TL: Hua
Autumn always seems to be associated with desolation and chill. Two consecutive days of falling temperatures have subtly revealed winter’s approaching footsteps.
Fang Qiao stepped out of the hospital gate just as a continuous autumn rain began. Fortunately, he’d checked the weather forecast that morning and brought an umbrella, which now came in handy.
“See you tomorrow, Dr. Fang.” A nurse on her way home waved to him.
Fang Qiao smiled and nodded, opening his umbrella and heading into the misty rain towards the nearby parking lot. As soon as he got into his car and drove onto the national highway, his phone buzzed with a message notification.
Taking advantage of a red light, he tapped to open it. “I’ve been waiting for you for twenty minutes.”
Fang Qiao could imagine the slight frown and tightly pursed, beautiful lips of the sender. Twenty minutes wasn’t too long, but it was usually Fang Qiao who did the waiting. With the roles occasionally reversed, it was inevitable the sender would be impatient.
Fang Qiao wasn’t intentionally late; Saturday at the dental hospital was always a bit busier, so a delay was understandable.
He quickly replied, “Almost there.”
Aside from a group chat he’d muted flashing a notification, his phone fell silent again.
Fang Qiao’s life was simple, with almost no entertainment outside of work. He worked in the department of Pediatric Craniomaxillofacial Surgery at the Municipal Stomatological Hospital, the only Omega attending physician in the department. He was known for his good temper and patience. Even the most difficult children would stop crying under his soothing care and obediently lie back in the dental chair, opening their mouths.
In the public eye, Omegas were gentle and tolerant, easy to get along with, and Fang Qiao was especially so. The nurses in his department often joked that there wasn’t a second person in the world with a better disposition than Dr. Fang.
Once, after he extracted a child’s tooth, the child swallowed the blood clot from the wound, leading to a dry socket. The parents blamed him, causing a scene at the hospital, even scratching Fang Qiao’s left cheek until it bled.
Facing the shouting and venting of family members, Fang Qiao remained calm. He simply took a tissue to wipe away the bloodstain on his cheek and said softly, “Please calm down. It’s more important to treat the child’s wound right now.”
Fang Qiao didn’t say a single harsh word until the parents left, grumbling, with their child. His colleagues, however, were all indignant on his behalf.
Fang Qiao didn’t take the scratch on his face to heart; it would heal in a little over half a month anyway. However, he never expected to receive a torrent of angry reprimands when he got home that day.
“Someone hit you, and you didn’t hit back?”
“Is your brain just for show?”
“You’re already plain-looking; with a scar, you’ll be even more unsightly.”
Fang Qiao looked up, seeing his face in the car’s rearview mirror without a trace of the mark. Remembering the other person’s anger, as if the party thought he was going to be disfigured, he still found it somewhat laughable.
However, he thought, although he wasn’t as delicate and beautiful as many other attractive Omegas, he wasn’t unsightly, was he?
Appearance was external. If he could, he wouldn’t want to be an Omega either.
Some unpleasant memories welled up from the depths of his mind. Fang Qiao frowned, suppressing them, and stepped on the accelerator.
The rain and fog were getting heavier; the visibility was decreasing. Fang Qiao had no choice but to slow down.
As his car drove down the street, he inadvertently glanced outside, his gaze momentarily fixed. In a nearby alley, a soaking wet teenager was being half-surrounded and shoved by several students wearing uniforms identical to his.
The teenager’s head was bowed, his expression unclear, but his body language showed he was trying desperately to break free. Unfortunately, the others outnumbered him, and each time he tried, he was forced back.
Fang Qiao didn’t like to meddle, but as a 27-year-old adult, he couldn’t simply ignore such blatant school bullying.
He pulled his car over, quickly opened his umbrella, and strode closer. As everyone noticed him, he announced loudly, “What are you doing? If you don’t stop, I’m calling the police.”
The black umbrella covered Fang Qiao’s slender, tall frame. He raised the handle slightly, revealing his refined features beneath the curtain of rain, holding his phone as if ready to press the emergency button at any moment.
The students likely didn’t want to cause a bigger scene. They cursed a few times and ran away, splashing through puddles.
Fang Qiao walked into the alley, cautiously approaching the teenager leaning against the wall. He caught a whiff of the other’s pheromones in the air—a cheap, pungent, sickeningly sweet synthetic scent. To be honest, it smelled awful.
With the advancements in science, the technology for scent-blocking patches was mature enough that even impoverished Alphas and Omegas would use inexpensive patches to seal their glands when going out, making it difficult for pheromones to leak.
Fang Qiao always wore scent-blocking patches, keeping his pheromones completely hidden. And because his frame wasn’t as slender as other Omegas, he was often mistaken for a Beta. However, there were exceptions.
Pheromones could be transmitted through bodily fluids. Thus, when an Alpha or Omega sweated or bled, even with a scent-blocking patch, one could still detect their scent.
As an Omega doctor, Fang Qiao inevitably came into contact with blood in his work, and most of his patients were Omegas and Betas.
“Are you okay?” Fang Qiao asked softly.
The teenager lifted his head. Fang Qiao was a little startled seeing his wet face.
He had delicate features, with stubborn eyes and a trace of blood at the corner of his lips, making him appear even more vulnerable.
Fang Qiao hesitated before asking, “Are you… an Alpha?”
The teenager looked at him warily. After a moment, he pursed his lips and said, “None of your business.”
His voice was deliberately lowered but still pleasant.
Fang Qiao wasn’t angered that his kindness went unappreciated. He stepped forward and offered a tissue. “Wipe it off.”
The teenager didn’t take it. Fang Qiao reminded him, “You’re bleeding.”
Seeing the teenager fumbling somewhat frantically at the back of his neck, he said, “Your scent-blocking patch is still on.”
Fang Qiao had initially wanted to take the teenager’s hand and give him the tissue, but remembering he was an Alpha, he minimized physical contact. He simply bent down, picked up the single-shoulder bag from the ground, tucked the tissue into one of its compartments, and returned it to the teenager.
The teenager silently accepted it.
Before leaving, Fang Qiao said earnestly, “If this happens again, remember…”
Remember what? To ask a teacher or parent for help?
His pause led to the teenager’s gaze, and finally, he finished his sentence before turning to leave.
Sitting in his car, he looked back at the alley. The teenager was still standing there, clutching the bag. It was only a chance encounter; there was only so much he could do.
Fang Qiao sighed softly, as if seeing a much younger version of himself through this chance acquaintance.
But the past was far behind him. His greatest current dilemma was how to face the Alpha at home, who had waited for him for far more than twenty minutes.
The residential area where Fang Qiao currently lived was one of B City’s top luxury communities. With his salary, he’d have to work a hundred years without eating or drinking to afford it.
He swiped his card for the elevator, entered his fingerprint, and pushed open the door. Just as he bent down to change his shoes, he heard a chilling voice, “Decided to come back?”
Fang Qiao froze, looking up along the polished floor.
The tall Alpha leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, enveloped by the cool white light, like moonlight. His long, thick eyelashes cast a small shadow beneath his eyes, and his obsidian-like pupils were fixed on the figure crouched before him.
As Fang Qiao expected, the other’s beautiful, distinct lips were indeed tightly pursed, betraying their owner’s bad mood.
Jiang Mingyu wore a thin black turtleneck sweater, arrogantly raising his chin slightly as he coldly glared at the late Fang Qiao.
Perhaps it was a common trait among dentists, but Fang Qiao liked to observe people starting from their craniomaxillofacial region. From this angle, Jiang Mingyu’s jawline was still impeccably perfect. From the first time he saw him, Fang Qiao had noticed Jiang Mingyu had a jawline close to the golden ratio, making him perfect for a photo to hang on the hospital’s promotional wall for people to admire.
But even the most aesthetically pleasing beauty could not be underestimated when angered.
Fang Qiao was about to explain his lateness when Jiang Mingyu’s handsome brow furrowed even deeper.
After Fang Qiao stood up, Jiang Mingyu approached, sniffing lightly like a large dog trying to detect if its owner had been secretly feeding stray dogs. Once he confirmed that Fang Qiao carried the scent of other pheromones, Jiang Mingyu stepped back in disgust, gnashing his teeth. “What is that messy smell on you?”
Alpha’s nature dictated they would reject the pheromones of their own kind.
Fang Qiao had been in contact with the teenager and quickly said, “I’ll go take a shower first.”
Jiang Mingyu suppressed the urge to lecture him and urged, “Hurry up, you stink. What Omega smells like this…”
Fang Qiao asked, confused, “Was it an Omega?”
The teenager’s pheromones indeed didn’t smell good, but he was clearly an alpha.
Jiang Mingyu walked to the sofa and countered, “What else would it be?”
Fang Qiao shook his head and entered the bathroom to adjust the water temperature. Although a little puzzled, he didn’t dwell on Jiang Mingyu’s misjudgment.
Jiang Mingyu suffered from Pheromone Disorder Syndrome, whose symptoms included, but were not limited to, extreme sensitivity to pheromones, irregular estrus periods, and potentially indiscriminate aggressive behavior during severe flare-ups…
Aside from the Jiang family’s close relatives and the doctors responsible for his treatment, only Fang Qiao knew about this.
Jiang Mingyu’s illness was reportedly congenital. For over a decade, he suffered from the torment of pheromones. As a child, he could control it with medication, but after his first estrus during adolescence, his condition worsened. Afterward, he needed a daily injection of an inhibitor to remain conscious.
To prevent others from discovering the needle marks, all injections were given in his lower back.
When Fang Qiao first met Jiang Mingyu, Jiang Mingyu was nineteen, and his condition was at its most severe. He took medication like candy, taking seven or eight inhibitor injections a day.
Fang Qiao had accidentally seen him giving himself an injection once, expressionlessly piercing the needle into his bruised and swollen skin. But no matter how calmly Jiang Mingyu tried to conceal it, from his bloodshot eyes and trembling fingertips, it was evident he was enduring immense pain.
It was Fang Qiao who rescued him from the vortex of pheromones.
After Jiang Mingyu’s condition completely flared up, to treat him, the Jiang family used their connections to access the information database and found Fang Qiao, whose pheromones had a 92% compatibility with Jiang Mingyu’s.
The doctors proposed two solutions.
One was to extract Fang Qiao’s pheromones for medicinal use, but this would cause irreversible damage to Fang Qiao’s glands, and if the medication failed, they would have to find another Omega highly compatible with Jiang Mingyu’s pheromones.
The second was for Fang Qiao to act as a human inhibitor for Jiang Mingyu, using Fang Qiao’s continuous supply of pheromones to alleviate Jiang Mingyu’s symptoms.
The former touched upon legal issues; if the aristocratic Jiang family were exposed for using human pheromones in medicine, they would undoubtedly face public outcry. Furthermore, a highly compatible Omega was one in a million, and no one could guarantee finding a second “Fang Qiao.” The latter only concerned ethics. If both parties were willing, at most they would receive a few condemnations if the matter came to light.
Weighing the pros and cons, the Jiang family chose the second option and signed a three-year secret agreement with Fang Qiao.
With a signed contract and a red seal, Fang Qiao became the medicine to treat Jiang Mingyu.
Although Jiang Mingyu didn’t accept the Jiang family’s arrangement at the time and strongly resisted, with the combined efforts of the Jiang family and Fang Qiao, it was ultimately set in stone.
Without Fang Qiao, Jiang Mingyu, tormented by his illness, might now be a walking corpse or a violent, aggressive beast. Even if not confined to a sanatorium, he would likely be under house arrest.
The water temperature gradually rose.
Fang Qiao had just taken off his clothes and wet his hair when the bathroom door was twisted open.
In the misty air, an intense mint scent rushed towards Fang Qiao like a blade. Fang Qiao’s legs instantly went weak, and he had to lean on the wall to keep from falling.
“Mingyu…” In less than two seconds, Fang Qiao’s voice became slightly hoarse. “What’s wrong?”
Jiang Mingyu moved through the steam to stand before him, his cheeks flushed, looking at him angrily. “Are you seducing me again?”
Anger mixed with something else caused Jiang Mingyu’s pheromones to overwhelm the space, almost a mental suppression. Fang Qiao could no longer stand. He weakly grasped the corner of Jiang Mingyu’s clothes, his knees collapsing before Jiang Mingyu.
Jiang Mingyu looked down at the half-crouching Fang Qiao and slowly reached out to grasp the soft hair at the back of his head, forcing Fang Qiao to lift his face.
Fang Qiao’s every breath was filled with the sharp mint scent. Highly compatible pheromones could instantly destroy the self-control of Alphas and Omegas. His scalp felt slightly numb from being grabbed, and his gaze was slightly unfocused as he looked at the features in the mist.
“I…”
He only managed a single sound before Jiang Mingyu leaned down and sealed his throat with a kiss.
Fang Qiao felt a bit helpless. He wanted to say that he hadn’t even removed his scent-blocking patch yet, so how could he be seducing Jiang Mingyu? But it didn’t matter; his mere presence held a fatal attraction for Jiang Mingyu.
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