Icing on the Cake Chapter 3

Having been lost in unnecessary thoughts, the song had already ended before he knew it. As the program changed, Yuri half-listened to the ensuing conversation, and the name Cheriot Gutnight lingered briefly in his ears. What a ridiculous name, just like Jeff Murray. Whether it was well-chosen or not, Yuri had no idea about public opinion, but by his standards, it was a terrible name.

However, that unusual name—perhaps a pseudonym—had a knack for sticking in one’s memory, if nothing else. Even Yuri, who had little interest in worldly affairs, remembered that name for that very reason. He didn’t particularly know the face, but since the man was a player invariably mentioned among hockey enthusiasts, just going to a pub on game days was enough for the name to become familiar.

Cheriot Gutnight.

After muttering the unusual name to himself without any particular thought, Yuri finished parking. Fortunately, perhaps because it was a weekday evening, there was a parking spot available in front of the chocolate shop. On a weekend, it would have been a pipe dream.

It was through such trivial moments that Yuri often realized he was living a “normal” life. Saratov had been a place where the very concept of illegality had all but disappeared, and because its population was so small, he had never grown up hearing about parking shortages.

Getting out of the car, he looked around to buy a parking ticket. Spotting a parking pay station nearby, Yuri slowly turned in that direction. The moment his black work boots stepped onto the rain-dampened cobblestones, Yuri sensed a presence behind him. More precisely, he sensed pheromones.

The scent was barely there, as if suppressant had been sprayed, but it was unmistakably an alpha’s pheromones. As the footsteps drew closer and he detected the pheromones directed toward him, Yuri clenched the hand he had tucked inside his jacket.

In a city where hardly anyone knew him, someone approaching was usually an ominous sign. It could be an enemy from the past, or perhaps someone he’d gotten tangled up with while crossing over here and helping with Alexei’s work.

Pretending not to notice anything, Yuri stared at the pay station and waited for the other person to approach. The footsteps grew increasingly urgent as they neared, and from the way the presence was given away, it felt amateurish. Still, letting his guard down was out of the question…

“Hey, handsome over there. Got a minute…”

The moment the person stopped right behind him and spoke, Yuri twisted his upper body and thrust his arm out sharply. His left hand, shooting out, subdued the wrist of the person who had been trying to grab his shoulder in one move. As he quickly turned his body and twisted the left hand, the unidentified someone who had been approaching him let out a pained groan, “Ough,” and bent over.

“Ow, ow, ow!”

The first thing Yuri noticed after subduing the other person out of habit was that the wrist was so thick and solid it was hard to grasp entirely with one hand.

“Crazy, damn, God!”

The second thing he noticed was that, to the point where his tension had been meaningless, the man was an ordinary civilian, easy to overpower. Hmm. He wasn’t sure if the man was actually ordinary. It wasn’t exactly common sense for an alpha to approach another alpha and call him “handsome,” after all.

So, not an enemy… a madman?

“…”

Unable to clearly gauge the other’s intentions, Yuri scrutinized the man with suspicious eyes. The man, with his wrist twisted and held while his large frame was bent over, was quite intimidating in terms of sheer size, but judging by the exposed vulnerabilities and openings, he was clearly a civilian. There were types who deliberately showed openings to lure others into carelessness, but…

“Handsome, I’m really hurting here… are you not going to let go?”

Judging by the man’s state—still having his wrist held with no thought of escape and speaking to him—that didn’t seem to be the case. His attire was also telling. Jeans, a white jacket, and a white knit beanie pulled down low—an outfit that easily caught the eye, and people up to no good were usually far from this kind of look.

Yuri briefly gazed at the man’s wrist he was holding. He didn’t know what reason the man had approached him for, but if he was out of his mind, it would be best to put some distance between them and let go. Having made that decision, just as Yuri was about to release the arm he’d been holding while widening the gap, the man spoke.

“Well, I don’t mind you holding on like this, actually. I came out dressed lightly and was cold, but maybe because your hand is warm, the chill seems to be fading.”

Yuri didn’t immediately grasp the absurdity that flowed into his ears. Frowning his thick brows—a rare occurrence—Yuri stared at him with puzzled eyes, and their gazes met. The man, now that he looked, was taller than Yuri, but because his shoulders were twisted and he was bending over, their eye levels were the same. In that moment, part of the face that had been hidden by the pulled-down beanie was revealed.

The moment he realized their eyes had met, Yuri briefly forgot to step back and observed the man’s pupils.

Strikingly vivid, lime-green eyes were looking at Yuri. Though he had seen green eyes countless times in his life, he had never seen this color before. The man’s irises were remarkably vivid. A clear lime-green, like the skin of a green apple.

Neither murky nor offensively tacky dark green, but eyes that gave a strong impression of freshness—Yuri was momentarily overwhelmed. They were such innocent eyes that he momentarily forgot the man was an uninvited guest who had abruptly touched him, and a fleeting sense of guilt washed over him, as if he had painfully subdued a young child.

“Hmm.”

The man’s sigh brought the frozen Yuri back to reality.

“Handsome, you’re even prettier up close.”

The lime-green eyes that had been looking at him curved brightly. The moment he saw the corners of the eyes lift into crescent-moon shapes, Yuri roughly let go of the wrist and stepped back. Frowning, Yuri wanted to believe that the words the uninvited guest had babbled were not directed at him, but unfortunately, they were.

“Hey, why are you backing away all of a sudden? You weren’t letting me go just a moment ago. Oh, but wait, can you not speak? Or is it because I startled you?”

Glancing around, there was no one nearby. The man kept talking to Yuri, which meant that all the nonsense he had spouted before had been directed at Yuri.

A madman, then.

Since the world generally defined a person who spewed incomprehensible babble as crazy, Yuri quickly reached that conclusion.

With that, Yuri felt that the time he had wasted dealing with this fellow was a terrible shame. He had carefully assessed the situation, thinking it might be remnants of his past, but if he had just bought the chocolates and gone back instead, his precious friend could have eaten them five minutes earlier.

Since ignoring someone out of their mind was always the best policy, Yuri moved to achieve his intended goal, regardless of what the man said. Thierry, one of only two in downtown Vancouver, was so popular and required lining up to get in that the later he went, the worse it was.

“Hey, honey, where are you going?”

But the madman didn’t leave Yuri alone as he tried to leave. The man, who had called him by that sickening pet name, swiftly followed right behind him. For Yuri, who loathed drawing attention, this was a situation he couldn’t just leave alone.

Stopping in his tracks, Yuri spun around and stared at the man. Even when met with Yuri’s expressionless, chilly blue eyes straight on, the man fearlessly approached closer. Standing upright, the man’s eye level was slightly above Yuri’s. Once again, he could see those strikingly vivid lime-green eyes examining him. The man’s face, he now noticed, was about half-covered by a mask.

“What do you want.”

There was no need to be polite to someone who had approached rudely from the start. Yuri lowered his voice and asked.

“Wow, you can talk. Your voice is as killer as your face, huh?”

“I asked what you want.”

Yuri steadfastly ignored the man’s nonsense and asked again. What he really wanted was to plant a fist in the man’s face and go on his way, but this was downtown. He couldn’t afford to cause trouble where so many eyes were watching.

“Oh, now that I think about it, I did approach you out of the blue, didn’t I? Sorry. I startled you, right?”

“Your business.”

Cutting off the man’s apology sharply, Yuri asked again. The man twisted his thick reddish-brown eyebrows as if hurt.

“I’ve earned your dislike before even asking your name.”