He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel and parted his lips as if he wanted to say something. After a long silence, Cha Seonwoo frowned and looked back at me.

"I think it is jealousy. Probably."

Faced with his annoyed expression, as if he hated admitting it, I was swept by a strange feeling. When I thought about how Cha Seonwoo must have felt the same emotion I had when I saw the shoes in his car, my fingertips tingled.

It was an emotion I had thought only I felt. Something I had never dared imagine a brilliant Alpha like Cha Seonwoo would feel, something that suited Cha Seonwoo the least.

I didn't dislike the fact that Cha Seonwoo was feeling that because of me. If anything, I was happy.

"...But you know you don't have the right to feel that, right?"

But I couldn't show it. Cha Seonwoo and I could never be anything more than this. This was practically directed at me as well.

"We're nothing to each other anyway."

"What if I don't want hyung and me to be nothing?"

I mulled over the words and then let out a small laugh. Cha Seonwoo and I both knew full well that six days from now, he would go back to the United States...

"I don't want to be anything with you."

"Why not?"

"Because you're... not my type in the first place."

"What's hyung's type?"

"For one thing, it's not you."

Honestly, I didn't really have a type or an ideal type. I had never thought about it in detail.

Cha Seonwoo said nothing and ran a hand through his hair. His bangs, which he had left down instead of pushing back and fixing like usual, seemed to bother his eyes, so he roughly mussed his hair and looked down at me with sharper eyes than usual.

"A type is just a type. What actually turns you on is different. I've never once been turned on by someone like hyung, who knows how to use his looks."

"..."

He wasn't completely wrong. I had wanted someone who would make me feel secure when I looked at the Alphas around my mother, but in the end, the one I was drawn to had been Cha Seonwoo.

"I don't know what kind of relationship you had with Cha Taewoo, but I'm not the kind of person who clings to people like that."

Was he saying that to reassure me? But for some reason, instead of calming down, I felt more anxious.

I knew that Cha Seonwoo wasn't the type to cling to anyone. I couldn't even imagine him acting that way.

I didn't know why he was saying this, but instinctively, I didn't want to hear what came next. Yet against my will, Cha Seonwoo kept going.

"I don't want anything serious. And definitely not something deep. So isn't that fine?"

I couldn't stop myself from laughing under my breath.

He didn't want to be nothing with me, but he didn't want to get deep or serious either. Then what exactly did he want from me?

Unlike me, there wasn't a hint of amusement on Cha Seonwoo's face. Soon, the corners of my mouth slowly dropped and pressed into a flat line.

"Yeah, I guess so."

Now it was clear. Cha Seonwoo just wanted to sleep with me once. Something that wasn't serious, but wasn't nothing either.

That had been his purpose from the start. That was why he told people to prepare my breakfast, ate breakfast with me, and drove me around. To him, these were probably nothing at all, but I had been shaken by them.

I was stupid. Even after having seen so many Alphas until now.

The distrust toward Alphas that had piled up inside me had been something I learned with my own eyes from childhood.

Every Alpha I had seen up to now had been the same. They used their social standing, their wealth, and their trait to do whatever they wanted to my mother, and even ending those relationships was entirely in their hands.

The disgust I had felt toward Alphas since childhood had been carved into my bones by the time I became a full adult.

I felt like you really were the same after all. My instincts had warned me the moment I saw you. But I had wanted it not to be true. By now, none of it mattered anymore.

"Did you really think I was going to agree to that?"

Did he think I would nod along without hesitation, like other Omegas had? It occurred to me that Cha Seonwoo had probably been in this kind of situation more than once. And that nobody had ever refused him, or pointed out his attitude.

"You know I don't have much time."

Cha Seonwoo tapped his watch on his wrist. Even while he looked straight at my face, which I knew would be stained with shame and anger, he didn't waver.

He didn't want to waste time with more meaningless arguing like this. So I should just stop talking and sleep with him.

He was thoroughly self-centered, and he didn't think for a second that I might refuse. I let out a dry laugh at how certain he seemed that it was only a matter of time before I slept with him.

He wasn't that great, huh... Back then, I hadn't been able to relate to Cha Taewoo's words this much, but now I understood.

"I think you're misunderstanding something. Who's the one at a disadvantage here, you or me?"

"Right now, I'm the one at a disadvantage, yes."

It was true that I was drawn to Cha Seonwoo, but that was all there was to it. Besides, if I slept with you, what would happen after that? You would just go back to the United States feeling light and free, as if you had completed some quest by sleeping with the person you wanted to try once. Then what about me?

I would be left alone in this mansion. Every time I heard anything about you, every time I saw your empty room or the annex, every time I saw the people in this house or my own mother, I would think of you out of habit.

After hearing what Cha Seonwoo had to say, I became certain that I really should not get involved with him any further.

"You said you're leaving in six days, right? Not much time left then. Stop acting like you know me. And don't talk to me either. Please."

I took a deep breath and let it out, trying to hold back my anger.

"I don't want to get tangled up with you. And I hate being treated like this too."

"How exactly have I been treating you?"

"You really have to ask?"

I tried not to be emotional. The other person wasn't even flinching. But it wasn't easy. I clenched my teeth and tried to steady my breathing, which kept getting ragged.

"If you want someone who will play along, go find another Omega like you always do. Why are you doing this to a Beta like me?"

Then Cha Seonwoo's expression changed strangely. Seeing that made an uneasy feeling rise in me too. But my reaction was justified. I glared at him without looking away, and Cha Seonwoo gradually furrowed his brows.

In the midst of that strange silence, when my unease had reached its peak, Cha Seonwoo turned the wheel and roughly pulled the car over, then swept a hand through his hair.

Was he going to tell me to get out?

I clutched my bag tightly and glared at him, but Cha Seonwoo didn't look angry so much as like he couldn't make sense of the situation.

After staring down at me like that for a long while, Cha Seonwoo finally opened his tightly pressed lips.

"Beta?"

I couldn't understand why he was asking that. Was he asking because I looked like an Omega?

"Are you sure?"

"Why are you asking something so obvious?"

But Cha Seonwoo tilted his head as if he were thinking about something and swept his eyes over me from head to toe.

"Don't tell me you're insisting you're a Beta because you think I can't smell your pheromones."

"What are you even talking about? I'm a Beta. That's what the test said too."

At his attitude, which seemed like he was changing the subject, my irritation flared and my voice sharpened.

"When was the last time you were tested?"

"...Third year of middle school."

The moment Cha Seonwoo heard that, he let out a hollow laugh.

"I'm turning the car. We're going to the hospital first."

I stopped him from starting the car again and raised my voice, frowning.

"I don't know what you're scheming, but there's no need to go. I'm definitely a Beta. I don't even feel your pheromones, and I've never had a heat cycle. And you want to tell me I'm not a Beta?"

"Are your parents Betas?"

"...No."

"Let's talk about the earlier story later. First, let's go to the hospital."

My mother was a dominant Omega, and my father was a recessive Alpha. But... still, there was no way I could be an Omega. Yet for some reason, Cha Seonwoo's strange reaction made unease slowly creep over me. I shook my head, trying desperately to deny it.

"...No. Go home."

"Think about it. Then there's no way hyung could be a Beta."

"If I'm not a Beta, then what am I...?"

"What do you think?"

Cha Seonwoo only kept looking at me. His tone and expression were both as if he were certain I wasn't a Beta, certain I was an Omega.

"No. There is no way."

My once certain voice gradually lost strength and faded. I hugged the bag in my arms tighter. The anger from earlier was turning into anxiety.

"No one has ever told me they can smell pheromones on me, or told me I'm an Omega."

"Because your pheromones are so weak that unless it's a dominant Alpha like me, they wouldn't notice. If it weren't for pheromones, how do you think I knew hyung had been going in and out of the annex?"

Was that what he had been talking about then, pheromones? I didn't really understand what Cha Seonwoo was saying. My head felt blank, just stupidly empty.

"Have you never had a heat cycle?"

"Never had..."

No way.

Something surfaced in my mind, and I shut my mouth tightly.

Since I was young, I had often been sick. More precisely, from around my second year of middle school, I had often come down with unexplained fevers and body aches. They were never severe, and after a week of resting properly I would recover, so I had never thought much of them.

I had just assumed it was because I had been getting bad looks all throughout my school years due to rumors about my family, and that the stress had built up because of that. But then...