Chapter 33

"Yes"?

Sebastian actually had someone he liked?

And as his best friend, he was completely in the dark about it?

Asher suddenly felt a sharp tightness in his chest. Unhappy, he raised an eyebrow.

At the other end of the private room, Eugene pressed on relentlessly, "Then who is the person you like?"

Everyone held their breath, waiting for the answer.

But Sebastian merely leaned back, half-shrouding himself in the shadows. His fingers unfastened another shirt button as he spoke with complete nonchalance, "That's for the next question."

Asher felt that blockage in his chest tighten even further. This guy was intentionally keeping them hanging; it was a pure downer, thoroughly boring.

But whatever, I'm not curious anyway.

Yet, even after going to the restroom and washing his hands, his mind was still completely fixated on it. Sebastian genuinely had someone he liked now?

They hung out together every single day, so how had he failed to notice even a trace of it?

Exactly who could it be?

It definitively wasn't someone from their city. If the person belonged here, Sebastian wouldn't have been able to hide it from him. Therefore, it could only be someone he met back when he was living in the capital.

Thinking about it, it did seem reasonable.

Sustaining a severe injury here, going to the capital completely alone, without friends or family... if a soft, sweet, sensible, and thoughtful Omega surfaced during a time like that, it was remarkably normal for Sebastian to fall for them.

Yet he hadn't even told him. Asher felt a sudden bitter, sour pang in his heart.

Then he imagined what it would be like if they both got into the university in the capital next year, only for Sebastian to suddenly drag a sweet little Omega in front of him, telling him to call her "Sister-in-law," while showing off their affection right before his eyes...

The sour feeling turned increasingly intense.

But if reality genuinely turned out that way, how large of a red envelope would he have to prepare when the time came? Or should he simply drag two more friends along to the capital? In any case, Sebastian was a solitary soul; if he had a girlfriend to keep him company, it would be a good thing, and he couldn't just stand there like a third wheel.

Yet regardless of how his thoughts twirled, his heart consistently held a trace of absolute displeasure.

Sebastian harbored a little secret, yet refused to share it with him.

Asher shut off the water faucet, pulling two pieces of tissue to wipe his hands with total distraction.

"Stop wiping; you're going to rub your skin raw if you keep going."

Hearing the voice, Asher lifted his head and discovered Elliot had stood behind him at some unknown point.

Patting his shoulder, Elliot’s smile carried an exceptionally deep, suggestive meaning: "After you left, we played four or five rounds, and Sebastian didn't lose a single one."

Asher turned defensive: "Are you saying I was the one bringing Sebastian bad luck? That I'm a jinx?"

"..."

Elliot stared at him for three solid seconds, before turning with absolute exasperation to march inside the restroom.

Whoever harbored an unrequited love for Asher had definitively encountered the worst luck across a hundred lifetimes of destiny.

The exact moment Asher stepped back inside the private room, a round had perfectly hit its conclusion. Milo had lost, and the winner turned out to be Eugene for a second time.

The atmosphere was much more vibrant than before, and the questions were getting bolder. Eugene had already coiled his legs straight onto the sofa: "Milo, listen carefully. The question I desperately want to ask is simply—is your first kiss still intact?!"

Asher wanted to blurt out,

Of course it is, Milo personally promised he would safeguard his purity before I transform into the most dominant Alpha of all.

Yet Milo unexpectedly flushed red to an extreme degree, stammering his words: "That... that locking of lips... does it count as a first kiss..."

...

Otherwise? Could it be that kissing a toe counts as one?

Draped in a deadpan face, Asher sat back down into his original seat.

Sebastian was lazily leaning against the back of the sofa, resting his eyes. Noticing his return, he asked: "What's with that expression on your face?"

Asher maintained his freezing detachment: "An expression typical of someone who has been subjected to a dual betrayal across a single evening."

Hearing his words, Sebastian tilted his head sideways, his gaze sweeping out from the corners of his narrow eyes to evaluate Asher, wanting to extract a trace of something from his face. Opening his mouth slowly: "Subjected to a dual betrayal?"

"My best brother and my best sister have successfully started a scandalous connection behind my back, yet I was completely left in the dark about it."

"Just that?"

"Is just that not enough?" Asher raised an eyebrow, slanting a glance back over at him.

He was a fraction unhappy.

Yet it merely amounted to a fraction of unhappiness, stripped of any alternative ripples.

Sebastian withdrew his gaze, turning his head around to slowly straighten his back. His hand rested securely against the dice cup: "Next round."

A light, smooth shake.

The five ones re-emerged in the room.

Asher followed along to execute a shake.

The five sixes remanifested in the world.

...

Asher started to suspect whether he was truly some kind of demon who exclusively drained Sebastian's masculine essence.

As fate would have it, everyone’s luck turned out rather decent this time; Mason, who recorded the second-smallest total, still secured thirteen points.

Another round of eight cups.

The cups provided by the KTV were colossal; a single cup could comfortably hold more than half a can.

Asher didn't even think about it, grabbing a cup for himself, cracking open a pop tab with one hand, and pouring it in. "Sebastian and I will split it fifty-fifty."

The two silly giants, Mason and Caleb, weren't having it. "Ash, across the past rounds, the two of us drank more than a dozen cups whole with total honesty. Substituting alcohol for another person is completely barred, alright."

Too lazy to deal with them, Asher grabbed the cup. He had merely taken a shallow sip when a hand abruptly snatched it away from his grip.

Sebastian leaned close to his ear, his voice dropping low and deep, keeping his volume to a baseline where strictly only the two of them could catch the words: "I already told you—little kids are completely barred from smoking and drinking. Why are you refusing to be compliant?"

Finishing his line, his two sharply contoured fingers gripped the rim of the cup. With a feather-light pull backward, he brought it to his lips and tilted his head back, draining the entire cup of alcohol in a single go.

The exact fraction of a second his head tilted back, the lines of his neck elongated sharply, the dim, hazy, flickering lights of the private room slicing a flawless profile outline. The amplitude of his Adam's apple sliding up and down turned exceptionally distinct.

In a silent, peaceful grace, a masculine hormone styled "sensual attraction" quietly drifted outward in this manner.

He had clearly refrained from exposing a single patch of bare skin, yet Asher abruptly averted his gaze out of nowhere.

He didn't know why he made this movement; only the primal instinct buried deep within his core knew perfectly that continuing to look at the man crossed the boundary of absolute impossibility.

If he kept looking, he would be completely consumed by this fox spirit.

And tracking along his tactical retreat, Sebastian had successfully completed the task of draining all eight cups of alcohol.

Slow, deliberate, and entirely elegant—one cup after another, completely stripped of the sallow embarrassment typical of other human beings who leaked liquid or let out hiccups while being forcefully fed alcohol.

Wrapping up the task, his posture remained entirely upright without a single shred of unseemly behavior. Merely the crimson scoring his eye corners turned a fraction more bewitching as he squeezed the bridge of his nose, delivering a flat line: "Before I get completely drunk, ask your question quickly. Otherwise, if you fail to extract an answer in a bit, don't blame me for playing rogue."

Eugene instantly joined the track to hype the atmosphere: "Exactly, exactly! Ash, ask quickly!"

Only then did Asher recall that with his five sixes aligned, the option to ask belonged strictly to him.

Yet what on earth should he ask?

Ask exactly who the person he loved was? Encircled by this massive crowd of people, blurting out a question that sat at this extreme threshold of personal privacy was genuinely unseemly. He had zero desire to make Sebastian face an uncomfortable bottleneck, nor did he want to force Sebastian.

Ask why the hell he refrained from disclosing the reality that he possessed an individual he loved to him? Behaving along that line would merely make it look like he over-elevated his own importance, thoroughly unnecessary.

Ask alternative matters... what the hell was there left to ask anyway? He possessed the absolute awareness that even a mole rested against the right side of Sebastian’s hip; what else could he possibly ask?

Thinking for a long while, the imagery of Sebastian consuming alcohol just a moment ago flashed across his mind, driving him to ask along a bizarre impulse: "Sebastian, do you think I'm attractive?"

He discovered that recently, he evaluated Sebastian to be increasingly attractive. In the past, he merely knew that Sebastian was handsome, but it amounted to a flat concept—mismatched alongside recent times, where at a sudden, random fraction of a second, he would discover this person genuinely radiated an intense attractiveness, the specific model of attractiveness packed with immense charm that accelerated a human heartbeat.

Across his entire existence tracking to this milestone, he had never once deemed any alternative human being this attractive before.

Therefore, to safeguard an absolute fairness, he strictly had to know whether Sebastian thought he was attractive. If Sebastian thought he was unattractive, he would decisively cease evaluating Sebastian to be attractive in return.

The exact fraction of a second this question broke past the surface, the remaining members inside the private room turned completely rigid on the spot, failing to snap back to their senses for a long while.

Hey! Our pack didn't launch this game layout purely to listen to you raise an absolute grade-schooler tier question, alright!

Sebastian couldn't hold down a sharp

pffft

, letting out a loud laugh: "You are the most attractive; no one is more attractive than you."

"Stop laughing! What's so funny! Be serious!"

Asher also realized the question he raised crossed the line into absolute idiocy, forcing his face into a hard line as he attempted to weaponize his own aura to ensure the question appeared a fraction less childish.

Yet unfortunately, he possessed a physical build where a wave of embarrassment would instantly flush his ears red. Tracking along Sebastian’s angle of vision, he could see with total clarity exactly how his pale, smooth, rounded little ears transformed into a pair of brilliant pink nodes.

His heart couldn't help but think how this guy could be so incredibly cute.

Even the question he asked was so cute.

"Alright, I won't laugh. I'm being very serious too—you really are the most attractive."

Although he forcefully held down his amusement, the laughter and absolute indulgence pulsing within his eyes were far too obvious, leaving Asher with a persistent sensation that he wasn't being completely honest, but was just coaxing a child.

Glancing toward the side to catch the expressions on the others' faces—which clearly said,

'I knew you were narcissistic, but I didn't think you could be this narcissistic'

—Asher felt he had utterly lost face.

He clearly hadn't drunk a single drop of alcohol, so why had his brain short-circuited like this?

Before Sebastian’s return, he had never been like this. The moment the guy came back, he seemed to act a bit foolish at every turn.

He absolutely hated this guy.

With his ears burning hot, Asher stood up with a tense face: "I'm going to the restroom."

Caleb was shocked: "Ash, you just came back from the restroom. Don't tell me that at such a young age, you already..."

Sebastian stood up right along with him, his arm dropping naturally over Asher’s shoulder as he leaned half his weight onto him, putting on the front of being three-parts drunk. He slanted a narrow glance back at Caleb: "Asher is helping me over. Do you have a problem with that?"

Drenched under that narrow gaze, a cold shudder traced Caleb's spine: "I wouldn't dare."

Asher didn't say anything either, letting him keep his arm around his shoulder as they walked towards the restroom together.

As they turned the corner, they ran right into Elliot, who was coming back.

Elliot evaluated their posture with a single look, nodded, patted Sebastian’s shoulder with a smile, and walked away.

Asher raised an eyebrow: "What's his deal?"

Sebastian shifted his weight another two fractions deeper onto Asher's frame, his expression looking a bit uncomfortable: "I don't know either; there's probably something wrong with him. I think I'm a bit drunk."

Asher snapped: "Serves you right for showing off. Would it kill you to let me share half? Is my tolerance for alcohol lower than yours? Insisting on barring me from drinking, I have no idea what you're thinking."

Before his scolding could finish, Sebastian’s body suddenly went soft for a second. Asher hurriedly extended his hands to catch him, but the hand Sebastian had on his shoulder unexpectedly applied a bit of force along some unknown track. In the next fraction of a second, Asher found himself pinned flat against the corridor wall.

One of Sebastian’s hands encircled his neck, while his other hand loosely rested against his waist with zero strength, his head buried deep within Asher's neck.

"I think I'm a bit drunk. Let me lean against you for a bit to clear my head, alright?"

His tone was thoroughly soft, carrying a tiny trace of pleading and a minor hint of a spoiled tantrum in it.

When had Asher ever heard Sebastian speak like this? Hearing him talk this way, how could he possibly refuse him?

Yet having no idea how to make Sebastian more comfortable, he could only keep his body rigidly straight as he was pinned against the wall. His two hands had nowhere to go, and his neck was relentlessly tickled by those puffs of warm breath.

He wondered what was wrong with this KTV—why on earth did they turn on the heating when it was only September? It was so damn hot.

Both hot and restless.

The two maintained this exact posture—one having no desire to move, and the other not daring to move.

Time bled away slowly.

Just when Asher thought Sebastian had fallen asleep, Sebastian suddenly spoke: "Asher, I have someone I love."

"Huh? Oh, congratulations. Wishing you an early success in winning your beauty over."

Asher tried his absolute best to ensure his tone flawlessly matched the standpoint of a good brother, serving as an absolute, emotionless blessing machine.

Sebastian thought to himself,

Then I really have to thank you for your blessing.

His forehead rested against Asher’s shoulder, his face buried in a spot completely hidden from view, a helpless trace of amusement crossing his lips.

"Asher, you really are an absolute idiot."

"?"

Asher instantly extended his hands to push Sebastian off his body. "That's it. Our brotherhood is completely severed; we are done!"

Straightening his back, Sebastian put on a deadpan face: "That works out perfectly. I didn't want to be brothers with you anymore anyway."

Finishing his line, he turned the corner and walked toward the restroom, his steps swaying slightly.

Asher was thoroughly used to bickering with Sebastian on regular days, so he didn't think about why Sebastian had suddenly insulted him, nor did he take Sebastian’s words seriously.

Commotion aside, he was still afraid the guy would fall, so he quickly took two paces to catch up, grabbing his arm while throwing out a sharp jibe: "Are you still doing alright? Can you handle your own business independently? If you can't manage it, I can help hold it for you."

Stopping right at the restroom door, Sebastian tilted his head sideways, his narrow eyes half-squinting to evaluate him: "If I can't manage it, what exactly do you plan to hold?"

"Whatever isn't working, that's what I'll hold."

"Alright, then come hold it."

He looked completely nonchalant.

Asher: "..."

Damn.

Being drunk makes him invincible? Being drunk lets him be this completely shameless? It's infuriating that my own level of banter actually lost to his shamelessness.

He could only retreat into the corridor with a flushed face: "Forget it. I'm an Omega, it's inconvenient for me to enter an Alpha restroom. Figure it out yourself."

Sebastian couldn't help but laugh. Given how thin this guy's skin actually was, he still dared to talk trash. He had the nerve to tease but completely lacked the nerve to handle the consequences; he would definitively pay the price for this in the future.

Thinking about this, he turned on the faucet, putting his hands under the cold water to force a sliver of clarity back into his head. He had actually been sober the entire time, just a bit chaotic inside, wanting to catch a brief break to sort out his thoughts.

He wasn't completely sure if his choice to disclose that he had someone he liked had been too sudden.

He always felt that although Asher acted like a stone-cold straight Alpha on the surface, a subtle spark and a different kind of feeling had faintly surfaced between them. Perhaps it was time to force Asher to look straight at the possibility of another relationship between them.

As it turned out, this guy just gave him a flat "congratulations"?

He, a top-tier Alpha, had meticulously planned to seduce an Omega, only to find out the other guy hadn't even opened a single portal of realization from start to finish.

So whose fault was this exactly?

Sebastian let out a self-deprecating smile, wondering if he should just directly use his looks to seduce him and settle it once and for all. While tugging open his shirt collar, he walked straight out.

The exact second he stepped outside, his eyes caught sight of Asher leaning against the corridor wall, fiddling with something in his hands.

Seeing him emerge, Asher grabbed his left wrist with a sharp tug, fastening something onto it without giving him room to argue: "Wear this before you go back. Otherwise, with your terrible luck and your stubborn pride, what happens if you drink until you collapse on the floor? I have plans tomorrow and I don't want to see you hungover like a dog."

Plans tomorrow.

The corners of Sebastian's lips curved upward as he looked down at his own wrist.

It was an exquisitely woven black cord stringing a collection of obsidian stones. Anchored right at the center was a pristine, rounded, glistening prehnite stone. Across the surface of the prehnite, a row of text characters was carved.

Looking closer, he discovered it wasn't a full row, but half a row—a vertical line slicing right down the middle to split a name into two halves.

And across Asher’s right wrist, an identical string of beads was resting securely.

Sebastian lifted his eyes to look straight at Asher, waiting for an explanation.

Asher appeared to feel a trace of embarrassed discomfort, refusing to look at Sebastian's face as his head dropped to fumble with the beads on his own wrist.

"This prehnite stone was bought at the Dajue Temple yesterday. The old monk said that prehnite is a stone of luck—if there are two identical pieces, and you carve the names of two people with each stone carrying half, it can share my excellent luck with you..."

"Don't laugh! You are completely barred from laughing! I know feudal superstition is wrong. But it’s just... I think your luck is really a bit terrible, and as it happens, my own luck is so good it's ridiculous—so good that I feel life has no challenge. So I'm sharing a bit with you, and then both of us will be perfectly balanced."

"And don't look down on it for being plain. I begged my mom for an exceptionally long time last night before she helped me weave the cord... this thing is way harder than you think, I tried for ages and couldn't learn it. It counts as a piece of my mom's heart too... So, if you think it's passable, just wear it."

"And what if? What if this thing really can share my good luck with you? In any case, wearing it won't hurt you or cost you anything, so why don't you... just try it first, and we'll talk if it turns out useless."

"Sebastian, really, I don't mean anything else by this. I just hope that after your eighteenth birthday, you can be a bit luckier and happier. A guy as excellent as you has no reason to keep suffering. Stop mocking my superstition, and trust me just this once, alright?"

Sebastian had likely never met anyone who could deliver words of such absolute tenderness while putting on such a fierce, explosive tone—so tender that it left him desperately wanting to pull him into a tight embrace and never let him leave.

His initial thought hadn't been wrong: Asher really was an absolute idiot. If he weren't an absolute idiot, who on earth would actively plan to share their own good luck with someone else?

Sebastian lowered his eyes, his fingertips gently brushing past the prehnite stone: "I won't mock your superstition."

Because looking back at the person who had written "wishing to be together year after year" on that crimson cloth, he himself wasn't in a position to judge.

At seventeen or eighteen, the mind starts to understand everything, yet remains completely short of sorting everything out.

It felt as if nothing in this world could create a true bottleneck for them—as long as their collective will was aligned, they could force the world to bow before them.

Yet it simultaneously felt as if they were both too young, causing every front to radiate a trace of helplessness and absolute daze. Consequently, they could only use a cautious, clumsy approach to try every method within their scope, even knowing clearly that the method might look thoroughly ridiculous.

But what did that matter anyway? During the years of youth, they had expended their maximum efforts to fight for each other; then, a definitive day would arrive where they would all successfully see their wishes come true.

Sebastian ifted his left hand, looking at the half of the characters carved across the prehnite stone, letting out a certain, absolute smile: "I also think that after turning eighteen, I should turn out to be exceptionally lucky."

For instance—if I can successfully pursue you, it would count as a stroke of luck that completely crossed the absolute limit.