Chapter 118

Click.

The small sound scattered the remnants of sleep, and the lingering fragments of the past vanished with it.

When Gyeol opened his eyes, Yo Han Sung was taking pictures with his phone in selfie mode.

It was the first time since monitoring the drama that he had seen both of them framed together on one screen. Once R-Connect started airing, there would probably be countless shots like this piling up everywhere.

“...You could’ve woken me up so we could take one together.”

He didn’t even need to ask to know it was for the required verification photo.

The car was still idling, briefly parked along the roadside. Gyeol shook off the last traces of drowsiness, straightened his posture, and lifted his head properly.

“You looked pretty sleeping.”

The answer came so casually that Gyeol gave no reaction at all. Instead, still half-asleep, he found himself thinking, Are the cameras rolling or something? There was no other reason Yo Han Sung would act like this toward him.

A long hand reached over and smoothed down his messy bangs. Fingertips barely brushed his forehead.

That trivial contact snapped Gyeol fully awake in an instant.

“If we’re going to do this, we should at least use a pretty picture.”

An absurd thought crossed his mind.

Did this man just call me pretty when there aren’t even cameras around?

“If people misunderstand and think I spent the entire two-hour date passed out asleep, what then? An Omega lying there dead asleep next to Seong Yo Han... seriously insane.”

Toward the end, he deliberately flattened his tone, like he was reading some third-party internet comment aloud.

“I’m serious. You looked really pretty. Want me to show you the photo?”

“I’m good. Just take a new one. We don’t have much time left anyway.”

Checking the clock and seeing less than five minutes remaining, Gyeol gestured impatiently.

While they talked, Yo Han raised the hand that had lowered earlier and adjusted the angle again.

Usually when people took selfies together, their eyes drifted automatically toward their own face rather than the person beside them.

But for some reason, this time Gyeol’s attention kept getting caught on Yo Han’s face reflected in the screen.

That perfectly sculpted appearance without a single flaw even under a basic phone camera. The sharply defined features that asserted themselves effortlessly. The smile resting so naturally on his face.

All over again, Seong Yo Han looked devastatingly handsome.

There had once been a time when Gyeol envied his looks endlessly.

Yo Han possessed the kind of bold-featured face that stood out unmistakably from any angle. It was different from Gyeol himself, who as an Omega had been born with features that, generously speaking, were delicate and pretty, and less generously speaking, plain.

A person born to become a star.

Someone who moved through the world without resistance.

Just like everyone else said, Gyeol too had thought hundreds—thousands—of times:

How can a person possibly look like this?

When he first began seriously preparing to transition into acting, how many times had he marveled watching Yo Han’s debut film?

There hadn’t been a single gap in him on screen.

Even in group scenes, his presence stood out absurdly sharply, and in solo scenes he filled the frame completely, overwhelming the audience.

Gyeol had replayed that movie dozens of times. He focused so intensely that later he could recite entire lines from memory.

Yo Han’s delivery was precise, every vowel length distinguished perfectly, making him an ideal model for studying acting.

Because of that, beginner-era Gyeol had found direction in his own acting studies, and at the very least, nobody anywhere ever criticized his pronunciation.

Back then, he had never imagined he would one day appear in the same production as Seong Yo Han.

A dating program was even more unimaginable.

To think things would end up like this with someone he had admired so intensely.

“Ready? One, two...”

The call pulling him back to attention erased the fleeting thoughts instantly.

Gyeol shifted his gaze barely two centimeters and looked into his own eyes reflected on the screen. Then he curved his eyes and lifted the corners of his mouth into a bright smile.

Click.

With the tiny sound, both of them were captured together.

Checking the photo, Yo Han let out a quiet laugh.

“You smile exactly the same.”

“......?”

“As your son.”

He flipped the phone around to show him the picture.

Seeing himself smiling brightly beside Yo Han felt strangely unfamiliar.

“Do I?”

“Yeah. You really do. Especially your eyes and your mouth.”

Still looking at the photo, Yo Han smiled faintly.

Well, of course they looked alike. Even if Yuli wasn’t a child Gyeol had carried himself, they still shared blood.

Ever since Yuli had first started crawling around, people constantly told Gyeol the baby looked just like his father.

Copy-pasted from the same mold. A miniature version of Dad. Everyone had their own way of saying it whenever they smiled at Yuli.

So this is what family is. Being told things like this.

Those words layered themselves over Gyeol’s chest again and again, carving Yuli’s existence deeper into him.

Seriously though... hearing something like this from Seong Yo Han of all people.

If someone had told the Gyeol of a few years ago, he would have fallen over backward in shock.

“Shouldn’t we get going soon? We’ve got less than two minutes.”

“We should. Don’t worry. It’s only two blocks away.”

The car began moving again.

Only after both their gazes settled forward side by side did Gyeol finally relax enough to realize he’d been tense the entire time without noticing.

“I’ll send you the picture later.”

“That’s okay. Send in the one we need, and keep the rest for your private collection.”

“That’s cold.”

“...I don’t think we’re exactly the kind of people who should be acting warm with each other.”

Yo Han laughed low, like he genuinely found that amusing.

I wasn’t trying to make you laugh.

Gyeol only pushed his lips out slightly before turning to stare out the window instead.

I wish we could just skip the rest of the date and go back to the island.

Maybe it was selfish, but he desperately wanted to get out of this situation where he was alone with Yo Han.

Old memories kept surfacing, tangling up his thoughts.

***

Regardless of how Gyeol felt, the cameras would keep rolling until the program ended, and the Alpha-and-Omega date would continue.

And so, after finishing their free time, the two of them had to continue their date to fill out the Golden Date footage.

There was no helping it.

Life handed out carrots before the whip, and most whips were followed by more whips. So the only thing you could do was gratefully accept the occasional carrot and voluntarily endure the beating afterward.

“What are you thinking about?”

“...Nothing. I’ve just never been somewhere like this before.”

Lost in thoughts about carrots and whips as a form of escapism, Gyeol forced himself back to reality.

The place they had arrived at was a movie theater.

It would’ve been nice if this turned into some painfully cliché drama setup where they sat side by side sharing popcorn before their hands brushed together.

But there was one thing Go Gyeol absolutely could not forget here.

He was currently appearing on R-Connect.

Meeting Yuli had briefly allowed him to experience a ridiculously sweet all-ages version of life...

But that didn’t change the core reality.

Go Gyeol was an Omega, and the direction R-Connect pursued was aggressively adults-only.

Which was why, after passing through a hallway closed off to outsiders, the place they arrived at was a private room located at the very back of the theater.

The delicious smell hitting him the moment the door opened was nice enough. He was hungry already, so the typical movie snacks—hot dogs, sandwiches, popcorn—easy to eat one-handed immediately caught his attention.

The problem was the structure of the private room itself.

“I’ll sit inside.”

Why the hell did the movie theater seats look like a DVD room setup?

“...Yep.”

It was pretending to be a sofa, but it was obviously a bed.

A bed capable of accommodating Seong Yo Han’s over-190-centimeter frame.

Definitely a bed.

No matter how you looked at it, absolutely a bed.

Staring at the massive leather seat positioned directly in the center, Gyeol fought the overwhelming urge to run away immediately.

It was exactly large enough for two people to lie down together, complete with pillow-like cushions near the headrest and even a blanket large enough to comfortably cover two grown men.

Why is it this thoughtfully prepared?

Watching Yo Han casually settle into the inner side of the seat and lean back comfortably, Gyeol stiffly shuffled over as well.

Then he folded his legs beneath him and sat beside him.

“Are you trying to make me laugh?”

Yo Han burst out laughing as he asked.

“No. I always sit like this.”

“Don’t lie to me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sit like that before.”

“I’m serious.”

Yo Han snickered quietly like this was endlessly entertaining.

Of course he was having fun. The entire environment practically screamed Please devour Go Gyeol alive.

This private room was Gigabox’s ambitious counterattack against streaming services. According to the advertisements, you could lie down comfortably and enjoy movies as if you were in your own living room, while the front glass was made of special material.

Meaning from inside, you could see outside perfectly clearly, while people outside couldn’t see in at all. To the audience in the regular theater seats, it simply looked like an ordinary dark wall.

And to create a perfectly private atmosphere, the room could not only be locked from the inside, but thick blackout curtains could also be drawn across both sides of the front glass if desired. Not that anyone outside could see anything anyway, but apparently it was about the mood.

Why are they even offering that kind of consideration? What exactly do they think people are going to do in here?

Mentally tallying up every horrifying example accumulated from years of part-time job experience, Gyeol nearly jumped at the sudden flutter in front of him.

“Why are you so startled?”

“...I wasn’t startled.”

“Looked like you were.”

“.......”

“Scared of the blanket?”

That was exactly it.

The blanket had merely fluttered.

Yo Han questioning him in polite speech while suppressing laughter made him unbearably irritating.

The production staff hadn’t followed them inside the room itself, but cameras had obviously been installed all over the place, so Gyeol couldn’t openly snap at him the way he wanted.

“Nervous?”

“...No.”

“Then why are you so tense?”

Lifting the corner of his mouth, Yo Han slid a hand beneath the blanket and pressed firmly against Gyeol’s thigh as he leaned closer.

Gyeol’s toes curled hard as he fought to stop his leg from jerking away.

“I’m not tense.”

From point-blank range, Yo Han quietly searched his eyes.

“You are.”

Gyeol wanted to look away.