Alpha Trauma Novel - Chapter 42. Spring Breeze (5)

When faced with a moment of crisis, people make different choices. They try to resolve the situation, get angry, or pretend not to know and ignore it. Among them, Wooyeon was the type to somehow avoid the situation at hand.

Before chugging the champagne, these thoughts were the only ones in his head: ‘I want to run away.’ ‘I want to disappear into dust.’ ‘I want to hide if there’s a rat hole.’ ‘I want to go back in time and make it as if nothing ever happened.’

Naturally, Wooyeon chose the most feasible option: ‘I want to run away.’ Like a lizard cutting off its tail and fleeing, he threw himself into it headfirst. Even if it was reckless, it was better than enduring a conversation with Dohyun while sober.

He couldn’t fathom Dohyun’s intentions for bringing up such a topic. He didn’t want to know, and he didn’t think anything would change even if he did. However, he had a vague memory that the last expression he saw before blacking out was somewhat crestfallen.

In the faint light of dawn, Wooyeon awoke with a throbbing headache. His dreams during the night had been excessively disturbing, and waking up felt anything but refreshing. He decided to sleep more and curled up, but then he felt an unfamiliar warmth beside him.

“……”

Wooyeon slowly lifted his eyelids. His eyes, stiff from sleep, gradually came into focus. A familiar room, a familiar blanket, a familiar ceiling, and familiar fingers. No, to be precise, two right hands clasped together.

Wiggle, wiggle, Wooyeon moved his fingers. One was his, but the other was not. The straight fingers, even the neatly trimmed nails, looked very familiar. Whose hand could this be? Just as Wooyeon thought this and was about to let go,

“You’re awake?”

A low voice came from his bedside. The soft voice, trailing off at the end, was one Wooyeon knew well. If his ears weren’t deceiving him, the owner of the voice was definitely his teacher.

Wooyeon felt as if his heart would stop and lifted his head. His eyes, shifting awkwardly, saw that familiar neat appearance. Dohyun was leaning against the headboard, looking at his phone, then lazily lowered his eyes towards him.

“Are you conscious?”

“……!”

All traces of sleepiness vanished instantly. His pupils dilated widely, and his entire body stiffened. It wasn’t just because Dohyun was in front of him. It was because Dohyun, who held his phone with his hand still offered to Wooyeon, was wearing nothing on his upper body.

Below his prominent neckline, his broad, straight shoulders extended. He had noticed it even when Dohyun was dressed, but his solid upper body suggested he worked out quite a bit. Wooyeon unconsciously lowered his gaze to his chest, then found sculpted abs and promptly sat upright in surprise.

“Why… why, why are you like that?”

His round eyes were filled with wariness. Wooyeon, who had even hesitantly let go of his hand, scrambled to the edge of the bed as if Dohyun might grab him. Dohyun, as if seeing a pervert, asked back in disbelief.

“Is that something you should say, dressed like that?”

“……”

Only then did Wooyeon realize that his legs felt excessively exposed. Not just his legs, but his neck and shoulders were too. He blankly looked down to see himself wearing only a gown.

“W-why am I like this?”

Wooyeon hastily drew his legs together, fumbling to pull the lapels of his gown closer. The tie was half-untied, but he couldn’t even think of tying it properly. Dohyun looked at Wooyeon and slyly curved his lips.

“Right, this is the reaction of someone who doesn’t remember.”

He slowly extended his hand so as not to startle Wooyeon. He untangled the twisted waist tie and tied the ribbon again himself. Wooyeon huddled up, eyes wide, then awkwardly shifted his gaze after Dohyun moved away.

“……”

“……”

A strange silence, tenuous and intimate, permeated the air. Their ambiguously mixed pheromones obliviously lingered between them. With neither of them speaking, Wooyeon suddenly realized one more new fact.

‘Crazy…’

He wasn’t wearing underwear. The sensation of the gown touching between his legs was distinctly that of bare skin. Why on earth was he like this? His dizzy mind rapidly traced back his memories.

‘What were you thinking while watching the movie?’

Yesterday, after hearing those words, Wooyeon had immediately decided to pass out. So he drank champagne, and so he lost consciousness as he wished. It was an act done without thinking of the aftermath, but he never expected to wake up in bed in this state.

“Why… No, what, what is this situation?”

Wooyeon asked, his voice hesitant and muffled. His voice had dropped so low it sounded like he was half-crying. At that, Dohyun, who had narrowed his eyes, ran a hand through his hair and threw off the blanket he had been covering himself with.

“What do you think it is?”

Unlike Wooyeon, Dohyun was perfectly dressed on his lower half, not his upper.

Turning his back, he got off the bed and lightly stretched his shoulders. Wooyeon stared blankly at his back, admiring his finely structured muscles.

He wasn’t overly bulky, but his body was adequately firm. Every time he moved, his back muscles became prominent, and Wooyeon’s face flushed as he remembered being carried on that back. Then, he suddenly noticed something written on his back and narrowed his eyes.

“…Tattoo?”

A long tattoo was etched from his shoulder to his shoulder blade. It wasn’t a design but seemed to be some kind of phrase, and since Wooyeon, who was good at English, couldn’t read it, it was highly likely to be another foreign language.

Dohyun unconsciously touched his shoulder, then let his words trail off vaguely.

“Ah, this…”

His thick-knuckled fingers gently traced the tattoo. It was just a casual touch, but watching it made Wooyeon feel embarrassed. He subtly averted his gaze, then realized it wasn’t the time to be surprised by a tattoo and hesitantly parted his lips.

“That… I asked because I don’t know what’s going on…”

His head was spinning. The reason he was in a gown, the reason Dohyun was like that, and the reason they were both in one bed. No matter how much he racked his brain, only a few reasons came to mind.

So Wooyeon decided to ask about the most concerning part first.

“I… didn’t do that again, did I?”

“Again?”

Dohyun asked back, staring at Wooyeon. His dark eyes held an inscrutable light. Dohyun frowned for a moment, then let out a faint, wry chuckle.

“What do you think you ‘did again’?”

“……”

It circled back to that question again. Wooyeon, realizing there wasn’t even champagne this time, despairingly lowered his head.

Alcohol was truly his enemy, how could it produce new past events he wanted to forget every time he drank? The next time he drank, he felt like he should truly be ‘Sun Wooyeon’ instead of ‘Seon Wooyeon’ (a pun on his name and ‘before’).

“You really need to hear it out loud…”

Wooyeon mumbled, his face bright red. His embarrassment was so extreme that it even turned into resentment. He knew perfectly well what was being implied, so why was Dohyun pretending not to know all this time?

But Dohyun replied in a firm voice.

“I need to hear it out loud.”

His face still held a smile, but his eyes were slightly subdued. Dohyun, pressing his brows as if tired, looked down at Wooyeon obliquely. His hand, which had clearly been holding something all night, had prominent, rough veins.

“There might be a reason for not saying it, but if you don’t say it, I won’t know anything.”

“……”

“Just like you don’t know what we did last night.”

At those words, Wooyeon felt a stinging sensation around his chest. He remembered the secrets he hadn’t spoken, but also the things Dohyun hadn’t told him. Hadn’t Wooyeon misunderstood him for four years because he hadn’t revealed he was an Alpha?

Sigh, a sigh escaped him. It was something closer to a firm resolve than a lament. Taking a breath once, then twice, Wooyeon looked at Dohyun with serious eyes.

“…Did we sleep together?”

Even though he thought it wasn’t true, he couldn’t be absolutely certain it wasn’t. Dohyun was an Alpha, he was an Omega, and they had already done something similar once before. Moreover, they had woken up naked in the same bed, so the situation could only logically unfold this way.

“……”

Dohyun narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. Wooyeon deeply lowered his head and fidgeted with his earlobe under Dohyun’s penetrating gaze. The other person was half-naked, while he was clumsily covered, yet he felt more embarrassed.

“I thought you wouldn’t remember…”

His small murmur somehow sounded like an affirmation. His mind cooled instantly, and his heart sank. Could something really have happened? Had he, drunk, made another unspeakable mistake?

“Looking at your physical condition…”

Dohyun lightly began, then stopped speaking and covered his mouth. The gasp that followed seemed to indicate a realization. He briefly looked away, then vaguely gazed at Wooyeon.

“You’d know from your physical condition, right?”

It was a surprisingly out-of-place question. Wooyeon, with a blank face, asked, “Huh?” That was when Dohyun curved his lips into a smile.

“Muscle soreness, I mean.”

“…Muscle soreness?”

It took a very long time for him to understand those words. Wooyeon, who had been open-mouthed and dazed, belatedly grasped the meaning and gasped. Simultaneously, his pale face turned even more ashen.

“……”

Now that he thought about it, his whole body felt stiff. Especially parts that usually didn’t hurt, like his lower back and pelvis. It wasn’t to the extent of interfering with daily life, but if you called it muscle soreness, it was muscle soreness.

“Really…”

Wooyeon couldn’t bring himself to utter the rest of the sentence and closed his mouth. The circumstances strongly suggested they had slept together, but hearing it directly from Dohyun would leave him no room for escape.

As he fidgeted, trying to choose his words, Dohyun calmly picked something up from the floor.

“You probably don’t want to hear it from my mouth.”

A white T-shirt was pulled up in Dohyun’s hand. If Wooyeon remembered correctly, it was the T-shirt Dohyun had been wearing last night. This time, Wooyeon felt as if he would faint and widened his eyes.

“I’m leaving, get some good rest today.”

With those words, Dohyun left Wooyeon’s room. There was no clear answer as to whether they had slept together or not.

He had asked, “Wouldn’t you know from your physical condition?”, but unfortunately, Wooyeon had no basis for comparison.