From the moment he received his boarding pass for Shanghai at Incheon Airport, all the accumulated tension erupted at once.
Lee Young-jin dreamed a dream he hadn’t had in a long time.
It wasn’t a nightmare.
Beloved faces appeared before him.
His grandfather, who had raised him for seventeen years, stood in the yard, cleaning the flounder. The fishy smell of the sea, the scent of salt and mud, butterflies basking in the sun under the dilapidated fence, the sound of waves crashing from afar, the creaking sound of a shrimp fishing boat, the boiling sound of shrimp in a large iron pot, and the laughter of a few middle school classmates.
“If you want to go to high school, you have to leave the island.”
“How can you send him off to the mainland alone?”
“Is he going to become a clever fisherman like you?”
“We should go together. I heard they give scholarships at the school.”
“What about living expenses?”
“We’ll catch fish and sell the land. Somehow, the two of us can make a living, right?”
“Smart students get taken away and given money and houses. They say there’s something like that. Let’s go meet Teacher once.”
A year after entering the high school on the mainland, his grandfather passed away. After that, one by one, the residents left the island. In just one month, more than half were gone, then another half the following month, and six months later, Lee Young-jin was the only one left. After the family who promised to take him with them hurriedly left, Lee Young-jin spent a year alone, guarding the island.
“The Lee Sang-heo family. Will Teacher not buy their land?”
The black sea.
A lonely farewell as they departed.
The empty yard.
Teacher.
When Lee Young-jin turned eighteen, the only person who regularly visited Magnolia Island was the Teacher. Once a week, the teacher would come on a small 125-ton cargo ship carrying essential supplies to the island. Occasionally, some unfamiliar faces came with Teacher, but they were truly rare occurrences.
Ji Jung-hoon was one of them.
When Teacher and the rugged-looking unfamiliar man stepped off the regular ship onto the empty dock, Lee Young-jin was startled and instinctively stepped back. The unfamiliar alpha was enormous like a mountain, with fierce features, and the right side of his lower lip was scarred, making his face look extremely menacing.
Though Lee Young-jin had talked with him before, it was the first time he saw his face up close.
After that encounter, he visited the Magnolia Island three more times.
He and Lee Young-jin spent ‘time’ together five more times.
As Lee Young-jin turned twenty, Ji Jung-hoon started visiting more frequently. Of course, he didn’t particularly like the small one-room house on the outskirts of Seoul where Lee Young-jin lived.
Ji Jung-hoon occasionally scolded Lee Young-jin while coming to fill the empty refrigerator with meat and vegetables. He stacked canned corn and canned ham in the kitchen, saying that a balanced diet was essential for growing taller. With a disapproving tongue-click, he used the vacuum cleaner to tidy up the small living room that didn’t need any significant cleaning. In the evenings, he would take over the middle of the living room, lying down and watching variety shows while laughing out loud and drinking beer. Naturally, he didn’t give Lee Young-jin a single drop. Later, before it was even ten o’clock, he would push Lee Young-jin into bed and gently stroke his hair with his thick hands. He didn’t sing a lullaby, but perhaps it would have been better if he had.
Ji Jung-hoon’s voice resembled the gentle echo of the sea, the sound of waves crashing against the boat, the clattering of heads of rockfish hanging on the clothesline, and the raspy cough of Lee Young-jin’s grandfather.
Lee Young-jin sometimes feared that Ji Jung-hoon might never come back to see him again.
Perhaps if Ji Jung-hoon were a proper alpha, he wouldn’t have such fears.
Between knotting and heat, intense chemical reactions sometimes occurred in the interactions between alphas and omegas, and they were often adorned with words like love, fate, or destiny. To Lee Young-jin, they were all fantastical stories beyond his reach.
On days when he couldn’t bear the fear, Lee Young-jin would sneak out alone and follow any man or alpha who approached him.
Sharing a bed and exchanging body heat with them for a night erased his fear, if only temporarily.
When Ji Jung-hoon found out, he looked at Lee Young-jin with a very lonely gaze.
“You’re still young, Young-jin ah. Someday, you’ll meet a good alpha.”
Could there be a better alpha than him?
“You worry too much. If I had gotten into an accident with that kid I used to meet in high school, you’d have had an older brother.”
Although Lee Young-jin knew that Ji Jung-hoon passed the GED at the boys’ home and that there was no way he could have met that kid from high school or gotten into an accident back then, he remained silent.
“Young-jin ah, you are…”
[Interpol arrests two Korean nationals involved in the invasion of H Bank in Shanghai.]
“You’re really smart.”
[Related to an international terrorist organization…]
“I want to live a more ordinary life now.”
[Nation’s investigative agencies to be extraditing within this month.]
“I don’t have to worry about high school anymore.”
Teacher, after Yokohama, I don’t want to do this kind of work anymore. I just want to live a more ordinary life. Can I do well? Do I really have the qualifications for that?
When he woke up from the dream, Lee Young-jin was sitting hunched on the sofa. Seo Seung-hyun was sitting in front of the sofa, bending his knees and gazing directly into his face. His elongated eyes were very close. With the dim lighting, his eyes glimmered like transparent gray. His even eyebrows, straight nose, sharp cheekbones, expressionless lips, and strong jaw were all perfectly arranged like a flawless sculpture, forming a harmonious composition. The features on his face seemed to be swaying gently as if submerged in water.
Lee Young-jin blinked his eyes rapidly.
Tears formed a pool beneath his swollen eyelids and dripped down like dewdrops.
Seo Seung-hyun reached out his hand and gently touched the corner of his eye.
It was then that Lee Young-jin realized he was crying. The tears welled up on his retina, gathered heavily under his lower eyelashes, resisted the surface tension for a moment, and then flowed down steadily. Seo Seung-hyun’s eyebrows furrowed slightly as if he was uncertain. He wiped away Lee Young-jin’s tears again with his hand. Slowly, his palm moved to caress the wet cheeks and temples. Lee Young-jin just silently stared at him with his tearful eyes. Their gazes intertwined for quite a long time.
“Ah.”
When Seo Seung-hyun withdrew his hand and moved back, Lee Young-jin let out a soft sigh, feeling disappointed that the warmth of his touch was gone. He blinked his eyes a few times, trying to shake off the feeling. Fortunately, the tears stopped soon after.
“Why?”
Seo Seung-hyun noticed that the tears had stopped and asked softly.
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