The next morning, Seo Jaemin was in the rehearsal hall before anyone else, a manila folder in his hands. The thin morning light caught his face, making his skin look pale and almost translucent against the charcoal grey wool wound around his neck. He sat in one of the old wooden chairs, his expression lost in thought. He didn't look like a musical genius. He looked like an artist struggling with a canvas. There was a quiet intensity to him, a kind of solitude that was deeper than loneliness.
As the musicians filtered in, Jaemin walked to the podium, his expression as calm as ever, but Do-hyun, with his alpha's keen eye for detail, noticed the faint shadows under his eyes. His movements were precise, but there was a subtle weariness to his gait, a fleeting sign that the previous day's short but sharp fight had, in fact, taken a toll. Even his sandalwood scent seemed to be holding on by a thread, a faint whisper that was barely there at all.
He was affected. But he was here.
Jaemin raised his baton, but he didn't give the cue. Instead, he spoke, his voice low and clear.
"For today's rehearsal," he announced, "we will work on the Adagio from Samuel Barber."
A collective murmur rippled through the room. The piece was slow, mournful, and brutally difficult. It required an almost perfect, unified sound, a shared emotional core that the Seoul Philharmonic Symphony hadn't possessed in years.
But Jaemin wasn't finished. "And we will be performing this, together with two other pieces, at an official Revival Gala, which will be held on the weekend of the Spring Equinox."
There was a resounding gasp, then chaos erupted.
"A Gala??"
"Spring equinox?? That's in two and a half months' time!!"
"Can we even make it??"
"He's mad!"
Do-hyun felt a cold thrill shoot through him. This was not a soft conductor. This was a challenge. Seo Jaemin wasn't playing it safe. He was pushing them to their limits, demanding a perfection they couldn't possibly achieve. It was a test. A test of their skill, and of their commitment.
Eyes finding Seo Jaemin at the podium, Do-hyun thought he saw, for the first time, a glimmer of something familiar in the conductor's eyes. It was a stubborn, unyielding fire. This wasn't a game. This was a battle for the soul of the orchestra. Do-hyun's own gaze sharpened in return, and his subtle scent of cedar in the air sharpened with it, a quiet battle flag between them. The dirge was over. The fight was on.
…
The scent of dust and wood remained, but the atmosphere in the rehearsal hall was no longer heavy with resentment. Instead, it held a fragile, expectant tension—the quiet hum of an orchestra trying to be better. They were giving him a chance.
Do-hyun, too, was trying. He held his violin in a more relaxed grip, his posture a little less rigid. His scent of cedar was still a strong, alpha presence, but it lacked the sharp, aggressive edge from the day before. He had agreed to this. He had to see it through.
Jaemin looked directly at Do-hyun. "Kang Do-hyun-ssi. I want you to play this piece not as a soloist, but as a living instrument. The music should feel as though it is flowing through you, not being forced out."
Do-hyun's jaw tightened. The instructions were ridiculous, abstract nonsense. He was a violinist, not a philosopher. And this man still wasn't addressing him properly, with the due respect for a concertmaster.
He opened his mouth to protest, but then saw the weary hope in the eyes of his fellow musicians. It made him hesitate, then sigh deeply.
In the end, he held his tongue and simply gave a curt nod.
The mournful notes of Barber's "Adagio" were meant to be a single, aching cry, a seamless tapestry of sound. But in the hands of the Seoul Philharmonic Symphony, it was a frayed and tattered thing. The sound that rose from the orchestra was a painful shriek of separate voices—the first violins dragged, the cellos were a fraction off, and the violas sounded a hollow, lonely lament. Do-hyun played his part with a cold perfection, but it was only a small, perfect part of a broken whole.
Jaemin listened to the discord for a full minute, his face a mask of serene calm. He didn't flinch. He simply lowered his baton, and the ugly sound died.
"No," he said, his voice softer than before. "Not like that. The emotion in this piece is a shared grief, a single voice. It is not a collection of individual sorrows."
Yoon Hyeonwoo, the principal cellist, shifted in his seat. "The music is too difficult, Conductor-nim. We haven't played a piece like this in years."
Jaemin's gaze found Hyeonwoo's. "The music is not too difficult. The feeling is. You are all playing alone. You are an orchestra. A single body with a single heart."
His eyes scanned the room, lingering on each musician before settling on Do-hyun. "The pain in this piece is universal. It must be shared. Kang Do-hyun-ssi, your playing is flawless, but it is a wall of sound. You are not listening to the person behind you, or the person across from you."
The criticism felt different this time. It wasn't about his skill; it was about his soul. It triggered a phantom ache at the back of his neck, a ghost of the sensation he felt whenever their auras had clashed.
Jaemin looked down, his gaze fixed on his own hand. "Close your eyes," he commanded, his voice an almost-whisper. "Just for a moment. Feel the air in the room. Feel the air moving when your fellow musicians breathe. That is the pulse of the orchestra."
Reluctantly, some of the musicians, including Han Chaewon and Jung Eunji, closed their eyes. Do-hyun, ever defiant, kept his open, but he felt an odd tremor of curiosity.
Jaemin lifted his hand, not his baton, and without a single sound, his fingers traced a slow, invisible arc in the air. Do-hyun watched, spellbound, as the conductor's slender hand moved. The gesture was impossibly graceful, a single, fluid wave.
And in that moment, something shifted. For the first time, Do-hyun's alpha-driven instincts didn't fight against the gentle command. He felt an involuntary, almost magnetic pull from the nape of his neck toward Jaemin's hand, his own bow beginning to move in sync with the conductor's subtle, quiet motion. It wasn't a conscious choice. It was instinct. Their hands moved in perfect harmony, a shared rhythm that felt as natural and terrifying as breathing.
The first violin section, following Do-hyun's lead, began to play. The sound was still fragile, but this time, it was united. The single voice Jaemin had spoken of was there, thin and brittle from their months-long exhaustion, but a beautiful thread of sound nonetheless.
The cellos entered, lagging slightly, created a hollow echo, and the violas, as if on cue, began to drag the tempo. The tentative harmony teetered on the edge of chaos, threatening to collapse just as it had so many times before.
But then, Jaemin's hand moved again. It was a slight, almost imperceptible turn of his wrist, but it was a deliberate, silent command that seemed to pull the lagging notes back into alignment. His eyes, fixed on the brass section, held an unnerving intensity. They seemed to ask, without words, for more breath, more life, more commitment. The brass, as if responding to a primal call, took a collective, shuddering breath, and when they played the next note, it swelled with a power and warmth that had been absent for months.
A collective feeling, a shared rhythm, began to emerge from the discord. It was still imperfect, a symphony of small struggles and triumphs, but Jaemin was there, a quiet force, guiding them all. He corrected with a fleeting glance, encouraged with a slight nod, and demanded with an almost imperceptible change in his posture.
And with each small correction, a new, unified harmony began to sing. The brass section came in on cue. The percussion was in sync with the strings. The music was no longer a fractured, disjointed mess; it was a living, breathing thing, an unfolding tapestry woven from their collective will.
As the music swelled towards its finale, Jaemin's gaze shifted from the orchestra and settled on Do-hyun. His eyes, dark and fathomless, held a silent challenge, but they also held something else—a silent invitation to surrender to the music, to trust.
See? it seemed to say. This is what we can do.
In that moment, the rest of the world faded away. It was just the two of them, linked by a sound only they could hear. Do-hyun's bow moved with a newfound energy, his body responding to Jaemin's unspoken command with a graceful, desperate urgency. His cedar scent, which had been a barrier between them, now flowed in a new harmony, a silent admission of defeat and a reluctant, thrilling acceptance of a different kind of power.
The rest of the orchestra, sensing the perfect, unspoken tempo between the conductor and the first chair, followed suit. The music wasn't a collection of individual sorrows anymore. It was a single, heartbreaking, and achingly beautiful lament.
As the last notes faded, Jaemin lowered the baton. His eyes, still on Do-hyun, held no triumph, only a quiet knowing.
Do-hyun stared back at him, his heart hammering against his ribs. The sound had been magnificent. Impossible. He had just played in perfect, unspoken harmony with this man, this beta with a quiet scent and a commanding soul.
He felt a profound sense of shock and something else, something he didn't have a name for. An electric jolt that started at the nape of his neck, the same place he had felt a phantom ache the day before. A sudden, terrifying understanding that there was something here that was more than he could possibly explain. It was something he could hear. Something he could feel.
This man was not what he seemed. He was not powerful in the way Do-hyun understood. He was something else entirely. Something subtle. Something dangerous. And he had just proven that everything Do-hyun had been doing for the last year had been wrong.