They’ve dug up this much on Shin Seyoung?
Seojin’s mouth fell open as he opened the files in the folder. Yoon Haegang was nothing more than a sub top, so what his information company did, and how it did it, was never something the outside world got to see.
Which meant there was no telling how much of the main bottom’s personal life this place had already pinned down, either. And yet, astonishingly, the material Manager Kim had handed over covered not just Shin Seyoung’s own details but the people he met, the places he frequented, even his finances, every bit of it sorted down to the last line.
Wouldn’t want anyone doubting what an obsessive bastard he is.
Photographs attached and everything. The file was frankly enough to leave a man shaking his head in disbelief.
“Seojin, sorry about this. Looks like you’re on your own for lunch. A client called and asked to move the appointment up.”
Seojin, who had just opened the second file, nodded without much thought.
“I don’t mind eating alone. Don’t worry about me, go ahead.”
“Mm-hmm. I’ll buy you something tasty on my way back to make up for it!”
Manager Kim scooped up his coat and winked his right eye.
“No, really, you don’t have to...”
Bang.
The refusal never made it out of his mouth. The door swung open and cut it off. The man who walked in was Yoon Haegang, in a black suit.
You said he wasn’t coming in today, Manager Kim!
That gaze fixed on him at once, and Seojin’s brows drew together before he hurried to smooth them out.
“Oh? You’re here, President! Perfect timing. I’ll just step out to meet a new client.”
“Sure.”
Half-hearted as the answer was, Manager Kim vanished with a spring in his step, probably out of relief that he wouldn’t be leaving the new hire on his own.
With only the two of them left, the discomfort rose right up to Seojin’s throat, and he was the one who tried to start a conversation.
“Good afternoon, President...”
He’d scraped together every last speck of courage to offer that much, and Yoon Haegang only twitched an eyebrow and sat down on the sofa. Legs crossed, a cigarette between his lips, he made an absolute picture.
Wow. Unbelievable...
The manners on this man. Seojin smiled with everything he had, purely to keep his face from twisting. If he let it slip, something very rude was going to come out of his mouth.
“Haaa—.”
Yoon Haegang exhaled smoke. At the same moment, a thick, damp pheromone began creeping out and spreading around him.
The scent filled the room in no time and rolled all the way over to Seojin’s desk.
He can’t actually suspect something, can he?
Yesterday, on his very first day, Yoon Haegang had asked outright whether he was an omega. So the reason for letting his pheromones loose this openly was obvious enough.
Knock yourself out.
Seojin was an omega either way, so he could smell it. But it didn’t touch his sensory cells at all.
‘Noh Seojin, your pheromone glands are in an immature state. That’s why there’s no secretion, and no response to stimulation either.’
He remembered the doctor saying he didn’t even get the heat cycle an omega should have naturally. And the rest of it, too: that this was what had eventually thrown his body into abnormal reactions.
Well, it hadn’t caused him any real trouble so far.
It still doesn’t work on me, right?
The corner of Seojin’s eye twitched faintly. He wasn’t on his own anymore; he had a child now.
I should go to the hospital soon and get everything checked.
Pretending not to notice the stare boring relentlessly into him, he sank into one stray thought after another.
For the next thirty minutes, Seojin held out against a stare that jabbed at him like an awl and the steady assault of heavy alpha pheromones.
How am I supposed to get literally anything else done?
What he urgently needed was strong caffeine. Even that, though, he couldn’t bring himself to act on. The tension in the room said that if he moved carelessly, something would tear into the back of his neck.
It’s like being locked in a cage with a predator...
Maybe it was the unbroken tension, but his stomach started to feel tight and heavy.
Rrrrrring.
Just then a tinny bell went off.
“Yes, this is the Righteous Information Office, responsible service with all our heart!”
Seojin snatched up the receiver that had rescued him at his hour of need. He didn’t forget the line Manager Kim had drilled into him, the one that absolutely had to be said whenever he answered a call.
He’d once asked his noona how the word ‘Righteous’ had ended up attached to the company name. The answer he got back had been something else. Now that a certain someone had settled up his delinquent past and opened a respectable office, didn’t righteousness suit him?
In what possible way!
What part of that man, bobbing one ankle while he puffed away at a cigarette, suited righteousness? Now, if you told him the man spent his evenings ringside at some illegal fight pit where blood and cursing flew in equal measure, that he’d believe.
“An information office? Then, um, you don’t do finding stuff?”
He was on the verge of drifting off into other thoughts when a small, young voice came through the receiver. On top of that, the slightly whistling way the words came out put the speaker at seven years old, give or take.
Missing a front tooth, I’ll bet.
Picturing it tugged the corners of his mouth up all on their own.
“What would you like us to find? If there’s something you want, customer, anything is possible!”
At Seojin’s warm, obliging tone, the slightly nervous young customer confessed the reason for the call.
“Um, so. Our Kkokko isn’t anywhere. Please find our Kkokko.”
“Kkokko...”
Going by the name, Kkokko had to be a chicken. And if they kept one at home, did the parents run a poultry farm?
Are there even poultry farms in Seoul or the metro area, though?
Or, well, he doubted anyone still sold chicks outside school gates in this day and age, but it had been a common enough sight when he was little, so apparently there were still households raising chickens that way. Either way, the child sounded shaken that a doted-on pet had vanished.
“When was the last time you saw Kkokko?”
“I came home from school and Kkokko’s not there. Hu-eh, hwaah...!”
The child had been trying so hard to speak calmly, but Seojin’s gentle question must have burst the dam, because the tears finally came.
“Okay, okay, don’t cry. Customer, you have to explain it properly, or we can’t find Kkokko for you.”
“I opened the window a teeny bit ’cause I thought Kkokko would get bored, and then, hic, hu-eh...”
So the chicken had slipped out through the gap. Seojin clicked his tongue, at a loss. He’d been listening diligently, but he honestly couldn’t decide whether this was the sort of job they were allowed to take.
And of all the luck, the one in the office right now wasn’t Manager Kim. It was Yoon Haegang. Which made it that much worse.
“Gyaah!”
Seojin had been racking his brain over how to break it to the kid when a huge shape materialized right beside him, and a scream tore out of him before he could stop it.
He’d been startled badly enough that he nearly dropped the receiver. The mugger, who’d appeared out of nowhere, snatched the thing straight out of his hand.
“W-what, what, why, why, why?”
The little customer seemed just as flustered, because the voice leaking faintly from the receiver came out chopped into staccato. Yoon Haegang looked down at him with an expression that said, what is this?
“That’s, um, a client... I think they want us to find a lost pet...”
Seojin had no choice but to explain the situation. Even as he did, he fully expected Yoon Haegang to scoff and end the call then and there.
“How much are you paying, customer?”
Huh? What? Did I hear that wrong? Seojin looked up at Yoon Haegang, not quite believing it. He must have felt the stare, because he tipped his head down.
“Twenty thousand won? Hmm... that’s a little low, isn’t it?”
The mischief hanging off the slight lift at the corner of his mouth was a strange thing to see. It shouldn’t have suited a sub yandere top at all. What was stranger was how perfectly it did.
“You’ve got a piggy bank, but you don’t know how much is in it?”
Yoon Haegang perched on the edge of the desk, which brought the two of them that much closer together. His gaze had left Seojin now, moving to the monitor.
Agh!
Seojin’s eyes followed his, and goosebumps prickled up his spine. Shin Seyoung’s file was still open on the screen. Then, a moment later, he tilted his head.
Wait, no? Why am I panicking? Manager Kim is the one who told me to read it.
If anything, wasn’t this a chance to show he was doing his job well? He looked back up at Yoon Haegang, eyes hopeful.
The man happened to be just wrapping up the call.
“All right, customer. We’ll find him soon, so sit tight. Yeah, that’s right. I’ll have him back to you before the day’s out.”
Astonishingly, Yoon Haegang had taken the little customer’s case.
What’s with that? Since when does he look pleased about anything?
He was even smiling, and Seojin found himself staring blankly at the sight. But every stray thought blew right out of his head when Yoon Haegang hung up, looked at him, and spoke.
“What are you doing? Get up.”
“Sorry? Me? Why?”
Seojin questioned the sudden order even as he pushed himself to his feet. With Yoon Haegang planted squarely in front of him like that, ignoring it wasn’t an option.
Yoon Haegang dropped the receiver back into its cradle with a clack and said, lightly, as though the answer were obvious,
“What do you mean, why? We took a job, so we go find it.”
“Me too?”
My job is to sit quietly in the office answering phones and organizing files. Office secretary!
“Obviously. Isn’t a secretary supposed to go where the boss goes?”
Excuse me? President? I was told you find it a hassle having a secretary at your side!
So why are you suddenly doing things you never do?
Sadly, Seojin was in no position to lodge a strong protest, and so, two days into the job, he found himself heading out on an external assignment at Yoon Haegang’s heels.
“Kkokko” is Korean baby-talk for a chicken, from the sound one makes.
