TIN 24

“…”

My mind went completely blank. It felt as if time had stopped, and I couldn’t sense anything at all—not the gaze looking down on me, not the voice I had just heard, not even the water touching my body.

“What do you…”

“I’ve felt something was off from the beginning.”

I managed to open my mouth, but couldn’t finish the sentence. Joo Do-hwa spoke softly as if I had used informal speech with him all along.

“You’re too pretty to be a Beta.”

I had heard that line countless times, but with Joo Do-hwa being the one saying it, I felt tense. The back of my neck chilled, as if all my secrets had been exposed for all to see.

“But the more I look, the stranger it gets.”

He smiled kindly, rolling his eyes to carefully examine my face. His gaze lingered, traveling from my eyes to my nose, then to my lips.

“Okay, so you can do math. And you seem to have a decent mind, you even had the leisure to read fairy tales when you were young…And now you even know how to swim.”

My reflection was visible in his clear eyes. With each remark he made, the conversations we had shared started flashing one by one in my mind.

Joo Do-hwa curled his lips into a small whisper.

“That’s why I thought…”

“…”

“Ah, even if you’re not an Omega, you’ve grown rather beautifully.”

‘Grown beautifully,’ really? That was hardly something a young master should be saying.

“Thinking this far, it gets even stranger. Why would someone like you be in a place like that?”

The water droplets clinging to my curly hair fell onto my face. Joo Do-hwa gently wiped my cheek with his hand.

“You see, I did contact Oceans.”

“…”

“But of all times, when I was there, not somewhere else, you were getting your face hit—does that make any sense?”

“…Ah.”

I couldn’t respond to that because the fingers that had been caressing my cheek were now trailing down to my neck. Passing my chin and following the curve of my neck, they reached my shoulder. The light touch felt like feathers, but there was no way I could ignore it.

“And yet, your body has no scars at all.”

“Just step back and…”

“Do you know what I’m thinking right now?”

Suddenly, he gripped my shoulder. Somewhere along the way, the air had become thick with his cloying pheromones. The slowly rising scent was blurring all my thoughts.

“Who made you do this?”

I had no chance to answer the subtly thrown question before he asked again, his smile unwavering.

“Was it my father who sent you?”

“…”

A face suddenly flashed in my mind. The ‘father’ Joo Do-hwa referred to was the chairman of the 4HAE Group, the highest authority in this country.

“What did my father say?”

‘Listen well to what I say.’

The voice I heard as a child was buzzing in my ear. I had only met him once, but I could never forget that face—the deeply shadowed eyes, the arrogant gaze, the sensation of being watched by those eyes tinged with gold.

‘You’re going to feed this to Joo Do-hwa, understand?’

“What did he tell you about me?”

“…”

His lips moved, but no words came out of his frozen throat. Even though I knew I should deny it, I was too overwhelmed by his pheromones and the atmosphere to say anything.

“What kind of speech patterns your brother used, what his personality was like, what kind of games we played, how I should imitate him, how much age difference there is between us…things like that?”

It sounded familiar. When Joo Do-hwa had asked me about role-playing, those were the things he was curious about. But there was no way the chairman would know those details. Had the suspicion already bloomed this much?

“So, are you trying to seduce me by pretending to be my brother?”

“…”

“Or do you want to at least have my child?”

“…It’s not like that.”

The hoarse, muffled voice I managed to utter was pathetic even to my ears. The only consolation was that Joo Do-hwa didn’t seem driven enough to interrupt me.

“I only worked at Oceans for a year. Of course, I’ve never even met your father.”

“Well, I’m the kind of person who would prepare for 10 years, not just 1 year, to trick someone.”

Joo Do-hwa lightly refuted, lowering her eyes with a bored expression. It was a look that seemed to say, “Is that the only excuse you can come up with?”

“If you’re not following instructions from my father, that’s really strange, isn’t it? If you’re this good at acting, you should have become an actor.”

I regretted it a little late. I should have controlled my temperament a bit more. It wasn’t like I was trying to test out how much he didn’t know by using the absolution he had given me.

But I didn’t think all the blame had to do with me. It was Joo Do-hwa who made me imitate in the first place, and it was Joo Do-hwa who acted so shamelessly as if he could recognize me.

So if he was going to be so confident, then he should have truly recognized me as well.

“The thought that I might really be that brother…ack!”

Suddenly, a large palm grabbed hold of my neck. I couldn’t even finish my sentence. Along with the sensation of my throat being constricted, the oxygen in my lungs was rapidly depleted.

“It seems you can’t gauge the atmosphere well…”

The crushing grip felt like it would break my neck. I instinctively grabbed his wrist, but the force in his grip only grew stronger. Due to the blood rushing to my head, it felt like my eyeballs were about to burst.

“I have to put up with your blabbing to a certain extent just because you have a loose mouth.”

His eerie, glowing eyes were a pure golden color, untainted by even a single speck. The unusually bright gaze was filled with a pure, undiluted rage.

“There’s no way you could be that brother.”

“Ugh…”

Even as I was struggling to gasp for air, I was puzzled. Why was he so convinced? He was making ridiculous guesses about what his father had said, but why couldn’t he accept the obvious fact that I might be that brother?

“Ack…Ugh…”

The stronger the force choking my neck, the more my body was lifted off the ground. My feet, which had been slowly lifting off the floor, were now flailing in the air. No matter how much I struggled and twisted around, all I could do was splash some water drops.

“Ugh, urk…”

“…”

Even as I squirmed, Joo Do-hwa calmly stared at me. Every time my vision, darkened by the lack of air, turned bright, his expressionless face came into view, sending shivers up and down my spine. The tingling, painful sensation was starting to feel like a kind of twisted pleasure.

I couldn’t die like this. I had imagined countless ways of dying, but never being choked by a child’s hands. Along with an inexplicable sense of shame, a wave of betrayal toward him washed over me.

“You…bastard…”

Instead of the curse that came to my lips, I ended up grinding out the swear words. Tears of a physiological nature flowed down my cheeks. I tried to scratch the back of his hand with my nails, just as my strength was gradually leaving my body.

“…”

In a brief moment, the strength in the hand gripping my neck disappeared. As my airway opened up momentarily, I mustered whatever strength I had left and brought my knee up sharply.

And then I kicked him squarely in the solar plexus.

Thud!

With a dull thud, Joo Do-hwa staggered back. But since he still wouldn’t let go of my neck, I twisted my body with all my might and swung my fist directly at his face. Coincidentally, as my punch landed on his face, his grip suddenly loosened.

“Cough…!”

Splash! My body dropped straight into the water. Water from the pool flooded into my open mouth. Flailing helplessly, someone roughly grabbed my arm and pulled me up again.

“Cough…!”

The lack of oxygen rushed back into my lungs. It felt like my shrunken lungs were inflating like balloons. After coughing and sputtering, the water I had swallowed finally spilled out of my mouth.

“Ugh, ugh…”

My head was spinning uncontrollably. Due to holding my breath for so long, it was hard for me to tell what was going on. I blinked my eyes wide open and looked around, but the flowing water made everything hazy in front of me.

“Ugh, ah…”

Leaning against the wall, the hand that had been grabbing my arm finally released me. I was free, but I couldn’t lower my guard. Tensing up, I looked in his direction, and Joo Do-hwa was covering his mouth, letting out a long groan.

“Ah…”

His long fingers gently brushed his lips. Disbelievingly, he slowly pulled his hand away. His slightly swollen lips were stained with an even deeper red liquid.

“…”

“…”

A heavy silence descended between us. The drops of blood were trickling down his chin, one by one. Looking at my still-throbbing fist, it was clear whose doing this was.

“…Did you just hit me?”

Damn it. That was what I thought. The cold look in his eyes as he stared at the blood on his hand, along with his mocking murmur, said it all.

“You are a rat, not a cat.”