My Alpha Era Began with Gongjindan Chapter 55

I felt carsick the entire time in the taxi. Jung Pureum kept asking if I was okay and rubbing my back from beside me.

The taxi driver rolled down his window, probably worried I might throw up in the car. The air, thick with fine dust, thankfully made the dizzy feeling somewhat better.

“Maybe it’s because my stomach is empty….”

“Should we go eat something after we drop off the luggage?”

“No, I just want to rest today.”

Originally, I’d planned to take Jung Pureum out and buy him something to eat. Even though it was Jung Pureum who’d offered to come pick me up, without him it would have been impossible for me to carry all this luggage home by myself.

So I’d planned to buy him an expensive meal—fancy enough to make him wonder why the hyung next door was only feeding him good rice. But right now, I had no appetite at all. The cause was obvious: accumulated fatigue and Jung Pureum’s unfamiliar cologne scent. There were no other unusual factors.

“Why did you suddenly put on cologne?”

I finally spoke slowly, leaning against the car seat. Normally, I’d let people wear whatever they want, but the cologne was making me carsick, so I had to ask.

“Does it really smell that bad?”

“The scent itself is fine… but it feels like something’s subtly mixed in.”

“Mixed in?”

“Yeah. It’s hard to explain in words. It’s like… someone else’s pheromones.”

At my words about it being like someone else’s pheromones, Jung Pureum was momentarily flustered. It was a fleeting change in expression, but since I’d been looking at him the whole time, I caught it easily.

What would it take for unstable pheromones to stabilize in just four days? I hadn’t given it much thought before, but gradually that question started to arise. I began imagining how Jung Pureum had managed to control his pheromones.

The most likely possibility was that he’d done it alone, but another alpha or omega could have helped him. Even though it’s impossible for a latent omega like me, a dominant omega can release their pheromones to forcibly stimulate or conversely calm alphas.

Of course, if a dominant omega had helped, I should have been able to sense another omega’s pheromones on Jung Pureum. Instead, there was only the cologne scent that made me dizzy, as if he’d used a masking agent.

“I’ll buy you a meal later, hyung.”

Jung Pureum, worried about me who seemed low on energy the whole time, carried my luggage all the way into the apartment. As soon as I got home, I washed up and collapsed onto the bed.

“Go on, go home.”

Despite my dismissal, Jung Pureum sat on the living room sofa like a statue. Seeing him linger and say he’d go buy me some porridge made me feel even more sorry.

“Hyung.”

“Yeah.”

“Can I use your bathroom?”

“…What? Why?”

“So I can wash up too. Because I want to stay by hyung’s side a little longer.”

He followed up with a whine asking if I didn’t want to see him after not seeing each other for so long. I was a bit taken aback. He was the one who went into closed training for a week at a time.

Letting him use the bathroom wasn’t difficult, but I didn’t have any clothes that would fit Jung Pureum. When I made a troubled face and said no, Jung Pureum looked deeply deflated and said he’d go wash at home before heading out the front door.

As soon as Jung Pureum left, sleep paralysis came over me. I think I fell asleep the moment I closed my eyes. Ah, I should at least dry my hair properly. If I sleep like this, the pillow will get ruined….

When I opened my eyes again, it was late at night.

I’d had a nightmare about something heavy pressing down on me. Even after waking up, I felt strangely heavy, and there was Jung Pureum lying beside me.

I was dumbfounded. Why was he sleeping here? His own house was right next door, yet he’d crawled into my bed—it was absurd.

On top of that, a dry towel was neatly folded on my pillow. Upon closer look, it wasn’t even my towel. The spare clothes placed in front of the closet also seemed to be new ones Jung Pureum had brought.

In the bathroom, he’d even placed a new toothbrush. I was flabbergasted, my mouth hanging open. What is all this? Did he run away from home to my place?

“Hey, Jung Pureum. Wake up.”

“Mmm….”

“Why are you sleeping here?”

I roughly shook Jung Pureum, who’d been sleeping like an angel. It was the vibrating shake technique I’d inherited from my mom.

At my merciless shaking, Jung Pureum slowly opened his eyes.

“Are you feeling better?”

Still drowsy, his husky voice sounded a bit strange.

I was startled and started patting Jung Pureum’s back. He curled up in pain but still reached out and wrapped his arms around my waist.

What’s this, why is the mood like this? I was horrified and pulled my body back. But my lousy reflexes couldn’t push away Jung Pureum’s arms.

“I don’t smell like cologne anymore, right?”

It seemed he’d really gone home to wash, because now there was no scent at all on Jung Pureum. When I nodded, Jung Pureum pulled me in tighter.

“That’s a relief. I just put it on to look good for hyung, but because of it you seemed unwell, so I was worried.”

Hearing that made me feel a bit sorry. I gave up on pushing Jung Pureum away and quietly stayed in his arms.

“Why are you so good to me?”

“Because I like hyung.”

“….”

“I say I like you every day, and you ask every day.”

Somehow, the words “I like you” from Jung Pureum sounded different this time.

It was all because I’d watched too many romance dramas with my mom over the past few days. In that cliché romance drama I watched with her, I think there was a scene like this around episode seven.

Suddenly, my mind became unsettled. It was because Jung Pureum’s “I like you” sounded like a confession. If I hadn’t heard those words so many times before, I might have misunderstood like someone with a delusion of grandeur.

“Pureum, do you know the PD of <I Want to Know Everything>? Not the current one, the one who stepped down.”

To avoid having strange thoughts, I quickly changed the subject. I was afraid the mood would get weird again if I didn’t.

I shouldn’t be doing this with someone who barely got their pheromones stabilized. Jung Pureum, not caring at all about his own body, held me like a summer hug pillow.

“The PD? Why bring up the PD all of a sudden?”

“No, he just said something strange.”

“…I don’t really know. I know he made things difficult for hyung with his bad programming, though.”

“See? I knew it.”

Why did PD Kim have to say something strange and unsettle people for no reason?

The very idea that Jung Pureum, a normal physical education student, could threaten PD Kim was an implausible assumption. It would be more likely that my grandfather bought off the broadcasting station with money.

“But… why did you contact PD Kim?”

“Huh? It’s nothing. I just had something to ask a drama PD, so I asked him to connect me.”

The room was dark so I couldn’t see clearly, but Jung Pureum’s expression was odd. He seemed worried that I’d contacted PD Kim again.

I patted Jung Pureum’s back reassuringly. He’d been practically kicked out of the program he was working on, so what danger could there be?

“Something came up that I need to check with the drama side that KBC is about to air.”

To reassure Jung Pureum, I brought up <The Alpha Who Was a Beta Is Too Much!>. The drama PD had probably used the alpha-making tonic without a second thought, but for me, who’d gone through all kinds of trouble because of broadcast programs, it was something I couldn’t ignore.

“You said PD Kim said something strange.”

At this point, I gritted my teeth, thinking I should at least get some free PPL out of it, but Jung Pureum asked again about PD Kim.

Something was suspicious. Setting aside my belief that Jung Pureum couldn’t possibly threaten anyone, his excessive wariness toward PD Kim seemed odd no matter how I looked at it.

Then again, he was someone worth being wary of. Unlike Baek Wonhee, he hadn’t been brought before the law, so there was no telling when or how he might make a comeback.

“It wasn’t anything major. He told me to stop threatening him while conspiring with a kid.”

“….”

“Strange, right? I don’t remember threatening that guy at all.”

After a brief silence, Jung Pureum agreed with me. Hearing him say it was truly strange made my rising suspicions settle back down.

That’s right. Whether it’s the “I like you” or the “conspiring with a kid,” both have too much potential for misunderstanding. It would be better for everyone not to say such ambiguous things….

I thought about the unnecessaryness of cryptic speech and closed my eyes again.

∞ ∞ ∞

The next day, I went to the clinic, dragging the suitcase full of herbs my grandfather had packed tightly.

“Feels like I’m finally back home.”

“You said you were going for recuperation, so why do you look even more haggard coming back….”

Nam Jungyoon, who looked several times more haggard than me, welcomed me. He must have had a hard time handling more than double the workload as vice director while I was away.

“Don’t even mention it. I couldn’t rest comfortably at the main house. Seoul is better.”

“Isn’t the air there good?”

“The air is good. If I didn’t have to hear about marriage all the time, it’d be a complete resort.”

“Marriage?”

“My family is conservative, so they’ve been going on about marriage from early on.”

“Ah… that must be exhausting.”

Nam Jungyoon, who had plopped down on the clinic floor, started sorting the herbs. I sat beside him and reviewed the work logs to see how the clinic had operated over the past two days.

Since Kim Miyoung was such a veteran, it seemed none of the unexpected incidents I’d anticipated had occurred. I was relieved but also a little disappointed. At this rate, the staff wouldn’t even notice the director’s absence.

“Nothing particularly special happened while I was gone?”

“Special things shouldn’t happen. Ah, right. A regular patient did come looking for you.”

So my thought that a regular patient might look for me wasn’t unfounded! I flipped through the work log with excitement.

According to the log, Lee Seolwoo had come looking for me just yesterday. He’d wanted a consultation with the director, but since I wasn’t there, he’d just gone back.

I’d thought he’d switched to a different Korean medicine clinic altogether after Baek Wonhee’s attack on ours. I smiled contentedly and circled Lee Seolwoo’s name.