Colin came trudging down to the first floor, fatigue written plainly across his face as he scanned the front desk. Ensha was seated at the desk, scribbling away busily at something. It was obviously a list of dinner options — nothing else.
“Ensha.”
“You’re back?”
There was mischief written all over her face as she turned around. The red-haired woman had freckles dotting her cheeks, and just as many streaks of troublemaking in her nature.
“What were you thinking, accepting something like this?”
Colin didn’t bother hiding his alarm as he held out the résumé he’d kept tucked in the folder.
A résumé from a recessive omega in District 4. His heart had nearly stopped when that piece of paper landed on the Executive Director’s knee.
“How did this person even get into the building and leave a résumé in the first place? What was the security team doing?”
“I accepted it myself. He was whimpering outside the building like a puppy caught in the rain.”
“What? Are you out of your mind?”
Colin was stunned to learn how a résumé that failed to meet any of the criteria had made its way all the way up to him.
“Why? Is the boss saying something about it?”
Ensha asked, eyes gleaming with interest. That expression made it perfectly clear she had done it on purpose.
Colin and Ensha were the same age and had grown up in the same orphanage as Cesare.
In this country, orphanages were nothing more than operations that sold children. From early childhood, they had been put to work pickpocketing and begging, and eventually, firearms manufacturing as well.
Everything had changed when Cesare manifested as a far-dominant alpha. The Herald family, who had long yearned for a dominant alpha, formally adopted him — and as if in answer to their hopes, Cesare went on to restore the family’s fortunes.
At first, there had been shareholders who were wary of his adopted status, but by now, that kind of reaction had gone completely silent.
His meticulous and perfectionist tendencies as a dominant alpha had certainly played a part — but to put it bluntly, the skills he’d honed surviving back-alley life had finally met the right backing and taken flight.
Around the time Cesare was establishing himself within the family, he brought Colin and Ensha on.
The two of them had known nothing but brawling, knifework, and petty theft — but with Cesare’s sponsorship, they graduated from the Academy and became something resembling functioning members of society. From that point on, Ensha had called Cesare the boss.
Colin, too, had always held Cesare in deep gratitude and respect. But that was limited to Cesare as a benefactor — as a human being, he was frightening. The man’s temper was so foul and exacting that cold sweat ran down Colin’s back several times a day.
“Well, he didn’t exactly……”
Colin, still damp with cold sweat even now, scratched his temple.
He’d come downstairs intending to give Ensha a piece of his mind for passing up that résumé without reviewing it — but when he thought about it, he couldn’t find a solid basis for complaint. Far from coming down on him, the Executive Director had asked to see the recessive omega from District 4.
“He said to bring him in tomorrow.”
“Well, that settles that.”
Ensha shrugged with a smile, as if she’d known that would happen.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s exactly the boss’s type.”
“What? How?”
The Executive Director’s type. No — did Cesare even have a type to begin with.
His criteria for categorizing people were strictly based on usefulness. Omegas were no different. For someone who had an aversion to omegas, the top priority was simply someone who didn’t grate on his nerves.
And he’d never even liked anyone before, let alone been in a relationship — so what type, exactly.
In Colin’s assessment, Cesare was not a person. Something more like a ghost or a monster — that was the appropriate category. Normal standards simply didn’t apply.
But Ensha looked at Colin like he was being deliberately dense and gave the résumé a playful little shake.
“Mm…… his face?”
“That’s exactly what someone who doesn’t know the boss would say.”
Cesare had a particular loathing for the rich, syrupy sweetness of omega pheromones. He was repulsed by the fact that the more worn-out an omega was, the stronger the scent they put out.
Add a touch of obsessive fastidiousness on top of that, and omegas from District 4 were the last thing he’d look at. Anyone living there was bound to be well and truly worn-out. And even just now, hadn’t the first thing he’d said while looking at the résumé been unremarkable-looking.
So Colin was certain. The Executive Director would not spend even five minutes with this omega tomorrow. But Ensha looked oddly confident.
“Want to bet? Whether the boss ends up contracting with this omega or not.”
“I’m in. I’ll bet he absolutely doesn’t.”
Colin jumped into the wager with full confidence. No reason to turn down a bet he was obviously going to win.
Over two hundred omegas had been seen up to this point. Of those, only two had ever been brought as far as the hotel. One had been a failure mid-way through, and the other had been sent home after a single night’s pheromone release.
Finding a partner for Cesare was, in truth, one of the things Colin wanted most. Managing the rut that came every month was already killing him, and reviewing omega résumés on top of that was its own form of torment. The moment a partner showed up, his workload would shrink — there was no reason to be against it.
But there was such a thing as a matter of probability. Honestly, Colin was convinced that Cesare would go his entire life without finding a partner. If ten-plus years of searching hadn’t done it, it was reasonable to assume it wasn’t happening any time soon.
“Loser buys dinner ten times. Deal?”
“Deal. We’ll see tomorrow.”
Ensha and Colin wrote out a bet agreement on the back of the paper covered in dinner options. As they pressed their fingerprints to it, both their faces were full of the conviction that they would be the one to win.
* * *
Seohan flopped out flat on the old mattress and reached one hand up toward the wall. Mold had settled beneath the bare patch where new wallpaper had never been put up.
“This seriously can’t be happening……!”
He kicked his legs and thudded his fists against the mattress. They said bad luck came all at once, and his life was the perfect example.
“Oh, world……”
Today, Seohan had been let go from the laundromat. It had started when a customer who’d come to drop off shirts had come on to him.
Damn it, putting on airs with those looks when we’re all in the same boat.
It was a customer who came in twice a week. Always dropping off exactly one shirt at a time, yet always coming on to Seohan with all manner of low-grade propositions — going to an inn together, saying his place was empty.
Any other time, he would have put up with it. If only those fleshy hands hadn’t grabbed his backside, he would have held his tongue right to the end.
“W-well then, I suppose it’s nice for you, sir, not being the kind of face worth what you charge.”
That runaway mouth of his was always the problem. The moment those hands grabbed him, he’d fired right back at the customer before he could stop himself.
Seohan was born timid and soft-natured. On top of that, having grown up begging in District 4 from childhood, he’d spent most of his life unable to hold his head up. Stuttering and hesitating was practically second nature to him.
And yet, there was one thing — one thing that never changed regardless of the situation — and that was this easygoing, uncomplicated personality of his.
Perhaps because he’d grown up only ever focused on whatever meal was right in front of him, Seohan had a bold streak running alongside the timid one.
Ironically, it was exactly that personality that had kept him alive in a reality spent crawling through the gutters, so he had no complaints.
It was just that, not being the type to think deeply about things, words would sometimes fly out of his mouth without passing through his brain first. The reason Eddie occasionally called him a headcase was entirely down to that unruly mouth of his.
The customer, upon hearing what Seohan said, naturally flew into a rage on the spot. He’d demanded to know if Seohan was calling him ugly, and gone after the owner about whether he was seriously keeping a little whore like this on staff.
As was always the way in District 4, the weaker party took the loss. And just like that, Seohan lost his weekday part-time job.
“Maybe I should just hurry up and die……”
It wasn’t like he had much time left anyway. What was the point of clinging on.
He’d buried himself in the blanket and was groaning away, chewing on a stale loaf of discount bread while staring up at the ceiling. He’d already had a nosebleed that morning on top of everything. The gloomy feeling was free of charge, and on top of that, his head was pounding.
He was lying there with a miserable face, chewing lifelessly on bread that tasted like nothing at all, when Eddie burst through the door like he’d kicked it open.
“Seohan!”
“Huh? What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
Eddie had come home earlier than usual, and was breathing hard like something urgent had come up. His old necktie — the one he wore every single day — was nearly undone and dangling loose.
“You — you’ve got to go!”
Eddie blurted it out with no subject at all. Go — go where, exactly. He’d barely tilted his head in confusion when something seemed to click, and Seohan clapped his hands together.
“The gambling den? They want me to fill in?!”
That would be welcome news if so. Having lost even the laundromat job, he needed every extra day of work he could get just to eat.
“No, not that——!”
But Eddie shook his hands to say it wasn’t that. Wherever he’d come running from, he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. He came into the room and drained an entire cup of water in one go, then continued in a state of barely contained excitement.
“That thing — the résumé you sent to Herald’s company! They called, they said to come in!”
“What?!”
Seohan’s eyes went as wide as they could go. His — his mouth dropped open and a piece of bread fell out.
He’d been certain there would be no call. Getting the résumé there in the first place had been a miracle in itself. Eddie’s contact had told them it would be too difficult to introduce Seohan and had turned them down. Because of that, he’d ended up just showing up with a single résumé in hand and no plan — and that was only yesterday.
He’d been stopped by security before he could even get through the door and had been wondering what to do, when an employee came outside and accepted the résumé. He’d managed to hand it over on a fluke, but the atmosphere hadn’t made it feel like it would get a proper review.
And yet, they’d called.
“Is this real?”
“Would I have run all the way here if it wasn’t?”
“Let me see, okay? Let me just have a look.”
Seohan frantically patted at the pockets of Eddie’s jacket.
“Hold on, I’ll get it out.”
Eddie pulled his phone out of his jacket and tapped at the keypad. It was a beat-up old model, but even that was a rare thing in District 4.
Naturally, Seohan didn’t have a phone. Eddie needed one for the many places that contacted him for his newspaper work, but Seohan — with only one friend and a narrow range of activity — had never felt much need for one.
In the past, when humanity had been at its most dazzling peak of advancement, phones had apparently been capable of all sorts of things — but now, they had no function beyond making calls.
With as few social connections as Seohan had, paying a large sum every month just to send and receive a handful of messages was wasteful. Which was why he’d had no choice but to leave Eddie’s phone number on the résumé.
“At first they called, but when I said I was a friend, they said they’d leave the details in a message. Look, here!”
Eddie pulled out the phone and held it out so Seohan could read it himself. On the small black-and-white screen of the old phone, a single message was displayed.
“Resume passed, interview time is tomorrow at nine…… oh——!”
Seohan clapped both hands over his mouth. The message really did contain the details of an interview.
“This is for me, right? It’s me, right? This is real?!”
It was nothing more than a chance at an interview — and yet he felt like he could jump for joy. With his part-time job gone, this was an enormous opportunity.
