Chapter 5: 5 – ghosts

Although aggrieved, Jun Sheng knew why exactly others dubbed him in such a way. In the past two years of his high school life, he had received countless direct confessions, be it in the form of letters, in person, or texts—he had experienced them all. 

Any other normal alpha would have already succumbed to their primal instincts and feel the want to chase after an omega; however, Jun Sheng was different. He wasn’t different physically—he had grown well throughout the years, sporting a height of 182cm, having a toned body with lean muscles and long legs which made him seem even taller.

Paired with his deep-set of pale eyes, his straight eyebrows, and with his black hair styled in a way where loose strands would fall across his forehead in a messy but attractive manner—his handsome and boyish charms made him the ideal alpha in the eyes of many.

Truthfully, he didn’t appreciate the amount of attention he got. Not because he didn’t take their feelings to heart, but because their cunning methods just made him very uncomfortable.

Especially the way some omega admirers would try to glue their pheromones to their confessions letters, or how they’d try to deliberately seduce him with their scents in his presence. 

He absolutely couldn’t stand a typical omega’s scent, it was sickeningly sweet and it made him feel nauseous, as though he was being suffocated by the memories he didn’t want to unravel. And because it would make him feel agitated, he would appear even more displeased and annoyed.

So to prevent those admirers from getting scared of his sudden anger, he had simply started to reject them all coldly before they even had a chance to speak. He would rather have them hate him than he hurt them during his muddled moments.

Henceforth, alongside the title of most handsome in the school, he had earned the reputation of a heartless alpha that would, without fail, reject any omega sent his way.

Crushing a plastic bottle he had just emptied, Jun Sheng narrowed his eyes, murmuring, “And I’ll keep it that way.”

“Did you say something?” Laurel asked, looking up from his meal.

With a smile, Jun Sheng shook his head. He then tapped Laurel’s phone screen, causing it to come alive once more and said, “The picture isn’t so bad though, a good-looking model paired with nice lighting.”

In hindsight, the image was nothing particularly noteworthy—the classroom’s bluish glow made every edge to an object within the image seem blander.  Yet, the way Ying Lin buried the lower half of his face against his sleeved palm and listened to the lecture with a lazy gaze, oddly made him appear alluring.

The red hue of the uniform jacket was especially vivid against his snowy skin, and his dark eyes glistened in that moment of time—seeming bright as it dulled everything else; Jun Sheng’s lips unconsciously twitched.

Maybe it was the subject of the picture that was its saving grace.

They say an alpha knew another alpha best, so when Laurel saw his faraway expression, he knocked the table twice, asking, “You do know that Ying Lin is an omega, right?”

Laurel, along with their dear friend Hu Duyi, were the few people who roughly knew why he had such a strong aversion towards omegas. So whenever they could, they would inspect certain items that were sent towards Jun Sheng first, in case they were lathered in copious amounts of pheromones, and if deemed safe, they’d let him handle the rest.

At that, Jun Sheng snapped his neck away from the photo and towards him, blinking, “...he is?”

Thinking back to their faux match that night, he recalled that the youth had indeed been sweating a little, and despite some physical exertion, his pheromones didn’t leak at all—so he had thought the other was a beta.

Similarly, having sat next to the said youth for half a day, his keen alpha senses weren’t agitated even once by an omega’s telltale smell. In reality, it was impossible to fully keep one’s scent in-check. During a resting state, at most a pheromone concentration of 3% or below would leak. Despite his excellent control, even his own scent would exude unwittingly.

The amount was so small that it was almost negligible to detect, unless the individual was very sensitive to pheromones—just like Jun Sheng himself was, but as long as the scent wasn’t released strongly, he wouldn’t feel bothered.

Laurel looked exasperatedly at the outwardly-young-but-old-at-heart alpha. “I’m now convinced that my best friend of almost three years has been living under a rock. Jun Sheng, really? Do your ears subconsciously get blocked whenever someone mentions an omega?”

Jun Sheng pursed his lips, unable to refute. If he wasn’t prompted, he couldn’t care less about what others were shrieking at, after all, he already couldn’t get close to an omega, so what for would he intentionally look for trouble?

Disregarding Ying Lin’s slightly thinner frame, his tall disposition of around 175cm along with his indifferent nature would make one automatically pass him as an alpha or a blessed beta.

Lowering his eyes, Jun Sheng covered his mouth with a palm.

Drawing a certain profile from memory, he had to admit that the youth was handsome, beautiful even, but his allure was a far cry from feminine. Perhaps it had to do with his usual nonchalant visage, embodying the winter itself and making others perceive a distant beauty.

‘Truly alike to a lone flower atop a mountain, seemingly unattainable…’ Jun Sheng mused.

“Jun Sheng? The bell’s going to ring soon, let’s head back.”

Nodding, Jun Sheng tossed their trash into a nearby disposal bin and similarly kept those thoughts aside, leaving the cafeteria with Laurel.

 

 

 

 

Throughout the whole evening self-study period, Ying Lin’s right eyelid kept spasming as he felt a certain scum’s blatant stare on himself.

Seizing the chance when Old Cai went out to take a call, he turned to face his seatmate, asking, “Admiring again? Haven’t you had enough?”

Noncommittally, Jun Sheng hummed, “Mhm, just curious about something.” He then dropped his pen to prop his cheek against his knuckles and leaned forwards slightly. “My dear moody ancestor, you’re an omega right?”

“...” Dear moody ancestor your foot.

Feeling as if he had wasted energy on paying attention to the idiot, Ying Lin angled himself away and continued to work on his economics worksheet. Still on the receiving end of that piercing gaze, he “tsked” and bit back, “So what if I am?”

However, this time he didn’t immediately get an answer. So he parted his lips once more, about to ask the scum to direct his gaze elsewhere when, suddenly, he felt a feathery touch on his nape.

Caught off guard, Ying Lin jolted and his pen slipped from his grasp as a tingle crawled up his spine; a streak of ink smeared the corner of his paper. “What are you—”

“Shh, relax,” Jun Sheng whispered, his hot breath brushing against his ear. “I’m not going to do anything bad.”

As a warm finger dug in between the jacket’s loose collar and rubbed circles into his skin, Ying Lin abruptly regretted not having zipped up the uniform all the way earlier. 

True to his words, Jun Sheng did nothing but caress his nape with a single finger. Ying Lin endured it for a while, suppressing the urge to shiver. Unable to hold out any longer, he slapped the alpha’s hand away and covered the back of his neck.

He glared at the idiot, “So? What have you found so amusing that you’ve been disturbing me, dear scoundrel?”

Said scoundrel merely huffed a small laugh, saying, “You really are wearing a scent blocker, why?”

Whilst touching Ying Lin’s smooth neck, Jun Sheng’s finger had come across a thin plastic film. He didn’t dare rub too hard lest it came off, so he allowed his finger to be swatted by a harmless paw. Alas, his unbridled mouth wasn’t taped and it continued to spout nonsense. 

“Having trouble controlling your pheromones? Should I help teach you, fellow deskmate?”

Ying Lin kicked the alpha’s ankle, zipped the jacket to the top and said, “You can teach me how to not strangle you to death.”

“Simple, one look at my handsome face and you’d find it such a pity to waste.”

“...” Why did I even bother?

At that, Ying Lin completely ignored Jun Sheng’s remark and the entirety of his existence, opting to focus on his work instead.

However, another laugh, this time beyond his personal space, distracted him minutely. Nonetheless, that bright and velvety timbre drilled into his ears all the same, causing an unavoidable itch. 

He glanced sideways at the alpha, catching on the faint uplift to the corners of those lips, and suddenly discovered that Jun Sheng’s arrogant demeanour eased ever-so-marginally when he smiled.

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Ying Lin bit his tongue, retrieved his gaze and tackled yet another word-vomit of a question.

 

 

 

 

An hour later, standing with his back against his dorm room’s door and his front towards a certain smiling scoundrel, Ying Lin quickly burned that foolish thought, sending it to the gates of hell.

Perhaps he had committed a crime during his past life, or else why would he find himself in his current predicament? 

Jun Sheng, having walked the whole way back to the dorms by his side, merely smiled suavely. “Oh, what a coincidence.” 

He unlocked the door belonging to the room opposite of Ying Lin’s, saying, “We’re deskmates during the day and neighbours at night. We’re terribly fated, moody ancestor.”

Ying Lin, “...” Fuck.

Unwilling to deal with the bastard for even a second more, he turned on his heels, walked into his room and slammed the door shut behind himself. And if his ears caught the echoes of roguish laughter from outside, he took it as the buzzing of a bee instead.

After a quick shower, he fanned out a few worksheets he wasn’t able to finish in class across his desk and cursed the culprit under his breath. 

Twirling a pen absentmindedly, Ying Lin had a silent staredown with his worksheet.

If it were alive, he’d see the words on its pages have beads of sweat rolling down their edges.

His hair was still slightly damp, and the towel which hung listlessly around his neck couldn’t prevent a few droplets from dyeing the worksheet translucent. However, that made him snap out of his daze.

Ying Lin glanced at the corner where an ugly streak of blue was painted, and somehow, there was now an additional scribble that—if one squinted hard enough—could plainly see he had written something along the lines of a certain someone’s name.

He blinked a few times, then pulled the drawer of his desk out and searched for his correction tape. Calmly, he removed its sealed cap and erased the evidence with a dash of white. 

Senior students rarely use correction tape or fluid nowadays, simply because they were banned in exams, thus it was more cost-effective to cross out their mistakes with a rough line instead.

Ying Lin stared at the plump roll of tape and was speechless for a moment. With a dark expression, he glowered, “It’s his fault. Definitely.”

He raised a hand to ruffle his wet fringe, causing specks of water to fly defiantly. Then he slumped against his chair with a thoughtful expression. “He took the chance when the dorms were relatively empty to move in quietly…”

Suddenly, living with ghosts didn’t sound too bad.

A lifeless breath left Ying Lin’s lips as he stood. He walked towards his bed, picked up the alpha’s twice as large jacket and unceremoniously dumped it into the washing machine.

With the mindset of not seeing and not knowing, he then returned to his desk and rummaged through a familiar paper bag. Withdrawing his hand, within his palm were several packets of pills, half for controlling his pheromone levels and the other for suppressing his heat. 

Both types of pills looked identical: medium-sized capsules of white and blue, so if not for their labels, he wouldn’t be able to differentiate between the two.

Since showering, he had removed his scent blocker, and his room was now filled with the overwhelming scent of snowdrops—slightly earthy with an icy undertone. Fortunately for him, the walls were quite thick and the ventilation system was truly godsent, so even if his scent leaked beyond his doors, it wouldn’t be noticeable at all.

He took a pill to stabilise his pheromone fluctuations, tidied up his desk and fell back onto his bed, earnestly ready to hibernate at this point.

When his black hair met the plush pillow, his eyes lidded and then his breathing eventually evened out. As such, the two consecutive loud sneezes from next door went unheard.

 

 

 

 

Jun Sheng, who was about to end his call with Hu Duyi, rubbed under his nose with a finger. “Who misses me so late at night?”

Through his phone’s speaker, Hu Duyi’s slightly distorted cackle came, saying, “You sure? Once if someone misses you, twice if someone curses you and thrice if someone is reminiscing about you.”

“...Maybe it’s because I haven’t dried my hair.”

“Never mind that, Sheng-ge! Who’s your deskmate this time?”

At that, Jun Sheng pursed his lips. He recalled how a certain first son of his had calculated his chances of getting an omega deskmate, and truly felt that a crow’s mouth must run in the blood of their Hu family.

“Ah? Great master, did the connection cut?”

“Yeah, our father-son relationship just ended.”

Hu Duyi’s voice raised slightly, “What did I do? Was it because I didn’t visit your class? Sheng-ge, I didn’t know you were this petty—”

Jun Sheng sighed, threw his phone next to his pillow and similarly plopped down. “No, you fool. I should’ve known you were faking your horrible maths results all these years.”

The phone’s speaker went mum for a moment, but Jun Sheng could hear the rusty gears in Hu Duyi’s head start to creak.

“Your deskmate is an omega?!”

“Yep,” Jun Sheng said, popping the p. He grimaced, “Keep your voice down. You want to wake the whole dorm up, don't you?”

“Fuck, my bad—wait no, like hell I care! Which omega is it? Do I know them?” Hu Duyi clicked his tongue, mumbling, “If they’re one of your admirers...Sheng-ge, won’t you get uncomfortable?”

Jun Sheng closed his eyes and after a few silent moments, he opened them once more, the look in them unreadable. Feeling the alpha’s anxiety through the phone, he simply said, “Ying Lin.”

Hu Duyi didn’t know if his ears were still muddled with post-shower water, or if his mind was too drowsy, but the great master’s whisper almost seemed…amused? He didn’t think too much about it, finally exhaling the breath he held. “Ying Lin? Our school’s famous indifferent omega? That’s…good—at least, he’s not one of your admirers!”

Going off on a tangent, Hu Duyi added, “You both are quite similar, you know? An A who doesn’t like omegas, an O who keeps away from alphas. What’s that saying…? Right, like poles repel each other! Looks like I almost went bald for nothing—with him, you both won’t even have to get along!”

Jun Sheng frowned, he knew Hu Duyi meant well, but an unreasonable irritation welled up in his chest, as sour as vinegar. He interrupted the other’s monologue, saying, “It’s almost midnight, go sleep.”

Hu Duyi gave a start, “Ah?” He glanced at the time, reading: 11.45, and felt that it was too sudden. What was midnight to most students? Nothing. If anything, it was an hour to finish up homework or pester your friends, certainly not for sleeping—heck, he himself usually slept at two in the morning!

But he could discern an undertone of hostility in his Sheng-ge’s seemingly perfunctory words, and so he wisely didn’t prod, mumbled a quick “sleep well” and ended the call.

Hearing the line go flat, Jun Sheng gnawed on his bottom lip, picked his phone up to set his usual alarm and flung it aside after. With a mind full of irrational and irrelevant thoughts, he tossed and turned on the bed for a full hour before he eventually drifted off.

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