On-Way Passage || ᴠᴍɪɴ

Chapter 26

Jimin shut himself away in his room, reading books late into the night, and what first appeared to be a complex and obscure craft proved to be not so difficult to grasp as time passed. He discovered that he hadn’t completely lost that part of his memories—it was more like something had been obstructing them, and everything would clear up in an instant as long as the fog was lifted.

His laptop was filled with documents concerning the research and development of Hyungjin’s Emotions pheromone perfume line. Initially, Jimin had discovered a species of insect that possessed human pheromone receptors in its body. When exposed to human pheromones, this insect emits a fragrance, so Jimin had gone and injected a human pheromone extract directly into the insect’s glands and extracted the quasi-pheromone transmitter substance it secreted in response.

This quasi-pheromone transmitter was able to bind human pheromone receptors and carried its own natural fragrance. In the beginning, this quasi-pheromone transmitter only expressed a single smell, but Jimin led his team to conduct countless experiments in the lab, giving the insect different stimuli and looking for the same genus of insect for breeding, and was eventually able to extract up to seven types of stable quasi-pheromone transmitters for seven different “emotions” in a strictly controlled laboratory environment.

This was the origin of the Emotions pheromone perfume line.

Presently, various perfume brands were all researching pheromone perfumes, but the patent for the extraction and development of quasi-pheromone transmitters was in Hyungjin’s hands alone, and those other brands all encountered a number of difficulties. Perhaps, it should be said that Hyungjin was only able to succeed due to Jimin’s unique constitution, because alphas and omegas had no way of detecting the subtle changes in an insect’s secreted fragrance under the influence of pheromones.

But, because Jimin had already overcome the biggest challenge in developing pheromone perfumes, with patented technology and a professional team behind him, it shouldn’t be difficult for him to continue making breakthroughs.

The opened document before him was a project proposal he’d submitted. The proposal mentioned two brand new pheromone perfumes, the alpha perfume Xishui Hall and an unnamed gender-neutral perfume.

The descriptions for the two pheromone perfumes were very simple; it appeared that the idea had yet to fully take shape in Jimin’s head. As for what his original idea was, Jimin couldn’t remember at all.

The manager of the marketing department sat across from him at the long table in the meeting room, reading out dull and tedious numbers. As Jimin listened to him go on and on, he became increasingly sleepy.

He cast a glance over at Taehyung, who sat at the head of the table, his head bowed and a focused expression on his face as he studied a report on his tablet. Jimin thus leaned forward and rested his chest against the tabletop, lifting one hand to prop up his face.

The effects of last night’s all-nighter were starting to show, and with his head on his hand, Jimin unintentionally dozed off.

He didn’t know how long he’d slept, but he awoke with a start when his arm slipped, his eyes flying open as he straightened up in his seat—only to find that everyone had already left the meeting room and he and Taehyung were the only ones remaining.

Taehyung was still seated at the head of the table, but he was now lying back in his chair, his posture casual as he looked through the files in front of him with his head lowered.

There was a red imprint on Jimin’s cheek from where his hand had pressed against it. He was a little disoriented as he asked, “Why has everyone left?