Flower Fiancé Chapter 15

Ji Yeonwoo, who had locked eyes with Choi Moohyuk, felt his eyes gradually widening.

“For example, something like Mr. Ji Yeonwoo’s own pheromone.”

“…!”

“Mr. Ji Yeonwoo, you’re an Omega, aren’t you.”

A flustered and surprised expression flickered across Ji Yeonwoo’s face. He hadn’t thought Choi Moohyuk wouldn’t know, but he hadn’t expected him to say it so directly to his face.

“I think your question is a bit too late.”

Ji Yeonwoo lowered his hands beneath the table and tightly clutched the hem of his carefully chosen shirt.

“Shouldn’t you have asked that question on the first day we met, when you came back?”

“Asking someone’s trait outright at a first meeting seemed rude.”

“That’s no different now. If I had been a Beta, or if I had been in a relationship, I would have been offended.”

Choi Moohyuk, who had gently pulled up one corner of his lip, smiled an unreadable smile. Because he couldn’t decipher the meaning of that smile, Ji Yeonwoo furrowed his brow instead.

“Even if both of those were the case, it wouldn’t really be a problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whether it’s ongoing or already over, a lover who hands over French marigolds couldn’t possibly be a good person.”

“…!”

“And there would be no lingering attachment left for a person who received French marigolds and felt a sense of relief.”

Even after hearing that sharp-edged reply, Choi Moohyuk, meeting his eyes, showed no change in expression. As if being shocked and flustered was solely Ji Yeonwoo’s part.

The image of himself bristling like a hedgehog just because Choi Moohyuk had instantly figured out he was an Omega contrasted with the quiet and mature Choi Moohyuk. At the wave of shame washing over him, Ji Yeonwoo’s face flushed bright red.

“Then that means the Managing Director, who gifted French marigolds to his blind date, isn’t a good person either.”

Having blurted it out, Ji Yeonwoo wore a surprised expression without realizing it himself. He had been so sharply on edge that he had misspoken, but he couldn’t take back the words already spoken.

He watched Choi Moohyuk’s expression. Choi Moohyuk was still calm, with no change in his expression. He was so unreadable that one couldn’t fathom what he was thinking at all.

Choi Moohyuk, who had been meeting his eyes squarely, gently closed his eyes and averted his gaze first. Hmm, a low voice slipped through his closed lips along with a long breath. Choi Moohyuk seemed to be mulling over the words Ji Yeonwoo had left behind.

“Mr. Ji Yeonwoo is right. A person who hurts the other party can’t be a good person.”

Whatever thought had crossed his mind, a faint, derisive smile spread across Choi Moohyuk’s lips at the end of his words.

“But, is that also a guess based on experience?”

After being found out as an Omega, his heart, which had been racing fast the entire time, showed no sign of calming down. It wasn’t due to excitement but entirely due to anxiety. In that brief moment, moments he had tried hard to forget flickered past.

A bedroom filled with red lighting, the suffocating, intense pheromones of an Alpha, and one person looming over Ji Yeonwoo sprawled on the bed—Lee Hyunjoon.

Ji Yeonwoo’s lowered eyes clouded with unease, quivering and shaking.

“Managing Director, I….”

Ji Yeonwoo stopped speaking, his facial muscles trembling minutely. His fingertips began to grow cold, freezing from the ends. It was one of the habitual changes that occurred when he was nervous. Ji Yeonwoo clasped the tips of his fingers, which felt somehow numb, with his other hand.

“I vowed never to date someone who hurts me ever again.”

To a person who readily admitted that he himself wasn’t a good person either, there was only one thing Ji Yeonwoo could say.

To be honest, it was difficult for him to harbor feelings of liking someone. He didn’t want to become narrow-minded, and he didn’t want to become petty. He didn’t want to spend his days thinking only of that person, feeling like he couldn’t go on without them, and then experience that sense of loss all over again when it ended.

The pain of parting had thus imprisoned Ji Yeonwoo inside a thick iron fortress.

“Ah, right. A guess based on experience.”

Choi Moohyuk murmured as if talking to himself. Because the surroundings were so quiet, Ji Yeonwoo, who had heard it, opened his mouth as if to say something, then hastily shut it.

A person who has gone through pain once inevitably becomes passive. Because they never want to repeat the pain of parting again. A breakup where only he was in pain was enough once in this lifetime.

“Then the answer is settled. Wouldn’t it be fine as long as I don’t hurt Mr. Ji Yeonwoo?”

Choi Moohyuk looked at Ji Yeonwoo and shrugged his shoulders. It was as if he was asking, what’s so hard about that?

Watching that, Ji Yeonwoo grew even more unsettled. Looking at that relaxed smile, he felt strangely as though the thick walls were crumbling. It had been like that from the first time he saw him. Unlike the typical Alphas who thoroughly hid their bad points and tried to show only the good, Choi Moohyuk was easy to acknowledge in every aspect. As if both his good points and his bad points were all simply himself.

Choi Moohyuk, who had been quietly meeting his eyes, changed the subject.

“But it seems Mr. Ji Yeonwoo isn’t curious about my trait. You don’t ask.”

“I know already.”

“You know?”

“Yes. Managing Director, you’re an Alpha.”

Choi Moohyuk let out a small breath of a laugh, ha.

“Is he simply just an Alpha?”

Hearing yet another completely composed reply, Ji Yeonwoo’s eyes widened greatly. Then, could it be, was he saying he was a dominant Alpha? Even though he couldn’t feel pheromones, he had known it faintly. The physique that was a head taller than Ji Yeonwoo, the handsome appearance, and his high social standing, and so on.

Taking everything together, he had thought Choi Moohyuk would be an Alpha, but he had never predicted he would be a dominant Alpha, belonging to only one percent.

Ji Yeonwoo’s wavering eyes quickly swept over Choi Moohyuk.

“But that’s fascinating. How did you know?”

“Pardon?”

“Mr. Ji Yeonwoo can’t smell pheromones, after all.”

“…!”

Ji Yeonwoo parted his lips slightly and drew in a breath.

Blood rushed to his head, making him dizzy. Even without looking in a mirror, Ji Yeonwoo could tell that his face was draining of color, turning pale. It wasn’t so much that he was displeased by being tested in an unethical way, but rather because he had now realized that there was no place left for Ji Yeonwoo to lean on in this relationship.

With this, everything was over. There would be no Alpha who, knowing he was an Omega who had lost his pheromones and couldn’t even smell pheromones, would want to continue seeing him. Wouldn’t it feel even more negative, especially to someone who was a dominant Alpha on top of it?

With a hollow smile, he finally let out the words that had been circling in his mouth all along.

“The Managing Director is right. I am an Omega, but I have no pheromones.”

He thought there was no point in hiding it any longer.

“Rather than not having them, it would be more accurate to say I lost them.”

A flicker of interest passed through Choi Moohyuk’s eyes, which had been nothing but relaxed the entire time.

“Is it a congenital deficiency?”

“It’s not that.”

Ji Yeonwoo, who had paused, hastily made an excuse.

“An accident, there was an accident.”

After blurting out that hasty excuse, it ended up sounding even stranger. After all, it wasn’t like breaking an arm or a leg, so it was hard to connect losing pheromones to some kind of accident. I should have just said yes when he asked if it was a congenital deficiency. Ji Yeonwoo regretted it, but he couldn’t take back the words he had spoken.

“I know that for a person of a trait, pheromones are both a cumbersome obstacle and, at the same time, akin to a powerful weapon. But I, who have lost my pheromones, am nothing more than a flawed Omega.”

“It must be a personal shame in its own way, so I’m curious about the reason you’re willingly revealing your secret.”

“….”

“You could have denied it, couldn’t you.”

“Because the fact that someone has noticed means it’s no longer a secret.”

The fact that he had been a dominant Omega, the fact that he had lost his pheromones, and even the fact that he couldn’t smell them. Somehow, Choi Moohyuk had found out all of Ji Yeonwoo’s secrets through conversation. The last remaining secret was Ji Yeonwoo’s greatest shame and weakness.

∞ ∞ ∞

Still, wouldn’t it be better to be honest in order to continue seeing each other?

But if he did, what if the relationship ended right here and now?

Throughout his entire life, he had never met anyone who approached him with such a good feeling. He was a person too precious to lose like this, yet even without revealing the last remaining shame, the decision was already in Choi Moohyuk’s hands.