I stand in front of the bathroom mirror afterward, towel around my waist, and study myself under the overhead light.
My face still holds up, I think. The structure is good, the jawline firm, my skin clear if a little tired around the eyes. My body is lean and harder than most omegas my age, more muscle than softness, shoulders broader than what’s fashionable for my designation. I’ve kept myself in shape out of necessity more than vanity, because an omega who can’t physically endure a rough rut doesn’t get called back, and I’ve needed to get called back. But there’s a tiredness in the way I hold myself that I can see even if I can’t always feel it.
I wonder what this alpha will see when he looks at me. Whether he’ll notice the tiredness around my eyes, the faint lines forming at the corners of my mouth, the scars I can’t quite hide. Whether I’ll read as just another aging omega past his prime, one more in a long line of companions this guy has already rejected, or if there’s still something worth paying for.
It doesn’t matter what he sees, I tell myself, meeting my own eyes in the mirror. It matters what he’s willing to pay.
I dry my hair and style it neatly, pushing it back from my face the way I know looks best. I dress in clean dark clothes, the nicest things I own, a black button-down that still fits well through the shoulders and dark slacks that I ironed this morningfor exactly no reason, as if some part of me knew I’d need them. I roll the sleeves to my forearms because the cuffs are starting to fray and this hides it. I skip cologne because most alphas prefer to smell an omega’s natural scent, and whatever else I might be insecure about, my scent has never been a problem. Jinkyung tells me it’s one of my best selling points, warm and clean with an undertone that alphas apparently find hard to ignore. I wouldn’t know. I can’t smell myself the way they do.
I check my phone. The address Jinkyung sent is in the Gangnam district, which tracks with the kind of money this client is apparently throwing around.
I take one more look in the mirror, straighten my collar, and head back through the living room.
Sungyoon is still at the coffee table, still working, his posture unchanged from when I left him. But his pencil is moving slower now, and I can tell he’s not fully focused on whatever problem is in front of him. I cross the room and stoop down behind him, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. His hair smells like the cheap shampoo we both use, the one that comes in the big economy bottle, and underneath it he smells like himself, like my kid, and for a second I want to call Jinkyung back and tell him I changed my mind, that I’m staying home tonight, that I’ll figure out the bills some other way.
But there is no other way. There hasn’t been for a long time.
I ruffle his hair with my hand, messing up the neat part he always keeps, and Sungyoon swats at my fingers with an irritated grunt.
“Dad, quit it. I just fixed it.”
I grin down at him. “Behave yourself tonight. Don’t stay up too late, and eat whatever Mrs. Han makes you, all of it.”
“I always behave,” Sungyoon says without looking up, already smoothing his hair back into place with one hand while the other picks his pencil back up.
“Always,” I echo, even though the word tastes bittersweet in my mouth as I straighten up and head for the door.
I step out into the hallway and pull the door shut behind me, checking that it’s locked, and nearly walk straight into Mrs. Han.
She’s already shuffling over from the apartment next door, her slippers scuffing against the linoleum, a cardigan draped over her shoulders despite the fact that it’s barely cool enough to warrant one. Her white hair is pinned back in its usual tidy bun, and she’s carrying a plastic bag that I can tell from the shape contains side dishes she’s already prepared. Mrs. Han has never once shown up to watch Sungyoon without bringing food, even when I tell her she doesn’t have to.
“Mrs. Han, I’m so sorry for the short notice,” I say, bowing my head as I step aside to let her pass. “I know it’s late, I only just found out about this meeting an hour ago, I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t—”
She waves me off with a flick of her wrist, the gesture so dismissive it borders on impatient. “Stop apologizing. The boy needs to eat and you need to work, what’s there to be sorry about?”
She shifts the bag of side dishes to her other hand and reaches into the pocket of her cardigan, fishing around for a moment before producing a small bottle, one of those vitamin energy drinks from the convenience store downstairs, the kind that comes in a brown glass bottle and tastes like medicine. She presses it into my palm and closes my fingers around it, her grip surprisingly firm for a woman her age, and when she looks up at me her expression is knowing.
“Take care of yourself tonight,” she says quietly, her voice pitched low enough that it wouldn’t carry through the door to where Sungyoon is sitting.
I look down at the little bottle in my hand and then back at her face. She doesn’t know the specifics of what I do. I’ve never toldher, the same way I’ve never told Sungyoon, but Mrs. Han raised six children of her own and has been watching me come and go at odd hours for over a decade now, and she’s not stupid.
I slip the bottle into my back pocket and give her a thin smile that I hope conveys more gratitude than I’m able to put into words right now. “I will. Thank you. There’s rice in the cooker and I left some bean sprout soup on the stove, he just needs to heat it up, but knowing him he’ll try to convince you he already ate so he can skip dinner and keep studying.”
“He can try,” Mrs. Han says with the serene confidence of a woman who has never once lost a battle of wills with a teenager. She pats my arm twice, firm little taps, and then shuffles past me toward my apartment door, already pulling her spare key from her other pocket.
I watch her let herself in, hear her call out a cheerful greeting to Sungyoon, hear his muffled response from the living room, and then I turn and head for the stairwell.
The parking garage beneath our building is half-empty at this hour, the overhead fluorescents buzzing and flickering. My car is wedged between a newer Hyundai and a Kia that’s at least a decade younger than mine, which isn’t saying much because my sedan is old enough to vote. It’s a faded gray Daewoo with a dent in the rear bumper from when I backed into a pole three years ago and never got it fixed, and the passenger side mirror is held on with electrical tape that Sungyoon applied with enough contempt to suggest he was deeply embarrassed to be seen anywhere near the vehicle. The engine turns over on the second try, which is better than average, and I pull out of the garage and onto the street.
I check my phone at the first red light, pulling up Jinkyung’s text. The address is a hotel in Gangnam, one of the ones tucked behind the main boulevard where the buildings get taller and the signage gets more discreet. Room 2714. There’s a noteunderneath that says the front desk has been informed and will direct me to the private elevator bank on the east side of the lobby, and that I should use the client’s reservation name, which is listed simply as “Mr. Lee.”
The drive takes forty minutes with traffic, and I spend most of it not thinking. I’m good at not thinking when I need to be. I turn the radio to a station playing older ballads and let the music fill the car while I watch the city slide past my windows, the neon signs and late-night food stalls giving way to wider streets and cleaner sidewalks as I cross into Gangnam. The buildings here are all glass and steel, architecture that looks like it was designed to make you feel small on purpose, and the cars parked along the curbs cost more than my apartment.
The hotel, when I find it, is exactly what I expected. A tall narrow building with a facade of dark stone and minimal signage, the type that doesn’t need to advertise because the people who stay here already know where it is. I pull into the underground parking structure and find a spot between a black Mercedes and a white Porsche, and my Daewoo looks so out of place that I almost laugh.
I kill the engine and sit for a moment with my hands on the steering wheel. My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and glance at the screen. It’s a text from Sungyoon, just two words:be safe.
I stare at those two words for a long time. Then I type backalways am, pocket the phone, and get out of the car.
