Unlike Juhan's surprisingly simple room, Yuni's space was so cramped with all kinds of belongings that it was difficult for three people to move around at once. On top of that, a uniquely restless energy drifted through the air, the particular disorder left behind by someone about to leave.

Saying they could take whatever they needed, Yuni had invited Juhan and Ihyeon into her room before the real drinking began. Most of what filled the space was clothes and books.

Watching Juhan's back as he rummaged enthusiastically through a two-tiered clothing rack that was already about half empty—likely sorted through once already—picking out things to his taste, Ihyeon tried to focus on what Yuni was saying.

"They told me to do whatever I want. As if I ever needed their permission in the first place."

Yuni, sitting on the edge of the single bed cluttered with books of various sizes, magazines, and printed materials, gave a wry smile and took a sip of beer before continuing.

"And?"

Juhan, who had been digging through a box under the rack and struggling to pull out a sweater, stopped and turned around. Unlike him—who clicked his tongue in disbelief—Yuni just shrugged once, aimlessly flipping through a magazine within reach.

"I told them I didn't come to ask for permission. That I got a job overseas, and since I don't know when I'll be back, I thought I should at least tell them. That's why I went."

She said she had met with her family earlier that afternoon. Though she had exchanged a few brief calls since leaving home, this was the first time they had actually seen each other in person—and even if he didn't show it, Ihyeon had been genuinely surprised.

As far as he knew, she had been gone for at least four years. He was surprised once by the fact that she hadn't seen her family at all during that time, and surprised again by her decision to break the long silence and go to them herself.

Inertia worked on relationships between people too. Once distance formed, it wasn't easy to reverse it. But leaving things alone and simply watching required no effort or resistance at all. That was far easier. Despite having plenty of reasons to avoid it, she had chosen the harder path.

"I told you to just say it over the phone."

Thinking of the hurt she must have received, Juhan grumbled at her back. Yuni looked down at him and let out a faint laugh.

"Whatever my parents have to say, it's not the kind of thing you say over the phone between parents and their child."

She had been delivering news over the phone—news they weren't curious about, or at least hadn't welcomed—for years now. There must have been her own reason for insisting on a face-to-face meeting this time. If all her previous choices had been secondary consequences of her initial decision to leave, then this one carried a different weight: a turning point, the moment her life entered a new phase. It wasn't just about her address changing from domestic to overseas.

Tilting her head back as if tired and rubbing the back of her neck, Yuni murmured toward the ceiling.

"They told me to come home, prepare for the college entrance exam again, and apply to an education college. They're still saying that. It means they have no intention of acknowledging anything I've built for myself since leaving. That I'm just acting out against them, deliberately going off course. Even now... the fact that they still think that..."

Unable to finish, Yuni shook her head slightly and snapped the magazine she'd been flipping through shut.

"Before, I at least thought it was for my sake. Getting a stable job and settling down. By their standards that's a good life, so I told myself they were being firm because they wanted me to live well. But seeing how they still say those things without trying to understand my life now, or the future I'm working toward... I don't know anymore."

Faced with Yuni's frustration at being denied once again by the very people she most wanted recognition from—as she actually was—neither Ihyeon nor Juhan could offer easy comfort.

"Even if it's hard, even if it's not stable, I'm happier this way... so why do they keep saying I'll regret it later? Even if we're connected by blood as parents and child, even if siblings are raised by the same people—can't the conditions for happiness be different for everyone? Can't they?"

She stretched her legs out and pressed them against Juhan's back, coaxing his agreement. Ihyeon watched her profile and quietly turned his head away from the pressure rising inside him. Then he mechanically swallowed a mouthful of beer that had tasted like nothing from the start. It felt like the only thing his powerless self could do right now.

"Even the four of us in my own family don't share the same taste in food. How could something as tricky as the conditions for happiness possibly be the same?"

There was an unmistakable weariness in Yuni's voice. Not physical exhaustion—something closer to resignation, the realization that it was finally time to sever the thin thread of lingering attachment she hadn't been able to fully let go of.

She hadn't gotten the result she wanted. But at least she hadn't run from the problem, hadn't piled up excuses to justify running. She had walked into a situation that was bound to be awkward and painful, of her own will.

Her family's house. The house that should have been the most comfortable place in the world. Ihyeon could easily imagine how long she must have hesitated at that door.

Even while living under the same roof, it had never been easy for him to say a single word to his father. He had rationalized his avoidance with the excuse that there was no point—he wouldn't get an answer anyway. Compared to the pain of speaking and being met with silence, avoidance had been so much simpler.

But Yuni had not turned back at the door, even knowing what reaction was coming. She did what she had to do, said what she needed to say. What happened after that was no longer her responsibility.

Tilting the bottle silently, Yuni seemed to remember something and quickly pulled it away from her lips.

"Ah, actually—my family does have something in common with me."

"......"

"This stubbornness that makes my mom and dad groan, wondering who on earth I take after? I probably inherited it straight from them."

As she said it, she even smiled. It was a smile she forced to block out the complicated emotions—but having decided not to expect any more understanding from her parents, she also looked, somehow, relieved. She had confirmed once and for all that there was no room left for lingering hopes. Before moving on to the next chapter of her life, she was already separating what she would leave behind from what she would keep.

Everyone was using their own choices as fuel to move forward somewhere. The regrets to leave behind, the ties to cut loose, even mistakes and remorse—it felt like everyone was choosing their own.

Ihyeon felt like he alone was a coward who had never collided with anything.

Was this retribution? For not digging into his problems, not pushing through toward any kind of breakthrough. For retreating, taking detours, feigning ignorance, relying on a cowardly peace built on silence. Was even his own body—the most tangibly his own thing he possessed—being altered by someone else part of that price?

To stop his thoughts from drifting somewhere too sentimental, too self-condemning, Ihyeon drank more beer. This wasn't the right moment to be thinking about anything.

Yuni stood up from the bed, set the empty bottle on the sink, pulled a fresh one from the refrigerator, and nudged Ihyeon's shoulder. He'd been leaning against the counter in a daze.

"Why are you so quiet today?"

"......"

It wasn't a question he could answer. That his head right now was more of a mess than your room. That he felt like an ant crushed beneath a problem so enormous he couldn't even take it all in at once—couldn't even scream. He couldn't say it.

Even if he had the nerve to open up, he wouldn't know where or how to start. It was impossible to explain to someone else a problem he himself hadn't yet properly grasped.

Meeting Yuni's worried gaze, Ihyeon bit down hard on his lower lip. She reached out and lightly ruffled the back of his head, then gave him a faint smile.

"What, are you sad about us parting?"

Juhan sprang up from his spot, eyes gleaming, and gripped Ihyeon's shoulder firmly.

"Seo Ihyeon, then you tell the Director. Tell him we're not going to New York."

He was promptly smacked lightly on the back of the head by Yuni.

"Ah, why'd you hit me?"

"Ihyeon, he knows he's talking nonsense and he's just blurting it out anyway, so don't pay attention to him."

Watching the two of them bicker over something trivial, same as always, Ihyeon tried desperately to focus on this last time the three of them could spend together.

The problem of his body being changed into an Omega by Liu felt like someone else's story—as remote from reality as an internet gossip article. Yet even without being able to feel it as real, the shock had taken its toll. The shell encasing him was shaking, everything inside slipping out of place, falling, breaking, mixing together—and still he couldn't truly feel that it was happening to his own body.

So he wanted to shove that problem somewhere out of sight, the kind he couldn't do anything about right now, and focus on what was in front of him. Avoiding and burying things was his specialty, after all. Even if the New York trip with Liu fell through, Yuni would still leave for Paris. He didn't want to treat his farewell with her carelessly.

"This guy's head is really somewhere else completely, isn't it?"

Juhan waved a hand in front of his face. Ihyeon tried to muster something resembling a smile—but it was useless. His specialty wouldn't come through at the precise moment he needed it most.

Ihyeon rubbed his face several times with his palm.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

Yuni carefully pulled his hand down and asked. Facing her worried expression, Ihyeon felt the urge to unload this shock onto someone—anyone. It felt like he had to disperse the impact onto another person, had to, or his body and mind would rupture.

"Actually... I'm not feeling very well...."

If what Shushu had said was true, the thought that saying he wasn't feeling well might not be entirely a lie sent a hollow laugh slipping out.

"Your complexion is bad. Your lips are completely pale."

Only then did Juhan seem genuinely concerned as he examined Ihyeon's face closely. Yuni took the beer bottle from his hand and set it on the sink.

"You should go home and rest. You're not the type to say you're unwell over just a slight dip."

"......"

Ihyeon didn't move, his expression reluctant. Yuni ruffled his hair gently, her tone coaxing.

"It's not like we'll never see each other again. I'm going to the Director's place on Friday, we'll see each other then."

According to the plan, Ihyeon and Liu were scheduled to leave on Saturday. That was why they had arranged to finish early at Phantom on Friday and all have dinner together.

It wasn't just dinner that was uncertain. The New York trip might be canceled entirely. In a single instant, everything had been pushed into an abyss where not even the next step was visible.

Swallowing the desperate impulse to confess everything and throw it down in front of them, Ihyeon slowly nodded. Then he picked up the backpack he'd left unopened in the corner by the bed. It felt heavier now than when he'd packed it.

"Thanks for the gift."

At the light squeeze on his shoulder, he turned. Yuni was smiling bitterly. She meant the travel souvenir that no one had taken last time—the one Ihyeon had brought today.

"I just brought it over... Director bought it, though..."

"Right. Director gave it...."

Murmuring that, Yuni seemed to be counting the long list of opportunities and considerations Liu had given her. Even if Manager Han had told her it wasn't a betrayal, it wouldn't put her mind at ease so easily. But Ihyeon was certain that Liu hadn't provided all those opportunities simply to bind Yuni's or Juhan's labor to Phantom.

No. At this point he could no longer speak as if he knew Liu that way. More than that, Liu had been pushed far away into a distant, blurry existence—belonging to the most unknowable chaos, the most uncharted territory.

After persuading Juhan and Yuni for quite some time that he didn't need them to drive him home, Ihyeon finally left the officetel. The thought crossed his mind that they might contact Liu, or that Liu might contact them, but a reckless kind of whatever happens boldly cut off that concern.

He had no room to limit his actions out of consideration that someone might worry about him. Even without properly grasping the situation, a faint resentment toward Liu was already rising, and whether he worried or not, Ihyeon only wanted to think about himself right now.

The night air, approaching October, was chilly. The wind racing between the massive high-rises made him hunch his shoulders. He didn't even think to put on the jacket in his hand.

After parting with Yuni and Juhan and becoming alone, it was time to face the problem. He had to become properly aware of what had happened and understand it. This wasn't a matter of perspective on life or passive attitude. It was happening to his body. He couldn't pretend not to know.

Haaa....

Ihyeon sat on the tall planter in front of the officetel, let out a sigh heavy with confusion, and covered his face with both hands. After rubbing it hard enough to make his skin sting, he took out his phone from his jeans pocket.

Who should he contact? There was no need to think long. The meager contact list saved on his phone didn't even reach ten numbers.

He stared blankly at the name saved as "Awi"—previously "Director"—and rubbed his thumb over it for a long time. Whether he was tracing the memories represented by that name, or wishing for them to be erased, Ihyeon himself didn't know.

· · · · ·

"Ihyeon-ssi."

At the urgent voice, he looked up. Inwu, who had parked tight against the curb, was already walking quickly toward him, half-running. Ihyeon shifted awkwardly and stood.

"I'm sorry for suddenly—"

"No, don't worry about it. I'm really fine."

Inwu didn't press him. Ihyeon stood there looking down at the ground, biting his lip and fidgeting with the strap of his bag. Inwu didn't crack a cheap joke or flash his usual easy smile. The moment Ihyeon had suddenly called asking if he could stay the night, he had already acted far outside his usual self. That alone must have told Inwu the situation was serious.

Keeping his gaze fixed on his toes, Ihyeon tightened his grip on the strap.

"I'm really sorry, but I... today... I have nowhere to go right now. It's not that I don't want to be with nuna and hyung—it's just that my thoughts are too complicated right now...."

"Ihyeon-ssi, you don't need to explain. Let's just go."

Inwu placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and cut off the rambling.

"......"

But Ihyeon couldn't follow the pull toward the car and remained where he was. As Inwu took the small shopping bag from his hand, he let out a low breath.

"I won't tell Liu Weikun."

Only then did Ihyeon slowly raise his head to meet Inwu's eyes. This time, he allowed himself to be guided and began walking.

While driving, Inwu glanced at the passenger seat now and then, but he didn't ask anything. Feeling his gaze, Ihyeon pretended not to notice, staring blankly out the window while chewing at his dry, cracked lips. I wish I could just run somewhere far away where I don't have to explain anything to anyone or face any problems—he mocked himself for such a very-him kind of thought.

True to what he'd once mentioned at a Phantom party, from the living room window of Inwu's thirty-second-floor apartment, the nightscape of Seoul literally spread out beneath them. Thinking that this was a landscape with a different character from the view at Liu's house—from the second floor, or from the rooftop—Ihyeon pressed himself close to the floor-to-ceiling glass and poured out admiration for the night view, determined not to let a single thought, however trivial, lead him back to that person.

"I'm glad you like it... but please put your bag down. Are you carrying something valuable?"

Inwu came out of the kitchen holding two glasses and caught Ihyeon's eye through the window reflection, chuckling. Ihyeon managed an awkward smile, shrugged off his backpack, and accepted the glass offered to him. Inwu's glass held whiskey on the rocks. Ihyeon's was warm milk—the same thing Liu had brought him that sweltering summer night when his great-uncle had visited, when it had been pouring outside and Liu had found him in the bathtub, trembling.

"Um, hyung, if it's okay... I'd like some of that too...."

"Ah... I don't have any beer right now...."

"I can drink whiskey too."

He pressed his lips shut, realizing too late he sounded like a child insisting he could do anything adults could do, only proving his own greenness. He felt the regret as Inwu chuckled softly, ran a hand through his hair, and disappeared back into the kitchen with the glass of milk—but he didn't call him back.

The continuous string of uncharacteristic words and actions was disorienting to Ihyeon himself. These impulses, breaking through control and inertia, reminded him of a whack-a-mole game. But he had no desire to pick up the mallet and strike the moles that kept popping up in different places to provoke him.

Wiping his face and turning his head, Ihyeon's gaze paused on the easel and painting supplies scattered haphazardly in the corner behind the sofa, where the two large windows met.

The canvas was more than halfway finished. It was far removed from Inwu's usual style—the cheerful, cartoonish aesthetic, the warm colors with just enough bizarre undertone to season it.

This was far bolder. More direct. It held richer stories and emotions than his usual work. There was no trace of the intention to soften inner weight with witty jokes. As if he were fed up with evasion and avoidance dressed up as ease, the desperate figure of a naked man struggling on the canvas seized Ihyeon's attention.

"Ihyeon-ssi, over here."

Inwu raised his glass and called him from the long dining table set between the sofa and the kitchen—long enough to host a banquet for ten.

"Were you... working on a painting?"

"I'm usually the kind of person who can paint fine with someone staring right over my shoulder, but knowing you're watching makes me strangely self-conscious."

"I didn't know you painted at home."

"I'm not someone who stakes everything on painting to the point of needing a separate studio either. Like someone once said."

Setting the glasses from the tray onto the table, Inwu glanced up at Ihyeon with just his eyes and smiled. Ihyeon thought he knew who that "someone" was, but he only lifted the corner of his mouth slightly without reacting further. He accepted the glass—whiskey, three or four ice cubes—and sat across from him.

"The feel of the work seems a little... different."

"You really are a fortune teller when it comes to paintings. Like someone once said."

Because Inwu was clearly bringing Liu up repeatedly—intentionally—Ihyeon couldn't follow his smile this time. He lowered his gaze, holding the glass lightly, and slowly let the liquor slide down his throat the way you'd drink hot coffee.

"Maybe it's because Ihyeon-ssi is honest when it comes to paintings that you're so good at recognizing the sincerity an artist pours into a work, whether intentionally or not. It's true that with literature or music, the more you study, the more you see, and the wider your interpretation becomes. But I don't think that inability to see a painting as anything more than an object of academic analysis is something you can fix just by studying harder. That's what I think."

I looked up at Inwu. He was leaning back loosely in his chair, upper body relaxed, and he laughed while rubbing the back of his neck, as if embarrassed by his own long, serious speech. Perhaps his change wasn't limited to his paintings.

Everyone was moving forward somewhere. While I remained frozen—shaped by fear of change, shaped by the ways my thoughts and wounds had warped me—those who had made different choices were drawing in shock and transformation itself, absorbing it as nourishment.

For them, scars had become identity. Just as Liu had said....

But no scar could become identity without a price. It was a radiance granted only to those who had faced their wounds with their own strength and endured the passage of pain without compromise, with their whole body.

I bit down on my lower lip, and the lingering taste of alcohol swirled on my tongue.

"I appreciate you thinking that, but..."

The sharp bitterness of the whiskey Liu often drank reminded Ihyeon of kissing him. They had shared a deep kiss just that morning before he left, but now it felt distant and hazy—like reaching for a memory from a past life.

Ihyeon tightened his grip on the glass, bore down on his lip with his teeth, and stared at the ice before continuing.

"You can't really call someone who gave up on their art... honest in front of a painting."

"But you're painting again. You couldn't completely let go of it. That's what matters."

Before Inwu could even finish speaking, Ihyeon drained the rest of his glass and delivered his own verdict without mercy.

"Fortunately... I got to paint again. With someone else's help."

He stood up with a bitter smile, feeling trapped—like a maze where no matter how many corners he turned or how hard he ran, every path led back to the same place, back to Liu. He retrieved the shopping bag he'd left on the sofa, brought it to the table, and pushed it slightly toward Inwu.

"Here..."

"......"

Inwu's eyes widened slightly, asking.

"Starbucks City Tumblers. This one I bought in Chicago, and this one... in Boston...."

As Ihyeon set them down one by one and explained, his hands and voice suddenly slowed. He let out a faint, useless laugh and ran a hand over his face.

"I should have at least wrapped them. I have no sense for things like this...."

"You have plenty of sense—look at what you picked. These Starbucks City Tumblers are genuinely pretty. I didn't expect you to bring one back from Boston either. The two of you... must not have had much time to spare for yourselves. Thank you. Honestly... I wasn't expecting much. I thought you probably wouldn't remember."

Holding the orange tumbler from Boston and turning it in his hands as if admiring it, Inwu sank into thought, a very faint smile touching the corners of his mouth.

Back in Boston, when Ihyeon had said he wanted to buy a tumbler for Inwu and asked to stop by Starbucks for a moment. Liu's brow furrowing in jealousy, his tone going petulant like a young boy. And then the feel of his arms wrapping around from behind, pulling at his waist while he tried to choose, and the body warmth pressed against his back—all of it came rushing back at the sight of one orange tumbler.

Yet just like the kiss that morning—like something experienced secondhand through a fictional character in a film or a novel—it carried no real weight. It only grazed the surface of his senses without catching.

Ihyeon could tell from the way Inwu had unconsciously slowed at the words "time to spare for yourselves" that he had already guessed: today's sudden contact had something to do with Liu.

Of course it did. What was left of him lately, if you removed Liu? It didn't require any great deduction. It was a very simple matter.

Now that he had been forced to stop and look back, everything—not just his day-to-day life but every aspect of the grand design of his existence—was completely entangled with Liu.

The influence of another person determining the course of his life itself.

Whether he was present or absent, everything changed—from the basics of food and shelter to the direction of his future. Literally everything.

Could he call that love? Could he say it with any confidence? Or was it dependence—surrender, even?

Was he loving in the exact way he had feared most—the way his father had loved, turning his back on the entire world after losing his mother? Trying to shake off that new fear, like the faint tremor a distant tsunami sends through the body of someone standing on the shore, Ihyeon swallowed more liquor.

"When I was in Boston, there was a really wonderful Starbucks near Ellen and Marcus's place. It felt less like a chain and more like a small traditional local café... Oh, do you know Ellen and Marcus? You probably do, right? Given how long you've been friends with the Director... They're truly wonderful people, and when I visited—"

"Ihyeon-ssi."

Leaning forward from his chair, Inwu placed a heavy hand on the table, stopping the uncharacteristic stream of chatter.

"I won't ask anything, so you don't have to force yourself to talk. But if you want to, I'm always ready to listen."

"......"

Ihyeon's gaze, which had been fixed on Inwu, tilted sideways toward the table.

From the moment he had selected Inwu's name from his contacts, he had actually intended to ask for help. He had planned to share the impact of the shock with him, disperse it. But he knew confirming the details would only inflict greater damage—so he kept delaying, afraid to make it something certain and real.

Ihyeon moistened his lips with whiskey that still carried the burn of undiluted alcohol. Eyes fixed on the glass instead of on Inwu, as if something else were moving him, he opened his mouth and spoke in a voice like a sleepwalker's.

"Today... Shushu came to the house."

"......"

"It seemed like she had something to say to the Director, but his schedule is completely booked until Friday, so he was out again today. I had some time before meeting nuna and hyung, so we waited together...."

As he tried to say aloud what Shushu had told him, a hollow laugh slipped out. He felt like a child about to tell some absurd story—meeting an alien, talking to his own toys.

For someone who had lived his entire life only aware of a world made of Betas, with no particular connection even to ordinary Alphas or Omegas let alone a Golden Alpha, the idea of a Ghost being able to turn a Beta into an Omega was less believable than talking to a doll. It was closer to folklore. A ghost story.

Ihyeon rubbed his face with his free hand as if trying to crush it, then rested his chin on the table.

"Hyung—do you happen to know?"

Unsure how to continue, he changed direction and posed the question to Inwu. With his chin propped heavily, as though forcibly supporting a collapsing body, his gaze still lowered, Ihyeon looked exhausted.

"Phantom, Ghost... why the Director is obsessed with those words."

"......"

Inwu's mouth went rigid while his eyes flickered, unstable. Seeing it, Ihyeon's eyes narrowed. A cold, sinister premonition—one he didn't want to believe—seemed to freeze him from the inside out. His shoulders jerked as his breathing went ragged all at once. Even after swallowing dryly and wetting his lips with his tongue, his mouth felt filled with sand.

He had asked if Inwu knew—but that was only the form of a question. He had never actually imagined the answer would be yes.

"Then... you knew about the other things, too?"

Both the hand gripping the glass and the lips shaping those words were trembling against his will.

Inwu's face answered for him. He opened his mouth as if to speak, couldn't bring himself to say it—then closed his lips again tightly, as if he would say nothing further on the matter, his gaze falling away in something like grief. His face alone was the answer.

"I guess you did know."

It wasn't a calculated reaction. He simply couldn't bear it. He pushed himself up from his seat to breathe, to survive.

Even the place he had come to for refuge—to hide for a moment, catch his breath, get himself together—had turned out to be enemy territory. It felt like everyone around him knew Liu's secret. So much so that he wondered how he had gone without knowing until now. Threats and crises were right at hand. Right behind the smiles of kind, gentle people.

How fragile peace was—like a floor of thin glass, so easily shattered. He thought he had already learned that lesson from his mother's accident, had always been on guard because of it. But once life decided to be cruel, there was no preparation that was ever enough.

Without thinking to grab his bag or jacket, with no plan whatsoever, driven only by instinct, Ihyeon moved away from the table and walked quickly toward the entrance.

"Ihyeon-ssi! Ihyeon-ssi!"

Halfway down the hallway, Inwu grabbed his arm and held him fast. Forced to turn, Ihyeon saw the desperation in Inwu's face—but he didn't want to let his guard down. He wanted to harden himself. To become ruthless. He pulled his gaze straight down to Inwu's chest and bent forward, pushing against him.

"It might sound like an excuse, but I only found out recently myself. Ihyeon-ssi, please... just listen to me. Right now, Weikun and I—I know you probably can't even stand the sight of us—but if you really can't, I'll leave. Just... don't try to leave. Okay? Where would you even go right now?"

Inwu's grip on his arms was so tight his arms went numb, but Ihyeon couldn't even register the pain.

When Shushu had told him that Liu was using his unique ability to change his body into an Omega—at the time, there had been shock, instinctive and immediate, but he couldn't truly feel it as real. But Inwu's reaction in front of him—now—transformed that vague, drifting ghost story into something concrete. Something happening to his own body.

It wasn't Inwu Ihyeon wanted to run from. It was this reality. Like someone trying to shake off a swarm of winged insects closing in from all sides, Ihyeon shook his head.

"No... I know it's not your fault, hyung. I know you're not the one who did this. But right now, what I know in my head is useless... It's like my brain stopped working and my body is moving on its own. I can't control it. I want to handle this calmly, I do, but my body—"

"Don't blame yourself. Who could stay calm in a situation like this? That would be strange."

"What's strange and what's normal... I don't even know anymore. How am I supposed to... how am I supposed to accept this, this situation... Director... nim...?"

Looking up at Inwu, Ihyeon had completely lost the equilibrium he usually maintained—the restraint that had always kept his emotional range smaller than his age. With the face of a frightened young boy lost in chaos, he grabbed Inwu's arm and shook it, repeating the question.

"What is this... what is this, hyung?"

"......"

Like a truck slamming into a taxi waiting quietly at a red light, listening to the radio.

Rushing in from the side of ordinary life without any warning—shattering everything, breaking the flow, ruining plans—and in an instant turning the touch of someone he had taken into himself, had felt as close as his own skin, into something terrifyingly unrecognizable.

He never thought he would experience that kind of impact twice in his life.

Inwu, who had been gripping Ihyeon's arms tightly and looking down with an expression like he'd just swallowed something unbearably bitter, pulled him in hard. He wrapped his arms around his shoulders and squeezed his back, holding nothing back.

"You don't need to understand it. You don't need to try to accept it. You haven't done anything wrong."

"Then what am I supposed to do? What do I do?"

"......"

"Blame someone? Hate someone? Demand answers? Is that what I should do?"

"If that's what you want to do, then do it."

Being held like this felt wrong. Inwu's shoulders were a little lower than Liu's. The warmth of their chests meeting, the brush of ear against cheek—the fact that it wasn't him—made Ihyeon flinch inward.

But even in Liu's arms, he realized, he would probably never feel the same familiarity and safety again. Probably. He was realizing it in someone else's arms.

Ihyeon slowly pushed Inwu's chest away. The arms that had held him so tightly—as if determined never to let him go—loosened more easily than expected, as though the force from a moment ago had been an illusion.

He steadied his staggering steps, backed away until he met the wall, and leaned against it. To maintain some minimum of composure, he wiped both hands down his face and lowered his voice.

"And then? After I've vented all of that... do I just go back to how things were like nothing happened? Or...."

Or is this something that should never be forgiven?

He bit his lip until it went white, swallowing the words. Still—more real than the terrifying change Liu was supposedly causing in his body were the sincere expressions Liu had shown him, or at least what he had believed to be sincere, the words of healing and empathy he had offered. That accumulation was still trying to defend him.

"I'm sorry... I really don't know how to apologize... No, this isn't even a matter of apology anymore. Regardless of when I found out, I'm just as much of a bastard for staying silent...."

Ihyeon shook his head, cutting him off. Inwu was right—it wasn't a matter of apology. And right now, apology wasn't what he needed to find his footing again.

Ihyeon gnawed on his lower lip and muttered.

"It's not something you need to apologize for... I think that, I want to say that, but I don't know...."

"Even I, as an Alpha, can't understand this—so for you, who has lived as a Beta... it goes without saying. I agreed with that bastard when he said the shock would be less if you heard it from him directly. So I kept my mouth shut. But if he was so afraid of the shock you'd receive, he shouldn't have started any of this in the first place. I know I can't be free of responsibility for this—for falling for that sophistry and staying silent."

Inwu's voice was rising with agitation. He leaned back against the wall across from Ihyeon and ran a hand through his carefully styled hair. He repeatedly clenched and unclenched his fists—like before a blood draw—staring down at his own forearm, revealed beneath the sweatshirt pulled up past his elbows, with fierce eyes.

"My pheromones went wild. The Alpha instincts I'd never once been swayed by before took control of me." Isn't that too flimsy an excuse coming from the mouth of that great, near-perfect Golden Alpha? If he couldn't resist the pheromones—if he couldn't control himself around you, couldn't keep his hands to himself—then he should have given up on being near you entirely."

Inwu clenched the fist he'd been working open and shut, looking as if he was barely holding back the urge to drive it into something. The veins on his forearm stood out, faintly blue.

"He watched the object of his desire every single day. Observed him. And then claims he never intended rape. That's nothing but an excuse."

Inwu's voice was low and quiet, almost a whisper, but it had gone cold as metal—as if there was no room left for reconsideration in the conclusion he had already reached.

"......"

The word "rape" seemed to drop the temperature of the room and his own body by several degrees. Ihyeon flinched and went rigid, staring straight at Inwu. But Inwu, burning with rage toward Liu who wasn't even present, didn't even register Ihyeon's reaction.

Strictly speaking, no coercion or force had been used during the act itself. But he had never been told about the essential physical changes that could result from it. It wasn't rape in the conventional sense—yet even as he felt revulsion at Inwu's analogy, he couldn't step forward to defend Liu by calling it an unfair leap.

Was it really like that? Had something that vile happened—to his body?

The weight of that word poured cold water over the scattered thoughts churning in his head. He needed to be cold. To see past the confusion without distortion, he had to be cold and steady and still. But it wasn't easy.

"How... how can you turn a Beta into an Omega? What method did he—"

His voice still trembled faintly at the end. Inwu's guilty eyes met his cautiously.

"Through knotting...."

"......"

"Normal knotting has no effect on a Beta. But a Ghost can perform a special kind of knotting. It causes some inexplicable chemical change. If a Beta is continuously knotted in that state, they gradually turn into an Omega—and that's what they call Changing. That's what I heard."

From Shushu, he hadn't received such a detailed explanation. Only that Liu was a Golden Alpha—a Ghost with the unique ability to transform a Beta into an Omega. That whenever he attempted to Change someone, his eye color would cloud over like a ghost's within a few hours. That was all.

Ihyeon wrapped his arms tightly around his own trembling body.

"Then, all those times we knotted...."

A hollow laugh slipped out after the murmur, quiet as talking to himself. What he had believed was the most intimate form of connection with Liu had only ever been a tool—the realization settled over him, heavier each time it returned, shock layering upon shock.

Inwu gripped Ihyeon's shoulder again as he shook his head slightly, as if refusing to believe it.

"Let's go to the hospital tomorrow. We can check how far it's progressed—whether there's still a chance of living closer to a Beta if we stop it now. I'll arrange a VIP examination. I'll do the checkup myself."

Ihyeon looked at him. His eyes were unfocused, asking what difference that would make now. Inwu loosened his grip on the shoulder beneath his hand—Ihyeon looked like a defenseless young animal before something violent—and stroked it as gently as he could.

"Of course, if you're not ready, we don't have to do it right now."

"How long will the results take?"

"We should be able to confirm quite a bit right away with an ultrasound."

"By how developed my uterus is...."

"......"

The word "uterus" cut through him with the same metallic chill as "rape" had—sharp and cold and alien—and his speech slowed without his choosing it to. Seeing Inwu set his jaw and avert his gaze rather than answer, Ihyeon let out a faint breath.

He remembered Liu asking him to sleep together without having sex, just wanting to stay until morning. And his own question that followed—why couldn't they sleep together after having sex—and now a bitter smile slipped out. Right. That wouldn't have been possible. What expression had Liu worn while looking at him then?

Pity? Apology? Conflict and a strange tenderness? Whatever complicated story had been mixed into it, at this moment, he didn't want to block his own feelings to try to decipher Liu's.

Ihyeon took a deep breath and bit down hard on his lower lip.

He felt he could vaguely understand now—the desperation after their first penetration and first knotting in Hong Kong, when Liu had frantically scraped the evidence from his own body like a man losing his mind. The reason for the repeated apologies. The reason for the "unnecessary cleanup." Liu's confusion, having to do something, anything, to address what could not be addressed.

"I want it. Do that for me. Knotting... do it again."

His own voice, begging Liu for it, was still vivid. He released the arms wrapped around his own chest and scrubbed at his face as if trying to wipe it away. His breathing was quickening again, steep and sharp, and he couldn't steady it. He wished he could lose consciousness—the way he had when he first came face to face with Alienation again in Liu's living room—but his foolish body demanded that he be present for every moment of this.

Every moment he had spent with Liu looked different now. The sex with him, where he had felt gloriously free—liberated from convention and morality as if he had become an entirely different person. How afterward, even having said such explicit things that he would have burned with embarrassment just thinking them alone, he had felt more intimacy with Liu than ever before—a profound sense of security, as if they had shown each other everything and been understood.

It had all been an illusion. For Liu, sex with him hadn't been only that. It had always contained another direction, another purpose.

"It was me...."

"......"

"I was the one who asked... who kept asking him to knot me, who said I wanted it... so many times...."

"That's not it. It's not your fault!"

Inwu shook his shoulders and raised his voice. Ihyeon hadn't meant it as an admission of fault, but he didn't feel the need to correct the misunderstanding.

"Liu Weikun is just a bastard. You were a victim who knew nothing. You shouldn't blame yourself at all."

"......"

Like the day his uncle had visited—he felt soaked through, drenched to the bone. Foolishly, he missed Liu's warmth. The body warmth of him jumping out of the car that day and pulling Ihyeon into his arms first, before asking a single question. Even though Liu was the one who had driven him into this cold—wanting to be warmed by his body heat now....

Concluding that his love had probably been nothing more than dependence and surrender, moisture welled in Ihyeon's eyes. He raised his hand immediately to wipe it away, unwilling to give it room—and at that moment, Inwu's head tilted slowly, deeply, forward.

"......"

No tongue. But it was a kiss deep enough to press their lips together completely, tightly, for a long moment. While Ihyeon stood frozen, blinking slowly two or three times, Inwu slightly adjusted the angle, gently dragged across the inner lining, and then drew back.

"......What is this."

His body was stiff as if someone were pressing a gun to his spine. Without moving an inch, Ihyeon moved only his lips to ask. Inwu released his shoulders and raised both palms in surrender, rubbing the back of his neck with an awkward smile.

"A new shock... did it at least momentarily make the Changing one disappear?"

He was trying to play it off like one of his usual cheap jokes, but Inwu's eyes were shifting unsteadily and his lips were twitching. Under Ihyeon's gaze—direct, demanding a real answer—he quickly gave up the act. He let out a heavy breath through closed lips and looked at Ihyeon with eyes that had been scratched raw by something.

"I can't just watch."

"......"

"I know that to you, I'm just another bastard involved in this. But at least I'm not the one who changed your body. I stepped back because I thought he genuinely wanted you and cherished you—but if that hadn't been the case...."

"What good are hypotheticals like that?"

As if Inwu's hypothetical—along with the kiss moments before—meant nothing to him, Ihyeon's voice was neither cold nor warm.

"I understand this whole situation has been a big shock for you too, hyung."

Just as Ihyeon tried to close the matter there, Inwu stepped forward with a scowl.

"Don't pretend not to know. You remember—I was the one who showed interest first."

"Yes, I remember. And I also know that even if it hadn't been me there, you would have done the same."

"......"

Inwu's approach in the beginning—always wrapping his words in something that felt like a proposition, as if he wanted to go on a date or take Ihyeon to bed—Ihyeon had dismissed it as nothing more than the habitual behavior of a typical womanizer, empty of any real feeling. Since Inwu had never tried to cross a decisive line, Ihyeon had simply ignored him and offered no reaction.

Even if there was a possibility that those feelings could have grown into something more, beneath that seemingly careless exterior—bringing it up now would serve no purpose whatsoever.

If his father had reacted differently then. If his mother hadn't been in that accident. If they hadn't changed restaurants. If the truck driver had gotten his vehicle checked on time. What did hypotheticals like that change?

"You're too confused right now... I'll just think of it as a momentary mistake."

Inwu looked at Ihyeon—who spoke in a weary voice, wanting to wrap this up and leave it here—and his eyes filled with something like resentment.

"You aren't even confused about me."

"......"

"You can handle me this calmly."

He couldn't stand it—Inwu deliberately choosing this moment to throw yet another problem at him. Whether his feelings were genuine or not, right now Ihyeon didn't have the strength to carry even the weight of a feather more.

"I... I'll sleep somewhere else tonight."

Without his jacket, without his bag, without any plan, Ihyeon turned toward the entrance—and Inwu grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. His hand this time was firm. No hesitation.

"There's no need. Like you said, it was a meaningless impulsive mistake."

"......"

"But."

"......"

"It seems even mistakes have timing."

Pushing Ihyeon's shoulder—gripping it hard enough to hurt—back toward the living room, Inwu tilted his head at a crooked angle.

"Living as a coward who only smiles faintly on the surface and never tries anything... might actually be worse than making a once-in-a-lifetime mistake that risks everything. That's what I think."

Inwu muttered it from behind him, bitter and self-deprecating. As Ihyeon was pushed along toward the living room and glanced back, Inwu patted his shoulder a couple of times as if in encouragement and flashed his usual playful smile.

"Haven't seen that face before. Who is it? A new lover?"

That was what he had said—curious, interested—when they first met in front of Phantom, by Liu's car. That Inwu seemed to overlap with this one now. But like two pictures in a spot-the-difference puzzle, there was something subtly misaligned somewhere.

Inwu softly pressed his hand against Ihyeon's cheek—the one that kept turning back to look—as if telling him not to.

"At least then... something will happen."

The voice that came from behind him was no longer laughing.

· · · · ·

Among the many books Morae nuna had collected, there was a work by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. He had often borrowed whatever he felt like reading from her back then, regardless of genre or content—any well-regarded book was nothing more than a way to kill time. Now, he could no longer remember what had led him to choose that particular one, unpolished as it was and riddled with mistranslations.

At the time, reading had been a mechanical act—filling envelopes of time with words until they were full, setting them aside, then opening the next one and filling it again. The elegance of the prose, whether the sentences flowed—those things hadn't mattered to him then.

Even so, within that unfriendly translation—one he had to read haltingly and slow, as though struggling through a French original despite the words being in his own language—there had been sentences worth claiming as his own.

"The giver of a gift must not hope to receive equivalent value in return, nor should they desire for it to remain in the recipient's memory. Nor should they preserve it within themselves as a symbol of sacrifice for the other."

Back then, reading that passage, Ihyeon had thought of Morae and Yeehan.

Outwardly, he had eaten normally, slept, gone to school, done his military service—had lived quietly without causing trouble. The adults in the family had accepted him as an untroubled child. In reality, he had been nothing more than mechanically performing each assigned task.

When exam schedules were announced, he prepared diligently—not out of any desire for high scores. He had never rebelled after going through "that incident"—not because he was the deep, resilient child the adults believed him to be, the one who had fortunately overcome everything.

He had simply been making his inner self numb, so as not to feel the full force of shock and confusion, resentment and grief. A state where human desire and emotion were completely dehydrated—incapable of genuine laughter or genuine anger—was akin to a quiet death. A passive death.

Keeping such a person close, without being consumed by their numbness, was harder than one might think. The light and energy they provided—allowing him to hold on to the fact of being alive, even in that state—couldn't have sprung from nowhere on its own.

Even if his father had turned away from him along with the rest of the world, the world had not entirely turned away from him. At least Morae and Yeehan had been there.

That, precisely, was the gift.

A gift that perfectly met the conditions Derrida described: expecting nothing in return, not even hoping to be remembered.

In the same conversation about that book, Morae nuna had also mentioned another of Derrida's definitions.

"If one forgives only what is forgivable, the very concept of forgiveness disappears. Forgiveness is precisely forgiving the unforgivable."

Sitting on the worn sofa of the regular repair shop while a simple part was replaced on the motorcycle, drinking the barley tea the owner had set out for them, Ihyeon had thought of his father.

If he had possessed the maturity to forgive what was unforgivable... he wouldn't have needed to protect himself by numbing his emotions. He couldn't forgive, and he didn't know how, so he had simply tried to become numb to that too.

Making the surface of his heart hard enough that he wouldn't look at his father with wet eyes, wouldn't waste his emotions on cutting words—being able to look at his father with nothing at all, the way you'd look at a washbasin beside the tap or a broom in the corner of the yard. That had been the best Ihyeon could do back then.

Inside the taxi slowly climbing the slope toward Phantom, Ihyeon looked out at the Samcheong-dong streets lit with warm lights in the gathering dusk, and this time he thought about Liu.

Was what he had done unforgivable?

The same as his father's silence?

For Ihyeon, who had moved to a fishing village the moment he finished middle school and had lived in a narrow, monotonous world with almost no one beyond Morae and Yeehan, Phantom had been a whole new world—vibrant and glamorous and unpredictable, and yet a place where passion and respect for art genuinely coexisted.

The feeling he had carried in the taxi leaving Phantom on that very first day, when he had followed Manager Han to help prepare for an exhibition—it was still vivid. An unreal sensation, as if turning the car around would reveal nothing but overgrown weeds where Gallery Phantom had been. Or the dazed, disoriented feeling of waking from a dream that had felt too real.

Back then, behind that strangely skewed sense of reality, Ihyeon had been feeling a deep want. He wanted Phantom to be real. To remain exactly where it was.

As proof that even if you block the light to keep it dark and withhold the water to let it wither, light will inevitably seep into a human heart and moisture will soak through—and one day, desire will grow—Ihyeon had steadily cultivated that desire ever since.

On the night he had hyperventilated because of Alienation, he hadn't refused Liu's touch when he climbed onto the bed. He had clearly expressed his desire—that he wanted Liu's kisses and sex and knotting only with him. Not with anyone else.

And Liu... had been pursuing his own desire through me. Because there's no guarantee that the object of your desire will desire you back in the same way.

Ihyeon scoffed at himself for having cautiously, optimistically believed that this time—this time—it would finally flower and bear fruit. For having invited words like "the future" and "hope" and "overcoming." He shifted his gaze to the street outside the window.

The street, lined with cafes and trendy shops, was alive even on a Monday evening with people trying to hold on to the brief autumn air. Ihyeon watched each face passing by—faces he had unconsciously always assumed were Beta—and watched them as if they were the faces of old friends. Then the Phantom building came into view. He clenched his empty, sweat-damp hands hard against his thighs.

To be continued in Diamond Dust, Volume 6.

1) Close Out: A surfing term. A situation where waves don't roll in sequentially but crash down all at once, making surfing impossible.

2) Ding: A surfing term. A crack or break in a surfboard.

3) Ted W. Jennings, Reading Derrida / Thinking Paul: On Justice, translated by Park Sung-hoon, Greenbee (2014).