The Outsider Omega Wants to Be Alone! Chapter 9

Suppressing the urge to tear his hair out, Lee Yuseong devoted himself wholeheartedly to the closing cleanup. He couldn’t bring himself to look in the direction Kim Wooju was standing, and he wanted to avoid running into Choi Jigu as much as possible.

However, things didn’t resolve themselves just because Lee Yuseong didn’t look at them. Their presence was so overwhelming that he was nervously aware of them to the point where over his right shoulder and behind his left back prickled and stung for no reason.

‘Ah. Tired. I’m really tired.’

Yuseong ducked his head down completely. The face of Lee Yuseong—with his unkempt hair and glasses—seemed to be reflected on the glossy table, and then, before he knew it, Kim Wooju stealthily crept into his consciousness and overlapped his own face onto Yuseong’s face.

‘Gasp. What the.’

Startled, Lee Yuseong sprayed alcohol over it.

Spritz spritz. As the alcohol was sprayed and settled, Choi Jigu interjected himself into Lee Yuseong’s unconsciousness as the next batter. His face surfaced clearly over the faint water marks left behind.

‘This crazy…’

Lee Yuseong cursed inwardly and scrubbed the table hard, wiping it until not a single speck, not a single trace of Choi Jigu remained.

“You’ll hurt your wrist. Do it gently.”

Choi Jigu, who was pushing a cart past him, patted his back.

‘This is all because of who.’

Lee Yuseong turned to look at him with a gloomy gaze. Without the slightest clue, Choi Jigu just tilted his head as if thinking ‘What’s with him?’ and moved away.

“Yuseong, the tables look about done, so could you move the dishes that are finished being washed? We need to dry them.”

At Kim Wooju’s soft voice, his shoulders twitched involuntarily. He didn’t see that, right? Without looking toward Kim Wooju, Lee Yuseong just nodded his head emphatically and moved his steps toward the massive dishwasher.

He stacked the steaming hot dishes onto a tray and took a step.

How many steps had he taken? It happened in an instant. Beneath his feet, he slipped. Before he could even lift a hand, Lee Yuseong’s body tilted backward.

‘No!’

Clatter clatter. The dishes on the tray wobbled, making a racket.

Lee Yuseong barely held on. It was thanks to the heel of his left foot precariously touching a spot that wasn’t slippery.

The weight of the tray and dishes was transmitted all the way to his lower back. His back and abdominal muscles tightened fit to burst and trembled.

It was between table 7 and table 8. He had been told to be careful, but he had forgotten because his mind was full of distracting thoughts.

Still, if he could just, like this, get up properly…

“No, Yuseong!”

At that moment, the boss charged forward.

‘Huh?’

He wrapped his arm around Lee Yuseong’s waist with a dashing posture. It was that very arm—firm and taut, with veins bulging. An arm that looked like it could effortlessly scoop up someone like Lee Yuseong.

“Ack!”

He had miscalculated. The boss’s foot, having slipped long and far, grazed Yuseong’s left foot by a hair’s breadth. At the recoil of having his sole axis disturbed, Yuseong sensed doom.

‘No, you should’ve just left me alone!’

The thought was instantaneous. Lee Yuseong ended up toppling backward, sandwiched together with the boss and pinned beneath him.

Crash! Clang, clang, clang!

“Hyung!”

“Yuseong!”

He could hear Choi Jigu and Kim Wooju shouting in alarm and running over.

Lee Yuseong felt like he was going to die.

Was this what it felt like to be crushed by a hunk of meat weighing nearly 0.1 tons? The boss’s body, visibly muscular at a glance, was no joke. He seemed like 100% pure lean meat.

He couldn’t breathe properly. Lee Yuseong began to thrash.

“Hea… heavy…”

As he scrambled to press his hands against the floor, a sharp pain shot through him. Only then did he survey his surroundings and saw broken glass dish fragments strewn everywhere. Lee Yuseong hadn’t been hit on the head, body, or limbs by any of the dishes. If so, then…

“W-wait. Just a moment. Don’t move.”

The boss, who had cradled Lee Yuseong’s head with his hand, looked down at him. His face was bright red.

‘Did the boss shield me from everything?’

The boss’s breath tickled Lee Yuseong’s forehead.

‘T-too close.’

It was burdensome. Once he became aware of it, he felt suffocated all over again.

Lee Yuseong struggled once more, trying somehow to push his body off. But the boss, who had tried to brace himself against the floor, let out a stifled sound and slipped back down on top of him. It was because all the remaining cream sauce had spilled onto the slippery floor.

“Boss. Boss! I can’t, can’t breathe…!”

“I know. Just a moment, calm down…”

“Hyung!”

Choi Jigu, having dashed over, grabbed his arm.

“Ah, no, just a moment.”

The boss’s face flushed even hotter.

Kim Wooju, who had come near over Lee Yuseong’s head, hastily swept away the large fragments with his foot, then bent down and carefully cradled Yuseong’s head. He pulled them simultaneously so they would cross over and under.

“Just a moment!”

The boss yelled in a voice close to a scream.

In that instant, something on Lee Yuseong’s thigh…

‘Something heavy.’

Touched.

‘No way?’

The blood drained completely from Lee Yuseong’s face.

At the same time, a streak of blood trickled down from the boss’s forehead.

∞ ∞ ∞

1 a.m.

Cafe & Bar 〈Momento〉, having finished its business, was quiet.

The boss, seated at a corner table, was silently holding his breath. Choi Jigu was trying desperately to hold back laughter, and Lee Yuseong, who wanted to go home, was just staring out the window.

Only Kim Wooju, who had administered first aid to the boss, let out a sigh and looked at the three in turn.

“This is no laughing matter, Jigu.”

“I have a smiling face by nature.”

Liar. Lee Yuseong just barely restrained himself from poking Choi Jigu in the side.

“Hyung, lift your head. It was an accident.”

“Even so…”

“It’s workplace sexual harassment. Yeah.”

Choi Jigu chimed in, and the boss threw him a look that said he was barely refraining from killing him.

Lee Yuseong, who had been fumbling his lips for a moment, carefully spoke up.

“…I don’t think of it that way. It’s a physiological phenomenon, after all.”

An omega and an alpha had been pressed together stickily, so that said it all. It was an unavoidable physiological phenomenon.

Of course, Lee Yuseong felt he wouldn’t easily forget the heavy sensation that had touched his thigh. He was so mortified he could die, and he would probably have trouble meeting the boss’s eyes for the time being.

Still! A physiological phenomenon was just a physiological phenomenon. He didn’t want to falsely paint someone as a bad person over something like this.

“And it happened while you were trying to save me.”

More than anything, hadn’t it happened while trying to save him? Lee Yuseong only regretted that he hadn’t been a bit more careful himself. If he had been, then this kind boss wouldn’t have been put in an awkward situation or gotten hurt.

“From what I saw, he looked perfectly capable of surviving on his own, but didn’t they both go down because of hyung?”

“Choi Jigu.”

Kim Wooju gave Choi Jigu a warning look.

Choi Jigu feigned ignorance and pretended to fiddle with his phone. Honestly, Choi Jigu was speaking nothing but the truth, point by point. That’s why he was even more infuriating.

The boss hung his head deeply.

“I’m truly sorry, Yuseong. It was absolutely not on purpose.”

“Ah, you really don’t need to do this.”

“I should properly apologize for my wrongdoing.”

The boss, having spoken firmly, bowed his head as far as it would go.

“I’m really okay. You even got hurt because of me…”

Yuseong reached out a hand to help him straighten up but stopped. The boss’s nape and ears were visibly bright red all over.

Honestly, it was unexpected. A middle-aged man, at least a good dozen years older than himself, bowing his head to him. When he was the boss and Yuseong was nothing more than a mere part-timer.

Lee Yuseong silently looked down at his head for a moment, then soon took the boss’s shoulders and raised him up.

“It’s really okay. Please get up. It’s not good for your injury.”

“Strictly speaking, he killed himself. He should have just stayed still.”

Choi Jigu, can’t you shut up. This infuriating bastard.

Unable to hold back in the end, Lee Yuseong jabbed Choi Jigu’s waist with the edge of his hand.

“Ukh! Hu, hyungs. Did you see that? He attacked me. Wow, Lee Yuseong, I didn’t expect that from you? Pretending to be all meek and then, huh?”

“…”