Chapter Text
1.
The keypad beeped and Baekhyun shifted on the sofa bed. He kept playing Tetris on his phone, dropping a square into the right-hand corner as Chanyeol walked in – or rather, stepped in, ducking on reflex even though the doorframe had never actually been that low for him – and toed his shoes off with a groan.
Baekhyun didn't react, though a smile was already forming on his lips, warmth spreading through him before he even caught the scent of mint and rain cutting through the stale afternoon air.
They rarely bothered folding the pull-out bed back into a sofa during the day, but Baekhyun had done it for once, hunting for his headphones. Said headphones were now hanging off Chanyeol's neck as he crossed the distance from the door in three long strides and collapsed on top of Baekhyun, nuzzling into his neck with a dramatic whine – right where the scent always pooled thickest, right where Chanyeol liked to breathe him in.
Baekhyun couldn't bring himself to scold him.
"Hi, baby," Chanyeol said, voice muffled against his skin.
Baekhyun fought off a smile, gazing down at the short russet hair. "Hi yourself."
He raised his knees, letting Chanyeol settle fully between them. Chanyeol groaned his appreciation, breathing him in like he'd been away for weeks instead of a few hours. This should have been unwelcome in the September heat, their two windows cracked open to a chorus of shouts from the street below – but the weight of him, warm and a little sweaty, felt like exactly where Baekhyun wanted him.
"What'd you do today?" Chanyeol asked.
"Nothing," Baekhyun said easily.
In fact, he'd ordered Chanyeol's twenty-first birthday present that morning: spent all his extra won on a rare book in Japanese that, out of everything in the world, Chanyeol had been talking about for weeks. He'd nearly winced at the price. Then he'd bought it anyway.
Baekhyun slid a four-block bar into a gap on the left side of the screen.
"And you? How'd it go?"
"I dunno. The editors seemed nice. I hate interviews. I nap now."
"On me?" Baekhyun checked.
One hand relaxed into Chanyeol's hair, scratching slow circles over his scalp the way he liked – the way that always eased something in him, made his shoulders drop and his scent go soft and sweet, sleepy.
"Alpha privileges," Chanyeol argued into his collarbone.
Something warm turned over in Baekhyun's chest.
"Okay, you giant teddy bear. Nap, then."
"Perfect."
Chanyeol craned up, lips puckered, and Baekhyun met him in a fond kiss, the taste of him still a small addiction after all this time.
Content, Chanyeol settled back down, all seventy kilos of him pressing Baekhyun into the cushions, tall frame shielding him from the world outside – the two of them tucked into their small, cluttered haven where their clothes stayed in suitcases for lack of closet space, where the mini-fridge hummed constantly and the windows never quite shut properly, and where Baekhyun, if he let himself think about it, felt more anchored than he had anywhere else in his life.
Baekhyun kept trying to play with one hand, brushing slow circles through Chanyeol's hair with the other, his golden band pressing lightly against balmy skin.
Chanyeol went under fast.
His scent resolved into something low and content as he slept.
The studio filled with his steady breathing, traffic outside, the hum of the mini-fridge, neighbours' voices through thin walls – the summer ticking by in slow, sluggish beats, Baekhyun's heart full to the brim.
His phone buzzed.
He blinked, startled, cancelled the call from his father, and pulled Chanyeol closer. A second call came while Chanyeol snored on. Baekhyun switched the phone off entirely. Those calls didn't belong in this cocoon – where the two of them didn't have much, but had each other, and this studio, and the sofa bed, and the Seoul summer heat, and the comfort of scents mingling together beautifully.
And Baekhyun was happy.
That was what he remembered years later: that he had been so devastatingly happy.
These days, some mornings, still half-asleep, Baekhyun would marvel at how comfortable their old sofa bed actually was, thinking he had to tell Chanyeol this – before waking up properly to find himself alone in his king-sized bed, in the spacious, scentless apartment fit for a well-to-do investment oversight managing director, aged thirty-four.
Nothing minty in the air.
So it goes sometimes, right?
So it goes.
He'd stretch, get out of bed, and start another day.
*
The day Baekhyun found out that he was a mated omega was a busy day, like all his days.
He had to call his insurance company himself – his assistant wasn't allowed to handle personal matters – and while he waited on hold, phone wedged between ear and shoulder, he kept typing emails.
"Your excess has been adjusted to reflect household earnings," the advisor said, clearly angling to weasel out of paying his flight-delay claim.
Not on his watch.
"I am the household," Baekhyun corrected, rounding off a cutting warning to a junior associate in sales. Friday, seven PM. Fifty-five hours logged already this week, and he planned to stay for several more.
"Our records show you're mated. Has that recently changed?"
That gave him pause.
Baekhyun frowned and took the phone properly in hand. "No?" he said. "I've never been mated."
As he said it, his eyes landed on the painting by his office door – an auction find, The Waves of Spring: a dramatic Kyoto coastline, blue waves crashing against cliffs, green summer hills dotted with wildflowers.
Calming, usually.
"Why do you ask?" He turned on the charm. "Are you courting?"
There was silence on the line while he chuckled at his own joke.
Then:
"According to our records, you've been mated since the fourteenth of June, 2014."
Baekhyun went still. He stared at the painting, the calm draining out of it entirely – as if, at any second, his father, retired now, might burst through the door. How did she have that date? How did anyone have that date? More than a decade later?
His fingers tightened around the phone.
"E…excuse me?"
She remained brisk.
"To, let's see…"
Don't say it. Don't–
"Ah. To an alpha Park Chanyeol. Oh! Like the author."
Baekhyun's elbow slid off the desk. He nearly cracked his face against the tabletop.
"Sir? Hello? Hello?"
He clutched the phone like a lifeline.
"Wait." His voice came out strangled. "I'm mated?!"
*
Look, there was a perfectly logical explanation as to why Globe Insurance Company was under the false impression that he, Baekhyun, was mated to South Korea's darling author, Chanyeol. He just wasn't entirely sure why this misinformation was on their records, and yet they insisted it was there in black and white. Apparently, Baekhyun was mated to an alpha. To Chanyeol.
He brewed over this on the way home. Despite being a division managing director in his father's firm, he still used the subway; everyone else had chauffeurs, and he'd had one too for a while after the accident, but he'd been hopelessly stiff in the backseat, unable to even loosen his tie.
It was worse during the heat season, when being trapped in the enclosed space of a car with a stranger's scent had made him feel like he couldn't breathe. Exiting his office in the heart of Gangnam and joining the stream of commuters let him disappear into the crowds at the end of each day; it allowed him to loosen his tie and exhale. The city swallowed him whole, and that was precisely what he liked about it.
Yet that evening's subway ride was spent stiff, on-guard, and on his phone, requesting a file on himself from the government's mating registrar. Apparently, this would be emailed to him within fifteen working days. Fifteen?! Absurd!
He was so out of sorts that he got off at the wrong station, intending to change to Line 5 to take him southwards, before he recalled that he had not lived that way in years, and that it was Line 1 that took him home directly. He muttered to himself angrily. Then caught sight of a tall and broad man from the corner of his eye, in an oversized khaki jacket with the hood pulled over his head, and his hands began to sweat.
It was someone he had never seen before, of course. Obviously. Baekhyun was being ridiculous. Still, his omega had never cared much for obvious things. He kept walking.
Finally home, he poured himself a generous scotch, restless and annoyed, before he conscientiously checked his email and managed a few more queries from contacts. He absently examined his not-so-modest view of Seoul from his expensive two-bedroom apartment, the urban sprawl stretching as far as he could see. "Ideal for an unmated omega!" the agent had told him at the viewing some years earlier. Yup. That was him, alright.
He considered calling Kyungsoo or Jongin, but the two were so busy planning their own mating ceremony that he didn't want to disturb them. Besides, what exactly was he even supposed to say? Hey, quick question: do you remember me getting mated to Chanyeol twelve years ago?
Hoping for a distraction, he plopped down on his leather couch, propped his feet up on the glass coffee table, and turned on the TV. The huge seventy-five-inch monitor flicked on to whatever channel he'd left it on and a talk show came on –
– and one Chanyeol was seated on a couch as one of the guests, giving a warm yet professional dimpled smile at the host.
Baekhyun choked on his scotch. Of course. Of fucking course.
On Chanyeol's left sat a veteran actress Baekhyun recognised, and the three were discussing the state of contemporary art in South Korea. Everything Chanyeol said was charming and insightful. Baekhyun shouldn't have been surprised: Chanyeol had his name on posters on the subway whenever a new book came out; and this time he had a play premiering in the next year.
But seeing him was different. It always has been. Even through a television screen, even after all these years, Baekhyun's body seemed to recognise him before the rest of him could catch up. His omega stirred uneasily. Not quite a response to an alpha's actual scent – there was no way the television could carry that – but something close enough in memory that Baekhyun's stomach dropped anyway.
"But in Tokyo," the host said, and Chanyeol nodded. His hair was a honeyed brown, and he was dressed in a simple black turtleneck that showed off his chest and arms, both much more defined than when Baekhyun had known him. Round glasses on his nose, hair pushed off his forehead: the image of an intellectual if there was one.
For some god-awful reason, Baekhyun was hit by a vivid memory of himself curled against Chanyeol's chest, feverish and boneless with the aftermath of a heat, Chanyeol's scent thick around him, his own body still aching pleasantly from the hours they had spent tangled together. A younger Chanyeol, dark-eyed and flushed, looking at him like the omega was his everything.
Baekhyun gulped. God, was there anything more dreadful than a semi-famous ex? Especially an ex who was apparently still listed as his mate.
The middle-aged male host said, "You've written this play in Japanese. Are you going to self-translate this as you've done with some projects in the past?"
"Maybe," Chanyeol granted, with a charming, white-pearled smile. "I mean, I lived in Kyoto and Osaka…then Tokyo for such a long time…so using Japanese for this play came naturally. And this play is about the Japanese: their small absurdities, the class micro-aggressions. Koreans would see some echoes there too, but recontextualised. There is cultural intertextuality to play with."
Baekhyun snorted on his couch, forcing away the image of a younger Chanyeol with dark eyes staring up at him hungrily. Oh, Chanyeol, such an intellectual! The most prolific South Korean author of the last twenty years! Living abroad but gracing South Korea with his presence sporadically! And apparently, the alpha (as his government records insisted) had been claiming Baekhyun's scent for twelve years.
They both had lived entire lives since they'd last seen each other – meeting only once, unintentionally, at a birthday party that Kyungsoo threw the year after Baekhyun finished military service and Chanyeol happened to be in the country, but that was it. Their brief reunion had been as awkward as one could imagine: Baekhyun was seeing someone new, so was Chanyeol.
They exchanged some forced pleasantries before Baekhyun rushed to find his hunk of an alpha, clinging to him fiercely, and Chanyeol left the party shortly after. Baekhyun was so upset over it all that he ended up in a massive fight with the alpha – over what, he didn't even know. At the time, he'd blamed the heat he'd gone through a few weeks earlier. Then he blamed the alcohol. Then he blamed Chanyeol. It was easier than blaming himself.
He and Chanyeol were memories to each other now, and that was all. Yet his hands were clammy, his stomach in knots, as he thought of a boy who'd always smelled faintly of mint and rain, goofy smiles and loud cackles, nuzzling into him. He saw no traces of that man on the TV screen. No trace of the alpha who used to curl around him in bed, pressing his nose against the scent gland beneath Baekhyun's jaw and breathing him in until the omega complained that he couldn't think. No trace of the boy who used to call him baby in that stupidly soft voice.
Baekhyun nervously played with the chain that he habitually wore, always tucked underneath his neatly pressed shirts. His thumb found the locket. The metal was warm from his skin. He hadn't opened it in years. He didn't need to. He knew exactly what was inside.
When the host asked Chanyeol what he would work on next, Chanyeol said he was spending the rest of summer on his next full-length novel, in a writing retreat.
"Here in Korea?" the host asked.
Chanyeol shook his head. "A remote location abroad."
When had the show been taped? That week, presumably. So Chanyeol was – or had been – in Seoul, as happened maybe once or twice a year. It made no difference to Baekhyun, of course. He'd asked their remaining mutual friends to avoid inviting him to something Chanyeol might be at. It was just better that way. He didn't want to accidentally encounter the alpha who had once known every inch of his scent, didn't want to wonder whether Chanyeol could still recognise him, didn't want to find out whether the strange ache beneath his ribs was anything more than memory.
And so he pieced this together with Kyungsoo not having messaged him for two days. And knowing Kyungsoo could not lie whatsoever, he texted: hey just curious what did you do last night?
Kyungsoo texted back nearly instantly: …we had dinner with Chanyeol.
Figured, he responded.
Kyungsoo took a few minutes to reply. sorry, i thought it was just easier not to mention it, that okay?!
yea of course you know that, he typed back. i prefer not to be told, really. lunch sometime next week?
He shut the TV off tiredly. How absurd it was for anyone to think he had any entanglements with the ever-popular Chanyeol anymore! An omega's scent could change. Infatuation could fade into nothing over time, particularly when the pair had been separated for years. People moved on. People fell in love again. People lived perfectly normal lives after the sort of mistakes they made when they were young and stupid and in heat and convinced that forever was a reasonable thing to promise – and bite someone to prove it. Baekhyun had done all of those things or, at least, he remembered doing them.
All except the last one.
After a shower he even went on a dating app and swiped left and right monotonously, matching with a relatively cute guy who immediately messaged him: wait hold up, let's summarise your profile: you're absolutely stunning, you head your own division, you cook, sing, like to go fishing, I mean how are you single??
i guess i work too much to really meet people, he replied honestly.
yeah?? bet you smell really good too.
So much for candid reflections, then. i don't mean to brag but yeah that too, he responded, staring at the screen with no real enthusiasm.
you sure you don't have an alpha and pups that you're hiding? not that i give a shit lol, let's meet up
i might be bonded, it's a bit unclear right now. i shouldn't be. i mean i'm not ACTIVELY mated but maybe accidentally i am? and i mean even if i am then who cares right. like sometimes you are mated and don't know?
The guy unmatched him.
Baekhyun stared at the screen. Then poured himself another scotch. It was fine. Sometimes the past was just a little more present than he wanted it to be, that was all – and it'd been a tough year. A tough few years. He wasn't in his prime; that, he was certain of but he was an omega with a career he'd built carefully enough that nobody could dismiss him as someone's mate. He had his own apartment, his own money, his own name on the door downstairs. He had friends, routines, a life. He didn't need an alpha. He certainly didn't need that alpha. And he absolutely did not need to discover that some government database thought otherwise.
He went to bed, alone –
– and woke up knowing exactly where he was.
For one blessed second, Baekhyun lay perfectly still beneath the cool sheets, eyes closed, already reaching for consciousness. Then he inhaled. His eyes opened. There was no unfamiliar room. No strange ceiling. No warm body beside him. No alpha scent curled into the pillows. Nothing. Just his own apartment. His own bed. His own strawberry scent, faint and fresh in the expensive linen, exactly as it should be.
Baekhyun stared at the ceiling. Of course he knew where he was. He had lived here for years. He was home, wasn't he?
*
“Work’s great,” he told Kyungsoo and Jongin over dinner the following week. “Busy as ever, but the annual asset re-evaluation went smoothly.”
They were at the fried chicken place they’d all frequented since their university days that, although it was down a backstreet in Gwanak-gu, often had queues outside. Walking through the door to the scent of sizzling fat always pushed a sense of nostalgia onto Baekhyun, who became keenly aware of how long it had been since they had been carefree students. These days, as an omega well into adulthood, there was always something waiting for him: work, family expectations, mating ceremonies, the inevitable questions about his heat schedule and whether he had finally found a suitable alpha.
He tore off another piece of the chicken tiredly, having come straight from work at eight PM.
His two friends were looking at him with the same air of concern they’d surveyed him with since he had started working for his father, a whole five years ago now? Who even knew anymore, but Baekhyun had gotten used to it. Jongin and Kyungsoo worried, and Baekhyun worked.
“Hyung,” Jongin said, his alpha scent subdued into something almost mournful as he looked at him sympathetically. “Maybe you need a holiday? Didn’t you say you have weeks and weeks of leave saved up?”
“I mean, I do,” he admitted, his face scrunching up in disdain. “But no one actually uses all the leave they accumulate. It’d be selfish to just take time off. Besides, I hate travelling.”
Kyungsoo shrugged. “Then stay home and play video games.”
“Childish,” he said, motioning in the air with a drumstick, ignoring the endless hours he’d enthusiastically spent gaming when younger. “The video games, that is. Look, work is great. How’s the ceremony planning going?”
The omega gave Baekhyun an incredulous look but kindly allowed the deflection – Baekhyun’s schedule had been busy with mating ceremonies since he had passed the age of twenty-eight, but perhaps this one he was genuinely looking forward to. Baekhyun did not have many – or any – other friends who reached back a whole decade and more like Kyungsoo did, and Jongin too, by now.
Jongin and Kyungsoo were really investing in their mating ceremony: they’d booked the banquet hall of a five-star hotel by the river, spending a hell of a lot more than a traditional mating hall ceremony would cost. Jongin said that since they could finally mutually mate now, he was going to make a fuss about it. Kyungsoo giggled at this brightly, eyes scrunched up, lips in a heart-shaped smile – they had a glow about them these days, with the mating impending. After all, it was one thing to have their bond recognised; it was another to finally be able to stand before everyone they loved and exchange bites properly, neither of them having to pretend that only one of them could be the other's mate.
Baekhyun had been given a plus-one invite but had no one to bring.
Maybe life would be more joyous if he and Bogum hadn’t broken up – probably his most serious relationship in years. What had been not to like? The Jaguar that Bogum drove, the amazing steak that he cooked? The generous cock that, fine, Bogum perhaps had not quite known what to do with, but together they’d made significant improvements? But their relationship had been bland, even a year and a half into it: like unseasoned oatmeal, just like everything else seemed to be in life.
At least Bogum had never been particularly pushy about the whole alpha-and-omega thing. He’d respected Baekhyun’s blockers during heats, never tried to make a fuss about scenting or claiming, and had been perfectly happy to let their relationship remain a relationship rather than some grand march towards a mating bond. Perhaps that was part of the problem. Or perhaps it wasn’t. Because Baekhyun had wanted something more once. He just had never admitted it - not to Bogum, and certainly not to himself.
Sometimes, though, he still wondered if some part of him was waiting for someone to sweep him off his feet. How naive.
Baekhyun paid for their meal, insisting it was his treat. He was in better spirits by the time he headed home, too, until, by some cruel twist of luck, he ended up sitting opposite a young woman on the subway. She hadn’t presented yet, but that wasn’t what caught his attention. It was the book in her hands.
Tokyo After Hours: An Accidental Diary.
Her eyes were glued to the page. It couldn’t be that good, could it? Baekhyun stared at the author’s name on the cover, a bitter taste in his mouth.
Should Baekhyun lean across and say, ‘Hey, fun fact? That’s my mate.’
Hilarious, sure.
He’d considered bringing up his recent predicament involving Chanyeol with Kyungsoo and Jongin, but ultimately hadn’t. Just because he hadn’t spoken to Chanyeol in years didn’t mean his friends couldn’t see him during the man’s brief visits to South Korea. And, tactfully, they never mentioned those reunions either - at least not until Baekhyun forced it out of them.
That was how they had awkwardly coexisted with the subject for years: Baekhyun pretending he didn’t care and his friends pretending there was nothing to tell him.
At least, that was what he’d told himself.
He managed to push the whole thing out of his mind until, three days later, he fled a contract negotiation meeting and returned to his office. As he settled back at his desk, he decided to check his emails and, ah, finally! He had been sent the documents he’d asked for! Well, this would clear it right up, this –
The first attachment was a copy of his resident register, which listed him as mated.
Alpha Mate: Park Chanyeol.
His stomach dropped.
What in the living…?
The second PDF explained why the Republic of South Korea was under this delusion: it was a scan of a certificate of mutual mating from Kamigoto, all in Japanese, from 14 June 2014. Signed by himself and Park Chanyeol.
He stared at the scan, a hollow ache in his guts: he hadn’t seen this piece of paper in years.
The loud noise of a club now echoed in his ears, the flashing lights blinding him, the warmth of Chanyeol’s large hand squeezing his, the taste of cheap beer on his tongue – on Chanyeol’s tongue. The laughter, the excitement…the goddamn Yutaka Ozaki impersonator in the temple!
And underneath all of it, something else.
Chanyeol’s scent.
Warm and deep, clinging to Baekhyun’s clothes long after they’d left the temple. Baekhyun remembered waking the next morning with his own omega still humming pleasantly beneath his skin, his body apparently far more convinced by the mating than his brain had been.
Well of course a document like this might suggest to the uneducated that Baekhyun was mated when truly he was not! What a ridiculous mix-up!
He called in the newbie of their legal team and Kim Junmyeon appeared five minutes later with a nervous air to him, wearing a smart white dress shirt, burgundy tie and black trousers, sticking to their dress code politely – even if the dress shirt looked ready to burst from the omega's running addiction.
“Ah, Kim Junmyeon-ssi, please sit down,” he said, and the omega obeyed with a polite nod, slightly overgrown black hair tucked neatly behind his ears. Baekhyun then hesitated, wondering how to word it as he sat behind his desk: wondering how to ensure the partners, let alone his father, never heard of this error in the files.
“I’ve called you in for something confidential,” he said at length, motioning for Junmyeon to put away his pen and notepad.
Junmyeon blinked owlishly but did so.
Baekhyun sucked in a breath, formed his words, then said, “It’s a… a sensitive topic, about someone working here, so you cannot repeat what I tell you outside of this room. Is that understood?”
Junmyeon looked scared but nodded.
Baekhyun exhaled. “Okay, good. Excellent. Well, you see, we have a colleague in a bit of trouble. It turns out that he got mated in Kamigoto years ago, and now the state of Korea lists him as such.”
“What?” Junmyeon frowned. “They. Hang on, if… if a colleague got mated in Japan, they’re mated here too. That’s how it works.”
Baekhyun sucked in a breath, suddenly unsure whether Junmyeon had somehow picked up on his private life - and just how disgracefully he behaved as an omega. It was an open secret around the company these days, much to his father’s enduring annoyance. The old man had eventually come around, though. He’d even seemed approving of Bogum: a corporate lawyer with a big yacht and, apparently, all the right credentials. A Sagittarius, too. Baekhyun should have known from the very beginning that it was doomed.
When that fell through, his father had asked whether he needed to be set up with the alpha son of Samsung’s vice chairman. A real catch, apparently. And, really, the rumours about the nineteen-year-old’s clubbing lifestyle and drug habits were probably exaggerated. Baekhyun was not that desperate for company. Dear God.
Baekhyun pushed all of that aside, instead finding himself thinking about how Junmyeon had worn a tie last Thursday that was far better than the one he had on today, and said, “This colleague bit an alpha. Understand? In Japan, years before South Korea had legally recognised mutual mating.”
“Ah, I see!” Junmyeon nodded, back on track – not that shocked, thankfully. “My aunt and her mate did that, as well – exchanged mating bites in Hawaii! It was a wonderful ceremony!”
“Yes, precisely!” he said, relieved. “Yes, good for them, you understand…excellent! So it was a symbolic mating, not legally binding under South Korean law! You understand, wonderful.”
“A lot of people did that,” Junmyeon said with a well-meaning smile. “I think it’s nice people did, even if it wasn’t legally recognised back then…that for them it was real anyway.”
“Ah, no, this one wasn’t real! No, no,” he said quickly, visibly disturbed. “It was just the kind of mating you got when you were in Kamigoto with your new alpha, and he was all tall and cute, and you were twenty-two and an idiot, and he had these cute dimples, deep as the ocean, and there was a temple right there, just a few blocks from the club…”
Baekhyun stared at the large painting on his office wall, lost in a memory: the painted waves were the colour of the bowtie on Chanyeol when he’d taken Baekhyun’s hands in his and looked at him so very fondly and firmly and with such heavy meaning, before leaning down and biting into his neck.
The alpha’s teeth had broken the skin.
Baekhyun remembered the sting, the warmth spreading over his neck, and then the strange, overwhelming rush that had gone through his entire body when Chanyeol had pulled back and looked at him as though he had just given him something precious.
“My omega,” Chanyeol had called him.
And Baekhyun, stupidly, had done the same thing too.
For a brief, ridiculous moment, the mating bond had felt real.
Not legally real, obviously. That had been the whole point. In South Korea, an omega could be marked by an alpha, but an omega couldn’t legally mark an alpha in return. The mutual exchange of mating bites simply wasn’t recognised as a valid mating bond. It was one of those archaic rules everyone knew about, and somehow, everyone had become so accustomed to it that hardly anyone thought about what it actually meant anymore.
But Kamigoto was different. Kamigoto had let them do it.
So they had.
Baekhyun had bitten Chanyeol, Chanyeol had bitten him, and for one stupid, drunken, exhilarating night, they had been able to pretend that the rules did not exist.
The ceremony was symbolic. The paperwork was meaningless back home. Whatever bond had formed between them was something Baekhyun could simply ignore if they went their separate ways.
Baekhyun snapped out of it.
“And…and I digress, Junmyeon-ssi, but the point is that such mutual matings are not legally binding in South Korea now because they weren’t then either.”
“Um,” Junmyeon said, looking serious. “I’m afraid they are.”
Baekhyun stared at their legal advisor.
“What.”
Junmyeon tugged at his collar, visibly uneasy. “When the government, um, legalised mutual mating at the beginning of the year, they made the law retrospective. So, by definition, it recognises any existing mating bonds that South Korean citizens had formed in places where an omega could legally mark their alpha.”
He hesitated.
“So, then, our colleague is officially bonded. To, uh, his alpha mate...as of the first of January this year.”
Baekhyun was still staring.
“Wha…?”
Junmyeon perked up. “Unless they formally broke the bond?”
“But why would they break the bond!” Baekhyun cried, his hands thrashing wildly through the air. “It was a sham mating ceremony! The legal part was a sham! How was anyone supposed to know they’d recognise the rest of it?! Shouldn’t they have said that somewhere if they were going to recognise the other parts too?!”
“They did...” Junmyeon said timidly.
“Did they?! I didn’t see it!” Baekhyun barked. He’d paid very little attention to the mutual mating bill to begin with. Bogum had been dropping increasingly obvious hints at the time, and Baekhyun had been far too occupied with deciding that he needed to end things quickly to bother reading the finer points of a piece of legislation.
He’d been busy with other things as well. Work, for example, and living his life. He was also very tied up with taking blockers whenever his heats came around and pointedly refusing to think about the fact that, technically, somewhere out there, an alpha was still biologically bonded to him because of one stupid night twelve years ago.
Except now....
Now it wasn’t just biological. The law recognised it. Twelve years later, that stupid night had somehow become legally real.
“Why would they not call… call our colleague to say so!”
Junmyeon frowned. “Uh, if our colleague does not wish to remain mated, he can file for a formal bond break, of course!”
Junmyeon was trying to be helpful, but Baekhyun was freaking out.
“I…You” – deep breaths, deep breaths – “need to send me the exact legislation on this ASAP, our colleague needs it! And I need the bond broken! The colleague! He needs the bond broken! So I need you to draft those formal papers now, right now!” Baekhyun tapped at his desk furiously.
Junmyeon stared at Baekhyun with his mouth hanging open, and Baekhyun nearly lost it.
“Go, go! Dash, Junmyeon-ssi. An unmating won’t write itself!”
Junmyeon fled his office like a frightened hare, but twenty minutes later had emailed him a copy-paste of the legislation he’d referred to.
Baekhyun looked it up and read it once – twice.
And it turned out that, for nine months, he had been legally mated without the faintest idea.
Worse, apparently, the mating ceremony itself had been recognised alongside the mutual mating bond. Which meant that, according to every government database that mattered, Baekhyun was not merely some omega who had once gotten drunk and exchanged a couple of symbolic bites with a handsome alpha in Kamigoto.
No.
He was Park Chanyeol’s mate.
He noted some thoughts on this:
- He was mated.
- To his ex Chanyeol.
- Who was also his mate?
- And his mate had technically been legally attached to him for nine months.
- For nine months, he had apparently been someone’s omega without knowing it.
- What.
- The.
- Oh fucking shit fuck shit fuck hell shit.
- Shit shit SHIT!
*
Now, Baekhyun didn’t object to being mated as such! Mating was perfectly fine if you liked that sort of thing! It was just that he hadn’t seen his… mate… in seven years.
He had also, apparently, rather spectacularly betrayed the bond. And Chanyeol had betrayed it too!
Honestly, was this supposed to be funny?
Baekhyun struggled to find the humour in it. It was as if someone had punched the air out of his lungs, and he was furious with his twenty-two-year-old self, and with Chanyeol too, for sauntering into that temple in Kamigoto like absolute dickheads. They had never considered formally breaking the bond because why would they? Baekhyun had assumed their symbolic mating had ceased to exist just as their relationship had, on the day Chanyeol moved to Osaka without him, all those years ago.
Apparently, not.
But anger didn’t solve the current problem – and Baekhyun was a man of action, the kind who didn’t stall when he discovered he was a little bit mated to his ex-alpha. Within days, he had figured out how to process an uncontested bond break, which their seven-year separation made considerably easier. Junmyeon had given him a draft of all the paperwork, explained what he needed to fill in, and what further documents their “colleague” would need to provide.
Baekhyun was ready to be unmated!
He was just missing one thing.
Park Chanyeol.
The author of bestselling fiction, including A Sordid Winter and Parcels for Caretaker Park, and non-fiction like The Unassuming Flower: A Cultural History of Bonsai Trees, A Thousand Fists: Korean History Through Marginalised Voices, and even the autobiographical memoir, Tokyo after Hours: An Accidental Diary.
Because, alas, Baekhyun could not unmate Park Chanyeol without the alpha knowing about it.
He’d have to contact Chanyeol in Tokyo. Maybe Chanyeol had a PA who could break the news?
“Oh, but he’s actually in New Zealand now,” Jongin told him over the phone, which was news to Baekhyun. “Yeah, he’s writing his new book somewhere with peace, rented a house out there or something.”
“Oh?” Baekhyun asked, his throat tightening.
But Chanyeol had been relatively settled in Tokyo, hadn’t he? With a nice Japanese alpha…who presumably had absolutely no idea that Chanyeol was already mated.
Fuck. What a mess!
“Look, please don’t ask me why,” he said slowly, “but I need to get in touch with him. It’s, uh, well. It’s a practical matter. Personal.”
There was a pause on the line.
Then, “Hyung, are…Hyung, are you okay? Are you sick?” Jongin sounded alarmed. “Hang on, we’re coming over, I’m—”
“It’s not an STI, and I don’t have cancer!” he hurried to say.
He understood Jongin’s concern: he didn’t talk about Chanyeol and had never asked after him in all this time. Why now, all of a sudden?
“I just need Chanyeol to co-sign some paperwork for some stuff from…from back when we were, uh. Living together. That’s all. We made some investments, and now there are dividends.”
Jongin sounded disbelieving. “You two invested some money? We were all broke as hell back then, especially the two of you. Like, I still don’t know how you two fit in that tiny studio together.”
“Surprise,” he chuckled awkwardly. “The early bird catches the Won.”
Jongin sounded doubtful but, thankfully, gave him an address for a town in New Zealand that he’d never heard of.
Baekhyun finished the call with, “I’m just going to pass the details on to my financial advisor.”
But in actuality, Baekhyun signed himself off work, unexpectedly, and bought flights to Christchurch.
He wanted this done with as little fuss as possible, and without anyone finding out – because if his parents caught whiff that their “doomed to being unmated forever” son had been mated all this time to that russet-haired journalism major who had somehow turned into one of South Korea’s most prolific authors, then…the world would explode?
Implode?
Baekhyun was not sure and did not care to find out.
“I’m going to a nice spa resort in Thailand,” he blatantly lied to Kyungsoo when they met up for coffee a few days later. “I’ve earned a break from work…and you guys are right, I think I’m close to burning out. I have to take care of myself now that I’m approaching, uh, my mid-thirties.”
He almost winced saying it.
“You’re going alone?” Kyungsoo asked, and Baekhyun wasn’t sure what Kyungsoo was implying.
Kyungsoo’s eyes widened.
“Oh, is it like a… resort resort?” Kyungsoo made a vague wanking gesture. “You gotta be careful not to, you know.”
Baekhyun reeled.
“Did Jongin tell you I have an STI? Because I don’t!”
His love life had been rather non-existent as of late – he wasn’t sure why everyone thought he’d had time to be catching anything! But Kyungsoo wished him a good trip and said he definitely had earned a break.
And so, having covered his bases and turned on an Out of Office reply, Baekhyun boarded a flight heading south, south, south.
*
New Zealand was absurdly far away: the flight there was so much longer than a flight to Tokyo. Baekhyun pondered this furiously, trying to piece together world geography, as he emerged from Christchurch Airport into cool, crisp air. He felt mildly surreal, as one did when boarding a plane and suddenly finding oneself on the other side of the world. The world shrank yet expanded at the same time: apart from the handful of Asian countries that he travelled to for work, Baekhyun had only been to Japan once, and to Paris as a child. He was a homebody: give him Seoul forever, for the rest of his life, and he would be content.
This clearly could not be said of globetrotter Park Chanyeol, who had always talked of travel: a few months in Singapore, then swing by London, go to Marseilles for the summer…that appeared to be the life Chanyeol had and Baekhyun felt alienated by the thought. And while it was summer in Korea, New Zealand was in the midst of winter. No, Baekhyun did not understand how planet Earth worked at all.
He rented a black Toyota SUV, checked out the map on his phone, and started driving. Chanyeol was on the other side of the South Island completely and Baekhyun couldn’t understand why Chanyeol had chosen such a remote place to stay – yet, as he drove towards the Southern Alps in the distance, green fields all around him, the towns cute and picturesque and sheep on the pastures by the roadsides, he admitted that this seemed like a good place to get some quiet and tranquillity for a writing project.
Probably even better if you were an alpha who liked disappearing into the wilderness for months at a time.
Baekhyun had always thought Chanyeol’s alpha suited him rather well: restless, territorial in that irritatingly subtle way, forever wanting to roam somewhere new and then make himself comfortable there as though the entire world had been waiting for him. Even at twenty-one, Chanyeol had never seemed capable of sitting still.
Baekhyun, meanwhile, was an omega who liked knowing exactly where his coffee was going to come from every morning.
He turned on music, refusing to think about where he was going – and who he was heading to meet, and especially why. As evening began to fall, he found a motel in a lakeside town and stumbled through booking a room in unrehearsed English, but the owners were friendly and even knew a few Korean phrases, and he got a nice double room upstairs.
Even so, he struggled to sleep, staring at the ceiling with restless sighs, trying to relax. He was so used to the office life, the commute after work, the habit of getting out his suit for the next day, that being abroad in a comfy jumper and old jeans while trying to rectify the mistakes of his youth felt like an out-of-body experience. He felt guilty about all the work he wasn’t doing, all the projects and decisions that now had to wait for his return, about his father’s displeased “oh I see” when he’d called to say he’d be out of the country for a while.
And, annoyingly, his omega was not helping.
Baekhyun had spent seven years keeping his former alpha out of his thoughts, and now merely knowing he was somewhere in this country had apparently been enough to wake up every stupid instinct he’d spent years suppressing. Nothing dramatic, obviously. No ridiculous mystical pull across the ocean. He was a grown man, not some lovesick omega in a romance novel.
Just a bizarre awareness beneath his skin. Which was, frankly, much worse.
Yet he had good reasons, and he clung to that as he fell asleep.
When he woke up, it was the day he was going to see Chanyeol for the first time in years. Not only that, he had to tell Chanyeol that they were, well, mated.
He groaned, wondering if he could stay in bed longer still and, like, never move.
Yet he set out, after a hearty breakfast of eggs and toast – although what he really wanted was some ramen. And yes, he knew that on the outside it looked insane that he was halfway across the world to hunt down his ex like a goddamn stalker, without calling Chanyeol to explain, but there were reasons why he and Chanyeol had not spoken in years.
No, this was best done in person so that Chanyeol couldn’t avoid him – and it was more discreet, as well. Besides, how exactly was he supposed to explain this over the phone?
Hello, Chanyeol-ah! Long time no speak! Remember that time we got drunk in Kamigoto and bit each other and then spent the subsequent years pretending it had never happened? Great news! Turns out we’re legally bonded now!
No.
Absolutely not.
But, dear god, why was Chanyeol lurking up god's backside?
Excuse his language, but Baekhyun was driving along a narrow road leading up through the mountains, dark, heavy clouds looming over him. The motel owners had warned him of bad weather, but thankfully he didn’t get rained on as he navigated the (admittedly breathtaking) mountain pass that was dotted with piles of snow – driving on the wrong side of the road to boot.
He finally made it to Haast in the early afternoon: a small township of not much on the West Coast. There was a petrol station with a small grocery shop, a tiny post office, and a motel, but that appeared to be it.
Had Jongin tricked him? Had he come to this minuscule village for absolutely nothing?
Feeling on edge, he parked the car amidst campervans outside the motel and headed to the small café next to the motel reception that catered to hikers. They had places like these in South Korea, too: remote towns that lived on tourism and not much else. And, because it was winter, the tourists were few except for a loud gang of unpresented Taiwanese teenagers on some kind of survival hiking trip.
Thankfully, the kids were filing back onto a bus, excited to go on their adventures.
As Baekhyun’s phone was unable to pinpoint Chanyeol’s exact address, he bought a map. The black-bearded alpha, who was also the motel owner, drew an X at the end of a dirt road a short drive out of town.
“Are you visiting Chanyeol?” he beamed, friendly, and Baekhyun flinched. “He didn’t tell me he was expecting anyone!”
God, he was in the right place. How he wished he wasn’t.
“Surprise visit,” Baekhyun explained awkwardly.
The man said something more – about the weather, motioning at the skies – and Baekhyun nodded, yes, fine, rain was expected, and the wind was picking up.
Baekhyun got himself a room at the motel for the night: he wasn’t sure how long it’d take to break the news to Chanyeol and then get Chanyeol to sign the papers, for which they needed two witnesses anyway. The whole ordeal seemed like a lot to take after years of silence, and Baekhyun nervously huffed around the small motel room with a single bed.
He showered quickly and calmed his nerves – or tried to.
He checked the scent-blocker around his neck twice.
It was a habit, really. Omegas who worked in corporate environments learned quickly to be careful about scent: perfume, blockers, suppressants, whatever kept the office from becoming a hormonal nightmare every time somebody’s cycle decided to make an appearance. Baekhyun had worn blockers so routinely for years that he barely noticed them anymore.
Today, however, he was suddenly very aware of them.
He was going to see Chanyeol.
His alpha. His ex-alpha. His legally recognised alpha mate, apparently.
Fuck.
Chanyeol had always been such a city kid – Seoul, Osaka, London, Tokyo… Chanyeol loved the crowded markets, the mix of languages – the “melting pot”, as he’d always enthused – so finding Chanyeol in a remote New Zealand town was confusing.
He’d imagined Chanyeol in Tokyo, of course: in the park by Tokyo Tower, hand in hand with that pretty Japanese alpha, writing his books and giving the occasional Korean interview, but thinking back to Seoul, little.
Certainly not thinking of him at all.
And Baekhyun, well, he’d spent two years in military service after their break-up, after which he’d joined his father’s firm and started climbing up the ranks.
Four promotions in five years. What else was life for except work? An endless task of building up capital from paycheck to paycheck: two years until a mortgage, a year until a car…an endless litany of purchases that somehow made sense of living for work. Before he knew it, he’d be forty or fifty and comfortably on the property ladder, and then what?
Ah, save up for retirement, of course! An endless scramble for money and then you died.
He frowned: these thoughts were not his own – he liked work, enjoyed the effort of it! Work gave life value! Measured a true man!
God, these other thoughts were Chanyeol’s: idealistic, spoken by a twenty-one-year-old who of course thought he knew so much more than the rest of the world combined.
And, annoyingly, some of them had stuck.
Well, perhaps not even Chanyeol had expected to find himself living in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand.
Baekhyun pulled on a fresh blue jumper and tight jeans, blow-dried his hair, and – with the papers in his messenger bag – got back into his SUV and followed the marked map further into town and then out of it: the tarmac road changing into a dirt track, crossing wide plains before entering the surrounding forest.
But, as the motel owner had explained and Baekhyun had just about understood, there were no other houses along this track, and so the road curved up and finally narrowed around a bend, ending outside a large and expensive-looking wooden cabin.
It was elevated on a hillside, with huge windows and a wide deck surrounding it, with steps leading up to the decking.
A bike was resting against the deck steps next to a stack of firewood, and Baekhyun exited the car as his breath rose in the air, birdsong echoing in the trees.
It was peaceful. Beautiful even.
The ground scrunched under his feet.
The elevation from the deck gave a view far around the cabin, out over the trees and grassy lowlands, while off in the distance the Southern Alps broke the view. Baekhyun had spent years staring at the high-rise buildings of Seoul each night – he blinked, stunned that not a single house, no sign of human habitation or construction, was in sight from where he stood.
Shoes lay abandoned by the main door: muddy wellingtons, dirty hiking boots – discarded, hastily kicked off, and Baekhyun recognised the sight with a heavy heart.
Of course.
Even the shoes were Chanyeol.
He wasn’t ready.
Ha. How funny was that?
He absently tugged at the chain on his chest, for comfort as he often did, trying to calm down. He had flown halfway across the world to see Chanyeol again, and here he was: still not ready.
The chain was cool beneath his fingers.
His omega had always liked the little ritual of touching it when he was nervous, something to ground himself with. Today, it felt almost absurdly inadequate.
But he’d never been ready when it came to Chanyeol.
Wasn’t that why he’d stayed away all those years, turning down Kyungsoo’s early attempts at “Hey, Chanyeol will be in Seoul next month. You could come for dinner with us… for old times’ sake, you know…” He couldn’t do it. Not after their lone encounter at Kyungsoo’s birthday party had made it painfully obvious that they resented each other now. He couldn’t face Chanyeol, who already had his first two books out by then and a new beta in Osaka, and no.
Seeing Chanyeol was not something he could endure. It’d been too raw, then. Throw in a year, then another, then another – let the scab grow thicker and thicker.
Pull it off seven years later.
See what bleeds.
The sun was setting, and Baekhyun accepted his fate solemnly.
Get in and get out – keep your head on.
Don’t let Chanyeol distract you with all of his big words and wild philosophies! Don’t fall for the dimpled smile and scrunched-up nose!
Stay focused!
Chanyeol’s not that impressive, for god’s sake – remember when he ruined the frying pan trying to cook an egg?
But the memory was tinged with nostalgia, of the two of them flailing in the kitchenette as the pan emitted smoke and the alarm blared.
And, for one horrible second, Baekhyun remembered the same kitchen from another angle: Chanyeol standing behind him, chin resting on his shoulder, scent warm around him, both of them still so young and stupid and completely convinced that biting each other meant something they could control.
He pushed it aside. And knocked.
There was no response.
He knocked again – and the door swung gently inwards, not even locked.
He hesitated before he stepped inside, almost tripping on a further pile of shoes by the door. He pushed his own shoes off, looking around the large open-plan living area that had enormous wall-length windows, intended to maximise views of the deck and the wilderness outside.
All the furniture was wooden yet modern, evoking simplicity but wealth also. A large fireplace stood in the back, full bookcases near it.
The floor beneath his socked feet was warm, and a radio was playing classical music quietly somewhere.
“Hello?” he called out, unbuttoning his long beige coat.
Then he called out to someone he had lost years ago:
“Chanyeol-ah?”
After all, what was one more “Chanyeol-ah” to the thousands of his youth?
No response.
The kitchen was part of the open-plan living room, with a random collection of discarded, half-finished coffee cups on the kitchen island. Baekhyun knew those too. Random stacks of papers lay here and there: on the couch, on the armchair, on the coffee table, with chewed-up pens.
The sight was eerily familiar and painful.
Guess not everything changed.
He followed the sound of the music: maybe Bach or one of those guys – Baekhyun had never bothered learning who was who. But Chanyeol had always enjoyed writing to that music, hunched over his laptop, russet hair soothing like coffee, typing away furiously, eyebrows knitted together in concentration and eyes shining bright with his vision.
And although Chanyeol no longer had chapped russet hair but longer brown locks, and although he was no longer sitting on their sofa-bed in a tiny Doksan-dong studio but instead at a large pine desk in a spacious study overlooking grand mountain views - despite all those differences, some things had remained the same. Chanyeol was still listening to classical music, hunched over his desk, typing away furiously, his eyebrows knitted together and his bright eyes fixed intently on the laptop screen.
And Baekhyun stood in the now-open doorway, almost seven years after they had parted, with only one unhappy chance encounter since.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Chanyeol looked up from the screen. His eyes widened and Baekhyun felt something inside him go very, very still.
Not his heart, obviously. His heart was perfectly normal. His omega, however, had apparently just stirred.
Baekhyun hated him. He hated his omega. He hated Kamigoto. He hated mutual mating laws. He hated New Zealand. He hated the entire concept of having a body that apparently remembered things his brain had spent seven years trying to forget. Most of all, he hated that Chanyeol was looking at him exactly the way he remembered.
Baekhyun let a small, saddened smile form on his lips. “Hi, Yeollie.”