Chapter 10: Shadows Across the Gap

Sijin seemed to want Haejun to stay longer, but Haejun packed his bag the moment he finished his meal and cleaned up.

Even with the medicine, he could feel Sijin’s Alpha pheromones strongly with every breath. Haejun was reaching his limit.

At this rate, he might break out in a cold sweat that didn’t suit the cool weather. If his condition worsened here, Sijin would notice in no time.

To avoid Sijin’s pheromones, taking public transit would have been better. But he couldn’t stop Sijin from grabbing his car keys to drive him.

It felt like silent pressure: since Sijin wasn’t holding him back even though he was packing earlier than expected, he should allow the ride.

His stomach was pleasantly full, and the car seat was comfortable as he half-reclined. Exhausted from several days of part-time work, Haejun’s eyes kept closing with drowsiness.

He only wanted to keep his eyes shut until they reached home.

“You can sleep a little.”

“Mm. No, it’s fine.”

A warm palm touched Haejun’s face as he tried to keep his eyes open. Haejun chuckled softly at the gesture, which was clearly meant to lull him to sleep.

His eyelids, fluttering slowly, lost the battle against sleep and closed on their own. Convincing himself he’d just rest his eyes for a bit, Haejun fell asleep.

In his drowsy state, he vaguely heard Sijin talking to someone over the car’s Bluetooth speaker. It sounded like his brother’s voice saying he’d see him later. Haejun wanted to wake up, but in his half-asleep state, he closed his eyes again.

Just like that, it felt like he’d only closed his eyes for a moment, but the car had already stopped. Outside the window stretched a familiar street.

“You said you had a tutoring job this evening?”

“Yeah. A student who lives near my house. I promised to help him study until the CSAT.”

The student was the son of the convenience store owner who had been his neighbor back in the shanty house days. Haejun and his grandmother owed that woman a great deal of gratitude.

Even after they’d moved away like they were fleeing in the dead of night, she stayed in touch now and then. When Haejun entered university and returned to Seoul, she helped him find his footing.

Haejun considered it a blessing that even while living a hard and stubborn life, he never let go of his studies. Tutoring brought in a little money for allowance, and word of mouth spread well, so this summer break he’d even done group tutoring.

As he breathed in calmly, Haejun noticed a faint familiar pheromone mingling among Sijin’s cool yet warm pheromones.

… .

He had been too relaxed. Perhaps because his body was so comfortable, his own pheromones had seeped out without him realizing. Sijin’s made up far more of the mixture, but to Haejun, his own was unmistakable.

Feeling tense, Haejun shifted, picking up the bag at his feet and holding it to his chest. Sijin didn’t say anything, as if he hadn’t noticed a thing, which made Haejun feel like he was the only one being self-conscious about it.

The suppressant barely works, and it cost five thousand won?

He grumbled mentally at the pheromone suppressant sitting in his bag.

“When does your lecture end tomorrow?”

“After five.”

“Then call me then.”

Sijin rested his crossed arms on the steering wheel and leaned his cheek on them, waiting for Haejun to get out. His face was perfectly composed, as if he truly hadn’t sensed another person’s pheromones at all.

Come to think of it, that had been him scheduling a meeting with someone else after parting with him, hadn’t it? It hadn’t been a dream after all. If Haejun was the one pretending to be busy, Sijin truly was a busy person. Haejun had wanted to get out of the same space as him as soon as possible, but now that the moment had come, for some reason he couldn’t easily step out. Suppressing the urge to ask whether Sijin really felt nothing strange, Haejun opened the car door and got out.

The cream-colored car exited the alley. Its receding rear was utterly casual.

Even after Sijin completely disappeared from view, Haejun’s feelings were in considerable turmoil. He couldn’t tell whether Sijin acting just as usual meant he could let his guard down or not.

A heavy sigh welled up, as deep as his worry. Haejun stood still for a long while, then turned around.

Light yellow paint had been applied along the brick walls to brighten the old, dingy mood. A cleaner swept the street every other day.

It was a plain neighborhood, but it had a humble beauty of its own.

Haejun’s house was further in, down the winding alley from here. The deeper you went, the less touched by human hands it was. Haejun walked along the sunlit road, then stopped at the mouth of the alley where the shadow began.

Why did this familiar scenery look so shabby and unsightly today of all days?

His current place was a single room barely less cramped than the shanty from back then, but he’d never complained. It was easy to live in simply because there was no demon wearing the mask of a family here.

He knew this impure feeling was baseless self-consciousness and an inferiority complex. But he’d just eaten delicious food in a large, clean house minutes ago, so he couldn’t help comparing Sijin’s home with his own. The gap he’d vaguely felt as a child now hit him more bluntly now that he’d grown up.

He wished he could be as oblivious and simple as Sijin seemed to think he was, still treating him like a child. But Haejun, then and now, stood at the boundary between adult and child. He was naive yet quick to realize reality, seemingly innocent but quite capable of reading the room.

Unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way, and Haejun’s family was no different. Under a father given to drunk violence and a pitiful grandmother, the only place young Haejun could lean on was Moon Sijin, who lived in a large mansion in the neighboring neighborhood.

And happy families resemble one another, didn’t they say? Sijin lived with affectionate parents in a cozy house out of a fairy tale. A dog ran freely in the wide yard, and every meal was warm.

Was it because he’d been born into a poor family and lived with nothing, yet met a savior like Moon Sijin exactly once in his life? Had he continued to live in such poverty, he might have humbly accepted this as his future. But Sijin kept letting him sleep in warm places and feeding him good things, making him delusional enough to think he could live in a world like Sijin’s.

Without realizing it, Haejun clenched his fist. He had never resented Sijin for a single moment, but sometimes, when he realized the gap between them, it was unbearably bitter.

Omega… I should really say it eventually.

The thought suddenly struck him: when Sijin learns this, maybe this time Sijin will leave him.

Haejun looked down gloomily and stepped into the shadow. The feeling that had been stirring just at his ankles seemed to have risen to his waist by now.

Each step was so heavy.

Happy, the Golden Retriever, had been named arbitrarily by Haejun, but in fact, Happy had a proper name of his own. Haejun learned this obvious fact about a month after he started walking Happy.

“Call him whatever you like. My family calls him by whatever name we feel like anyway,” Sijin said, shrugging.

Apparently, Happy had quite a variety of names. From simple ones like Nurungji, Hwanggeum, or Gold, to the fact that Sijin’s brother sometimes called him Spoliatine. Spoliatine… Anyway, the thing was an Italian pastry with meringue on top and apricot jam baked in a lattice pattern. Haejun swore he would never, ever call Happy by that name.

“What do you call him?”

“Hey. Him. Kid. Something like that.”

“…”

“Right now, it’s Happy.”

Haejun’s face scrunched in disgust at the callous way Sijin referred to his own dog, then relaxed at the last bit. Sijin chuckled as if he’d known it would happen.

“Happy. Haejun. They sound like brothers. Nice.”

“Happy’s two now, so I’m his older brother.”

Sijin looked at the back of Happy’s head as the dog sat proudly at his feet, then shifted his gaze. Baek Haejun, with his overall small and round impression, looked a bit younger than his actual age. Sijin had thought he might be ten, but was fairly surprised to hear he was thirteen. What made Haejun, already young, look even younger was his development lagging behind his peers. The two sat side by side on the bench, and Haejun, being short, couldn’t reach the ground with his feet.

Sijin looked down at the child’s skinny legs. Unaware of his gaze, Haejun’s legs just dangled in the air, swinging. For some reason, they seemed to be expressing that he felt pretty good right now.

The weather was such that even in the shade of a tree, the heat came quickly. Wiping his nape with the back of his hand, he felt sweat.

“Hyung. I want to eat ice cream.”

Sijin stared at the kid who suddenly demanded ice cream from him. Not long ago, the boy would get scared at eye contact and hurry to lower his head. Now, he begged for ice cream at every opportunity.

Times like these, when he silently watched Haejun, were increasing. As much as they did, Sijin’s head grew more complicated by the day. It wasn’t that he begrudged a few coins. It wasn’t that he was flustered by the kid being forward and shamelessly acting familiar. Moon Sijin was taking Baek Haejun’s existence for granted. That was the problem.

He’d grown used to Haejun darting out from somewhere whenever he took Happy for a walk. At times, when the two of them were walking, Sijin felt like just the caretaker or a supporting role. If he bought ice cream, the next day, Haejun would bring clean clover or junk food bought from the stationery store as thanks, or even smooth stones, telling him to use them for acupressure. It was absurd, but it also seemed endearing.

That’s when he realized. The kid was using ice cream as an excuse to gauge his reaction. If he showed the slightest sign of dislike or annoyance, Haejun would retreat into that wary, pitiful state from the first day. The proof was that the distance between them had been shrinking day by day.

His impassive black pupils checked the distance remaining between him and Haejun. There was less than a handspan until their thighs touched. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before he had the kid on his lap.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Sijin held the leash in one hand and offered the other to Haejun. Because the bench was high, Haejun had to jump down. Once he was safely down, Sijin made to naturally release his hand, but a tiny hand carefully wrapped around the back of his.

His hands might get sweaty. That thought crossed his mind for a moment, but it soon stopped bothering him.