‘Promise me you’ll definitely go here one year after I die.’

‘…Why?’

‘I have a gift for you.’

‘What is it?’

‘That’s still a secret.’

‘How can you do that? That’s mean.’

‘You had a secret from me too.’

‘…You’re talking about that bus stop?’

Hae-wan took out the note Hae-eon had given him from his pocket.

Now he thought he understood. Though he didn’t know when it had been arranged, this was clearly an appointment time and place. The intended person was probably Kang-hyun.

His legs gave out, and Hae-wan crouched down against the wall.

Hae-eon.

What on earth were you thinking?

Wrapped in a strange sense of exhaustion, Hae-wan stared blankly at the afternoon sunlight sliding down the wall, creating a square space on the asphalt floor.

Eight years might have been too long to reminisce about someone. Especially memories that ended as one-sided love without ever speaking a single word should have been even more so.

But Hae-wan’s situation was a little different.

He had learned he wasn’t like others when he was fifteen, but he truly felt what being different meant after graduating high school, leaving the orphanage, and coming up to Seoul.

In the world of alphas and omegas, an omega without scent was like a music box that made no sound. You could see it existed in that place, but no one thought to wind its spring.

Perhaps that’s why that pitiful one-sided love remained so precious.

Of course, he hadn’t missed it and reflected on it every day. It was just the kind of memory that would suddenly come to mind on nights when he was too exhausted to sleep, even though most days he lived forgetting about it.

Even though he couldn’t properly remember why he had liked that boy whose name he didn’t even know, even though he had never even thought of expressing it, even though it would only become a memory that grew cold and forgotten after a very long time, it was the kind of feeling he wanted to cherish carefully like dried flower petals.

The sudden weight in his heart made Hae-wan bow his head.

Then a long shadow fell over his bowed head. Startled, Hae-wan looked up and his eyes widened like they might pop out.

Kang-hyun stood close in front of Hae-wan, who had scrambled to his feet, almost bouncing up, blocking any escape route.

“Did you want to play hide and seek with me?”

His mind went blank, leaving Hae-wan unable to give any answer, only opening and closing his mouth. Kang-hyun was breathing hard like he had been running all the way here. Nevertheless, his eyes visible above the mask were fixed straight on Hae-wan’s face without the slightest waver.

“I told you that you’ve mistaken me for someone else…!”

Filled only with the thought that he had to get out of this situation somehow, Hae-wan muttered the same words like a parrot while looking for a place to escape.

But Kang-hyun easily blocked Hae-wan’s retreat route, seemingly determined not to be fooled twice. At the continued denial, he opened his mouth again with an agitated voice.

“Why are you acting like this? You’re the one who said to meet today. So why are you pretending not to know me!”

Even though he had clearly said no several times, Kang-hyun’s voice strangely held not the slightest doubt that he might not be Hae-eon.

Unable to step back because of the wall, Hae-wan could only look up at Kang-hyun with round eyes. Considering that Hae-wan rarely had occasion to look up at anyone normally, having the overwhelmingly tall Kang-hyun blocking his way made his heart pound and gave him a dizzy feeling.

Hae-wan had never been good at handling confrontational situations like this. Nearly panicking, Hae-wan pushed against Kang-hyun’s solid chest as he stood close and raised his voice slightly.

“Whoever you were supposed to meet, it’s not me!”

At those words, his strangely jet-black eyes flashed threateningly.

“You’re saying you’re not Yoon Hae-eon?”

Kang-hyun pulled down the black mask that had been firmly covering the lower part of his face to below his chin. His high, clean nose bridge and sharp jawline were revealed.

And he, without a moment’s hesitation, pressed Hae-wan’s shoulder against the wall with one hand while using the other to pull down both the muffler and turtleneck Hae-wan was wearing around his neck, bringing his face close to the exposed neckline.

When his nose tip, cold from the winter wind, touched the sensitive skin, Hae-wan trembled like he’d been electrocuted and pushed Kang-hyun’s shoulder away once more.

“What, what are you doing…!”

Regardless of Hae-wan, who was so flustered he couldn’t even finish his words properly, Kang-hyun smiled with an utterly satisfied expression.

“It’s you.”

“…”

“There’s no way it’s not you.”

It was blind certainty for reasons unknown.

Overwhelmed by it, Hae-wan was staring blankly at Kang-hyun’s face when it happened.

“Excuse me, are you alright there?”

A strange voice from somewhere snapped him back to his senses. Looking hurriedly behind Kang-hyun, he saw two police officers approaching.

“There’s nothing wrong, so why are you asking?”

Kang-hyun turned slightly and spoke first with a sharp voice. But the police officers didn’t respond to Kang-hyun’s words and looked straight at Hae-wan as they spoke.

“Are you okay? It looks like that person is forcibly restraining you.”

The strength momentarily left Kang-hyun’s hand that had been pinning Hae-wan to the wall until then. Not missing that opening, Hae-wan pushed Kang-hyun away and walked forward, almost running.

“Hae-eon! Yoon Hae-eon!”

He could hear Kang-hyun calling Hae-eon’s name in a flustered voice, but Hae-wan didn’t even look back as he hurriedly got into a taxi parked on the roadside.

The last thing Hae-wan saw as he repeatedly asked the driver who inquired about his destination to just start driving was Kang-hyun, who couldn’t take his eyes off the taxi Hae-wan had gotten into with a devastated face like he’d been abandoned, and the police officers blocking his way.

* * *

Opening the front door and entering the house, Hae-wan plopped down right there in the entryway.

The time showed 2 PM. He didn’t even know what state of mind had brought him home, but he couldn’t believe only half a day had passed.

At the sound of the door opening, he turned his head startled to see Yu-jun, who must have just woken up with a messy bedhead, coming out while yawning lazily.

Seeing Hae-wan sitting blankly in the entryway, he blinked a few times, then asked in a puzzled voice.

“What’s wrong with your face? You look like you’ve seen Yoon Hae-eon’s ghost or something.”

Though it wasn’t quite Hae-eon’s ghost, thinking he had experienced something sufficiently incomprehensible, Hae-wan bit his lip.

“Something really did happen, didn’t it? What is it, what happened?”

Yu-jun asked again worriedly. Hae-wan looked at him and swallowed hard.

Though Yu-jun wasn’t exactly a suitable person for advice, his head was such a mess that he felt like he needed to talk to someone about it to sort things out.

After hearing the story, Yu-jun spoke in a dumbfounded voice.

“So, at the place where Yoon Hae-eon told you to definitely go today because he had some gift for you, there was some guy that Yoon Hae-eon dated when they were young?”

“…Yeah.”

“And that guy thought he was meeting Yoon Hae-eon there?”

When Hae-wan quietly nodded, Yu-jun frowned.

“Wait, so that guy is supposed to be the gift for you? What’s that about? Does that make sense?”

Hae-wan let out a small sigh. Though he still couldn’t understand the meaning, at least he had some small, vague clues unlike Yu-jun.

The fact that Hae-wan had known Kang-hyun before Hae-eon did.

And the fact that after Hae-eon became lovers with Kang-hyun, the relationship between the two of them had become strangely awkward.

But somehow he didn’t want to tell Yu-jun about that. Fortunately, Yu-jun didn’t obsess over that problem and easily moved on to something else.

“But what’s with that bastard insisting you were right when you said you weren’t Yoon Hae-eon and making a fuss?”

“…I think it was because of my scent.”

“Well, that could happen… But still, there are so many similar scents in the world, how can he be certain that someone he met after 8 years is definitely the person he knows? Besides, he couldn’t even see back then.”

That was a mystery to Hae-wan too, so he couldn’t answer. No matter how much pheromone scent was one of the powerful means of identifying someone, it couldn’t be the primary means like a face. Of course, Hae-eon’s scent was special, but there couldn’t be no one with a similar scent.

“Ah, this is suspicious no matter how I think about it… Why didn’t you tell him you came because Yoon Hae-eon asked you to!”

At Yu-jun’s question that was close to scolding, flustered Hae-wan could only open and close his mouth.

“Well… I was too shocked to think of saying that.”

“I have a bad feeling about this. Didn’t Yoon Hae-eon take his money and disappear or something like that?”

“What?”

“I mean, who waits until now to meet someone they dated 8 years ago, especially when they were too young to know anything? Does that make sense? Unless there’s money involved or some grudge or something like that.”

At the absurd words, Hae-wan shook his head vigorously. Regardless, Yu-jun almost spat as he fervently expressed his opinion.

“You said that guy was really big too. Isn’t he like a gangster or something? So he sent you there to clean up the mess.”

“Say something that makes sense.”

Finally unable to bear it, Hae-wan scolded him, but Yu-jun’s next words left him speechless.