Ridiculous.
One in a million? What am I, TW*CE?
Hanbyeol lodged an objection on the spot.
“I-it could be a misdiagnosis, couldn’t it?”
The population of South Korea: roughly fifty million. Of those, trait-holders made up under thirty percent, give or take.
And even being generous and calling it a full thirty, half of them were alphas. Which left fifteen percent. About 7.5 million people.
If the phenomenon happened to one person in a million, then at the most flattering count there were eight cases like mine in this entire country. Eight, counting me.
And forget all that — scale it up to the whole planet? Twelve hundred people.
Throw out trait distinctions entirely and take all eight billion? A measly eight thousand!
“Realistically, there’s no chance of that. I ran it several times just in case, but the values came back almost exactly the same.”
“Almost isn’t exactly!”
“With numbers like these, you can safely call it exact.”
“I-I don’t want to be an omega!”
“It isn’t really the kind of thing you can opt out of by not wanting it.”
“But...!”
Hanbyeol’s lips trembled. In his past life, and in this one too, he’d had no connection whatsoever to pheromones or any of that business, so he’d never felt much dissonance about it.
An omega?
If it’s going to be like this, just make me a gamma instead!
Seeing a face gone pale enough to faint on the spot, the doctor offered a consoling mutter.
“Still, fortunately, it should be just as you were hoping — there won’t be much change to your daily life. Your total pheromone level is about the same as what a dominant omega leaks on an ordinary day.”
It was not, of course, especially comforting.
“...”
“At the early stage of manifestation, that’s on the low side even for a recessive omega.”
“...So you’re saying I’m an extreme recessive?”
“Yes.”
Since there were cases where the medication had to change depending on the trait, he explained, pheromone levels were the very first thing they checked in a patient suspected of manifesting.
And because the graph sometimes spiked, they logged it hour by hour and took the average, which was why this particular figure was never wrong, the doctor said.
He gave a small nod, as if he’d finished sorting his thoughts out on his own, then added,
“The later the manifestation, the more markedly trait adaptability tends to drop — but with a reading this faint, you can treat it as barely different from being a beta. You shouldn’t have any trouble adjusting.”
“Even as an omega?”
“As a rule, dominants cycle once every two months, recessives about once a quarter. The weaker the trait, the bigger the differences get, from pheromone sensitivity all the way to cycle frequency. In your case...”
“...”
“Roughly once every few years. And even then, think of it as your libido running a little stronger than usual while you’re aching all over. As for pheromones, unless it’s something special, it’ll just feel like a few more people on the street are wearing cologne. Do you have any plans to get pregnant, by the way?”
“...”
Preg— sorry?
“No?!”
Hanbyeol jolted hard enough to nearly launch himself out of the chair. At the violence of the recoil, the doctor nodded along again, with the air of a man who’d expected exactly that.
“That’s fortunate too, then. Extreme recessives are subfertile to the point of being near-infertile. Sperm activity does slacken off a little as well, though not so much that natural conception becomes impossible.”
“...”
“Ordinary trait-holders can’t reproduce with betas, but you’re the exception.”
...So that means I can go on living exactly like a regular beta?
Having apparently said all he had to say, the doctor told him it was getting late and he was free to head back to his room, and Hanbyeol slowly rose from the chair.
Thud.
“...! Are you all right?”
His legs had given out and dumped him on the floor.
Sprawled there in the exact pose of a tragic heroine out of some TV drama, Hanbyeol hung his head and clenched his fists. He was twenty-four years old. Twenty-four!
The age you graduate if you clear the university gates on the first try and tough out four brutal years without taking a leave of absence. The age you take your first step into the real world.
Why twenty-four, when there’s mandatory service to get through? He’d kept putting it off while chasing Kang Taeseo around, so he hadn’t gone yet. Well — trait-holders are exempt, so they don’t serve at all.
And now he’d never need to go.
I’m... an omega?
A male one, at that.
That hopeless new species that squeals Oh my! Please, stop! and then, the second someone leaks pheromones or whatever, goes haaanh and crumples to the ground, dribbling some kind of fluid out of its asshole.
...That’s me.
F*uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Even when my world falls apart, tomorrow’s sun still rises.
Well, obviously. The earth keeps spinning.
“...I need complete bed rest.”
Hanbyeol, who hadn’t closed his eyes once since walking out of the consultation room, mumbled it quietly. He’d dutifully eaten every meal they brought him and even washed up in the bathroom attached to his room, so his face was positively glowing — but tired was tired.
Mentally, mostly.
I’ve turned into an acquired hermaphrodite who may or may not be capable of conceiving life?
Unbelievable.
Hanbyeol swayed his way into his own clothes, folded the hospital gown he’d shed into a neat pile, and blew a huff out through his nose. He’d spent all night working his brain, so he had a decent grasp of the situation by now.
First: this world was the world of the novel he’d read in his past life. And not just that — it was a world crawling with humans who had mathematical symbols bolted on as a second sex, fused with a world where, in the name of destiny, someone else’s name gets branded onto the body of a total stranger and privacy protection is smeared away as an afterthought. A malamintchocobubbleteabuttertteoktunasaurydubaichewycookiemacaronporkkimchistew.
Known colloquially as: a baseless slop-pot of a B-grade gay novel.
And of everything in it, he’d been reincarnated as the new species you get by dumping all of it into a slop bucket and stirring.
What the hell kind of...!
No wonder the state of the hospitals here was beyond saving compared to his past life!
They’d committed enough dereliction of duty to be hit with a few hundred malpractice suits over, and somehow nothing had come of it yet. That was all because the whole world ran on airhead logic, exactly as befitted a B-grade gay novel.
Remembering the itch somewhere deep in his gut and in his backside right before he’d blacked out, Hanbyeol stamped his feet. Just thinking about it raised goosebumps all over him, so he marched straight down to the billing office.
Halfway through rushing the discharge paperwork, he paused, hesitated a moment, then asked the clerk a question.
“Excuse me. There’s no way to find out here who called it in when I collapsed, is there? Like, a phone number or anything.”
“Sorry? That’s not something we’d have access to unless the caller left it with us separately... Let me just check the record,”
“...”
“Th-there is one?”
The record existed, but the person in question didn’t want his identity disclosed.
The clerk said she couldn’t go into detail, but that he had come by just yesterday to pick something up, and a flicker of awkwardness crossed her face as she said it. That was enough for Hanbyeol to get the gist.
There was the fact that the hospital had set aside and stored the item that came in with him under special instruction. And the fact that the hotel floor itself was the kind you could only book by phone, the kind of room not just anyone could get their hands on.
He’d expected as much, more or less.
Guess he isn’t exactly an ordinary civilian.
In that case, unless the man wanted to meet him, there was nothing more Hanbyeol could do. He dropped the whole idea on the spot and bowed his head.
“Thank you. Keep up the good work, then!”
He’d meant to meet the man, thank him, maybe repay him somehow. A shame.
Digging through his memories from before he collapsed turned up nothing except that the guy had a great body, so instead of dwelling on it any further, Hanbyeol headed for the parking lot to find the person who’d be waiting for him. He spotted a familiar car and opened the door.
When even the lady of a chaebol household speaks your name with an honorific attached, there’s always a reason for it.
“You’re here. When I heard you’d collapsed, I thought it would shave years off this old man’s life.”
A hale, upright old gentleman with hair gone white, exactly like a butler out of a romance fantasy novel.
At the welcome sight of that face above a crisply pressed suit, Hanbyeol broke into a grin and started teasing.
“Huh? Oh no, that won’t do. If you’re gone, Grandpa, who am I supposed to play with?”
“Then you’d best look after your health first, so I can keep you company for a good long while.”
Secretary Kim — or rather, Grandpa Yeongho — was a veteran chief secretary and team leader who had served the group since the days of Hanbyeol’s grandparents.
There were stretches when Hanbyeol saw him more often than his own parents, which made him something like a second father.
“But I’m really not sick. Don’t you think my face looks better already? The hospital food was delicious!”
“Ho ho. I’m glad it suited your palate. Even as a child, the first thing you’d talk about after a hospital visit was the food.”
“...I did? No, hold on, I grew up ages ago.”
“And yet the grown gentleman bristles at a remark like that, same as ever.”
“...”
Hmph.
Secretary Kim was probably the only person on earth who treated a man in his mid-twenties like a baby. When Hanbyeol sulked and stuck his lip out a mile, the old man chuckled and shot him a look.
“I’m joking. Put that lip away. Making a face like that won’t get me to take your side in front of the Chairman and Madam, you know?”
“That wasn’t what I was going for, but now that you’ve said it, I think I’ll keep it up. You might take my side if you really tried.”
“Goodness, do as you please, then. I charged that phone you left behind and put it on the back seat, so don’t forget it.”
Oh! That thing?
There was something he’d been meaning to look up anyway. Hanbyeol’s eyes darted around before he quietly picked up the phone and switched it on. The moment the screen lit up, a small laugh drifted over from the driver’s seat.
...Rude, but I’ll pretend not to notice. Just this once.
He opened a browser right away and typed something into the search bar.
He was being pretty serious. No matter how he turned it over, this was the easiest? most comfortable? way to live quiet as a mouse.
Hanbyeol hunted around for posts from people who’d had the same idea, and finally found a suitable one and tapped it.
I’m an omega but I think the army would suit me. Is there a way to go career?
[Exactly what the title says. I like eating on a schedule, I like working out regularly, I like training. I feel like I could do it, so is there a way? Omegas are exempt from service so I get filtered out at the door and I don’t know where to start.]
↳ Nobody on this earth is built for the army.
↳↳ bro use your head, you get filtered at the door for the DRAFT and you think career officer is happening? alphas barely make it, for an omega it’s threading a needle lmaooooo unless you’re like an athlete or ex-national team, that’s a minimum 5 years of prepping for the practical exam. gl
“...”
Refusing to accept reality, he searched out other questions. He even read a few articles. All it got him was confirmation that the commenter was telling the truth.
Ugh... so much for that.
His eyes narrowed, then he switched off the screen and shoved the phone aside. Scratch that one too. At this rate, Kang Taeseo’s custom-mixed cement would be ready long before he finished prepping for any exam.
Ah. Isn’t some killer way out going to turn up on its own? Reduced at last to demanding things passively, Hanbyeol slumped deep into the back seat and sighed.
Judging by the look in that guy’s eyes, he’d dunk him in cement behind Gyeon Raewon’s back if it came to that, which meant sitting still and behaving wasn’t going to solve a thing.
Honestly, maybe it’d be better to just prove his heart had moved on for good and get himself a lov—
“Huh?”
In that instant, something clicked.
Now that he thought about it, surely...
...didn’t I have a destined partner of my own?
In Korean slang, “driving in a stake” means staying on in the army as a career soldier instead of leaving after conscription.
