Chapter 158

“So, what exactly happened under the blanket between those two?”

At Shin Kyunghee’s question, the panelists burst into laughter.

Kim Arang, the idol who had been laughing behind a cue card covering their mouth, chimed in.

“Are you sure the sound from under there wasn’t captured? You didn’t actually capture everything and only share it among the production staff while refusing to let us hear it, did you?”

At the question, Producer Yoo, beyond the camera, put on the dead-eyed stare of a fish. It was an expression of profound regret.

“Yes. Producer Yoo is currently insisting that she feels exactly the same way.”

Ha Jinsu neatly summarized the situation. Then, with an impressively grave expression, he offered an idea.

“Starting next season, why don’t we just confiscate all the blankets at Ivory Mansion?”

“Jinsu, you’re a genius. We should.”

“They keep hiding under the blankets to do things. We can’t exactly punch holes in them.”

“What are they, paper doors from the Joseon era?”

Producer Yoo smiled faintly as she listened to the comedy routine unfolding among the panelists.

No matter what anyone said, the people bitter enough to swallow their own resentment over the wasted footage were the production staff.

Yo Han Sung and Gyeol Go had spent over an entire hour tossing, turning, and making a commotion beneath that blanket.

They had definitely kissed. The problem was what came afterward. After raising the brightness of the video as far as it would go and analyzing it, they had managed to determine that Yo Han had spent a long time positioned above Gyeol.

But that was all.

As though his arms never went numb, Yo Han kept his back stretched taut like some kind of tent or awning, mounting such a thorough defense that not even Gyeol’s silhouette could be seen. There was simply no way to uncover what was happening beneath the blanket.

“What did he mean by saying he’d do whatever he wanted...?”

Ha Jinsu muttered with a dazed expression.

“Yo Han Sung!”

Big Shot leaped furiously to his feet.

I’m going to do whatever I want.

That was the one barely intelligible line they had managed to salvage after exhausting themselves trying to raise the volume and isolate the sound.

Of course, the audio had become so crushed and distorted in the process that it was nearly impossible to identify whether the voice belonged to Yo Han or Gyeol. Judging by the way it had been said, however, it had unmistakably been Gyeol.

Producer Yoo had no choice but to end their bedroom scene with that line. It was perfect for stimulating the imagination, and they could hardly broadcast endless rustling when no one could even tell what they were doing.

The production staff had been divided over whether to include the part afterward, when Yo Han switched the camera off and then turned it back on....

People might say we’re letting too many things slide just because he’s Yo Han Sung.

That’s true. He may have been the late-entry twist, but there was also the bait-and-switch with the panel appearance early on.

In the end, they had narrowed the decision down to cutting it.

As the panelists’ nonsense continued, Producer Yoo briefly recalled her meeting with Yo Han the day after the Ivory Mansion date.

He had been brazen and arrogant. He had not asked what had been captured or attempted to probe her intentions.

He had simply made his demands with complete confidence.

“Cut the latter half of the hot-tub scene. And I trust you’ll handle what happened that night appropriately.”

Of course, there was nothing particularly unusual about Yo Han making such requests.

Compared with the agencies of other contestants—especially Hanseul Ga and Woo Seok Jung—which had hounded the production staff, whining for every tiny fragment to be cut or inserted, Yo Han was exceptionally gentlemanly.

And that was hardly all. In one of the previous seasons, a couple had actually had sex at Ivory Mansion while the cameras were still running. They had been ordinary people rather than celebrities, and afterward, they had tearfully appealed to Producer Yoo, claiming it had been “an impulsive accident caused by intoxication from pheromones.”

She had planned to remove that entire section anyway. R-Connect was something she had raised with tender care. Why would she risk having the program suspended?

Besides that, all manner of things had happened in the Time Booth and at Ivory Mansion.

Kissing was merely the beginning. Hand jobs, fellatio, and various other things....

This is how terrifying it is when an Alpha and °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° an Omega fall for each other through pheromones.

Producer Yoo supplied her own internal narration. Without the high salary, this was truly not a job anyone could endure.

“You’re free to switch the camera off and back on at night.”

Still, if there was one thing that made Producer Yoo recognize the value of the name Yo Han Sung all over again—and raise her opinion of him as a person—it was that he had communicated with her directly.

Unless they were ordinary people without agencies, celebrities generally hid behind their companies and launched passive-aggressive attacks through them.

Yo Han, on the other hand, was the quintessential active aggressor.

“As for the Time Booth... well. Do whatever you want with the beginning. Nothing much happened afterward, so I don’t care.”

Producer Yoo interrupted him.

“Oh, right, Yo Han. About the Time Booth.”

“Yes.”

“It was quiet for around twenty minutes near the end. What were you doing alone?”

Producer Yoo had a reason for asking.

While analyzing, twisting, amplifying, and otherwise putting the audio through every conceivable process, they had caught the sound of two sets of footsteps.

In other words, Gyeol had not been the only one to enter the bathroom. It seemed Yo Han had followed him inside a beat later.

But the jazz melody playing in the room had been extremely loud, and the speaker had unfortunately been positioned close to the camera microphone, making precise identification of the sounds impossible. The emergency idea of applying the Time Booth to Ivory Mansion had been good, but introducing the system so suddenly had created an unexpected blind spot.

In the end, Yo Han following Gyeol into the bathroom remained nothing more than a strong suspicion.

“What else would I have done? I took a nap.”

“I see....”

“Gyeol woke me up, and that was when I got up.”

Yo Han answered with a perfectly innocent expression. He always maintained a courteous, gentlemanly manner, but there was an indescribably powerful force in the way he looked down at people. Was it a trait of an extremely dominant Alpha?

Producer Yoo might have been a Beta, but she had been knocked around this industry long enough to have seen everything there was to see, and she prided herself on being second to none when it came to force of personality. Yet around Yo Han, she could never quite shake the strange feeling that she was being overwhelmed.

“King Potato is a man!”

“Tommy Choi!”

The shouts from Ha Jinsu and Big Shot seized Producer Yoo’s attention.

“He kissed him. Oh my God.”

“Hee Jun looks flustered.”

On the screen the panelists were watching, Tommy and Hee Jun Kang’s Pheromone Time was playing.

Overwhelmed by pheromones, Tommy had been at a loss with a conspicuous erection tenting the front of his clothes. When Hee Jun soothed him and said it was all right, Tommy had kissed him on the cheek.

Afterward, the two had endured the rest of the hour tightly embracing beneath the blanket. The scene had come out sweet, with just a slight edge of sexiness.

“Ugh, that’s sweet. So sweet.”

“They have wonderful chemistry. Don’t you think these two might become the final couple too?”

Once their Time Booth segment ended, the edit moved on to Yo Han and Gyeol’s.

“Every time we switch to these two, my entire mental state changes. Honestly....”

“Exactly. I tense up immediately.”

Shin Kyunghee responded to Ha Jinsu.

Voices came through the black screen after the camera had been switched off.

“...Yesterday. You had fun, didn’t you?”

Yo Han spoke amid soft rustling sounds. Something seemed to be moving, but with nothing visible, there was a limit to how much they could infer from sound alone.

“This is driving me insane because we can’t see anything. Damn.”

“The CAMERA OFF — FREE TIME from the Golden Date Card had its own way of driving people crazy, but Off-Time has a completely different flavor.”

“I’ll bet ten thousand won they kissed.”

“Isn’t ten thousand too little? Buy us coffee.”

Before long, someone switched on music. The panelists erupted in protest.

“Turning on music is cheating!”

“You should’ve stopped them!”

“Yo Han Sung!”

“How do you know who turned it on, Big Shot?”

“I’m one hundred percent certain it was Yo Han.”

“There wasn’t any rule announced in advance prohibiting it, so I don’t think the production staff could have stopped them.”

While everyone else lost their minds, Ha Jinsu desperately clung to reason and defended the production staff.

“Gyeol, why are you so pretty?”

Shin Kyunghee, who had been staring blankly with her mouth open as she focused on the audio, rubbed at her lips.

“Is it... the jazz? Why does their conversation sound so sexual?”

“Oh my God. Me too. I was just wondering whether I was the only one possessed by a sex demon.”

“A sex demon. Perform an exorcism.”

“What is your name!”

“Oh, Big Shot. Stop it.”

“I was surprised yesterday too, because you were so pretty. They’re sides of you I can only see when we come to Ivory Mansion. When we swam together too....”

“...Yes. I think I know what you mean.”

The panelists’ playful expressions gradually became serious.

“Why are they talking so slowly? It’s suspicious.”

“Kyunghee, I think you’ve become incapable of speaking without starting with ‘No.’”

“They say Koreans can’t talk without saying ‘No’ or ‘But.’”

“No, but... ha... what is this indescribable, suggestive feeling...?”

“This is why background music matters.”

Ha Jinsu dismissed Shin Kyunghee’s deduction. Shin Kyunghee pretended to strike him with her cue card.

“What are you going to do about the third wish?”

“At this point, Yo Han is obsessed with wishes.”

“When I see Yo Han on a filming set later, I’m not going to know what kind of face to make at him anymore.”

Shin Kyunghee commented in complete seriousness.

“Hmm? Tell your big brother. Hmm? Gyeol.”

“...I’m going to the bathroom.”

“He’s running away.”

“He ran away.”

The panelists, who had been utterly immersed until then, all released the breaths they had been holding and leaned back in their chairs.

A sound like tape rapidly fast-forwarding played to indicate the passage of time, followed by Gyeol’s voice.

“Yo Han? Are you asleep?”

“Mmm....”

“You fell asleep that quickly. Time Booth is almost over. Wake up.”

Judging from their conversation, Yo Han had apparently fallen asleep while Gyeol was in the bathroom.

“Yo Han must have been exhausted.”

Shin Kyunghee clicked her tongue.

“There’s no way he slept properly all night beside someone he likes, after all....”

Ha Jinsu said, fanning himself with his cue card.

Before long, the camera came back on.

It captured Yo Han, still not fully awake, pulling Gyeol into his arms while Gyeol tried to wake him.

The panelists, who had been sprawled in their chairs with listless expressions, all sprang to their feet again.

“I think you two need to book a room of your own.”

“Haven’t they already done exactly that?”

No one suspected it might all be an act—not the viewers, nor even the panelists.

The only people who possessed even circumstantial evidence were Producer Yoo and the production staff.

***

“Oh! There they are!”

The people gathered in the lounge looked outside.

The two couples who had left for Ivory Mansion were walking back side by side along the vivid blue shoreline.

“Wait. Aren’t those two holding hands?”

Jaekyung Park’s voice popped with surprise as he shaded his eyes with one hand and peered outside.