"Wait. Wait a second."
Haram?
The name is "Haram"?
That line from the novel pops up.
Let me rewind that for a moment.
[Geonho Baek. Where did you stash my Omega.]
Not this one.
[I let him out of the cage.]
[Who said you could.]
Not this one either.
[It wasn’t enough to steal my family and my position… and now you dare steal “Haram,” too?]
…This is it.
Haram.
A name like Seolheon Baek—Wooheon Baek.
And the one said to be Wooheon’s brother, Geonho Baek.
"Names overlapping like this—can that really be a coincidence…?"
And that hospital pamphlet over there suddenly seems strange, too.
[Seoul Municipal Sophia General Hospital — Children’s Hospital Guide]
[*Alpha and Omega parents, please be sure to take a temporary pheromone suppressant before your visit.]
Basic facts of this world hammered into my head by a year of awkward sex education from my adoptive parents.
Alpha, Omega, Beta.
I thought I’d heard those words somewhere before, and…
[Where did you stash my Omega.]
They show up in that novel passage, of course.
"Ah, damn. My head…"
The headache pricks again.
At the same time, letters in my mind start locking together like a puzzle.
Alpha, Omega, Beta.
The golden-haired baby, Haram.
Baekil Group, a chaebol family.
Not Seolheon Baek, but Wooheon Baek.
And Wooheon Baek’s brother…
Wooheon Baek’s enemy.
The trash villain.
"…Me, Geonho Baek."
I remember.
It all comes back—every last bit of it!
"How the f**k did I forget this…?"
It all started with some web novel.
"W-what is this."
They blasted a limited-time ninety-eight percent sale, so I snapped it up and read it. Webtoons and web novels were a luxury for me, but in a grinding life you need at least a shred of relief.
I figured it was just some R-rated smut. I paid without thinking and hit download and…
"Why—why is a man—doing that—with a man…"
Two men were doing it.
"Ah. Aha! Later the real female lead will show up and they’ll, like, have true love, right?"
I kept reading, denying reality.
"What? Omega?"
Some third sex I’d never heard of appears.
"What? Heat, rut?"
Humans were ranked below animals.
"What?! Pregnant?"
When the main character hits the part about getting pregnant, I almost blacked out. He’s a guy!
I freaked out at every single thing, but I still read all the way to the last page.
Partly because I didn’t want to waste the few hundred won I spent, but more than that…
"Wow. Are you insane, Wooheon Baek? How could you betray Haram’s heart?"
…it was entertaining.
"Now you’re going to lock him up, slap on shackles, and rape him? Stuff like this happens out in the open in the twenty-first century? Fine, let’s see how far you go, you psychopathic sex criminal!"
I didn’t want to admit it, but the funk and spice hit like fermented soybean stew…
"What! And Wooheon Baek’s archenemy, his older brother Geonho Baek, turns out not even related by blood?! An adoptee trying to swallow Baekil Group pulled that kind of heinous crap?! What a bat-s**t family…"
It was addictive.
"So Haram ends up miscarrying and dying in the end… worked to death and goes out empty. And you—why are you crying now, Wooheon Baek? Maybe treat him right when you had him."
Of course I skimmed the sex scenes with blurry eyes. No matter what, I just can’t watch guys doing it.
"God. What a trash novel… it only wrecked my mood."
And I absolutely denied that I got any enjoyment from reading a BL novel.
"Like hell I’m ever reading BL again. Half of it was porn—my eyes are ruined."
So I grabbed the dopamine and then tried, with everything I had, to erase the BL from my head.
I tried like hell to forget it. And that turned out to poison me.
Because it took me a year and a half to realize this place is inside that novel!
"Damn it, this is the world of an R-rated obsession-imprisonment-misery-sugar-high hard-smut gay story?!"
"Hyung, what’s wrong?"
Only then do I feel the tiny body in my arms trembling.
"Oh, crap! Right—this kid…"
The tragic "male" main character who gets obsessed over and imprisoned, Haram (age four), is lost and clinging to me.
"Hyung’s face is scary. The cool hyung turned into a wicked witch…"
"S-sorry."
Afraid I’d make him cry again, I just apologized first.
Then I ground my teeth, wanting to go back and beat up my past self.
"Why did I do that. How did I not notice. For a year and a half!"
Erasing the memory… probably to protect my fragile pride as a straight guy.
No, self-defense is pointless. Either way, I ended up paying the price for my own stupidity.
"Hyung?"
"Ugh."
There it is again—the headache…!
Unwanted lines of text flash through my mind.
[Haram. Why does Wooheon Baek get to, and I don’t?]
[Don’t do this, Geonho hyung…!]
"So you’ve got pride? For a filthy little rag."
Haram slapped Geonho Baek across the face after Geonho’s insults, didn’t he?
And Geonho Baek’s eyes changed.
[Ha. Now this has some flavor.]
You’ve got to be f**king kidding me. Flavor?
Go die, you criminal bastards. Oh—right now I’m that criminal bastard!
"There was also that scene where Geonho Baek forced himself on Haram. To vent the inferiority he carried toward his younger brother…"
Spicy scenes slither past in my head. Even though I skimmed with blurry eyes, there were so many shocking lines that, no matter how tightly I squeezed my eyes shut, they leaked through my eyelids and nailed themselves into my frontal lobe.
Belts for restraints, tearing clothes, pheromones or whatever, drugs…
"Hyung, when do I find Dad?"
"Aaack—sorry!"
The teary baby voice snaps me back.
This is not something to picture in front of an innocent four-year-old. Absolutely not.
"Your name’s Haram, right?"
"Mm-hmm. What’s yours, Hyung?"
"Huh?"
"Hyung’s name."
"Ah, hahahaha. There’s the counter. Nurse unnie—!"
I’m sorry. I can’t tell you a name. Please just remember me as the cool hyung you met in passing. That’ll be safer for you. And for me…
I hurry toward the nurses’ station; one of them greets me with a kind smile.
"Hm? What is it?"
"He says he lost his parents."
"Oh? This kid is Haram?"
"Oh—you know him?"
"Of course. His father just…"
Right then—
"Haram!"
"Oh! Pretty Dad!"
"You scared me, vanishing like that!"
So that’s what a voice like rolling jade beads sounds like.
A man as handsome as my adoptive father—no, just as handsome—runs up, sweating cold, and scoops up Haram. Contrary to my expectation of a golden-haired foreigner, he’s a straightforward Korean. So maybe the "handsome dad" is the foreigner? No—don’t be curious. I don’t want to know.
"Were you scared?"
"Mm-mm. No! Hyung played with me!"
Meeting his dad seems to relax him; Haram beams and points at me.
"This cool black-cat hyung here!"
"Thank you for finding Haram."
"N-no problem."
Reflexively, I bow my head at the thanks.
"Haram’s usually very shy with strangers, but today’s different."
"He’s shy?"
"Maybe because he looks a little unusual, he’s gotten a bit wary of people."
Ah. Makes sense. With that baby-angel, holy face, he must attract not only kids his age but also weird adults. Like that swarm with phones earlier. And that obsessive stalker criminal, Wooheon Baek…
"I’d like to repay you somehow."
"N-no! It’s fine."
"Have you had dinner? At least a snack…"
"No, thank you. I’m full."
"I see. I still feel bad."
"It was nothing. Don’t worry about it."
"My, I’ve never met a kid so crisp and grown-up. Your parents must be proud."
"Hahaha…"
Guilt tugs at me at his slightly crestfallen face, but I want no further entanglement with Haram, so I draw a clean line.
The handsome man gives up and turns away.
"Haram, let’s go. Your big uncle is waiting."
"What about Hyung? Come with us."
"Don’t make things hard for him."
Haram keeps looking back at me with eyes dripping with regret.
We only spent an hour together, and he likes me that much?
But that’s only because he doesn’t know the plot.
"Hyung…"
This is a grotesquely explicit world with no morals, and I’m Geonho Baek.
I’m the brother of the man who’ll drag Haram into despair—and I’m no less a perpetrator than my brother.
Even if some stranger took over that Geonho Baek’s body…
"Staying out of it is best."
If there’s any way to repay Haram, who died in the novel, even a little, that would be it.
"I" don’t owe Haram anything, but as a reader I feel a kind of debt.
"Your death was so empty. So sad."
Even if I forgot everything else, the scene of Haram turning pale and dying alone on the beach is vivid.
"Bye, Haram."
Let’s never meet again.
I turn away from the sniffling, angelic child and walk off, cold and alone.
…And then, not long after my adoptive father is discharged—
"Oh! Cool Hyung, it’s you again!"
Haram moves in next door.