The Wedding He Was Never Meant to Attend

Baek Jeongha was like a wound that would never heal for Ahn Seonwoo.
He possessed a delicate appearance and pheromones with a scent so dazzling any alpha would be forced to look back at least once.
Seonwoo, who had everything most omegas envied, had never clung to any alpha.
Except for Baek Jeongha.

“Looking at your face… it’s been a while.”
That very Baek Jeongha.
No matter how much Ahn Seonwoo clung and clung again, he was the one who never gave even a grain of affection and remained only cold.
That Baek Jeongha was standing next to Seo Haeyoon.
And he was doing it affectionately, with an arm around Haeyoon’s shoulder.

With a face full of tenderness directed at another person, Baek Jeongha spoke.
“You probably didn’t know.
Actually, Haeyoon and I are seeing each other.”

Seonwoo’s pupils dilated with shock.
The moments when he had triumphantly stolen Haeyoon’s long-time lover flashed before his eyes like a panorama.
He had taken everything Haeyoon had because he wanted to hurt Seo Haeyoon, who was naive enough to mistakenly think they were real friends.
He betrayed him, insulted him, and mercilessly stabbed him in the heart.
Because he knew Seo Haeyoon wouldn’t be able to do anything.
He knew that Haeyoon, foolishly docile to a fault, would back down without even putting up a proper fight.
So Ahn Seonwoo had rolled around with Haeyoon’s lover to his heart’s content and flauntingly carried out a marriage with him.

But here, at this beautiful wedding where that fool had no business interfering.
Seo Haeyoon had come.
And with Baek Jeongha, the one Seonwoo had loved and obsessed over so desperately.

“Seo Haeyoon, you…
How dare you do this to me!!”
Seonwoo’s sharp voice echoed through the dressing room prepared for the groom.
This was a retaliation from Seo Haeyoon that Ahn Seonwoo had never anticipated in the slightest.

* * * *

“What the hell did you just say?”
“You, you didn’t know about you two…?”
At Woojin’s sharp reaction, Insoo, who had delivered the news, looked embarrassed.
It was too late for regrets about having said something unnecessary.

“Who…
Who’s doing what with whom?”
Woojin asked on behalf of Haeyoon, who was completely frozen.
Insoo let out a sigh as if in a bind and roughly ran his hands through his hair.
If only they had just exchanged brief greetings when they happened to run into each other and parted ways.
He had gotten himself into this mess by adding unnecessary words.
Feeling sorry for Haeyoon, who looked like he’d lost half his weight, he had tried to comfort him and ended up misspeaking without realizing it.
Assuming Haeyoon must already know, since rumors were already swirling noisily among their college classmates, had been the fatal mistake.

“Ugh, well.
Anyway, you’d have found out soon enough, so.”
However, Insoo soon adopted a ‘what will be, will be’ mindset.
Literally, with everyone’s connections intertwined like this, what was the point in hiding things now?
Haeyoon would have found out soon enough regardless.
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to say it again directly in front of Haeyoon, who had turned to stone, so Insoo looked at Woojin and spoke.

“Oh Jaeyeol and Ahn Seonwoo are getting married, they say.”
“…….”
“They’re already sending out invitations, seems they set the date in a hurry.
They’re making such a big fuss about it, so I naturally thought…
you guys knew too…
Sorry, man.”

Even if it was news they’d eventually hear, it was still an uncomfortable story to deliver personally.
How could it not be?
The Seo Haeyoon sitting there, face pale and unable to speak, was the very person who had dated Oh Jaeyeol for nearly ten years until just a few months ago.
He was also the decade-long friend of Ahn Seonwoo, the one marrying Oh Jaeyeol.

“Those goddamn bastards…!”
A curse finally burst from Woojin’s mouth, something he rarely did.
It might not compare to how Haeyoon felt, but this was shocking news for Woojin too.
Oh Jaeyeol and Ahn Seonwoo had also been Woojin’s friends throughout college.

“Woojin…”
At that moment, Insoo tapped Woojin’s arm.
Turning his gaze, he saw Insoo making eye gestures toward Haeyoon.
Woojin finally realized this wasn’t the time for his own reaction.
The person most in shock right now wasn’t him, but Haeyoon.

“…Right, thanks.
Let’s get a meal sometime.”
“Thanks, my foot…
Sure, get in touch.”
Woojin quickly wrapped things up with Insoo and looked over at Haeyoon, who had been frozen and speechless all this while.

“Haeyoon, are you okay?”
Haeyoon blinked slowly without answering.
It hardly felt real.
The floor seemed to sway, and his body felt like it was floating, untethered from gravity.
Oh Jaeyeol, Ahn Seonwoo, marriage…
Words that seemed utterly impossible to belong together kept surfacing and disappearing in his mind.
When he found out that Jaeyeol and Seonwoo had been secretly seeing each other, he thought nothing could be more shocking than that.
But even though they were already broken up, the news of their marriage struck him as a completely new kind of blow.

“I…
Woojin, sorry, but I…
want to sit down…”
Haeyoon managed to force the words out.
He felt like he’d forgotten how to breathe.

“Yeah.
Let’s go sit inside somewhere for a bit.”
Woojin hurriedly guided Haeyoon into a nearby cafe.
They had been on their way to a planned meeting spot, but that didn’t matter now.
Led by Woojin’s hand, walking a path he couldn’t even see clearly, Haeyoon felt the pain of a certain day—a pain he thought he had finally escaped—rise vividly once more.
Pus began to ooze again from a wound he thought had somewhat healed.

* * * *

Haeyoon had fallen for Jaeyeol at first sight.
Some might think that, being just a high school student, he had naively attached a dramatic name to those feelings without question.
But even looking back on that moment with age, the conclusion didn’t change much.
Seo Haeyoon had fallen for Oh Jaeyeol at first sight.

Haeyoon was a boy far removed from playing musical instruments.
It wasn’t so much a lack of interest as a lack of talent.
Even though he enjoyed listening to classical music, unusual for his age, his own attempts at playing were a mess.
He had tried learning piano and violin, but he was terribly untalented, and his skills never improved.
Instead, Haeyoon had been good at drawing since childhood.
Later, his friends would often say it seemed he had poured all his artistic talent into painting.
It wasn’t particularly comforting.

At some point, Haeyoon intentionally distanced himself from instruments.
Perhaps it was a childish sense of rebellion.
Since he couldn’t do it, it felt unfair to show one-sided interest, so he pretended not to care even more.

Then one day.
Haeyoon, a high school freshman, happened to hear piano music from a hallway he was passing by.
He was just walking past the music room.
The clean, clear piano melody instantly captured Haeyoon’s attention.
As if entranced, Haeyoon approached the music room and pressed his face against the small window to peer inside.
A boy wearing the same uniform as Haeyoon was sitting in front of the piano.
He seemed completely focused on his playing, and as if he didn’t need sheet music, he sometimes closed his eyes.

Haeyoon grew impatient.
Because the piano was placed diagonally facing the door, he couldn’t see the hands on the keys.
Haeyoon was curious about those hands.
He wanted to know if they were the slender, long-fingered, pale-skinned hands one typically imagines when thinking of a skilled pianist.
He couldn’t stand the curiosity.

Even though the other person was a complete stranger, Haeyoon opened the door that day and carefully went inside.
It was the first time Haeyoon, who was very shy, had mustered that much courage to approach someone.
Perhaps it was precisely because it was an unfamiliar face.
The anxiety that if he missed this chance, he would never meet him again, spurred Haeyoon into action.

That day, Haeyoon was convinced he sensed a certain scent from Jaeyeol.
Seo Haeyoon was a Beta, so he shouldn’t have been able to sense a manifestor’s pheromones.
But in that moment, he was clearly intoxicated by an intense fragrance that shook his very body and soul.
Haeyoon always thought afterwards that the pheromones Alphas and Omegas spoke of couldn’t be much different from the sensation he felt that day.

The name of the boy who played that beautiful, soul-cleansing piano melody was Oh Jaeyeol.
He was a year older than Haeyoon and said he played piano as a hobby.
His hands were thicker, blunter, and even darker than expected, but it didn’t matter.
Haeyoon had fallen helplessly in love with a boy who possessed a talent he himself lacked.
Haeyoon believed with unshakable conviction that their first meeting was destiny, written in the stars.
That is, until he saw that boy rolling around with his decade-long best friend.

* * * *

“Aren’t they just f*cking insane?”
Sumin, who had downed nearly half her glass of liquor, yelled out loud and then continued muttering curses, her anger not subsiding.
The person actually involved, Haeyoon, just kept blinking, unable to process it, while everyone around him was in an uproar.
Sumin’s twin sister, Sua, quickly chimed in.

“Damn bastards, we should’ve grabbed them by the hair right there in the street and humiliated them back then.”
“Why did we hold back?”
“Should we go even now?
Go and raise some f*cking hell?”

“Hey, quiet down a bit.”
It was Woojin who calmed the heated atmosphere.
Sumin, about to retort ‘Quiet down, my ass!’, shut her mouth after seeing Woojin subtly gesture toward Haeyoon.
Haeyoon was probably the most shocked person here right now; they were being too loud.
While Sumin, feeling stifled, downed the remaining half of her liquor in one shot, Woojin carefully spoke to Haeyoon.

“Haeyoon, are you okay?”
“Huh?
Ah, huh…?
Sorry.
What did you say?”
It was obvious to anyone he was not okay.
Woojin made a somber face, and Sua let out a sigh.

Honestly, who could be okay with this?
It had only been three months since he broke up with his ex-lover, whom he’d considered marrying, after that ex and his actual decade-long best friend had an affair behind his back.
And now, as if that wasn’t enough, those two were getting married.
No matter how easygoing a person’s personality is, no one can remain detached from something like this.