DFLT 46

Seeing Sehyun’s serious reaction, Yeonoh awkwardly scratched the back of his head and mumbled in a flustered voice.

“Uh, why, why it’s coming out like this, I’m not sure either. I’m really a beta….”

“Yes, I know you are a beta, Mr. Ji Yeonoh. You couldn’t detect my pheromones earlier.”

Understanding that he was being told not to make a fuss, Yeonoh pressed his lips together firmly. In the meantime, the pheromone level updated again, and then the exact same error he had seen in alpha mode appeared. Just when he thought it was working normally now, it refreshed again and a decimal-point pheromone level appeared.

“I will try it on.”

Unable to watch any longer, Sehyun put on the watch, and the pheromone concentration immediately rose. Unlike Yeonoh’s case where errors and numbers appeared alternately, a similar reading was maintained no matter how many times it was refreshed. Compared to Yeonoh’s result, which was a decimal number close to 0, the reading for Sehyun, a dominant omega, was much higher.

“Hmm, so the watch isn’t broken….”

Sehyun, who had been groaning for a moment in thought as the watch on his wrist worked normally, put the watch down.

“Mr. Yeonoh, I have a favor to ask. Could you possibly test it for about a week?”

“Uh, do I just need to wear the watch?”

Instead of answering, Do Sehyun placed a white medicine bottle on the table and pushed it towards Yeonoh. Yeonoh, with a large question mark floating above his head, opened the lid to check and found it full of white pills.

Noticing Yeonoh looking down at the medicine with a suspicious gaze, as it had no label and would be easy to fall for even if someone said it contained poison, Sehyun opened his lips.

“They are omega pheromone suppressants.”

“…Pardon me?”

“I think we need to determine whether you are reacting to omega pheromones, or if it is a flaw in the pheromone measurement logic.”

Yeonoh doubted his own ears. If you parsed Do Sehyun’s eloquent words, it meant he intended to conduct a clinical trial. The only thing proving this medicine was a suppressant was Do Sehyun’s story, and it was unknown what side effects a beta might experience from taking suppressants.

If it were just a test of wearing the watch, he would have gladly accepted, but he was not convinced and even felt displeased about having to measure a non-existent pheromone level while taking an unidentified drug. It was ambiguous whether this person usually made such requests so easily, or if he considered it no big deal because safety was guaranteed.

Yeonoh, who had pursed his lips for a moment, was lost in thought before he pushed the medicine bottle back towards Sehyun.

“I am sorry, but I understand that the causal relationship of omega suppressants on a beta’s body has not yet been clearly researched.”

“You cannot interpret that as meaning it’s dangerous. Research on the causal relationship between betas, who have no pheromone function at all, and drugs for manifested individuals has simply never been properly conducted because it’s not cost-effective. There won’t be any safety issues. Betas lack the gene involved in pheromone regulation itself.”

How can he guarantee that it won’t be dangerous in theory when it has never been properly researched? He felt a surge of anger for a moment, but he suppressed his emotions and responded to Sehyun’s words in a calm tone.

“…I believe we are repeating the same point.”

“Then I will put it another way. The solution TG presents to society with this smartwatch will be the first of its kind. It might even reach into unknown territory.”

It seemed he had to acknowledge Do Sehyun’s innate eloquence. If Yeonoh’s company loyalty had been just a little deeper, he would have willingly participated in Sehyun’s experiment.

“I am not interested in living for such a grand cause.”

In the face of reality, a cause is merely a romance. If something were to happen to him, what sin would his family, who would suddenly have to bear the burden of livelihood, have committed?

“I will be going now. I will continue to test the watch.”

Yeonoh picked up the watch and the charging cable and rose from his seat. After a bow and a turn to take a step, Do Sehyun’s low laugh and subsequent words caught him by the ankle.

“You were not interested in a grand cause, so you liked your boss?”

Yeonoh’s body swayed for a moment, as if the ground he stood on had suddenly caved in. Was his head spinning, or was the ground rising up and then sinking down? His body was plunged into an abyss, and Yeonoh could not bring himself to look back, nor could he say a single word.

“That is why I thought you liked things like romance, Mr. Yeonoh.”

Sehyun’s light footsteps were approaching. Sehyun came into the view of Yeonoh, who stood frozen like a broken doll with rusty joints.

The moment he met the coldness filling Do Sehyun’s lackluster pupils, Yeonoh froze stiffly to the tips of his toes. After a moment that felt like an eternity, Do Sehyun folded his double-lidded eyes and smiled.

“Get a manifestation test tomorrow and share the results with me.”

Sehyun, who had hidden his contemptuous gaze without a trace, handed him the medicine bottle. In his mind, where a giant cloud had formed, before he could even retrace the whole situation at a slow pace, Sehyun offered a brief farewell to go home safely and disappeared inside.

“…Haa.”

A ragged breath escaped from between Yeonoh’s teeth. A sense of enervation, as if all the blood had drained from his body, made him lose his balance for a moment, but he propped himself up against a wall to support his tilting body.

“Are you all right?”

“Ah, yes. I am sorry.”

“I will escort you home.”

“No, it is all right.”

As soon as his body swayed, Sehyun’s assistant rushed over to support Yeonoh, but he barely managed to pull himself together and shook his head. He fled Sehyun’s house as if running away and caught a taxi.

Confusion remained in the wake of the storm that had swept through. To think that Do Sehyun knew. I believed without a doubt that I had hidden it well…. It was an absurdly arrogant thought.

Only then did he re-examine the reason why Do Sehyun had been particularly prickly with him. Even if he could not figure out how he had noticed, seeing as he had disliked him from the very beginning, it seemed it did not take him that long to discover his one-sided love.

He even tried to make the paltry excuse to himself that his feelings had started before the talk of their marriage came up, but he knew better than anyone that it would not work. Sehyun had said he had been chasing after Heonyoung since they were young.

If that was the case, then there was truly only one option left. He had to get over his feelings and come to his senses before he made things worse. It was a resolution he had already made hundreds of times, but the one-sided love he had carried on like a habit for three years had to come to an end someday.

If you place a glass marble on the floor and flick it with your finger, the marble gains momentum and rolls far, far away before slowly losing speed and stopping at some point. A person’s heart could not be like a glass marble that stops on its own if you just hold your breath. Unlike a marble, a person, regrettably, has an emotion called lingering attachment.

What if the marble never stops? A sudden worry struck him, but it was a helpless question. There would be a way, whether by catching it with his hand or shattering it by stepping on it with his foot, and besides, it was not as if there was no hope at all.

Perhaps because he had become a little more stoic about accepting the destined end, the tightness that felt like it was piercing through his chest seemed to have lessened a little. Perhaps because of the memory of having cried his heart out in front of Seo Heonyoung, no tears came out.

“I’m home.”

Yeonoh, who had arrived home, announced his return listlessly. He happened to run into Seowon, who was coming out of the bathroom. Seowon, whose hair was damp as if he had just washed it, had a towel draped around his neck.

“Did you wash up?”

“Yeah, I just got off work from the cafe. You are a bit late, hyung?”

“Seowon-ah, come over here.”

Yeonoh had Seowon sit on the sofa and fastened the smartwatch onto his wrist. Since Seowon was also a beta, he intended to test the watch.

“What’s with the watch?”

The loading icon for the omega mode’s pheromone level spun round and round, and then a numerical error message appeared.

[No pheromone response for the ‘Omega’ type. Would you like to re-select the type?]

For Seowon, who was a beta, it produced the correct result again. Bewildered, Yeonoh blinked his eyes and stared down at the watch.

“I’m not an omega. But what is this?”

“It’s a new product being tested.”

“That’s crazy. It can measure pheromone levels too? This is going to be a huge hit when it comes out. An omega friend of mine almost got into big trouble when his heat suddenly came on at school, and I heard things like that happen quite often.”

Yeonoh let Seowon’s chatter go in one ear and out the other as he fastened the watch back onto his own wrist this time. But only the same result he had seen several times today appeared.

An error appeared, then it showed a value of about 0.01, then an error again. Seowon, who was watching the constantly changing watch screen, made a comment.

“Huh. Why is it going crazy on its own?”

“…I know, right. Why is it doing this?”

At this point, it was beginning to go beyond simple curiosity and into worry. Yeonoh, who had quickly washed up and come out, picked up his phone and searched the internet.

[Recessive Omega]

[Recessive Omega Pheromone Level]

According to the search results, no matter how recessive an omega was, a pheromone level below 0.01 was impossible. On top of that, since manifested individuals can perceive pheromones, if Yeonoh were a manifested individual, he should have noticed when Sehyun, a dominant omega, released his pheromones in front of him.

From his first manifestation test, he had received the result of being a beta every time in his manifestation tests, including his annual health checkups. There was no way he could be an omega, but he had no way of knowing why the watch was showing this error, and why he himself was so agitated.

He closed his eyes with the thought that he should get a manifestation test again when the day broke. Turning away from the complex fantasies that washed over the darkness.