Salt Society Chapter 19

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Ah, fuck.

The curse word popped out on its own. Kihyun, who had leaned toward the center of the table to look at the phone together, flipped the phone over and pulled his body back to his seat.

“So Kihyun, you…”

“Don’t say a word and shut up.”

Has he been cursed with public humiliation lately? He didn’t know why these things kept happening in a row. While he remained silent out of sheer absurdity, he heard a pfft sound. Kihyun looked at Cho Yeonoh with one eyebrow raised. The other man was eating his food with an expressionless face. Kihyun let out a sigh and clicked his tongue as he watched the tips of Yeonoh’s chopsticks trembling.

“If you’re going to laugh, just laugh. Don’t hold it in, it’s annoying.”

“Haha!”

At those words, Cho Yeonoh burst into loud laughter. He even set down the chopsticks he was holding and snickered while clutching his abdominal muscles; as much as his laughing face was devastatingly beautiful, Kihyun wanted to kill him just as much. Kihyun buried his face in both palms, finished his beer, and then crushed the can.

“Omega perfume?”

As if he hadn’t stopped laughing yet, Cho Yeonoh let out gasps and his shoulders shook. The fact that tears were even welling up in his eyes was incredibly irritating. Kihyun brought out one more can of beer while waiting for him to stop laughing. Since the guy was laughing so much, Kihyun decided to just leave him be.

In any case, he was the one who searched for it, and he was the one who shoved the phone forward to look at it together, so there was no ground to blame Cho Yeonoh. He had no choice but to wait with a sullen face for the fellow to stop laughing.

“Ah, I thought I was going to die laughing.”

It was an even more infuriating thing to say coming from someone who was perfectly alive. Kihyun rested his arms on the table and leaned his chin on his hand, looking at Cho Yeonoh, who was still suppressing the aftershocks of his laughter. Soon after, the fellow opened his mouth again.

“Why did you search for that? Are you curious about the omega scent, or are you curious if that kind of perfume is effective?”

“It’s neither. I just stumbled upon it while searching for something else.”

Kihyun replied indifferently. That was the truth. Cho Yeonoh looked surprised, as he knew Kihyun’s personality of not making excuses for himself even if he lost face.

“Then what is it? What did you search for?”

“…”

That was difficult to answer. When Kihyun fell silent, Cho Yeonoh’s eyes narrowed. With a suspicious smile hanging on his lips, it seemed he wouldn’t let it slide easily.

“Are you curious about Omegas?”

“…No.”

That wasn’t it. Kihyun was truly the type who didn’t have much sexual desire. That must be why he could endure for a full seven years without showing any signs, even when the person he liked was being clingy. Furthermore, his interest in others was quite thin.

Since he had little interest in others and no sexual desire, he had never thought deeply about how Betas, Alphas, and Omegas differ from each other. He was simply curious about how the dating between Betas that Cho Yeonoh mentioned differed from dating between an Alpha and an Omega. But he couldn’t say that.

Cho Yeonoh, looking at his silent boyfriend, smirked and spoke.

“I wonder what you were curious about. You should have asked me. Isn’t that the kind of thing you should ask your lover?”

“…”

What was the point of asking a hollow lover such a thing? Besides, even if he did ask, all Kihyun would be able to find out was how and to what extent the size and shape of this heart were different. Did he really need to go out of his way to ask and find out? It was already so strikingly vivid.

“Forget it. Stop treating me like a minor caught watching porn. If you’re done eating, I’m clearing the table.”

“I haven’t finished yet. You eat more too. I’ll stop teasing you.”

He says that while a soft smile is still hanging from the corners of his eyes. Kihyun merely hid what he wanted to say by covering his mouth with the hand that had been supporting his chin. When would this fatigue fade? A fleeting thought occurred to him: was the dating between an Alpha and an Omega that the fellow mentioned less tiring than it is now?

Then, suddenly, he remembered the Omega he had seen earlier today. The slender waist, the person who seemed to naturally harmonize with the atmosphere when standing next to Cho Yeonoh. He was curious for a moment about who he was.

But Kihyun didn’t ask. There would be nothing he needed to know. Cho Yeonoh swore loyalty of affection to So Kihyun. That was a part he could believe without a doubt. Because he was a guy who didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep in the first place.

The funny thing was, he never swore affection itself. That difference felt incredibly clear. Kihyun pressed his lips to the beer can.

⏳

“Monday is so shitty I can’t stand it.”

“Every day is like that.”

“We should kill Monday first, and before we kill the others, we have to execute Thursday; that bastard pretends to be Friday.”

As if they had practiced their lines, the three therapists sitting in front of the office computers poured out their complaints in a row, which was funny. Kihyun swallowed the words that, despite saying that, hadn’t they all shown up to work faithfully without a single person being late. There was no need to provoke their anger for no reason.

Instead, he set down a tray of coffee on the desk.

“Have some of this while you work.”

“Gasp! What?! Is Doctor So a tycoon?! How did you buy so much coffee!”

He wasn’t a tycoon, but because that tycoon gave him a ride to the vicinity of the hospital from the morning, he had time left over to stop by a cafe. Moreover, the card used for the payment belonged to Cho Yeonoh. He uses it occasionally. It was because it was a hassle when Yeonoh would hold onto Kihyun and pour out a long lecture if he didn’t use it. Instead, he only took it out when he had a reason to treat others.

Even though it was almost 9:00 AM, Kihyun placed a drink on the desk of the team leader who hadn’t arrived yet, then unwrapped a straw and stuck it into his own share of coffee before sitting in front of the computer himself to organize charts.

“By the way, Doctor So, did something good happen over the weekend? Your face has brightened up.”

“I slept well.”

“Oh, as expected, is that why your skin…”

Watching Changwon give a thumbs-up as he spoke, Kihyun simply nodded.

Yesterday, which was Sunday, Cho Yeonoh fortunately had a golf appointment. After seeing off the partner who left at dawn and feeding only the goldfish, he fell into a deep, continuous sleep. In the middle of it, Manager Yoo contacted him saying, “The Director wants you to make sure you eat,” to which he replied okay and then went back to sleep immediately after hanging up.

Thanks to sleeping his fill, it seemed the skin that had been crumbly for several days had recovered. After waking up refreshed, he had a protein shake and went straight out to exercise, then came back, showered, and slept again. Truly, it was an incomparably happy weekend.

Cho Yeonoh returned home quite late, perhaps because there was a dinner after the rounding, and Kihyun was already asleep. Thanks to that, he was able to sleep in until Monday morning.

—How can you sleep so much…

Even seeing Cho Yeonoh shaking his head in disbelief after waking up in the morning, Kihyun didn’t find him hateful. It was thanks to the positive feelings springing up from having slept well.

Kihyun got up with a light face, washed up, and set the table in place of Cho Yeonoh. Even if he didn’t have one specific dish he was exceptionally good at, he knew how to make something edible.

After simply boiling some egg soup and serving it with a light sprinkle of pepper, Cho Yeonoh dipped his nose in and drank the broth first before holding out his bowl for another serving.

He usually eats well, but he isn’t the type of guy to eat something before the other person sits down at the dining table; when Kihyun wondered why he was eating so well, Yeonoh said he had drunk quite a lot of alcohol. It was curious that there seemed to be many dinners involving alcohol lately.

—Your tolerance is poor to begin with, but drinking sessions have increased lately?

—Yeah. It’s killing me, seriously.

Then the two men were stuck among the cars commuting side by side. For some reason, Manager Yoo hadn’t come to pick him up, so Kihyun took the car driven by Yeonoh and got off near the hospital. Looking at him as he got out, Yeonoh’s face seemed a bit tired, but since it was the opposite of the usual situation, that was also a bit funny.

However, the pleasant start to Monday was short-lived; Kihyun felt a slight fever rising and couldn’t help but tilt his head in confusion.

His body temperature is usually on the lower side, but he felt hot today and could feel a heat rising in his cheeks. He thought it was strange since he had woken up after sleeping well.

Regardless of his physical condition, since a hospital is a place where sick people come, Kihyun turned off his attention to his own body and devoted himself to his treatment work for the time being.

Since a check-up for a youth soccer team was scheduled for Monday morning, it was chaotic with children under thirteen flocking in. Despite needing quite a few people because every single one had to have their muscle strength tested, Team Leader Lim insisted on taking Mr. Park whenever he went to smoke, so Kihyun was dying from being so busy.

The coaches and director followed Team Leader Lim to talk and were nowhere to be seen. Thanks to that, he was quite busy having to supervise the children while also looking after the exercises of other patients.

Seunghee, who was passing by, seemed to feel sorry for Kihyun; she said she was going to the restroom and came out from the general room to help with muscle strength testing for a couple of people. That alone was quite helpful, but the workload didn’t decrease.

In the end, because he had to finish the tests on time and send the children down to the medical department, Kihyun had no choice but to skip lunch.