* * *
Yoonwoo couldn’t remember how he got home.
The memories after turning away from that tightly shut hotel room door were like a thick fog.
He didn’t remember whether he took a taxi, how long he walked, or even how he managed to enter the officetel’s door code.
By the time he came to, he was slumped helplessly on the floor of the living room—where he had breathed and lived with Cha Joowon for years.
The warmth they had built together still lingered there.
But Yoonwoo didn’t even feel the cold that seeped through his thin clothes from the chilly floor.
It was like all sensation had left his body.
The throbbing pain in his side and wrist was the only thing anchoring him to reality.
But even that felt distant.
All his senses were numb, consumed by the brutal image he’d witnessed in that hotel room—and the searing betrayal that carved into his chest like a knife.
The dark, silent living room felt like a grave.
Outside, the dazzling city lights shimmered beyond the window, like a scene from a world that had nothing to do with him.
Life went on under those sparkling lights.
Only he was trapped in this cold, pitch-black despair.
He blankly scanned the room.
A photo on the wall—taken during one of their trips—showed the two of them smiling brightly.
He felt like a fool for believing that smile had been real.
The mug on the table—the one Joowon used to make coffee for him every morning.
Every corner of the room was plastered with memories of Joowon.
What once gave Yoonwoo joy and comfort now pierced him like sharp thorns, stabbing straight into his heart.
The laughter they shared, the tender whispers, the moments they promised each other a future—every one of them now felt like poison, spreading through his entire body.
The happier the memories, the more brutal the pain.
Eight years.
Everything they had built together crumbled like a sandcastle.
Yoonwoo numbly turned over the past in his mind.
Where had things gone wrong?
When had the cracks started forming?
Had he become too familiar—so much so that Joowon grew tired of him?
Or was it the sex?
Was Joowon dissatisfied?
Had he gotten bored of Yoonwoo’s awkward, passive body?
What did I do wrong?
No matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t find an answer.
Joowon had always been kind and affectionate.
He had taken suppressants to hold back his ruts for Yoonwoo, protected him from the world’s prejudice, built a company for him, believed in his talent.
Yoonwoo believed all of that had been genuine.
So then, what changed?
Or—had nothing changed at all? Had it always been that way from the beginning?
The kindness and care he’d shown—were they just the compassion and sense of duty of an Alpha?
Had Joowon been suppressing a primal desire that Yoonwoo, as a Beta, could never fulfill—for eight whole years?
If so, how torturous must that have been for him?
And how pathetic was Yoonwoo, dreaming of happiness at his side, without knowing any of that?
“Was I… not enough because I’m a Beta?”
And just like that, his thoughts looped back to the beginning.
No matter how much he tried to believe in Joowon’s love, the reality he had seen was too cruel.
When Joowon’s rut hit, he had instinctively responded to another Omega—and shoved Yoonwoo away like he was nothing.
If that’s what Alpha instincts were, then maybe Yoonwoo had never been a complete partner for him from the start.
Guilt crushed Yoonwoo’s entire body.
No — it wasn’t just guilt.
It was the scream of an old wound he’d long tried to ignore and bury, now festering and bursting open.
He was fifteen when he manifested as a Beta — and the blatant disappointment that had flashed across his parents’ faces still haunted him.
Since then, they had looked at him like he was lacking, treating him as if he were invisible.
His friends had turned their backs on him for not being an Omega.
All of those wounds, every scar he had endured, exploded to the surface now — triggered by Joowon’s betrayal.
‘So this was it. No matter how hard I struggled, no matter how much I tried… I could never change the fact that I was a Beta.’
He had believed Joowon would be different.
That Joowon would see him as simply “Seo Yoonwoo.”
Now that belief felt unbearably naïve.
Yoonwoo wondered — maybe the eight years they’d shared had been nothing but a long, elaborate play.
And the whispers, the rumors people said out of jealousy or spite, came rushing back.
To an Alpha, a Beta is just… a temporary stop.
A placeholder until they find their Omega.
Was that all he had ever been?
If that was true, then what had those eight years meant?
What had his youth even been?
Should he end this relationship?
Betrayal and anger screamed “yes” — but deep down, another voice trembled within him.
But how?
Yoonwoo couldn’t even begin to imagine a life without Cha Joowon.
For the past eight years, Joowon had been his whole universe, his world.
The first person who had made him feel a true sense of belonging after his family had abandoned him.
If Joowon disappeared from his life…
Yoonwoo felt like the very ground he stood on would vanish beneath him.
Even the thought made it hard to breathe — like his chest was being ripped open.
He didn’t have the courage to let go.
Self-loathing coiled around his throat like a noose.
His chest ached, and he felt nauseous.
He hated himself — for trusting Joowon, for daring to dream of happiness through his warmth.
He felt pitiful. Pathetic.
He had been abandoned again.
Because he didn’t meet expectations, or simply because he wasn’t enough.
The reasons were different, but the ending was the same.
‘I was never someone worthy of love.’
‘Seo Yoonwoo was just a worthless failure.’
That thought shattered what little strength he had left.
The tears he had held back burst out again — but he no longer had the energy to cry out loud.
Only hot tears flowed endlessly down his cheeks, soaking the cold wooden floor beneath him.
In his mind, the scene from the hotel replayed like a vivid nightmare.
The tangled sheets.
The two shadows exploring each other’s bodies.
A stranger’s flushed Omega face, lost in ecstasy, moaning in pleasure.
And Joowon… Joowon immersed in it all, making a blissful expression he had never once shown Yoonwoo.
The sound of their bodies colliding, the sticky squelch of their movements, echoed in his ears like hallucinations.
Yoonwoo wanted to scream, to cover his ears and make it stop.
Their affair… was probably still ongoing.
Even now, Joowon was likely being consumed by a deep, primal pleasure with that unfamiliar Omega — a kind of pleasure Yoonwoo had never been allowed to experience.
They were probably inhaling each other’s pheromones, baring their most intimate selves to each other.
The kind of pheromones Yoonwoo couldn’t give or receive.
That thought tore through his chest like his heart was being physically ripped apart.
It wasn’t jealousy.
It was a pain far more raw — a pain that denied his very existence.
The idea that Joowon could surrender to instinct so easily, indifferent to Yoonwoo’s suffering, chilled his blood.
A day passed. Then two.
Yoonwoo barely ate.
He couldn’t sleep.
When waves of nausea hit, he dragged himself to the bathroom.
The rest of the time, he curled up on the sofa, staring blankly into space.
By the second day, his phone wouldn’t stop ringing.
[Senior Kang Seoyeon], [Manager Park], [Assistant Manager Kim]…
It was probably about the important presentation Joowon had missed due to his rut.
Joowon hadn’t shown up — so they must’ve been calling Yoonwoo instead.
He stared blankly at the screen but never answered.
The ringtone felt like a piercing noise.
Missed call alerts and message notifications filled the screen, but Yoonwoo didn’t even have the strength to pick it up.
Even the names on the screen felt like they were mocking him.
Eventually, the phone battery ran out. The screen went black.
And with it, his last connection to the world vanished.
He was now alone, in perfect darkness.
Time crawled by.
Deprived of food and sleep, his body weakened rapidly.
His lips cracked with dryness.
His face was pale and drained.
The bruise on his side darkened.
His wrist still throbbed.
He barely moved, alternating between the couch and the floor.
Only the faint sound of his breathing and a suffocating stillness filled the room.
On the morning of the fifth day, the silence was finally broken.
The door lock, quiet for days, beeped to life.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The sound of a passcode being entered.
Yoonwoo instinctively lifted his head.
His heart began to pound with unease.
Click.
The front door opened.
A familiar silhouette stepped inside — someone he hadn’t seen in five days.
Yoonwoo stared blankly at the entrance, like an old robot booting up after being shut down.
A face gaunt from exhaustion.
A scent that still carried faint traces of unfamiliar pheromones and rut.
It was Cha Joowon.
He stood there, frozen in the doorway, staring at Yoonwoo’s collapsed figure on the living room floor — like a discarded doll surrounded by the heavy stench of decay and silence.
* * *
