Chapter Nine #3
The school is silent around me as I make my way to the vending machines near the front entrance, my footsteps echoing off the empty walls.
No sign of our friends anywhere, either they went home after the rooftop party or they’re still passed out up there.
I don’t have the headspace to worry about them right now.
I feed coins into the machine and press buttons mechanically, watching cans and bottles drop one by one, grabbing a couple of rice snack bars from the adjacent machine because Hongjoong always complains he’s starving when he wakes up.
My mind won’t stop spinning while I gather everything into my arms. I keep circling the same questions without landing on answers.
What does this mean for us now? We’re both supposed to leave for college in different cities in a few weeks, Hongjoong accepted into a prestigious university across the city that his family’s money and connections secured for him, me headed to a public university on a partial scholarship that I fought tooth and nail for.
If Hongjoong decides to claim me officially, will he expect me to drop everything and follow him?
Will his parents even allow it? They’ve never been unkind to me, but they are standard high-born people.
I doubt they’ll be very pleased about Hongjoong bonding a no-name omega from the group of scoundrels they always complain about him getting into trouble with.
And what if Hongjoong decides not to go to school at all, throws away his future to stay with me out of some misplaced sense of obligation?
The thought makes me feel sick. Or worse, what if he regrets it?
What if it was just the rut talking, the hormones, and when he wakes up clear-headed he looks at me and feels nothing but awkwardness and pity?
I hear footsteps and look up as I’m halfway back to the classroom, arms full of drinks and snacks.
Hongjoong is striding toward me down the hallway, awake but disheveled, his hair wild and sticking up on one side, his clothes pulled on haphazardly with his shirt buttoned wrong and his belt hanging unbuckled from the loops of his pants.
He looks like he dressed in a hurry and a panic, and when he spots me his whole body visibly loosens with relief.
“There you are,” he says. For one second my heart lifts.
I search his face for something, a look of recognition, of tenderness, of knowing, some sign that he remembers what happened between us and that it meant something to him too.
But what I find instead is confusion and uncertainty, a slight panic around his eyes.
He continues, his voice tight and rushed, “Thank goodness you’re here.
I think I did something stupid last night. ”
I stop walking. The cans in my arms feel suddenly very heavy.
“What do you mean?” I say carefully.
Hongjoong looks me over, a quick scan from head to toe like he’s checking that I’m in one piece, and then he shakes his head and laughs.
It’s a humorless sound, more air than voice.
He runs a hand through his messed up hair and says, “I think I went into rut last night, but I don’t remember a thing.
The whole night after a certain point is just blank. ”
The hallway tilts slightly under my feet. I adjust my grip on the drinks and hear myself say, “You don’t remember?”
Hongjoong shakes his head again, more emphatically this time. Then he glances around the empty corridor, checking both directions, and asks, “Have you seen anyone? Any of the guys, or anyone else?”
“No,” I say. My voice sounds normal. I’m amazed by that. “It’s just us.”
Hongjoong lets out a long breath through his mouth, his shoulders dropping. “Good,” he says.
“Why?”
He scrubs his face with both hands and then drops them, meeting my eyes with an expression that’s equal parts sheepish and genuinely rattled.
“I woke up naked on a classroom floor and the whole place reeks of omega,” he says.
“I was worried for a minute that I’d slept with someone.
Like maybe the guys called some omegas over to party last night or something.
” He pauses, scanning my face, and I keep it perfectly still.
“But there’s no one around, so it must be fine.
Right? I probably just... I don’t know, stripped down because of the fever and the pheromones are residual from the rut itself. ”
I nod. The motion feels mechanical, my neck stiff. “Probably,” I say.
Hongjoong laughs again, and this time there’s real relief in it, strained.
He tips his head back and stares at the ceiling for a moment, then looks at me sideways with a crooked grin that shows the edge of his dimple.
“I was worried for a second there that I’d done something really stupid,” he says.
“Like bond an omega while I was in rut. Wouldn’t that be ridiculous?
Making a mistake like that on our graduation night?
” He shakes his head, still grinning, and adds, “My parents would actually kill me.”
My stomach drops. It drops so far and so fast that for a second I think I might actually be sick, right here in the hallway, all over the vending machine snacks I’m clutching to my chest. The bite mark throbs under my buttoned-up collar like it heard him, like it’s responding to the word mistake.
I can feel it burning against my skin, hot and accusatory.
I have to swallow twice before I can trust my voice.
“Yeah,” I say. The word comes out thin and reedy and I clear my throat to cover it. “That’d be awful.”
Hongjoong doesn’t notice. He’s already moving on, the crisis averted in his mind, his body language loosening back into the easy swagger I know so well.
He hooks an arm over my shoulders, casual and companionable, the exact same way he’s done a thousand times before, but the pressure of it feels like it’s going to crush me.
He reaches over with his free hand and plucks the bottled water from my grip, cracking it open one-handed.
“Is this for me? Thanks.” He takes a long drink, his throat bobbing, and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“God, I feel like shit. I need a shower so bad.” He steers us down the hallway with his arm still slung across my shoulders, our steps falling into sync the way they always do.
“Do you think the convenience store near school is open yet? I’m fucking starving. ”
I say nothing. I match his pace and let him talk and I keep my face pointed forward and I feel the bite mark burn under my collar with every step, every heartbeat, every breath.
I decide right there, walking down that empty hallway with Hongjoong’s arm warm and heavy across my shoulders and his voice filling the silence between us with easy chatter about breakfast and showers and how totaled his body feels, that I will never tell him the truth about last night.
It’s better this way. It was just a rut.
Just hormones doing what they do to stupid teenagers who don’t know any better.
If Hongjoong doesn’t remember then it doesn’t count, and if it doesn’t count then I can bury it and move on and we can stay friends and nothing has to change.
He called it a mistake. He called it ridiculous.
His parents would kill him. I heard him clearly and I understood, and there’s nothing left to misinterpret.
I tell myself this firmly, ignoring the way the bond mark throbs against my collarbone with every beat of my heart, steady and insistent, like it’s trying to tell me something I’ve already decided not to hear.