The Outsider Omega Wants to Be Alone! Chapter 31

It was about Kim Wooju. A clear mockery. He was an extraordinarily beautiful person, but the traits of an Alpha were also distinctly evident in him. It wasn’t that he was burly—he had broad shoulders, long limbs, and well-developed muscles all over his body. Lee Yuseong knew this best, having leaned against that body during shoots.

“It’s not like that.”

He would let anything said about himself slide, but dragging innocent Kim Wooju into this was something he couldn’t overlook.

“He even gave you a ride home.”

“…”

See? In the end, it was bait.

Though much of his memory was blank from intoxication, the memory of Jo Eunha and Kim Wooju confronting each other remained vivid. How could he forget that? His mind had fully snapped—no, it felt like his brain was about to explode.

So Lee Yuseong also remembered that Jo Eunha had made remarks as if he had watched Lee Yuseong from in front of his own house.

Bait is only bait when it’s taken; if you don’t bite, it becomes nothing but garbage.

Lee Yuseong left Jo Eunha’s words as garbage to be discarded.

Silence flowed. Only the sound of the car’s engine and a low hum filled the stillness. After a moment, Jo Eunha, touching the corner of his mouth, spoke.

“You’ve grown a lot, Lee Yuseong.”

The low chuckle that followed made Lee Yuseong want to cover his ears.

“How disappointing.”

∞ ∞ ∞

Moored along the Han River, there is a fine dining cruise ship accessible only to VIPs.

Naturally, Lee Yuseong himself had only learned of its existence ten minutes ago.

Renting out that entire enormous place, Jo Eunha had seated Lee Yuseong right in the center.

“Eat well.”

Lee Yuseong stared at the table before him.

On the white tablecloth woven with luxurious fabric lay a lavish feast of appetizing food. Freshly baked white bread, presumably straight from the oven, a salad generously piled with large shrimp, traditional Italian carbonara, aglio olio di mare prepared with large clams freshly shipped from the West Sea and various other seafood, duck with caviar on top, salmon steak, and even a T-bone steak—something he had always wanted to try someday.

And furthermore, this smell was unmistakably Korean beef.

It was a Korean beef T-bone steak, no less.

‘I think I’m going crazy.’

Saliva instantly flooded his mouth.

“For dessert, we have tiramisu imported directly from Milan and lemon sorbet gelato, so please let us know when you would like them.”

The server, dressed in a suit, offered a polite bow and stepped back.

‘Why can’t I just eat?’

He wanted to eat. He really, really wanted to eat.

Letting food go cold was no different from accumulating bad karma for generations to come.

“It’s getting cold.”

That bastard. He knew full well that Lee Yuseong hated it when food went cold, and yet he delivered that line.

Whether Lee Yuseong glared at him like an angry pufferfish or not, Jo Eunha moved his hands with infinite elegance. Lee Yuseong had no idea how he did it, but he could tell it looked incredibly refined and courteous. Jo Eunha interlocked two large spoons stuck in the salad, then, with a graceful motion, served some onto Lee Yuseong’s plate.

There is such a thing as business ethics. Lee Yuseong knew well enough that Jo Eunha was a man who had no regard for business ethics in the first place, but tempting someone with such a sumptuous feast of delicacies was truly unconscionable.

Lee Yuseong clenched both fists tightly beneath the table.

‘Should I just kill Jo Eunha?’

The angry pufferfish was on the verge of bursting.

“Yuseong-ah.”

Jo Eunha called him in a low voice. It was a resonance Lee Yuseong had heard thousands of times over.

Though there were always many people around him, Jo Eunha rarely set his heart on anyone—he called only Lee Yuseong by his given name without his surname.

That was why, whenever Jo Eunha called his name, Lee Yuseong couldn’t help but feel a strange sense of elation. The feeling that only Lee Yuseong was special to Jo Eunha. The reassurance that he was different from everyone else. The satisfaction that their own private world was solid.

But now, all of that had become a thing of the past.

“Don’t call me that.”

Staring straight at Jo Eunha, Lee Yuseong said.

Jo Eunha had hair and eyes as black as jet. So when you looked at him quietly, sometimes a peculiar bluish tint would rise across his pupils depending on how the light caught them.

Just like now.

With a soft chuckle, Jo Eunha replied as if he had heard something absurd.

“If I don’t call Lee Yuseong ‘Lee Yuseong,’ then what am I supposed to call you?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. You know that’s not what I meant.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Stop it with the word games if that’s all you’re going to do.”

Slinging his backpack over his shoulder, Lee Yuseong rose from his seat. But before he could take even a single step, Jo Eunha grabbed his hand.

“Sit down.”

“And if I do? You’ll just keep playing word games—I’m not some idle middle schooler like before.”

“Just sit down for me.”

A rough texture rubbed against the back of Lee Yuseong’s hand. Irritated by the pleading tone, Lee Yuseong turned to look at Jo Eunha, and his gaze inadvertently dropped to his hand.

That hand was covered in scars he had never seen before. They were not the simple scrapes and scuffs from the usual fistfights of the past. These were wounds that looked as if they had been cut by something sharp.

Gritting his teeth, Lee Yuseong roughly shook off his hand. He threw himself back into the chair as if collapsing into it. He just dropped his bag carelessly on the floor.

He was annoyed. Jo Eunha, who appeared out of nowhere and acted like this, was annoying, but more than anything, he was most annoyed at himself for having been dragged along by Jo Eunha yet again.

Why did his hands look like that? If he had left like trash, he should have just lived it up and acted all high and mighty.

Sensing that Lee Yuseong was looking at his hands, Jo Eunha spoke.

“Ah, well, the chairman’s temper is no joke, after all.”

Chairman… Lee Yuseong’s brow twitched. So the rumor was true.

The rumor that Jo Eunha was actually the grandson of the large conglomerate D Group.

“The old man already eats more than his fill, but he’s still too greedy. He still hasn’t gotten rid of his old habits—when things go wrong, he has people buried. People, I mean.”

D Group had long been famous as a so-called “gangster group.” There were many rumors—that they colluded with gangsters and hired thugs when things went south, or that the company itself had been founded by gangsters who started with money-lending schemes. In other words, Jo Eunha’s words amounted to an admission of those rumors.

Lee Yuseong unconsciously glanced around. He was thinking whether any server might be nearby. But they were all standing far away on standby, and no one was close enough to overhear their conversation.

Jo Eunha let out a low laugh.

“You’re still as cautious as ever.”

The watch wrapped around Jo Eunha’s wrist. Even to Lee Yuseong, who knew nothing about luxury goods, it looked expensive. Good things have a way of announcing their quality even to the blind.

The suit Jo Eunha was wearing. It looked on a completely different level from the ones Lee Yuseong had tried on at an outlet with his parents when he was preparing his first formal suit for college entrance. Moreover, with no wrinkles whatsoever and fitting his well-built frame perfectly, it had to be custom-made.

The car Jo Eunha had arrived in. That went without saying.

“If anything, you seem to have eaten your fill and then some.”

“You?”

Repeating the syllable with interest, Jo Eunha placed a piece of steak onto Lee Yuseong’s plate.

“We’re not on the kind of terms where we call each other so familiarly by name, are we?”

Looking at the plate now beautifully arranged with salad and steak, Lee Yuseong let out a hollow laugh in disbelief. Gesturing toward the plate with his eyes, Lee Yuseong added,

“What are you trying to do? Play house?”

“Aren’t we on the kind of terms where we’d play house together?”

Jo Eunha echoed Lee Yuseong’s words and threw the question back.

Just as expected. This is how it always is. You shouldn’t even exchange words with Jo Eunha in the first place. He was someone who knew how to draw people into his own pace. He had always been arrogant, quick to look down on others, and kept them under his thumb. It wasn’t just his exotic, attractive looks and the unique charisma of an Alpha that made people flock to him.

“I just wanted to buy you a meal, that’s all.”

“…”