“The strongest economics department general meeting will be held next Thursday at 6 PM at Daebak House by the main gate. Participation fee is 10,000 won per person, non-participation fee is 20,000 won. Please reply with your attendance status.”
The phone with peeling paint on its corners vibrated incessantly, pushing up the class representative’s message. Wooyeon’s eyes, which had been staring at the screen, wrinkled slightly. A sigh flowed out between his reddish lips.
20,000 won. Was that such easy money for others?
His slender finger stopped on the screen. He hesitated without typing anything into the message window, when a new text message appeared in the top bar. His bitten teeth turned his red lips pale.
“When are you coming to give me money”
“You’re tired of this too, right, by now”
“That’s why I’m telling you I’ll get you a job”
“You’ll pay off all your debt soon and won’t have to see me in this tiresome state either”
They were texts from a loan shark. A deep sigh flowed out between Wooyeon’s lips again.
No matter how much he paid, no matter how much he paid, the interest showed no signs of decreasing. He had become accustomed to the debt collection that poured in daily along with verbal abuse. The man who occasionally came to his house and caused a scene hadn’t forgotten today either to recommend an omega bar or omega surrogate at the end. Wasn’t he tired of it?
After staring at the message window of the department group chat, which contrasted sharply with the debt collection texts that poured in rapid succession, Wooyeon put down his continuously vibrating phone.
“Welcome.”
The bell hanging above the convenience store door always made the same sound even though it wasn’t an electronic tone. Unlike that familiar bell sound, an unfamiliar scent rushed in, and Wooyeon raised his lowered head.
Through the briefly opened door, cold air seeped in along with damp humidity. Watching the water droplets falling from the man’s folded umbrella, their eyes met as he unconsciously raised his head.
It was something that happened hundreds of times a day while working at the convenience store, but his heart sank with a strange sense of déjà vu. Were they a couple? The tall man, whose appearance didn’t match his gentle eyes, smiled faintly. In front of him, a slender woman walked in first. The man’s languid gaze remained unchanged. Wooyeon lowered his head in an awkwardly uncomfortable feeling.
“…Hana, should we buy this too?”
“Do whatever you want, sunbae.”
The man carelessly stuck his folded umbrella into the umbrella stand and slowly walked toward the woman. Wooyeon quietly watched them.
“Which one should I eat, I’m really bad at deciding these things.”
“Just buy both.”
The worry that preceded consumption became trivial in front of a few coins. What would it feel like to be able to say it so easily? Wooyeon pressed down on the inside of his hand with the tips of his nails.
Before long, items came tumbling onto the table.
“Check out, please.”
“…Yes.”
The palm of Wooyeon’s hand as he picked up the snacks was a mess with nail marks. The man who had been standing behind the woman approached and leisurely placed one more item down. It was a condom.
Reflexively about to look up, Wooyeon soon lowered his eyes again at the gaze looking at him and grabbed the condom to scan the barcode.
“That’s 41,520 won.”
“Ah, give me one pack of cigarettes too.”
Unavoidably meeting eyes again, the man’s mouth was smiling but his eyes were cold. Wooyeon took his hand off the register and turned around.
“Which one would you like?”
“Give me Retyplasma.”
“Would one pack be enough?”
“Yes.”
He smokes damn expensive ones too. Wooyeon took out a pack of cigarettes from the right corner and placed them on the table.
“Would you like me to ring these up together?”
At Wooyeon’s routine words, the man stared directly at Wooyeon’s face and smiled broadly. He clearly had a kind-looking face, but perhaps because of his large build, or perhaps because of the somehow intimidating atmosphere, he didn’t feel kind at all.
“…Aren’t you going to check my ID?”
“Ah.”
The man’s gaze slowly descended from Wooyeon’s face. Judging by how his gaze lingered long around the chest area, he seemed to be looking at the name tag.
Suddenly, a thick fragrance rushed in. Lifting his averted eyes, Wooyeon looked at the man again. It was quite deliberately intentional flirting.
“What’s with you, worried you might look like a minor?”
…So he was an alpha after all. If a recessive like himself could notice, he was probably a dominant alpha. He had thought it might be cologne scent, but the fragrance that kept bothering him was apparently pheromones. The woman, perhaps a beta, giggled without noticing.
“I’m sorry. ID, please.”
He couldn’t understand why he was doing this with a woman right next to him. When he asked for the ID with an expressionless face, the man smiled again and handed over his ID. His finger brushed underneath the ID. He was definitely doing this on purpose. At the heat that suddenly flared up, Wooyeon looked up at him.
「Kwon Jeong Han」
It was clearly engraved on the ID like that. His pupils shook beneath his long eyelashes, and his composure pathetically crumbled.
Thump thump thump…
His heart beat loudly.
Beyond the ID, Wooyeon’s face had hardened. After checking the name tag again, he looked at Wooyeon and smiled. His eyes still weren’t smiling.
* * *
‘…Hyung.’
His cheeks, still plump with baby fat, munched away. The hand wrapping around his thumb was white and small.
‘I’m going to marry you, hyung.’
‘Silly, men can’t marry each other.’
‘Yes, we can.’
‘No, we can’t, silly.’
The child’s big eyes glistened with moisture. Every time his long eyelashes moved, even though he knew the child’s insistence on marrying him, a man, was just childish stubbornness, he somehow felt like he was doing something bad.
‘Yes, we can, hyung is the silly one. Alphas are supposed to marry omegas.’
‘But I’m a beta.’
‘…Then why does hyung smell so good?’
The child who clung to him also had a nice scent.
‘Hyung smells the best.’
Just as Wooyeon was about to close his eyes again, intoxicated by the pleasant fragrance, a loud explosion sound came from the side.
Bang!
A small, shoddily made DIY bookshelf collapsed and the books inside came tumbling out.
When he raised his head, his father’s face, drunk and shouting at the top of his lungs, approached like a monster. It was his mother who pulled the small Wooyeon’s body into her arms. Her arm, with bruises on her face, was trembling.
‘Does it make sense that this little bastard is a beta? Huh? Fuck.’
Feeling like his breath was cut off, Wooyeon gripped his mother’s arm holding him tighter. In his drunk, staggering father’s hand was Wooyeon’s trait test result.
‘What can you do? Who told you to give birth to something useless like a beta, huh? Fuck, can’t even sell him, something like this!’
‘Ahhh!’
At his raised arm again, his mother screamed as if being torn apart. Young Wooyeon could only squeeze his eyes shut and tremble. At that moment, Wooyeon’s eyes flew open at the rough hands that pulled him from his mother’s embrace and grabbed him by the collar.
‘His face is pretty enough that if he were just an omega, he’d sell for a high price, fuck.’
The cigarette the man was chewing on swayed in Wooyeon’s blurry vision.
At the fact that he couldn’t be sold to pay off his father’s gambling debt because he wasn’t an omega, Wooyeon felt relieved and trembled in fear at the same time. He was so glad he wasn’t an omega. And he was so scared that he wasn’t an omega.
‘F-Father… I was wrong…’
Swallowing his streaming tears, Wooyeon pleaded. When the man grabbed and twisted Wooyeon’s collar and shook him roughly, his thin legs swung helplessly in the air.
‘Why isn’t this face an omega, fuuuck, is the test wrong? Should I just sell you? Say you’re an omega, huh?’
‘F-Father… I don’t want to, I don’t want to…’
‘What? You little shit, what did you say? You don’t want to? Don’t want to? Has this bastard gotten too comfortable!’
Smack!
A harsh hand struck Wooyeon’s cheek.
‘Don’t hit the child, you bastard!’
With his mother’s scream, Wooyeon’s body flew as if thrown into the corner of the room.
And when he raised his head, the scene had changed again.
The science lab. It was the place where he had properly faced his own existence for the first time.
At this terrible sensation that repeated itself countless times in his dreams, when he straightened his head again, his fingertips kept pulsing and he finally clenched his hand. The children’s noise grew louder and louder, and eventually his gaze turned downward.
On the desk were a glass petri dish and a microscope and such. On the side of the petri dish was a label that read: ‘Alpha’s blood’.
Tears dripped onto the laboratory desk.
The children’s noise gradually died down, and the thumping heartbeat sound completely filled his head. The heartbeat sound was getting so loud that he couldn’t hear it properly. There was no way he, a beta, would react to alpha’s blood…
Thump.
His heartbeat pounded hard.
Thump thump thump.
As he turned his head at the continuously ringing sound, the scene had changed before he knew it.
It was the large mansion where Wooyeon had often spent time in his childhood. Although he had many memories from that place in his youth, it wasn’t as the “young master.” His parents weren’t very wealthy and those memories too were only permitted as the child of an employee.
His mother’s face from when she was younger and healthier than now suddenly appeared and grabbed Wooyeon’s arm. He stepped back at the frightening emotion that flared up, but even in his dreams, it was useless every time.
‘I don’t want to, Mom told me to play well with Jeonghan!’
Through the dark curtain, Wooyeon’s childhood voice shouted.
‘Lee Yooha, come to your senses.’
‘I’m going to stay here…’
‘Why didn’t you tell your mom!’
His mother’s face was more desperate than ever, so Wooyeon couldn’t forget that face.
‘We have to run away. Your dad knows.’
‘…?’
‘He knows you’re an omega!’
The sound of his mother’s voice as she stuffed the mansion’s trinkets into her pocket rang piercingly in his ears.
