If Jang Si-won had known that his entire romantic karma was about to combust because of an oat milk latte with tragically limp foam and one glancing whiff of cinnamon iced espresso, he might have worn his sparkly gloss instead of the emergency cherry balm he kept in his apron. He might have chosen a less clingy mesh top, maybe one that did not scream I want a raise and a boyfriend in the same breath. He might have curled his bangs with more intention. But hindsight, like most things in Si-won's life, arrived late and carrying a passive-aggressive memo.
He was halfway through crafting an overly dramatic heart in a foam swirl for an influencer who had been filming for eight full minutes without tipping, when the door to Brewmates™ opened with a chime that did not sound so much like welcome as it did like a warning.
That was when he looked up. That was when his story began to rot itself into the whipped cream.
The boy who entered did not belong in a pastel-coded café with flirty aprons and drink specials named things like "Affogato of Emotional Support" or "The Knotted Cold Brew." He looked like he belonged in a server closet, whispering to hardware, judging your code, and ruining hearts with two lines of JavaScript. He was tall and unimpressed, dressed in matte black like he was emotionally allergic to color. A laptop bag was slung across his chest like a shield, and his eyes held the same cold sharpness as wet concrete after a storm.
Si-won blinked. The stranger did not. Then pheromones hit. They came low and slow, like something had shifted in the air vents, cinnamon and coffee and steel code bleeding through the powdered sugar chaos of Si-won's own strawberry milk aroma. His pheromones sparked up instinctively, fizzing sweet and flustered and unmistakably Omega, rising like foam in a shaken canister.
Kang Min-jae smelled them too. His eyes locked on Si-won as if a firewall had just been triggered. He did not smile. He did not speak. He just looked. And for a horrible, electric, pulse-wrecking moment, the entire café seemed to narrow around them. The scent hung thick between them, sugared tension and caffeine heat, a betrayal of biology in its most inconvenient form.
They had never met before. Not properly. Not memorably. But Si-won felt it anyway.
Some kind of instinct. Some kind of neural itch. The way animals probably recognize storms before thunder, or how idols know which camera is live. His throat tightened. His cheeks flushed. His pheromones spiked again, defensively and visibly.
Behind him, the whipped cream sputtered into a puddle on the counter. In front of him, Kang Min-jae, because yes, Si-won now remembered his name, his schedule, his major, and the tragic fact that they had shared a general ed class two semesters ago, was staring like he had just discovered the worst bug in the entire system, and it was strawberry-flavored and wearing too much eyeliner.
Si-won tried to be normal. He failed instantly.
"Welcome to Brewmates," he said, voice an octave too high, smile stretched too wide, scent spiraling like a panic spiral in a perfume bottle. "Can I interest you in an emotionally unstable matcha?"
Min-jae did not laugh. Of course he did not. He stepped up to the counter, pulled down his hoodie, and said in a voice that made Si-won's knees wobble like over-whipped meringue, "You're leaking your pheromones."
Si-won's soul briefly left his body.
The influencer at the corner table gasped. The Beta barista dropped a tray of dirty mugs. Someone outside dropped a drink order and cursed the weather. It was, all things considered, the most humiliating bonding moment of Si-won's entire not-actually-bonded life.
He was not even trying to release his pheromones. He was trying to flirt his way into a skincare sponsorship and maybe sneak off early for an audition, not get emotionally ambushed by a cinnamon-scented Alpha who looked like he had never failed a physics test or smiled during sex.
But the bond reaction, if that was what this was, did not care about Si-won's plans. It did not care about his pheromone blockers or his five-year goal to date someone rich, older, and emotionally unavailable in a yacht-owner kind of way. It did not care that Kang Min-jae was exactly the opposite of his type. It only cared that their pheromones were now dancing, awkward and raw and far too public, like a badly timed duet between two people who had no business being in the same key.
Si-won stepped back, bumping into a cardboard cutout of their seasonal drink promo. The strawberry ears on his name tag wobbled. His lips parted to say something clever, something sharp and flirty and controlled.
What came out instead was, "Are you seriously going to order something or just pheromone-shame me in front of my co-workers?"
Min-jae blinked. Then, slowly and deliberately, he leaned forward and whispered, "Strawberry milk, huh?"
Si-won's breath caught. His spine stiffened. His pheromones pulsed once, betraying every attempt at calm. And in that moment, he knew. This was not just a pheromone sync. This was war. A sexy, pheromone-stained, caffeine-laced war.