Correlation Between Alpha and Beta chapter 40

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The moment he recognized that face, Yoonwoo was struck by a breathless shock and involuntarily stumbled back.

It felt as if his heart had plummeted to the floor and shattered into pieces.

Joowon was equally shocked.

In the silence of the empty space, the front door had suddenly opened, and standing there like a ghost was the unbelievable figure of Seo Yoonwoo.

He hastily scrambled up from the sofa.

His face was severely drawn and haggard, his hair was messy, and a terrible smell of alcohol hung about his wrinkled clothes, suggesting he hadn’t slept properly for days.

He felt a more terrible humiliation at encountering Yoonwoo in this broken state than at being caught trespassing.

He unconsciously staggered to his feet and retreated behind the sofa as if to hide.

“…Yoonwoo? Why… why are you… here….”

Joowon couldn’t speak properly due to extreme confusion and guilt.

He had never expected Yoonwoo to return to this house, especially not to face him in this condition.

His heart began to pound violently with an emotion close to fear.

“That’s what I should be asking you.”

Yoonwoo cut him off.

The breath that had momentarily hitched from the shock burst out as cold anger.

His voice was low and detached.

“Why are you acting like this in someone else’s house? This is the house I received as alimony.”

He precisely threw back the word ‘alimony’ that Joowon had tossed at him.

Joowon’s heart sank at his icy tone, the use of ‘you’ (a more formal/distanced address), and the perfect distance Yoonwoo had established.

He quickly made an excuse.

“Ah… well… I didn’t know you’d be coming… I was just… checking if I’d left anything… I was about to leave.”

He averted his eyes and hedged, but he knew himself that it was a clumsy lie.

Months had passed since they broke up, and all his belongings had already been moved to the apartment he shared with Jiwoon; there was no trace of him left in the house.

Yoonwoo coldly glanced around the house, which held no belongings, and spoke without any change in expression, as if his excuse wasn’t worth listening to or he simply didn’t care.

“It doesn’t look like you left any luggage. In any case, please leave now.”

Joowon held his breath at Yoonwoo’s reaction.

This wasn’t right.

This wasn’t the reaction he had expected.

Eight years.

They had spent eight years together.

No matter how terribly wrong he had been, Yoonwoo should have been shaken upon encountering him again after only a few months.

Even if he was angry, resentful, or wailing, there should have been some feeling left for him underneath it all.

It had to be.

He should have looked at him, like he did when he was sitting defeated in the officetel, begging with his eyes for Joowon to stay.

‘He’ll naturally be shaken when we meet again. Even if he gets angry and cries, in the end… if I just treat him a little better, he’ll forgive me.’

He had unconsciously believed this.

But Yoonwoo was not shaken at all.

His eyes were chillingly calm, and there was no trace of lingering affection or hesitation in his voice.

It was as if he regarded Joowon as no more than a stranger or an unwelcome intruder.

Faced with Yoonwoo’s reaction, which was so different from his expectation, Joowon felt a feeling that bordered on panic.

The person before his eyes was not the Seo Yoonwoo he knew.

He was not the fragile being who was hurt and vulnerable but who would ultimately lean on and depend on him.

The person who should have been shaken and shown attachment to him was instead looking down at him coldly, as if he were an insect.

In the face of that unbearable disconnect, Joowon’s last remaining pride and the fear of losing Yoonwoo welled up.

His heart hammered wildly.

His voice, aided by his nervousness and the power of the alcohol, jumped out, trembling.

“…How could you do this to me?”

He turned the arrow of blame onto Yoonwoo, his voice sounding like he was holding back anger.

“We haven’t seen each other in so long, and you don’t even wonder how I’ve been? How can you so heartlessly tell me to leave immediately?”

He approached Yoonwoo, desperately reaching out and grabbing Yoonwoo’s wrist, like a drowning man grasping at a straw.

It was a frantic act.

“I worried about you so much. You disappeared without contact! I called every day and couldn’t sleep every night because I was thinking about you!”

He shouted, as if he were the abandoned victim.

“But you… how can you be so cold? You’re not this kind of person! The Yoonwoo I know would have worried about me even if we broke up. Why have you changed so much?”

Watching Yoonwoo’s face harden, Joowon’s voice shook with shattered pride and anxiety.

His fingertips trembled with the fear of completely losing the person in front of him.

“Yoonwoo. Don’t you even care what happened to the company after you left? It’s practically the company you built! Now that you’ve gone, clients are leaving too. The company is having such a hard time—don’t you think you’re being too irresponsible?”

The more he spoke, the more Joowon felt that his current difficult situation was all Yoonwoo’s fault.

Both his own struggle and the company’s difficult circumstances.

Perhaps that was why.

He was angry and resentful toward Yoonwoo.

Joowon rubbed his stubbly face with one hand and stared at Yoonwoo.

“And what about me! Don’t you wonder about me? You should be worried about me! We dated for eight years. How can a breakup be easy? I’ve lost nearly ten kilograms since we broke up. I can’t sleep properly. I’m… I’m also miserable!”

He pleaded with Yoonwoo’s heart, almost wailing his pain.

Yoonwoo’s eyes grew colder as he listened to Joowon’s words.

He was fed up with his conduct of only blaming him without considering his own wrongdoing.

He even doubted if this was the person he had loved for eight years.

‘Did I misjudge him?’

He strongly shook off Joowon’s hand gripping his wrist with a look of contempt, pulling away from him. The anger radiating from his body was cold and solid.

“Ha… Eight years…. You said it well.”

Yoonwoo dropped the honorifics, as if it was a waste to treat him with courtesy, and spoke.

His voice was icy, but it contained a simmering resentment like a live volcano.

“You’re the one who abandoned me first. Who was it that dumped eight years of memories into the trash? Who said that one night with an Omega was much better than eight years of intimacy with me? Why should I worry about you? To say something like that now, aren’t you ashamed?”

Yoonwoo’s barbed words shot like a dagger, accurately hitting Joowon’s heart.

He himself had said those words.

‘One night with an Omega was better than eight years of relationship with you.’

At the time, those words had felt like an obvious truth, but why did they sound so heart-wrenchingly painful now?

“And the company? If you seated your lover in my place, that’s something for the two of you to deal with. Why are you questioning me about it now? If your lover had done a good job, the clients wouldn’t have left. I didn’t want to leave the company I loved and raised either! Who made me leave?!”

“My lover…!”

The fact that Yoonwoo knew about his relationship with Jiwoon, and even that he had placed him in his position, struck Joowon hard.

The words ‘your lover’ coming from his mouth felt so strange and unfamiliar.

It was only then that Joowon realized.

He had never once thought he had ‘truly’ broken up with Yoonwoo.

He had been arrogantly confident that whenever he returned, Yoonwoo would be there for him, that Yoonwoo was kind and gentle and lonely, and would eventually take him back.

But he was wrong.

The word ‘end’ struck him squarely in the head.

And he realized. Something between him and Yoonwoo had been severed.

Yoonwoo would never look at him the way he used to.

He would not look at him with eyes full of love, nor call him with a voice full of affection.

Never again. It was truly… all over.

The terrible realization that he had shattered eight years with his own hands and could never get it back.

As the truth he had desperately avoided for months was laid bare before him, he felt his whole body grow cold and tremble. His vision went dark with terror.

“I… I….”

In an effort to somehow prevent this ending, he stuttered meaningless syllables, trying to say anything, even though he didn’t know what he wanted to say.

He instinctively felt that if he didn’t, this would truly be the end with Yoonwoo.

His body reeled and swayed from the immense shock.

The Yoonwoo he knew was truly gone.

The gentle, sometimes precarious Beta who ultimately loved him was no longer there.

He vaguely began to realize that what he had thrown away was not just a partner of eight years, but the only person who truly understood and supported him—and that he could never get him back.

“That’s enough. Get out.”

Yoonwoo spoke coldly, as if squeezing out his last shred of emotion.

His eyes were mixed with anger, disgust, and profound weariness.

“I don’t want to see your face anymore.”

He almost shoved the drunken Joowon toward the front door.

“Don’t ever look for me again. Whatever was between us ended completely the day you abandoned me.”

Slam! The front door sharply echoed as it closed, and the house was once again filled with silence.

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