Dinner was a delicate, agonizing dance. Each spoonful of oxtail soup was a silent reminder of the alpha he had just sent away, and a new, gnawing anger simmered beneath Jaemin's skin. The warm, delicious aroma of food that filled the air felt suffocating, a bitter irony to the coldness that had settled over the dinner table. He tried to eat, but each mouthful tasted like sawdust on his tongue.
He watched his father, who picked at his food with a stoic, unreadable expression. The man had made his point with the quiet ferocity of a lifetime spent in reserve. The silence was loud, a thick history of layers of unspoken grievances.
Finally, his father looked up.
"Your mother and I saw the news," he said, his voice measured. "The gossip about you being an omega, and what happened at your performance. We were quite… surprised to see the article."
Jaemin's jaw clenched. "It was nothing, Abeoji. Just a misunderstanding. The media made a mountain out of a molehill, as usual. I'm sorry to have worried you and Omma."
His father's face remained impassive. "A misunderstanding that has your name, and our family's name, attached to it. This life you have chosen, son, it's so... public. So full of drama. A career in anything else would have given you security, a life free from all this. We went through so much with you and your time in Vienna."
"I'm sorry, Abeoji." Jaemin's teeth felt like they were going to break from how hard he was gritting them. "I don't think I'd be any good at engineering; it's a good thing you have another son for that."
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Jaemin regretted using Junho as ammunition in this fight, but he barely had any time to feel bad about it before his father was speaking again.
"Maybe it's about the people you mix around with," his father retorted, his voice still low, but with a new edge. "These music types... They live for the drama. You're talented, there's no doubt about that, but then maybe you should be focused on your music, not getting caught up with another one of these… alpha musicians."
Jaemin didn't even bother pretending that he didn't know who his father was referring to. "I told you, Abeoji, he's just a colleague."
"A colleague who delivers soup to your house late at night, who addresses you so familiarly… Listen to me, son: don't get tangled up with anyone who could put you in danger or hurt you again."
The advice was meant to be a comfort, but it pricked and twisted in an old wound. Jaemin gave a soft snort of anger. "It's nice to know that you think I had the choice to put myself in such a position deliberately. I understand; I'm so sorry, won't do it again."
His father's eyes narrowed at the veiled derision in Jaemin's tone. "Your mother and I saw the videos of what happened that night," he insisted. "The way he rushed you off at the Gala… They're all the same, so passionate but so… volatile. Unreliable. You should be looking for someone with a calm and steady presence, someone gentle and obedient, who can support you in your career, someone who won't make a public spectacle of you—"
Jaemin's spoon clattered into his bowl. The sound, small as it was, cut through the room. A bitter, sarcastic laugh escaped him.
"I'm sorry, Abeoji, but it seems unlikely that I will be taking a wife. Again, I apologise for all the many problems I have caused you and Omma by being a musician, and for presenting as an omega. I'll make sure that I find a partner who will somehow finally accept me for all my poor life choices."
His father's face, which had been impassive for so long, finally cracked. "What about me? What about your mother? Think carefully about everything we've done for you, all the sacrifices we made. Do you think this is what we wanted? We gave you every opportunity to have a normal life, we did what any parent would do."
The words, meant as a defense, felt like a renewed attack. Jaemin's breath hitched. Decades of unspoken resentment, of feeling like a problematic project rather than a son, of being blamed for things that were not actually his fault, boiled over.
"Normal? You call it normal to make your firstborn son feel so fundamentally wrong that he takes the first chance he gets to leave? The scholarship to Vienna wasn't a gift, Abeoji—It was my way out. I was so desperate to feel normal, to feel like it was okay for me to be myself, that I ended up with people like Choi Seungcheol, who broke me even more." He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping to a hush so that it wouldn't crack. "I'm sorry but, how exactly did you protect me from that, Abeoji?"
A wave of palpable shock went through the room. Jina, who had been about to bite into a piece of meat from her bowl, froze, her chopsticks hovering mid-air in front of her mouth. His mother's hand, which had been nervously dabbing at a spill that wasn't there, stilled. Even Junho, normally so laid back, sat up a little straighter, his eyes flickering nervously between the two men.
If not for the bitter anger coursing through him, Jaemin would have almost found it comical, the way all three of them stopped, jaws dropping open as they stared at him.
His father didn't find it funny either. "Seo Jaemin, have you been away from home for so long that you've forgotten I'm your father? What sort of tone is that you're taking with me right now? Don't think that just because you're the leader of a band now, you can go around disrespecting your elders."
Jaemin sighed, closing his eyes wearily. Always the same trump card, always the same talking down to, never a real conversation. He was never going to be able to change his father's view of him and his choices.
Schooling his expression, he said stiffly, "My apologies, Abeoji. I forgot myself." A vein ticked in his temple as he swallowed down the torrent of angry words that fought to find life and leap into the ever-widening chasm between them. Yet he refused to look away, meeting his father's gaze with a cold, defiant stare.
His father's face, etched by years of hard work, hardened. But he, too, tightened his jaw and didn't say another word.
The rest of the meal passed in a strained, uncomfortable silence. Jina and Junho occasionally whispered between themselves, while Jaemin's mother nervously and unsuccessfully tried to break the tension by compulsively heaping an impossible amount of food into everyone's bowls.