Chapter 204

Siron rubbed down his arms against the chill. Having lived for a while without air conditioning, he must have grown used to the heat; now the blast of cool air felt like it pierced him to the bone.

“When the hell is he coming out?”

He stared at the gate. Even though endless streams of people kept pouring out, there wasn’t even a shadow of Baekgyeong among them.

The three of them had arrived safely at Dallas–Fort Worth Airport around three in the afternoon. He had worried it might be suffocating if the place was saturated with alpha pheromones, but thankfully, nothing like that happened.

The problem began after they landed. Isaac and Siron, both carrying American passports, passed through the gate relatively smoothly, but Baekgyeong, with a Japanese passport, had already been stuck in immigration for three hours. Most likely, something in the process had triggered further questioning, and he was being held in the secondary inspection room.

“What happens if Baekgyeong’s passport has a problem with... ‘forgery’?”

Siron glanced around and whispered the word forgery in Korean.

“He’ll be denied entry and deported back to his home country.”

Isaac was seated diagonally behind him, facing the other direction. They weren’t looking at each other, yet his detached voice reached Siron’s ear.

“In the worst case, he could be permanently banned from entering the U.S.”

With a grim face, Siron stared at the gate. They were seated near Gate D33. D33 had been chosen in advance as their meeting spot in case they got separated. But it seemed they had chosen poorly — there were far more people gathered there than at other gates.

In fact, the crowd was so thick it looked as though some celebrity was arriving. Reporters with cameras had staked out the spot, and groups of people in uniforms marked with the word SPURZ, holding phones aloft, clogged the entrance.

There was a time my fans waited for me at airports too. But... what the hell is Spurz?

Lost in that brief memory of the past, Siron squinted at the letters across the backs of their uniforms — then suddenly felt a surge of urgency in his bladder. He tried to hold it, but the body never cared about tense situations.

“Damn it, I better hit the bathroom.”

He muttered to himself and rose. A short while later, Isaac also got up, maintaining a steady distance as he trailed behind him.

Isaac wore a gray T-shirt layered with a long-sleeved checkered shirt, worn jeans with frayed knees, and an old backpack. He looked the picture of an ordinary traveler, even with a cap and glasses, yet his presence refused to be hidden. His muscular build was half-disguised under loose clothing, but his towering height, a head above most men, and his broad shoulders were impossible to conceal.

Siron rushed into the restroom and, after relieving himself, stepped back out with a sense of ease. Isaac sat about twenty meters away on a bench, flipping through a pamphlet advertising local attractions. Siron caught him folding the pamphlet out of the corner of his eye as he started back toward D33. But strangely, the atmosphere near the gate had grown even more restless than before he’d left.

The crowd out front was adjusting uniforms and pulling out phones. Siron spread his disposable mask wider, pulling it high across the bridge of his nose, and adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses. Just as he tried to circle around to avoid the people, the sudden roar of cheers and camera shutters exploded through the airport. The infectious excitement made his own pulse quicken.

I remember now. Spurz.

The Spurz were the hottest basketball team in America right now — this year’s NBA champions.

The moment he realized, Siron’s body jolted backward. A bodyguard clearing the way had shoved him aside while pushing back fans and reporters crowding the gate.

I don’t even like Spurz! I’m a Warriors fan, damn it!

Annoyed at being mistaken for a rabid fan, Siron tried to slip away from the surge, but a wall of towering men in formation cut across his path.

One wore a tracksuit and headphones, another paused to pose for photos with fans. The men’s massive height made them seem like moving walls, and their presence instantly recalled the alphas from the island he’d fled. The pressure froze Siron in place. People pressed forward, shoving, and in no time, he was completely swallowed by the crowd.

At that moment, a heavy unfamiliar scent spread like dense cologne, striking his senses. Behind him, it pressed on the air itself, like an atmosphere thick with gravity. Unconsciously, some hidden valve within his body seemed to crack open, leaking drop by drop like a broken faucet.

“Snap out of it!”

A thunderous shout cracked through him, and Siron was yanked back, hard. Hot, firm fingers locked around his wrist, dragging him out of the crush. Dazed, shoved through the chaos of screams, shrieks, pleas, and sobbing, he finally realized the voice calling to him had been in Korean.

“Don’t come out!”

The words Isaac had left him with back in the Secretan Marsh hideout, right before Hybris kidnapped him, flashed in his mind. Then, those words had marked their parting. Now, Isaac stood before him, gripping his shoulder, shaking him awake.

“Get a hold of yourself. Right now!”

Isaac’s eyes blazed as if he would burn him through, and Siron, dumbfounded, could only nod, letting himself be dragged along.

Meanwhile, within the crowd, one of the Spurz players passing through the narrow barricade suddenly stopped. Quietly slipping off his headphones, from which loud music still blared, he glanced around. Out of nowhere, a scent pierced through him, striking straight into his heart. A world he had never experienced cracked open before him, only to vanish before he could step through.

Clutching his chest with a frightened expression, he felt as though the roar of the world around him was sinking away, muffled as if he were underwater.

Siron staggered, struggling to steady himself, as he followed after Isaac. They had run to the far end of the airport, to a deserted gate. He collapsed against a column, sliding down to the floor, gasping.

“A b-basketball player—hah—he must have been an alpha.”

He swallowed the metallic taste of blood-tinged saliva, breathing hard.

“Yeah—hah—if you become an alpha—hah—you grow taller, stronger, right? So of course—hah—there’d be a lot of them among athletes. ...But isn’t that—hah—like cheating?”

His face twisted, panting, Siron glared up at Isaac, who still had his hand clamped around his wrist, ready to drag him bodily away from the airport if he had to.

“You really don’t grasp the situation, do you? That was dangerous.”

“I know. I know it was dangerous.”

“Hah... good. At least you know.”

Isaac frowned down at him, quickly scanning their surroundings. No one seemed to be watching them, but CCTV cameras dotted the place.

“We need to leave the airport.”

“What about Baekgyeong?”

“He’ll meet us at the destination.”

“Destination? ...Oh. There.”

Thinking of the McCarthy siblings’ house, Siron tried to get to his feet, then slumped back down again.

“No. We can’t leave him. We have to take him with us.”

“I don’t have a knife. Or a gun.”

Before boarding the plane, Isaac had ditched everything — not just guns and blades, but even the metal cable ties. If they were targeted for abduction again, this time they would truly be defenseless. And if captured, their fate could be far worse than before.

“We’ve already wasted too much time. Get up.”

“...Damn it, fine. Okay.”

“Oh, so you can agree when I say it?”

Startled by the familiar voice, Siron whipped his head around. Baekgyeong was leaning against a pillar, panting hard.

“You’re slow as hell.”

“Damn it! That’s because of your fucking fake passport!”

He hurled a navy-colored passport at Isaac’s face, shouting.

“Out of all things — why a Japanese passport? What kind of idiot Japanese man can’t even read hiragana?”

Isaac deftly caught the passport, flipped it open, and scrutinized the entry stamps.

“Still, you managed to get through. Well done, Nakamura Hiroshi.”

Baekgyeong bristled at the provocation, ready to lunge at him. But Siron jerked his chin toward the exit, dousing his fury with a silent gesture.

“Let’s go. Nakamura.”