Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The first time a director tells Minho to “play it more Alpha,” he thinks he misheard.

They’re shooting in a cramped apartment set, fake sunlight blazing through rigged windows, cameras tucked into corners like patient animals. Minho’s supposed to be angry in this scene—his character just found out his partner has been lying for months.

The script calls for frustration, betrayal, hurt.

He gives them that. Tight jaw, clipped words, an almost-shaking hand that never quite slams the door.

“Cut,” the director says, leaning back in his chair. His headset cord swings when he turns.

“It’s… fine. But can you do it again, more—” a vague circle of his hand in the air “—more Alpha-esque.”

Minho blinks under the hot lights.

“I thought he was trying not to explode,” he says carefully.

“Yeah, yeah,” the director says. 

“But we need something women will feel, you know? You’re an Alpha. Use it. Crowd her a bit, raise your voice, maybe grab her arm—obviously we’ll keep it safe, but we need the instinct. Right now you’re playing him like a Beta who read a self-help book.”

A few people chuckle. The boom operator looks away. The actress opposite Minho gives him a quick, brittle smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

Minho feels his shoulders lock.

He could do it. He knows how. Instinct sits there under his skin, a low-frequency buzz. He can imagine stepping into her space, making himself bigger, voice rougher, hand closing around her wrist.

He also knows that last week, in the same building, a makeup artist whispered about a different set, a different director, an Omega co-star who went home shaking because an "unscripted" shove and an "improvised" wall slam made it into the final cut.

“Can we try it with blocking first?” Minho asks. “And talk to her about where she’s comfortable?”

The director’s smile thins.

“It’s just acting,” he says. “We’re burning daylight here. You’re an Alpha, Minho-ssi. Audiences expect a certain… energy.”

He says Alpha like a prop description. A tool he ordered from a catalogue.

Minho’s scent wants to spike, irritation sharpening at the back of his tongue. He swallows it down until all that comes out is a level, “I still think we should talk it through.”

They compromise, sort of.

The actress hastily agrees to a watered-down version of the blocking with a nervous laugh and a “it’s fine, really,” that fools no one. Minho hits his marks, raises his voice half a notch, lets his hand land hard on the doorframe instead of on her.

The director calls cut again. This time he sounds satisfied.

“See?” he says. “Told you. That’s the Alpha people want to see.”

Minho smiles for the playback monitor. It feels like bad stage makeup—thick, wrong, sitting on top of his skin instead of blending in.

Later, on another set, someone else tells him to "loosen up" because real Alphas don’t ask so many questions.

At a commercial audition, the casting assistant asks if he’d be willing to take off his scent blockers patch "just for the last take" so they can get his "natural reaction" to the actress leaning in.

At dinner once, an older actor claps him on the shoulder and says, “You’re good, kid, but if you want leads? You’ve got to stop fighting what you are. Directors love a bit of unpredictability in an Alpha. You’re too… careful.”

Too careful to let his scent do whatever it wants in a room full of strangers. 

Too careful to pretend consent is optional because a script says so. 

Too careful to forget every rumour he’s ever heard about scenes that went too far and careers that ate people alive.

Sometimes, lying awake in his tiny apartment, Minho wonders if they’re right. If he’s making his own life harder by trying to thread a needle that doesn’t exist.

He could lean into it. Stop pushing back in meetings. Accept the roles that want him to be loud and possessive and always half a breath away from losing control.

He could probably work more.

He might even be more famous.

The thought makes his stomach twist.

On a Tuesday afternoon between jobs, he ends up in a dingy waiting room outside a mid-tier casting office. Plastic chairs, fluorescent lights, a water dispenser gurgling in the corner. The air is thick with cheap cologne and the faint chemical tang of too many scent blocker patches.

A few other actors are there—two Alphas in tight shirts, one Beta scrolling through their phone. The receptionist has disappeared somewhere down the hall, leaving them with a stack of outdated magazines and a poster for a drama that tanked three seasons ago.

Minho fills out the form on the clipboard and sets it aside. The script pages in his lap are thin and flimsy, the kind that crumple if you breathe too hard.

He’s not really listening to the conversation at first.

“Did you see that guy from CB97 in the last drama?” one of the alphas says. He’s got his feet kicked out, sneakers too clean, voice just loud enough to carry.

“Which one?” the other asks. “They’ve got a couple.”

“The quiet one. Murder-eyes. What’s his name—Lee something? He played the detective’s partner.”

Minho’s pen stills over the line that asks for his designation.

“Oh, him,” the second alpha says. “Yeah. He was… fine.” There’s a shrug in the word. “Kind of weird for an Alpha, though.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know, man. He just stood there looking like he was trying not to breathe half the time. You’re an Alpha, you’ve got presence, you know?” A lazy laugh. 

“If you’re gonna be on screen, at least act like you’ve got teeth.”

The first Alpha snorts. “Maybe he’s one of those ‘safe’ types. Omegas love that online. ‘Oh my god, he asked for consent’.” He pitches his voice high in a mock-fan tone.

They both laugh. The Beta on the phone doesn’t look up.

“I heard he pushed back over an unscripted kiss once,” the second adds, lowering his voice only slightly. 

“Director wasn’t happy. That’s career suicide, man. You can’t be difficult when you’re desperate to make it out there.”

Minho turns the page in his script, even though he already knows the next line by heart.

His face stays perfectly blank.

His scent stays low and clean, curled tight under his skin like it’s under a scent blockers even when it isn’t.

“You okay?” the Beta murmurs to him quietly, later, when the others get called in and it’s just the two of them.

Minho looks up, surprised they noticed. “Yeah. Why?”

“They were kind of loud,” they say with a small wince. “And rude.”

He shrugs, the movement easy, practiced. “Strangers say worse online,” he says. “At least these ones used my real job title.”

The Beta huffs a little laugh. Some of the tension slips out of their shoulders.

When Minho’s name is finally called, he stands, smooths the wrinkles out of his pants, and leaves the half-crumpled script pages on the chair.

The words they said cling for a moment—weird for an Alpha, safe type, difficult when you’re not even famous—then slide off the surface of him like water off oiled cloth.

On the surface.

Underneath, where it’s quieter, they sink just enough to add to the familiar weight he carries around. The knowledge that he’s never quite what people want him to be, not on instinct, not on camera.

He still walks into the audition room. He still does the scene. He still goes home on the subway, standing wedged between commuters, watching his reflection sway in the dark window.

He gets a polite email two days later: thank you for your time, we’ve decided to go in another direction.

Minho deletes it. Shrugs. Moves on.

Because what else is there to do?

So he keeps doing what he does. Taking the roles that don’t make his skin crawl, turning down the ones that treat designations like cheap special effects, and watching glossier, easier alphas climb past him on the ladder.

Hyunjin lands another cologne CF. Some other guy from his academy days books a lead in a drama built entirely around an Omega’s tragic heat.

Minho gets a week-long supporting part and a handful of lines that make exactly three people on the internet call him "promising" in the comments.

It’s not nothing. It’s just… not quite enough.

He drifts between sets and cramped practice rooms and the lumpy couch in Chan’s office, his days held together by coffee and scripts and the quiet belief that there has to be a way to be an Alpha on camera without being the worst version of it.

Most weeks, that belief feels thin.

On the afternoon everything changes, it feels especially thin.

The last audition was a bust, the subway was packed, and his scent blockers patch still itches faintly on the side of his neck from this morning. He peels it off in Chan’s bathroom before flopping onto the couch, scent curling small and tired in the stale office air.

“Rough day?” Chan asks, not looking up from his tablet.

“Nothing terrible,” Minho says, which is just another way of saying nothing special.

He doesn’t know yet that in a few hours, the office phone will ring with a project name he recognizes from headlines, and a role that might finally ask him to be an Alpha the way he actually is.

For now, it’s just another slow afternoon in a too-small office with a broken printer, a stack of scripts, and a manager who believes in him a little louder than he believes in himself.

And that, somehow, is still enough to make him stay.

The problem with being an Alpha without a proper rut schedule, Minho thinks, is that everyone assumes you’re lazy.

“You’re not lazy,” Chan says, which means he’s been reading Minho’s expression again. “You’re… selectively invested.”

The word hangs in the cramped office air like one of Chan’s many sticky notes. The room smells faintly of burnt coffee, old printer ink, and the ghost of too many stressed-out clients. 

Afternoon light seeps through the narrow window, catching on dust motes and the curling edges of paper pinned to the corkboard.

“That’s a polite way of saying picky,” Minho mutters.

“It’s a polite way of saying you refuse trash roles,” Chan corrects, squinting at his tablet like it’s personally offended him. “Which, for the record, I support.” He pauses. 

“Mostly.”

The couch under Minho is lumpy and a little too low, its cushions softened by years of actors slumping into it after bad auditions. He sprawls across it anyway, socked feet propped on the far arm, fingers idly tracing a rip in the fabric. The familiarity of it settles under his skin—a low, constant hum of this is where we are, this is what we do.

By the door, a crooked cluster of sticky notes glares down at him.

They’re half joke, half survival guides.

“Any more trash roles for your selectively invested client?” Minho asks, tipping his head back to stare at the stained ceiling.

Chan doesn’t look up from his inbox. “Define trash.”

“Instinct-driven Alpha in a love triangle where the Omega exists solely to cry and cook.”

“Yes,” Chan says immediately. “Three of those.”

Minho huffs a laugh into the couch arm. “Pass.”

“I already passed,” Chan says. “On your behalf. Twice.” He swipes to another email, face twisting. “And no, I’m not letting you do a variety show where you ‘help Omegas find their perfect Alpha partner’ either.”

Minho pulls a face at the ceiling.

“Do they at least offer good money to humiliate yourself?” he asks.

“Oh, incredible money,” Chan says blandly. “We could pay off the office printer. And maybe the building.”

The printer in the corner grinds uselessly, as if to prove his point, a red error light blinking like a tiny, furious eye.

Minho peeks over his folded arm. “Tempting.”

“Disgusting,” Chan counters. “Also, they wanted you to be on camera without patches the whole time so audiences could ‘read your natural reactions’.” He does air quotes with one hand while scrolling with the other. “I told them we’re not running a live biology exhibit.”

Minho’s jaw tightens. The easy sprawl of his shoulders stiffens for a breath, then he forces himself to relax again.

“Of course they did,” he says quietly.

“Yeah.” Chan sighs and finally sets the tablet down, leaning back in his rickety office chair. It creaks in protest. “Because why treat actors like actors when you can treat them like science experiments?”

Outside the thin wall, someone laughs too loudly in the hallway. 

A phone rings. A door shuts. The muffled noise of the agency carries on, a steady backdrop to the small, stubborn world inside this office.

“Hyunjin took that CF, right?” Minho asks after a beat, mostly to nudge them away from the familiar sore spot.

“Yeah.” Chan perks up a little. “The cologne one with the cinematic rooftop shots? It’ll look great on his reel. He’s probably shooting with them next week.”

Of course he is. Hyunjin glows on camera. Minho knows it, Chan knows it, the whole city knows it.

Where Hyunjin seems born for glossy close-ups and lingering perfume ads, Minho has always felt more like sharp edges and shadows. Useful in the right role. Easy to overlook in the wrong one.

Chan checks his watch. The cheap plastic band is worn where it rubs his wrist. “Look, there’s a mid-budget drama asking about you. Beta role, second male lead, no designation shenanigans. Might be good experience if—”

The office phone rings.

The sound cuts through the room like a cue.

Both of them freeze for a heartbeat, then Chan lunges, nearly knocking over a stack of scripts.

“CB97 Entertainment, Bang Chan speaking,” he says, voice snapping into polite-professional mode so fast it gives Minho whiplash. “How can I help you?”

Minho lets the words wash over him at first, staring at the coffee ring ghosting the edge of the desk. He’s heard a hundred variations of this call before. 

It’s usually scheduling, or a low-budget side project, or someone asking if Minho would consider "loosening up" on his contract boundaries.

He traces the outline of the stain with his eyes, follows the crack in the ceiling paint to the corner, counts the faint grey spots no one’s bothered to repaint.

He only tunes back in when Chan stops filling the silence with his usual small talk.

“Yes,” Chan says slowly. “He’s available. Of course. May I ask—”

His tone changes—flattens, then sharpens. His gaze flicks to Minho, focus landing like a physical weight.

Minho’s brows draw together. He swings his feet down from the couch, socks whispering against the worn fabric.

Chan reaches for his tablet with his free hand, opens the calendar, then a blank note. “Prelims? This week?” A pause. “Right, of course, short notice is fine. Is this an open call or…?”

There’s another pause. Chan’s eyebrows climb.

“Oh,” he says, softer. “Recommendation. I see. And the project name?”

He scribbles something, pen moving fast, the scratch of it loud in the small room.

Minho can’t see the words from here, but he doesn’t need to. He can read Chan instead—the way his shoulders straighten, the way his fingers tighten just slightly on the cheap ballpoint.

The air in the office shifts, the way it does right before a storm breaks.

“Understood,” Chan says. “We’ll be there. Could you email the sides and any scent protocol in advance? He—yes, of course he’s aware of protocol. We just like to be thorough.”

Another quick glance at Minho. Less checking he’s there, more are you hearing this?

“Thank you,” Chan finishes, and there’s something almost reverent under the professionalism now. “We really appreciate the opportunity.”

He hangs up the receiver carefully, like it might explode if he moves too fast.

The office seems suddenly too quiet. The hallway noises blur; even the printer has gone silent, red light steady instead of blinking.

“Okay,” Minho says, because someone has to break it. “That sounded… intense.”

Chan just stares at him for a second, like his brain is buffering.

“Breathe, hyung,” Minho suggests. “You’re turning purple.”

Chan inhales sharply, lets the air out all at once, and then laughs—a short, startled sound that borders on hysterical.

“Minho,” he says. “Do you know what Orion is?”

“The constellation?” Minho offers. “A very old-brand coffee? A pretentious bar you took Hyunjin to once?”

Chan drags his tablet closer and swipes, fingers moving faster now. He spins it around with a little flourish, as if he’s presenting a magic trick.

On the screen is an article Minho recognizes from social media headlines he didn’t quite click.

HONG JISUNG RETURNS WITH NEW OMEGA-LED FEATURE ‘ORION’
Top-tier director teams up with award-winning Omega actor Kim Seungmin…

  Set inside a failing public hospital, Orion follows an exhausted Omega whistleblower and the Alpha security officer assigned to keep him quiet as they uncover a pattern of disappeared patients and falsified case files. 

 What starts as a tense professional arrangement between designated opposites becomes a partnership that forces both of them to confront how much of themselves they’re willing to trade to survive an institution built to use their biology against them.

Minho’s brain blanks.

“Wait,” he says. “No.”

“Yes,” Chan counters, grinning wide enough that his eyes almost disappear. “That was JVillage Pictures. They’re running preliminaries for Orion this week. They want you there for the first round.”

The familiar little office suddenly feels too small, like the walls have inched closer while he wasn’t looking.

Minho swallows. His own scent curls low and tight in his chest, instinct tugging between step forward and back away now.

“They—” he starts, then clears his throat. “They saw my headshot?”

“Well, obviously.”

“Maybe they dialed the wrong number.”

“Stop it.” Chan taps the article. “They said you were recommended. That means someone watched your work and thought, ‘Yeah, let’s drag that surly Alpha with the murder eyes into the lion’s den.’ This is good.”

“The lion’s den,” Minho repeats. He looks at Seungmin’s photo again—hair neat, expression composed, eyes as cool and cutting as they look in HD. “More like throwing a stray into a designer pet show.”

Chan snorts. “Relax. You’re not that scruffy.” He squints. “Most days.”

Minho looks down at his shirt. It’s clean, but the collar has lost the stiff newness it had two years ago.

“Wow,” he says. “Such faith.”

“You’re the one who refuses the Alpha-brand leather jackets every stylist offers,” Chan points out. “You can’t blame me for accuracy.”

“Those jackets squeak when you move,” Minho says. “And they smell like a tax refund.”

“See, this is why I like you.” Chan flicks to the email from JVillage. “You keep me entertained while I burn out my retinas on contract clauses.”

He scrolls, reading aloud. “Preliminary chemistry reads, flexible supporting slot, possible upgrade depending on configuration… ah. Here it is. Scent and contact protocol.”

Minho’s spine straightens a little.

“Read it,” he says.

Chan’s gaze skims down. “Mandatory scent blockers for all mixed-designation scenes. No unscripted physical contact. No unscripted scenting. Immediate pause if any actor requests it. Lead talent has veto power on intimacy blocking.”

He exhales. “This is… actually good.”

Minho leans forward, elbows on his knees. “That’s not just standard boilerplate?”

“Standard is ‘we promise to be nice, please don’t sue us,’” Chan says. “This is someone who’s been in the trenches. This is—” he taps the screen again “—what happens when an A-list Omega makes the rules non-negotiable.”

“Kim Seungmin,” Minho says, the name tasting strange out loud in this cramped, familiar room.

He’s said it before, usually into the glow of a laptop screen, usually followed by an award clip or a behind-the-scenes video. It feels different when the syllables are connected to an actual email chain with his own name on it.

Chan watches him for a second, then his mouth curls.

“Don’t freak out,” he says.

“I’m not freaking out.”

“You’re doing the thing with your eyebrows.”

“What thing?”

“The thing where they try to escape your face because your brain is having feelings,” Chan says. “Very dramatic. Ten out of ten, would cast as ‘emotionally constipated detective’ again.”

Minho drags a hand down his face. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t,” Chan says cheerfully. “You tolerate me. Selectively.”

He swivels back to the desk and starts typing a response, fingers flying. “Okay, strategy. We say yes, obviously. We confirm availability, ask for sides in advance, pretend you don’t read script PDFs like they personally offended you.”

“I do not.”

“You highlight them like you’re about to sit an exam,” Chan counters. “It’s terrifying. I love it.”

Minho leans back into the couch, the lumpy cushions giving way under his shoulders. The office still looks the same—peeling paint, crooked sticky notes, a plant in the corner that may or may not be fake—but the air feels charged now, buzzing under his skin.

“Chan,” he says slowly, “if I go in there and bomb this, you’re not allowed to quit being my manager and move to another country out of embarrassment.”

Chan pauses mid-email.

“I would never move to another country,” he says. “I can barely manage this subway line.”

Minho snorts.

Chan glances back at him. “Also, worst-case scenario? You act opposite Kim Seungmin once, he looks at you with those terrifying eyes, you go home with a story to tell and I put ‘auditioned for Orion’ in your little career highlight reel.”

“That’s your ‘worst case scenario’?”

“Yes. My standards are high.” Chan hits send with a little flourish. “Best case scenario, they like you so much they rearrange the supporting cast around you and you get to spend the next year on set trying not to combust on camera.”

“Comforting,” Minho says dryly. “Truly.”

Chan grins. “That’s what I’m here for.”

He leans back, chair creaking. “Seriously, though. You’re good, Min. This isn’t pity casting. Someone watched you and thought you’d be worth Seungmin’s time. That’s not nothing.”

Minho stares at the far wall where the sticky notes shout their warnings.

“Worth his time,” he echoes, quiet.

“Hey.” Chan’s voice softens. “You don’t have to impress him. You just have to do what you do. Ask questions. Hit your marks. Refuse to be a walking hormone commercial.”

Minho huffs out a short laugh.

“I thought you wanted me to be more marketable,” he says.

“I want you to be employed and not miserable,” Chan corrects. “If I wanted a caricature Alpha, I’d have signed somebody else.”

Minho looks over at him. Nothing is joking in Chan’s face now, just tired sincerity and a stubborn kind of pride.

“Okay,” Minho says. “I’ll try not to ruin your master plan.”

“You won’t,” Chan says instantly. “You don’t have the budget for that kind of drama.”

Minho throws a balled-up sticky note at him. It bounces off Chan’s shoulder and lands on the keyboard.

“Wow,” Chan says. “Violence in the workplace. I’m telling HR.”

“You’re HR,” Minho points out.

“Exactly,” Chan says. “I’m telling me.”

Minho’s laugh this time is real, loosening something tight just under his ribs.

Outside the window, the sky has shifted from flat grey to the deeper blue that means evening is coming. The office lights flicker once before settling.

Chan picks his tablet back up, already talking about scheduling and wardrobe and maybe roping Hyunjin into running lines as the other character.

Minho only half-hears him.

His gaze drops again to the article still open on the desk, to the caption under Seungmin’s photo.

Kim Seungmin returns as lead in groundbreaking Omega-led feature…

Groundbreaking.

Big word, he thinks. Heavy word.

He wonders, for the first time, what it feels like to be the kind of person who can change the way a whole set runs just by agreeing to show up.

Across town, in a hotel suite with better lighting and thicker windows, Kim Seungmin sits cross‑legged on a couch, a tablet balanced on his knees.

He’s already read the latest revision of the Orion script twice.

The lines still burn behind his eyes. He told himself he’d stop working for the night, but Changbin’s message notification has been staring at him from the corner of the screen for the last twenty minutes.

Seungmin ignores Changbin's precautionary anyways.

Names, agencies, designations. A column of tiny headshots. He scrolls without much focus at first, mentally flagging a couple of familiar faces, skimming past others.

The suite door clicks softly.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Changbin says, voice drifting in ahead of him. He kicks his shoes off by the entrance and pads in, tie already loosened, jacket draped over one arm. “Or at least pretending.”

“I’m sitting,” Seungmin says. “That’s halfway there.”

Changbin snorts, dumping his jacket over the back of an armchair. “If you’re looking at spreadsheets, it doesn’t count.”

He comes around the couch and glances at the tablet.

“Prelim list?” he asks, though he clearly already knows.

Seungmin hums in answer, scrolling a little further down.

“Thought I said you could look when you had energy,” Changbin adds, softer.

“I have energy,” Seungmin lies.

Changbin looks at him for a beat, eyes tracking the faint tension at the corner of Seungmin’s mouth, the way his fingers curl a little too tightly around the tablet.

“Is the script getting to you again?” he asks. The question is casual on the surface, not actually casual at all.

“No more than it’s supposed to,” Seungmin says.

Changbin’s gaze flicks, just once, to the scent blocker patch on Seungmin’s neck. It’s still in place from a meeting earlier; the skin around it is slightly pink where adhesive has tugged.

“You tell Hong you’re not doing any corridor shots alone?” Changbin says.

Seungmin’s thumb stills over the screen.

“We’re talking about blocking next week,” he answers. “I’ll tell him then.”

“You’ll tell him before,” Changbin corrects. “I’ll tell him if you don’t.”

Seungmin exhales through his nose, a tiny huff that isn’t quite a laugh.

“Bin,” he says, “I’m not going to let them do that again.”

The word sits there between them, sharp and unspecific. They never name it. They don’t have to.

Changbin’s shoulders ease by a fraction.

“Good,” he says. “Because I’m too old to go to war with another studio this year.”

“You’re not old,” Seungmin mutters.

“I feel old.” Changbin drops into the armchair backwards, arms folded over the top. “Anyway. Let me see who we’re dealing with.”

He leans closer, careful not to crowd.

Seungmin scrolls again. Most of the names blur together: he recognizes some faces, has never heard of others. Designations tick by in a predictable rhythm—alpha, beta, alpha, alpha.

His thumb pauses over one entry.

The headshot isn’t great—bad lighting, neutral background, a suit that looks borrowed. The eyes, though, are clear even through the grain: steady, a little guarded, not quite willing to soften just to please the camera.

“CB97,” Changbin notes. “Bang Chan’s kid.”

“You know him?” Seungmin asks, not looking away from the photo.

“Not personally,” Changbin says. “Seen some tapes. Chan sends stuff around when he’s proud.” A tiny smile. “He’s… stubborn. The actor, I mean. Or both of them. Heard he walked away from an unscripted kiss once.”

Seungmin’s mouth tugs at one corner.

“Walked away or was walked out?” he asks.

“Depends who you ask,” Changbin replies. “Point is, he didn’t just roll over when they pushed. And they still call him back.”

The cursor blinks in the “notes” column next to Minho’s name, waiting.

Changbin watches Seungmin watch the screen.

“You want me to flag anyone?” he asks, voice turning carefully neutral. “Alphas you’ve had trouble with, directors’ favourites, people who don’t listen?”

There’s a shadowed beat before the answer.

“No,” Seungmin says finally. “Not yet. If they make it past the first round, we’ll see.”

“You sure?” Changbin’s tone is easy, but his eyes aren’t. “We don’t owe anyone the benefit of the doubt.”

“I know.” Seungmin’s fingers tap a slow, almost absent rhythm against the side of the tablet. “I just… don’t want to start this one assuming the worst.”

Changbin studies him, then nods once.

“Okay,” he says. “But the second you feel even a little off, we’re done. No more ‘maybe it’s fine’.”

Seungmin’s jaw works for a moment.

“ ‘Maybe it’s fine’ was three projects ago,” he says quietly. “I’m not going back there.”

“Good,” Changbin says again, and this time it sounds more like a promise than approval.

Seungmin takes one last look at Lee Minho’s headshot, then scrolls down. He doesn’t type anything in the notes column.

No red flags. No special treatment. Just another name on a list who’ll stand across from him under too-bright lights and say words that aren’t theirs, trying to make something true out of fiction.

He closes the file and sets the tablet aside, leaning his head back against the couch. The city outside hums on, uncaring.

“Try to actually sleep,” Changbin says, pushing himself up. “You’re no use to me tomorrow if you show up with eye bags and a martyr complex.”

“I don’t have a martyr complex,” Seungmin says.

“You have a ‘I can handle it’ complex,” Changbin replies. “It’s worse.”

Seungmin huffs, but he doesn’t argue.

When Changbin disappears into the adjoining room, closing the door most of the way, the suite drops back into quiet.

Tomorrow, there will be emails and fittings and meetings about intimacy coordination and scent protocol. 

For tonight, all he lets himself think is: I hope at least one of them can make this interesting without making it hell.

Minho’s first thought, seeing the building, is that it looks like the kind of place that would never call him back.

Glass, steel, mirrored lobby. 

The kind of minimalist reception desk that screams We don’t even need a logo; you already know who we are. 

A slow stream of people in expensive coats and worse attitudes slide through the revolving door while he stands on the sidewalk, knuckles white on the strap of his battered duffel.

Behind him, a car horn blares. Minho steps forward automatically. He almost walks straight into the revolving door before it spits him inside along with a gust of late-winter air and exhaust.

The lobby smells like money—polished wood, floral diffusers, faint ozone from overworked electronics.

And under that, a washed-out blur of scents from a dozen Alphas, Betas, and Omegas who’ve passed through already today. It’s heavy enough that his nose tries to close up on instinct.

He rolls his shoulders once, forcing his body to settle.

You’re here to read. Not to pick up anyone’s heat schedule.

“Name?” the receptionist asks, barely looking up.

“Lee Minho,” he says. “I’m here for the casting call? Supporting role, Project—”

He checks the email on his cracked phone. The screen flickers at the top where a web of fine lines spreads under the glass.

“—Project Orion.”

The receptionist’s fingers pause on the keyboard. She looks up fully then, eyes flicking over him like she’s scanning a QR code.

“Agency?”

“CB97 Entertainment,” Minho says. “My manager sent—”

Right on cue, his phone buzzes.

Minho sighs through his nose. “He’s probably about to storm the lobby, if that helps.”

As if conjured by his words, the revolving door spins again, and Bang Chan barrels in, scarf half-wrapped around his neck, hair in that stage between styled and I ran here. A messenger bag thumps against his hip, a tablet poking out stuffed with crumpled sides.

“Minho!” Chan calls, too loud for the lobby. “Why didn’t you text when you got here?”

“I did,” Minho says. “You just don’t read your phone when you’re panicking.”

Chan arrives at the desk, already pulling out his digital ID. “Bang Chan, manager, CB97. He should be on the list for today’s session.”

The receptionist’s expression softens incrementally when she registers Chan’s agency data. CB97 isn’t huge, but they’re known enough.

“Lee Minho,” she repeats, typing. “Supporting role… Orion… yes, you’re here.” Her gaze lifts again, cooler. “You’re aware this is a chemistry read, right?”

Minho’s stomach tightens. “The email said supporting…”

“Initial call was supporting,” she corrects. “The director requested certain attendees for chemistry read adjustments.”

Chan’s eyes widen, darting once to Minho. “Adjustments as in…?”

The receptionist’s smile is perfectly neutral. “As in, the creative team hasn’t locked the final configuration. Sixteenth floor, studio C. Scents are regulated; please put these on.”

She slides two small, adhesive scent patches across the desk—clear circles with a faint floral edge.

“Standard scent blockers,” she says. “Policy for mixed designation auditions. You know the drill.”

Minho does. He peels the backing off and presses the sticker high on his neck, just under his jaw. The chill of the adhesive seeps into his skin, then warms, releasing the thin veil of chemical neutral that will sit over his natural scent.

Every time, it feels like swallowing his own voice.

Chan sticks his on too, even though managers aren’t strictly required. “We know the drill,” he mutters. “We just don’t like it.”

“Have a good audition,” the receptionist says, in the tone of someone who doesn’t expect he will.

The elevator ride is cramped, shoulders bumping, eyes mostly on screens.

A couple of Beta actresses in sleek monochrome talk quietly in the corner about their last drama shoots, words like “CF,” “ratings,” “syndication” floating above the hum.

Someone’s faint vanilla-amber Omega scent pushes through the scent blockers' haze for a second before being swallowed again by the ventilation.

“It’s a good sign,” Chan says in a low voice beside him. “Chemistry read means they saw your tape and liked you.”

“They liked me enough to consider paying me scale for a supporting role,” Minho says. “That’s not the same thing as… whatever this is.”

Chan elbows him. “Can you let me have my delusions for five minutes?”

The elevator dings on the twelfth floor and disgorges half its passengers. 

Among the departing crowd, a familiar face catches Minho’s eye—Changbin, in a sharp blazer, an earpiece in, talking rapidly into his phone.

“I told you,” Changbin is saying. “If he doesn’t sign the clause, we walk. No, I don’t care how prestigious the director is, I’m not letting anyone put my client in an unscripted scene again—”

Changbin glances up, spots them, and flashes them a quick grin and a salute before the elevator doors close again.

Chan huffs a laugh. “See? Even the big guys are suffering today.”

“Changbin-hyung’s here,” Minho replies. “So that means…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t need to.

Everyone knows who Changbin manages.

At the next floor, the doors open again and a tall figure in a mask and cap squeezes in, clutching a script binder.

“Hyunjin?” Chan says.

Hyunjin pulls his mask down under his chin. “Hyung! Minho-hyung! You’re here too?”

“Apparently,” Minho says. “You aiming for second lead?”

Hyunjin grins. “I’m aiming for any lead that gets me on poster-sized bus ads, but yes, second lead would be acceptable.” He wiggles his brows. “We could suffer together on set.”

“Manifesting shared suffering,” Chan mutters. “Love that for my ulcer.”

The elevator dings again. Sixteenth floor.

Studio C is all white walls and exposed beams, a black floor scuffed with years of tape marks. 

Folding chairs line one wall, a long table with name placards down the other. 

Cameras on tripods, monitors, a row of staff with clipboards and tablets.

And at the center of it all, like an axis the room tilts around, is him.

Kim Seungmin.

Minho knows his face the way everyone in the industry does—from billboards, trailers, high-definition stills in awards broadcasts. 

The world’s favourite Omega chameleon. The kind of actor who could be a cold-hearted assassin one year and a devastating romantic lead the next, and collect trophies for both.

In person, Seungmin is… smaller than Minho expected. 

Not in presence—never that—but in frame. 

He’s in a dark sweater and slacks that probably cost more than Minho’s rent, sleeves rolled to the forearms, hair styled in loose, neat waves. Lazily perched on a folding chair, he’s scrolling through his tablet, ankle resting on the opposite knee.

The scent blocker patches on Seungmin’s neck and wrist reflect the overhead lights like a second skin.

Even through Minho’s own patch, Seungmin’s scent is just barely there: clean, cool, like fresh linen with something sharper underneath if you look for it. 

A professional veil, nothing more.

Top-of-the-chain Omega, Minho thinks. And I’m the stray they let in the building as a favour.

A PA approaches them with a clipboard. “Lee Minho?”

“That’s me,” Minho says.

“Great. You’re in Group B, second set of pairings.” She offers a thin smile. “We’ll be doing scene 12A and scene 23A for the chemistry reads. You know the material?”

“Yeah,” Minho says. He went over it until the pages blurred last night.

Chan raises a hand. “Do you know what designation coverage we’re running? Any special clauses?”

The PA rattles it off like she’s recited it a hundred times already today. “scent blockers required. No off-script physical contact. No unscripted scenting. If either actor requests a pause, we pause. If anyone shows signs of cycle onset, we clear the room. Director’s orders.”

That last part makes Minho’s eyebrows lift.

Most directors talk a big game about respect but hate interrupting their own momentum for something as inconvenient as biology.

Chan seems equally startled. “Director’s orders?”

“The director’s here already,” the PA says. “You’ll see why.”

She waves them toward the seating area.

Minho drops his duffel by an empty chair, sliding into the seat with the stiff realization that his jeans have a loose thread at the knee. 

Great. Exactly the image he’d hoped to project next to custom-tailored co-stars.

Across the room, Seungmin’s manager—Changbin, as expected—leans down to say something.

Seungmin barely nods, expression unreadable, fingers still scrolling. The faintest crease touches his brow as if whatever he’s reading is either deeply boring or deeply annoying.

Near the monitors, a guy with bright hair and a script binder balanced on one knee is muttering to himself as he scribbles.

“Jisung,” Chan murmurs. “Assistant writer. Hong loves him.”

As if he hears his name, Jisung looks up, catches Minho’s eye, and offers a quick, distracted little bow before immediately going back to his pages.

An AD with a headset and a soft foreign lilt to his Korean claps his hands for attention.

“Alright, everyone,” he calls.

“Let’s settle. We’re starting with Group A in five. If you’re not up first, find a seat and don’t trip over any cables—looking at you, Jeongin.”

A younger PA jerks his head up from his phone. “That was one time, Felix-hyung.”

Felix grins. “Once was enough, mate. Cameras are expensive.”

Minho follows Chan’s gaze to the name placards on the long table.

Director’s seat, producers, casting director. Right in the middle:

DIRECTOR – HONG JISUNG

“I can’t believe he’s actually here for the reads,” Chan mutters. “Guys like him usually just watch the tapes.”

Minho shrugs a shoulder. “Maybe he’s bored.”

“Maybe he wants to be picky.”

“That too.”

A door on the far side of the studio opens, and conversation drops to a murmur. Hong Jisung strides in, all confident lines and practiced half-smile.

Hyunjin catches Minho’s eye, flashes him a bright grin, and mimics wiping sweat from his brow in an exaggerated gesture before a staff member—Jeongin again—steers him toward another row of chairs.

“Hyung, you’re blocking the aisle,” Jeongin whispers.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m very famous, it’s heavy,” Hyunjin whispers back.

Jeongin snorts.

Minho exhales slowly.

Okay. So it’s not just me in over my head.

When they call Group A up, Minho watches.

The first pairing is an established Alpha star opposite Seungmin. The Alpha has a perfect jawline, perfect hair, the kind of polished charm that plays well in interviews.

Scene 12A.

The Alpha character is supposed to confront Seungmin’s character outside a hospital—frustrated, vulnerable, desperate. 

Seungmin plays it cool, the script calling for brittle composure and underlying fear.

Felix calls for quiet, claps, then steps back.

“Scene 12A, Group A,” he says. “Take one. And… action.”

The read is… fine.

Technically accurate. The Alpha hits his marks, raises his voice at the right beat, steps just close enough to read as tension without breaking the scent protocol. 

Seungmin listens, reacts in small, precise movements. His gaze flickers, his hand tightens on the prop bag strap, jaw working once.

It’s good. Of course it’s good. Seungmin doesn’t know how to be anything else.

But when the scene ends, Minho notes the subtle way Seungmin’s shoulders drop the second “cut” is called. Not a satisfied exhale—more like someone taking off a shoe that pinched after the first five steps.

“Nice,” Felix says, neutral-professional. “Thank you. We’ll take a short reset and bring in the next pair.”

At the table, Hong Jisung nods politely, scribbles something, and exchanges a look with the casting director. Neutral. Measured.

Beside him, Jisung mumbles under his breath as he flips a page. “It’s not bad, it’s just… I don’t feel why he’s so desperate.”

The casting director murmurs something back that Minho can’t hear. Jisung shrugs, unconvinced, and keeps writing.

Chan leans over to whisper, “See? You can do better than that.”

Minho snorts. “You say that because you’re my manager.”

“I say that because you’re not scared of him.” Chan lifts his chin toward Seungmin. “Most people are.”

“I’m not scared of him,” Minho says automatically.

His body disagrees, just a bit. There’s a tightness at the back of his neck, a bone-deep alert that’s more instinct than fear.

Top Omega, top of the industry, eyes sharp enough to cut. Anyone with half a brain would be cautious.

He just doesn’t plan to let that cautiousness show.

Hyunjin twists around in his chair in front of them. “If you are scared,” he stage-whispers, “just imagine him in pyjamas and fuzzy socks. That’s what I do.”

“You’ve seen him in pyjamas?” Chan hisses.

Hyunjin blinks. “No, but I have an imagination.”

Minho shakes his head. “You’re not helping.”

Hyunjin grins. “You’re welcome.”

“Group B, first pairing,” Felix calls. “Lee Minho and Kim Seungmin, scene twelve. Let’s go.”

For a heartbeat, all the air in the studio feels too thin.

Chan squeezes his shoulder once, fingers warm through the fabric of Minho’s jacket.

“Breathe. Hit your marks. Don’t flirt with the director. Try not to threaten any producers even if they deserve it.”

“I never threaten producers,” Minho says.

“You glared that one guy into dropping the improvised kiss scene once,” Chan reminds him.

“That was self-defence.”

From the monitors, Jisung calls out without looking up, “For the record, I fully support self-defence against unscripted kisses.”

Felix raises his hand. “Seconded.”

Jeongin, hovering with a clipboard, nods emphatically.

“Look at that,” Chan mutters. “You’ve got a fan club.”

He stands, legs steady despite the dry scrape in his throat, and crosses the floor toward the mark taped on the black floor—white for his character, blue for Seungmin’s.

Up close, Seungmin’s presence is sharper. The scent blockers sit over his scent like frosted glass over light, but the outline is there—something clean, something controlled, something that doesn’t bend easily.

Seungmin looks at him then.

Really looks.

His gaze sweeps over Minho’s face, down to his posture, back up again. Not lingering, not rude. Just… thorough. The way a surgeon might inspect a new instrument.

“Lee Minho-ssi, right?” Seungmin says. His voice is lower than Minho expected, smooth with a hint of dryness, like he’s constantly half a second away from a sarcastic comment.

“Yes,” Minho replies. “Kim Seungmin-ssi. It’s an honour.”

The words come out stiff. He doesn’t mean them that way. He does mean them, actually; he just hates sounding like every other actor who’s ever fawned over him.

One corner of Seungmin’s mouth twitches—amusement or annoyance, Minho can’t tell.

“Relax,” Seungmin says quietly, so only Minho can hear. “If you freeze up, I’ll get bored. And then they’ll blame you when I look bored on camera.”

From the edge of the set, Changbin’s gaze sharpens, like he heard the word blame from across the room.

Minho’s spine straightens. Something in him bristles.

He smiles, but it’s the sharp, careful kind he saves for people who expect him to roll over.

“I’ll try not to ruin your day,” he murmurs back. “But no promises.”

Dark eyes hold his for a beat, assessing. Then Seungmin’s expression clears, turning into something that belongs to the character on the page.

Felix lifts his hand.

“Quiet on set,” he calls. “Scene 12A, Group B. Take one. And… action.”

Minho becomes aware again of the weight of eyes on them—the director at the table, the casting staff, Hyunjin watching from the chairs, Chan on the edge of his seat with his tablet halfway to his mouth like he’d forgotten what he was doing with it.

Jeongin’s pen hovers over his clipboard, forgotten in mid-scribble.

Seungmin steps back, rolling his shoulders once like shaking off a coat. His gaze lingers on Minho for a beat longer than necessary.

Then he huffs a barely-there laugh under his breath.

“Not bad, Lee Minho-ssi,” he says quietly, lips barely moving. “At least I wasn’t bored.”

From where he’s standing, Changbin’s posture loosens by a fraction.

Minho’s pulse kicks.

He swallows, keeping his face neutral, his posture loose. Not too eager. Not too defensive.

“I’ll try to keep up,” he answers.

At the table, Hong Jisung leans toward the casting director, eyes sharpened, pen tapping against his notes.

“Run it again,” the director says. “Same scene. Same pair. Let’s see what happens if he pushes harder.”

Minho doesn’t have to look at Chan to know his manager is already imagining contract clauses and headlines, all the ways this could go right or blow up in their faces.

Felix resets the slate, calls for quiet. Someone adjusts the focus; a strip of tape on the floor gets pressed down where Minho’s shoe scuffed it.

Seungmin steps back into position without needing to be told, body already settling into his character’s brittle stillness. Minho joins him at his own mark, feeling the exact distance between them like a line drawn across the floor.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Felix says. The words are for Hong, but his eyes flick briefly to Minho and Seungmin, as if in encouragement.

A beat. A breath.

“And… action.”

This time, Minho lets the desperation sit closer to the surface.

“Don’t go in there,” he says, but the words land rougher, thinner around the edges. “You don’t owe them anything.”

He hears his own voice crack halfway through the sentence. The script doesn’t call for it. He doesn’t pull it back.

Seungmin’s reaction shifts by a hair. His character still looks past Minho, toward the imagined hospital entrance, but the line of his throat tightens, a swallow caught mid‑movement.

“I owe myself,” he answers. The tremor is clearer now, a ripple he doesn’t smooth over. “I’m not running because you’re scared.”

Minho steps in that fraction closer, carefully toeing the edge of the scent protocol line. His shoulders block more of the imaginary doorway. The camera will see it as a wall, one more obstacle between Seungmin and what he thinks he has to do.

“I’m not scared,” Minho says again, and it’s obvious he’s lying this time. He lets it be obvious. “I’m just… trying to keep you alive.”

Near the monitors, Jisung’s pen starts moving again.

Seungmin’s gaze catches on Minho’s face—on the set of his mouth, on the tightness around his eyes. He doesn’t blink for a long second. The silence stretches almost too far.

Felix doesn’t cut.

“That’s funny,” Seungmin finally says, voice softer, more dangerous. “Because every time you say you’re saving me, I end up bleeding for it.”

Something in Minho’s chest jolts. He feels the line click into place like it always should have been there.

He exhales, a brief, bitter laugh that isn’t in the stage directions.

“Fine,” he says.

“Go. Walk in there. Let them eat you alive again. Just…” His jaw works. The next words scrape out.

“Just don’t ask me to pretend I didn’t hand you the knife.”

For a heartbeat, Seungmin’s composure fractures.

It’s not big—no dramatic flinch, no obvious break. But his eyes flare, bright with something that isn’t just the character’s fear, and his fingers curl around the invisible bag strap like he’s holding on to that instead of Minho’s collar.

“I’m not asking you to save me,” he says, same as before, but the line lands heavier now. “I’m asking you to get out of my way.”

Another beat.

Minho doesn’t move.

He lets the choice sit there, heavy and unresolved, in the tiny distance between their shoes.

“Cut,” Hong says at last.

It’s not loud. He doesn’t have to raise his voice. The authority in it slices clean through the air.

The studio snaps back into itself.

Felix lets out a low whistle under his breath before catching himself. Jeongin exhales hard enough that the fringe over his eyes flutters.

Somewhere behind them, Hyunjin mutters, “Okay, but did anyone else stop breathing?” and gets a sharp elbow for his trouble.

Seungmin is the first to move. He takes a small step back, rolling his shoulders, the character sliding off him in an almost visible wave. The scent blocker patch on his neck catches the overhead light when he tips his head, stretching the muscles there.

Minho feels his own body lag behind by half a second. His pulse is still up, palms faintly damp. He forces his hands loose, unclenching fingers he doesn’t remember curling.

“Thank you,” Felix says, professional again. “We’ll… reset in a minute.”

He glances toward the table, waiting.

Hong hasn’t looked away from the monitors.

He rewinds something with a flick of his fingers, watching the two of them from a different angle. Minho sees the moment where Seungmin’s eyes flash, the half‑step he took that never became a full advance. The way Minho himself didn’t move aside.

Jisung leans in, murmurs something. Hong hums, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, pen tapping a slow rhythm against his notes.

“All right,” Hong says finally, sitting back. His gaze lifts, landing first on Seungmin, then on Minho. “That’s enough for today.”

There’s a subtle ripple in the room as the decision registers. 

A couple of waiting actors straighten in their chairs, hopeful, then deflate a fraction when they realize they won’t be reading opposite Seungmin after all.

Felix nods briskly. “Group B, you’re clear. Please head back to holding; we’ll follow up through your managers.”

Minho’s muscles want to sag. He doesn’t let them. He dips his head instead, a small bow toward the table, then another to Seungmin.

“Thank you for the read,” he says, still a little hoarse.

Seungmin studies him for a beat longer than politeness requires. There’s no bored glaze in his eyes now, no detached professionalism. Just an assessment, and something like the beginning of interest.

“You did well,” Seungmin says quietly, just for him. “You listen.”

It’s the kind of comment that would sound condescending from someone else. From him, it lands like a rare, carefully measured compliment.

Minho opens his mouth, shuts it again, settles on, “You make it easy.”

A corner of Seungmin’s mouth lifts, brief and sharp. Then he’s already turning away, Changbin stepping in at his elbow with a low-voiced question about his schedule.

Chan appears at Minho’s side like he’s been there the whole time.

“You’re breathing,” Chan says under his breath. “Good. I was about to start planning the funeral.”

Minho lets out a shaky little laugh he hopes no one important can hear. “Did I screw it up?”

Chan blinks at him. “Were we watching the same scene? No. Absolutely not. You… hung in there. You pushed him.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m going to need three coffees and a lie-down.”

Before Minho can answer, Felix calls out again.

“Everyone, hold for a moment, please.”

The low murmur in the room dims. Heads turn back toward the table.

Hong folds his hands over his notes.

“First of all,” he says, voice carrying easily without effort, “thank you for your time today. We know the notice was short, and you’ve all come in prepared. That matters.”

A few people straighten a little, the praise landing even if it’s generic.

“We’re going to take some time to review the footage,” Hong continues.

“Talk through where we want to take this configuration, who fits with whom, what balance we’re building.” His gaze flicks over the rows of faces again, unreadable. “This project lives or dies on chemistry. We won’t rush that call.”

Next to him, the casting director nods. Jisung is already jotting something in the margin of his script, the curve of his mouth thoughtful.

“We’ll discuss where we want to take this,” Hong says, more casually now, like he’s explaining a scheduling quirk rather than altering the trajectory of half the room.

“You’ll hear from us through your agencies once we’ve decided which combinations we want to test further.”

He offers a small, almost apologetic smile. “In the meantime, I suggest you all drink some water and try to forget every word you said in here today until we call you back to say them again.”

A ripple of quiet laughter runs through the space, taking a notch of tension with it.

Felix claps once. “All right. That’s a wrap on chemistry reads for this block. Thank you, everyone. Please don’t crowd the hallway on your way out; legal will hunt me if you trip on a cable.”

Chairs scrape. Scripts rustle. The spell of the scene breaks fully this time, replaced by the familiar post‑audition shuffle—actors checking phones, managers murmuring into earpieces, someone already asking where the nearest coffee is.

Chan touches Minho’s elbow, steering him gently toward the exit.

“Come on,” he says. “Before Hyunjin corners you to ask if he looked mysterious enough in the waiting room.”

As they pass the monitors, Minho catches one last glimpse of his own face frozen on the screen, eyes locked on Seungmin’s, mouth mid‑line. 

He looks… different than he expects. Not like a background player trying to be small, but like someone who belongs in the frame.

His stomach twists, the feeling not entirely unpleasant.

“Hey,” Chan murmurs, tracking his line of sight. “Whatever happens, they saw that.”

Minho tears his gaze away, shoulders squaring almost on their own.

“Yeah,” he says quietly.

The door swings open ahead of them, spilling them back into the bright corridor, the neutral, expensive air of the sixteenth floor.

The studio feels louder after everyone leaves.

It always does.

The air-conditioning hums, a cable rattles under someone’s careless foot, Felix and the casting director are trading muted comments by the monitors—but underneath it all is that particular echo that comes after a room full of people has just stopped performing.

Seungmin rolls his shoulders once, the way his physio taught him, and reaches up to peel the patch off his neck.

The skin there is a little pink, and the adhesive tugs when it lets go. 

He folds the patch in half and sticks it to the back of his hand for a second before remembering that he’ll forget it there and smear it on his pants later. 

He peels it off again and drops it neatly into the small trash bin by the monitors.

“Don’t move,” Changbin says behind him.

“I’m not,” Seungmin answers.

“You’re thinking,” Changbin counters. “It’s worse.”

Seungmin huffs once, then tips his head to the side obediently when Changbin’s fingers brush his neck. Cool gel touches the irritated skin.

“Thank you,” Seungmin murmurs.

“Mmh.” Changbin’s answer is noncommittal, his thumb ghosting over the spot one last time before he steps back. “How’s your head?”

“Attached,” Seungmin says. “Mostly.”

He watches the playback screen instead of looking at Changbin. Hong has frozen the frame on the last take of scene 12A—on the moment where Seungmin’s character says, I’m asking you to get out of my way, and Minho’s character doesn’t.

From this angle, they look closer than Seungmin remembers.

On the monitor, his own face is a study in control—chin lifted, eyes hard, mouth too calm for the context. The performance is exactly what he planned to give.

What he didn’t plan is the way Minho’s shoulders are set.

Tense, yes, but not looming. The way his jaw works once, like he wants to speak and knows he shouldn’t. The way his hands are open at his sides, not balled into fists.

He looks like he’s holding a door shut with his body and apologizing for it at the same time.

“Thoughts?” Hong asks, not looking away from the monitors.

He doesn’t mean it in a polite way. He means it in the specific, unnerving way of someone who will ask again if you pretend you don’t have any.

Seungmin considers lying.

He doesn’t, in the end.

“Most of them don’t listen,” he says.

“Actors?” Jisung asks from his stool, pen hovering.

“The whole film only works if you believe these two people could burn the system down together and still be afraid of touching each other,” Jisung murmurs, flipping back a few pages. 

“He’s hospital security on paper, but he’s basically enforcement—his job is to keep Omegas like your character in line. If the audience doesn’t buy that he could hurt you and chooses not to, the whistleblower storyline just looks like another martyr fantasy.”

“Alphas,” Seungmin replies.

“In scenes like this, they decide what they’re doing before acting. Then they drag you through it and expect you to decorate around them.”

He feels Changbin’s attention sharpen a fraction beside him. Hong’s mouth curves, not quite into a smile.

“And him?” the director asks. “Lee Minho?”

Seungmin tips his head, eyes on the frozen frame. Minho’s gaze, caught mid-moment, is locked on him with a focus that had felt, on the floor, almost uncomfortably direct.

“He was… quiet,” Seungmin says slowly.

“Not passive. Just—” He searches for the right word and doesn’t find a new one, so he reuses Hong’s.

“He listened.”

Jisung scribbles something. “He didn’t flinch when you changed the rhythm,” he offers.

“No,” Seungmin agrees. “I pushed the pause before ‘I owe myself’ longer on the second take. He held it.”

Most actors get restless in that gap, he doesn’t say. They rush in to fill the space, to prove they’re still the center of the scene.

Minho had just… waited.

Not blank, not empty. Attentive. Ready.

On the monitor, the still frame winks away as Hong drags the timeline back a few seconds and lets the scene run again in silence.

“You like him,” Hong says, matter-of-fact.

Seungmin glances at him.

“As an actor,” he clarifies.

Hong lifts one shoulder. “It’s the only metric that matters to me.”

Changbin snorts quietly. “To you.”

“What did you see?” Seungmin asks instead, nodding toward the screen.

Hong considers.

“He doesn’t try to look dangerous,” the director says. “Most Alphas I’ve seen for this are selling threat. He sells… consequence.”

Seungmin’s mouth twitches. “You write a nice copy, director-nim.”

“I cast better than I write,” Hong replies dryly. “Question is if you can stand him for six months.”

It’s meant to be a joke. It doesn’t quite land that way.

He’d gone down the list with a pen in his hand, ready to cross out every name that made his skin crawl.

He hadn’t put a mark next to Lee Minho.

“Did you notice his scent?” Changbin asks, voice quiet enough that it doesn’t carry far.

Under the scent blockers, it had been a ghost of a thing.

Most Alphas in auditions like this try to push through the chemical veil—standing too close, moving too fast, letting the edges of their scent leak at the seams.

Minho’s had stayed low and even, like he’d pulled it in tight on purpose and then forgotten about it.

“I noticed his control,” Seungmin answers.

Changbin hums. It isn’t a disagreement.

They watch the scene through once more. On the second viewing, Seungmin pays less attention to himself. To the exact angle of his chin, the tilt of his head.

He watches the way Minho’s eyes flick away and back on the final line, like he’s looking for an exit that doesn’t exist. The way his body doesn’t crowd in, even when the emotion spikes.

There had been a moment—brief, but sharp—where Seungmin’s muscles had remembered. A phantom echo of hands on his shoulders that hadn’t been in the blocking, a wall under his back that hadn’t been in the script.

Minho hadn’t stepped in.

He’d let the scene be ugly without making it worse.

“I can work with him,” Seungmin says finally.

It lands heavier than it should for five small words.

Changbin’s shoulders drop a fraction. Hong nods once, satisfaction barely visible.

“That’s what I needed to hear,” the director says. “I like him for the configuration we talked about. We’ll keep looking, but he’s in the pile we test again.”

“Ink, not pencil,” Jisung murmurs, scribbling something. “Got it.”

Seungmin exhales, slow.

He doesn’t ask what would have happened if his answer had been different.

He’s done that before. He knows exactly how fast a name disappears from a list when an Omega lead says, not him.

He doesn’t say that he’s also seen what happens when he ignores that flinch.

“We’ll stagger the next round,” Hong is saying now, already moving ahead. 

“No more than two intense scenes a day. I don’t want anyone fried before we even start the main shoot. Minho for scene 23A, maybe one of the later ones. We’ll see if he can hold a softer beat without turning it into pity.”

“Softer as in—?” Jisung prompts.

“As in less martyr, more messy,” Hong replies. “He’s got a good line on restraint. I want to see if he can let it crack without losing the spine.”

Seungmin lets the words wash over him.

Scheduling, configurations, the slow machinery of pre‑production cranking back into gear.

He feels strangely… calm.

Not excited. That’s never been his flavour of anticipation. But something quieter, steadier. The sense of a piece clicking where it belongs on a board he’s been staring at too long.

Changbin nudges his elbow. “Water,” he says, already holding out a bottle.

Seungmin takes it, twists the cap off. “You’re very pushy for a Beta,” he mutters.

“That’s why you hired me,” Changbin answers. “Drink.”

He drinks.

The water is lukewarm, the aftertaste faintly metallic. He swallows anyway, the simple act of it dragging him back into his body, away from the screen.

“Bin,” he says, after a beat.

“Mm?”

“If we do take him,” Seungmin says, “you’ll send Chan the updated protocol? Before they sign anything?”

Changbin’s look is offended. “Obviously. Hong can write poetry about chemistry all he wants. I’m not letting anyone on set until legal does their job.”

“Good,” Seungmin says softly.

He turns away from the monitors at last.

On one of the seats near the back, there’s a familiar script packet, folded once at the corner, a pen tucked through the staple. The cover page has been underlined in three different colours.

LEE MINHO – ORION – PRELIM SIDES

Seungmin walks over, slow, and picks it up.

The handwriting in the margins is neat, almost obsessively so. Beat marks, tiny arrows, the occasional single word.

He flips to scene twelve.

There, next to his own first line, someone has written: don’t make him the villain for being scared.

Seungmin stares at the note for a moment, then closes the packet and sets it back exactly where he found it.

“Ready?” Changbin asks from behind him.

Seungmin glances once more at the chair, at the paper, at the faint indent where Minho’s weight had been during the briefing.

“Yes,” he says.

The email arrives while Minho is in the shower.

He doesn’t hear his phone buzz over the sputter of the ancient pipes and the rattle of the bathroom fan. Hot water needles at the back of his neck where the neutralizer patch sat all afternoon, washing away the last faint trace of sterilized scent and studio air.

He tips his head forward, eyes closed, and lets himself think about nothing for exactly three breaths.

On the fourth, his brain offers, unhelpfully—You stared at Kim Seungmin like a deer in headlights for at least two seconds.

Minho groans and thumps his forehead gently against the tile.

“Shut up,” he tells himself. The tile does not apologize.

By the time he steps out and wraps a towel around his waist, his phone has collected three missed notifications and one incoming call.

He stares at the screen for a moment, then down at the towel around his waist.

“Traitor,” he tells his reflection in the dark TV screen. It looks just as dazed as he feels.

He pulls on the first T‑shirt and sweatpants he can find that don’t smell like three days ago, tosses the towel into the hamper, and glances at the email again.

Scenes 12A and 23A.

Of course.

He taps the attachment open.

The familiar words scroll past—the hospital confrontation, the late‑night apartment argument in scene 23A that he’d only skimmed once because it felt too intimate to read alone at two in the morning.

Now those lines hum under his skin like a low‑grade current.

They were pleased.

He reads it three more times, like repetition will make it less fragile.

By the time Chan bangs on his door with the subtlety of a SWAT team, Minho has made coffee that tastes like burnt regret and sat at his tiny table long enough for his leg to fall asleep.

“Open up before your neighbours call security,” Chan calls through the wood.

Minho unlocks the door and steps back just in time to avoid being body‑checked.

Chan tumbles in, scarf askew, hair damp with subway humidity, messenger bag already sliding off his shoulder.

“Show me,” he demands.

Minho holds up his phone.

Chan snatches it, scans the email, and lights up like someone turned on a sign behind his eyes.

“There!” he crows, stabbing at the screen.

“ ‘Particularly his reads opposite lead actor Kim Seungmin.’ Do you see that? Do you see that, Lee Minho? You, my selectively invested nightmare, impressed Kim Seungmin enough that they want you back.”

Minho leans against the counter, arms folded loosely, trying for casual. It probably fails.

“Or Hong liked the dynamic, and Seungmin is just tolerating me,” he says.

Chan looks up at him, expression flattening.

“Do you want me to be happy or do you want me to strangle you?” he asks.

“Because you’re making it very hard to choose.”

Minho’s mouth quirks despite himself. “Multitask?”

Chan rolls his eyes and shoves the phone back at him.

“Fine. Okay. Let’s do this your way. Worst‑case scenario, they just need a reliable punching bag for Seungmin to act circles around in callbacks. They still called you. Out of everyone in that room, out of everyone on that spreadsheet, your name is in the ‘see again’ pile.”

Minho’s fingers tighten around the phone, knuckles whitening for a second.

“Ink, not pencil,” he hears himself say.

Chan blinks. “What?”

“Nothing,” Minho mutters. “I just… saw that Jisung guy writing something. It looked like he changed pens.”

Chan stares at him for a long beat, then laughs, short and disbelieving.

“You’re unbelievable,” he says, but there’s no heat in it. “Who even notices that?”

“Actors who don’t get called back often,” Minho replies. The honesty of it surprises both of them.

Chan’s face softens.

“Hey,” he says quietly. “This isn’t a pity call. They’re not doing you a favour. That room doesn’t have time for charity.”

Minho looks away.

He remembers the way Seungmin’s eyes had sharpened in the second take. 

“I didn’t bore him,” Minho says.

It’s half‑statement, half‑question.

Chan snorts. “He literally said you didn’t.”

“He was in character,” Minho protests weakly.

“And you think Kim Seungmin breaks character to lie for your ego?” Chan counters. “He doesn’t even lie for sponsors he hates. Have you seen his CF interviews? Man’s allergic to fake flattery.”

Minho has. There’s a compilation somewhere online of Seungmin giving brutally polite non‑answers to bad questions.

Okay, fine.

Maybe that compliment was real.

He sits down heavily, the chair legs scraping. The tension that’s been coiled between his shoulder blades since the audition loosens in small, reluctant increments.

“What if I can’t do it again?” he asks, barely above a murmur.

Chan sighs and drops into the opposite chair, the wood protesting under the sudden weight.

“You will,” he says. “Because you didn’t do anything magical in there. You did what you always do when they let you—you listened, you hit your marks, you didn’t turn into a hormone ad. Now they want to see if that was a fluke or a pattern.”

He leans forward, elbows on the table.

“And if you freeze? Then you freeze,” Chan says bluntly.

“We go home, we put ‘callback for Orion’ on your resume, we steal the free catering if they have any, and I bully some mid‑budget director into giving you a decent Beta role. Life continues.”

Minho huffs out a laugh. “You and your low standards.”

“My standards are extremely high,” Chan says. “They just include you not imploding under pressure you haven’t even been officially offered yet.”

He taps the phone again.

“Practically speaking,” he goes on, sliding back into manager mode, “we need to confirm availability by tomorrow, ask about updated protocol, and get updated sides if they’re tweaking anything. You’re free that day unless you picked up a secret part‑time job I don’t know about?”

“No,” Minho says. “Just the usual hustle of not getting paid to be stressed.”

“Perfect,” Chan says. “More time to obsess over line readings.”

He’s joking, but Minho already feels the itch under his skin to print the new pages, to mark beats and pauses, to figure out where this version of the character sits in his chest.

He hesitates, then asks the question that’s been sitting at the back of his throat.

“Do you think…” He trails off, grimacing. “Never mind.”

Chan raises an eyebrow. “Nope. Out loud.”

Minho grimaces harder. “Do you think Seungmin had any say?”

“About the callbacks?”

“Yeah.”

Chan leans back, considering.

“If he wanted you off the list, you wouldn’t be on it,” he says finally.

“Whether he personally circled your name or just didn’t cross it out, I don’t know. But he didn’t veto you. And that’s already a big deal in a setup like this.”

The words land differently than the neutral corporate praise of the email. He didn’t veto you.

Minho thinks of all the stories, all the times someone said, The Omega was uncomfortable, and the Alpha mysteriously stopped getting calls from that circle.

He can live with not being picked.

Being explicitly unwanted is harder.

“I can work with him,” Minho hears in his head, even though he never heard those words out loud.

He realizes suddenly that part of him had been braced for exactly that—for the quiet, efficient removal.

He exhales, long and slow.

“Okay,” he says. “We confirm.”

Chan’s grin flashes back, bright and sharp. “That’s my boy.”

He pulls his tablet out of his bag, already typing. “I’ll reply now, ask for scent protocol in case they’ve adjusted anything, and see if they’re pairing you with the same group or shuffling combinations.”

Minho nods, watching Chan’s fingers move.

He reaches for his own mug, takes a sip, makes a face.

“This coffee is terrible,” he says.

“It is,” Chan agrees. “We’re celebrating, remember? Put on real clothes. I’m buying you something with actual caffeine and fewer war crimes.”

Minho hesitates. “Shouldn’t I be… I don’t know. Studying? Meditating? Sacrificing a goat to the drama gods?”

Chan snorts. “You’ll have a week to obsess. Today you let it be good. Just for a few hours.”

Just for a few hours.

The idea feels almost indecent.

But the callback isn’t going to vanish if he breathes.

“I don’t have real clothes,” he says weakly.

“You have one shirt that doesn’t look like it’s seen a war,” Chan counters. “Wear that one. We’re going to the nice coffee place Hyunjin keeps posting about.”

“The one with the baristas who look like idols?”

“Yes,” Chan says solemnly. “So you can practice not being intimidated by pretty people before you have to stand in front of Seungmin again.”

Minho throws a balled‑up sock at his head. It bounces off Chan’s forehead and lands on the floor.

“Violence in the home,” Chan says. “I’m telling HR.”

“You’re HR,” Minho points out automatically.

“Exactly,” Chan says. “I’m writing myself a strongly worded email.”

Minho laughs, and this time it doesn’t feel forced.

He glances once more at the phone screen, at the neat corporate font, at his own name next to the word callback.

It still doesn’t feel entirely real.

A new email from Chan, CC’d to him:

CB97 ENT – RE: ORION CALLBACK AVAILABILITY

Confirmed.

Minho doesn’t open it.

He doesn’t need to.

The second round is quieter.

Smaller room, fewer people.

No rows of waiting actors this time—just Minho, two cameras, Hong at the monitor, the intimacy coordinator, Felix, Jisung, and Seungmin.

The door shuts behind him with a soft click that sounds more final than he wants it to.

“Minho‑ssi, welcome back,” the intimacy coordinator says, offering a hand. “My name is Hana. We’ll keep it brief. Mostly marking proximity and checking how you two sit in frame for the closer configuration.”

Closer configuration.

Minho ignores the way the phrase makes his pulse climb.

They run through the beats.

No touching, just walking through where it would be—a hand almost on a forearm, a shoulder almost brushing a shoulder, a tilt of Seungmin’s chin that brings their faces into the same breath of air before they separate again.

“Remember,” Hana says, “if anything feels off, you speak. No surprises.”

They read.

Scene 12A again, but tighter this time—imaginary corridor instead of wide hospital entrance. The blocking has him a half‑step closer, weight shifted forward like he’s ready to move and choosing not to.

“Don’t go in there,” Minho says, voice low, the anger mostly swallowed. “You don’t owe them anything.”

Seungmin looks up at him like he’s measuring the distance between them and all the things neither of them is saying.

“I owe myself,” he answers. “I’m not running because you’re scared.”

The coordinator lifts a hand when Minho’s foot inches forward, a silent reminder of the line they discussed. He stops exactly where they’d agreed.

It still feels close.

They move on to the late‑night apartment scene—scene twenty‑three. No shouting here, just low, fraying edges.

“You can’t keep doing this,” Minho reads. “Running into every burning building because you think your designation makes you fireproof.”

Seungmin’s gaze doesn’t leave his face.

“I don’t think I’m fireproof,” he says. “I just know I burn slower than you.”

Hong doesn’t cut. He watches, elbows on the desk, chin on his knuckles.

Minho lets the next line out like it costs him.

“Great,” he says. “So I get to live long enough to watch you fall apart.”

No theatrics.

No raised voice.

Just the tired, ugly fear the coordinator had told them to aim for—this is what it sounds like when people who care about each other fight around the parts that hurt the most.

When they stop, the room holds its breath for a moment.

Then Hong exhales.

“Okay,” the director says. “That’s enough. Thank you.”

Hana nods, satisfied. “From my side, this configuration is workable. Good communication. Clear boundaries.”

Minho’s shoulders finally loosen a few degrees.

He bows to the room, to Hong, to the coordinator, to Seungmin.

“Thank you for your time,” he says.

Seungmin’s mouth curves, small but real. “See you around, Minho‑ssi.”

It sounds like a polite nothing. It sticks in Minho’s head all the way home.

He doesn’t expect anything that night.

Callbacks like this take time. Decisions bounce between producers and schedulers, between budgets and headlines.

So Minho goes home, reheats leftovers he can’t taste, and pointedly does not open the Orion script for the fifth time.

His phone, of course, rings mid‑bite.

The line goes dead.

Minho stares at the screen.

“For someone who claims to be tired all the time, you run a lot of emotional marathons,” he mutters.

He grabs his jacket.

The agency office looks the same as always—peeling paint, blinking printer, sticky notes.

Chan, however, looks like someone poured three espressos directly into his bloodstream.

He’s pacing behind his desk when Minho walks in, tablet in hand, hair more chaotic than usual.

“You’re late,” he says.

“It’s been eleven minutes,” Minho replies. “Do you want me to sleep here next time?”

“Yes,” Chan says, then immediately waves the thought away. “No. Sit. Here.”

He thrusts the tablet at Minho.

An email is open.

SUBJECT: ORION – CASTING UPDATE / LEE MINHO

His heart misfires.

He reads.

The text swims.

“Male lead,” Minho says.

His own voice sounds far away.

“Male lead,” Chan repeats. Then, louder, as if the room didn’t hear it the first time. 

“Male. Lead.”

He grabs Minho by the shoulders and shakes him once, gently. “Do you know what that means?”

Minho blinks at him. “It means someone at JVillage made a clerical error?”

Chan actually laughs—one short, incredulous bark.

“They don’t make clerical errors on offers,” he says. “They triple‑check before they even type your name.”

He jabs a finger at the screen.

“ ‘Promoted to male lead,’ ” he reads, savouring every syllable. “They reassigned you. You were going in for ‘flexible supporting configuration,’ and now you are the configuration.”

The words land slowly, like stones dropping into too‑deep water.

Minho sinks down onto the lumpy couch without quite realizing he’s moved.

“Seungmin agreed to this?” he asks, because that’s the part his brain can’t quite wrap around.

Chan’s expression softens, the wild glee in his eyes tempered by something like pride.

“The email says, ‘after discussing options with Director Hong and lead actor/producer Kim Seungmin,’ ” he says. “That doesn’t mean he personally wrote your name on the wall in blood, but it does mean he didn’t cross you out.”

He hesitates.

“Changbin called,” Chan adds. “He said—” He breaks off, then grins.

“He said, ‘Tell your kid if he screws this up, I’m never speaking to you again.’ Which, in Changbin‑speak, means he likes you for it.”

Minho stares at him.

“All the other ways my career could have gone wrong, and it’s this one that kills me,” he says weakly.

Chan sits on the coffee table opposite him, leaning forward, forearms on his knees.

“Min,” he says quietly. “Listen. This isn’t one of those offers where they slap an Alpha in because marketing demanded it. They already had an outline. They brought you in as a maybe. You and Seungmin went in there, did the work, and the story shifted around you. That doesn’t happen unless it needs you.”

Minho’s throat works.

He thinks of the intimacy room—soft tape on the floor, the coordinator’s calm voice, Seungmin’s eyes steady on his.

“I can’t do the things they usually want from Alphas,” he says. “Not the way they want them.”

“Good,” Chan says.

“They didn’t pick you to be ‘the way they want alphas.’ They picked you because you did it your way and it still crackled on camera.”

He taps the tablet again, gentler.

“ ‘The central relationship and thematic balance of the film,’ ” he quotes. “That’s not ‘he looks good in a leather jacket.’ That’s ‘we think this guy can carry the part of the story that actually matters.’ ”

Minho feels something twist low in his stomach. Fear, sure. But braided through it is something else—thin and electric and unfamiliar.

Hope.

“My face is going to be on posters,” he says faintly.

“Correct,” Chan says. “And on bus ads. And on very bad fan edits set to very loud songs. We’ll deal with that later.”

He reaches into his bag and pulls out a folder.

“Right now, we do the boring part.”

Minho blinks. “There’s a boring part?”

“Contracts,” Chan says, face lighting with an almost unholy joy.

“Rewriting your fees. Upgrading your billing. Making sure your scent and intimacy clauses are as ironclad as Seungmin’s. We are not putting you in the lion’s den without a shield, got it?”

Minho manages a smile. “I thought you liked me selectively invested.”

“I like you selectively traumatized,” Chan corrects. “Let the acting be hard. Everything else we make as easy as legally possible.”

The printer in the corner chooses that moment to grind and blink its red light, like an angry mascot.

Minho huffs out a small, disbelieving laugh.

“Male lead,” he repeats, testing the weight of the words in his mouth.

They still feel too big.

They don’t feel wrong.

Chan watches his face, something easing in his own shoulders when Minho doesn’t immediately flinch away.

“Hong wants a quick answer,” Chan says. “We’re not going to make him sweat. I’m going to email back that we accept in principle, pending a contract. You’re okay with that?”

It’s a formality. They both know what Minho’s answer has to be.

Still, Chan waits.

Minho looks at the ceiling, at the stained tiles he’s memorized over years of almost‑jobs and near‑misses. At the sticky notes by the door screaming their rules.

Chan followed all of those for him, even when it meant turning down money they badly needed.

Now here they are.

“Yeah,” Minho says.

His voice is steadier than he feels.

“Tell them yes.”

Chan’s grin is blinding.

“Yes, sir,” he says, already scrambling back to his chair. “Look at us, making responsible life choices.”

As he types, Minho’s phone buzzes on the couch.

UNKNOWN NUMBER

He hesitates, then answers.

The line clicks off.

Minho lowers the phone slowly.

Chan looks up from his tablet. “Who was that?”

“S-Seungmin.” He stuttered.

“Well?” Chan perks an eyebrow.

“He called me his co‑lead,” Minho says.

Chan’s mouth falls open. “He what?”

“Told me to sleep while I still can,” Minho adds.

“Oh, you’re doomed,” Chan says, delighted. “And we’re so back in.”

Minho tips his head back against the couch and stares at the ceiling again.

A few hours ago, he was a maybe. A flexible supporting option in a project run by people with more power than he could imagine.

Now, somehow, he’s the person standing opposite Kim Seungmin when the cameras roll, holding up half of a story that might actually matter.

He feels terrified.

He also feels—quietly, stubbornly—like for once, he didn’t have to become the worst version of an Alpha to get here.

“Okay,” he says into the humming office air. “Let’s do this.”

Chan pumps a fist.

The printer, as if on cue, starts whirring to life, spitting out the first draft of a contract that says, in black and white:

LEE MINHO – HAN JOON (WORKING NAME) – MALE LEAD.

For once, Minho doesn’t look away.

Kim Seungmin is also awake.

The city is a low murmur outside the glass. Inside, the room is quiet enough that the air‑conditioning sounds loud. Seungmin sits cross‑legged on the couch with his tablet in his lap, the Orion script open but not really moving.

He’s read the scenes so often the lines blur. His head aches in that familiar way that isn’t just from staring at a screen.

He tells himself he’s only tired.

The bedroom door opens.

“I thought you were done for the night,” Changbin says.

“I’m just skimming,” Seungmin answers.

Changbin snorts. He’s in shirtsleeves now, tie gone, hair pushed back with his fingers. He drops a bottle of water and a small zip pouch onto the coffee table.

“You left your suppressants in the bathroom,” he says.

“I’ll take one before I sleep,” Seungmin says automatically.

“That’s what you said yesterday,” Changbin replies. “And the day before that.”

Seungmin looks at the pouch. It’s the same brand he’s been taking for years. Same pills that have pushed his heats into neat blocks on calendars and contracts until his body barely remembers what a full, unmedicated cycle feels like.

It kept him safer on bad sets.

It hasn’t made him healthy.

“I’m not off schedule,” he says. “We planned the window.”

“We planned one,” Changbin says. “You’ve been sitting on suppressants for three years straight. Your system is tired, Seung. It’s going to push back if you keep dodging full heats forever.”

He nods at Seungmin’s neck.

"Even your phone is reminding you," Changbin huffs.

The skin where the scent blocker patch sat earlier is faintly pink.

“Head?” he asks.

“Hurts,” Seungmin admits.

“Too warm?”

“A bit.”

Changbin lets out a slow breath.

“You ran heavy scenes today in blockers with an Alpha you don’t know yet,” he says. “Tomorrow we tighten the blocking with the coordinator. If you walk in over‑suppressed and half‑fried, your body’s going to treat every step forward like a threat.”

“My flinch doesn’t matter if he hits his mark,” Seungmin says.

“It matters to you,” Changbin says. “And he’ll notice. You know he will. You would.”

Minho’s face flashes in Seungmin’s mind: steady eyes, open hands, scent pulled in tight. The note in his script: don’t make him the villain for being scared.

Seungmin swallows.

“I can’t have an unscheduled heat in the middle of Orion,” he says. “So I take the meds. That’s the deal.”

“The deal was to control the timing,” Changbin says. “Not pretend your body doesn’t need a real cycle at all. The doctors keep telling you the same thing. If we’re going to keep you on this stuff, we do it properly. No skipped doses. No ‘I forgot.’ No pushing until your body forces an induced heat and picks its own moment.”

The phrase hits hard. They both remember what that looks like.

Seungmin stares at the pouch.

“It kept me safe,” he says, quieter. “Before we had rules.”

“I know,” Changbin answers. “And now we have rules. This set isn’t the one that hurt you. You don’t have to wreck yourself to survive it.”

He holds the pouch out.

“Full dose,” he says.

“Now. Then tomorrow we tell Hong if we need to shuffle the heavier scenes. That’s it. No secrets.’”

“ ‘Maybe it’s fine’ was three projects ago,” Seungmin mutters.

“Exactly,” Changbin says. “Leave it there.”

Seungmin hesitates. The tablet screen has dimmed in his lap. His head throbs in time with his pulse.

He takes the pouch.

The blister pack crackles as he presses a tablet into his palm. It looks small. It never feels small.

He swallows it with a mouthful of water. Bitter spreads down his throat.

Changbin’s shoulders ease a little.

“Thank you,” he says.

“You’re welcome,” Seungmin replies. “Now you can stop looking at me like I’m about to fall over.”

“I’ll stop when you stop trying to outrun your own biology,” Changbin says. “If your head’s still bad in an hour, text me.”

He starts back toward the bedroom, then pauses.

“Seung,” he says.

Seungmin looks up.

“You don’t owe this film your heat cycle,” Changbin says, sober. “You’re allowed to finish Orion without breaking your body for it. That was the whole point of you taking this much control.”

Seungmin’s throat tightens.

“I know,” he says, though it doesn’t always feel true.

“I’ll keep reminding you,” Changbin says.

The door clicks almost shut behind him.

The room is quiet again.

Seungmin leans back into the couch. The ache in his skull is still there, but the sharp edge has dulled a little, or maybe that’s just the promise that at least this part of the timing is handled.

He unlocks his tablet.

A banner from earlier still sits on the lock screen:

He swipes it away and opens Orion instead. Scene 12A glows up at him.

His lines in blue. The Alpha’s in yellow. A neat ring of green around a margin note.

‘don’t make him the villain for being scared.’

He touches the edge of the screen, not quite touching the words.

Tomorrow there will be tables, coffee, tape on the floor, the coordinator talking about marks and stop signals, Minho standing closer than he did today.

If something in him jolts, he thinks, this Alpha will see it.

For now, that has to be enough.

He scrolls down one more page before finally letting the tablet go dark.

Sleep can wait a little. The window, at least, will stay where he put it.