Chapter Text
The halls of ONER Entertainment always smelled faintly of laminate paper, citrus air freshener, and heat suppressants. As a big company, they really did paid a lot for those scented suppressants, usually, there's no odor, just a weird scentless place. But here, Po liked how it smelled like oranges and lemons.
Everything in the office was crisp, curated, and timed within a breath—right down to how the elevators closed and the rhythm of morning check-ins. No one was ever late. No one ever lingered. There wasn’t space for uncertainty in a building that managed five top idol groups and several billion baht in branding deals.
Po had learned early that the best way to survive ONER was to be invisible.
To not get anyone's attention and keep to yourself, keep personal lines outside the company. Even if it was just friends, but be civil with everyone, make sure to be friendly but not overly friendly.
As an intern in the logistics department, his name wasn’t on the staff rosters that mattered. His desk didn’t have a placard. His keycard barely gave him access beyond the basement storage bay and the first three floors.
And that was just fine.
Po already loved that, he wanted what he is doing right now.
He didn’t want attention. He didn’t want to be remembered. He doesn't want eyes on him anyway. He just wanted to work and go home, get his paycheck, and maybe buy his favorite food every end of the month.
The thought of someone like the idols or actors of ONER—or just any members of MARS, really—knowing his name made his skin itch with anxiety. Not because he disliked them. Quite the opposite.
Because people like them belonged to a world so far away from his that they didn’t even breathe the same air.
Don't get Po quite wrong. He does not think lightly of himself but he just respected how the real world works. In the company, there are two world, the artists' and higher staff's world and their world--where they work on the scrap stuffs for the company. And its not so bad too, they get busy as well.
But MARS, he knows them well.
He had watched their debut showcase from his phone screen in his university dorm four years ago. He remembered the way Thame had stared down the camera—stoic, sharp-jawed, magnetic in a way that made even silence feel intentional. He remembered how Pepper laughed off his mic falling mid-choreo, or how Jun smiled without it ever quite reaching his eyes.
But they were just figures on a stage. Packaged nicely. At most, they looked like robots working on sheer determination and responsibility at this point.
He saw right through it but he really never wanted to involve himself there.
Po preferred it this way, keeping his personal feelings and emotions outside of work.
He liked routine. Order. His small square of the world that included shipping labels, product codes, and delivery schedules. He wore industrial-grade scent blockers like a second skin—not out of shame, but necessity. Being an omega in a company dominated by alphas and high-rank creatives meant nothing unless you made yourself neutral. Professional. Controlled.
He felt untouchable that way.
So when P’Mick, one of the higher up staffs that he would always see walk with MARS, flagged him down by the rolling fanclub crates that morning, clipboard slapping against his thigh, Po thought maybe it was just about restocking the foam stickers again.
He never expected the order that followed.
“P’Rena’s intern called in sick—can you bring this up to the eleventh?”
He blinked. “Eleventh?”
“Boardroom A,” Mick replied, distractedly scribbling something onto his tablet. “They’ve got a group-level meeting. It's MARS. Five trays. All labeled. You just need to walk them in and drop them. Don’t talk. Don’t spill. Don’t… whatever it is you usually do when you get nervous.”
MARS? Po’s stomach twisted. That does not sound so good at all.
“Okay,” he said, because there wasn’t really another answer.
“Good. Don’t mess it up. They’re in the middle of comeback prep, everyone's stressed out. Just be quick. If they look at you, just pretend to be blind, they're on the edge this da---you know what? Hurry up!”
He nodded once and turned toward the service stairwell.
He didn’t like elevators on the upper floors—they made his ears pop and his chest tighten. It wasn’t the height. It was the proximity. Too many alphas rode those cars at once. Their scents were sharp even when dulled, thick with ego and heat-season paranoia.
But he walked there anyway, taking the card that P'Mick tossed on his table to access the upper floors.
Carrying the tray up eleven floors took him a little under ten minutes.
It wasn’t heavy—five drinks, all sealed in gold-lid cups with decorative sleeves and sticker name tags. Still warm. Still fragrant. He could smell them through the lids—vanilla for Nano, a strong americano for Dylan, oat milk something for Pepper. Jun and Thame’s were unlabeled, though the bitter roast smell suggested Thame and Jun took their coffees black.
Po almost felt disgusted, who likes black roasted coffees? That almost taste like nothing but bitter caffeine.
But he ignored his thoughts, because the whole scenario right now feels weird. One second, he was fixing schedules for deliveries, the next, he's on the elevator to deliver some idol group's coffee.
And also,
It was a strange intimacy, reading someone's preferences off a paper cup.
When he reached the eleventh floor, the air shifted immediately.
Cooler. Quieter. Carpeted, unlike the concrete and linoleum downstairs. The lighting dimmed to a soft designer glow, and large framed photographs of ONER’s greatest achievements lined the hallway like museum exhibits. There was one of MARS at their world tour, standing on Bangkok's largest stage bathed in violet light. Thame was in the center, his silhouette sharp against the fog and strobe lights, flanked by Jun and Pepper. Nano and Dylan on the both sides.
Po tried not to stare.
He had only seen Thame once before in person—at a distance, during an agency-wide New Year’s event. Even then, across a room, the man had made the space feel smaller just by standing in it.
It wasn’t just the alpha dynamic. It was presence.
And Po did not dare to dissect how the man does that, he doesn't want to fixate himself.
He did not want to obsess over it.
Thame didn’t walk so much as cut through the world.
And Po—Po was the opposite. A shadow with a badge, just that.
As important as that, but still, he kept some things working on the company. MARS members probably worked the company's paycheck and everything but Po never really found it that amazing. Of course, they are ONER's top artist, it's taken that they are the top-paying ones.
Po's bubble burst when the woman from the information desk raised her brows on him, he nodded awkwardly and apologized.
He inhaled slowly as he neared Boardroom A. Readjusted the tray in both hands. Willed his heartbeat to settle. His shirt clung slightly at the back of his neck—nerves, probably. He checked the suppressor patch under his collar. Still cool. Still active. No reason for anyone to sense anything.
His only job was to enter, drop the tray, and leave.
Easy as that. Nothing else.
He glanced briefly through the frosted glass strip along the doorframe. The silhouettes inside were animated—figures leaning over documents, gesturing. A low thrum of voices filtered through the thick wood.
He caught a glimpse of Jun—tall, poised, brows slightly furrowed. Next to him was Dylan, tapping a pen to his lip. And across the table, with a tablet in hand, sat—
Thame.
Even seated, he looked regal. Focused. Half-listening to a manager as his fingers moved over the screen.
Po’s throat went dry.
He dropped his gaze to the tray.
In. Out. No eye contact.
He pressed the handle, gently.
And the door clicked gently.
It cracked open—
—just a sliver.
Light spilled out—warm, diffused, far too clean.
Po exhaled slowly through his nose and stepped forward, tray balanced perfectly between both hands, wrists tense, spine aligned. He didn’t lift his gaze. His eyes stayed on the tray. Five cups. Five names.
Just walk forward.
Two steps.
Set the tray down.
Walk out.
And he was gonna be fine. He'd be walking right back to that same hallway, to that same information desk, and the elevator, back to his own office where everything would go back to normal.
He didn’t need to exist here. He wasn’t part of this world.
But then—
everything slowed.
Maybe his body already knew it before it happened, but Po?
Po was not prepared for what was about to happen.
The moment his shoes crossed the threshold, something shifted. Auditory detail sharpened—the scratch of a chair leg against the floor, the tap of a pen on glass, the quiet rustle of clothing. The low bass hum of a ventilation unit overhead began to echo like a war drum.
And beneath it all, something darker stirred.
Heavy. Primal. Familiar in a way it shouldn't be.
Po’s breath caught.
His grip tightened reflexively around the tray. The condensation from the drink sleeves made the cardboard slick. One shift of balance and he’d drop it all.
“Don’t look up,” he reminded himself silently.
“Don’t flinch.”
"It's gonna be fine."
But his skin was crawling.
His senses—wrong. Too sharp. Too open.
A single bead of sweat curled down his temple, cool at first, then hot, like it scalded as it dragged along his cheek.
And then—
“What the f*ck—Thame—?!”
The voice sliced through the air. It was Pepper’s. Alarmed. Choked on disbelief.
Po didn’t move.
Because he knew exactly the reason why one of the members shouted like that, abandoning their idol image.
Po felt it, the shift.
The shift of an Alpha when they see someone theirs.
And Po wasn't sure if he liked that realization.
His feet rooted to the floor. He stared at the tray like it held the universe. Like if he just focused enough, it would anchor him through the tsunami building in his chest.
But it was already too late.
Because in the next breath, it hit him.
A scent unlike anything he had ever encountered.
Not cologne. Not ambient alpha pheromones diluted by filters.
This was raw.
Sharp and layered—like burned cedar and smoked cinnamon, undercut with something rich, feral, and singularly focused.
And it was coming straight for him, straight at him.
His omega basked on it while Po did not know how to take it.
But his heart stopped.
His lungs forgot how to breathe.
The suppressant patch on his neck—he could feel it straining, struggling, failing. Proving to be insufficient from how much his Omega was reeling over this someone's alpha.
Then—
“Move, Thame—sit the hell down—”
Thame?
“Don’t come any closer!”
“THAME, NO—”
A chair crashed to the floor. Footsteps. Too fast. Too hard.
Someone lunged.
"THAME! STOP!"
The tray jolted. A ripple of near-spilled coffee sloshed inside the plastic lids.
Still, Po didn’t look up.
Because he knew.
He knew.
The scent wasn’t just alpha.
It was a scent of an alpha that targets someone. Tethered. Meant for him.
“What the hell is going on?” one of the managers snapped behind the chaos, as if the pheromones and distressed smell of an omega was not enough to give it all.
But the voices were drowned now—by a pulse in Po’s ears, by the pressure in his chest, by the burn in his lower back that made no medical sense, except…
Except his body was reacting.
It wasn’t heat.
Not yet.
But it was close. The edge of it. A flickering match pressed against dry kindling.
His grip faltered. He nearly dropped the tray.
A deep growl split the air.
Low. Guttural. Right behind him.
Too close.
So close that Po felt it in his spine.
“Who are you?"
The voice wasn’t loud. But it was dangerous.
Smooth like smoke, cracking like thunder.
Po’s blood ran cold.
He didn’t have to turn around.
He already knew whose voice that was, and it was enough to confirm it.
But Po remembered P'Mick's words.