He’d sometimes had this thought. If life were converted into a game, what genre would he be living? In Saehyeon’s opinion, he seemed to be playing a luck-based piece-of-shit doomed game on Nightmare mode.
Ordinary games let you choose the difficulty when starting. And as you played, you’d gradually get stronger through various items and leveling up, becoming more skilled, so no matter how much the boss difficulty increased, playing became easier. That is, ‘in normal cases.’
On the other hand, Saehyeon’s case was like this: Random difficulty selection, no item drops, no leveling up, no obtainable skills. A legendary doomed game with no walkthrough posted online.
On top of that, it felt like having to make it to the ending with a character that had all sorts of debuffs as passives.
Ah, just one thing. There did seem to be an exception.
“Wanna have a drink with this mister later?”
“If you’re prepared to have your head cracked open, I won’t stop you. That’s 18,900 won.”
Because the problem customer repelling skill seemed to forcibly level up whether he wanted it or not.
This goddamn but too precious to let go of labor began with a loud landslide.
The mountain behind the house hadn’t actually collapsed—just the last bastion called academic background had crumbled. Damn it.
It was even embarrassing to compare it to a landslide. At least landslides were accompanied by loud noise, weren’t they?
To be precise, it was more like a raccoon or whatever with an innocent face not knowing anything trying to wash cotton candy in a spring.
Going tra-la-la to wash and eat it, putting it in water only for it to disappear like smoke. Even stirring the water with futile eyes, nothing could be caught.
“Dropped out… Did I? From Korea University?”
Right, that’s what happened.
Saehyeon had no choice but to sit there blankly for a long time. It really felt like just yesterday that he’d been studying day and night getting nosebleeds over grades and the college entrance exam. To think in about two days his final education became high school graduate.
He couldn’t believe it so much that tears didn’t even come. Rubbing his dry eyes, Saehyeon muttered.
“Right now… how much do I need.”
In fact, he didn’t even have time to cry. Because the knife called livelihood was being thrust at his throat. After carefully reviewing his expenditure details, along with amnesia, Saehyeon had acquired a new diagnosis. Namely, the disease of dying if he didn’t work right away.
Honestly, Saehyeon had never worried about ‘making a living’ itself until now. It was enough to just think about somehow polishing his pathetic self to succeed. But now he had to choose a different way of life than before no matter what. He had to accept a life of working to eat day by day.
Accepting it emotionally was hard, but reality was even harsher. Because the work that someone without connections, school ties, blood ties, and even health could do was extremely limited.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about riding on the coattails of where his past self—before losing his memory—had worked. It was because of a glimmer of hope that even if his 28-year-old self had gone bonkers, wouldn’t he have prepared an escape route?
But there was no such thing. If someone asked “Wasn’t there anything?”, Saehyeon could answer like this: No, there’s just nothing.
It seemed he’d done various jobs. But without settling in one area or working anywhere long-term, he’d moved regions quite frequently, moving houses and changing jobs.
“Where is this place again?”
Saehyeon, who’d been staring intently at unfamiliar region names that kept popping up the more he searched, let out a deep sigh. His past self seemed like someone plagued by wanderlust. Naturally, the house he currently lived in had also just been moved into not long ago, so there was no way he had a previous job.
Among jobs someone without education, health, or career could start immediately from tomorrow, excluding illegal ones, what he could do was extremely limited.
So the first place he stuck his head into was physical labor. Not in a strange sense, but really healthy manual labor jobs.
Such places wouldn’t even accept Saehyeon, who looked like he could lie in a coffin tomorrow.
Even if he somehow succeeded in pushing his way in, what came after was the problem.
“…I’m going to die at this rate tomorrow.”
Saehyeon, lying under thick blankets, muttered blankly. Was the problem that he’d overlooked being at an age that hadn’t even filled a carton of eggs yet? He didn’t know working in a fresh food warehouse would result in catching a terrible body-aching cold and being bedridden for a good three days.
For the past few days, all Saehyeon could do was wear a mask and cough while preparing the child’s meals. Anyone could see there was no sustainability, only life span reduction.
Then, if not hard labor that actively used the body,
“Ah… omega? We don’t hire omegas. Try looking somewhere else.”
While hiring sickly omegas who looked like obituary texts would fly in after a few days of overwork.
“During the 3-month probation period it’s this much. Okay? Think of it as training period.”
A place that wouldn’t rip you off down to minimum wage instead of giving you more.
There was exactly one such place.
Light pouring from signs that clubs had all put up indiscriminately swept the dim alley in disarray. On streets where staggering drunks and well-dressed people mixed together once night fell, Saehyeon was walking silently.
The baggy black hoodie was clearly ordinary attire, but here it stood out even more.
As light mottled over the black hair covering his forehead pressed down by the hood and his pale face, a strange atmosphere arose. There were people who glanced at such a Saehyeon, but he walked looking only forward, paying no mind.
The destination was a convenience store in a slightly secluded spot, reached by walking a bit further into the flashy alley.
“Oh, hyung. You’re here?”
The previous shift part-timer jumped up from his seat and offered a greeting. Saehyeon accepted the greeting indifferently while glancing at the name tag on the other’s vest.
Kim Woohyeon. The young man whose name he still couldn’t remember gave off an alpha-like feeling with his beanpole height and dark complexion, but he remembered being told he was clearly a beta. He seemed to have said he was earning college tuition.
To the person peering with a friendly face, Saehyeon responded with an indifferent greeting then turned his head away. The other tried to strike up conversation a few more times, then soon left a dejected farewell and turned around. Saehyeon briefly glanced at the sturdy back disappearing out the door.
He didn’t seem like a bad person, but Saehyeon had no intention of being friendly. Saehyeon’s original personality wasn’t very sociable, and he didn’t have enough physical capacity to squeeze that out either. On top of that, when he rolled the keywords of healthy beta and college student in his mouth, his tongue stung painfully.
Well… in this line of work, due to environmental characteristics, part-timers were all either betas or omegas anyway.
At first, he’d thought it was a strange place with the phrase “Omega preferred, Alpha rejected, Beta acceptable” and a noticeably decent hourly wage.
Like those strange establishment part-time flyers plastered all over college campus bathrooms and elevators.
But whether on the map or from the outside, the location looked like an ordinary convenience store. When he came during the day, it was just that there weren’t many people on the street and you had to turn in a bit—there didn’t seem to be any particular problem.
At least during the day, from the outside.
“Ugh, there are so many drunks around here… Business is good but it’s hard to hire people.”
This place, the only convenience store in the area, was located close to clubs and establishments. Thanks to the omegas working at the store and the customers, store sales were good, but the clerks were the problem.
Considering most were drunk customers, the owner had hired alphas. But trouble arose from not considering the characteristics of the clubs and establishments nearby.
Usually people coming and going from the store were either alphas or beta males, and they became the convenience store’s main customers as they were.
Alphas whose senses became sensitive while intoxicated by alcohol and omega pheromones found other alphas’ pheromones unpleasant.
Beta males disliked the feeling of being encroached upon when meeting a part-timer who clearly looked like an alpha after filling themselves with confidence by flirting with omegas.
In the end, while alpha part-timers were good for dealing with problem customers, they actually caused more friction.
But hiring betas and omegas wasn’t smooth sailing either.
Since betas had a wider range of part-time job options compared to omegas, they left to find better jobs even if the hourly wage was a bit less.
Omegas, in a different sense from alphas, often suffered from drunks, so they also quit quickly.
If it were someone else, they would have already closed shop, but the income was quite substantial and there were other reasons too. Having already slipped bribes to the company managing this alley to establish close ties, the owner wanted to run this place no matter what.
Whether paying several times the hourly wage, however unfriendly the part-timer was, whatever history they had, whatever state they were in—it didn’t matter.
And what rolled in there was Lee Saehyeon.
“Friendliness? We don’t deal in that. Just don’t quit, and don’t call the police. Okay? I’ll give you plenty of hourly wage plus bonuses.”
As mentioned earlier, Saehyeon needed money urgently and had a bad temper.
Honestly, though he hadn’t accepted it in his heart yet, according to trait registration, he was also an omega. In a way, it was a perfect job.
That didn’t mean the men and misters who came in totally drunk looking like they’d smashed their faces into telephone poles several times, and low-quality alphas, weren’t irritating.
But in a situation where a character carefully cultivated since childhood had fallen to high school graduate status through a data load error like a bolt from the blue, there were no immediate options.
With an empty bank account while there was money that had to go out just from breathing, plus needing to save treatment costs as part of a plan to regain his memories.
So he had no choice but to survive strongly.
“Prepared to have your head cracked? Does that mean you’ll drink with me until then? I knew it would be like—”
“I meant I’ll take out a liquor bottle right now and move to action.”
For Saehyeon, ‘surviving’ was the same as absolutely never losing easily.
In other words, even if it meant cracking a drunk’s head who crossed the final line with a green bottle with a red cap, he would earn money today too. It was such a fierce declaration. Saehyeon grabbed a bottle he’d set aside near the counter upside down with an expressionless face.
