“Am I that interesting to you?”
“Of course! I’ve never seen a beta with guts like yours in my entire life.”
Minwook said cheerfully without any malice. To the discriminated old humanity, Minwook’s reaction was clearly rude. So Woojae stayed on high alert regarding Bang Minwook as well, rolling his eyes busily to figure out the true intention behind his words. After all, humans always spoke with some kind of intention. Even if it was an intention they themselves weren’t aware of.
As the silence lengthened, Minwook finally caught on.
“Ah, was I too… like that? Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
He turned his gaze away at the apology, awkward as it was.
This place was different from the world Woojae had lived in. It was a completely different dimension from the days when there were only two or so omegas or alphas in a class. Among the countless students in this vast school, he was the only beta. In this extremely unfamiliar environment, Woojae had already received negative looks directed at him about twice, and he had just learned that the most annoying person among them lived in the room next door.
“Didn’t you do an internet news interview or something? My dad told me about it. I had no idea that protagonist would be my roommate.”
Minwook said in a slightly excited voice as if he had never been sulky. To be precise, it wasn’t an interview. They had arbitrarily edited a post he uploaded and broadcast it as if it were an interview.
“This is my bed, right? Let me unpack my stuff.”
Woojae carefully observed Minwook unpacking in front of him. The clothes looked expensive even at a glance. He frowned at the clothes with excessively flashy colors and patterns. What was certain was that even if those were expensive, they weren’t Woojae’s taste. Tacky…
“Right. You’re a full scholarship student, aren’t you? My dad is your fan. The kids might hate you like crazy. There are a lot of kids who came from the same high school as me, and they’re really shitty. They really hate betas too.”
Minwook, who had roughly crumpled his clothes and stuffed them into the closet, chattered on endlessly. Woojae stood still and mulled over those words.
That damn public attention was the problem. It had become a double-edged sword for Woojae. Thanks to the public attention, he got into the dorm, but because of it, he maximized an already attention-grabbing situation. It seemed it would be a bit difficult to keep a low profile. Still, though, how much did they know about him to hate him already? Minwook seemed like the type to add a lot of MSG when he talked.
“Are you usually prone to exaggeration?”
“Well, first of all, I got beaten up by my dad. Want to see my back?”
Minwook lifted his clothes and offered to show Woojae. What on earth did his admission have to do with Minwook getting hit by his father? Woojae had no hobby of looking at men’s bodies, so he obviously showed his distaste and turned his head.
“No.”
“…You’re a really straightforward type.”
At Woojae’s reaction, Minwook sounded quite hurt and sulky. Although they hadn’t talked for long, Minwook seemed like a pretty decent guy. Like a spoiled fashionista who grew up loved in a good home.
“Ah, I have too much stuff, I can’t organize it. I’ll do it later. Are you done?”
“…What’s your major?”
Woojae asked Minwook, who was putting off organizing his luggage and chattering busily. Minwook’s eyes lit up at the interest directed toward him.
“I’m an art student. Sculpture major. It’s, well, nothing that great.”
Somehow looking sheepish, Minwook scratched his nose with his finger. Since Woojae was far removed from the arts, he found that part quite interesting. Woojae moved a bit closer and asked Minwook.
“Can you show me your work?”
“Of course! Make sure to come to my exhibition later too. It’d be great if you bought a piece too.”
He didn’t have that kind of money right now, but later was a different story. Woojae leaned comfortably against the wall and murmured quietly.
“Honestly, I thought all alphas were assholes.”
“Me too? Why? Is my first impression bad? Is it because I have a lot of piercings?”
Minwook lifted his bangs a bit to show the piercings in his eyebrows and asked. You could pierce there too? Woojae was surprised by this new knowledge and answered Minwook’s question. Now that he looked, there were also a bunch of metal pieces hanging from his ears that he hadn’t noticed before.
“No, I just now noticed you had piercings.”
“Oh… That’s kind of hurtful.”
You don’t seem very interested in other people. At Minwook’s bitter addition, Woojae nodded. It wasn’t an incorrect analysis.
“Well anyway, not all alphas are assholes. But there are a lot of them like that.”
“Do you have beta friends?”
“Not super close, just casually acquainted? But I’m like that with alphas too. I aim for shallow and wide relationships.”
Minwook said, patting his chest. Woojae partially agreed with his words. In the first place, Woojae himself had no one he could call a friend. From the start, a teenage head of household with no parents who had to study, work part-time jobs, and take care of his one and only younger sibling could never have had time to make deep friendships. Watching Minwook chattering away excitedly by himself, Woojae decided to explain why he had solidified such prejudice.
“Actually, I got into it with the guy in the room next door earlier.”
“Why? Did he say he got his back beaten because of you too?”
Minwook again insisted that more than half of the omegas and alphas at this school probably got their backs beaten by their parents because of Woojae. Why on earth they had to get their backs beaten because of him was beyond knowing.
“Why would they beat their backs?”
“You, really you… Originally, a genius’s mere existence is bad news for mediocre people.”
It seemed like something genetically gifted geniuses shouldn’t say, but Woojae just dismissed it as a joke. At Woojae’s reaction, Minwook turned his body as if extremely wronged and rolled up his clothes to show his back.
“I really got hit! Look here. Look at the handprint.”
“Why do you keep trying to show me a guy’s back?”
“I screamed that day because it hurt. As soon as Dad saw your article, he ran over and smacked my back while I was sleeping.”
“Why on earth?”
“I barely got in here…”
“What does that have to do with my admission?”
“Uh…”
At Woojae’s answer, Minwook opened and closed his mouth as if to say something more, then closed it. What nonsense was he about to spout now? Looking at the clock, it was almost time to sleep. Should he wash up around now? As Woojae was about to get up from the bed, Minwook raised his hand high and started speaking. He wasn’t an elementary school student giving a presentation.
“But what does me getting into it with him have to do with me?”
It was a sulky voice, as if quite wronged. But it was a valid question.
“You’re both alphas.”
“Geez. I have nothing to say to that. Right. That could be. Some people are afraid of dogs because they got bitten by a dog, after all.”
He accepts it easily. Woojae soon let down his guard about Minwook and took off his socks to hang them by the bedside. He should do laundry in batches. He’d have to ask Minwook in a bit what he thought about buying detergent. As Woojae was making plans, Minwook spoke up again.
“But why did you get into it?”
“I saw him hooking up with an omega at the sacred school.”
“Whoa, they had sex? On the street?”
At the explicit word choice, Woojae frowned. Having just shed his minor status, such direct words made him uncomfortable. I’m still pure. Woojae shook his head.
“Right before doing it? Well, pouncing on them saying let’s do it just once.”
“Uh… Why did they do that? Didn’t they have suppressants?”
As soon as Minwook heard that story, he brought up suppressants first. That sweaty-smelling omega from earlier seemed to have been in heat. But seeing how he immediately got up fine and got angry at him, it didn’t seem like an unavoidable situation. Woojae tilted his head and asked Minwook.
“Would you do that too if you didn’t have suppressants?”
“I take my suppressants properly! My rut doesn’t even come that often in the first place. That varies from person to person too. And not knowing your own cycle is embarrassing. That means you didn’t get proper home education. Whoever it is.”
“Hmm…”
Is it that hard to resist? Even if they deliberately pretended to be in heat to seduce, it wasn’t his concern. Anyway, seeing how he didn’t even know how to act decently toward others, it was certain that the alpha bastard next door was the one who didn’t receive proper home education.
“Anyway, it has nothing to do with you, so don’t worry too much about it. Then again, you don’t know, do you? What kind of place this is.”
“It’s a university.”
“…Never mind. What good would it do to know? From now on, even if you see something like that, pretend you don’t know. There’s nothing good that’ll come from acting like you know.”
Minwook left Woojae with advice whose meaning he couldn’t understand.
***
“Hey, get up.”
“Uhhh… Dad, just a little more… 5 more minutes…”
“Who’s your dad? Are you getting up or not?”
“Agh…!! My back!!”
On the memorable first day of the semester, Woojae dragged Minwook, who was struggling between life and death in bed, and took him to the cafeteria. In that process, Woojae’s handprint was left on Minwook’s back. Minwook protested tearfully until the end that he didn’t eat breakfast, but Woojae couldn’t understand refusing a free meal. Moreover, Woojae’s belief was that breakfast was the start of the day, so one must definitely eat it heartily.
“Ah fuck, what bad luck first thing in the morning…”
Woojae ran into that alpha bastard again in the dorm cafeteria. He had decided to forget about him, but running into the bastard at the cafeteria put him in a foul mood. Even among the alphas who boasted superior physical conditions compared to average beta males, the bastard bragged an even bigger and more solid build. As Woojae muttered curses quietly, Minwook, who had been yawning continuously in his drowsiness, asked.
