Chapter 79: Walls Come Crumbling Down

At those words, all of Eun-gyeol’s movements froze at once.

His snake-like eyes hardened stiffly, like stone.

“Y-You knew…?”

His voice began to tremble.

Contrary to the countless resolutions he had made—to stay calm, to speak steadily, to face it head-on even if he opening himself to fear.

On the bus ride over, he had thought about it endlessly.

The one who had turned him into this—there was no need to question it—it had to be Eun-gyeol.

If it was omega pheromones, Eun-gyeol could pick them out with eerie precision even in a crowd, so there was no way he wouldn’t have noticed the changes in him, but still… just in case.

If by some slim chance Eun-gyeol had done it unintentionally, if he truly didn’t know about his condition—
Then maybe, just maybe, he could maintain enough rationality to talk.

But if Eun-gyeol had known.

As horrific as the possibility was, one he didn’t even want to imagine—
If Eun-gyeol had known and still hadn’t told him.

And worse still, if the manifestation itself had been deliberate…

If that were the case… how was he supposed to forgive Eun-gyeol?

It felt like it would take an immeasurable amount of time and effort just to find an answer to that question.

“Who told you?”

The first words Eun-gyeol uttered were neither affirmation nor denial.

Yet they were also an answer that already said enough.

Clenching his teeth, Han-geon desperately held onto his crumbling resolve.

“Is that really the problem right now?

I’m asking if you knew.”

“Yeah.

I knew.

I’m the one who made you like that—how could I not know?”

“…What?”

“I turned you into an omega.

Fucked you every single day, flooded you with my pheromones.”

Eun-gyeol spoke as he looked down at Han-geon with lazy eyes.

The utter lack of apology—or even the will to make excuses—made the heat boiling in Han-geon’s head freeze cold.

In an instant, his palms turned icy.

Clenching his faintly trembling fingers into fists, Han-geon barely managed to force his voice out.

“…Why?”

“…..”

“Why did you do it?”

Eun-gyeol, who had answered so readily until now, suddenly closed his mouth.

Even so, he stubbornly kept staring at Han-geon’s face.

Compared to his barbed words, his gaze didn’t match.

Behind eyes pretending calm, some emotion was clearly writhing, shaking in confusion.

But Han-geon had no room to read Eun-gyeol’s feelings right now.

He glared at him as if he wanted to kill him and spat the words out.

“How can you be so shameless…
after turning me—me—into this?”

His voice shook violently.

Startled by the sound of his own voice, he clenched his fists, only to realize his hands were trembling too.

His entire body was already shaking like a quivering tree—he realized it a beat too late.

“They even said you did some kind of imprinting.

The doctor… the doctor said it can’t be reversed.

You do something you can’t take responsibility for, and now you stand there saying this kind of shit to me…!”

“Choi Han-geon.”

Eun-gyeol strode forward and reached out.

The moment he yanked Han-geon into his arms, Han-geon reflexively raised his hands and shoved him away.

The instant Eun-gyeol’s uniquely high body temperature touched him, he felt like he was going to vomit.

“Let go!

I don’t want to do this with you right now—get lost!”

Han-geon struggled violently, trying to push away the body trying to hold him.

But the more he resisted, the tighter Eun-gyeol’s arms wrapped around him like a trap.

At that moment, a single word was tossed casually into his ear.

“I’ll take responsibility.”

“…What?”

“I imprinted on you, so I’ll take responsibility for you.”

With his wrist caught, all of Han-geon’s movements stopped.

Eun-gyeol continued in a flat voice.

“From now on, you’ll only react to my pheromones.

Not some other bastard’s.”

“…..”

“Since I imprinted you, your heat cycles won’t be too severe either.

So you’ll still be able to live a normal social life without problems—”

At that moment—smack!

A sharp cracking sound tore through the air.

Eun-gyeol slowly turned his head back to its original position.

Seeing his reddened, swollen cheek—and the glare still burning fiercely in his eyes—
Han-geon realized that he had just hit Eun-gyeol for the first time in his life.

“You selfish bastard…”

Ragged breaths spilled from his mouth.

He struggled to calm his chest, which felt like it might burst as he gasped for air.

But it wasn’t easy.

Just facing Eun-gyeol had already become unbearable.

Despite all the circumstances he couldn’t ignore, he felt like an idiot for forcing himself to believe that Eun-gyeol might not know about his condition.

No—he had wanted Eun-gyeol not to know.

Because only then could he even try to bring himself to forgive him.

But once again, Eun-gyeol shattered that hope without mercy.

He didn’t even look like he wanted to make excuses.

That garbage he’d just spewed—that was all.

Right now, Han-geon couldn’t stand to face Cha Eun-gyeol any longer.

As he turned to bolt away, a hand grabbed him from behind.

He shook it off immediately—but his wrist was seized again.

Glaring at him with blazing eyes, Han-geon twisted and wrenched the arm away.

Even as his arm was bent back, Eun-gyeol didn’t let out a single groan.

Instead, he lunged forward with a ferocious look and grabbed Han-geon’s other wrist.

Eun-gyeol forced Han-geon back into place and shoved his body forward.

Facing that overwhelming strength, Han-geon’s legs shook violently.

He had collapsed, rolled on the floor, and been hooked up to IV fluids just yesterday.

Unable to use even half his usual strength, there was no way he could overpower Eun-gyeol.

“What are you—doing?!”

“Han-geon.

I said I’d take responsibility.”

In a menacing voice, Eun-gyeol dragged Han-geon over to the sofa and slammed him down.

Straddling his waist as Han-geon lay there gasping for breath, he yanked his T-shirt up.

The moment Han-geon read the sexual intent clinging to Eun-gyeol’s hands, his face drained of color.

If Eun-gyeol raped him at a time like this, he would truly never be able to forgive him.

What Eun-gyeol was about to violate wasn’t just his body.

It was like kicking away and stomping on the fingers barely clinging to the edge of a cliff—
Forcing him to fall.

And once he plunged into that pitch-black abyss, he would never be able to crawl back up again.

That much, he wanted to stop at all costs.

But the look in Eun-gyeol’s eyes as he gathered Han-geon’s flailing hands and tried to bind them with a necktie lying nearby—
There was already no reason left in them.

Han-geon screamed and thrashed with his whole body.

Clenching his fists, he began pounding wildly at Eun-gyeol’s neck and shoulders.

“Don’t!

Don’t do it, you son of a b*tch!”

“Choi Han-geon.”

“I don’t care any other time!

Just not today—don’t do this today!

Stop it, you bastard!”

No matter how much he screamed or hit him, Eun-gyeol’s rock-solid shoulders didn’t budge as he pressed Han-geon down.

Pinning one of Han-geon’s wrists to the sofa with his foot, Eun-gyeol snatched the other wrist as well.

With his wrists held, Han-geon tried to push himself up and resist.

The heavy bodies of the two men crashed down off the sofa with a loud thud.

They hit, kicked, blocked, and rolled around for a while.

But the struggle didn’t last long.

Even slight movements left him breathless, his vision spinning.

His body clearly hadn’t recovered yet—every muscle trembled violently.

In the end, his hands were bound behind his back as he lay pinned beneath Eun-gyeol.

Bearing the weight of Eun-gyeol sitting astride his back, Han-geon gasped for air.

“…Don’t.”

A desperate groan leaked through clenched teeth.

His closed eyelids burned hot.

“Don’t, Gyeol…”

At the same time as his plea, hot tears spilled down, soaking his cheeks.

He himself was startled, but once the crying burst out, it forced its way past his bitten lips.

Guh—hic—
As Han-geon pressed his forehead to the floor, trying desperately to stifle his sobs, Eun-gyeol fell silent.

But he didn’t withdraw his body.

“I told you.

You have no idea how much I like you.”

“…..”

“I like you too, Choi Han-geon.

I said I’d take responsibility for you, didn’t I?

Why… do you have to make it so difficult?”

His words rang in Han-geon’s ears like a foreign language.

That like—so completely different from the meaning Han-geon had carried all this time—felt unfamiliar and terrifying.

The desperation in Eun-gyeol’s voice, what it was trying to convey, Han-geon couldn’t understand at all.

He didn’t have the capacity to try.

He was too busy spilling out the boiling rage and sorrow churning inside his chest.

At that moment, a strange, sweet scent began to spread through the air.

The faint fragrance that lightly teased his nose thickened in an instant.

A dense sensation, almost suffocating, surged through his body through his nose in the blink of an eye.

That unfamiliar sense disguised as scent pried his body open all at once.

“Uh—hngh, ah…!

Cha, Eun-gyeol…!”

Saliva dripped from his wide-open mouth.

The violently invasive sensation was unbearably unfamiliar.

It was similar to what he had experienced at his family home last time—but incomparably stronger.

He knew instinctively.

He felt it deep in his bones.

This was an alpha’s pheromones, and he had become a body ruled by them.

This wasn’t something he could reject with willpower or reason.

It was nothing like earlier, when even Eun-gyeol’s body heat had made him nauseous.

Right now, there was only one thing he wanted.

He craved Eun-gyeol’s body.

As if forgetting that just moments ago he had been cursing, hitting, and pushing him away, Han-geon stopped resisting, his eyes unfocused.

The wetness spreading below felt itchy rather than shameful.

He could no longer endure the strange desire writhing inside him.

In his head, a voice was still urging him not to break.

Telling him not to be swept away by primal instinct, to face Eun-gyeol as one human being to another.

Begging him not to throw away even his last shred of pride.

But that voice grew quieter and quieter, until it was buried beneath pitch-black lust.

Before Eun-gyeol’s pheromones that wrapped around and constricted his body, everything collapsed with a deafening roar.

It was the sound of a tower that had stood firm for seventeen years finally crumbling.