METAL 1

The second semester after his return, on a Saturday in mid-October.

Hyunsoo walked into the entrance of K Nursing Home, holding a bouquet of artificial flowers. An alpha male on his way out quickly scanned him from head to toe.

Sniff, sniff. As the man flared his nostrils, his eyes darting between Hyunsoo’s cheeks and lips, Hyunsoo felt as if the man’s thoughts were tickling his skin. An omega, hmm. Seems he’s wearing anti-pheromone perfume, but seeing as it can’t hide his scent, heheh, he must be a dominant omega.

The man was sniffing so hard that Hyunsoo imagined he could smell his own scent. The lilac of spring, a pure fragrance of a purple so pale it felt almost white.

Alpha and beta males had always said so whenever they hit on him, trying to sleep with him once. And the doctor who had pinched Hyunsoo’s nipples over his undershirt, completely unrelated to the checkup, had whispered it softly. He couldn’t help but touch them because they protruded so prettily, the doctor had said, as if giving a compliment. And then, as if in concern, he added that because Hyunsoo was so pretty, it couldn’t be helped; he would just have to be careful his whole life.

The memory of the last time he had received a pheromone-related endocrine examination in Korea. It was from his second year of high school.

Hyunsoo tried not to quicken his pace intentionally as he approached the reception desk. There was no reason for him to run away… no reason to ‘be careful’ just because of someone else’s gaze. He was innocent, so he just had to act as he normally would.

Normally? A question bordering on a scoff popped into Hyunsoo’s mind.

What was normally?

It was a fight.

Others stared, and Hyunsoo endured. Even from a very young age, before he presented, the only things Hyunsoo ever heard were “pretty,” “so pretty,” “what a little looker,” “you’re going to be an omega, born for it,” “what a little slut,” “I want to eat you up,” “born to get fucking fucked,” and things like that. Amidst the daily barrage of words and stares, Hyunsoo endured and endured. No matter how much he searched his mind, those were the only memories he had.

So, normally meant a fight. It meant that since he had always fought, he had to fight today as well. Hyunsoo crossed the hallway and approached the reception desk. The beta employee sitting at the desk also began to stare at him. He’s here again, that disgusting extreme dominant bastard, the employee thought.

When that monster comes, you can smell him from ten meters away. When his genitals finally began to swell tautly because of the scent, the beta employee became very angry. He was sure that the pretty omega named Lee Hyunsoo was deliberately flouncing around, spraying his pheromones.

Of course, scientists explain it. Betas cannot smell the trait pheromone scent. They say that so-called extreme dominants are an exception, but that extreme dominance is a trait that has yet to be properly proven scientifically. But if it wasn’t the pheromones, how could this erection be explained?

He had never exchanged any words with Lee Hyunsoo other than to check him in. So it was impossible for him to be falling in spiritual love. In that case, did it mean he was going into heat every time, fixated only on the other person’s face and body?

The employee believed he could never be that kind of person. So, it was obvious that it was that omega’s trickery. That bastard was an extreme dominant omega, and an extreme dominant was a being that clearly affected even betas. So why were the official research results so ambiguous?

Wasn’t it obvious? Because of politics.

Lately, the issue of protecting omega rights had emerged as an important matter again. Since major politicians were making such a fuss trying to win votes over that issue, wouldn’t the research they funded be just so-so? They probably suppressed new findings even if they came out. Especially for extreme dominants, the sample size was too small. How could they have properly investigated something said to be one in three million?

Damn omegas. The beta employee muttered under his breath as he glared at Hyunsoo approaching. Then, he noticed an old recessive omega in a wheelchair coming out into the hallway to the left of the reception desk. He must have come out for a walk from his cramped 10-person hospital room.

The recessive omega’s gaze also quickly fixed on Hyunsoo. Of course, the employee chewed on the thought. A dominant omega was an incredibly rare being, so they were bound to stand out, and anyone would notice them right away.

Because they were so rare, they had been treated like sacred cows since ancient times. That was the case until about seventy years ago.

It was said that if a dominant omega appeared in a family, the household would dance for joy. It meant they had acquired an asset they could sell for a high price to a dominant alpha family, who were mostly large landowners or high-ranking officials. It was said to be to the point where they would take bids from alphas and have them compete on the terms before selling them off.

It was said that was really the case until just seventy years ago.

The reason times have changed so much is all because of Liberator’s suppressants.

ʚଓ

In the old days, when the inhabitants of the peninsula still lived in thatched and tiled-roof houses. Dominant omegas were married off young, as if sold, right after they presented, and after marriage, most of them couldn’t even go outside much. They were confined to the largest room in the center of their alpha masters’ grand mansions and spent their entire lives there.

They lived modestly with little interaction, not just with outsiders but even with the beta servants of the household. It was said that this was because, since old times, there were not a few instances where even a beta would fall for a dominant omega upon seeing one, somehow spend the night with them, and then run away with them.

So, dominant omegas found their life’s purpose in waiting all day for their alpha master in their room, greeting him demurely when he came, and spreading their already wet parts, having masturbated in advance, to satisfy their master. However, while they had to provide satisfaction, the alpha was not to become so intoxicated by the pheromones that he indulged only in intercourse to the point of disrupting his life. If that happened, the omega would be beaten for ruining his master and locked up in the annex for about a month.

Management during heats was a particular problem. When a heat came, the omega would moan all day for two days, and it was said to be difficult for even a dominant alpha to manage unless his rut happened to overlap. Besides, ruts were only about once every six months, while heats were once a month.

Therefore, for this period alone, it was said to be common to call in a ‘caretaker’ from the outside. They were a group of specialists who would force-feed rice gruel down the throats of those who would otherwise just masturbate, not eat properly, and have their eyes roll back in their heads, and relieve the open parts between their legs only with tools.

It’s said that in those days, those guys also made a good living, receiving a pretty penny from dominant alpha families. Nowadays, they have fallen into ruin, with only a very few remaining.

During a heat, the omega would be cared for by the caretaker during the day, and when the alpha returned at night, they would receive his seed and become pregnant. It’s said that an omega who consistently satisfied their master and bore many heirs was, even when they grew old and intercourse became difficult, finally treated as a human being and lived out their final years in peace. Those who could not became disposable the moment their heats stopped. They were driven out to a small annex to subsist on meager meals, or sometimes even thrown out onto the street.

That was the story until just about sixty years ago.

But then, with the rise of the so-called human rights movement, the situation began to change little by little. Even though they were confined to those back rooms, dominant omegas somehow started writing letters and secretly communicating with each other. We are human too, what about this, I read this new book and it says all people have something called human rights, that other book says something about natural rights, they chattered, studied, and even roped in recessives to form organizations…

Thus, the omega uprising began to spread like wildfire across the peninsula. Through struggle after struggle, and by borrowing the influence of powerful foreign nations, their position on the peninsula gradually improved thereafter. To the point where even dominants could wander outside the house in broad daylight.

However, in those days, there were still no suppressants, so there was a limit to perception. From the perspective of betas, who made up seventy-eight percent of the population, it was true that trait-holders were animals, not humans, at least during their heat and rut periods. Especially the omegas, who were in that state for two days every month, how could they be treated only as human?

The prevailing public opinion was that treating them exactly the same as betas was a denial of their birth nature. But then one day, about forty years ago, a suppressant drug appeared on the market.

It wasn’t just an invention of Westerners. It was also the invention of a proud Korean. An achievement by Lee Yongha, a Korean who was the director of research at the British company Davidson.

The media went wild. If it had been something the Westerners had made amongst themselves, the politicians would have been much more cautious about bringing it into Korea. But at that time, when Korea’s GDP was still less than a tenth of the so-called developed countries, it was an item created by the genius Yongha Lee, a proud countryman who stood tall in the world. So, it was immediately brought in and distributed as a subsidized item with ninety-eight percent insurance coverage.

From then on, the omegas had it made. And Lee Yongha also had it made.

A few years later, he went independent, moved to the United States, gathered shareholders, and established his own pharmaceutical company, ‘Liberator.’ It’s unknown what kind of fraud he pulled in the contract for a mere researcher to win the lawsuit, but in any case, Lee Yongha patented the latest improved recipe as his own, not Davidson’s, and left. And in California, he married a dominant omega—I made this suppressant for her! he had revealed in a broadcast interview—and had two children.

His eldest daughter had moved to Seoul about a year ago, inheriting the Korean branch. She reportedly also brought the child she had in high school through a mishap with a dominant alpha American. I heard that her twenty-two-year-old son is now attending Korea University.

The name in the newspaper was, let’s see, the employee searched his mind. Jun Griffin, it said.

So, at the university where that Lee Hyunsoo guy works as an instructor, that bastard would be attending as a third-year transfer student.

An omega-turned-human pharmaceutical heir, and a dominant, no, an extreme dominant omega at the same school. What a fine connection. The employee thought as he glared at the person who had finally come right up to him, and at the same time, licked his lower lip.

Hyunsoo stood before the reception desk, trapped between the gazes.

Even after he stopped, the recessive alpha male near the entrance continued to scan his back. The old recessive omega who had wheeled out from the hospital room also watched him, and the beta employee at the reception desk continued to glare at him. Hyunsoo felt the three lines of sight interlocking like aperture blades toward a single vanishing point, forming a clear image. The picture of the twenty-eight-year-old body named Lee Hyunsoo.

Lee Hyunsoo is not that short. He’s exactly 180 cm. However, his limbs are willowy to the point of looking slightly thin, and his waist, in particular, is very slender. To borrow a phrase that was posted on the campus app’s anonymous lecture evaluation board and was quickly deleted, it’s a waist you want to grab with both hands and pound into right away.

Jet-black hair and jet-black eyes, eyelashes long like willow branches by a lake, and his eyes are large and deep. He gives the impression of a gentle and flexible black cat. On top of that, his skin is as fine as milk-white porcelain without a single blemish, making him look utterly pure, but if you look closely, the corners of his eyes are coy, hiding a seductive feeling. This contrast appears in various places on his face; for example, his lips are somewhat thin, giving an intelligent impression, and the front teeth peeking out between them are even and white, but his tongue is an extremely chewy red.

A mouth and tongue you want to fuck right down to the throat. It was an expression Hyunsoo had heard hundreds of times on the street during his school days, to the point where he was dragged into an alley and was on the verge of having it realized through action. The alpha man at the nursing home entrance also smacked his lips at the thought in his head before reluctantly turning his eyes away and going outside.

The recessive omega, now seventy-seven years old, also soon scowled and turned his wheelchair toward the door leading to the backyard. Rotten bastard, he cursed inwardly.

If he had been born a dominant omega with looks that would stand out even from a hundred meters away, he would have had far more choices in life. He was born a recessive, and he lived his life being beaten after marrying a butcher-like bastard who had raped and forcibly impregnated him during his heat. Hadn’t dominant omegas, in any case, had choices since ancient times?

To the traditional choice of being able to pick and choose a dominant alpha to marry, in modern times, another had even been added. The option to rise dazzlingly as an actor or model. Even if they lacked talent or skill, a certain level of success was practically guaranteed with their looks alone.

But what was with that bastard? Seeing him come to visit someone at a cheap nursing home like this—so he was probably visiting family—he must have thrown away all those choices.

In the last ten years or so, the number of dominant omega bastards like that had increased. Bastards who threw away the future guaranteed to them from birth, claiming they wanted to do ‘what they wanted to do’ or whatever. As a result, that bastard had probably failed to properly support his sick family member and had just stuck them in a place like this. Judging by his looks, if he had become a model, he would have made a fortune just by standing stupidly in front of a camera. Then he could have placed his parent in a first-class hospice, but he probably made a fuss about doing some unprofitable research or studying.

Selfish things, rotten bastards. After the old man cursed and returned to his room, Lee Hyunsoo signed the visitor log and gave the name of the inpatient.

“You’ll have to wait.”

The employee answered with deliberate bluntness. But even as he did, he swallowed hard, his eyes touching Lee Hyunsoo’s straight, smooth-skinned fingers with their neatly trimmed nails.

“The caregiver is bathing Mr. Choi Jinwoo right now. Please wait for twenty minutes. I’ll let him know his son is here as soon as it’s over.”

Hyunsoo nodded. His ‘mother,’ Choi Jinwoo, who at fifty-eight was already afflicted with a severe case of dementia, would be screaming while being forcibly bathed. And when Hyunsoo entered the room, she would surely be furious, cursing at him—you bastard, you son of a bitch—and pinching his arms.

ʚଓ

About a year ago, while he was taking a short break in Kelnon, a small republic in Europe, after just submitting his doctoral dissertation, Hyunsoo heard the news. His ‘mother’ had dementia. Over the receiver, his father declared. I can’t fucking deal with it, so you come back and take care of it.

[You son of a bitch, finding your number was a goddamn pain in the ass. You think cutting ties is as easy as hopping on a plane? Bullshit. You clean up the shit your own kind’s hole shits out. I’m telling you, fuck…]

Perhaps because he had blocked him on the messenger app, an international call had come to his cell phone. If that man hadn’t screamed like that and abruptly hung up, and if he hadn’t become unreachable, Hyunsoo would never have set foot on his native soil again.

Delmar, in Kelnon, was by no means a perfect city. Still, from an omega’s perspective, it was easier to live in than Korea. After all, it was the capital of a country that had been at the center of the Western trait-holder human rights struggle for the past hundred years.

From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, people believed that science meant progress. At that time, many developed countries rounded up trait-holders, confined them, and conducted biological experiments on them. Recessive omegas, who particularly lacked backing, were the main ones to get caught. Kelnon was the only country that had served as a refuge for them during that era. Thanks to this, the influx of capable trait-holder immigrants increased, and Kelnon achieved brilliant development, especially in academia, after the war.