METAL 2

Moreover, Hyunsoo lived confined in the liberal arts college—a breeding ground for left-wing liberals, so to speak—during his master’s and doctoral programs. The people he met were mostly fellow doctoral students, professors, and instructors. Individuals who, at least in principle, held the conviction that humans should primarily interact through their minds.

As a result, if he were to compare the racial discrimination he received while earning his degree in Kelnon with the average treatment of a dominant omega in Korea, the former was undoubtedly better. Adding to this, the public opinion in Korea had rapidly worsened around the time Hyunsoo presented, and that played a large part. It was triggered by an incident where an omega trait-holder working in a company cafeteria indiscriminately poisoned betas and alphas.

Only after several dozen people had languished and died was the perpetrator identified. Thanks to this, the hard-won achievements of the trait-holder human rights movement regressed once again. There were voices suggesting that the fundamental structure that forced omegas to harbor resentment should be considered, but they were quickly trampled, and only the voices asserting that omegas should be stomped on to make them obedient grew louder, riding every wave online.

Amidst that turmoil, Hyunsoo had chosen Kelnon for his master’s studies, as if seeking asylum. He had no intention of ever returning to Korea, determined to bury his bones at that university. He wanted to live tucked away in a place where only the brain, the clean brain, was seen. That was why he had set his sights on academia from a young age in the first place.

However, Hyunsoo did not dream of becoming a professor. He had no confidence in belonging to an organization, even a university. But in Kelnon, after completing a postdoc1), one could become a kind of full-time instructor. It was a position registered as faculty but in reality required living as a freelancer, meaning he could be a loner as much as he wanted. Of course, the salary was much lower than a professor’s, but if he did online translation and interpretation part-time, it seemed sufficient to live alone.

Fortunately, Hyunsoo had talent. Throughout his doctoral program, he not only received good grades but also often heard sincere compliments from those around him. Thanks to that, for the first time in his life, he was able to live trapped in the illusion that he had entered a world where people truly saw past his shell and only looked at his brain. The feeling of being just a brain resting on a spine-shaped stick, with no need for a body.

His advisor had suggested that they discuss him taking a paid postdoc position after he submitted his dissertation. Hyunsoo had immediately agreed.

But then the call came.

Family is a burden one cannot shake off.

Until high school, he was beaten by his parents, especially his father, to the point of breaking bones. Because he did not follow the path they wanted for him.

His beta father was a man who originally despised omegas. But after marrying a smart beta woman, he apparently felt that she was always ‘looking down on him,’ which made him feel bad. The two soon divorced, and his father found a thoroughly intimidated recessive omega male somewhere and married him. The omega was from a very poor family and was not welcomed in the marriage market because his reproductive organs were not physically sound.

His father had married such an omega simply because he wanted a ‘submissive’ partner. His business was doing well at the time, so it was possible for him to pay a hefty sum to a matchmaking agency and acquire the ‘item’ he wanted. But that omega, who should have been infertile, suddenly got pregnant, and the child grew up to present as a dominant omega at the age of fourteen. This was after his father’s business had failed and he had even incurred debt.

Between the couple struggling in their tight circumstances, a dominant omega appeared as if a miracle from god. The couple began to scheme to make money by selling this golden goose.

First, marriage. Right after Hyunsoo presented, matchmaking offers from dominant alphas began to pour into his house. The reason was that he needed to be educated early to fulfill his role after marriage. The education costs, of course, would be fully covered by the alpha family. And the entertainment industry. Offers for modeling and acting also flooded in. His parents were beside themselves with joy. All Hyunsoo had to do was pick one.

But that bastard Hyunsoo refused them all. He said he couldn’t give up studying because he loved it.

That damn little thing wouldn’t go into the entertainment industry, nor would he become the bride of a rich dominant alpha.

Selfish son of a bitch, selfish son of a bitch. In high school, Hyunsoo was beaten while hearing only those words every day. His parents still held out hope of selling him off someday, so they carefully chose where to hit him, just enough not to permanently ruin his face and body. They particularly avoided his face.

Only after taking the college entrance exam did Hyunsoo leave home and start living alone. Only after he was recognized as an ‘adult’ and no longer needed his parents’ signature on various documents.

He found a boarding house with bars on the windows and a security camera at the entrance and lived in constant fear, always carrying an electric taser. And as soon as his scholarship for his master’s and doctoral studies, which he had been preparing for long before graduating from his undergraduate program, was confirmed, he left for his master’s in Kelnon. He had not the slightest intention of returning to Korea.

But what his father didn’t know was that Choi Jinwoo was not simply Hyunsoo’s ‘fellow omega,’ his ‘mother’—he had forced Hyunsoo to call Choi Jinwoo ‘mother’ regardless of his gender, saying that one patriarch in the house was enough. Anyway, if it had been only that, Hyunsoo might have turned his back on him.

Whether his father had thrown his partner away like trash or not, if it had been only that, Hyunsoo might not have thought to pick him up again himself. Even if he cared, it would have at most been limited to sending a portion of the hospital fees from Kelnon. But Choi Jinwoo had helped Hyunsoo just once.

He had willingly become Hyunsoo’s accomplice then and had also promised to keep the secret. Perhaps he did so more as a fellow omega than as a parent.

So Hyunsoo came back to Seoul.

Of course, he hadn’t wanted to come. Selling his furniture, urgently finding someone to take over his not-yet-expired lease, stopping by the immigration office to sort out paperwork—until then, Hyunsoo had just moved his body busily. But on the last night before he left, while packing his final belongings, he cried and cried.

And so he came to Korea. Choi Jinwoo was in a level 2 nursing home. According to an employee, he hadn’t had a visitor in over three months, and his hospital fees and special trait-holder medication costs were two months overdue.

Choi Jinwoo was lying in a bed in a 10-person room. And as soon as he saw Hyunsoo, he swiped his hand across the bedside table. He was clearly looking for something to throw. Then, as Hyunsoo approached, he pulled his forearm toward him and pinched the flesh mercilessly. You fuuucking bastard.

An employee explained that he was a patient with severe delirium. His dementia had also progressed so much that it was doubtful whether he could distinguish between his husband and Hyunsoo, no, between Hyunsoo and the caregiver, no, between the caregiver and the table. Anyway, his personality had completely changed, and he persistently cursed and hit Hyunsoo. In a place like this, huh, you dog-like, you skipped away, and stuck me in a place like this, you son of a bitch, die, just die.

Dementia is not usually caused by direct psychological trauma. Still, Hyunsoo thought it might have had an effect. His father, claiming ‘I am not a man who hits his spouse,’ did not hit Choi Jinwoo, but he had thrown things often, and his verbal abuse was very severe. Perhaps because of that, Jinwoo had shown spasmodic symptoms of delirium since Hyunsoo was young. He would say he was a bug and beg Hyunsoo to kill him, or, if you don’t want mom to die, please just listen to dad.

[Baby, my baby, please save your mom. Baby, get married. Get married and give your dad some money. Baby.]

His brain was definitely shrinking, Hyunsoo had thought at the time. It was obvious that if he stayed in that house for long, he would become like that too. So he ran away as soon as he took the college entrance exam. Because his brain, only his brain, was something he could not compromise on.

Hyunsoo knew he was smart. From elementary school, teachers had adored him. Even in high school, when his body had matured, a few female teachers had enjoyed having purely intellectual conversations with him. It was all thanks to his brain.

Hyunsoo had one last talent that allowed him to live like a human, transcending the shell he was born with. So he couldn’t give that up.

But regardless of the reason, it was true that Hyunsoo had run away, leaving Choi Jinwoo with the beast. It was also true that even as his mind was breaking down beside the beast, he never uttered a word about his son’s secret, a secret that would have immediately become a huge weakness if his father had found out.

Because Hyunsoo had abandoned him and run away, Choi Jinwoo had broken. To a state where he could no longer keep the secret of his own volition.

When you get dementia, recent memories disappear. Your personality changes too. But old, and among them, fatal memories, are said to sometimes come back even more vividly, as if they happened today. Hyunsoo was sure that Choi Jinwoo could not have forgotten the memory of that day. The memory of getting blood on his hands for the first time. It’s okay, child, my baby, this is self-defense, he had whispered in a rarely cold and calm voice, while the body…

The memory of the two of them dividing that young alpha’s body… into black plastic bags together.

The cold moonlight of that night as they drove silently to a secluded suburb with it in the car.

Three days after the two of them had disposed of the body, the news of the recessive alpha’s disappearance appeared on the evening TV news. Along with the information that he was a relative of an international conglomerate family. His father had clicked his tongue and shaken his head, but Choi Jinwoo had sat beside him pretending nothing was wrong, skillfully peeling fruit, and when Hyunsoo had frozen, pale as a sheet, he had calmly stroked his shoulder. Only then did he act like Hyunsoo’s true comrade and parent.

So Hyunsoo had to pay the price, however late. He had to stay by the side of someone who could, with an unbridled mouth, blow decisive evidence about a case whose statute of limitations had not yet run out by two more years, to monitor, soothe, and prepare.

So Hyunsoo, in early January last year, had no choice but to return to Korea, even as he despaired as if his heart were shattering.

Because he was afraid of his murder from 8 years ago being discovered. No, the rape from 8 years ago.

Hyunsoo would reflect. It was aggravated rape, and he was the victim. But the world would only treat it as murder. No matter how many times that alpha had shoved and twisted foreign objects into the omega’s body, if the omega, with a trembling hand, had plunged a blade into the alpha’s neck just once, only once, it was murder. Besides, Hyunsoo himself would only get support from a public defender, but the other side would surely bring in a team from a fancy law firm.

If it were treated as murder, even if there were some extenuating circumstances, he would surely be sent to prison. And if a so-called extreme dominant omega went to prison… Hyunsoo would bite his lip, not wanting to even imagine it. If he was caught before the statute of limitations ran out, it was over.

If someone were to somehow find out about what happened then and blackmail Hyunsoo, he would have no choice but to do whatever they told him to.

ʚଓ

After returning to Korea in early January, Hyunsoo visited the nursing home on both days of the weekend. While getting the blue bruises on his arm pinched black again and hearing curses.

During the week, he mainly worked as an instructor. He taught at four universities, six subjects per semester, twelve lectures a week, and did online translation part-time in his spare time. He was extremely reluctant to get directly involved with people in spaces outside the university, but due to an old connection, he took on just one private tutoring position. As a result, there was no time for his own research other than preparing for classes.

There was no time to build a research career by publishing papers or attending academic conferences. He had given up on that while crying on the night before he returned to Korea.

For now, he was working as an instructor because it was the only thing he knew how to do, but Hyunsoo thought he couldn’t live as a part-time instructor forever. A part-time instructor was different from a full-time one in Kelnon, and taking care of a patient cost a lot of money for hospital fees and medicine. Choi Jinwoo’s body was unusual even among trait-holders, so using medicines that suited his body often resulted in parts not covered by insurance.

So, in the long run, it was better to choose another profession to earn money. He had a few things in mind, like getting a formal job at a foreign language academy or working as a dedicated interpreter.

But Hyunsoo was still scared to enter an organization. Thinking about what he had gone through at school after presenting, the mere thought of a large group of people made his skin crawl as if it were being flayed. If he were to take on a service job like an interpreter that involved working outside, he would have to deal with an unspecified number of clients, and he didn’t even want to imagine what he would go through in the process.

As a result, he kept putting off writing a new resume. Amidst being tired and tired, Hyunsoo went to three universities and the tutoring place during the week, and on weekends, he visited the nursing home and got pinched by Choi Jinwoo. Ungrateful bastard, smelly slut.

Even while being pinched and hit, Hyunsoo would still tell Choi Jinwoo stories about the outside world, place a bouquet of artificial flowers on the bedside table, and then leave the room. Every time he did, the two walls of the nursing home hallway seemed to rush in narrowly on both sides of his shoulders and whisper. This is your life now.

You can’t escape from here.

As the months passed, his despair only deepened. On the weekend of the second week of May, when the semester was past its midpoint, Hyunsoo walked out of the narrow hallway, stumbling with dizziness.

As soon as he stepped outside the hospital, the familiar gazes poured down. Gazes that were hundreds of times more powerful than Hyunsoo’s own self-esteem, than his own sense of his body, and overwhelmingly abundant in quantity. He walked step by step through the sunny downtown area as if swimming, submerged in a pool of clear eyeballs.

Hyunsoo knew that even at that very moment, photos of him taken in secret were circulating in group chats, on the campus app, and on various anonymous communities. Even if they don’t choose to be actors, extreme dominant omegas end up being photographed in public places as if they were actors.

If anything, actors get legal protection, don’t they? A voice whispered in the pool of gazes. The same voice as from the hospital hallway earlier.

An actor’s body and face are a company’s property, so they protect them from being photographed. If doctored photos circulate, the entrusted law firm immediately files a large-scale lawsuit. Why not just become an actor now anyway? Well, twenty-seven is too late. Hmm, but if you were a porn actor, you’d be an instant star.

It’s already twelve. Recalling his schedule, Hyunsoo tried to distract himself. I need to stop by the department office at Korea University by one. But the voice flowed along the texture of the sunlight, the light that exposed his body to all sides, and teased him annoyingly. Or why not listen to your parents now? Marry a dominant alpha. You can live off your husband’s money.

Pick a dominant one. Why, there’s one at the university where you teach.

The chaebol student who always sits in the front row and asks you a lot of questions, the one who got a really high score on the recent exam.

…Jun.

Brown hair with a band of golden sheen and green eyes flashed through his mind. Under the bright sunlight, Hyunsoo paused his steps for a moment.

It was a strange feeling. His head tingled. In the moment when he was trapped in the shadow of the past and feared the future, in the middle of that bridge of time, the image of one person throbbed wildly in his mind, and somewhere inside his ribs ached as if it would break.

Marriage, huh, Hyunsoo chuckled. He had no intention of marrying an alpha. Besides, a dominant from a chaebol family. He knew well how marriages between dominant alphas and dominant omegas worked. It was close to unilateral possession.

The reality was that married life between dominant trait-holders had not changed much from sixty-odd years ago. Because powerful families kept to themselves, unlike in the case of recessives, the public hand could not intervene, so it had remained much more conservative. The omega lives like a doll, confined to a back room except for family events, and is monitored with bodyguards and even a tracker whenever they go out.

It’s because the pheromones don’t disappear, Hyunsoo recalled what he had read. A dominant omega’s pheromones do not diminish in their effect or intensity even after imprinting. It’s just that the omega themselves feels sexual revulsion towards other alphas and suffers extreme pain during the act, so they take care of themselves. But other alphas still feel attracted to the omega. In the case of an extreme dominant like Hyunsoo, the same goes for betas.