Chapter 11: A Wallet Worth Finding

“No, it’s not like the busy boss has to keep staying with me…. What I mean is….”

At this moment, the person Si-hyeon envied the most was Secretary Kim, who was probably waiting for Cha Hae-jun’s rut to end. If he had known it would be like this, he would have switched roles.

He had chosen this job thinking taking care of the omega would be easier, but now it had backfired on him.

“…Just quietly receive your treatment. That’s the only way you’ll cause a little less trouble.”

“I want to stay still too. But the cleaning lady told me that if you lose your passport, you have to go to the police station, get a report, and then go to the embassy to get it reissued. When I ran it through the translator, that’s what it said. Uh… here.”

On the phone Si-hyeon held out, a translated screen was displayed. It seemed he hadn’t only lost his wallet. Ignoring the headache that was starting to creep in, Secretary Kang spoke.

“Didn’t you have it with you?”

“…It was in my bag, but I threw the bag away… while chasing the wallet thief….”

When you go overseas, the most important thing is your passport, first and second. In a foreign country where you can’t even speak the language, what proof of identity could be more reliable than a passport? And yet he had thrown it away himself. Was he an idiot?

Looking at the carefree-faced kid in front of him, Secretary Kang felt utterly frustrated. He pressed the power button on his tablet and picked up his phone, selecting Cha Hae-jun from the call list out of habit.

“I’ll check it. And by the way, I’m not an ‘uncle.’ How is twenty-nine an uncle?”

At the sharp question, Si-hyeon widened his eyes. Twenty-nine? Even if you were generous, he looked well over thirty…

The words “you’re definitely an uncle” rose up to the tip of his tongue, but Si-hyeon held them back. More accurately, he couldn’t say them. Secretary Kang’s glare looked rather dangerous.

****

The streets of New York, which he hadn’t visited in a while, looked exactly as he remembered. Still crowded, still dirty.

“Do you think we can even find it…? It’s been too long….”

Muttering while staring ahead, Si-hyeon’s face was filled with worry. Every now and then he glanced toward Cha Hae-jun before quickly turning his head away. It seemed he was consciously trying his best not to look at him.

Thanks to that, Cha Hae-jun was able to quietly observe Si-hyeon.

Under the sunlight, his black hair shimmered. His clear face looked smooth and healthy, probably because he had been eating well lately. The back of his neck, slightly visible, was pale and straight.

Cha Hae-jun had seen countless white people through business dealings, but he had never seen someone with skin as pale as Si-hyeon’s.

According to the background check, Si-hyeon had spent most of his life doing hard labor, construction site work, flyer distribution, factory shifts, yet his skin was surprisingly smooth.

At that moment, a bicycle sped past Si-hyeon. Because he was standing close to the road, his body wobbled.

Without thinking, Cha Hae-jun reached out and grabbed his waist, but the warmth he felt in his palm made him quickly withdraw his hand.

“This country really has no sane people.”

At the grumbling complaint, Cha Hae-jun casually replied that maybe that was true. Walking a few steps behind Si-hyeon, irritation surged inside him.

He had no idea how many documents were piling up at that very moment while he was wasting time like this.

‘Endure it, endure it.’

When Cha Hae-jun lifted his head again, his face had already returned to its usual gentle expression.

“Even if you go there yourself, I don’t think it’ll make much difference. Let’s just wait for the hospital to contact us.”

At the soft suggestion, Si-hyeon stubbornly shook his head. He still had many things to do and couldn’t spend all his time in New York.

“Well… since we’re already out, maybe we should just take a look…. Huh! Do you see that poster? Looks like there’s a performance here… That person is really famous.”

Turning his gaze, Cha Hae-jun saw posters covering an entire wall. The person holding a violin with a melancholic expression was a recently famous omega violinist.

“…Yes, he’s famous.”

In a bad way.

Although the public said he had broken the negative stereotype of male omegas, Cha Hae-jun believed he was simply someone who used his omega traits to the fullest.

Wondering what kind of connections he had used to get a performance in New York, Cha Hae-jun glanced at the poster sideways.

“That’s surprising. I didn’t think you’d be interested in trait-types.”

At the sudden remark, Si-hyeon blinked before grumbling.

“People these days are all curious about it. And… it’s kind of fascinating, right? Pheromones. Though it has nothing to do with me anyway.”

That was only natural. Extreme-heat omegas usually lived their entire lives believing they were betas.

They couldn’t even be detected through simple tests, and only extremely expensive examinations, costing tens of millions of won, could reveal it.

They could barely sense the pheromones of a dominant alpha, which was considered an easy way to identify them, but even that wasn’t reliable since dominant alphas were rare as well.

Repeating Si-hyeon’s innocent words in his mind, Cha Hae-jun spoke.

“What’s there to be curious about in a life controlled by something like pheromones…? Anyway, is it around here?”

“Uh… yes! I think so.”

Spotting a familiar alley, Si-hyeon jumped excitedly and ran toward it.

He had to find that wallet.

At this point, the money inside was probably gone. Unless he had memorized the serial numbers of the bills, there was no way to recover it. But wallets were different.

Cheap wallets were often thrown away in back alleys, so it was worth searching.

Honestly, he should have come here much earlier. Trusting the police in this country had been his mistake.

He had learned that at the police station when he went to get a report for reissuing his passport. While communicating with a translator app and showing individual words, he discovered that his lost-item report had never even been filed.

‘That lousy cop… I knew he handled things carelessly.’

Grumbling internally, Si-hyeon finished applying for a new passport at the embassy and then pleaded with Cha Hae-jun.

Please help me find my wallet. Or at least come with me to the place where the accident happened.

That was how Si-hyeon ended up here with Cha Hae-jun.

“Um… boss, thank you so, so much. I insisted on this, but you’re helping me anyway. Even though you’re busy…”

Glancing at the man beside him, Si-hyeon nervously shifted his eyes.

One day, he had searched Cha Hae-jun’s name online and nearly fainted.

The profile beneath his name was filled with titles anyone in Korea would recognize.

GQ Group, a massive corporation that manufactured everything from smartphones and semiconductors to shipbuilding, medical services, and household goods.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that nearly everything filling Si-hyeon’s tiny one-room apartment was made by GQ Group.

And Cha Hae-jun was the vice president of that company.

And yet here he was, telling such an incredible person what to do.

If the foreman at his worksite ever heard about this, he would probably kick him for telling such ridiculous lies.

“Then let me ask you something. Is that wallet really that important? How much money was inside?”

It wasn’t the money. It was what was inside it.

Looking into the dark alley, Si-hyeon clenched his fist tightly.

He thought he would be fine, but now that he had returned to the scene of the accident, it felt hard to breathe.

“I… I’m fine. Let’s hurry and look for it! Uh… it might be dangerous in there, so… boss, you can stay here. I’ll go look quickly!”

He tried to sound brave, but with his pale face it wasn’t convincing at all.

Cha Hae-jun tilted his head slightly as he looked at him.

“Is there a rational reason you absolutely have to find it? If you need a wallet, we can just buy another one. Adding the price of a wallet to the painting fee wouldn’t even be noticeable.”

At first glance, it sounded incredibly arrogant.

Si-hyeon almost snapped back but imagined the title “Vice President” floating above the man’s head and forced a stiff smile.

“It has to be that wallet.”

“You’re quite thrifty.”

“Saving money is good… you can gather more that way. But I don’t really need money anyway.”

“…Why not?”

‘Who doesn’t like money?’

And Bae Si-hyeon definitely didn’t seem like someone who hated money. Just recently he had widened his eyes at the amount of money mentioned for the wallet and hospital treatment.

But instead of answering Cha Hae-jun’s question, Si-hyeon only gave a bitter smile.

****

After searching the smelly back alley over and over, Si-hyeon’s face became miserable.

He had been circling the same place for nearly an hour and still hadn’t found anything resembling a wallet.

Of course, it had already been a week. Still, he couldn’t give up hope.

“It was this alley…”

He clearly remembered the thief disappearing into this alley.

Trash was piled everywhere, and the stench was overwhelming. The place even felt dangerous, but he didn’t want to leave without finding anything.

“What exactly was inside that wallet?”