Don't You Need an Omega Lucky Charm - Chapter 15.1
Cha Jeongwon’s eyes narrowed. His expression looked as if he were watching to see what Ha-on would say.
“You thought I was clinging to you while pretending it was a coincidence.”
Then why did you come here?
Whether it was because of the alcohol, he gained a bit of courage.
Cha Jeongwon’s finger tapped the glass and stopped.
“You were clinging to me, weren’t you.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
Ha-on shot back quickly.
“Denying it like that won’t turn fact into fiction.”
Ha-on let out a dry laugh. Because all his attention was focused on Cha Jeongwon before he knew it, he did not notice Cha Seojun’s gaze.
“If you think so…, you are pitiful too, Senior.”
Only after spilling out the words did he realize uh-oh. Even if it was under the influence of alcohol, it was an expression that narrowly crossed the line.
“Pitiful?”
His voice lowered ever so slightly.
“I-I mean.”
Ha-on raised his glass. The beer foam touched his lips.
“You keep looking at me… as an Omega with ulterior motives toward you, Senior.”
It was somewhat laughable to talk as if he had motives based merely on that one trait marker that he was an Omega, neither an Alpha nor a Beta.
A bitter smile naturally hung on the corners of his mouth.
“Even if all of that were truly a coincidence, the fact that you are an Omega is the decisive blow.”
Cha Jeongwon did not back down in the slightest.
Because of that, while they were tightly confronting each other, Ha-on voiced what had been on his mind all along.
“Anyway, I apologize for saying you were pitiful.”
And then he set down his glass.
“However, I would like you to acknowledge just this one thing.”
“What.”
“The fact that coming here today was your choice, Senior, not mine.”
Their gazes clashed for a moment. Cha Seojun, stuck in the middle, twitched his lips with a face full of things to say, but he closed his mouth as Ha-on spoke first.
“It wasn’t me following you.”
He quietly nailed it down.
It felt as though drawing a thick line between the two of them.
Where coincidence ended and where choice began, he wanted to make that boundary clear.
“Let’s just drink.”
In the end, instead of a proper answer, such words came back.
Cha Jeongwon grabbed the beer Cha Seojun had brought. Originally, he had brought it so they could drink together, but in an atmosphere where it was taken away out of nowhere, Cha Seojun could do nothing with his hand raised in midair.
And Ha-on, who was similarly feeling frustrated, had no reason to refuse. Rather, it was what he had wished for.
“Sounds good.”
Ha-on picked up his glass again.
“This isn’t a place to argue over who came first or whether it’s a coincidence anyway.”
On the surface, it sounded as if he were lightly passing over it, but he subtly contained how sensitive he was about such things.
Ha-on also brought a beer bottle from the next table and lightly clinked it against Cha Jeongwon’s bottle.
Along with a short sound, foam rose above the beer bottle.
The two tilted their bottles almost simultaneously.
“It turns out like this?”
Cha Seojun’s murmur drifted by.
***
One glass. Two glasses.
Sometimes drinking draft beer, sometimes chugging straight from the bottle…
There was no conversation, and the speed of drinking picked up.
“You drink well, Senior.”
Ha-on, whose eye rims had turned slightly red, spoke with a smile. It was a remark made after looking at the bottles gathered near Cha Jeongwon. Even that was only that much because Cha Seojun had tactfully cleared them away once.
“You too.”
The short reply returned with an ambiguous tone, somewhere between praise and wariness.
Ha-on looked in front of himself. There was an empty bottle just a moment ago. Now it’s gone.
“I’ll leave tissues and wet wipes here separately too, so tell me if you need more. And eat some snacks too once in a while.”
The owner of the hand that cleared the bottles offered some nagging.
“The snack is the alcohol.”
Spouting the nonsense that alcohol eats alcohol, Ha-on looked at Cha Jeongwon with eyes that were only half-open.
He looks perfectly fine. Rather, his face was more relaxed when he was caught by surprise in the elevator this morning.
“Aren’t you getting drunk?”
“Not particularly.”
Ha-on rested his chin on the back of his hand. As hot blood rushed to his face, the inside of his cheeks felt burning hot.
“Since you are so strong, why weren’t you going to drink earlier?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Shall I guess?”
He spoke as if joking, but it sounded strangely even to Ha-on’s own ears.
“Because it felt like an accident would happen.”
Cha Jeongwon paused while lifting his beer glass and looked at Ha-on.
Ha-on flashed a subtle smile toward Cha Jeongwon. Now that he had drunk alcohol, much of what intimidated him in the world had vanished.
“Because a drunk version of you, Senior, becomes dangerous.”
It was a statement that could also be interpreted with a double meaning. His heart beat a little faster.
Even without saying it out loud, both of them knew about Alpha instincts or pheromone reactions.
Ha-on leaned his body against the backrest of the chair. A chuckle seeped out once.
