The Main Character is Obsessed With a Foreign Substance

 3.

Jin Suhwan was strange. Truly strange.

While drinking with his fellow classmates, Seunghyun was lost in thought.

He wasn’t sure exactly when it had started. All he knew was that Jin Suhwan, whom he’d met again after a month, had become a completely different person.

Now, seeing him no longer brought feelings of disgust. No, rather…

As if trying to shake off the sudden sensation that arose in his mind, Seunghyun gulped down the beer in front of him.

“Oh, Seunghyun. Feeling it tonight?”

“Hah…”

“Yeah, yeah. Drink up, drink up. Down it all!”

Chanwoo, already thoroughly drunk, poured plenty of beer into Seunghyun’s glass with his flushed face. All his classmates appeared equally intoxicated.

Normally on such nights, Seunghyun would have limited his drinking and taken care of his friends, but today he didn’t feel like doing that.

As Seunghyun tilted his beer glass again, someone tapped him.

“…?”

“Hello?”

Still holding his beer glass, Seunghyun slightly furrowed his brow. He would have returned the greeting if he knew who it was, but coincidentally, it was a face he’d never seen before.

However, the stranger continued speaking without considering Seunghyun’s awkwardness.

“Ah, I’m from the English department. I was drinking over there. I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while.”

“And?”

“Huh?”

Seunghyun, taking his lips off the beer glass, looked directly at the uninvited guest. With an expressionless face, he asked the surprised man.

“You’ve already spoken to me. Now what do you want?”

“Huh? Well, that…”

For someone who had approached so boldly, the man was excessively flustered. He was shocked by Seunghyun’s unexpectedly intimidating presence.

Seunghyun was quite well-known at the university, as much for his pretty appearance as anything else. The fact that he was an omega was also one of the reasons for his fame. Though suppressants had become nearly perfect and the trend of discriminating against omegas had almost disappeared, prejudices hadn’t completely vanished.

Betas who didn’t know better would arbitrarily assume that omegas who experienced heat cycles were lustful and promiscuous.

Previously, Seunghyun had only been embarrassed by such treatment, but now he felt pathetic for having been that way. Having to suffer emotionally because of idiots who couldn’t even give a proper answer when he merely snapped at them.

Sighing deeply, Seunghyun stood up from his seat.

“Huh? Seunghyun, where are you going?”

“Just getting some fresh air.”

Leaving behind the nameless man who stood there with his mouth stupidly open and his classmates who were too drunk to do anything but talk among themselves, Seunghyun went outside for a moment. Fortunately, the dismissed man didn’t seem tactless enough to follow him out.

“Phew.”

Leaning his back against the wall, Seunghyun rubbed his stiff eyes with his fingers. With the noisy commotion fading away, his head felt somewhat clearer.

At times like this, he wondered what Jin Suhwan might be doing. Lost in thought, he was thinking about Jin Suhwan again. Seunghyun sighed and took out his phone.

After hesitating, Seunghyun opened an app. After a moment, a simple background appeared with the loading screen. Several words appeared on the screen, and Seunghyun touched the one that said ‘Home’.

Soon, familiar screens scrolled up.

It was the CCTV installed in Jin Suhwan’s house.

People might install CCTV at home for various reasons, but most would be for security purposes. Unfortunately, the reason Seunghyun had installed CCTV there was far from that.

Installing CCTV to collect evidence against someone trying to rape him—even Seunghyun felt conflicted while setting it up. After all, he would have to be assaulted by that guy at least once.

However, Jin Suhwan, with whom he had started living again, didn’t lay a finger on Seunghyun. Ridiculously, he would cower, avoid, and be terrified if even a finger came close to touching him. It was actually Seunghyun who had provoked him out of frustration.

As Seunghyun had wanted, Jin Suhwan made the first move, but all he did was give a childish kiss. Even that made him blush as if embarrassed, which was absurd.

Are you kidding me? Seunghyun was so angry that he lost his mind first and showered Suhwan with kisses; he wasn’t in his right mind at that time.

Something was wrong. Everything was going wrong.

Feeling anxious, Seunghyun stared intently at the CCTV screen. This was something he had been doing every hour since he started living with Jin Suhwan. He would monitor every evening to see if Suhwan dropped his mask and did something when Seunghyun wasn’t around.

But after several days of surveillance, Suhwan’s behavior in the empty house was utterly ordinary.

After returning from school, he would wash up, eat, watch some TV, occasionally call someone, go to his room to read, and fall asleep…

It was the routine of a truly ordinary person. It was so different from what Seunghyun had expected.

Determined not to be fooled, Seunghyun watched carefully, but Suhwan never did anything unusual. Was he planning to make Seunghyun let his guard down and then backstab him severely? Such suspicions would melt away like snow when he saw Suhwan stupidly laughing while watching TV.

But today, Seunghyun noticed Suhwan doing something different from usual.

“…Beer?”

After rummaging through the refrigerator, Suhwan returned to the living room with beer. Seunghyun had thought it strange that Suhwan hadn’t been drinking since they started living together again, but it seemed that wasn’t the case after all.

Jin Suhwan becomes a beast when he drinks. A mad dog, literally. Even his grandfather, Jin Gilnyeong, the owner of Hwamyeong, wouldn’t deal with Jin Suhwan when he was drinking.

Well, of course. Now that he’s drinking, he’ll truly reveal his true colors. Seunghyun felt a sense of relief, but also a chill in one corner of his heart.

What had he been expecting from Jin Suhwan? Seunghyun couldn’t understand himself. He just turned off his phone screen after closing the CCTV app with a bitter smile. Then he returned to where the drinking party was in full swing.

“I’m heading back now.”

“Huh? Seunghyuuun, leaving already?”

“Yeah, drink moderately and go home.”

Though his classmates, already drunk with slurred speech, all seemed hopeless, Seunghyun still left words of caution before turning away.

Leaving the bar, Seunghyun headed straight home.

His mind was complicated. If he went home now, the situation he had been so desperately wanting might unfold.

And at the same time, his mouth went bitter. He felt pathetic for having been swayed by Jin Suhwan’s changed demeanor all this time.

“Hah…”

But it was something that had to end someday. Just a little later than expected. Steeling himself, Seunghyun entered the door lock password.

Beep beep beep beep, beep.

Piriririk.

Seunghyun moved immediately to find Suhwan, who would be in the living room. Soon, he saw Suhwan sitting on the sofa. Seunghyun approached him with some tension.

“Ah…”

“…!”

At that moment, a tear dropped from Suhwan’s eye with a plop. Seunghyun, who had been approaching with tension, widened his eyes in surprise.

…Is he crying? Jin Suhwan?

An unpleasant sensation enveloped his entire body. Seunghyun asked in a stiff voice.

“Why are you crying?”

“…”

When Suhwan couldn’t answer, Seunghyun stepped closer. Perhaps because of the alcohol he had just consumed, he felt his head getting heavy as the intoxication belatedly set in. Standing in front of Suhwan, Seunghyun asked again.

“I said, why are you crying?”

“Well…”

Seunghyun could see Suhwan hanging his head low.

In that moment, flames surged before his eyes. Seunghyun forcibly lifted Suhwan’s face with both hands and said through gritted teeth.

“I asked why you’re crying, Jin Suhwan.”

“…!”

Suhwan was surprised. He was startled that Seunghyun suddenly came home while he was crying, and even more surprised that upon seeing Seunghyun, his tears didn’t stop but flowed even more abundantly. And most bewildering of all was Seunghyun’s action of grabbing his face and looking into it.

“S-Seunghyun.”

“…”

“Sob…”

Why wouldn’t the tears stop? Once they started flowing, the tears wouldn’t cease, like a dam bursting. Seunghyun looked at Suhwan’s tearful face with indecipherable eyes. His persistent gaze followed the tears flowing down from Suhwan’s eyes.

Seunghyun’s hand, which had been still, moved. He touched Suhwan’s eye area with careful fingers. When he felt the moist sensation, his fingers stiffened with a jerk.

Jin Suhwan was crying in front of him. That scene, somehow unreal, was being deeply etched into Seunghyun’s retina.

“…Don’t cry.”

“Ugh.”

Seunghyun’s fingers brushed away the tears around Suhwan’s eyes. At that tender action of wiping away his tears, Suhwan paradoxically cried even more.