It was a few months after his father passed, around the time his mother’s first treatment had ended successfully and they’d finally breathed a sigh of relief. On top of that, like a gift, came the glad news that Yiwon had been named a candidate for principal dancer—he’d dared to hope that this coming Christmas might be at least a little warm.
He’d wanted to properly thank Muyoung, who’d helped them so much. Muyoung was throwing a party at his family home for close friends, so Eunwon had gone with a small, carefully chosen gift in his arms.
But there, he’d ended up hearing those words. His true feelings about Eunwon, leaking through a firmly closed door.
*Hyung helped me because I was pitiful and pathetic. Because I’m a charity case… I irritate him…*
His heart shredded to ribbons, he’d forced himself to patch it up any which way, and Eunwon had stood before Muyoung smiling as if he knew nothing—but that day, Muyoung had inflicted a second wound on him.
The moment Eunwon approached him, he’d scowled fiercely and issued a firm, merciless order to leave, embarrassing everyone present.
"Seo Eunwon. What are you doing here?"
"…Why? What’s weird about it?"
"…You’d better just go home today. Wait outside for now. Hyung’ll drive you… no, I’ll call the driver. What are you doing? Why are you just standing there? Let’s go, before anyone sees you."
"Why should I—?"
"You… you have a fever right now. You’re sick. So go home and rest."
"No. I’m not sick at all, hyung."
"No, you’re sick. Go home right now and rest."
"…"
Maybe it was because of the venom he’d overheard earlier. Muyoung’s tone sounded especially cold. Dismissing his insistence that he wasn’t sick at all and forcing him away felt, to Eunwon, exactly like he was hiding him because he was ashamed to show him to people.
Feeling miserable and hurt, he’d even tried being stubborn for once—unlike him—but Muyoung, instead of stroking him and soothing him like usual, didn’t even take his hand, just strode ahead.
"Can’t I just stay here? With you, hyung…"
"Absolutely not."
He’d tried holding his ground once more in front of the waiting car, but Muyoung had just grabbed his forearm roughly and shoved him into the back seat.
"Make sure he gets inside the house, and that he’s resting. Seo Eunwon, lock the door and go rest in your room. Don’t open the door for anyone, and don’t even think about going outside for no reason."
"Hyung’ll be right behind you with medicine, okay? Got it?"
Miserable and hurt. Barely answering through his sniffles, he’d arrived at an empty house. That was when it started.
Following his anguished heart, something deep inside his body crumbled with a crash. Just as Muyoung had insisted—*you’re sick*—he really did start to hurt.
He collapsed in the entryway, not even getting his shoes off, clutching his lower belly and writhing for a long while before he understood. This pain was the famous "omega presentation."
He had no idea why he, who’d lived fine as a beta into his twenties, was going through in his late twenties what others went through in puberty—but he instinctively sensed that once this pain of tearing flesh and twisting entrails ended, his life would be completely changed.
But surprisingly, the first heat that was supposed to come with presentation was lukewarm. No mind-blowing excitement, no desire.
They said the heat came to help you survive the pain of presentation, but Eunwon’s symptoms were brutally, maddeningly pain alone.
He didn’t even make it to the bed, just curled up anyhow in front of the shoe cabinet, groaning through endless pain, fainting countless times, over three days.
It took another full day of sleeping it off, utterly spent, before he could think straight. His first thought was relief: *thank god I locked the door.* Looking back, the way Muyoung had acted as if he’d known in advance that he’d be sick felt like a blessing he was grateful for.
Barely getting up, washing, heading to the pharmacy—when he opened the door that had been shut tight for four days, Eunwon stopped dead at the sight of the pile in front of it.
In front of his door sat daily necessities as if preparing for war, every brand of emergency medicine and painkiller, and lunch boxes of porridge still warm as if freshly made.
The missed calls on his phone made it obvious who’d done it. So Eunwon just took the porridge inside and sat at the table. Without even opening the lid, he stared blankly, endlessly, at it until the once-warm porridge went cold—then dumped it in the sink.
Throwing away Muyoung’s kindness with his own hands for the first time in his life, Eunwon decided he’d wash away his feelings for him the same way.
In his exhausted state, the trait test kit he’d bought showed the faintest omega color. Eunwon was certain: he was a "recessive omega." And he decided to keep his changed trait locked away alone. If he was careful, he thought, he could live as a beta forever.
But the arrogance of defying his inborn nature crumbled horribly at his second heat cycle.
The dream’s backdrop abruptly changed to that day’s hotel. Eunwon became an observer, as if out of his body, looking down at himself crouched and panting, and the pack of alphas closing in around him.
*No, don’t. Don’t do it!*
He screamed silently in the void on behalf of himself, who couldn’t make a sound, but no voice came—just scattered emptily. The alphas were reaching out without hesitation.
Had he been dragged off by one of them?
Just as he tried to look away from the horrific moment, an unexpected figure appeared.
A man cutting through the crowd, pinning the other alphas with his overwhelming presence. He looked down at the crouched Eunwon for a moment, let out a laugh, then shrugged off his jacket and tossed it over him like a curtain.
Ah, right.
A faint memory surfaced. Back then, when he’d desperately wanted to hide in a mouse hole, a saving veil had fallen over him. He hadn’t even known it was someone’s jacket.
The scent from that time came back with it. Not an entirely unfamiliar scent. As if he’d smelled it somewhere before…
While Eunwon’s mind busily turned thoughts over in the void, the scene changed again.
A man of a similar silhouette was striding down the hotel corridor with Eunwon in his arms. Still covered by the jacket, Eunwon was begging.
"Just let me go… I have to be there. Someone’ll come for me there. Someone will come… please let me go."
"Who’s coming for you? Family?"
Stabbed right in the truth, Eunwon sniffled miserably. Even in that state, he seemed to know—his late father, his hospitalized mother, his brother abroad couldn’t come save him now.
"Isn’t there anyone else? Someone who’ll really come save you. Someone who *can* come."
Was it his imagination that the voice sounded oddly kind, and at the same time strangely impatient—as if it had a desired answer in mind?
"Hyung… Muyoung hyung. Hyung will come…"
"You don’t *have* a hyung. You said you didn’t want to call him that."
"I do… he’s my hyung. So you can’t do this to me. My hyung… he’s a really scary person. If you do this to me, he’ll be so, so angry… he won’t just stand by…"
The man burst out laughing at that.
"Yeah, he’s *fucking* pissed right now."
At the light tone, as if joking about someone he knew, Eunwon’s heart froze as he quietly listened to their conversation. That casual way of speaking, that form of address… someone who knew his family situation and his relationship with Muyoung. And the pheromone scent, the same as from that jacket earlier—
"*I saved you, y’know. When you were in heat, surrounded by alphas… that’s cold. We got *so* close that night. You even called me hyung for the first time. Moaning these incredibly dirty sounds—*"
Could that man really have been Joo Siyoon?
"No! I don’t like it… no!"
Even in the dream, Eunwon shook his head violently, screaming at the hypothesis he didn’t want to admit. At the violent wave of rejection, the terrifyingly quiet world of the dream cracked sharply, then collapsed with a tremendous roar.
*Crash!*
His eyes snapped open. With his breath coming in gasps, along with the terror threatening to burst his heart, he realized together: this sound wasn’t the dream shattering—it was real.
*Crash, crash, crash!*
Someone was pounding on his door hard enough to break it down.
It was a brutal knock, violent enough to make even his uncle—who looked like he could sleep through a war—jerk upright with a choked gasp.
Eunwon reflexively bolted upright too, but his mind was still blankly stopped on the border between dream and reality.
The wall clock read 6 a.m. Who on earth pounded on someone’s door like they were breaking it down at this hour?
*…Could it be Muyoung hyung?*
He was the only person who came to mind, and Eunwon started toward the door as if entranced—when a hand shot out from the side and snatched his arm.
"Don’t. Don’t open it." It was his uncle, white as a sheet.
He was trembling with his jaw chattering like a beast expecting to be dragged to slaughter. His harsh breathing between words sounded desperately pleading. Realizing the situation a beat late, Eunwon looked down at his uncle and whispered low.
"…Who’s here?"
His uncle’s sudden visit, and the wounds he’d seen on his legs yesterday. The reality he’d put off confirming, using exhaustion as an excuse—the reality he’d wanted to ignore forever—sent a chill down Eunwon’s spine.
"Uncle."
"No, it’s nothing… just… seeing someone act like *that* at the crack of dawn, they can’t be sane. Best to avoid people you shouldn’t associate with… right? And, well, it’s not like I’m avoiding them because I’m scared of shit or anything."
"Maybe they’re drunk and got the wrong house…" At the fading, unconfident excuse, Eunwon read the exact opposite conviction. *They came after my uncle.* His lips went dry and his insides went cold.
He wanted to demand *why are you doing this to me*, but the urging from beyond the door stole the chance first.
"Hey, you fucker. What kind of rude people are these. If you’re gonna talk shit, do it where I can’t hear it, huh? I can hear *everything*, y’know? Seo Jonghyeok, you talking behind my back like you *want* me to hear? How rude?" *BANG*—the sound of the door being kicked made Eunwon and his uncle hurriedly hold their breath.
"You think if you hold your breath now, we’re idiots who’ll go *oh well, guess nobody’s home, let’s head back*?"
Leave a Reply