METAL 3

Therefore, a dominant omega sold to a chaebol family has no choice but to live a life thoroughly restricted as an exclusive possession.

Hyunsoo had no intention of ending up in such a situation. Above all, in Hyunsoo’s opinion, it wasn’t even a true relationship of possession. Whether alpha or omega, love, sexual desire, and what have you, they simply act according to the family’s will and customs. They get married and have children if told to, raise them if told to, the dominant alpha works outside, and the omega stays confined, only adorning himself. There is no will of their own, no distinctiveness of soul.

Jun Griffin. Hyunsoo silently rolled the pronunciation over his tongue. And then, the very center of his heart finally shattered with a crack.

His heart broke like a white porcelain vessel that had held something very clear and pure. But it was a delusion. As soil poured out with a surge, the vessel’s true identity was revealed. It was a flowerpot. A flowerpot that had harbored a terrible seed. A monstrous flower had sprouted and grown so large that the pot had shattered, pushed by the roots.

Biting his lip hard, Hyunsoo pressed his hand to his chest. He felt as if he could touch the familiar purple plant, its five petals wide open, right inside his rib cage. A giant rafflesia.

Hyunsoo staggered on the street. In an instant, his insides twisted so much that he couldn’t regain his senses.

Fighting back nausea, Hyunsoo barely managed to walk into the subway station and retched in the public restroom almost like a seizure. Only after vomiting with great difficulty did he return home. To the omega-only officetel he had struggled to find after being harassed by stalkers several times in dorm-style rooms and one-room studios until last month.

Hyunsoo stayed up for several nights, pondering something. His stomach twisted to the point where he thought he would die, and he took stomach medicine, only to throw that up into the toilet as well. Clutching his chest, he couldn’t help it. His body and mind were already poisonously wide open.

In the center of the five petals, he just couldn’t close the place that had become so desperately empty again.

The dreadful void that had revealed its crimson identity 8 years ago. It was blooming there, far more fatally empty than could be compared to that time. At this rate, he would surely… him…

At the end of his frustration, a solution miraculously popped into Hyunsoo’s head.

For a moment, Hyunsoo tilted his head. It didn’t feel like a thought he had come up with himself. It felt as if a scenario written by someone else was simply being entered into his brain, step by step. But it didn’t matter. Hyunsoo was ready to follow it.

To Hyunsoo, it felt like a kind of choreography. The choreography of a social dance that could never be danced unless the partner willingly initiated the step, a dance where only the powerful partner could lead and Hyunsoo himself must only obey.

Something like this is okay. Thinking this, he accepted the role. The final step would be in about half a year, at the end of September, or early October.

It would be completed by then.

The following weekend, Hyunsoo stopped by the nursing home and sat by Choi Jinwoo’s side. While trying to listen carefully to the patient’s ramblings and respond, he was contemplating in his head what prop to use as the key for the final chapter.

From his first visit, Hyunsoo had been bringing bouquets of artificial flowers and placing them on the bedside table. As a result, he had coincidentally found out what kind of bouquet Choi Jinwoo reacted to particularly sensitively—a bouquet of several red, double-petaled flowers similar to salvia, wrapped in deeply colored plastic.

Hyunsoo guessed that the plastic tightly wrapped around those red paper flowers reminded him of something. After Hyunsoo’s soothing and cajoling, the patient had now come to rarely mention direct clues about the incident from 8 years ago. Only when he sees a bouquet of red, double-petaled flowers with their upper stems tightly bound in dark plastic does his eyes suddenly flash open, and he starts spouting all sorts of things, regardless of who is around.

Hyunsoo sat by the bedside, blinked, and then left.

On a Saturday in early October, in the middle of the fall semester, Hyunsoo finished his usual weekend visit to the nursing home, came out onto the street, and headed for the subway entrance.

His complexion was not good. In the meantime, several unexpected variables had been added, and the situation had changed. With a frown, as if making a precarious calculation, Hyunsoo began to descend the stairs. The moment he stepped on the first one, his ankle faltered.

I’ve been skipping meals often lately. He only then realized.

He had been so busy with one thing or another that he hadn’t paid attention to eating. Looking back, he hadn’t eaten anything this morning either except for a cup of instant coffee. As he stopped to rest, holding onto the handrail, he suddenly heard someone else’s voice.

“Are you okay?”

It was a man’s voice. A familiar type of tone and an obvious body scent. A recessive alpha, Hyunsoo thought and answered without even looking up.

“I’m fine.”

Hyunsoo tried to continue down the stairs with a blank expression. But the other person had already placed a hand casually on his shoulder.

The alpha man squeezed his hand and scanned the other’s profile up and down. A white shirt, the hem pulled down long to cover it, but a plump, nicely lifted ass, and long legs hidden under slim-fit pant legs. He licked his lips overtly and then snapped.

“Someone asks you if you’re okay out of concern, you could at least look at their face when you talk, no?”

Hyunsoo immediately sensed it. This man was on the stronger side for a recessive alpha.

A dominant omega’s sense of smell is extremely sensitive. The other person wasn’t intentionally spraying pheromones, but through his skin, hair, and breath, he was inevitably emitting chemical particles at the level of body scent. Hyunsoo tried to ignore it and walk down, but the man’s hand was firm. He kneaded the area from Hyunsoo’s shoulder to his neck and said in a soothing tone.

“Oh my, look at this. You look really pale. Should I buy you a cup of coffee?”

While offering to buy coffee, he pointed for some reason to a place with a motel sign.

“Or should we go down? You seem to really want to go down. Hey, do you want to rest in the public restroom downstairs? Want to throw up a little? You must not be feeling well.”

Hyunsoo smiled.

And with a bright smile, he said, No, I’m fine, and repeated it clearly, looking the man straight in the eye one more time. And he simply repeated the motion of trying to go down the stairs mechanically until the other person let go of his hand. Like a game NPC blocked by an obstacle.

It was a place with security cameras. The man finally gave a smirk and backed away, but at the same time, he put his hand in his back pocket.

He’s taking out his phone.

A sentence like a whisper, as if receiving a radio wave emitted from that very phone, popped clearly into Hyunsoo’s head. Then, electricity sparked somewhere in the nerves of his brain, and a ringing began in his ears.

Slowly, very slowly, Hyunsoo went down the stairs. But even though he was walking with the man behind him, the more he walked, the more it felt like he was getting closer to the screen of the man’s phone. To the glossy rectangular picture that contained his own jet-black back of the head and nape, the part where the outline of his shoulder blades was visible under his shirt, and his waist and ass just below.

Walking forward as if being sucked into the picture frame, Hyunsoo thought. That man will probably send the picture to a friend, and in the chat window… Suddenly, his vision dimmed, and he couldn’t even imagine it properly.

No way, it can’t be. Hyunsoo repeated to himself inwardly.

But his lower abdomen melted dangerously as if with a thud.

I hope not, it can’t be. Thinking it like someone else’s prayer he had read in a novel, Hyunsoo got off at Korea University Station, transferred again to the shuttle bus, and arrived in front of the humanities building. By then, he was sure. Even though it wasn’t the right date.

It’s been like this often since he returned to Korea last December. His cycle had been disrupted. The doctor at the university clinic said it could happen if stress was too severe, but he didn’t prescribe anything special. He didn’t have the money to get a separate prescription for hormone stabilizers administered by injection. That part isn’t covered by insurance.

Except for the subsidized suppressants, Hyunsoo currently couldn’t afford any other prescriptions. He went up to the second floor of the humanities building and went to the cabinet in the language and literature department’s instructor lounge. He had put an emergency suppressant in the cabinet just in case.

Normally, he would carry it in his bag, but for the past few days, the weather had been abnormally hot, like summer. The latest suppressants were jelly-type and melted easily, so it was specified to be ‘stored at room temperature in a dark place.’

Especially since it was a ten-minute walk from the nursing home to the subway, and after the medicine he carried in his bag last weekend got sticky on the walk from the hospital to the subway, Hyunsoo had decided not to carry the suppressant on the days he visited the hospital. Instead, he kept a stock at home and in the cabinets at each university…

“Oh.”

But Hyunsoo opened the cabinet and muttered softly.

The suppressant was gone.

The books and all the other things were there as they were, but only the medicine container where he had put the suppressant was missing.

It’s okay, I can buy it at the campus pharmacy. There’s still time before class starts, so I can last for the twenty minutes it takes to go there and back. Hyunsoo thought. Who stole it was something to think about later. It wasn’t as if he had no idea at all.

If it was indeed that organization, they probably weren’t targeting only Hyunsoo himself. But for it to happen right before his class time, it was true that he had an ominous feeling.

Was it really that organization’s doing, or was it that kid again… A face popped into his head, and Hyunsoo frowned, but when he turned around and saw a pamphlet on the lounge table, he was rather relieved. You can live without medicine too!

Let’s all escape from the grasp of giant pharmaceutical companies.

Refusing to be slaves to capitalism

Naturalist Trait-Holder Gathering

Greencode Dongbaek Faction

Contact: XX—XXX—XXXX

After a light sigh, Hyunsoo looked away from the pamphlet, left the instructor’s room, and headed for the campus pharmacy. He just had to leave the humanities building, walk across the lawn path and the road, and go into the basement of the student union building.

“That’ll be thirty-six thousand won.”

The staff said, holding out a ‘Pre-Fill’ box containing just six pills. Hyunsoo pressed his lips together and held out his debit card.

The sound of the paper receipt printing, zzt, zzt, gnawed at Hyunsoo’s stomach like a serrated blade. By the standard of the student cafeteria, it was the price of about 8 meals, the price of two artificial flower bouquets to take to the hospital.

Two a day for three days, thirty-six thousand won for just one dose. This is what happens when an individual buys suppressants directly without government mediation.

In the case of subsidized suppressants, trait-holders can get medicine at a designated pharmacy once a year for a price that is almost free. But because the basic amount is distributed free of charge by the state, the price rises ridiculously if an individual wants to buy extra. Putting the receipt and medicine in his bag and turning around, Hyunsoo thought that he hated the Dongbaek Faction activists.

But at the same time, he understood. It is a scary thing that one company has a near monopoly worldwide on a medicine that is like life itself to trait-holders. Because ‘Pre-Fill’ is the only suppressant that can be officially purchased in the country. This price is also, in fact, because of that monopoly.

Just when the patent for ‘Pre-Fill’ is about to expire, Liberator develops a new drug around that time and renews its contracts with various governments. Moreover, it has monopolized some of the raw materials, making it difficult for generics to come out. Other companies’ generics released using low-quality raw materials had problems like side effects, got a bad reputation, and were sued. There are rumors that Liberator inflated those rumors, but there is no proof.

Hyunsoo was about to go up to the first floor but stopped on the stairs. People were pouring down.

Standing against the wall, he idly observed the people’s faces. Judging by their appearance, most were omegas, and it seemed to be a mix of students, instructors, and staff. They were all going to the basement pharmacy.

The Dongbaek kids must have really searched high and low all over campus and stolen the medicine, Hyunsoo thought. It seemed they had touched not only the students’ cabinets but also the instructor’s room, the administrative staff’s office, and even the janitors’ break room. The stairs quickly filled up with omegas trying to buy suppressants. To the point where everyone had to move like squirming caterpillars.

An alpha walking from the direction of the basement bookstore came over, said, “Ugh, jeez,” and deliberately made a gesture of holding his nose before turning back. It seemed he would wait and go up later.

But Hyunsoo didn’t have that luxury. There were only twenty minutes left until his class, and this was the only staircase to the first floor. He had to get back to the humanities building quickly.

Hyunsoo hesitated. Because he didn’t want to push through the people to go up. He lacked the strength to push, but he was also afraid of their bodies brushing against him. It was because he had always had bad experiences in crowded places like the subway during rush hour. Even knowing that most of the people crowding the stairs now were omegas, he couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling.

“Are you okay?”

Suddenly, a whisper reached his ear, and Hyunsoo stepped back, almost hitting the back of his head on the wall.

Because the insinuating tone and even the line were the same, he had reflexively thought that the recessive alpha from the subway had followed him all the way here. After all, there had been more than one or two alphas who started stalking him as if they had received some kind of permission after talking to him just once on the street. Not just in Seoul, but also when he was studying abroad in Kelnon.

He remembered the alpha taking out his phone on the stairs. He must have taken a picture, right?

It’s not necessarily the case that the recessive alpha himself followed him right away. He could have been aiming for his prey with a more long-term perspective and sent out other bait first. Could he have sent a picture to his friends or younger siblings who attend or work at this school and given them orders?