What? What omega?
“Who?”
He pointed at himself, then redirected the finger toward the doctor, then jabbed it randomly in Kang Jaeho’s direction for good measure, before pointing back at himself one more time.
“Me?”
Countless question marks floated up above his head. They multiplied at a rapid, glitching pace — and then, as if lagging out entirely, his thoughts came to a complete halt. His face, drenched in sheer bewilderment, must have been invisible to the doctor, who simply nodded in confirmation.
The finger that had been stiffly poking around in every direction wandered for a long moment before losing its will and curling inward. He shut his mouth, and an awkward, strange silence settled over the hospital room. But that atmosphere was promptly shattered by a bright burst of laughter from him.
“Ahahahahaha!”
The doctor doesn’t look the type, but he’s got a talent for unfunny jokes.
“Oh come on. I actually thought it was real for a second. You’re even cracking jokes, so it can’t be anything serious, right?”
“It isn’t an illness. And it certainly isn’t a joke.”
The doctor, who had somehow straightened his appearance without anyone noticing, now wore the face of a seasoned specialist. A wave of unease washed over him in an instant.
“The test results confirm that while you present as recessive, you have undergone a secondary gender transition to omega.”
“Are you serious……?”
Me……? This isn’t a lie? Everything was starting to sound like a lie at this point. But what would the doctor have to gain from deceiving him? And besides — look at that face, impossibly trustworthy and sharp to a suspicious degree. A face that would never speak a falsehood.
His mind was in chaos — the news was not only beyond the bounds of reality but nearly impossible to accept.
“No. That can’t be right. There’s no way……”
Was he not fully awake yet? He wanted someone — anyone — to tell him this wasn’t real life but a dream. Instinctively seeking something to hold onto, he turned his gaze to the man, and the man smiled gently and added,
“Yeah. Our Gang is an omega now.”
That one sentence from Kang Jaeho snapped his drifting consciousness back to reality.
Even as he was hearing the bombshell that he had become an omega, this man was busy fixing his disheveled hair. He pushed back the bangs that had stuck to his forehead with cold sweat and smoothed down the strands sticking out at the back.
He’d just been told he was now an omega — and the man wasn’t even surprised. He was completely calm.
“But how…… How am I supposed to have become an omega?!”
It seemed like he was the only one in the room whose jaw was about to fall off from shock. The medical professional aside, why was this man so utterly unruffled? No matter how even-keeled a person might be — this was his beta partner of three whole years, and that person had just become an omega. If anything, the man looked downright pleased.
Of course he’d imagined before what it would be like if he were an alpha or an omega. When he was younger, he’d admired the specialness that only a few possessed and thought he wanted to be one of those special people. But that was just a part of growing up — something everyone went through.
Right. If he was being honest, even after getting involved with this man, he’d complained more than once — more frequently than before, even — about his unremarkable secondary gender. He’d been curious what his partner’s pheromones smelled like, and in his most jealous moments, he’d even wanted to tie the man to his side with a bond — or whatever it was called.
But that didn’t mean he’d actually wanted to become an omega! Having the delusion he’d entertained not long ago now realized in actuality was simply disorienting.
A beta suddenly becoming an omega out of nowhere — and as a full-grown adult, no less, after already going through a third secondary gender test — wasn’t that just too far-fetched? Was this actually something that happened with any regularity? Having only recently learned what a pheromone shower even was, he wondered whether he’d simply been ignorant all along, and he stared at the doctor with suspicious eyes.
“It’s perfectly natural to feel confused. It isn’t a common occurrence. It’s an extremely rare case, even on a global scale.”
The man continued to hold him in his arms, patting him gently as he poured every bit of his energy into trying to make sense of the situation. As if the two of them were the only ones in the room. The doctor was the same. No matter what the man beside him did, he didn’t spare so much as a glance, continuing his explanation without interruption. The deliberateness with which he averted his gaze seemed almost desperate, which was puzzling — but thanks to that, at least some of the embarrassment faded.
“We can’t say with absolute certainty, but prolonged and excessive exposure to the pheromones of an extreme dominant alpha appears to be the primary cause.”
“Which means……”
Who was the alpha who had been dousing him in pheromones for a long time — and in massive quantities, at that? On top of being one of the rarest kinds of alphas in existence, the kind you’d be lucky to encounter even once in a lifetime. Who else could it be?
“Are you saying my secondary gender changed because of this man?”
He had never, not once in his life, heard of a beta who had been with an alpha turning into an omega.
He lifted his gaze and met the eyes of the man who, even in the middle of all this, looked as composed and handsome as ever. Whether the man had heard his inner cry or not, those neatly tended bangs — smoothed down by the man’s hand just moments ago — received a brief press of lips. He startled, covering his forehead with his hand and whispering at the man.
“Why are you kissing me out of nowhere here!”
That was way too random! He was at a complete loss for words at the entirely unprompted action. A kiss — here, of all places, in the middle of this serious and shocking situation!
He’d felt this way for a while now, but this man paid absolutely no attention to the people around him. Which was exactly why he — who in any other situation prided himself on doing whatever he liked without caring what anyone thought — ended up being the one to watch their surroundings on this man’s behalf. He rubbed at the faintly tingling spot on his forehead until it turned red.
“I wanted to comfort you.”
“I’ve just been told I’m an omega and you think a peck on the forehead is going to comfort me?!”
“Then a kiss——”
“Get away from me! What kiss?!”
They were going back and forth in hushed voices when the doctor cleared his throat to announce his presence.
“Ahem.”
Only then did he remember they were in a hospital. He felt like he’d lost track of time and place after being pulled in by the man, and his ears burned like a kettle about to boil over.
He shot the man — who still wore an expression as if to say what’s the problem? — a resentful look, then yanked the blanket up to just below his eyes. He was putting up a shield in case the man tried to sneak in another kiss under some other excuse. A shield with zero defensive capability and zero offensive power, but right now even this was desperately needed.
The man hadn’t intended it, but after a few rounds of bickering, the stiffness that had seized his body from tension eased away and he felt considerably more comfortable. Or perhaps he was simply drained.
“To continue what I was saying……”
He felt a flicker of guilt for having, even briefly, treated the doctor as something less than a lamppost standing on a street corner.
“The secondary gender change was not caused solely by alpha pheromones. It appears to have been possible because the patient’s innate genetic makeup contained an extremely minuscule but present potential for secondary gender expression. Your physique and muscle mass have already been closer to that of a secondary gender type than a beta.”
“So the reason I’ve been sick all this time…… was all because of the transition?”
“Most likely. The headaches, the drop in physical condition, the difficulty regulating body temperature that you mentioned earlier — those are all symptoms that typically occur during secondary gender expression. Your mood swings must have been quite severe as well — are you feeling alright now?”
The doctor pushed his glasses up once more and asked, as if he had already mapped out the full picture.
“Uh…… yes.”
As expected — the doctor at the beta specialty clinic had indeed been a quack. What? Simple stress-induced symptoms? Damn! The man hadn’t even known a beta was in the middle of becoming an omega and just loaded him up with useless prescriptions that did nothing but wear out his liver.
And the wild swings in his emotions every single day — those weren’t the aftermath of a breakup either…… So it wasn’t that his personality was a mess after all, it wasn’t that he’d been unable to separate personal from professional like some child and took it out on his subordinates! It had all been because of the transition! He could have handled the breakup like a proper adult……!
He pressed a hand to his chest in relief — and then the doctor said something that made no sense.
“For the time being, it would be best to continue receiving pheromones from a familiar alpha, as you have been.”
“Yes…… Pardon?”
Receiving what, exactly?
“It’s what Gang kept asking for more of.”
“I did? When……?”
“Like this.”
Lick. ……Lick?
Without warning, the man licked the back of his neck, then bit down gently and said,
“You were lapping it up like it was delicious, begging me for more of my pheromones.”
