Siyeon passed through the lounge that had served as the waiting area and searched for the exit. The red light of the CCTV camera in front of the lounge blinked steadily. The manager’s smoke break and the record of his ID access would all be logged down to the minute.
But he had no time to worry about that right now. He was anxious about the possibility of running into Chae Yuno or his manager before he could get out of the hospital.
Damn…… of all times……
As if his fears had come true, the manager who had stepped away to smoke was now walking toward him from the other end of the hall. Flustered, Siyeon immediately spun around and pressed the elevator down button — and right at that moment,
— Seventh floor.
The elevator doors slid open with perfect timing. Thud — he quickly twisted his body inside, but in his haste, he ended up colliding with a passenger who had already been on it.
“Ah! I — I’m so sorry.”
Siyeon stepped aside to let the man off and bowed his head in apology. Then the man’s breathing shifted for just a moment, and a low murmur reached his ears.
“……An omega?”
The man was wearing a dark suit and had a cold, sharp impression — and he was very tall. As if he’d caught an unpleasant smell, the man wrinkled his nose as he stepped off the elevator.
Could it be — is that heat scent, or whatever it’s called, already coming off of me……?
There was truly no time left. The man looked as though he was about to say something more, but Siyeon dry-swallowed the suppressant he’d secretly brought with him and hit the close button.
Unheat : Suppressant for Omega (Ω) use only
Recommended dosage : 1 tablet per day
Precautions : Exceeding the standard dosage may amplify side effects and cause permanent disability
By the time he belatedly read the precautions, five of the blue pills that suppressed heat had already gone down his throat.
He felt a slight twinge of regret at making such a reckless decision — but going through a few side effects was a small price to pay compared to his heat hitting him in the middle of the street.
Come to think of it, the main character had taken suppressants too……
The original ‘Omega Hong Siyeon’ also had an episode where he’d taken a large amount of the same suppressant that Siyeon had just taken. He’d taken them to avoid going into heat, but at the time, there was a life growing inside him that he didn’t even know about.
His first pregnancy — after spending his heat with the alpha couple. The events that followed played out far more severely than expected. After a horrific bout of abdominal pain and fever, the child in the womb was miscarried, and the main character fell into deep guilt and depression.
The suppressant episode was the very turning point that sent That Alpha’s Trap spiraling into its most harrowing arc. From that moment on, what little will the main character had previously shown completely broke.
From that point on, Omega Hong Siyeon began to stop speaking.
In the story, the alpha couple — shattered by the shock of the miscarriage — began treating the main character purely as a ‘tool.’ They heaped guilt onto him for causing them to lose their child, despite the fact that he had been sold to them as a surrogate, and crushed whatever freedom he had left.
The reason the couple had broken him down and brutally suppressed him was to burden the main character — who had wanted to leave their side — with a weight he could never shake off. But as a result, the relationship between the alpha couple and the main character was utterly destroyed.
What could have bloomed into something resembling love, or even family — that bud was severed. It became the defining moment that locked them into a cold, vertical relationship of employer and employee, of the powerful and the powerless.
Doesn’t matter. I’m not pregnant right now…… and I have no reason to see them again.
Siyeon pressed a hand against his lower abdomen, which was radiating a strange warmth. He made a firm promise to himself — that he would not live the same unfortunate life as the main character.
***
“Please drop me off just up ahead.”
Having quickly assessed the situation, Siyeon had taken the elevator down to the main entrance and immediately hailed a taxi. He’d nearly run into Chae Yuno in the first-floor lobby, but managed to slip away unnoticed while Yuno was busy on what seemed to be an urgent call.
The only problem was that his entire fortune amounted to the fifty thousand won he’d begged from Manager Kang — so he had to get out before the meter hit ten thousand.
“Damn it…… where do I even go now.”
With the most pressing crisis handled for the moment, Siyeon pressed a hand to his throbbing forehead as he stepped off at the local bus stop. Was it the overdose of suppressants? Or the lingering effects of the heat that had begun to surface?
His whole body burned with heat, and his head was spinning. On top of that, his half-casted leg was aching — his physical condition was, to put it plainly, absolutely terrible.
If I go back home, I’ll definitely run into Manager Kang. The intercity bus terminal is too risky. That leaves……
No matter how hard he thought about where to run, nothing concrete came to mind. In the first place, the original ‘Omega Hong Siyeon’ was a pitiable character with no acquaintances to turn to and no safe place to rest.
The people around him were nothing but flies drawn to his unusual looks, or con artists looking to take advantage of his kind nature. Perhaps because he was tagged with the ‘#pushover’ keyword, they only ever thought of exploiting the naive and soft-hearted main character.
But who was he, exactly. He shared a name with the main character, but he was absolutely not the type to get walked over. For someone who had been an orphan with no one to rely on from the very start, poverty was as natural as breathing. Being thrown out on the streets with no money — this kind of situation was something he was already familiar with. Siyeon pulled himself together, calling to mind those bleak days from his past.
Stop whining and figure out how to survive.
Not having a phone was frustrating, but Siyeon resolved to form an escape plan that would keep him out of Manager Kang’s reach. He planned to confuse the trail by switching between as many forms of public transportation as possible, making it difficult to track him.
Turning over his options carefully, Siyeon stepped onto a bus. Heading toward ‘that place’ — somewhere the original main character had never gone.
***
“What brings you here, hyung?”
While Siyeon was fleeing the alpha couple and Manager Kang, Chae Yuno — left behind at the hospital — had just made his way up to the floor with the VIP ward. He was puzzled to have received a call from his spouse, Beom Yisu, who normally never contacted him for personal matters.
Legally bound as they were, they were both dominant alphas. There was no way either of them would feel anything romantic toward the other, so they had come to regard one another as collaborators tied together by a strategic marriage — nothing more.
“Is there a problem with me visiting a hospital I own?”
“I was just surprised because you called out of nowhere and asked where I was. You never do that — I figured your days must finally be numbered.”
Beom Yisu shut his mouth at Chae Yuno’s smoothly delivered quip. Something about his behavior was off today, and Yuno narrowed his eyes and pressed his paper spouse further.
“Hyung, you’re not actually sick, are you?”
Had he genuinely come to the hospital feeling unwell? Yuno, suddenly uneasy as well, approached Beom Yisu, who was standing with a pained expression and a hand pressed to his forehead.
Of course, it wasn’t for any soft reason like fondness or worry. Even if his relationship with Beom Yisu was entirely formal, there was quite a lot he stood to gain from this marriage.
It was a marriage he absolutely had to maintain for the next several years — so it was obvious that his position would be compromised if his spouse were to die right now. The same logic applied to Beom Yisu’s side as well.
“What the — are you in rut?”
But that thought was short-lived. After a long while, seeing Beom Yisu’s cold face up close, he noticed a strange flush coloring it. As Yuno stepped into range of his pheromones, his stomach turned, and he made an exaggerated gagging motion.
“Don’t ruin my mood. Get away from me.”
“That’s my line! How old are you, and you still can’t manage your rut? This may be your hospital, but going around like this in public is a nuisance.”
The faint traces of an agitated alpha’s pheromones soured his mood considerably. And layered on top of that, a trace of omega he recognized.
As Yuno grumbled and pinched his nose shut, Beom Yisu — as if feeling suffocated — loosened the tie that had been fastened all the way to his throat.
Finally seeming able to breathe again, he let out a small exhale — and then got to the point.
“Where is the omega you brought in today?”
“Omega? Ah…… could it be — my darling?”
“……Your darling?”
“I was wondering why you smelled like omega — don’t tell me you were in rut and put your hands on them?”
“You never stop with the useless remarks. Do I look like the type to do something like that?”
Beom Yisu shot Yuno a sharp glare, irritated by the flippant dig. Yuno responded with an easy shrug, as if to say it was just something he’d said offhand.
“Fair enough — you’re the type who can’t stand omegas. You wouldn’t have done that.”
The Beomyeong Group, where Beom Yisu served as CEO, was a global conglomerate with roots in construction that had since expanded into medical facilities, transportation, semiconductors, and more — so much so that people said the domestic market would grind to a halt without Beomyeong’s involvement.
With his high position came an endless stream of rumors, the most well-known of which was that he had an extreme case of mysophobia. That was partly true — but the precise diagnosis Beom Yisu actually carried was ‘omega pheromone rejection disorder.’
Even Yuno had only learned of this after their marriage, which had thrown him considerably. He himself was a healthy alpha with ordinary inclinations, and he had briefly wondered whether his partner in the strategic marriage might be the type to go into rut over alphas. That misunderstanding, of course, had been cleared up within a matter of days.
“Answer the question first. Where is the omega you brought in today?”
Beom Yisu asked the same question again. Come to think of it, Yuno still didn’t even know his name. The omega he’d only just met, yet kept finding his eyes drawn to. It was still nothing more than simple curiosity — but the thought of another alpha showing interest made something twist unpleasantly inside him.
“That’s strange. Why are you looking for them, hyung? If you’re trying to interfere in my personal life, forget it.”
As Yuno instinctively put up his guard and withheld his answer, Beom Yisu produced a stack of documents he’d been holding.
A vivid percentage printed in red ink.
「Pheromone Match Rate: 100%」
Alphas couldn’t produce an heir with each other. Since it had been a strategic marriage from the start, having a child through a surrogate was already an established plan. Yuno had known that Beom Yisu — given his pheromone rejection disorder — would be running separate compatibility tests for the sake of an heir, but he hadn’t expected him to actually find a match.
And of all things, it had to be…… the omega he’d already marked as his. Whether that was truly a coincidence remained to be seen.
“Find that omega right now and bring them to me.”
