But no matter how long I waited, not one of them moved. Not Kang Yunsik, not the manager, whom I had gone to the trouble of inviting, and not Kyle either. The mouth that had been so busy taunting me a moment ago was now shut tight.
“What. You’re not going to do it?”
The phone screen, having received no attention whatsoever, went black. Kyle wore a curious expression that was neither smiling nor serious, and those eyes weren’t all that frightening to me anymore. He was a madman, but there was a part of him that had lined up more or less with what I had predicted.
Velvet Soirée.
It had been an orgy. A masked orgy, no less.
The party had been filthy and debauched enough that when I first looked the case up, reading nothing but the news articles was enough to crease my brow and turn my stomach.
The tacit host of that party, four years ago, was the man sitting right in front of me. And yet, far from serving a sentence, he had left not a single record connected to it.
At the time, Kyle had merely provided the venue, and no evidence emerged tying him to attendance or to drug distribution. Someone else had been clearly identified as the party’s organizer in his place, which meant he had probably paid a man to stand there as a shield.
The trouble taken over masks so nobody could recognize anybody, and the meticulousness of leaving no consequences behind while running that loose, had made me think of him as someone who cared about social standing a great deal more than his sexual tastes suggested. Of course, for all that trouble, the profile Secretary Choi gave me listed Kyle Carver as the host of Velvet Soirée, so the people in this world evidently all knew and were keeping it quiet.
Sexually debauched, and horribly invested in his social standing. That was Kyle Carver. If he hadn’t been a gifted businessman he might have been thrown out of Novus long ago, but unfortunately for everyone he was a gifted businessman.
Which is to say, a man like that was never going to openly masturbate here and now.
I flicked a look at the CCTV cameras mounted in the ceiling corners, positioned so there were no blind spots, and picked up the phone.
“Well, if you’re not going to do it...”
“Who says I’m not?”
And then Kyle got to his feet. A tall shadow, not as tall as Baek Ihyeok’s but tall, fell across the table. Smiles were in full bloom across his face as he undid his suit belt.
“Count carefully. Though I can’t come on your face, can I? I still haven’t got Baek Ihyeok’s permission, after all.”
“There’s no need to go all the way to Ihyeok for that. No, you can’t.”
“Can’t do it while smelling you either?”
He licked his lips as he said it and it didn’t sound like a joke. Above all, the flush on his face carried the unmistakable look of a madman getting excited. Kyle pulled the belt out completely and released his zipper.
Hold on. He’s actually doing it? It was alarming, but I couldn’t let it show, so I held the phone up doggedly and spoke.
“Why do you keep asking things like that? Are you afraid I’ll find out you have erectile dysfunction?”
“Erectile dysfunction?”
Kyle made a laughing sound like air going out of something.
“Hardly. Getting hard too easily is the problem.”
He put one foot up on the table and pushed a hand into his trousers. The thick outline of him was distinct through the fabric. Working not to let my face screw up, I gestured at Kang Yunsik and the manager, both frozen in place.
“Looks like he’s about to start. How many minutes do you want to bet he finishes in? For the record, I’m going with...”
That was as far as I got. Suddenly there was a murmuring out in the corridor, and it grew louder. I had barely looked at the door before there was the sound of a card key and the door was flung roughly open. The broken latch dangled.
And the face I saw was the one I had been waiting so desperately for.
“Mr. Baek!”
I sprang up off the sofa. Baek Ihyeok was standing in the doorway. Through the slightly open gap behind him I could see foreign executives and bodyguards. A deep relief came flooding in.
“Ihyeok, so what happened here is...!”
“Everyone out.”
Just as I was about to explain, a smell I had never encountered before hit me in the face.
“...Oh.”
But the smell vanished like a mirage in the space of a second. I touched the tip of my nose, as if chasing the scent that had lingered there for a moment. That it was Baek Ihyeok’s pheromones I had recognized the instant I caught it. But how to put it... it felt enormously complex.
“D-Director.”
When I lifted my eyes, the manager had already gone. Kang Yunsik was still there, floundering, disaster written all over his face.
“This matter is my oversight, but if I may offer an excuse, there was nothing I could do... He came at it so utterly unreasonably...”
“I’ll assign responsibility later. Out.”
Baek Ihyeok’s face was cold in a way it had never been before. Kang Yunsik dropped his eyes and chewed at his lower lip. He seemed to have something he wanted to say. And sure enough, he stretched the moment out without reading it at all.
“Director, but the thing is, would you be able to keep this from Irang...”
“I believe I told you to get out.”
Baek Ihyeok crossed the room in long strides and stopped in front of him. From where I was I could only see his profile with his head tilted at an angle, but I could tell his temper was very badly out of sorts. Kang Yunsik dropped his head further.
“First you went blind, and now you’ve gone deaf as well?”
“...My apologies.”
Only then did Kang Yunsik hurry out of the room like a man with something chasing him. When the door shut, the murmuring outside faded too.
When a slow quiet had settled over the room again, I took my eyes off the door. Given that he opened doors perfectly well and met my eyes perfectly well, there didn’t appear to be anything wrong with Kang Yunsik’s eyesight. So what did going blind mean?
The thought didn’t run long. Kyle, who had straightened his clothes at some point, cut in.
“We can stay in here, right?”
The tone was infinitely lighter than at our first meeting in the reception hall. Baek Ihyeok’s brows drew together minutely.
Kyle with his belt and zipper undone, and me sitting in front of him, went through my head. I hurried to explain the situation before an awkward misunderstanding could take root.
“Ihyeok, don’t misunderstand. I didn’t open the door for him, he opened it and walked in as he pleased. I was so startled that I hid in the wardrobe, and then...”
“Come here.”
Baek Ihyeok gestured me over. His eyes stayed fixed on Kyle throughout.
I stole a glance at Kyle and then went quickly to him and pressed myself flat against his side. Instead of telling me to get off, Baek Ihyeok wrapped my shoulder as though holding me and pulled me tighter in against himself. A sense of security I had never felt before wound comfortably around my body. The body pressed close to mine was solid. Thump, thump. My heart, still not settled, trembled in small increments.
When I looked up, he put more strength into the hand gripping my shoulder. Was it my imagination? For some reason he seemed uneasy. Perhaps it was the pheromones of his that I could faintly catch with every breath.
“Wait outside with Secretary Choi...”
He started to say it and then seemed to change his mind, clicking his tongue lightly.
“Never mind. You’re better off here.”
He didn’t appear to be particularly angry at me. His expression was considerably out of sorts, but he had been staring at nobody but Kyle the whole time. Kyle burst out with a laugh.
“You’re that all over him?”
He was sitting on the sofa threading the belt back through his trousers. The designer logo set into it caught the light and glinted. Snickering, he slung an arm loosely across the back of the sofa.
“Wasn’t that a fairly important discussion? What happens if you walk out on it like that and lose all your partner firms? I’m worried for you.”
“That’s none of your business.”
Baek Ihyeok drew a deep breath and spoke as though chewing a curse between his teeth.
“Why don’t you start by putting those pheromones away?”
“Why? Scared your omega might go into heat?”
“Because it looks ignorant. If you can’t regulate yourself in a place like this, go and get a pheromone suppressant.”
A silence like thin ice settled over the room. Judging by the mood, being on a pheromone suppressant was evidently a matter of injured pride.
Pheromone suppressants had to be taken consistently for three years after your trait presented at twenty. If you still couldn’t regulate after that you had to keep taking them, but I had heard such cases weren’t common.
Baek Ihyeok’s words must have had considerable effect, because the unpleasant pheromones that had been circling like a diffuser subsided, at least outwardly.
“Why are you so on edge? You’re frightening.”
Kyle put both feet up on the table and picked up his champagne glass. Still smiling.
“Is it that you think I touched your omega? Come on, surely not.”
He took an elegant mouthful of champagne and then spoke.
“I’ve got a brain of my own, I don’t just do things carelessly. Honestly, I can’t stand the sight of you, and then I heard you were turning up with a dominant in tow, so I only meant to have a bit of fun. And just like he said, I had no actual intention of jerking off to him either.”
At that last line Baek Ihyeok flicked a look at me and I shook my head urgently. No, why is he cutting out everything and phrasing it like that?
“But you know how it is. I’m rather fond of this sort of thing.”
As he spoke he poured champagne into a fresh glass and stood up holding it along with his own. He came toward us without the slightest hesitation, as though Baek Ihyeok’s mood were no concern of his whatsoever.
“Your omega, though.”
He looked down at me with a smile on his face.
“Completely my type.”
“Would you please give it a rest? I’m married to Mr. Baek.”
I had meant to keep quiet, and I simply couldn’t. But the moment I tried to clear up even a fraction of the misunderstanding, Kyle smiled all the more radiantly and pointed at me with the hand holding the glass.
“Look at that, the way he talks. Gets me so fucking hard.”
The insanity of it nearly sent my heart out of my chest. I protested again.
“Ihyeok, I swear I never gave him so much as a speck of an opening! This man is a lunatic! You know that, right?”
“Is he like this in bed too?”
But whatever I said, and admittedly that last part had been in Korean, Kyle paid me no attention, as though ownership of me lay with Baek Ihyeok. He held the glass of champagne out to him. Baek Ihyeok appeared to look at it quietly for a moment, and then raised his eyes.
“And?”
“You’ll have heard the rumor. An offer came in on this display supply contract, someone else asking us to sign with them, on far better terms.”
Kyle tipped the glass he was holding out slightly, as if telling him to take it.
“But if you accept my proposal, I’ll extend with your company the way we always have. Well, a good thing is a good thing, as they say.”
Baek Ihyeok still didn’t take the glass, and didn’t remove the hand around my shoulder either. I was watching that unreadable face anxiously when he spoke.
“What proposal.”
“You know I have a knack for ideas, don’t you? Right now I am going to...”
“Don’t drag it out pointlessly. Get to the point.”
At the irritable words Kyle shut his mouth and hitched the corner of it up. His face wasn’t so much offended as full of anticipation.
“Come to my party this time.”
Those sharp eyes narrowed for an instant.
“What party.”
“The kind of party the two of you can come to hand in hand, on the best of terms.”
“I asked what the theme is.”
To that question, Kyle answered with a wide smile.
“Swapping.”
For a moment I doubted my ears.
“It’s a swapping party. It’d be fun if you came together.”
No, quite tragically, the needlessly obliging bastard drilled that word into my ears one more time, and even the room to doubt disappeared.
“What did you just...”
It had exceeded the limit of what my brain could digest, so my tongue seized up and the words wouldn’t come out properly. My thinking felt like it was grinding against itself at the absurdity.
And then, suddenly, I heard laughter beside me.
“...?”
I turned my head, creaking, and looked to my side.
Baek Ihyeok was laughing. Out loud.
