My older brother, Kim Shin-Hee, who is three years older than me, is a superior omega so pretty anyone would want him.
With his light brown hair and sparkling black eyes set in gentle-looking eyes, he was lovely enough to make you think of a cute rabbit.
That was why, around the time my father’s business was going under, we were able to receive a huge investment in exchange for my brother’s engagement.
My brother’s fiancé was the second son of Seolgang Group, one of the country’s leading conglomerates, and seven years older than him.
The moment he had just turned twenty, my brother was basically sold off by force to a super-dominant alpha seven years older than him whom he had never even met before, and he cried his eyes out at the engagement ceremony.
He wailed so hard, sprawled on the floor in a way that was beyond embarrassing and enough to disgrace the whole family, and his fiancé checked the time and said,
“If you want to break off the engagement, then break it off. I have no intention of tolerating a childish brat throwing a fit at an engagement ceremony I had to make time for out of an already packed schedule. Of course, the money invested in Suhan will be withdrawn immediately.”
At the cold, merciless words from that icy man, my father fainted on the spot, and my mother clenched her fists and glared at my brother.
My brother, who had been shrieking and thrashing on the floor, quietly shut his mouth, got up, and finished the engagement ceremony.
At least his fiancé said he wouldn’t have time to get married within the next three years, so he gave my brother temporary freedom.
Calling it freedom was one thing, but in reality, he just neglected him because he was busy. My brother didn’t mind that at all.
While going to college and enjoying freewheeling romance, my brother started saying ridiculous things at some point about how he thought he’d met his fated one.
“Shin-Yeon, look at this picture. Handsome, right? He’s insanely hot, isn’t he?”
“Hyung, you already have a fiancé, so what are you even… And my CSAT is coming up soon. Stop bothering me and get out.”
“Come on, just look! He might become your brother-in-law….”
Watching Kim Shin-Hee shove his phone in my face while clinging to a high school senior with a hundred days left before the CSAT, I shouted at the top of my lungs.
“Mom!!! Hyung is interrupting my studying!!!”
Before I even finished speaking, my mom came running in at full speed and smacked my brother on the back with a flyswatter while scolding him.
“You little punk! Your brother’s CSAT is right around the corner and you’re in here causing trouble? And Shin-Yeon, it’s not like the CSAT is tomorrow, so why are you yelling like that just because your brother said a few words to you? Honestly…. Shin-Hee, come out right now!”
“Ow! Mom!”
Anyway, I wasn’t curious in the slightest about my brother’s love life, and the looming disaster of the CSAT was a much bigger problem, so I focused on studying.
Ignoring my brother, who had buried every last bit of common sense in a flower garden inside his head, I took the CSAT a hundred days later.
Of course, it was hellishly hard, but my score still came out higher than I had expected, so I was satisfied.
So, just as I was smoothly preparing my applications for the university I wanted, my brother stopped coming home much.
“Looks like Kim Shin-Hee is out somewhere again, getting drunk and crawling around on the ground.”
“Ugh, I’m scared he’s going to suddenly come home with a baby one of these days.”
“Oh, come on…. Surely he wouldn’t. No matter what, Kim Shin-Hee knows how to tell right from wrong.”
But the eldest son, Kim Shin-Hee, did not know how to tell right from wrong, and none of the rest of us had any idea what was happening.
December, when I was nineteen. The final stretch of my teens.
My parents had gone out to a year-end party, and I was home alone, eating chicken while watching TV.
Ding-dong!
At the sound of the doorbell, I set down the chicken I was eating and pressed the intercom to see who it was.
—This is Seo Kyo-Shin.
“Huh…? My brother’s fiancé….”
A low voice came through the intercom, and on the screen was a man so tall his face didn’t even fit properly.
Realizing it was my brother’s fiancé, I ran to the front door and quickly opened it.
The black coat of the man walking in through the gate billowed in the cold winter wind, giving off a dangerous sort of atmosphere.
“Hello.”
“It’s been a while. You’ve grown a lot since the engagement ceremony.”
The man reached the doorway in an instant on those long legs, his features so perfect he looked like he had stepped right out of a painting.
But unlike that frighteningly beautiful face, his dark eyes, tinged with blue-black, felt chilly and eerie.
“I’m still shorter than average. I’m only 173 centimeters.”
“For an omega, that’s average. Back then, you were really as tiny as a newborn baby.”
Unlike the intimidating atmosphere around him, his low, unhurried voice had a strangely languid feel to it.
“It’s cold, so please come in for a moment. My parents are at a year-end party, and my brother is… probably out meeting friends? I’m not completely sure.”
“As it happens, I haven’t been able to contact Mr. Kim Shin-Hee at all lately. I think he may have blocked me.”
…Did that bastard Kim Shin-Hee really cause some huge disaster or what?
A chill ran down my spine on the spot, and as my eyes darted around, I awkwardly raised both hands in a gesture inviting him inside, but he didn’t budge.
Seo Kyo-Shin, who was nearly as tall as the front door, swept a cold gaze over the inside of the house before looking at me.
“Today isn’t the day for it, so I should go. It would also be rude of me to enter a house where a baby is home alone.”
Seo Kyo-Shin pulled an elegant envelope from his pocket, handed it to me, and said,
“Congratulations on getting into Hankuk University. Buy whatever you need or whatever you’ve wanted. Have a good year-end, and happy New Year.”
“Ah… thank you very much. Happy New Year to you too, future brother-in-law. You’ve worked really hard this year.”
I hurriedly accepted the envelope so my outstretched hand wouldn’t look awkward, and when I offered him New Year’s greetings, Seo Kyo-Shin let out a short breath and said,
“Future brother-in-law…. That title may change, so don’t get too used to it.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve kept you out here in the cold too long. Go inside. Enjoy your chicken.”
Seo Kyo-Shin reached out his large hand and wiped the corner of my mouth, then showed me the chicken sauce that had gotten on his fingers.
“Ah—… thank you for wiping it off. Please get home safely. See you next time.”
“Sure.”
When Seo Kyo-Shin turned around, he crossed back to the gate as quickly as he had come.
Then he looked back at me and licked the thumb that had the chicken sauce on it with his tongue before disappearing from view.
“What… why would he…. Did I see that wrong?”
I watched Seo Kyo-Shin with that strange feeling lingering in me, then went back inside holding the envelope and absentmindedly finished eating my chicken.
The year-end variety show happened to be so entertaining that I completely forgot all about Kim Shin-Hee being unreachable.
Before I knew it, the end of the year had passed, and the New Year had arrived.
Kim Shin-Hee, who had been out and about the whole time, came home for the New Year too, and for the first time in a while, the whole family was together.
At last, on the first day of my becoming twenty, Kim Shin-Hee dropped a bombshell over a bowl of tteokguk.
“I’m pregnant.”
“What kind of bullshit is that first thing in the New Year?”
With the tteokguk sitting in front of him, Kim Shin-Hee teared up and hugged his stomach with both arms as he said,
“It’s my current boyfriend’s baby. He’s a superior alpha, but his family background is ordinary. That’s all you need to know.”
“…You crazy bastard! Catch him right now!”
As my father, who had been eating tteokguk, grabbed the back of his neck and collapsed with food still dribbling from his mouth, Kim Shin-Hee took the opportunity to bring out the suitcase he had packed in advance.
At that moment, while my mother and I were holding up my collapsed father together—
Kim Shin-Hee, fake-sobbing as he hurried toward the front door, waved the cash envelope Seo Kyo-Shin had given me at the end of last year and said,
“Ngh! Shin-Yeon, I’ll make good use of this when I have the baby. If Seo Kyo-Shin gave it to you, it’s basically mine anyway, so I’m taking it!”
“You fucking lunatic!!! Why are you taking that too?!”
“Seo Kyo-Shin, that crazy bastard, what kind of man gives five million won to a kid who just turned twenty? Still, thanks to him, I’ll be putting it to good use.”
“Hey!!!”
Just like that, Kim Shin-Hee ran away on New Year’s morning with the so-called father of the baby, a senior he knew.
As it turned out, the reason he had come home after so long was also to rob the emergency cash my mother had hidden in the house, along with the jewelry, and all the cash, watch, and gold rings in my father’s wallet.
By the time my parents belatedly realized Kim Shin-Hee had cleaned out the master bedroom, they both grabbed the backs of their necks and collapsed, but there was nothing anyone could do.
Kim Shin-Hee had even canceled his phone plan before vanishing, so he had disappeared completely, and the family he left behind could only sit there blankly, wearing hollow expressions.
“Dad, don’t we have to return the investment from Seolgang Group?”
“…If we return all of that, our company will go under.”
“We’re already barely hanging on because the economy is rough as it is….”
Sitting in the living room with my parents, who were sobbing that they had raised a son all wrong, I cried my eyes out all day too.
“I won’t go to college—I’ll get a job and start making money right away…. Can’t our family somehow figure something out together?”
“It’s not something that can be solved at that level.”
Suhan, a small-to-mid-sized company that was on the larger side for a small business, simply did not have the capital to repay Seolgang Group’s investment in one lump sum.
The investment was close to ten billion won, so if Seolgang Group withdrew it, we would all end up out on the street.
And a little while later, Seo Kyo-Shin informed us that the countdown to ending up on the street had begun.
—The wedding venue has been reserved for early March. Please inform Mr. Kim Shin-Hee.
At Seo Kyo-Shin’s notice, my father grabbed the back of his neck and collapsed all over again, and my mother ran around everywhere trying to find Kim Shin-Hee.
But how were we supposed to find someone who had deliberately disappeared?
At that point, the only final option left was for me to propose marrying Seo Kyo-Shin in Kim Shin-Hee’s place.
Of course a recessive omega wouldn’t catch the eye of a super-dominant alpha, but I had to at least try.
My parents were on the verge of collapsing every day from stress, and that was the only way I could think of to save the company, which was just one step away from going under.
In mid-January, I secretly checked Seo Kyo-Shin’s number from my father’s phone.
“Haa… I’m going insane.”
After wandering the streets for a long time in the cold winter wind, I finally dialed Seo Kyo-Shin’s number and called him.
Ring, ring—
—Seo Kyo-Shin speaking.
“Ah, hello. This is Kim Shin-Yeon….”
—Shin-Yeon still sounds like a baby on the phone.
At Seo Kyo-Shin’s low voice murmuring into my ear, I tapped the ground with the tip of my shoe and opened my mouth.
“If, if you have time….”
—Mm.
Please meet with me.
“Please marry me…. Ah, no! No! Slip of the tongue! That’s not it—I mean, please! Meet with me!”
That was when I stood there trembling, mentally shattered by my slip of the tongue, clutching my silent phone.
—…Hahaha! Ah, so if I have time, you want me to marry you.
“That’s not what I meant….”
While I stood there in a panic, chewing on my nails and not knowing what to do, Seo Kyo-Shin laughed for a long while, then let out a sigh and said,
—What should I do? I don’t have the time. Baby, I’m sorry.
And just like that, Seo Kyo-Shin flatly refused my request.
Two months before we ended up on the street.
Within two months, either Kim Shin-Hee had to be found and brought back, or I had to walk into a wedding hall with Seo Kyo-Shin myself.
From now on, a marriage proposal is the only way to survive.