“No, I meant it seemed like two betas got selected. I overheard it in passing.”
Ha-geon smiled and exhaled a stream of grey smoke. Along with the haze drifting apart in pale wisps, a stifling smell bored into his nose. Hee-won subtly wrinkled the tip of his nose before smoothing his expression back out.
Ha-geon had been watching the burning end of his cigarette when he glanced around once and then started walking again without a word to Hee-won. Must mean follow along quietly. Having guessed at the meaning on his own, Hee-won fell into step behind him.
Isn’t there a fine for smoking while walking? When it came to alphas and omegas, this kind of petty infraction was routinely overlooked. Betas had to make up at least seventy percent of the total population — and yet all the power was concentrated in thirty percent of it, leaving no energy for resistance. Well, the ones making the rules are probably alphas and omegas anyway.
“You’ve heard that I’m a parachute hire, haven’t you?”
“That…….”
“It’s fine. Someone probably mentioned it loosely during orientation. I don’t particularly have anything to hide. I’ll be a six-month disposable team leader. Unlike me, you might have to grind away here for six years. If you manage to hold on, that is.”
“I suppose so…….”
Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll be able to hold on. Wasn’t he the one who’d walked in on the very first day already coated in orange and chocolate and mint smells? Hee-won let out a sigh. I just hope I don’t quit before this team leader does.
Let’s just aim to get twelve paychecks. If not twelve, then at least six. He wanted to experience firsthand what kind of money this man — and the alphas and omegas who looked down on him — lived on.
Humans really are slaves to money without exception. Hee-won looked down at Ha-geon’s bag in his hand. Through a gap where it had fallen slightly open, he could see a wallet that looked expensive at a single glance. I wonder how much is in there.
If Ha-geon hadn’t reached out and turned Hee-won’s chin, Hee-won might have lost the battle with himself and just bolted with it then and there. Ha-geon closed the distance between them. A superior with no sense of personal space is the worst.
“……I haven’t done anything yet.”
“Betas really must feel nothing at all. Usually at this range, it’s one or the other — alpha or omega. Either they lunge at me, or they get spooked and run.”
“I don’t even know whether you’re an alpha or omega right now, team leader.”
And honestly, I don’t particularly care either. Ha-geon laughed quietly. As if to say I’ve truly never met anyone like this. Right — he’d said he’d never even encountered a beta before, so everything Hee-won did must seem novel and fascinating to him. If anything, it being pure curiosity makes it more uncomfortable.
Still, pulling his gaze away felt like it would only make things worse, so he couldn’t bring himself to look away. All he could do was draw in a slow, deep breath.
“For the six months I’m holding out here, I’ll help make sure you don’t get harassed. So let’s make a deal.”
“What would I have to give you in return?”
And suddenly a deal, of all things. Are all rich people like this? While Hee-won grumbled internally, Ha-geon let go of his chin. He was drawing it out, as if about to say something he found tremendously entertaining. Of course it’ll only be entertaining to him. Hee-won felt it instinctively — that whatever this was, it would hold absolutely zero entertainment value for himself.
“Nothing much. Just do one thing I ask for every morning. Usually it’ll be buying coffee. I’ll give you the money for it.”
“Coffee.”
Hee-won exhaled deeply. Truly zero fun. Still, when he weighed it out piece by piece, there wasn’t anything outright bad about it for him. Just like always, he’d be the spectacle for a while — and in the meantime, he’d have a safe shield around him.
A parachute hire. Alpha or omega unknown, but presumably dominant. Looks like he has money. As far as backing went, wasn’t that a perfect set of conditions? The slight flaw, if any, was that he seemed a little lacking in basic courtesy.
“It seems alright…….”
“So that’s a yes?”
“That’s a yes.”
Besides, if he crossed the team leader on the very first day, the odds were high that his life would get difficult not after the team leader changed six months from now — but starting tomorrow. Or ten seconds from now.
In truth, Hee-won had never really had a choice to begin with. Ha-geon extended his hand. Does he want to shake hands? Hee-won reached out and clasped it, and Ha-geon raised one eyebrow in bemusement.
“I want the bag.”
“Oh.”
Mortified, Hee-won quickly withdrew his hand and passed the bag over. Ha-geon laughed like he found it genuinely amusing, then with the hand that wasn’t holding the bag, he reached out and shook Hee-won’s hand.
“Pleased to have the deal done. As a sort of signing bonus, let me give you a small piece of information first. I’m an alpha — beta.”
“I see…….”
Hee-won smirked and gave the hand he was holding a light shake.
“Not particularly surprising, team leader.”
“So what you’re telling me is — you did exactly what I told you to do to avoid catching an alpha’s eye, got yourself thoroughly caught by an alpha on top of it, and on top of that, somehow ended up signing some weird contract?”
“You didn’t have to deliver the finishing blow like that, but thanks for spelling it out for me.”
“You’re the one who told me something I had absolutely no interest in knowing.”
Hee-won sighed. He’d known full well that Chae-won was going to tear into him — but now that she actually was, it was killing him. Chae-won looked ready to hurl the beer can she was holding straight at Hee-won’s head.
It had happened precisely because he’d done what his sister told him to do, and Hee-won felt like he was dying of injustice. He felt like a lab rat that had been snatched up by some alpha overflowing with academic curiosity about betas.
Chae-won, who had lived as an alpha with a beta little brother, didn’t tend to fully understand the kind of curiosity most alphas and omegas harbored toward betas. She readily stepped up for her brother’s sake, but the two of them were fundamentally living in different worlds.
When he told people he had an older alpha sister, the kids would look at him with envy. His mother was a dominant omega too. At his beta school, they were practically treated as a noble household.
But here was the core of it. Jin Hee-won was a beta.
“What’s this guy’s name?”
“It was Kim Ha-geon. A six-month parachute team leader.”
“Kim Hak-won?”
“Geon. Gun. Same pronunciation as the English word gun.”
“Even the name sounds terrible. Should just shoot him.”
Chae-won fumed about some guy laying his hands on her little brother and crushed the empty beer can in one hand. Hee-won’s mother, who had been chatting with their father in the kitchen, poked her head out.
Neither Chae-won’s nor Hee-won’s voices could have been that loud — how did she even hear? The worried look on their mother’s face was very much that of someone checking whether Chae-won had physically beaten Hee-won.
“Chae-won, why are you so worked up? Come out and look at this. Your daughter’s this upset and you’re just in there peacefully peeling peaches?”
“I can barely hear what they’re saying — how do you even know she’s upset…….”
“Chae-won’s angry pheromones are wafting all the way to the kitchen…… You really are an oblivious man.”
Their father looked at Hee-won’s face as if appealing for help. Only a beta truly understands a beta’s hardships. Alphas and omegas could share emotions even without seeing each other’s faces or hearing each other’s voices.
It always ended the same way — with the beta caught in the middle taking the fall alone. This happened most often when a superior was an alpha or omega. A beta giving a presentation without realizing their superior is angry and bored. And then the promotion quietly getting blocked in ways only everyone else could see. Situations like that sprouted up endlessly. It had been his father’s story — and it was Hee-won’s story too.
“I was just scolding my poor little brother because it looked like he’d gotten himself hooked by some strange alpha.”
“An alpha? Is he dominant?”
“I don’t know if he’s dominant or recessive. Actually, I only know he’s an alpha because the man said so himself — so I’m just taking his word for it. He says he’s seeing a beta for the first time in his life.”
At Hee-won’s even-toned remark, his mother frowned slightly. Seeing a beta for the first time in your life — does that make him dominant? She didn’t know about her own beta son, but the world of alphas and omegas was quite fierce in its own right.
That was why Chae-won was angry. Nobody — not even a child passing by on the street — would assume that an alpha of at least regular standing touching a beta had pure intentions. She worried that her brother might get lured in by some misguided alpha, played with like a toy to his heart’s content, then tossed aside. And it wasn’t a baseless worry — this kind of thing happened more often than one might expect.
He’ll no doubt be a fairly handsome alpha with a good build and plenty of money. He could lure her son in with all the right words. She pressed her fingers to her forehead with a sigh, and her husband gently patted her on the back.
“Hee-won, if the company becomes too much, you need to quit right away. Understood?”
“Yeah, quit and come work under me. I’m confident I’ll treat you better than that strange alpha.”
“If it gets to be too much, I’ll quit on my own without any help — don’t worry.”
He was thirty now. He needed to manage his own affairs, put money in savings, give his parents some spending money — didn’t he? Hee-won smiled under the gaze of his entire family, as if to say you can trust me.
If I hold on properly, I can get a good savings account going, meet a beta just like me, maybe even get married someday. Of course, that was still a vague dream set in the distant future.
For now, let’s try to put out the fire that’s landed right on my feet.
He deliberately left an hour earlier than his scheduled start time. The reason was simple. The place was an absolute field of alphas and omegas. The only thing Hee-won could do was move a little faster than everyone else.
His license — rendered useless from lack of a car — was tucked away sleeping in his wallet as always. He sighed as he boarded the subway. A distant workplace requiring two transfers.
He spent half the long ride standing and the other half sitting, grateful he hadn’t collapsed from exhaustion along the way. In the meantime, during the transfers, he was fairly sure he’d spotted at least three couples who looked like something had clicked between them — alpha and alpha, omega and omega, alpha and omega.
And filling the remaining subway seats like extras in a film, watching those couples come together, were betas wearing the exact same expression as Hee-won.
The commute is already rough. Hee-won closed his eyes in the empty seat he’d barely managed to find. If not for the text notification sound cutting through his earphones, he might have slept all the way to his stop.
[Buy a large iced Americano. Get one for yourself too.]
Ha-geon. They had exchanged numbers yesterday after that barely-a-contract contract. Ha-geon had saved his own number directly into Hee-won’s phone, and Hee-won hadn’t even gotten a glimpse of Ha-geon’s.
When he checked later what had been saved, the name read Team Leader Ha-geon ❤️❤️❤️ — three hearts and everything. He’d thought about deleting them, then figured Ha-geon might check later, so he left them alone.
