Chapter 89
Choose my position clearly? Is he joking? Who is he to tell me to define my position?
Strictly speaking, is he Jaesu-taeng’s boyfriend? They’re not even dating. What right does he have to tell me what to do?
Ju-on barely suppressed the hot anger rising to his throat, not clearly knowing why he felt such hostility towards Tae-geon.
It was late at night when his father finally returned home. Ju-on blocked Hak-gyu’s way into the house with a serious expression. Despite Ju-on’s insistence to tell him everything he knew, Kwon Hak-gyu shook his head in feigned ignorance.
Ju-on snorted at this.
“So you’re going to be like this till the end…?”
Hak-gyu clicked his tongue at Ju-on’s whining.
“Stop talking nonsense and go wash up and sleep, you fool.”
“How is this nonsense!”
“Whether something happened between those two or not, what’s it to you?!”
Ah, I really didn’t want to use this method…
Gritting his teeth, Ju-on deliberately lowered his voice and murmured softly, as if confessing his love.
“…I love Hyeon-woo hyung.”
Hak-gyu’s face turned ashen at this thunderbolt of a statement.
“So tell me. What exactly happened between them?”
“……”
“I need to know so I can either confess or give up!”
Hak-gyu, who had been frozen in shock, suddenly lunged at Ju-on.
“Hey! You brat! What are you trying to do…!”
Ju-on groaned and dodged as his father’s rough hands mercilessly struck his back.
“Ah, that’s why I’m asking you to tell me quickly! What kind of relationship do they have!”
“What relationship! You little…!”
With his face flushed red, Hak-gyu finally made Ju-on kneel and started talking.
Since Hak-gyu didn’t know all the details, he recounted the facts he knew. From Hyeon-woo’s manifestation as an omega, to his disappearance, pregnancy, arrest, confinement, miscarriage due to fire, and the fact that the lost child was Tae-geon’s.
Throughout the entire story, Ju-on’s face went through a range of emotions, turning pale and then flushing. When Hak-gyu finally finished speaking, Ju-on’s face had turned deathly pale. Seeing his immature son’s dazed expression, Hak-gyu finally felt relieved.
“…So, you brat.”
Hak-gyu stood up, grabbed his coat from the sofa armrest, and admonished the petrified Ju-on.
“That’s why you should give up these useless feelings!”
“……”
“There’s no place for you between those two.”
Even lying in bed, Ju-on couldn’t fall asleep.
‘Give up these useless feelings. There’s no place for you between those two.’
No place for me to intervene…
Ju-on sat up in bed, rubbing his chin with his thumb.
There are plenty of places. At least I’m sure I’m a better person than Tae-geon hyung, no, that bastard.
Just remembering how Hyeon-woo was nearly killed in the fire while confined made his heart race uncontrollably.
“…Crazy bastard.”
Ju-on gritted his teeth. Hyeon-woo’s intense rejection of Tae-geon now made sense. But still, he didn’t feel relieved at all. Learning about their situation made him feel suffocated, as if a heavy stone was placed on his chest.
No matter how he tried to understand why Tae-geon hyung had twisted the situation to this extent, he simply couldn’t comprehend it.
Ju-on, who had been holding his head trying to organize his thoughts, finally flopped down on the bed. The clock was already pointing to midnight.
“…I wonder if Jaesu-taeng ate well…”
That bastard must have fed him!
Ju-on tossed and turned violently. Once he started thinking about Hyeon-woo, his mind became completely filled with thoughts of him.
‘…I love Hyeon-woo hyung.’
Ah! Damn it!!
After tossing and turning for a while, Ju-on suddenly sat up again, grabbing his head. That one sentence he had uttered without much meaning was now shackling him, rampaging through his mind.
“…No. It can’t be…”
Get a grip! That’s a complete mess!
As he was shaking his head, strongly denying something he should never admit, his pocket started vibrating continuously. He took out his phone to find several messages from his friend.
[Choose the one you like best among these.]
[I’ve carefully selected them based on your preferences, so you’ll definitely like one.]
[You know you owe me a treat if this works out, right?]
Frowning at the messages without context, Ju-on remembered that he had asked his friend to set him up on a blind date recently. It was an impulsive act because he kept feeling inexplicable urges from his physical contact with Hyeon-woo.
At the bottom of the received messages, three small photos appeared. As Ju-on opened the photos and checked the faces of the three people in turn, his face suddenly hardened.
They all had thin double eyelids and downturned eyes, reminiscent of a certain someone.
His heart pounded with an ominous premonition.
[What are my preferences?]
Not long after sending the message to his friend with a stiff face, a reply arrived. As Ju-on read the message with a tense heart, the color drained from his face.
[How long have I known you since middle school to not know? You always lose your mind over pale-skinned, puppy-eyed types with downturned eyes. I saw on SNS that even your girlfriend in England was exactly this type. Don’t try to play dumb.]
Pale skin and downturned eyes.
…Han Hyeon-woo.
The reason he felt nauseous and his stomach ached when thinking about Hyeon-woo. Ju-on now strongly realized that his childhood feelings towards Hyeon-woo were not simply a sense of inferiority.
In this critical moment when the enormous presence that had dominated his subconscious for a long time finally surfaced and revealed its identity, Ju-on could do nothing but let out a despairing exclamation.
*
Ring-.
Ring-.
A call came from Dr. Jung Ui-hyeon, to whom he had entrusted the component analysis of the narcotic suppressant a few days ago. Tae-geon, sitting on the sofa, went out to the veranda and answered the phone in a subdued voice so as not to wake Hyeon-woo, who had gone to bed early.
-Young mas-, I mean, Director. This is Jung Ui-hyeon.
“Yes, go ahead.”
Unlike the warm daytime, the night air, cold and frosty like ice, swept fiercely over Tae-geon once. The night air of winter on the cusp of spring was fierce and biting, like the last struggle of the winter god facing imminent death.
-We’ve completed the component analysis of the illegal suppressant you requested. As you said, it contained components not circulated in the market.
“…I know there’s a drug that Biobak is exclusively trading with China. Is it related to that drug?”
-Yes. Although the molecular structure has been significantly altered due to the crude entanglement of various substances… But how did you know?
Tae-geon ran his hand through his hair habitually, recalling his conversation with Secretary Kim. Because Taeryeong had exclusive control over the domestic distribution of pianin, Secretary Kim had assumed that the leakage of pianin was an inside job at Taeryeong Pharmaceuticals, but Tae-geon thought differently.
This was because the pianin content detected in the illegal suppressant was absurdly low for its supposed potency, which was said to be dozens of times that of regular suppressants. He couldn’t shake the feeling that pianin was deliberately mixed in as a decoy to hide something.
“…So, what’s the role of this drug?”
-It’s similar to an immune adsorbent. It refines specific substances to become antigens by eluting them.
“……”
-Through this, the substance that becomes an antigen causes an immune reaction with omega antibodies, suppressing the heat cycle.
“…This substance… Is it what I think it is?”
-…Yes. Probably.
“……”
-It most likely is.
Damn, really. They’re something else.
Tae-geon muttered a low curse.
A substance that greatly affects an omega’s heat cycle but can’t be detected by modern drug detection technology.
It was the pheromones of dominant alphas.
The reason alpha pheromones couldn’t be materialized was more due to ethical issues than technical limitations.
Just as milk is produced through cows that continuously conceive, give birth, and are milked until near death, the same applied to pheromones.
To extract high-quality pheromones, an alpha’s state of arousal had to be maintained. Needless to say, unethical and illegal acts were committed in the process. Kim Jun-hyeok, the dominant alpha with testicles shrunken to the size of peas and drooling, was likely one of those sacrificial lambs.
Tae-geon had no doubt that Biobak was behind the underground forces working to turn alpha pheromones into drugs. Previously, while tracking illegal suppressants, he had learned about the existence of a brain death machine that damages the brain, putting healthy people into comatose states.
As long as the spinal cord is intact, even in a vegetative state, the body’s circulatory system functions normally, making it easier to preserve organs and extract pheromones. This brain death machine was developed in China.
A massive amount of pseudo-immune adsorbents had been flowing into this place in recent years. It was the core substance for illegal suppressants. It plays a role in stabilizing alpha pheromones by combining them with carriers to form artificial antigens. When these antigens are administered to omegas, they activate the same physical responses as during physical relations with alphas, showing the effect of suppressing the heat cycle.
