TW: Recount of SA
…
He was painfully aware of the attention of both Kang mother and son on him, Ji-young waiting with her pen poised, Do-hyun's gaze filled with worry. He stared down at his hands again, then took a deep breath.
"I've told Do-hyun some of it already," he started, "some months back. What I could remember. What I thought had happened.
"But that wasn't the whole thing. Not because I was trying to hide it from you," he said quickly, "but because there were things I didn't even know I had forgotten. I… recovered the rest of it while I was… asleep on the way here."
He could feel Do-hyun's eyes on him, but didn't look up. Instead, before he could second-guess himself, he reached up and drew his collar aside to reveal the jagged crescents of the bonding scar.
"About ten years ago, I met Choi Seungcheol at the Vienna Music Academy. We were close friends. In my final semester, he bonded me when I went into heat, before stealing my composition piece and submitting it as his own. When I tried to reclaim it, he discredited me and had me expelled. Then I returned to Korea, and haven't seen him since."
"Until now," Ji-young said.
"Until now." Jaemin released a slow, shaky breath. "Those are the broad strokes which I've already told Do-hyun before… but, like I said, there's more."
He told it plainly. How he had gone to Choi Seungcheol's house, to let him be the first to hear the finished piece. Drinking the celebratory wine. And then, that very night, the heat. His very first one since he had presented.
"I thought at first that I was unwell," he said, remembering. "But it was awful. I was in a lot of pain."
Ji-young watched him. As he was speaking, she had put down her pen and let her elbows rest on the table, leaning forward to press her chin onto her clasped hands.
"How did that experience compare with the other heats you've had since?" she asked quietly.
Jaemin hesitated. "I haven't had… I started on suppressants almost as soon as I left the Academy, so I don't really know what it's normally supposed to feel like. I haven't had any since. Until," he added quickly, "until the Revival Gala."
"The drug-induced heat." Ji-young's gaze sharpened. "And how did your first heat compare with that time?"
"It…" Jaemin paused, thinking. "It's a bit hazy. I felt like the second time was… worse? More intense? After a certain point, I wasn't really aware of what was happening around me. I only remember having vague impressions of…" He hesitated, blushing, but then bravely finished his sentence, "... of Do-hyun being there, taking care of me."
"I see." Ji-young's expression didn't change as she unfolded her hands. Then she said, carefully, "Jaemin-ssi. Is there a possibility that your first heat was also deliberately chemically induced by Choi Seungcheol?"
Biting his lip, Jaemin nodded. "I… I think so. When Choi Seungcheol was preparing the wine, I entered the kitchen to speak with him, and he… hid something." He recalled the flash of silver foil that Choi Seungcheol had swiftly pocketed. "But I didn't actually see him put it into my glass," he admitted.
Ji-young hummed, thinking, then glanced quickly towards Do-hyun. But the alpha seated beside Jaemin said nothing. Still, the quality of silence from his side of the room had shifted; a held breath that was carefully containing something.
Turning back to Jaemin, Ji-young asked gently, "What happened next?"
"I locked myself in my dorm room. He called, identified from my symptoms that I was in heat, and then told me not to let anyone else in except him. He said he could help."
"And you trusted him."
"Yes." The whispered word was bitter on Jaemin's tongue. "Yes. I did."
This was where there were significant differences to what he had told Do-hyun before. Jaemin had been carrying it for a while now, unsure exactly how Do-hyun would react. It had sat like a stone in his chest the entire morning.
"Walk me through what happened." Ji-young's voice was soft.
Jaemin's hand came up, almost unconsciously, fingers finding the scar on his nape. It seemed to ache faintly, a shadow of black tea and pain.
Then he let his hand fall.
"He came into my room," he said, trying to hold his voice steady even as it trembled. "He comforted me, and told me that it was too far gone for medication, that the only way to stop it safely was for him to… to mate with me and bond me." He looked up at Ji-young. "I believed him."
Ji-young gave a slight nod, acknowledging. "Did you agree?"
"I…" Jaemin swallowed through a dry throat, staring back down at his hands. "I was confused. I had been in love with him for a long time by then, but we had never actually been a couple, exactly, not in the romantic way. We hung out most of the time, but we'd never… yeah. So when he… touched me, kissed me, I… I didn't not want it."
"Understandably." Ji-young's deep brown eyes were sympathetic on Jaemin, but then moved past him briefly. "I'd understand if you'd want to step out for this, Do-hyun-ah," she said gently to her son.
Jaemin didn't dare to look, eyes fixed on his hands, but he heard the rustle of fabric as Do-hyun shifted in his seat.
"No." The alpha's voice was tight, but resolute. "I'm staying."
Ji-young nodded. Still with that same gentle tone, she said, "I'm sorry to have to ask, but I need to clarify: when you say that he touched you, do you mean penetration?"
Jaemin clasped his shaking hands tightly together. "Not… not exactly. Not yet, at that point." He took a breath. "Halfway through, I got self-conscious. I told him I didn't want to… to do it like that, when I felt so disgusting."
The furrow between Ji-young's eyebrows deepened slightly. "You resisted."
"Yeah, but then… but then he told me to relax… but it wasn't a suggestion." Jaemin swallowed, tense. "It was a Command."
The words, almost a whisper, landed heavily in the silent room. Jaemin felt rather than heard Do-hyun go absolutely still, and then, unmistakably, the cedar scent spiking violently into something sharp and wrong.
Across the table, Ji-young too had gone still, eyes widening. Her reaction was subtle, but Jaemin could tell that she hadn't been expecting that, somehow.
But there was more. The worst of it. Jaemin steeled himself and soldiered on.
"That was just the first one."
Open for me.
Do-hyun rose from his seat.
Jaemin went cold. His gaze snapped up in time to catch the line of Do-hyun's back as the alpha removed himself to the far side of the room. Jaemin couldn't see his face, couldn't read his expression.
But the cedar scent was climbing, sharp and distressed, and beneath that, the strain of Do-hyun fighting to contain it.
Quietly, Ji-young spoke. "Do-hyun-ah—"
Do-hyun shook his head wordlessly. One hand lifted briefly—continue—and then dropped.
Ji-young turned back to Jaemin, and her gaze, when they found his, were steady again. "Were there… more?"
Jaemin looked back down at his hands again. They were still cold, gripped white. But he couldn't stop now. There was no way to take back the words. He nodded.
"Two more. When he told me to let him bond me—"
Accept me.
"—after which he put me to sleep."
Sleep now.
"Each time, I obeyed. I had to. It… I felt like I wanted to. I can't really explain it." He looked at Ji-young, eyes pleading.
"It's the nature of a Command," Ji-young murmured. "The question they'll ask is: without it, would you still have consented?"
"I…" Jaemin swallowed. He understood that everything, the entire frame of this event, hinged on his answer. But he had to be honest.
"I really don't know," he said helplessly. "If things had happened differently—"
"But they didn't." Ji-young's voice was still gentle, but firm. "If he hadn't Commanded you, we would be having a different conversation. But he did. And the moment he did, any consent given ceased to be true consent. You could choose freely, because your will was overridden. That is what makes it a crime: not what you would have decided, but that he ensured you could never truly decide at all."
She watched him for a moment as he absorbed that, before continuing, picking her words with precision and care.
"What Choi Seungcheol extracted from you, through those Commands, was not consent. Whether or not he triggered your heat with substances, administered without your knowledge, it's clear from what you've just told me that he overrode any resistance from you, both explicit and potential, by force. The bonding mark he placed on you was inflicted through coercion, from beginning to end."
From the far side of the room, Do-hyun made no sound. He was just there—very still, very taut, and saying nothing at all… but there. Just as he had promised.
Jaemin couldn't bear to think about facing him after this.
Ji-young watched him for a moment. Then, with the same measured quiet, she asked, "There's more, isn't there?"
Jaemin nodded. "When I woke up, I found out that he had taken my piece, and submitted it as his own. When I confronted him and threatened to report him, he didn't take me seriously, because he knew that it meant I would have to reveal to the Academy that I was an omega, when I'd registered as a beta. But I went to the faculty to report him anyway."
"How did they react?"
Jaemin gave a small, pained laugh. "They took his side. Even though I gave them evidence of my working notes, my drafts, they'd already decided somehow that I was forging everything, and kept choosing to focus on the false secondary gender I had declared, instead of the evidence I was trying to show them that the piece was mine."
The words were coming faster now, pouring out of him in a tide he couldn't stop.
"They called me deceptive, hysterical. Volatile. And when Choi Seungcheol was called in, he told them, lied to them, that I was delusional, that I was obsessed with him, that I had stolen his music through transcription."
He gave another bitter laugh, closing his eyes and tilting his face up toward the ceiling. Across the room, Do-hyun's cedar spiked once more, but was quickly brought back under control.
"He performed so well for them," he murmured. "And they believed him, of course. I never stood a chance.
"It's funny. He also told them that I was the one who had thrown myself at him. Forced my pheromones on him, and then threatened to accuse him of plagiarism when he refused to comply with my demands." Jaemin paused, remembering. "He must have told someone else, even before that. It was all over the news, even before the tribunal was out."
"The news?" Ji-young asked, picking up her pen and quickly jotting something down. "Seems he likes using the media to create noise."
"Yes. He really… My reputation was in shambles. I was expelled without managing to graduate. Blacklisted with the European Association of Conservatoires. I had nothing left, nowhere left to go…"
"Except to go to him." Ji-young looked grim.
"Yeah. Even after the tribunal, he still somehow had it in his head that I would go to him eventually."
Ji-young tilted her head slightly. "You spoke with him after the tribunal?"
Jaemin nodded. "After the verdict was given. I was still in the corridor when he came out."
"The both of you were alone?"
"Yes."
"What did you say?"
"I… confronted him again." A sudden wave of exhaustion came over Jaemin. He felt hollowed out from the recollection, from the telling of it all. Reliving the grief and horror of realising that his closest friend and confidante had been a monster. "It was useless. He insisted that I wouldn't have made it otherwise, but said that I could still write music for him to perform."
"And you said?"
"I refused." Jaemin ran a hand tiredly down his face. "He attacked me."
Ji-young straightened in her chair. "He assaulted you?"
"With his pheromones. He… I don't know what he did. It… It felt a bit like just before a Command. It was intense, and just… pinned me to the ground. I couldn't breathe. Like he was choking me. And while I was down, he crouched over me, and said…"
My small, fragile little mate.
You will crawl back to me. When the world breaks you enough.
And because I'm benevolent… I'll let you.
A promise, delivered like a benediction.
I'll be waiting.
From the back of the room, Do-hyun made a sound. Ji-young's eyes snapped up.
"Do-hyun-ah."
The alpha didn't respond. Not with words. Just another strangled sound that did not resolve into anything coherent as he stumbled across the room and out the door.