My first and last murder was to protect myself. Though it sounds like an excuse.
‘Hey!’
The reason I was covering my face wasn’t anything special.
The face and head festering with burn scars, the wounds that had healed haphazardly after being mangled—they were hard and grotesque. Everyone who saw the result of that terrible pain grimaced without exception.
I don’t want to show it.
In the back alleys, the only people who covered their faces were those with diseases where their skin peeled off. Because of that, most people avoided me instead.
But my appearance began to attract the interest of the lowlifes who frequented the back alleys.
Moreover,
‘It’s an omega! An omega!’
The occasionally rampaging pheromones were the problem.
I escaped a few times by luck, but there was a limit to that. Groups of men started openly targeting me. Eventually, I clashed with them. I was cornered in a dead-end alley.
‘Over here! I caught one, I caught it!’
The man who grabbed the back of my neck shouted loudly.
Before his companions could arrive, I shook off the man and succeeded in escaping under his arm. No, it would have been a success if the man’s companion hadn’t happened to pop out from around the corner I ran to.
‘Catch it! Hold on tight!’
I was caught.
The two men first removed the sackcloth draped over my head. When they cursed at the eerie traces on my revealed face, I felt both humiliated and relieved. Since my face had melted from burns, I thought they might let me go. But they continued their actions. Simply because I seemed like an omega.
The cowardly faces of many trampling the weak began to press down on me.
‘Really an omega. …Wow,’
Base voices excited with delight, filthy eyes. Sinister touches.
I let my body go limp as if I had given up.
The moment they showed an opening, thinking they’d won, using the force of the one embracing me from behind as leverage, I kicked the throat in front with both feet. At the same time, I forcefully threw my head back to deal with the man who was holding me. Ahhh! Screams echoed through the alley.
Without even being able to straighten my stripped clothes, I fled into the darkness.
In the pitch-black alley where I couldn’t see ahead, I only stopped after crashing into a wall and tumbling down. I rolled around desperately swallowing the screams that tried to come out.
Only then did my heart race like an animal that had been bitten on the nape and escaped. I bit my lip and endured the panting breath, the tingling body and back of my head, the throbbing shoulder.
After that, I wandered only through smelly and dark alleys for a while.
Three days later, as soon as I found garbage food waste piled up in the back alley of a shabby restaurant, I frantically smeared it all over my body. Even while retching, tears flowed from relief.
I was fortunate it was just the beginning of spring. If it had been summer, I would have definitely caught a disease.
Two months.
That was the period it took for me to be able to completely conceal my pheromones in the back alleys.
I almost got caught being an omega a few more times, but I didn’t suffer anything as persistent as the first time.
Later on, I got used to brawling. When I thought it was manageable, I didn’t run away but made my opponent completely collapse. I stole things, picked pockets. I solved my hunger with that money. When I didn’t have such money, I starved or got by at poorhouses.
And around that time, I could tell I had talent.
I was good with my body.
Probably the swordsmanship I had learned as an alpha until I was 11 was helping. The fact that I absolutely never left the alleys and only dealt with bottom-feeding riffraff was also a reason for victory, but still, I had neglected physical training for 10 years. It was encouraging that I never had a single major injury.
I started doing physical labor while receiving small change like that.
Sometimes I also performed tasks that could be solved with fighting or nimbleness. No matter how small the change, since I ate three meals with one loaf of bread and slept on the streets, the little money gradually swelled up.
Back then, my heart swelled for the first time in a long while. There’s something I can do well too. I felt acknowledged.
That feeling was so unfamiliar that my stomach hurt as if it were empty.
‘I heard someone’s neck got broken while trying to rape an omega.’
I heard the rumor around that time.
The probability of a naturally very rare omega appearing in the back alleys. The timing of the incident. The circumstances. When I put together the common elements, the dead person was indeed the one whose throat I had kicked back then.
The gist of the rumor was where the escaped omega had gone. Before stories about facial burns circulated, I bought new clothes with the money I had saved up and paid for carriage fare to immediately head to another city.
Even at that moment when I was leaving forever the capital where I had lived my entire life,
It felt strange that I had erased the years someone had lived.
I hoped the people who did bad things to me would suffer. I hoped they would get back exactly as much as they made others suffer.
In fact, I thought they deserved to die.
But, I didn’t want to kill them myself.
* * *
“Let’s go, Joachim. A carriage has come from the Imperial Palace.”
I really ended up going to the Imperial Palace following Rilke.
This hadn’t happened in the past.
When I went down to see the carriage that the Empress had personally sent, Mikhail was making a fuss.
“What an honor for the family! Rilke, I’m always proud of you, but I’ve never been as proud as I am today!”
“It’s all thanks to hyung-nim.”
While Rilke was briefly talking with the knights sent from the Imperial Palace, Mikhail approached.
“According to Rilke, it seems we probably won’t be able to see His Highness the Prince today.”
And he told me that Prince Benedict currently had ‘that symptom.’
“Do you remember where the Prince’s Palace is?”
“What does that have to do with—”
“There’s no way your soft brain remembers. Here, a map.”
Without hesitation doing something that could even be construed as treason, Mikhail stuffed a piece of paper into my pocket.
After becoming Count, Mikhail had poured enormous funds into becoming a relative by marriage to the Imperial Family. He was desperate to push me in front of Prince Benedict but there were many setbacks due to health issues. Bringing in Rilke as an adopted sibling was quite a good strategy for his goal anyway. Since it actually came to be.
And Mikhail, both in the past and now, seems to intend to push both his biological younger brother and adopted younger sibling to one person at the same time.
I tried to immediately pull out the abominable paper, but since Rilke was calling, I had no choice but to take the paper with me.
The carriage ran for about 20 minutes and entered the Imperial Palace through the east gate.
“…Is it right to go this way?”
I slightly pulled back the red curtain symbolizing the Imperial Family and looked outside. The carriage was just now crossing a bridge within the Imperial Palace.
The bridge we had just passed showed clear signs of being newly built.
Rilke, who had been quietly closing his eyes the whole time, opened them.
“Her Majesty the Empress is not currently at the Empress’s Palace. In this vast Imperial Palace, is there a rule that she must stay in only one place? So we’re not going to the Empress’s Palace, but to where she ‘is.'”
The corners of Rilke’s mouth curved up. Shortly after, the carriage passed through the grand gate of a stone building.
“This is the White Palace. It’s a palace that was newly built recently, and Her Majesty the Empress will be here.”
The palace was as silent as a cemetery.
That was my first impression of the palace that had been born not long ago.
At the entrance painted black, only one palace servant was waiting. He too had a blunt and quiet impression.
The magical lighting was dark gray, dimly illuminating the interior that had been robbed of vitality. Nevertheless, each and every accessory that made up the mansion was tremendously luxurious.
“It was made by carving obsidian whole.”
Perhaps thinking I was showing interest, the palace servant explained.
“Those necklaces are all decorated with the finest pearls, agate, and malachite.”
He gestured with his eyes at the necklaces hanging on dozens of black busts. We passed between those black and splendid faces like that.
“Please choose the place you want and bathe.”
What I thought was a drawing room turned out to be a large, luxurious bathroom divided by partitions.
It was dark inside here like outside. In each of the dozen or so open stalls were luxurious bathtubs engraved with magic letters, the kind even ordinary noble houses only had two or three of.
On the dark gray walls surrounding the room hung as many paintings as there were bathtubs. Even to my inexperienced eye, they were masterpieces by famous painters whose styles I could recognize.
Hanging masterpieces in a space called a bathroom was ostentatious. As if they could hang more anytime even if they warped from humidity.
“Enjoy.”
Rilke, who had already chosen a stall and was entering, looked at me and chuckled. Perhaps because the palace servants were watching, he spoke informally.
“The Empress likes bathing. There are many fragrances you can’t use even at the Count’s house. Mikhail hyung-nim isn’t interested in such things.”
It was unfamiliar that we had to bathe as soon as we arrived, when we hadn’t even come from far away.
“It’s almost summer.”
The guide nearby interjected.
“It is the master’s wish to show the utmost courtesy to the precious omega guests visiting the palace. Are you perhaps dissatisfied?”
“No. I just… don’t want to bathe, I want to rest.”
“You’ll be bored. Shall I bring in an attendant?”
“It’s fine. I’ll wait until my younger sibling comes out.”
Since I didn’t want to hear Rilke’s bathing sounds beyond the partition, I sat at a distance.
I leaned back as if lying on the armless, soft couch. Since it was literally a bathroom, there were no books or anything. As I was just looking at the floor, curiously, the small chandelier above my head suddenly turned on.
Was it magic?
Only the couch and above my head were locally illuminated. In this dark room where only minimal lighting was maintained, it was a strikingly felt orange brightness.
Looking at the surroundings where the darkness had relatively deepened in a circle, I closed my eyes. I pondered what to do about the unfamiliar incident and unfamiliar place.
When I had been pondering like that for quite a while, I felt a strange presence.
“……?”
I raised my eyes.
A servant bringing beverages was pouring it on top of me.
