APAR PH34824 in March 2021 fixed the LARL loophole; if a literal with odd byte length is referenced by relative address, it is now automatically aligned to a halfword by inserting a padding byte before it if necessary.
It is still stored within the last section of the literal pool (because at the time of definition, it is not necessarily known whether it will be referenced by relative address) so there may occasionally be a padding byte within the pool as a result. Jonathan Scott, HLASM IBM Hursley, UK
