“BIPHS (Biochemically Induced Pheromonal Hyperesthesia Syndrome). Colloquially called ‘Bips syndrome.’”
What is this, a restaurant chain name or something?
While I was staring, dumbfounded at a disease name I’d never heard in my life, the ER doctor straightened his glasses and went on.
“Your son’s body is unusually sensitive to pheromone scents. Normally, right after Manifestation, children in the growth phase are supposed to be insensitive to pheromones…”
“Th-then is Geonho going to be okay?!”
“Well… his pheromone receptors are so overly sensitive that his body is mounting a rejection-level response. Think of it as similar to an acute allergic reaction—that’s the easiest way to understand it.”
“Wh-what kind of Alpha is like that! An Alpha with a pheromone allergy!”
My adoptive father, Jaeseo Park, gave voice to exactly what I was feeling, practically breathing fire.
I, too, felt my common sense punch through the stratosphere and fly off into space.
Because as far as I remembered, the Geonho Baek in the novel never had a setting like this.
“Geonho just manifested yesterday. He’s a healthy Alpha boy! He never had so much as a sniffle, and now suddenly this—why…!”
“Strictly speaking, it’s not an illness. It’s a syndrome, or a kind of constitution.”
“He collapsed the moment he got to school—how is that not an illness!”
“I—I’ve never seen a case with this strong a reaction either.”
Flustered by Jaeseo Park’s commotion, the ER doctor sweated and rifled frantically through a stack of papers.
“According to an overseas medical journal, stress and psychological factors are the leading suspects…”
Stress and psychological factors.
At first blush it sounded irresponsible and vague, but I accepted it immediately.
Honestly, because I still hadn’t adapted to this crazy world.
As my adoptive father said, I had manifested as an Alpha.
For about three days I’d tossed and moaned in bed with high fever and muscle aches like a kid with growing pains; then I sat up as if nothing had happened. My adoptive parents pricked my fingertip with a medical lancet and smeared the blood on a test card.
Then they shouted, “You became an Alpha! Congratulations, Geonho!”—popping party crackers and bringing out a three-tier cake they’d preordered.
But I couldn’t be purely happy.
First, because of the shocking fact that I wasn’t the “ordinary” Beta man I’d longed to be.
Second, because I worried I might turn into a walking sex drive like the novel’s Geonho Baek or that obsessive seme.
Third…
“What is that smell!”
It was the foul stench coming from my adoptive parents.
At first I wondered if they’d left food waste out, but this luxury apartment got professional cleanings on a schedule and was spotless.
Realizing the source was my adoptive parents, I suspected maybe they hadn’t done laundry or showered… but two neatly dressed adults like them? No way. And even that wouldn’t produce a smell on this level.
When I consulted them—
“Hm? A smell? I don’t really notice anything.”
“Was it like this when I manifested as an Alpha? I was too little to remember… but nothing special, I think?”
They suggested that if I still had the symptom the next day, we should go to ENT and get checked.
Back then I was pinching my nose tight, barely holding down nausea, thinking, “How am I supposed to sleep in this stench…”
“My room. Let’s go.”
Squeeze.
A small child took my hand and led me to the room.
I noticed the smell was much lighter than before, and the little one said:
“If you’re sick, sleep with me.”
As if bewitched, I breathed that fresh, cozy scent and managed to get through the day…
The next day.
“Hey, Geonho Baek! They say you became an Alpha? The whole school already knows!”
Early morning, Jaeuk Kim wiped sweat from his face and came over from soccer.
“Face, grades, money—and now Alpha? You greedy punk, taking it all.”
“What’s so great about being an Alpha.”
“Good looks! High earners! Super popular! You’ve got everything!”
“Everything, my ass. Being an Alpha just means…”
To me they were nothing but guys dangerously governed by what was below the belt.
But that wasn’t the issue.
Jaeuk had that typical boy-sweat reek wafting off him, but overpowering even that… something vile was creeping up from the school behind the field. I sensed it on instinct.
“In our class, that kid—Yeonseo Choi and Youngu Lee are both Omegas. And I heard there are two or three Omegas in Class 3 and Class 8 too. Aren’t they all going to fall for you?”
“What nonsense. They have eyes.”
“Why are you covering your nose? Do I stink that bad?”
“No, not you…”
The stench was getting stronger; my words stuck in my throat.
The closer I got to the school, the harder it was to breathe. The private elementary school, decked out like a rainbow flower garden, felt like a massive garbage landfill.
“Oh. Youngu Lee. Hey, Youngu!”
Jaeuk tucked the soccer ball under his arm and called out to a boy.
A pretty, small boy with light-colored hair—Youngu Lee.
“You’re that super-strong Omega, the, uh, prime Omega or whatever, right?”
“Jaeuk Kim. If you’re going to spout nonsense, I’m leaving.”
“No, he says he became an Alpha. What do you think? Does he look more handsome than before? Give us an Omega’s-eye verification.”
“You idiot. You think Omegas swoon over any Alpha on sight? If you said that to Yeonseo Choi, you’d already be—”
Youngu kicked him away, and only then looked at me. His eyes went round.
“Geonho Baek?”
Then the roughness he’d shown Jaeuk vanished; he fussed with his clothes and bangs and stammered.
“W-wow! A-an Alpha? How are you an Alpha now? C-congrats, I guess?”
Youngu was one of the classmates who played soccer and games with us.
By chance during soccer we’d learned he had manifested as an Omega early. Not just any Omega, either—his constitution was unusually strong, a so-called “prime Omega.” I let it go in one ear and out the other.
Honestly, as long as he didn’t drop his pants, wasn’t he just a normal human like me? I kept telling myself that and stayed friendly.
But—
“You know, right? That I’m an Omega. But since my pheromones are, like, especially strong, I heard Alphas might… h-have a hard time around me. So I practiced pheromone suppression a lot. Anyway…!”
Today he seemed very different. The blushing, the excessive self-conscious stammering directed at me—
Most of all—
“How’s my scent?”
It stank like hell.
“Uuurrgh.”
“G-Geonho!”
“Waaah! Geonho Baek died!”
I passed out to the sound of an ambulance siren,
and the ER doctor pronounced the Bips syndrome.
…After that, things got awkward with Youngu Lee.
From his side, I guess he decided not to come near me out of consideration for my constitution, but until I got the meds I transferred to a class with no Alphas or Omegas and took my lessons there. I wore two or even three masks and kept a strong-mint mouthwash candy in my mouth at all times.
To my classmates, I must have looked shocking. No wonder rumors started that I had a terminal condition.
So despite repeated warnings from my adoptive parents and teachers, whispers about me and the meds slowly spread.
The med is a pheromone suppressant, yes. But it keeps me from smelling other people’s pheromones, not my own…
To have that drug my adoptive parents sourced overseas with such difficulty stolen—never again. From now on I’d keep it on me at all times.
“Brought in again, huh…”
I blinked up at a familiar white ceiling.
Judging by the silence, it was the private single room I often ended up in.
Which meant, once again, I had been carried to the hospital.
“Why is the sequence exactly the same as last time.”
From a run-of-the-mill Omega in heat, I’d felt a rejection reaction on par with a prime Omega.
It wasn’t like no Omega had ever come at me before, but having my pill bottle stolen and my chastity targeted—that was a first. It sent a chill down my spine.
If I’d been an ordinary Alpha… maybe I really would’ve done it.
And on top of that, the other party was a boy, mid-teens. As a mentally thirty-something man, it had been a truly hair-raising moment.
Who knew I’d end up benefiting from this bizarre constitution. I shuddered when goosebumps prickled up.
“You’re awake?”
The soft flutter of turning pages snapped my thoughts.
I turned my head. A familiar face was there.
He stood with the setting sun behind him at the window, so I couldn’t see his face clearly, but the voice alone told me immediately who it was.
“…How did you get here?”
“Jaeuk hyung told me.”
He closed the book and turned his head; the dusk brushed his face.
A young boy with pitch-black hair and navy-blue eyes was dyed red by the sunset.
“He said when he followed you, you were lying there alone in a wrecked storage room.”
“Ha. Jaeuk Kim’s instincts are sharp.”
Maybe because of our years together, he could spot my lies in an instant.
He must have had a rough time cleaning up after me. I should buy him food later.
“Mom and Dad said they’ll be a little late because of work and asked me to tell you.”
“Yeah? They’re going to worry again.”
“…Worry?”
His voice dropped low.
“I did, too.”
He set the book down with a soft thud on the bedside table and perched on the end of my bed.
“I worried, too.”
Then he reached out to me.
“Don’t be sick.”
A small hand gently stroked my cheek.
“Hyung.”