XX | Chapter 2.4

Meanwhile, the bouquet in the bride’s hands caught his eye.

What’s with that bouquet?

A black rose bouquet at a wedding? The ominous color made him feel uneasy.

Something felt very wrong. He didn’t know what mistake had been made, but he had to stop this wedding immediately.

Sooha intended to tell Jaewon to stop the wedding and took a step forward—

Thud. Suddenly, he shuddered at the grip that seized his arm.

What kind of strength is this…

Sooha slowly raised his head, following the large hand gripping his wrist. Perhaps because of the bouquet the bride held, the scent of flowers was overwhelming. It felt familiar, as if he had smelled it somewhere before.

As the white veil covering the bride’s face was lifted, revealing her face, Sooha’s complexion turned pale.

“Where are you going, husband?”

It was Baek Gongjun in a wedding dress.

“What, what the hell!”

Startled, Sooha tried to shake off Gongjun’s hand, but it wouldn’t budge. Gongjun, with a bright smile, pulled Sooha’s arm toward him.

“Let go, let go of me!”

He screamed in refusal, but the people around them laughed and clapped. Even Gyehak, Jeongae, Yua, and Jaewon. Even Pilgyu congratulated them.

“No, no! This isn’t the wedding I want!”

Despite Sooha’s urgent voice, no one listened. The bright laughter grew louder. Before long, the laughter, which had been familiar, turned grotesque, like the sound of a stretched tape. The applause also changed to an ear-splitting, unpleasant sound.

Ha ha ha, ho ho ho…

The familiar faces from a moment ago looked like scary clown masks, with eyes twisted and mouths stretched to the sides, laughing.

In an instant, the atmosphere turned eerie, and Sooha trembled in fear.

“Why do you keep doing this?”

With a sinister voice, he felt a hand wrapping around the back of his neck. The cold touch, devoid of any warmth, sent shivers down his spine. The hand gripping his neck exerted strong pressure, and as it pressed him forward, Gongjun’s face drew closer.

Realizing the meaning of the action, Sooha panicked and struggled to escape the hand, but Gongjun’s lips continued to close the distance.

No, no. This isn’t right. This isn’t right.

With nowhere left to run, Sooha tightly closed his eyes and screamed with all his might.

No, no, no…

“Damn it! Get lost!” Thud!

With a dull sound and pain spreading across his back, Sooha opened his eyes wide again.

In the quiet silence, a bluish twilight spread gently across the space. It was a completely different place from where he had been just moments ago.

“Huff… Huff…”

Drenched in sweat, Sooha searched his surroundings with a wary gaze. Before long, Sooha’s eyes, adjusting to the darkness, revealed a familiar scene. It was a VIP hospital room.

It was all a dream?

It was so vivid that it was terrifying.

It felt like a premonition, a spine-chilling, ominous feeling. A lingering sense of having crossed an irreversible river.

Trying to shake off the lingering dream, Sooha rubbed his face dry. Finally catching his breath, Sooha broke the silence and muttered quietly:

“Damn…”

It was the prelude to the realization that Cheon Sooha’s life had taken a wrong turn.

✮⋆˙

Sooha has always valued his ‘gut feeling.’

You know how it is. When you feel like something won’t work out even before starting, it really doesn’t. And when something seems impossible but you have a feeling it might work, it somehow does.

Some people dismiss it as mere coincidence or fitting things together, but Sooha considered it more than just intuition. He saw it as telepathy from his future self to his present self.

There are mysterious things in the world that modern science can’t explain, right?

So, Sooha tended to rely on his gut feeling—his future self’s telepathy—no matter what he did, and it usually turned out to be right.

Lately, if there was a strong feeling Sooha had…

“…”

A feeling of being screwed…?

Sooha, who looked like he might die from stress at any moment, let out a deep sigh. Pilgyu, who was driving, glanced at Sooha through the rearview mirror and asked worriedly.

“Hyung, why do you look so down? Did something happen?”

Did something happen? A lot. A whole lot…

Ever since he punched Gongjun in the face on the hospital rooftop, Gongjun had been showing up everywhere Sooha went. At the clubs he frequented, the bars, the restaurants, the department stores… even Cheonha Hospital. At this point, it was suspicious whether Baek Gongjun was unemployed.

‘Damn, don’t you have a job? Are you free?’

‘Haha, of course not.’

‘I have nothing to say to you. Why do you keep following me, you crazy bastard!’

‘I’m not following you, Sooha. Isn’t your self-consciousness a bit too much?’

‘You expect me to believe that?’

‘It’s just that our paths overlap.’

And then he would flash that infuriating smile with his scabbed lips, as if trying to make Sooha feel guilty.

Why did I have to dream such a crappy dream!

Without a doubt, the dream Sooha had in the hospital room that night was telepathy from his future self. A dream where he was forced to marry Baek Gongjun, who was holding a black rose and wearing a wedding dress at night. It wasn’t even a ghost wedding. Sooha shivered at the memory of the dream.

He couldn’t figure out what Baek Gongjun’s intentions were. If he had just come at him like last time, saying crazy things about getting married or making clumsy threats, Sooha would have taken action long ago. But without any of that, Gongjun just hovered around, driving him crazy.

Not sticking right next to him, but keeping a vague distance. Always within sight, wherever he went.

As a result, Sooha’s outings naturally decreased. On nights when he should be out burning with youth and passion, he found himself pathetically holed up at home, watching TV, wondering what he was doing with his life. He thought he was avoiding shit because it was dirty, but upon reflection, it seemed he was hiding because he was scared of it.

On the other hand, Pilgyu was quite pleased that Sooha was diligently returning home as soon as his schedule ended. At the same time, he seemed curious about what had caused the change in Sooha’s mindset, but he seemed to think it had something to do with Max Rogers.

The gift from Max Rogers arrived a few days ago. It was a limited edition pair of dress shoes not yet released to the public, and Sooha was the only one in the country to receive them. The agency and Pilgyu were thrilled, but the recipient himself couldn’t genuinely be happy.

If it got out that he was an ultra-dominant omega, he’d be truly screwed. He had always boasted that there was no way his true trait would be discovered… but the thought that Baek Gongjun might actually spread the truth about his trait kept him up at night. It was all because of Baek Gongjun.

Whether the world knew it or not, they still firmly believed Sooha was a dominant alpha. Searching for Cheon Sooha online still brought up ‘dominant alpha’ as a related search term, and his personal SNS was filled with comments praising him. Despite the stormy events Sooha had experienced in recent days, the world continued to turn as usual.

“Pilgyu…”

“Yes, hyung. Go ahead.”

“My life is so hard these days…”

“What?”

“It’s hard, too hard…”

“…”

Pilgyu was puzzled by Sooha’s words, spoken in a voice that sounded like he was on the brink of death. Where in the world was there someone living as comfortably as Sooha? Still, just in case, Pilgyu checked Sooha’s complexion in the rearview mirror. Despite his words, Sooha was taking selfies with a pitiful expression.

…Of course. Pilgyu sighed softly and shook his head.

✮⋆˙

Arriving at the filming location, Sooha was heading to the elevator with Pilgyu when he suddenly stopped at a familiar figure. It was Reporter Park. Holding a DSLR camera in one hand, he seemed to be waiting for someone, constantly checking his wristwatch. Following Sooha’s gaze, Pilgyu spotted Reporter Park and frowned.

“Seriously… I told him not to show up unannounced, and here he is again. Hyung, you go up first. I’ll send him away and catch up…”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Hyung!” As Sooha gestured that it was fine and walked toward Reporter Park, Pilgyu was left behind, anxiously pacing like a puppy. I said it’s fine. Sooha gestured again, as if to say not to worry. With so much on his mind lately, it was better to just show his face once rather than risk giving away a weakness.

If he saw there was nothing to it, he’d probably leave him alone for a while. With a business smile, Sooha approached confidently.

“Reporter Park, did you come to see me again?”

“Oh? Who do we have here? Isn’t it our handsome Cheon Sooha?”

“Haha. Reporter Park, really. I told you it’s a problem if you keep showing up unannounced like this. You should set a date with my agency or manager officially.”

“Of course, I contacted them. But the agency said your schedule was full, and your manager didn’t answer the phone, so what can I do? If I want to see your busy face, I have to make the effort.”

As he said this, Reporter Park subtly glanced Pilgyu up and down.

“You know, Sooha, a reporter has a duty to provide the public with the right to know.”

“Of course.” Sure, whatever you say. Sooha looked down at the much shorter Reporter Park, smiling outwardly but inwardly mocking him.

Reporter Park’s intense interest in Cheon Sooha was so well-known that even fans and other reporters were aware of it. Of course, the ‘intense interest’ here was sarcasm. Reporter Park was practically Sooha’s personal paparazzi, writing articles about him whenever he got the chance, constantly digging through his SNS or prying into his private life.

The articles varied. There were articles about selfies Sooha posted on SNS, or cleverly woven stories based on eyewitness accounts. In other words, the kind of articles ‘trash journalists’ would write. The problem was the excessive frequency.