L*st and Death

"What! What's the damn problem this time, huh?"

At Baek Kyung’s outburst, Lewis turned his head away coldly. Baek Kyung didn’t like him either, but today, no matter what Baek Kyung said, Lewis responded with complete indifference.

Being crammed into a narrow car, forced to breathe in each other’s pheromones, was already enough to make the disgust boil up endlessly. On top of that, Lewis was deliberately provoking Baek Kyung at every turn. The humid air from the swamp seeping in through the cracked window only worsened the situation, and the inside of the car was thick with murderous tension.

Baek Kyung felt like someone was going to get killed at this rate, and he was barely keeping it together by scraping together every last shred of self-restraint—something completely out of character for him.

"Hey, why the fuck are you ignoring me? If you’ve got a problem, just throw the first punch already."

When Baek Kyung growled through clenched teeth, Lewis, still staring at his phone, answered with a crooked sneer.

"I’ve got a problem with everything from one to ten, so what, I should punch you? Ha. I'm not looking to kill anyone today."

It had been four days since the two of them started chasing after Isaac Bazelli and Yoon Siron, going from village to village around the Secreta National Park. During the first two days, they kept landing blows on each other over the smallest looks or tones of voice. But by the third day, an unspoken ceasefire had taken effect. Instead of wasting energy on pointless fights, they had to focus on getting Siron back. With broken limbs, neither of them could take on Isaac—the man was practically a living weapon.

What also had Baek Kyung on edge was the possibility that others were after Isaac Bazelli too. Ever since Anna told him that someone had accessed the vehicle GPS database to track Isaac, Baek Kyung had been wound up like a spring.

If he had to guess, they were probably trying to get their hands on Yuri Berek’s research logs—those rare few who knew that an omega could cure the incurable diseases of alphas. Their presence drove Baek Kyung halfway insane. Just imagining Yoon Siron, stuck next to Isaac Bazelli, getting dragged into their war was enough to make his throat tighten with fear.

Ironically, though, their existence also gave Baek Kyung a sliver of comfort. At least they weren’t going after Isaac in any loud, obvious way. That meant they had no intention of exposing the existence of an omega to the world. Even Baek Kyung’s own mother—the very person who helped make him an alpha—had no idea such a being even existed.

You couldn’t generalize all alphas based on one Lewis McCarthy, but there was a massive gap between what Baek Kyung knew about alphas and what Lewis thought he knew. Lewis had no clue that most alphas didn’t live past thirty-five, or that they were incapable of reproducing with non-trait carriers like betas. Baek Kyung only started to realize this through their conversations. This wasn’t just ignorance—it suggested that whoever altered Lewis into an alpha had deliberately kept the truth from him.

And Baek Kyung was glad for Lewis’s ignorance. If Lewis knew that the only hope for an alpha’s survival rested in an omega, he would never have agreed to help search for Yoon Siron. Still, Baek Kyung had at least a shred of a conscience. He planned to steal Yuri Berek’s research from Isaac and hand it over to Lewis.

And yet this bastard Lewis had the nerve to piss him off just two days into the ceasefire, completely oblivious to Baek Kyung’s grand gesture.

Baek Kyung twisted around and glared at Lewis in the back seat, his eyes full of murderous intent. He had a hunch why Lewis was being so antagonistic.

"Ahh, I get it. I know why you're being such a little shit."

Baek Kyung spoke in a goading tone, hoping to make Lewis physically sick with disgust.

"You saw that stuff online, didn’t you."

"What?"

"Sponsor, urethral plug, all those juicy rumors about how Yoon Siron only got involved with {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} me because of the money. Don’t believe everything you read. Reality was a lot sweeter than you'd think."

Lewis’s face flushed red with rage.

"You toyed with a person using money and now you’re saying it was sweet?"

"Ha ha, yeah. What we had... it was sweeter than you—"

Baek Kyung tried to say more but trailed off. The words he’d brought up just to provoke Lewis ended up stirring a wave of loss and emotion he hadn’t expected, and they hit him like a punch to the gut.

"Sweeter than what?... What?"

"......"

"Answer me!"

"...There are things like that."

"Don’t fucking start and then stop talking! What were you going to say!"

Just as Lewis lunged to grab Baek Kyung by the collar, someone knocked on the car window. Both men turned their razor-sharp glares toward the woman standing outside. She was standing close enough that her face wasn’t visible from the low sedan.

"You can’t park here!"

"We’re not parking!"

"You’ve been parked here for twenty minutes!"

The woman snapped, stepping back and bending down to peer inside the car. She looked to be in her mid-fifties, probably the owner of the convenience store. The irritation and tension carved into her face vanished the instant she saw the two men, replaced by surprise.

"Wh-what is it?"

Baek Kyung flashed her a sly, mischievous smile.

"Just here to buy something."

He pried Lewis’s hand off his collar and jumped out of the car. Lewis, glaring daggers, got out after him.

Secreta National Park was vast—about the size of both Gyeonggi-do and Incheon combined. Two winding roads snaked through the park like serpents, connecting small towns every few dozen kilometers. These towns mostly survived on the foot traffic of park tourists.

The two men had been combing through these towns one by one, looking for any trace of Isaac. They’d questioned the locals and searched every place Isaac might’ve visited, but so far, they’d come up with nothing.

Baek Kyung stacked a case of bottled water into the cart, waiting for the dog-nosed bastard to pick up a scent. Lewis wandered the store slowly, sniffing the air.

"It’s vague."

"Vague? What the hell does that mean."

"I’m not picking up Siron’s pheromones. That much I’m sure of. But... Bazelli’s is tricky."

"Tricky how?"

"It’s like... it’s almost nonexistent, like someone turned the faucet off. Maybe he masked it on purpose? Or maybe it’s just been too long since he was here."

"But you’re saying you can smell something?"

Baek Kyung pushed the cart over to the owner. She was restocking tea bags, still visibly irritated about the parking incident.

"Ma’am."

"Yes?"

"We’re looking for someone. If you’ve got a moment, could you take a look at a photo for us?"

"A moment? Of course!"

Apparently, life in the countryside was dull enough that this counted as excitement. She turned toward Baek Kyung eagerly. Peering into the phone he handed her, she squinted, then took a pair of glasses from her apron pocket and looked again, more closely.

"He drives a black Chev—Suburban pickup truck. Have you seen him?"

The phone screen showed Isaac, dressed head to toe in black, leaning against a Suburban. The image was grainy, but anyone who’d seen Isaac before would recognize him. It was a still from CCTV footage—captured via ALPR data on a freight vehicle. Anna had tracked it down from a Mexican supermarket not far from the motel where Siron had stayed. The footage showed not only Isaac Bazelli, but also the back of Yoon Siron as he climbed into the truck—looking heartbreakingly trusting and naive.

"Oh, this guy. I remember. He was wearing glasses, I think... but yeah, I remember him."

"You’ve seen this man?"

"Yes. He came in a few days ago and bought a bunch of Sudoku magazines."

After four days of chasing ghosts around Secreta, they finally had a lead. Lewis, standing behind Baek Kyung, looked stunned and repeated in a doubtful tone,

"Sudoku?"

"Yeah. He bought maybe ten or more. Cleaned out the entire stock. I thought he was a weirdo."

The two men exchanged a look of mutual distaste. A serial rapist and logic puzzles. Neither of them could even begin to guess what the hell was going on.

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