A studio apartment's door opened harshly after a series of loud beeping, and a voice half a hiss and half a shout greeted the empty space.
"Cousin?" Arthur kicked his shoes off and flung his coat across the room angrily. "Cousin?!"
Arthur had yet to read the manuscript — despite Ashley's suggestion — but he knew the characters well enough from the brief description in the audition document. At least, he knew enough that the protagonist's cousin was one of the 'bad guys'.
"And not even the main villain? Just a third-rate bully mini-boss?!" Arthur yelled in the middle of the first floor, clutching his hair in frustration.
He stood in the space between the kitchen and the living room--or rather, the sitting area in the open space of the first floor--listening to the echo of his ridiculous statement. Would it be fine if Eugene Kim pinned him to be the main villain? Ugh--how absurd.
Wrapped in silence, Arthur took a deep breath to calm himself and moved back to the foyer. In embarrassment, he adjusted his shoes, neatly lined them in the shoe rack, then crossed the room and picked up the coat slumped against the wall. Sighing, he chided himself for being childish and quietly went through the motion of tidying his house.
Still, his annoyance didn't wane. It even made him temporarily forget the feud he had with the sound director. Temporarily.
When he thought back to the meeting, he recalled the root of his reaction. To be fair, he was the one who started the whole shtick, calling Eugene Kim 'foxy and arrogant' in front of the others. The callback after was just a consequence.
In Arthur's defense, Eugene Kim did give out an impression of his own protagonist--at least from the character imagery. The man had an objectively nice smile that one might see a lot in a party, the kind of smile used to charm people. But it was also a smile that rarely reached his eyes, which were still and calm, and sometimes cold, like a seasoned sailor who had sailed all kinds of storms looking at the newbie crewmates.
The man had a profile of a seasoned player, but his demeanor and work ethic were polite, sincere, and professional. From what Arthur heard, Eugene Kim was rather gentle and soft-spoken, especially to omegas and those younger than him, like a proper gentleman.
Except on the rare chance he spoke to Arthur, obviously.
Arthur scoffed, stabbing his fork into the meatloaf he had just warmed up for his dinner. What's so wrong about voicing a fact? He clicked his tongue. Besides, Eugene Kim was the one who ticked him off first.
He didn't even try to fight or anything--he just wanted to discuss work! Was it so wrong? Sure, he was technically just an employee, but was there a need to dismiss him so blattantly like that? There was nothing wrong with discussing movie effects with him, was there? Even if the final decision was still in the boss's hands...
"Argh--so annoying!" Arthur mangled the meatloaf before pushing it all inside his mouth. "Why should I even get pushed into office politics like this?!"
Arthur just wanted to paint moving pictures with fitting sounds like a beautiful puzzle he used to do when he was a kid, sometimes weaving the melodies he came up with to pierce the viewer's soul more. After stacking up experiences with many projects, he'd shift into creating soundtracks and such, which was his original goal.
Really. All he wanted was to work in his field of expertise so he could survive living on his own without being a burden to his family.
He didn't expect that not being a burden and helping up his family members would include getting entangled with the company's power struggle.
Arthur knew that his grandparents had cofounded Seed Production with their friend, and the company was basically co-owned by two families. He didn't know, however, that the partner's daughter didn't like this and had been trying to assert authority after her parents' death. The power struggle between this Ervia madam and Ashley--who inherited the rights and the position from her father, Arthur's uncle--was happening while Arthur was busy studying abroad, oblivious to everything.
And that was how Arthur came home, in the middle of a war he had no intention to partake in.
Only after learning about this situation did he understand why Ashley sent him as a proxy to the production meeting. Ervia's side never liked doing projects that didn't seem to bring money--that is, Seed Production's tradition of creating social commentary, controversial movies. Naturally, the big madam didn't like the project Ashley brought, and wanted it fail to weaken Ashley's influence, as well as prove her point that production houses should only make something that brought money home.
It wasn't necessarily wrong, since the employees needed to be paid. That being said, the 'social service' projects had always been the soul of Seed Production, the reason why it was established from the start. The balance between such a project and the successful full commercial projects had been working well, so the only reason left was...well, greed.
Personally, Arthur didn't have any complex philosophy. He could see from both sides. Of course, he'd lean toward his relatives' side more, and he didn't want the founders' aspiration to be snuffed in the face of capitalism. But when people started to say that he was just another one of the Wynee's heirs, or that he was included in the company's struggle for power...
What heir?! The only inheritance tied to Arthur was what his mother would receive once his grandparents were gone--that is, if his mother hadn't squandered it for her scientific research first.
Unfortunately for Ashley, that Ervia Lady sneaked some of her people into the Invisible Scent project. Unfortunately for Arthur, one of those people was the sound director--basically his boss in the project. As a not-so-subtle Trojan horse, the guy had made it his mission to mess with Arthur all the time. From inciting fights to spreading rumors, even sending omega employees to Arthur, baiting the alpha into 'sexual harassment' scenarios.
Because of that sorry excuse of a human being, Arthur became so guarded about everyone, not knowing which ones were sent to screw with him. Not being able to register their faces made it harder, and he hadn't been there long enough to remember who was on Ashley's side and who wasn't by their names. It was also annoying that some of them didn't bother to wear their employee cards.
It was exhausting. So exhausting that he still didn't have the time or the mood to read the original manuscript that Ashley gave him last week.
The brown eyes narrowed, his lips pursed as he put the clean dishes in the drying rack. That comment about him being the cousin still swirled in his mind, persistently irritating.
"I should read it now," Arthur muttered while peeling off his scent blocker patch.
A wave of relief, as if a suffocating crutch had been taken off his neck and spine, washed over him. As his irritation lessened gradually, Arthur was once again getting reminded why people didn't like pitting on the patch unless they absolutely had to.
"Haa..."
He sighed, the relief marred with disappointment. But since his hormone was no longer forcefully regulated by the patch, Arthur felt he was in the mood enough to finally pick up the manuscript--or rather, to read something other than music sheets.
The manuscript, which looked like any unpublished work, found its way to Arthur's hand. The cover only had a simple title--Invisible Scent--as well as the author's name. At the bottom of the cover, in small letters, was a warning about distribution and a disclaimer that it was a Seed Production's property.
"Y. J. Gabriel?" Arthur tilted his head at the author's name while settling himself on the couch. He knew authors used pen names, but he wondered where this name came from. Only for a second, though.
Eh--not important. He flipped the page, eyes gleaming sharply. Did he read it to get a better understanding of the work? Maybe, if he read it last week.
Now? Now he just wanted to criticize the work to the smallest typo, a pencil ready on the side to make annotations.
"Let's see what is so good about you, huh?" Arthur smirked, and started reading.
Right away, he was blasted by a narration of a deadly car crash that befell the main character, Illian--or Ian, as people who were close to him used to call him. The car crash killed Illian's parents and, instead of getting the support one might get after they lost their parents, Illian was showered with a string of misfortune instead.
The omega, once a hopeful heir to an affluent family, lost everything when his own relatives drove him away, stripping him of his inheritance rights. Why? Because as an omega, he could only inherit through his child once he gave birth to an heir, but alas; he was found to be infertile.
At least, according to the medical report that the relatives produced from somewhere--suspicious, in Arthur's opinion. Their verdict, however, was supported by how Illian couldn't seem to smell others' pheromone, nor did he produce pheromone himself--which was common among those with infertility problems, although not all of them. It was used to prove his 'defect' and his inability to secure the family's future. The seat of the patriarch moved to the uncle, who proceeded to kick him out of the house.
Illian, who was still mourning, had no energy to fight his relatives' schemes, or even to question anything. The fact that he couldn't smell or produce pheromone after his coming of age was something his parents knew, and it was the whole reason they made the journey to that secluded place in the first place: to find an alternative 'cure' for Illian.
The journey that, unfortunately, became their demise.
If it weren't such a secluded place, perhaps they could still be saved. If they didn't make the journey in the first place, their car wouldn't be found at the bottom of a ravine.
Eventually, the one who pushed him out of his own home wasn't the shitty relatives, but his own guilt.
"That was...intense," Arthur muttered. The first chapter was basically just nails upon nails of curses being thrown at the main character. What struck, however, was the way it was written.
It was somehow blurry, but clear where it hurt the most. It was a narrative that sounded like a diary, as if someone retold their story in a therapist's office. Every sentence was heavy, as if Illian poured his own grief and guilt into each word. The voices of comfort from random people went by like a breeze, but the cruel sounds of ridicule and accusation rang clear, gutting him deeply inside.
Gutting the reader along with it.
By the end of the first chapter, Arthur wanted the main character to just run and leave and find their own happiness somehow.
"This..." Arthur frowned, once again looking at the plain cover of the manuscript. "This is never published?"