Salt Society Chapter 43

A curse word burst out. His complexion quickly paled to white. He pulled out the trash can from under the desk and hurriedly bent his waist over it.

Even though he gagged and retched, nothing came out, but his eyes were bloodshot as if his intraocular pressure had spiked. After straightening his bent back, he leaned against the chair and tapped the cell phone on the desk.

The truth was, he felt like he was going crazy. He had even thought about telling Manager Yoo to contact the urology department at Haeseong Hospital to schedule a surgery to cut off his cock. The impulse subsided slightly only after taking a stabilizer, but Cho Yeonoh was currently in a very foul mood, having been blindsided all at once by the needs and desires he had suppressed well for several years.

“…”

So Kihyun didn’t seem to know anything. There was no way Manager Yoo would have tipped him off, and though he might have looked at him strangely these past few days, Alphas in rut are originally strange.

Since he had never shown Kihyun any signs regarding his heat cycles, it seemed likely Kihyun just thought that Cho Yeonoh was originally that unstable when facing a rut.

Yesterday, after suddenly regaining consciousness at So Kihyun’s house, even up until he was preparing the meal, Cho Yeonoh thought there was no way he could have slept with someone. His mind, which had become a mess due to the mixture of Alpha heat inducers and suppressants, was regarding what happened that day as a dream. Cho Yeonoh didn’t particularly try to recall more about it either.

Ever since he started dating So Kihyun, those desires had significantly decreased, and even when going through ruts, he took suppressants researched by top-tier researchers specifically for Cho Yeonoh’s body. Because the effect was so excellent, there was no reason for him to grab the wrist of some cheap Omega passing by in a hotel hallway.

However, that night, Cho Yeonoh saw it clearly in a dream. The partner crying and saying no beneath him. Although the partner appeared with So Kihyun’s face, it was different from the dreams he usually had. That was a sensation of reality. Holding body heat, all those sexual feelings of being sucked into a slippery interior…

In short, it was clear that he had mistaken someone for So Kihyun and even slept with them, yet had completely forgotten him. It was the moment he reached such a conclusion.

“Ugh—!”

Another bout of retching rose up. This time, whether the startled stomach had struck the diaphragm properly, a severe pain arose beneath his ribs.

Since nothing was coming out, he stood up as he was and pulled a bottle of water out of the mini-fridge placed in one corner of the director’s office.

After twisting the cap open roughly enough to make a cracking sound, he emptied the bottle in an instant. At that moment, the cell phone on the desk rang. Cho Yeonoh let out a low sigh and returned to the desk to check the sender of the notification.

“…”

<Arsenal-loving Development>

「Don’t come today. I’m tired and want to rest alone.」 07:48 PM

Well, he wasn’t sure if he should call this welcome news… Cho Yeonoh furrowed his brows and shoved the cell phone into his suit pants pocket.

…Anyway, he wouldn’t be able to see So Kihyun for the time being. It seemed he would have to find the Omega and confirm exactly how things had turned out before meeting him.

He left the director’s office while holding his jacket. Before heading out, a man with bloodshot eyes and a tightly clenched jaw that made his masseter muscles bulge looked back at Cho Yeonoh from inside the glass of the cabinet.

“…Even if you look alike, you look just like a son of a bitch. Just die, you idiot.”

Cho Yeonoh sneered at the man inside the glass. Then, he left the director’s office just like that. Without looking back even once.

For quite a long time, Cho Yeonoh did not return to Kihyun’s house. Even when he tried to contact him, only the mark indicating the message had been read would appear. Kihyun was unable to make a phone call from his side. He just thought he had nothing to say and that if he said something, he might give him an excuse.

Thanks to that, Kihyun was at least able to sleep peacefully lately. But that was all. It meant the suffering was the same.

It wasn’t that he was suffering from thoughts about Cho Yeonoh. He was even pleased with the freedom he had encountered after a long time. During the past few days when the guy didn’t come, So Kihyun could walk around the living room in just his underwear and could come out just after wiping the water off following a shower to lounge around naked.

If someone asked what kind of freedom that was, he would have nothing to say, but for Kihyun, it was quite enjoyable.

Instead, he suddenly felt nauseous at the smell of goldfish food, and when he tried to eat, he would gag at the smell of the refrigerator. Thinking he might have indigestion, he pricked his finger, but no black blood came out.

“I hate going to the hospital.”

People who work at hospitals hate receiving treatment. Would they want to hear concerns about their health at their workplace? However, seeing how he couldn’t eat and was only crazily craving summer plums that weren’t even in season yet, it seemed like no ordinary matter, so he had no choice but to schedule an appointment.

Fortunately, there was a department of family medicine at Haeseong Rehabilitation Hospital too. The head of family medicine would probably get annoyed thinking his workload had increased, but since the nurses were strangely kind to Kihyun, it seemed fine to visit.

Thinking that, he intended to go to work early today, take care of the athlete’s room work in advance, and then carve out time to go down for the appointment, but he overslept.

Because of that, he couldn’t even stop by a fast-food place to buy coffee. He felt like he could eat a sausage egg muffin… The taste of a sausage egg muffin had suddenly come to mind while he was sleeping in the early hours of today.

Kihyun, who felt like he would die if he didn’t eat one and was about to look for a 24-hour branch, gave up on the muffin after seeing the number 4:00 AM appear on his phone screen. This was because he thought that even to him, waking up in the dead of night and going to buy a muffin like a zombie seemed crazy.

He intended to stop by in the morning to get it to go, but he failed because he woke up late. He originally didn’t have much of an appetite, so he wondered if it was because he had been starving these past few days.

Anyway, having failed at several things, Kihyun was in a state of exhaustion since the morning. Even so, thanks to Team Leader Lim—who looked for things to nitpick whenever he saw Kihyun—taking a morning off for some graduate school event, he was able to go down to the family medicine department without worrying about what others thought.

“Mr. So, what were you doing not going yet? Go quickly now.”

Perhaps because he saw Kihyun tightly closing his eyes as if suppressing dry heaves whenever he tried to eat yesterday and the day before, even the oblivious Byungju was fussing, asking if he still hadn’t gone to get treated.

Feeling grateful, Kihyun thought he should treat them to coffee during lunch.

After telling the floor below via the extension phone that he would be coming down to be seen first, Kihyun was able to show his physical condition to the head of family medicine without waiting long.

Though the words he heard were quite unexpected.

“It could be an allergic reaction, so let’s start with a blood test.”

“Ah, couldn’t it just be indigestion?”

“…Well, I’m not sure. It’s a bit much to say it’s just something being stuck… Since employees are free and it doesn’t cost money, let’s try it.”

He couldn’t shake his head at those words. In the end, after even having his blood drawn, Kihyun was told to come back for a consultation tomorrow when the test results would be out.

“It doesn’t all end in one day. Hospitals always telling you to come back is the most annoying thing.”

Even though he himself commuted to the hospital every single day, Kihyun grumbled and walked up to the athlete’s room. Wondering why they were doing an allergy test when he was fine except for his stomach feeling nauseous and being sleepy no matter how much he slept. That day ended after his stomach felt nauseous all day long. It was to the point where he wondered if he had gastritis.

Having been tormented like that, even after arriving home, he just slept straight through without washing or eating dinner. Because there was no one to take care of him, it was hard to manage meals. His cooking skills weren’t that great, but standing in front of the stove was a chore in itself.

If Cho Yeonoh had been by his side, the nagging would have been very severe, but contact wasn’t even working properly and it had been a long time since he had come home to Kihyun’s house after work. Thanks to that, Kihyun had been living dissolutely lately.

He also wondered if being alone was this comfortable. Thinking that there must have been some anxiety he felt unconsciously because of the guy all this time, he decided not to think about it further.

Recalling that night was equivalent to a taboo for Kihyun. Kihyun intended to just bury it like this. As if he had never once spent a night with Cho Yeonoh.

There was a reason he had pushed Manager Yoo as if threatening him to even delete the CCTV. It was because Cho Yeonoh harbored a sense of loathing toward sex with Betas.

He knew vaguely about the direct cause, but Cho Yeonoh had never spoken to Kihyun about it. Kihyun just guessed, ‘Ah, I see.’ The reason he hid the fact that he had slept with him from Cho Yeonoh based on such a guess was clear. Because Cho Yeonoh wouldn’t be able to handle it.

He doesn’t look like it, but he’s a guy with surprisingly thin nerves. Just dating him would have probably burned all those thin nerves, so he didn’t want to add depth to his worries. So Kihyun wanted to stop being a headache for Cho Yeonoh.

He had to have such worries, but if Cho Yeonoh was hanging around nearby, his mind would have been even less at ease. There was a reason why not seeing him was easier on his heart. At any rate, Kihyun slept just fine. His daily routine lately was falling asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow and not even opening his eyes until the alarm went off the next morning.

But this morning was a bit unusual.

“What is this…”

As soon as he woke up, his bottom was soft and damp. Narrowing his eyes in displeasure, he got up and went to the bathroom. As soon as he lowered his underwear, the part where the perineum of his boxer briefs touched was completely soaked with a slippery liquid.

“What…”