METAL 5

Ah, ah.

Hyunsoo only mouthed the words in a round shape; thankfully, he did not make a sound. His legs were trembling, and he leaned his back more deeply against the wall. The space between his buttocks was not just damp but was soaking through to his groin. Unnng, ugh, he held on by biting the sleeve of his left wrist while his right hand barely managed to open the box of suppressants and take out a plastic capsule.

The pills were packaged one by one in capsules, and getting a capsule out required a complicated process of pressing down on the perforated line with a fingernail and then pushing it up again. Hyunsoo skillfully performed the task with just one hand and immediately tossed a pill into his mouth.

Fortunately, his mouth had already filled with sweet saliva, so the pill managed to go down his throat, albeit with some difficulty, without water. I swallowed it, Hyunsoo felt relieved.

The symptoms would soon subside.

So, doing something like this wouldn’t be dangerous. Hyunsoo made a cover out of two or three layers of toilet paper and placed it over the toilet seat. Then he pulled his pants and underwear down to mid-thigh and sat down, grasping his penis.

They say that masturbating during a heat is dangerous because instead of calming the body down, it makes you want more, and more. But it was okay since he had taken a suppressant. After coming once, his body would immediately calm down. The timing was perfect anyway, since he had to wait for the medicine to kick in.

Hyunsoo sat with his thighs slightly parted and rubbed his penis with his right hand. From behind, he could hear the sound of his fluid dripping into the toilet water, drop by drop. I want something inside me back there, too, he thought.

A water bottle… I want to put it inside.

Because… the large hand that had held it and thrust it before his very nose, the thick palm with its pliable yet firm fingers, suddenly filled his vision.

“Hiek…!”

As soon as the sound escaped through his clenched teeth, Hyunsoo bit his lower lip hard in surprise. Tears threatened to fall. He suddenly realized the true nature of the strange feeling he had felt when his palm touched the water bottle in his bag earlier. That, that damp 500ml water bottle, that dominant alpha’s girth would be about that much, when erect and wet with bodily fluids, surely…. Hyunsoo imagined the bottle being thrust into him, all the way to its base.

In the center of the five petals, spread open pliantly.

Heek, uuuunng, ah.

With just a breathy sound, a nasal moan that resonated only between his nasal bone and jaw, Hyunsoo approached his climax. He could feel his internal organs contracting urgently inside his flower. It wanted to suck on something. An alpha’s thing, a veiny thing, Jun’s thing.

Jun’s thing.

The moment he came, Hyunsoo was lost in a hallucination. The scent he had smelled the entire time he was climbing the stairs in front of the pharmacy was amplified dozens of times in his imagination, and his brain lit up like a Christmas tree made of fragrance. A mix of light green and violet, of green apples and grapes, uunng, a scent like a mix of high-quality red wine and the fragrance of a summer night’s flowers, ah.

Jun’s pheromones.

As all the lightbulbs on the tree seemed to sparkle and explode, Hyunsoo lost consciousness for a few seconds. Still, he held back his own pheromones until the very end. As if cinching his pores shut, he endured that one thing.

After ejaculating, Hyunsoo’s head drooped on its own. Tears fell onto the hand wrapped around his penis, mixing with the whitish fluid pooled in his palm. His lower abdomen and inner thigh muscles ached, probably from being so tense. So that was it, Hyunsoo thought.

He had been too close to Jun earlier. He had inhaled his brilliant scent deeply, and that alone had brought him to this state.

Damn dominant alpha.

Whispers like the fluttering of an insect’s wings scrabbled in his mind before crumbling away.

He waited for about five more minutes while sitting on the toilet. He was already late for his lecture. Still, if he went now and hurried, he could still cover the lesson plan he had originally intended. Jun would have explained the situation well, so the students would be sitting and waiting quietly.

Jun was good at that sort of thing. In that respect, he could be trusted. Even if everything else was a complete mess, he was an alpha who was disgustingly good at playing the part of a well-behaved student on the surface.

Hyunsoo, however, tried not to think about Jun anymore. Instead, he began to recite complex equations in his head. As time passed, his penis cooled, and the image of the flower that had been throbbing throughout his body like a heart gradually disintegrated. Finally, when the suppressant took effect and his lower abdomen felt at ease, Hyunsoo meticulously wiped between his buttocks and his penis with the wet wipes he carried, then stood up and straightened his clothes.

As he quickened his pace and walked toward the residence hall entrance, he passed a police officer in the lobby. Judging by the uniform, it was an outside police officer, not a campus police officer.

It was very rare for official police to come onto campus. The officer, dressed in a deep navy blue that could be mistaken for black, stood with both hands on his hips. He noticed Hyunsoo passing by, turned his head, and stared at him for a long time.

It was a commonplace stare. Hyunsoo exited the building without bothering to look back.

When he arrived at the College of Humanities lecture building, police officers were wandering around there as well. Hyunsoo was a little surprised, but he guessed it was probably because of the theft incident caused by Green Code.

‘Green Code’ is an international non-profit organization that is fundamentally strongly anti-capitalist, and among that, anti-pharmaceutical company, and among that, it has made opposing the distribution of suppressants its agenda. People should respect their natural selves, artificial drugs are unnecessary, it’s all just a capitalist plot. Their motto is that one can live a perfectly human life while living naturally.

Green Code is further divided into two internal factions. The relatively harmless one is the ‘Cosmos Faction,’ which emphasizes meditation; the one that generates extreme controversy is the ‘Camellia Faction.’ They insist that the sexual desire of trait-holders is a gift and should be enjoyed to the fullest. Especially, they say, omegas must enjoy it.

The reason omegas were subjected to human rights oppression in the past, they say, is because only alphas and betas enjoyed themselves while the desires of omegas were objectified. Isn’t that clear from seeing how maddeningly beautiful and seductive creatures like dominant omegas had to be cooped up in a back room their entire lives? Omega liberation comes not from the suppression of sexual desire, but from its release. Enjoy it, embrace the heat as a festival. Arise, ye omegas of all nations!

Thus, the Camellia Faction urges omegas to never take suppressants even when their heat comes, and instead, they hold secret festivals. They gather omegas from each region whose heat cycles are at similar times, and when the time comes, they rent a suitable enclosed space and hold an orgy. If the heats don’t align perfectly, they adjust them by a few days with birth control pills.

All participants are required to wear masks and even come with voice modulators around their necks, so they do not know each other’s identities. Omegas make up the majority of the festival participants. Beta and alpha members of the Camellia Faction do submit applications to participate, but the organizers strictly screen them each time to select only the elite who have ‘no impure intentions.’

However, there is an exception. Since the Camellia Faction is a non-profit organization, it receives donations to sustain its activities, and among the big-money donor families, there are, as one might expect, many dominant alphas.

An illegal sponsored organization must inevitably provide special privileges to the sponsors who protect it. For instance, although it is not codified in rules or anything, it is an open secret that direct family members of so-called big-shot families who have paid a certain amount in donations can participate in the festival in any region without going through the selection process.

Because of this, the Camellia Faction is also inundated with criticism that it is self-contradictory. It is unclear, they say, whether this festival is truly for the self-liberation of omegas, or if it is just letting omegas in heat loose to serve a handful of the most elite dominant alphas. I had heard that there were sometimes those within the faction who showed dissatisfaction.

“Even for the Camellia Faction, theft is something new.”

Right in front of the stairs leading up to the lecture hall, Hyunsoo heard a freshman talking to a sunbae.

“I’m from the countryside. I’d heard that the Camellia Faction in big cities is stronger, or more aggressive? Something like that. But this is really surprising. They’re not just recommending not to use suppressants, they’re actually stealing them and disposing of them?”

“Yeah. This is the second time at a university. I heard it happened once or twice more at high schools and middle schools. When they steal the drugs, they leave behind festival pamphlets and masks and stuff. There was one in my locker too.”

“Do they really believe they can spread their message that way? From the perspective of trait-holders, I think it would just make them angry.”

“Well, rather than aiming for a short-term effect… it’s a symbolic act. On campus, they only hit the buildings near the pharmacy. They don’t actually believe people will stop using them right away just because they took them. They’re trying to attract attention first.”

“Still, this is just a crime, isn’t it?”

“It is a crime. That’s why the police are here. It’s annoying. The locker keys were already so flimsy I was worried about them, it would be nice if someone submitted a suggestion to replace them all….”

The two fell silent as the omega part-time lecturer walked right past them. As he climbed the stairs, quickening his pace slightly, Hyunsoo thought. There was a reason the Camellia Faction in the Gangbuk area of Seoul was being so aggressive these days.

Because of the serial murder case that had occurred over the past few months, the Camellia Faction’s membership must have decreased significantly. Perhaps a few sponsors had dropped out as well. That’s why they were now desperate to recruit new members.

It couldn’t be helped, since it would be scary to think you could be targeted and lose your life just for participating in the festival. Hyunsoo thought. A series of withdrawals was a natural consequence.

The police announced that the possibility of it being an inside job by a Camellia Faction member was the highest. Even though the festival participants didn’t know each other’s identities, they came into physical contact with each other, so there was no way to stop them if they secretly promised to meet separately after the festival. That’s how they arranged to meet one-on-one, and one of them ended up murdering the other.

In that… state, no less.

Ah, I see. Hyunsoo suddenly realized.

The police might not be at Korea University right now just because of the theft incident, but rather, there was a high possibility it was because of the murder. If it were just because of the theft, this many outside police officers would not have entered the campus so urgently. They wouldn’t have gotten permission for that either.

The serial murders occurred in the Gangbuk area at intervals of six to eight weeks. Since the last incident happened in mid-August, it was about time for the timer to go off. If the police really were on campus because of that case, then this time the victim could have been a Korea University student or staff member. Or, conversely, the possibility that the suspect was affiliated with Korea University could not be ruled out.

Finely chopped-up body.

Black plastic bags.

The description he had encountered in the news connected with his own old memories, which put Hyunsoo in a bad mood. He stopped for a moment in front of the lecture hall door to collect his thoughts before entering.

Jun Griffin was sitting alone in the front row, his hands placed neatly on the desk. The rest of the undergraduate students were scattered here and there behind him. It was an upper-level class, so there were many juniors and seniors, and the total number of students was fifteen.

Hyunsoo apologized for being late, took his laptop out of his bag, placed it on the lectern, and connected it to the projector with a cable. As the screen began to glitter on the wide-open wall space after he slid the whiteboard panels to either side, he quickly became absorbed in the lecture.

A few students asked questions, and he answered them. Jun also raised his hand a couple of times and asked good questions, so the lecturer answered him sincerely.

Hyunsoo liked this space. Inside a university lecture hall or seminar room, he could always forget his own body and function like a brain on a stick. He had worried that a lecture hall in Seoul would be different from Del Mar, but for two semesters now, Hyunsoo had been quite satisfied.

Of course, there were bound to be humans who, even after entering the halls of academia, tried to treat others only as leather balloons filled with pheromones, so Hyunsoo had intentionally made the syllabus extremely difficult. It was to ensure that no student who wasn’t genuinely interested in the course topic and prepared to dedicate their brain would dare to enroll.

Nevertheless, there were a few students who just sat there with their nostrils flared while staring at Hyunsoo on the first day. But they dropped out after just three or four classes. Most undergraduates these days were well aware that the world was too harsh to graduate with a D or F on their transcript.

The remaining students held on well and left good course evaluations. Long comments stating that the lecture was as rewarding as it was difficult were often written separately below the multiple-choice evaluation form.

But soon I won’t be able to give ‘difficult but rewarding good lectures’ like this, Hyunsoo thought. With so little time to do research, even lecturing was too much. He would fail to keep up with the trends, and his sense of depth would grow dull. When he had such thoughts, sometimes even in the middle of a lecture, a chill would run down his spine, and he would feel as if he were breaking out in a cold sweat.

One way or another, he could not stay at the lectern for long. He had to find other work.

While gesturing from the lectern, Hyunsoo accidentally shone the projector beam in his face. Hospital bills, monthly rent, food expenses, actor, porn, marriage… His temples throbbed as white letters resembling whispers crawled across his vision like caterpillars. But Hyunsoo did not want to choose any of them.

Hyunsoo knew that he had changed. It was not just because of external circumstances that he could not stay at the lectern for long. In fact, he no longer even wanted to be a researcher.

No, it wasn’t something he could just turn away from with such a negative expression. Only one specific role could save him. Heading towards a predetermined happy ending…. The lines of the lecture notes he had memorized stumbled on the tip of his tongue and came out slurred, flustering Hyunsoo. He barely managed to pull himself together, covered the material he had planned, and ended the lecture.

The students filed out through the back door one by one. But Jun, who had been sitting at the very front, waited quietly before getting up and coming toward the lectern. Hyunsoo guessed that he had stayed behind to ask a question. Jun almost always stayed behind after class.

Hyunsoo looked around Jun. As expected, no one was there. No one was waiting for him outside the classroom either.

Until last semester, he had had quite a few friends by his side, but they had all disappeared at some point. Everywhere on campus, Jun was always an outsider, all alone. Jun was looking at the lecturer’s face and then asked, as if sharing a small secret.

“Did you take your medicine okay earlier?”

“Thanks to you. But, actually, that’s not Mr. Griffin’s business.”

Hyunsoo replied in a slightly admonishing tone. Jun’s face, all the way to his ears, turned red in an instant, but he still stammered out an excuse-like confession.

“I’m sorry. You looked so unwell, I was worried. You even stammered once or twice during the lecture earlier… You’ve never done that before.”

“…”

Whatever the circumstances, showing a weakness during the lecture was clearly Hyunsoo’s own fault. Hyunsoo apologized.

“I’m sorry. Was there any part that you couldn’t understand, or that was unclear?”