“Have you ever desperately wanted something, even once?”
A nighttime garden stretched out before me.
The melody of string instruments reaching me, dulled through a single layer, from behind. The scent of cold, wet rain at the tip of my nose.
And Rilke, standing there like a spring tree.
It really was exactly like that day.
“It seems you still don’t.”
Five years ago, on my twentieth birthday, when I had just become a depressed adult.
“I’ll help you.”
The garden trees twisted in the wind. Rilke swept up their fluttering hair. Their radiant face was like a spring flower.
“So that you can desperately want something.”
They whispered thinly.
There was a time I wanted to peel away the emotions layered on that face.
Because all of it felt like pretense and lies to me.
“What do you think would happen if I fell from here?”
Rilke’s white arm rested on the terrace railing.
When there was no answer, Rilke wobbled and climbed up onto the white railing. They turned around and smiled brightly. Playful in a way that didn’t match the situation.
“Who do you think people will believe?”
“—What are you doing.”
Rilke’s smile deepened.
I felt like I had become a prophet. I knew what was going to happen.
“Don’t,”
People who saw us fighting, people who heard us raising our voices inside the terrace. There would even be people who would testify that I pushed them.
“Don’t…!”
I became frantic. I barely managed to take one step forward. Their slender body danced as if telling me to try and catch them, avoiding my fingertips.
“It’s useless. I’ve become curiouuuuus!!”
—If you’re going to fall, hurry up and fall already.
When I gave a slight push, they really tumbled over easily with a thud.
Aaaaah! Hearing the undignified scream rising from below felt refreshing.
Rilke had fallen, but the string music from the hall continued to play. I looked down below, completely tense. Rilke’s crouched face was covered in tears. I could see people in the garden gathering and murmuring. Someone looked up and discovered me, then pointed their finger.
Only then did my heart tremble briefly.
I really pushed them.
I clenched my trembling fingertips. If I was going to be falsely accused anyway, it was better that I actually pushed them.
—’I didn’t do it!’
“Yes, I did it.”
—’Why won’t you believe me!’
“Even if I said I didn’t, you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
People rushed over. Shock and condemnation poured out.
Surrounded by guests, even getting slapped by my hyung was exactly the same. I left my throbbing cheek alone and let out a sigh.
At this point, I had no choice but to acknowledge it.
I really had returned to the past five years ago, to my unhappy twenty-year-old self.
* * *
The first time I disappointed my father was when I was eleven years old.
‘Didn’t they say you were definitely an Alpha!’
That was one of my most vivid memories.
I was in the middle of a lesson with my tutor. Suddenly, I was in so much pain. I remember my body twisting in agony.
A strange cry bursting from my throat that didn’t seem like mine. The flustered voice of my tutor, people running around nearby. Even my father’s pale face as he gripped my shoulders.
The impression of that day would occasionally surface and disappear like afterimages, scattered like pieces of a ruined painting.
And the scent that wrapped around me, that thing resembling a scent.
Among the nobility, there were many who obsessed over whether one was an Alpha or Omega. It was emphasized all the more because it was a trait that revealed itself far more clearly than a family’s bloodline, which was difficult to verify.
Scholars argued that the era when Alphas and Omegas were treated like a third class was over, but it was difficult to change such a perception that had been in place for so long.
‘To be an Omega at this point, there’s nothing to be done. I’ll have to change the heir again.’
My father, the former Count Meyer, also held such antiquated views.
As soon as I was born, I had already been designated as the next Count, bypassing my older brother who was the family heir, because I was determined to have been born with Alpha traits.
‘Even as an Omega, it’s fine. Every family will want to take you, an Omega of House Meyer.’
And after eleven years, I was no longer the heir. Because Father thought an Omega could not become the family’s successor.
From that day, the identity I had established over more than ten years was denied.
Everything changed. Confusing days continued. I was no longer the heir, and the title used to address me changed. The people I met, what I learned, where I could go. And all my friends changed too. Because I had become an Omega.
But there was no time to express my upset about it.
‘Why can’t you control your pheromones?’
From the day I became an Omega, my pheromones started running wild.
In fact, unlike when I was an Alpha and could easily sense pheromones, after becoming an Omega, I couldn’t even sense my own pheromones well. I only knew my pheromones were running wild because people around me said so. The abnormal emission of pheromones that I myself couldn’t feel made me even more anxiously constricted.
‘If the trait is faint or immature, this can happen. Since you were an Alpha until recently, it seems your Omega trait has settled in more unstably.’
It was an era when etiquette, culture, knowledge, and norms were valued. It was an era when stimulus and desire were despised, and cold reason and intellect were preferred.
The sex pheromones of Alphas and Omegas that stimulated the instinctive parts of humans, and the concept of heat cycles, stood in opposition to such rational currents.
Therefore, if one was an Alpha or Omega, it was an obligation to know how to properly contain one’s pheromones. Since pheromones affected even those who weren’t Alphas or Omegas, failing to control one’s pheromones and giving forced stimulation to others was considered extremely rude.
‘I can’t let you go anywhere in this state.’
Father quickly brought in a child my age, telling me to solve the pheromone problem.
‘This child has controlled their pheromones since childhood. With such beautiful appearance, it would have been remarkable if they’d been born into a good family. Learn well from them.’
A pretty child who looked like an angel, even to my young eyes.
‘My name is Rilke.’
The blonde, blue-eyed child said with a shy smile.
Besides Rilke, adult Omegas also came in as tutors. Gradually, while also taking pheromone medication, I began learning how to control them.
But my progress didn’t improve.
When things weren’t going well, Father changed the teachers. He brought in more doctors and mages too.
Rilke was receiving Father’s affection, so they remained by my side. Since we were the same age, we just took lessons together, and they controlled their pheromones so skillfully that the teachers were impressed.
In other words, there was absolutely no problem with the teachers.
‘Why on earth is this happening!’
The problem was me.
At some point, I felt something seething inside me like a strong wild horse. The feeling was different from when I was an Alpha, but ah, I knew this was pheromones too. The more I suppressed them, the more violently they burst out, and sometimes they were accompanied by boiling high fever.
‘We can’t increase the dosage. Young master’s body will be harmed.’
Magic potions related to pheromones had achieved remarkable development. Their efficacy was widely known. If they didn’t work, then it wouldn’t work.
—Something is wrong.
Even the doctors who had been confident at first, even the mages who had guaranteed success, eventually said that.
The rampage of my pheromones worsened as I grew. Running a fever or collapsing was commonplace. I couldn’t leave the house, and no one came to visit anymore.
I became someone who couldn’t do anything.
Why did this have to happen to me.
I blamed the doctors, blamed the mages. No, I was an Alpha to begin with, so it was strange that I became an Omega in the first place. I myself was the strange one.
‘At this rate, only the young master’s body will be ruined.’
And so at fourteen years old.
I was placed in an annex in a corner of the estate.
I was hurt at the time, but thinking about it now, I think Father endured quite a lot. He withstood my supposedly terrible pheromones for three years. The long time and effort Father poured out for me wasn’t a lie. Father must have endured the nobility’s whispers and unpleasant attention just as much as I did.
And then,
That year, he passed away far away in a carriage accident.
I heard it was during the family’s business trip. There had been a lot of rain in that region, and the carriage was completely swept away by a landslide.
Even now, when I think of that day, my heart tears and my windpipe twists. I attended the black gathering for mourning but couldn’t say a word. Tingling cries that couldn’t become language came pouring out, “Uhhh.” After falling ill, I had become keenly observant of others’ reactions, but I don’t remember how people looked at me then, whether they clicked their tongues, whether they saw me as shameless.
I lost consciousness. I didn’t even know how I got back. The night I opened my eyes alone in an unfamiliar room in the annex, I thought it would be better if I hurt so much that I went to be by my parents’ side. And soon I cried because I loathed myself for prioritizing my own sadness over the sadness of Father’s passing.
Even while doing that, I also laughed thinking that if Father, who valued the family’s reputation and prestige, had seen me crying messily while letting my pheromones run wild, I would have gotten hit. I felt betrayed by myself for laughing and ended up crying, it was just a complete mess.
Even though I was so sad and hurt, my body grew.
My skin split and my bones ached. With my fever already raging, and my body creaking with growing pains everywhere, it was just terrible.
About a year after Father passed away, Rilke came to visit.
‘You’ve grown a lot.’
Looking down awkwardly at that still pretty child, I thought that I really was strange.
I felt like an Omega should be like this. I was growing tall like an Alpha, and I didn’t seem to resemble this child or other Omegas.
‘I came because I was worried about you, young master.’
Rilke’s face was frozen cold.
That child, who always smiled brightly, wore an unfamiliar expression and looked up at me as if wary.
