14: Narcissism Is a Disease
Qian Kun would never casually mark someone, much less go to a public matching room that treated marking like a transaction.
Was his mark something that could be measured with money? Who were they insulting.
Ever since he entered his growth period, requests like this had never stopped. He was sick to death of them.
Someone else being desperate had nothing to do with him. He had no obligation to shoulder responsibility for other people’s needs.
Anyone’s patience would be ground down little by little. No one, after being contacted by the same institution dozens of times, could possibly keep a good attitude.
Not to mention that this time, the operator didn’t sound like she was just doing her job. She sounded more like she was personally invested in that particular requester.
That tone was clearly tinged with personal emotion.
Are public servants really allowed to be this emotional. Do you feel worthy of the salary paid by the state.
After hanging up, Qian Kun directly blacklisted the number.
If this hadn’t been an inconvenient place, he might’ve even told the person on the other end that there was something in this world called a pheromone inhibitor, and if you can’t stand it, just give yourself a shot.
If one shot doesn’t work, then two.
Once the harassment was dealt with, Qian Kun finally turned all his attention back to the scene.
The Alpha who’d been kicked down was curled up on the ground, groaning in pain, cold sweat pouring straight down.
The people at that table were all drunk. It took them a moment to react before they staggered over to help the fallen man up, glaring angrily at Qian Kun as they did.
One Alpha wearing a thick chain noticed Shen Jin. His gaze locked onto him, and he couldn’t help stepping closer.
There was no attempt to hide the amazement and intense desire in his eyes.
Shen Jin clenched his fist. That look reminded him of some very unpleasant memories.
Qian Kun’s eyes narrowed slightly. He’d noticed long ago that Shen Jin had a strange kind of attraction to Alphas.
Zhou You and the others saw what was happening and all stood up, surrounding them.
The effect of more than a dozen Alphas standing at once was overwhelming. Even though they’d only just come of age and weren’t releasing pheromones, as the group that represented the strongest physical capabilities, they still exuded an absolute sense of pressure.
Some customers at other tables, afraid of getting caught up in it, had already left early. Others with stronger nerves stayed seated, watching how things would develop.
Among that group, aside from the Alpha who’d been kicked down, only the one staring at Shen Jin was still posturing. The rest had already begun thinking about making a run for it.
“You kicked my brother, and you don’t even have the decency to apologize?” that Alpha said arrogantly.
“Are you kidding me? You were the ones getting drunk and causing trouble, almost crashing into someone. We’re already being generous not asking for emotional damages!” Liu Qimai jumped up and started yelling.
“Emotional damages?” The Alpha smashed a beer bottle onto the table. As glass shattered, he pointed at Shen Jin. “Send him over here, and I’ll let you all go.”
Liu Qimai was furious. If Zhou You hadn’t held him back, he would’ve already rushed up to beat the life out of this suicidal idiot.
Shen Jin is someone our Brother Kun hasn’t even touched yet. Who the hell do you think you are?
Shen Jin stepped past Qian Kun and walked forward.
“What are you doing?” His wrist was grabbed by a pair of slightly hot hands.
Shen Jin turned back and looked calmly at Qian Kun.
Those eyes that were usually cold as frost now carried a defiant arrogance and anger that came straight from the bone.
Qian Kun felt his pulse jump violently from just that look alone.
The seed that had been buried in his heart since their first meeting had finally taken root and begun to sprout.
Slowly, Qian Kun released his grip. He glanced at the adult Alpha and said pointedly, “You’ve got this?”
“Yeah.”
Facing Shen Jin, that Alpha couldn’t fully control his pheromones. They surged straight toward him, making Shen Jin feel as though needles were stabbing into his skin.
The more it hurt, the clearer his mind became.
Under the man’s infatuated gaze, Shen Jin lifted his knee with lightning speed.
The Alpha never expected Shen Jin to attack so mercilessly right from the start. After being knocked down, before he could even catch his breath, Shen Jin twisted his wrist back. The instant he pressed down on an acupoint, a wave of numbness shot through the Alpha’s body. His strength drained away, and Shen Jin slammed his head straight into the dining table.
Shen Jin enunciated every word clearly. “Don’t look at me with that disgusting gaze.”
A pig-like scream erupted into the air.
Other customers: “……”
Liu Qimai and the others: “……”
Their class’s Shen Jin was ruthless and didn’t waste words.
Where did this sudden urge to cheer for Brother Jin even come from.
Only Qian Kun rubbed the sensor at his chest. Warning heat kept flaring there.
Shen Jin wasn’t strength-oriented, but every movement he made flowed smoothly, targeting Alpha weak points with clean, decisive strikes. He looked like a sly yet ferocious little leopard.
Shen Jin rarely made a move, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t.
After Xie Ling saw Shen Jin’s pheromone report when he was young, he specifically hired instructors to train him in grappling and combat.
Limited by an Omega’s innate physical constraints, Shen Jin never won any awards. Still, he played to his strengths and avoided his weaknesses. He was agile, and he specialized in pressing acupoints. Wherever it hurt most, that’s where he struck.
If an ordinary Alpha underestimated him, they’d pay dearly for it.
Because of the disturbance, the barbecue shop owner noticed what was going on and came over to mediate. He pulled the drunk Alpha out from under Shen Jin and asked whether they wanted to settle it privately or call the police.
Shen Jin had been prepared. He took out the digital ID on his phone and said, “An Omega being harassed and responding with reasonable force counts as self-defense.”
He hadn’t fully differentiated yet, so the information on his ID hadn’t been updated.
The owner fell silent for a moment, then voiced the same doubt as the surrounding onlookers. “You’re an Omega?”
The Alpha who’d been tortured by acupoints to the brink of death: “……”
The owner looked toward the group of students who seemed to be together, clearly asking for confirmation. Liu Qimai and the others were equally bewildered.
Since childhood, physiology class had always taught them that Omegas were delicate. Weak, lacking stamina, like fragile flowers that couldn’t withstand wind or rain and needed careful protection.
This… fragile flower?
Although the school said Shen Jin had differentiated, he’d never publicly acknowledged it. No one dared say anything or ask.
Qian Kun lifted his thin lips. “Yeah, he is.”
The owner had originally intended to call the police for the injured party. Given the situation now, he hesitated and asked Shen Jin, “Then… do you want to report him for harassment?”
This turn of events caught everyone off guard. Someone even whistled. What a dramatic reversal.
The Alpha could still feel the lingering numb pain in his acupoints. He looked at Shen Jin in fear, having no desire to experience that pain a second time. This Omega didn’t hit hard, but he was vicious.
“No need,” Shen Jin said, then pointed at the mess on the ground. “But don’t forget to ask him for compensation.”
Even if they called the police, since there was no serious injury, it would most likely be smoothed over in the end.
Qian Kun glanced at Shen Jin’s pale face and lowered his head to send a text.
Under the contemptuous stares of the crowd, the Alpha, having regained a bit of strength, paid the compensation and fled in shame. Before leaving, he glanced back at the group’s school uniforms.
When he reached the mouth of an alley, he spat several times.
He cursed his rotten luck, running into an Omega who was stunningly beautiful and terrifyingly fierce.
His steps suddenly halted.
Under the moonlight, he saw a group of burly men appear in this rarely used alley, walking toward him.
He stumbled back in terror.
“Who are you? What do you want!”
*
Shen Jin picked up the barbecue he’d bought for his brother and was about to leave when Qian Kun stood up after glancing at the other tables of restless Alphas. “Let’s go together. I’ll take you home.”
Shen Jin was still grateful that Qian Kun had helped block that collision earlier. His tone softened considerably. “I have a bus card.”
Qian Kun checked his watch. It was almost the last bus. “It’s on the way. You don’t think I’m specially escorting you, do you?”
Shen Jin’s face practically started hailing ice. “I don’t.”
Qian Kun walked straight over to the car that had been waiting by the roadside, opened one of the doors like a gentleman, and looked toward Shen Jin in the distance.
The people left behind at the barbecue stall watched as Shen Jin, who’d just been wreaking havoc, somehow still got coaxed into the car by Brother Kun. For a moment, no one knew who they should be warning.
With these two together, it was hard to say who would end up losing.
Someone suddenly came to a realization.
“Aren’t Brother Kun’s and Shen Jin’s houses in opposite directions?”
“What kind of ‘on the way’ is this?”
“Mai, didn’t you say Brother Kun was going to deal with him? What kind of move is personally driving him home?”
Liu Qimai was still processing when someone answered first. “You don’t get it. Look at Shen Jin, does he look easy to deal with? Brother Kun’s using a soft approach first, lulling the enemy into a false sense of security.”
Liu Qimai was still replaying the earlier scene in his head. That disdainful look from Shen Jin, his sharp judgment, those clean attacks…
Even as a bystander, it had been tense and exhilarating. It made him want to fight Shen Jin himself.
Someone who usually looked so quiet, a model student who never slacked off in class, had such a hidden side.
It was surprising, yet somehow completely reasonable.
Ice Block Shen, you’re hiding way too deep.
He took a bite of a spicy grilled chicken wing and sucked in a breath. “This is so damn exhilarating!”
After Shen Jin got into the car, he kept hearing vibration alerts by his ear.
“Your phone keeps buzzing.”
Qian Kun hummed in response, pretending to look for his phone while actually pressing the button on the chest sensor.
This was a warning. His emotional state had been elevated for too long. It was dangerous.
Neither of them spoke. The driver drove steadily. Shen Jin noticed that this wasn’t the same driver as last time.
He glanced at Qian Kun. Just how many drivers does your family have?
Qian Kun gave the address and turned to look out the window, seeming to simply be giving someone a ride home.
For once, he wasn’t showing off his eloquence. Shen Jin naturally didn’t make small talk either.
Shen Jin didn’t like Qian Kun, but he could tell that Qian Kun was arrogant to the extreme at his core. He disdained taking advantage of someone else’s vulnerability.
Compared to a table full of unfamiliar Alphas, at least Qian Kun, this Beta, was much safer.
Shen Jin felt a headache coming on. In the quiet car, only the soft sound of cool air flowing from the vents could be heard. The pain stretched on, lingering, and he slowly closed his eyes.
When the person beside him went silent, Qian Kun turned to look. Shen Jin’s breathing was slightly rapid, his brows tightly knit.
With that cold outer shell stripped away, Shen Jin looked a little helpless.
Qian Kun believed that if he moved even a little closer, the person who looked asleep would wake instantly and arm himself all over again.
He had no intention of approaching. He simply watched Shen Jin calmly.
After not hesitating long, he pressed the partition button.
The divider slowly descended, separating the front and back seats.
This driver, though petite and seemingly slender, was actually an Alpha. He’d received professional training and wasn’t easily affected by pheromones.
As he drove, he suddenly sensed an intense, icy pheromone appear in the back seat. That frost gradually melted into the gentlest water, flowing in from all directions, wrapping around the sleeping person.
There was no aggression, yet the innate pressure of its level made him extremely uncomfortable. He barely suppressed the urge to abandon the car and flee, gripping the steering wheel until the partition fully closed and sealed off the last trace.
Shen Jin drifted in a haze. Already in a sensitive differentiation period, he’d been subjected to an Alpha trying to use pheromones to force him to submit earlier. Though he’d endured the biological disadvantage, the already restless pheromones inside him now rampaged with nowhere to go.
He didn’t know how long passed before those boiling pheromones were wrapped layer by layer in cool water, like being gently brushed by a babbling stream in the heat of summer.
Perhaps because it carried no hostility, Shen Jin’s initial resistance gradually eased under that tireless soothing.
Since entering differentiation, Shen Jin had relied entirely on inhibitors to forcibly suppress things.
He’d never experienced someone using mental power to slowly comb through chaotic pheromones.
To be precise, most Omegas would never differentiate in their lifetime. Even if they did, they wouldn’t encounter an Alpha willing to expend their own mental power like this.
Combing and soothing pheromones consumed a massive amount of an Alpha’s mental strength and left them weakened afterward. It was a thankless task.
Compared to that, a temporary mark was faster, more convenient, and less draining.
Qian Kun, however, had no intention of marking anyone. To him, marking felt like a beast claiming territory, primitive and savage.
Just the thought of touching another person’s gland made him feel nauseous.
Time slipped by quietly.
Shen Jin jolted awake from a nightmare. He dreamed that he was drowning.
He kept sinking in the darkness, sinking endlessly, no matter how he struggled.
He opened his eyes and looked around. He was still in the car. Outside was a familiar villa district, and beside him sat that same noble young master.
Seeing him awake, the young master put down the handheld console and lazily lifted his eyelids. “If you didn’t wake up soon, I’d have thought you were deliberately refusing to leave.”
Shen Jin had no idea how he’d fallen asleep like that, nor why his body felt so light.
He was very aware of changes in his body. Confused, he asked, “Did you do something to me?”
Qian Kun seemed to hear the funniest joke. He scoffed.
He looked Shen Jin up and down, then leaned back against the seat. “Even if you stripped naked in front of me, I wouldn’t spare you a second glance.”
Shen Jin had only wanted a proper explanation. His mental state felt better than it ever had, and of course he wanted to know why. He never expected Qian Kun to start talking nonsense again.
Who would do something like that in front of you. That’s too vulgar to even say.
Shen Jin flushed with anger, got out of the car, and slammed the door shut.
Qian Kun still wasn’t satisfied. “Class rep, narcissism is a disease. You need treatment.”
Shen Jin acted as if he hadn’t heard, remaining polite and reserved, only his gaze colder than before. “Drive safe. I won’t see you out.”
You’re the narcissist.
So infuriating.
Absolutely infuriating.
Before Shen Jin could even enter the house, Qian Kun’s car had already disappeared into the night.
Seeing that Qian Kun didn’t look too well, the driver asked, “Why didn’t you tell him the truth just now?” and even deliberately provoked him.
Qian Kun looked listlessly out the window. “You don’t know him.”
“Independent, proud, unwilling to owe favors.”
If he told the truth, not only would he get no thanks, given that person’s temperament, he’d probably rack his brain trying to repay the debt.
For Qian Kun, it was simpler than that. He just couldn’t stand the sight of Shen Jin sitting there alone, enduring pain.
A moment of pity was fine.
Curiosity was fine too.
None of it required Shen Jin to repay anything.
*
Shen Jin stood outside sulking for a while. He was still puzzled by the changes in his body and posted online to ask about it.
After entering the house, he saw Shen Xie'an sprawled on the couch watching a soap opera, laughing so hard he was practically rolling around.
Seeing his brother come back, his smile widened even more. “Ge, welcome home!”
Looking at Shen Xie'an’s soft, squishy appearance, the anger puffing Shen Jin up like a pufferfish slowly dissipated.
Seeing the barbecue bag in Shen Jin’s hand, Shen Xie'an sprang off the couch and ran over barefoot.
He suddenly braked, looking at Shen Jin strangely, and leaned in to sniff him here and there.
With both hands full and his brother sticking to him like a hamster, Shen Jin said irritably, “What are you doing?”
Shen Xie'an’s face turned nearly purple. “Ge, why do you smell like an Alpha. It’s faint, but it’s super alluring!”
It was like spraying perfume on yourself. You might not notice it, but others would.
Shen Jin hadn’t noticed anything and asked, “What does it smell like?”
“Kind of like plants soaked by a stream. Really fresh, and not oppressive at all.”
Just catching a hint of it made Shen Xie'an’s legs feel weak, like he wanted to kneel.
That Alpha’s level must be insanely high.
That didn’t make sense though. There was no way his brother would let an Alpha touch him, much less get marked with a scent.
It had to be from being very close, or maybe accidental contact.
Shen Xie'an watched his brother’s expression change slightly as he maintained a steady demeanor while moving upstairs at lightning speed.
Oh no.
Words becoming prophecy.
Brother Huai, do you still want a wife?
Shen Jin returned to his room looking composed. Maybe the scent was too faint for him to notice. Was Shen Xie'an a bloodhound or something.
Still, the smell Shen Xie'an described was very similar to what Shen Jin had felt in his dream.
He was certain no one had touched him, but he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t done anything inappropriate himself.
Shen Jin carried out a meticulous logical analysis.
In the car earlier, there were three people.
An Alpha driver.
A Beta classmate.
And himself, in a differentiation period.
The driver looked petite. Under normal circumstances, Shen Jin didn’t think he could’ve done anything, but with his pheromones in disarray, there might’ve been perceptual errors.
This line of reasoning was very reasonable.
At that moment, Qian Kun’s friend request came through again. It had been arriving every day recently, like a daily task.
Shen Jin accepted it.
Qian Kun was already used to Shen Jin’s constant rejections. Seeing it suddenly approved made his dejected expression perk up.
He stared at the line “The other party has accepted your friend request. You can now start chatting” several times.
The young master who’d been rejected over and over suddenly felt flattered.
What’s going on. Misclick?
A moment later, Shen Jin sent a message.
[Earlier, did I do anything to your driver?]
The question was so bizarre that it took Qian Kun a long time to reply.
[He’s not crippled.]
With hands, you can refuse. What could you even do.
[Then your driver,] did he accidentally touch me?
Shen Jin typed too fast and sent the first part before finishing.
Before he could send the rest, Qian Kun replied as if he’d guessed it.
[He’s not blind.]
“…”
Qian Kun went from getting out of the car, to entering the house, to finishing his shower without receiving a reply. He sent another message to check.
What he got back was a red exclamation mark and the notice: Snowball has enabled friend verification. You are not yet their friend.
Qian Kun laughed helplessly. Damn.
He buried his face in the pillow.
After a while, a muffled voice drifted out.
“Quite the temper.”
Author’s Note:
Who told you to have such a nasty mouth.
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