(The essence that becomes the source of all matter) / Pure fragrance.

It felt like walking through a forest in the early morning that no one’s feet had ever trampled.

It felt like having your skin dampened by dew gathered on the leaves of young, tender trees that had grown tall and lanky, and breathing in the scent of fruits that were still green and unripe, too immature to fully sweeten.

Being immersed in Hae-eon’s scent was like that.

Before fully waking from sleep, Hae-wan turned his head and buried his face deep into the pillow.

The fragrance that had seeped in from lying on it all night was vivid. But it was absolutely not the same as what he remembered.

Pheromone scents could only be truly smelled at the moment they emanated from a person’s skin. As soon as they settled into objects, the fragrance subtly changed and easily deteriorated.

This was why most people, despite being curious about their own pheromone scent, could never grasp its essence from just the lingering traces on clothes or bedding.

This also meant that Hae-wan would never again be able to smell Hae-eon’s true scent for the rest of his life.

While other people could smell Hae-eon’s scent from him.

Sitting up, Hae-wan habitually rubbed away the tears that had pooled with the palm of his hand. Hae-wan only learned after Hae-eon died that it was possible to cry even while sleeping.

It was still early, and beside him, Yu-jun lay sprawled out like a starfish, snoring deeply in his sleep, though Hae-wan couldn’t tell when he had come in. Hae-wan sighed quietly, pulled the blanket up to Yu-jun’s chin to cover him, then tidied his own bedding and quietly left the room.

The cold air circulating in the living room, where the heating was barely turned on, made Hae-wan shiver as he entered the bathroom. The old, small multi-family house they had moved to last year had particularly severe drafts, making the air cap vinyl on every window useless.

Among all the rooms, the bathroom had no heating at all, making it cold enough that you could see your breath. After turning on the faucet and waiting for the water to warm while rubbing his forearms with his hands, Hae-wan quickly stripped off his clothes and immediately doused himself with water from the showerhead as soon as steam began rising.

His chilled skin turned red wherever the warm water touched. Especially the surgical scar on the right side of his neck would flush an unsightly red, making his hand unconsciously keep reaching for it.

Part of it was because Hae-wan’s skin was particularly delicate, but after suffering from inflammation at the suture site, the scar had deepened enough to require treatment. The doctor recommended laser treatment, but after spending a full year caring for Hae-eon’s illness and then undergoing surgery, there was no money left for such things.

While showering as quickly as possible and getting dressed, Hae-wan quietly felt grateful in his heart that they had been able to get even this house.

When Hae-eon was alive, they had lived in a well-insulated studio apartment, stretching their budget to pay 700,000 won in monthly rent, but after everything ended, Hae-wan didn’t even have enough money left to pay a security deposit for a new place.

Without the 5 million won settlement support fund from Yu-jun, his junior from the orphanage, he wouldn’t have been able to get even this house, which was why Hae-wan inevitably felt indebted to Yu-jun.

When he entered the dark room to get clothes to change into, Yu-jun opened his eyes at the sound and grumbled sleepily.

“What are you doing, hyung… It’s still pitch black and you’re making a racket.”

“Sorry, did I wake you? I’m getting ready to go out.”

“Today’s your day off, where are you going? You don’t have friends, so it’s not like you’re meeting anyone.”

Fingering the black knit sweater he had taken from the drawer, Hae-wan hesitated for a moment.

“Today is Hae-eon’s memorial day.”

Today was Hae-eon’s first memorial day.

Perhaps that was why he had dreamed that beautiful dream of walking through the forest with Hae-eon. It had been a very green and pretty forest filled with young trees.

And the place he had to go today would probably be like that too.

Yu-jun, who had his face half-buried in the pillow, rolled his eyes up.

“So you’re going to buy flowers or something?”

Since he did plan to visit Hae-eon’s columbarium first, Hae-wan nodded. There was no need to tell Yu-jun about where he had to go after that.

Yu-jun flopped over onto his back and grumbled in an irritated voice.

“What’s so great about that bastard who crawled back before dying and ate up all your money?”

As soon as Yu-jun finished speaking, Hae-wan glared at him sharply. Only then did Yu-jun wave his hands around, gesturing that he had misspoken.

His stomach instantly bubbled and boiled with anger, so he just slammed the door hard and came out of the room.

Yu-jun disliked Hae-eon. Though he thought there was some fault on his own part and had never scolded him severely for it, Yu-jun’s hostility toward Hae-eon was incomprehensibly strong.

Yu-jun, who was twenty-one this year, particularly liked and followed Hae-wan well despite their seven-year age gap with twenty-eight-year-old Hae-wan. Because of this, Yu-jun was also the person among the many juniors from the orphanage with whom Hae-wan had formed the deepest bond.

But despite Hae-eon always being by Hae-wan’s side, Yu-jun somehow avoided Hae-eon, and Hae-eon also seemed completely uninterested in Yu-jun.

That strange stalemate exploded into conflict last year.

When Hae-eon, who had left without a word, returned to his side with a face clearly marked by illness, Hae-wan was half out of his mind.

Unable to believe it, he dragged Hae-eon to various hospitals, and even after hearing the consistent diagnosis that there was no way except heart transplant surgery, he couldn’t accept it and even searched for ridiculous alternative therapies.

It was precisely then that he became neglectful of his contact with Yu-jun, which he had maintained consistently since coming to Seoul. Yu-jun had just graduated high school, and though Hae-wan knew that since he was over eighteen he could no longer stay at the orphanage and was going through a period of many concerns, he had no capacity to pay attention to anything other than Hae-eon.

So when Yu-jun came to Seoul without warning, saying he wanted to live with Hae-wan, Hae-wan just stood there with a flustered face, unable to say anything.

Normally, he would have naturally taken in Yu-jun without question.

But Hae-wan had Hae-eon.

Twenty-four hours weren’t enough to care for the sick Hae-eon, so taking care of Yu-jun too seemed impossible. Moreover, the studio apartment where Hae-wan and Hae-eon were living at the time was decent but only 10 pyeong, already somewhat cramped for two men.

In that situation, he couldn’t take in Yu-jun, who might make Hae-eon uncomfortable.

But Yu-jun seemed to have come without a shred of doubt that he would be accepted, so when Hae-wan told him with difficulty that they couldn’t live together, Yu-jun couldn’t hide his overflowing sense of betrayal.

Moreover, when he learned that the reason was Hae-eon, Yu-jun became even more agitated.

How could it make sense for someone to leave without a word, hurt his hyung like that, and then shamelessly come back like this?

If this wasn’t using his hyung, then what was it?

How could that bastard, who had even gone to study in America, come back broke and sick and latch on like this?

Speaking about the sick Hae-eon in that way was unacceptable to Hae-wan at the time, so he yelled and got angry for the first time in his life, even driving Yu-jun away.

Of course, before even half a day had passed, Hae-wan regretted it so much he couldn’t bear it and called Yu-jun, but Yu-jun didn’t answer his calls for several months after that.

And Yu-jun returned a month after Hae-eon died and Hae-wan had received Hae-eon’s pheromone gland transplant surgery.

When he barely managed to open the door to the frantically ringing bell, Yu-jun looked puzzled upon seeing Hae-wan, who had become haggard from the surgery’s aftermath, then soon looked at him with a face that had turned pale with disbelief.

It wasn’t because of Hae-wan’s appearance, but because of the scent emanating from Hae-wan.

Because he realized that the scent emanating from Hae-wan was Hae-eon’s.

No one in this world had the same pheromone scent. There were many similar scents, but all scents had their own individuality in concentration, persistence, and small nuances of difference, and from the moment secondary gender manifested as alpha or omega, pheromone scent became a powerful indicator representing each individual.

But Hae-wan had no scent.

It was a congenital disability of the pheromone glands’ scent-producing function, and there was no way to treat it except through transplant surgery. However, pheromone gland transplant surgery was an extremely rare case and a difficult surgery that had to be performed as soon as the donor’s heart stopped, so supply was almost nonexistent.

So all that remained for Hae-wan was to accept a life lived as an omega without a scent.

Of course, it was an incredibly harsh path. Despite being a proper adult, everyone literally found Hae-wan, who emitted no pheromone scent at all, strange.

Like looking at a person without a face, everyone hesitated to get close.

Only after putting on a black knit turtleneck, padding, and even wrapping a scarf around his neck did Hae-wan leave the house.

He quickly escaped the still-dark alley in the slowly rising winter sun and headed for the subway. The closer he got to the station, the more people he saw coming and going than expected.

To get to Hae-eon’s columbarium, he had to take the subway for over an hour, so he had left early on purpose to avoid rush hour, but it didn’t seem to help much.

As Hae-wan was going down the subway station entrance stairs, a man passed by him going up the stairs. But at the very moment he brushed past Hae-wan, the man stopped dead in his tracks, turned around, and stared intently at his retreating figure.

The behavior and gaze were so obvious he couldn’t miss it. Hae-wan wrapped his scarf tighter and buried his face in it, hoping less scent would leak out, and quickened his pace.

At times like this, he was newly reminded of how much Hae-eon’s scent attracted people.

Even now it wasn’t much different, but even before receiving the pheromone gland transplant surgery, Hae-wan’s human relationships had been narrow. Within those narrow boundaries, there weren’t many occasions to be particularly conscious of pheromone scents, so it was possible to sometimes forget about the disability he carried.

Perhaps that was why, only after experiencing for the first time how ‘normal’ people recognized each other through scent and wanted to form relationships, Hae-wan came to realize more acutely how much of an invisible person he had been without scent.

Though he might have enjoyed even slightly all this new attention and sense of presence, he absolutely couldn’t. Because while strangers who were easily interested in the captivating scent might not know, Hae-wan couldn’t forget that this scent wasn’t his but Hae-eon’s.

Therefore, every time he had these unfamiliar experiences, all Hae-wan felt was an endless anxiety like he was deceiving others.

Live with my scent. That’s my last wish.

When Hae-eon suddenly said that one day, Hae-wan answered without thinking that he couldn’t do that.

Hae-wan had never, not even once, wanted to have Hae-eon’s scent.

Yet he ended up having the surgery because it was Hae-eon’s last wish before dying.

Hae-eon was persistent. He cried for days, got angry, clung to him, and cried again, until he finally got Hae-wan to say he understood, so please stop crying.