“Let’s break up.”
The day white snow fell in pretty, fluttering flakes. The day couples packed every street, unable to hide their happy smiles. The day even just the sight of the sparkling tree at the center of the plaza was enough to make my heart race with excitement.
“I’m sick of worrying about what people think every time we go out.”
He said something that clashed horribly with that day.
“Just go date a woman. It’ll be better for your mental health.”
Words that clashed just as horribly with such a beautiful tree.
With that, he turned and walked away before I could even think to stop him, and in an instant, I was left standing alone in front of the tree surrounded by clusters of people.
“Haa.”
Through the crowd, my lover—no, the man who had been my lover until a few seconds ago—disappeared quickly. A heavy sigh escaped through my lips in a pale cloud.
That made three times.
I had been broken up with for the exact same reason every single time.
But we dated for a whole year this time……
I blinked away the tears threatening to spill and looked up at the sky. The snowflakes I’d found so beautiful just moments ago now felt like an annoyance. And yet, despite everything, the black night sky was heartlessly, stubbornly beautiful.
In my next life, I want to be born into a world where it’s okay to be gay.
It was a wish that could never come true—utterly absurd—but right now, it felt more desperate than anything. I stood in front of the tree for a long while, sunk in the grief of heartbreak, until a couple jostling for a photo spot nudged me out of the way and I moved on.
“But seriously, who breaks up with someone on Christmas?”
The thought made indignation flare up inside me, but at the same time, the memory of how we’d never been able to go on a proper date outside because he was always worried about people staring made me feel hollow.
Right, you had it hard too……
Maybe it was because I spent the entire walk home lost in those gloomy thoughts.
I realized far too late that a massive truck was barreling toward me like mad as I trudged across a quiet crosswalk.
By the time I noticed, it was already too late.
CRASH—!
With a deafening boom, my body was launched into the air.
The awareness that I was dying?
None whatsoever.
The pain of being hit by the car?
Not even a little.
As my body soared upward, close enough to touch that night sky I’d just been thinking was so beautiful, I was absurdly, bizarrely thinking about how unusually bright the moon was tonight.
And then, my body plummeted downward.
“Ow……”
Something hit my backside. It felt hard, so I probably landed on the ground, but…… why doesn’t it hurt?
I blinked and looked down.
But instead of cold asphalt, I saw some kind of yellow linoleum floor. Even then, I assumed I’d just been flung farther than expected, so I raised my head to look around. But.
“……Huh?”
What filled my vision wasn’t a road and the colorful lights of storefronts—it was a cramped, modest single room.
“Huh?”
I was sitting in front of a tiny desk beneath a rattling window that had barely been sealed against the cold with tape. Despite the strips of yellow tape plastered all over it, icy wind still cut mercilessly through the cracks.
I turned around. Some man and woman were lying on the floor with blankets spread out beneath them. Listening closely, I could hear them groaning and making pained noises, and the blankets covering them looked like they had been patched so many times that mismatched scraps of different fabrics were haphazardly sewn together, barely holding in the cotton stuffing.
What on earth had happened.
Why was I suddenly in a place like this.
Oh. Could this possibly be the afterlife……?
I got up from the floor and cautiously approached the two of them. Both of their faces were gaunt, looking like they hadn’t eaten properly in days. The man seemed to be in poor health—his face was flushed red as he kept letting out small, persistent coughs.
“Um……”
I felt incredibly strange and suspicious of myself for having broken into someone’s house and needing to ask something like this, but I couldn’t not ask.
“Excuse me, where is this place?”
“Seongha…… cough, could you get Dad some water……”
“Huh? How do you know my name……”
I was bewildered that a woman I’d never seen before knew my name, but the look she gave me, as if to say what are you talking about, made me set it aside for now. I went to the kitchen, which was squeezed right up against the entryway, fetched some water, and brought it to the man. Thankfully he seemed to have enough strength to drink—he barely managed to prop himself up, took a few sips, and lay back down.
After helping to ease him back down, I glanced around cautiously again and asked the woman, who seemed to be in comparatively better shape:
“Um…… but where exactly is this place?”
“Seongha, why are you acting like this all of a sudden…… It’s already been half a year since we moved here……”
“What?”
“Cough…… Mom and Dad are sorry. We didn’t even realize it was a scam……”
“……Pardon?”
Mom and Dad?
And suddenly a scam?
Ha ha ha, what a joke.
Throughout my entire conversation with the woman who kept calling herself “Mom,” I refused to believe it—I pinched my cheeks and smacked myself hard on the head—but…… it just genuinely, thoroughly hurt.
A week passed after that.
Over that week, I had more or less adapted to “this world” and had grasped the full scope of my situation. I didn’t understand the exact mechanics, but it seemed the person who had originally been living here as “Min Seongha” and I had switched places, and my best guess was that this world was what people called a “parallel world.”
The face in the mirror, my height, my build, and even my name—all exactly the same.
But everything except me was different. My parents here, our finances, the house, my educational background, my occupation, my circumstances…… all of it was different.
It wasn’t all bad, though. For me, this place was essentially a utopia.
“So what about that omega you met the other day?”
“Not bad. But not someone I’d keep seeing.”
Snippets of ordinary conversation drifted to my ears from passersby on the street.
Alpha, omega, and beta.
This world had a peculiar thing about it. They were called “traits,” and here, unlike the world I came from, it was the norm to date based on trait rather than by gender.
Since alphas dated omegas and betas dated other betas, this was a world where it didn’t matter whether your partner was a man or a woman—people dated and even married freely. As a result, there were quite a few same-sex couples out on the streets. This was exactly the kind of world I had always dreamed of.
Eureka!
I said that word again in my head—the same word I’d silently cried out so many times when I first learned this.
The wish I’d been fervently making every Christmas had finally borne fruit.
“Eureka!”
“……?”
“Ahaha……!”
I’d said it out loud without realizing it, and people’s eyes snapped toward me. I laughed awkwardly and quickly turned to leave. My feet felt light on the way home. Regardless of my family’s situation here, I couldn’t seem to contain the excitement swelling up inside me.
Now I can go around dating men as much as I want without caring what anyone thinks……
“Huh?! When are you gonna pay up?!”
CRASH BANG THUD!!!
I was steeling myself with fresh resolve when a commotion broke out at the alley leading to our house. On top of it being nighttime, it was raining, and the noise carried loudly all the way from the entrance of the alley.
A vague sense of dread made me quicken my pace, and under the dim glow of a streetlamp, I could see three or four large men kicking at something. Muddy water splashed up between the streaks of rain. The moment I saw who was on the receiving end of those kicks, my heart lurched and dropped.
“Mom! Dad!”
“S-Seongha! Run, just run!”
Right. No matter how much this was the world I’d wanted—how could it ever be as happy as heaven?
Here, too, my parents were the problem. “Problem” sounds unkind, but regardless, my parents were just too…… they were genuinely, impossibly kind-hearted.
Kind to the point of being naive—they’d hand over money without a second thought the moment anyone put on a pitiful act, without even realizing it was a scam, and since they never got any of it back, they were now scraping by in a semi-basement rented room, barely keeping food on the table.
The debt they’d racked up that way came to a staggering 3 billion won.
“What’s going on?!”
“Seongha! We’re fine, just run!”
No, how could I just leave my parents and bolt.
“Speak of the devil.”
The loan sharks had already spotted me. They turned their attention away from my parents and swaggered toward me. Despite the rain pouring down in sheets, none of them had an umbrella.
“If you can’t pay back the debt, you gotta sell your body, yeah?”
The exaggerated expressions and delivery—the kind you’d expect from a cartoon villain—would have made me burst out laughing if it were someone else’s problem, but not now. Because regardless, these were violent loan sharks who had come to collect money from us.
I clenched my fists and forced a smile.
“I’ve actually just been out looking for work right now. I’ll pay you back as fast as I can, so……”
“What kind of work? Regular jobs won’t even cover the interest consistently.”
“Once I save up a bit, I’m thinking of trying the stock market. If I grow the money that way……”
“The stock market, what a joke! You think 3 billion is some small change?!”
Let me finish talking, you bastards.
“Why complicate things when all it takes is that body of yours? We’re here because we know you’re a Superior Omega!”
“……What omega?”
“A Superior Omega!!!”
“……Me?”
“We know everything, stop playing dumb!”
THWACK!
One of the loan sharks shoved me hard by the shoulder and I went sprawling straight onto the ground. Of all places, I fell into a puddle of muddy water—grit filled my mouth and my entire body was instantly soaked through—but none of that mattered.
Superior Omega. That was what mattered.
There are only 100 of those in the entire country, Mom and Dad.
Oh—was that why they’d been so desperately against me going outside? The possibility that I might be one of those 100 had never crossed my mind, and the realization hit me like a hammer blow to the head.
I snapped my head to the side and saw Dad clinging to one of the loan sharks, the two of them scuffling, until the loan shark went lurching backwards and fell into a muddy puddle.
“Are, are you alright? I’m so sorry!”
Still apologizing even now.
I couldn’t believe it. Deciding I needed to protect my parents first, I was pushing my soaked body up off the ground when my hand touched something. Someone’s dress shoe. Only then did I notice the shadow falling over me from above, and I slowly tilted my chin upward.
A large man was looking down at me. For just a brief moment, a pleasant musk drifted past my nose.
“Ah…… I’m sorry.”
The overwhelming presence of him made me space out without realizing it, and I quickly pulled my hand away from his shoe.
The man said nothing—cigarette still between his lips—and only stared silently down at me.
On his side and behind him stood men in suits. The man to his side was tilting a black umbrella over him to keep him dry. One of the men behind him moved in a clean, practiced motion to wipe the mud off the man’s shoes with a handkerchief.
Even through all of that, the man kept his gaze fixed only on me. A long trail of cigarette smoke curled from his lips.
“A Superior Omega?”
“Yes……?”
He drew in a slow, deep breath, as if measuring something, and let his eyes drag over me from head to toe.
“That’s right. Superior.”
And then he spoke.
“How about you just marry me.”
