Dragging his feet home with heavy, listless steps, Seohan let himself collapse onto the mattress.
The mattress — its springs broken and its center sunken in — was something he and his roommate Eddie had found together last week. Discovering an abandoned mattress in District 4, where homeless people overflowed, was an enormous stroke of luck, and the two of them had run home with it gleefully, getting soaked in the rain all the while.
“I had a feeling something good was about to happen.”
What a cruel joke — to get lucky finding a mattress and then get hit with luck this catastrophically bad. Terminal. And only four months left at that. It was such a brutal kind of misfortune that it didn’t even feel real.
The doctor had recommended further testing and prompt treatment, but Seohan had declined. Knowing that District 4 had no facilities for treatment and he’d have to visit a hospital in another district felt like too much of a burden — and the astronomical cost of treatment had made him give up quickly.
His hands had trembled just paying for the consultation. There was no way he could afford anything larger. He didn’t even have next week’s rent yet. The weekly pay he’d received on Monday had just barely been enough to buy heat suppressants and a few loaves of bread to get him through the week.
That was the kind of life it was.
“I’m so sick of it.”
Even with only four months left to live, the reality of scrambling just to get through the very next day was exhausting.
Seohan stared blankly at the table — one leg noticeably shorter than the rest — and the bread bag sitting on top of it. There was not a single thing in this room that wasn’t broken. And now he could add himself to that list.
“There’s no way out of it.”
Even after receiving a terminal diagnosis, he didn’t feel anything dramatic. It wasn’t like the descriptions in novels — no sense of the ground shaking beneath him or thunder crashing overhead.
What could he do. For Seohan, there was no option but to accept it.
He’d never been the type to dwell on things too deeply. He gave up easily, accepted easily. Ironically, it was exactly that easygoing nature that had allowed him to survive in District 4.
Still — it was a shame. The fact that this garbage dump of a District 4 slum was both the beginning and the end of his life. The years he’d spent never once setting foot in a proper restaurant, carrying hunger around like it was just another part of his daily routine.
Clunk —
“Yi Seohan —!”
The old door rattled and jolted open, cutting through his wandering thoughts. Roommate Eddie came bursting in as the door swung wide. In the Graven Federation, where the cost of living was punishing, it was extremely rare to live alone.
“Did you go to the doctor? What’d they say?”
Eddie shook a plump paper bag as he asked. Inside it was probably a couple of oranges and something thrown in as a freebie. The easygoing, good-natured Eddie had a talent for getting little extras even from the stingiest fruit stall owner.
“Yeah, the usual… same as always.”
Seohan scratched his head and pushed himself up to sit. Maybe I should tell Eddie. He was Seohan’s only friend — the closest thing he had to family.
But the word death was heavy and sticky, catching somewhere in his throat and refusing to come out.
In the end, Seohan picked up the bread bag he’d bought on the way home and settled for a light smile.
“They said it’s just my pheromones being unstable.”
Unlike Eddie, who was a beta, Seohan — a recessive omega — had to visit the clinic regularly just to get his suppressants. That was why, despite working part-time without a single day off, he couldn’t save a single coin.
“When are those damn pheromones ever going to stabilize? Omegas must have it so rough.”
“At least being recessive is a silver lining. Because I’m unstable, heats don’t come around that often.”
Seohan’s heat cycle came around every three or four months or so. During especially busy stretches, it had gone as long as half a year without coming, so the exact cycle was hard to pin down.
On top of that, Seohan had undergone his trait manifestation after reaching adulthood — a case well behind the average, which meant he’d only experienced heat three times in total. He considered that a tremendous blessing. The longer the cycle, the less money wasted on suppressants.
“I’m not sure that’s a good thing. It’s a sign your body isn’t doing well.”
Eddie clicked his tongue and came back with a washed orange, shaking his head. He promptly split it in half and placed it on a piece of bread — peel and all — and ate it, demonstrating his famously bizarre eating habits.
Whether it was a habit formed from never having enough food and making do with whatever was available, Eddie frequently came up with unusual food combinations.
“You eat some too. It’s better than you’d think.”
“Ugh, no thanks. I’ll eat mine separately.”
Taking the sandwich Eddie-style, Seohan peeled the orange peel off the bread and tossed it aside, eating just the fruit.
But then his mind shifted, and he picked the peel back up and placed it on top of the bread and fruit again. Then, just like Eddie, he shoved the whole thing into his mouth and chewed.
It was because the thought had crept in — that there weren’t many days left to taste even something as absurd as this.
“Why are you suddenly eating orange peel?”
“Just wanted to try it at least once.”
“……You know your face right now looks completely weird, right?”
“Mm.”
Forcing down the bits of peel he couldn’t quite chew through, Seohan grimaced.
The peel was tough to chew and left a bitter, astringent taste. Maybe what was truly bitter wasn’t the orange peel at all, but his own reality.
“I don’t know much about trait stuff, but — doesn’t regular pheromone exchange usually help stabilize things?”
“In theory, that’s what they say.”
Seohan answered after spitting out the bits of orange peel he couldn’t get down. When he’d first manifested as a recessive omega, he’d been given the same advice. To seek out frequent contact with an alpha.
“Why not find yourself a partner? Those suppressant costs are no joke.”
“What, do alphas just fall out of the sky? And I’m recessive on top of everything.”
He answered half-grumbling, tilting his head back. Instead of sky, what met his eyes was a ceiling spreading with patches of mold and wallpaper peeling away at the edges.
Me, living in a place like this, with an alpha as a partner. It sounded like something out of a dream.
Alpha and omega. The appearance of what were called traits came alongside the era of chaos.
Humanity had achieved dazzling progress at a breathtaking pace, but the consequence was the collapse of the world itself. People named the period between the immediate aftermath of the collapse and the beginning of reconstruction the Era of Chaos.
The causes were climate anomalies and a mutant virus. The mutant virus, which had rapidly saturated the soil and atmosphere, gave rise to mutated plants and animals — and it affected the human genome as well, bringing mass death in its wake.
The only gain humanity had salvaged from the virus that had taken everything was the emergence of trait-bearers. Trait-bearers appeared in the course of humanity’s evolution, a means of surviving the mutant virus.
Since all evolution begins from imperfection, even trait-bearers weren’t without their drawbacks. Omegas, with their heat cycles, were sometimes at a greater disadvantage for survival than betas. Among them, recessive omegas in particular were prone to being looked down upon for their comparatively weaker physical abilities.
But alphas were different. Intelligence, vitality, even appearance — every metric was above average.
During an era when laws and order were becoming meaningless — when strength was what was right — alphas naturally rose to the top of the hierarchy.
Research into trait-bearers was still ongoing, but one thing was certain: alphas were the strongest among all surviving humans.
And so the world that began its reconstruction naturally became theirs. Alphas, who made up only 5% of surviving humanity, led the remaining 95%.
Wealth and power flowed around them, and naturally, alphas came to reside in District 2, the affluent district. In short, Seohan — living in the lowest rung of all, District 4 — had no business getting entangled with them at all.
“Come on, aren’t recessive omegas still omegas? Just as rare, right?”
“Rare isn’t the same as valuable, and valuable isn’t the same as wanted.”
Regular pheromone exchange was something alphas needed too. That was why omegas were an indispensable existence to alphas as well. They were always looking for omegas — so even Seohan, recessive as he was, could probably find a partner if he really set his mind to it.
But the risks were too great.
Omega kidnappings happened all the time. Especially omegas like Seohan — with no social standing and no one to rely on — were the ones most likely to disappear without a trace.
Snatched away without anyone noticing and sold off somewhere terrible. For recessive omegas in particular, being reduced to a plaything was more often than not the outcome. There were plenty of omegas who, just to survive, chose that path themselves.
Given the circumstances, social perception wasn’t kind either. They were frequently sneered at — a species that crumbled before its own instincts, something lowly that couldn’t even take care of itself.
But at the same time, they were also objects of envy. Betas resented the very fact of being a trait-bearer, and the fact that omegas were the closest beings to alphas. They’d point fingers and say that despite having no strength and being so lowly, omegas lived in the shadow of alphas.
That mixed gaze — contempt and jealousy tangled together — seeped into every corner of daily life. Because of it, recessive omegas were endlessly disadvantaged in the job market.
That was why Seohan hid his trait. In the whole neighborhood, the only person who knew he was a recessive omega was Eddie.
“Maybe I should’ve gone looking for some rich alpha myself.”
“Like that would ever happen for you.”
“Tch, if only I were dominant — I’d be flying high. Really going for it, like, huh?”
Seohan flopped down and rolled around muttering. A body that’s going to rot when I die anyway. A flash of regret crossed him — that he hadn’t lived a little more recklessly.
“Recessive…… recessive……”
Eddie murmured, popping another orange sandwich into his mouth. As the sound of chewing died down, he snapped his index finger and thumb together as if something had just come to him.
“So what if you’re recessive. Just look at the Executive Director of Herald right now — seems like he’s looking for a recessive omega specifically.”
Seohan’s ears — which had been quietly sweeping the orange peels off to the side while Eddie wasn’t looking — perked up in an instant.
