Chapter 55 - White Knight

The skin around my eyes flared up. Unable to suppress my trembling hands, I clenched onto the man’s shirt. I buried my face into his shoulder and breathed in deeply. My thorax felt like it was going to spasm, but I continued to do so.

It was Keith.

They were Keith’s pheromones.

“Ngh…” I burst out in tears. I couldn’t hold back my emotions. As I shivered my shoulders and cried silently, I heard Grayson—who had been speechless until that point—speak.

“What the hell happened? What’s going on?”

“Just be quiet, Grayson,” spat Keith with a sharp voice that was completely different from just now. That wasn’t all. “Get rid of your pheromones.”

“What?” Grayson asked in confusion.

Keith merely repeated his order in a cold voice, “You heard me. Get rid of your pheromones.”

Silence settled in briefly. Unlike usual, Grayson didn’t make any idle remarks. He remained quiet for a moment, and then the flow of the air changed. The pheromones that I sensed from around us had noticeably decreased in amount. I heaved as I huffed shakily and cautiously inhaled my breath. Keith’s scent wholly rushed into my body. I controlled my breathing carefully, slowly, and to be gradually deeper.

“Hahh, hahh… Hahh, hahh.” I barely managed to calm down my ragged breaths. My consciousness seemed far away, and my body lost its strength. My brain was jelly as if it had completely melted. Keith held up my unwound body.

“Why is he like that?” Grayson asked impatiently as if he couldn’t hold back the question any longer.

When I shifted up my cloudy gaze, Keith wasn’t looking at me.

“It just happened. When he smells other people’s pheromones, he goes into a panic attack.”

“How did it happen?”

Keith seemed like he couldn’t be bothered and answered simply, “The night Ken got into an accident. Because of that.”

Grayson was silent for a moment before belatedly exclaiming in shock, “It’s already been a few months!”

Instead of replying, Keith glanced down at me. I blankly stared back.

Grayson tilted his head in confusion. “But he’s okay only with your pheromones? Even though he’s like that with every other pheromone?”

Keith replied choppily, “Yes.”

Grayson fell speechless once again. An ominous silence continued.

“…So you have to calm him down every time something like this happens? Until when?”

Keith didn’t answer. Grayson didn’t particularly seem to want an answer either.

He jokingly added, “Why not just sleep with him? I think he’d like that.”

Keith gritted his teeth and spat, “Shut it, Grayson.”

“Hahahaha.” Grayson laughed out loud, but it soon turned into a bitter smile. “Poor Yeonwoo.”

I stole a glance at Grayson through my cloudy eyes. He was staring hard at me with a smile no different from usual.

‘He noticed,’ I vaguely thought amidst my hazy consciousness.

That man had noticed how I felt about Keith.

Act 11

“Hahh…” A deep sigh trickled out of my mouth. The night air was cold, and I had goosebumps running up my arms, but I didn’t want to go back to pick up my jacket. I had circled the huge garden once already, but there was a reason as to why I was loitering around the building without being able to actually go in—because Keith was having intercourse with his partner right now.

I cautiously sniffed the air. As expected, pheromones overflowed from the atmosphere. If it were spilling outside the mansion like this, the air inside the house would be soaked to the point where I would not be able to withstand the stay. I was afraid to go back into the mansion.

“You’re still here, Yeonwoo?” Charles spotted me and called out. I hesitantly nodded. With his usual dry face, he opened his mouth. “It will be done soon. Aren’t you cold? Would you like a warm drink or a jacket?”

“Oh, thank you. I’d appreciate a jacket.”

Charles nodded briefly. “I’ll be right back.”

He disappeared like the wind. I rubbed my arms and remained where I stood.

‘What time is it now?’ I glanced down at my empty wrist before bitterly shifting my gaze away. Keith sometimes called his partner to a hotel and other times to his place. This cycle was irregular, but the blank period never went beyond three days. This time, he was summoning her every day for a whole week. I knew about this already, so there was nothing to be disappointed about. It was just a little difficult to watch his partner confidently walk into his bedroom whenever he called her to the house.

For the first few times, I always made the excuse that I was going to bed early and holed myself up in my room from early in the evening. However, I could tell what was going on without even seeing it thanks to the overflowing pheromones, so now I just roamed around outside the building. I also felt pitiful reacting to the scent of his pheromones and jerking off while my heart was in deathly pain.

‘…It’s cold.’ I shivered and hunched my shoulders. How much time had passed? It felt like more than three hours had passed, but it was probably much shorter than that in reality.

Keith never actually slept with his bed partners. They quite literally only had intercourse. I only learned this fact for the first time when I started living here. Thanks to this, whenever he was meeting his partner at a hotel, I always had to wait at least three hours in the car for him. He sometimes went to the hotel after dropping me off at the mansion, but without exception, I still heard the sound of his car coming back in the middle of the night a few hours later.

‘…I wonder if they’re done now.’

It was unfortunate that I had forgotten my watch due to her unexpected early arrival. I was in such a rush that I even forgot my phone. I bitterly glanced up at the building.

When I had hurriedly escaped outside, a woman’s loud squeal had come out of Keith’s open window. I frantically ran away from the consecutive yearning moans and agitated grunts into the garden, where I roamed around aimlessly before finally coming back. However, the repeated nasal vocalizations had tormented me for quite a long while.