Should I run away?
Seo Yi Kyung paced around the room, gnawing at his lower lip.
He had chewed it so hard while racking his little brain that it seemed ready to bleed, yet the unease and anxiety crowding his chest refused to subside.
He glanced at the closed door. The unfamiliar navy surface gleamed, its curved handle polished to a platinum sheen. Yi Kyung had every sense trained on it.
He felt as though he might be able to escape if he left now. But even if he got out of this house, where in the world would he go? Perhaps his nerves were wound too tight, because a faint sound from outside made his shoulders jerk.
It had come from the terrace. A private table for the married couple stood there. Yi Kyung watched a bird briefly alight on it before flying away.
This is only the second floor. Couldn’t I jump down?
Maybe he would figure something out once he got away. Just as his frantic thoughts reached a fever pitch—
Click. The door opened.
Yi Kyung flinched and threw himself onto the bed. At the same moment, the metallic taste of blood spread across the tender flesh inside his mouth. He must have split the lower lip he had been biting all this time.
Ngh... Yi Kyung’s eyes tightened slightly. He pressed his lips together and swallowed the groan, then closed his eyes and tried his hardest to look composed.
“Director Han, you’re back? He hasn’t eaten anything all day. He hasn’t even left the room.”
The housekeeper’s troubled voice filtered through the narrow opening in the door.
“I’ll take care of it. Give it to me.”
Yi Kyung squeezed his eyes shut, his hands instinctively curling in on themselves. All he had heard was that low voice, yet his heart abruptly constricted.
Click. The door closed. Han Seung Jae’s tall silhouette turned around.
Holding the tray he had taken from the housekeeper in one hand, he approached the bed. Then he extended a long arm and placed it on the nightstand beside the lamp. The covered porcelain bowl likely contained porridge.
“...”
Seung Jae silently looked down at him.
With no color in his face, Yi Kyung looked like an invalid. He was even wearing pajamas nearly identical to the ones Seung Jae had seen him in before leaving for work that morning. If there was anything bothersome about him, it was that he seemed to be asleep every time Seung Jae saw him.
Was that merely a coincidence?
Seung Jae’s gaze suddenly settled on Yi Kyung’s reddened, bloodstained lips. He observed the sleeping man in silence before reaching out.
A large hand descended over Yi Kyung’s face. His slender brown eyebrows, delicate nose, and small lips quickly disappeared beneath it.
Seung Jae’s long fingertips touched his lower lip. The bead of crimson blood spread beneath them, crushing the lip that Yi Kyung had bitten red throughout the day. At the unexpected sensation, Yi Kyung’s parted lower lip trembled.
Seung Jae spoke.
“Are you going to keep avoiding me?”
His low, ominous voice shattered the silence in the room, as though he had reached the limit of his patience. Yi Kyung’s breath caught as if something had pierced his lungs.
Did he catch me?
Every fine hair on his body stood on end, and the fingers clutching the blanket curled even tighter.
Yi Kyung gripped it until his fingertips turned white.
I don’t want to die.
He had possessed someone in a novel.
Worse still, he had become Seo Yi Kyung—a man who had been abandoned by the Han Seung Jae he loved and met a wretched end.
Yi Kyung forced his eyes open. He could no longer keep pretending to be asleep. The pounding of his heart had already grown unbearable. He had hoped his voice would not tremble, but fear jolted through him the moment his eyes met Seung Jae’s looming gaze.
“...You’re back?”
Why was he glaring at him like that? Had he somehow realized that Yi Kyung was someone else? The thought drained what little color remained from his already pale face, leaving him as white as flour.
Seung Jae’s immense height and the body honed through years of exercise were concealed beneath his black suit, but nothing obscured his cold, impassive features. Leaning over Yi Kyung, he looked immaculate to the point of flawlessness. His face, seemingly devoid of emotion, was nearly expressionless, making the chill in his eyes all the more pronounced.
The instant Seung Jae’s eyebrows rose slightly, Yi Kyung looked away in alarm and deliberately rubbed his eyelids. Despite his plummeting heart, he struggled to appear calm, pulling a groggy face as though he had only just awakened.
“I was sleeping so deeply that I didn’t notice.”
He placed particular emphasis on deeply, as though offering a perfectly reasonable explanation. It did not seem to convince Seung Jae. Then again, perhaps he simply did not care. His long fingers were still touching Yi Kyung’s lower lip.
That alone sent a chill crawling down Yi Kyung’s spine. In the end, instinct took over, and he turned his head away from Seung Jae’s hand.
“What time is it? Did you just get home from work?”
Maybe he should have jumped from the terrace earlier. It felt deeply unfair that he had wasted his chance hesitating. Meanwhile, Seung Jae withdrew the finger that had slipped from Yi Kyung’s lip to his chin.
“Get up.”
He glanced at the small smear of blood on his hand, then raised his cold eyes to meet Yi Kyung’s.
“I’ll have them bring you a change of clothes. You’re going to the hospital first.”
“...”
His voice possessed a low resonance and unmistakable force. That alone carried enough heightened authority to intimidate Yi Kyung, who hurriedly braced himself on both arms and bolted upright.
“No. I’m just tired. It’s not serious enough to go to the hospital. Oh! Did you bring this for me?”
Yi Kyung hurriedly pulled the tray onto his thighs. Seung Jae stared down at him as he made a frantic effort to change the subject.
“Ah, it’s hot!”
He fumbled the porcelain lid in his haste to open it.
Clatter.
When Yi Kyung tried again, white steam rose in soft plumes. He picked up the deep-bowled spoon beside the dish and stirred the porridge, cooling the finely chopped beef and vegetables. All the while, his cheeks prickled beneath Seung Jae’s gaze until it felt as though the man were staring straight through him.
He suspects me.
Yi Kyung repeated the thought inwardly as though he had been burned, a red warning light blazing inside his head. Outwardly, however, he remained composed and rattled off empty pleasantries.
“It looks delicious. Thank you.”
Pursing his dry lips, Yi Kyung blew gently on the porridge. His mouth tasted bitter. With Seung Jae watching him like that, he had no appetite at all. Even so, he scooped up a small amount and skillfully forced it into his mouth.
Isn’t he leaving? Does he intend to stay until I finish all of this?
The porridge clung to his parched mouth. Yi Kyung stole a sidelong glance, only to meet Seung Jae’s eyes. His throat bobbed, and the porridge went down the wrong way.
He swiftly covered his mouth and lowered his head, his upper body heaving as one cough after another escaped him.
Cough, cough...!
Watching him, Seung Jae reached into the inner pocket of his black suit and pulled out his phone. The screen buzzed repeatedly. He looked down at it, then turned away.
Cough.
From the corner of his eye, Yi Kyung followed Seung Jae’s long legs as they moved away. The moment Seung Jae disappeared from view, opened the door, and left, his coughing subsided.
At least one good thing had come from his misfortune. Whoever was calling, they were nothing short of a savior.
Yi Kyung dropped the spoon onto the tray as though tossing it aside. Then he let all the strength drain from his body and leaned back against the head of the bed. Several long breaths poured out of him in succession.
“That won’t work anymore, either.”
The truth was, he could not solve anything by continuing to avoid Seung Jae. Yi Kyung looked around. The vast room belonged to an entirely different world from the place where he had once lived.
A landscape painting hung on the wall. Even at a glance, the ornaments on the shelves and in the display cabinets were clearly expensive. No matter how many times he looked around, he could not grow accustomed to the sight.
At first, he had assumed he would soon awaken from this bizarre dream.
In his original life, he had been a twenty-one-year-old university student with an alpha older brother. Addicted to studying, his brother trusted in their father’s support and habitually did whatever he pleased.
Naturally, their father was lenient only with his academically accomplished eldest son and trusted his word over Yi Kyung’s. His brother even cited research papers Yi Kyung had never heard of, leaving him speechless and unable to argue back.
Their mother was likewise persuaded by his brother’s methodical reasoning and repeatedly pressured Yi Kyung to apologize, insisting that he, as the younger brother, was at fault.
But Yi Kyung stubbornly refused until the end.
What did I do wrong? Why does everyone always blame me?
He slammed his bedroom door and went inside. No one opened the firmly closed door or came looking for him.
Yi Kyung woke early the following morning. Perhaps because he had not eaten the day before, he felt hungry. Even so, he stubbornly prepared to go to university as if his pride depended on it.
As he was leaving through the front door, he suddenly felt the warning signs of his heat cycle. Since presenting a medical certificate would excuse his absence, he hurried back to his room. He took suppressants and tried to sleep.
The world was populated by a majority of betas, a minority of alphas, and omegas. Male omegas in particular were rare—or at least seemed rarer because so few made themselves known. Their rarity brought so many inconveniences that some deliberately passed themselves off as betas.
Yi Kyung did not hide what he was, but neither did he advertise it. During the heat of his cycle, however, there was nothing he could do. Wandering outside and becoming aroused by an alpha’s scent would be disastrous. If that happened, his brother, who knew how to do nothing but study, would undoubtedly sneer that he had known Yi Kyung would end up like this.
When Yi Kyung awoke late that night, he could not fall asleep again.
I’m hungry.
Perhaps because he had taken strong suppressants on an empty stomach, he had a slight fever, and his head felt especially foggy.
Lying on the mattress, Yi Kyung idly played with his phone. He watched whatever YouTube showed him, drifting from one cat or dog video to another. Some scenes even made his nose sting with emotion. Then an advertisement titled The World of Omega happened to catch his eye.
It must have drawn his attention because one of the characters shared his name: Seo Yi Kyung.
Is he the protagonist?
Dazed from the medication, Yi Kyung searched for the novel and began reading. He intended to read only a little before going to sleep, yet bluish light was already seeping through the window before he knew it. Even then, he could not bring himself to put down his phone.
There’s someone just like my father in this story, too?
The more he watched a character with his own name suffer under the shadow of an alpha older brother, the more sympathy drew him into the story.
In The World of Omega, genetics and pheromones strictly determined a person’s place in society. The stronger an alpha’s secondary gender trait, the more completely he monopolized power. Moreover, the status of the alpha an omega married directly determined the omega’s own position.
In the original novel, Seo Yi Kyung entered an arranged marriage at the age of twenty-four with Han Seung Jae, who was four years his senior. Their story began in the spring, beneath cherry blossoms in full bloom, with the blessings and congratulations of countless people.
The match between Seo Yi Kyung, a dominant omega, and Han Seung Jae, a dominant alpha, had been arranged by their families when both presented at the age of seven.
Han Seung Jae of Myungjun Group and Seo Yi Kyung of Woorim Construction. Their marriage was little more than a politically and economically expedient arrangement. It was also driven by the desire to possess and preserve superior genes.
Before they actually married, their paths had barely crossed. There could not possibly have been any love between them.
No—at least Seo Yi Kyung in the novel had loved Han Seung Jae. Gentle and accommodating by nature, he willingly accepted his parents’ wishes and opened his heart to Seung Jae.
Fond of painting and deeply knowledgeable about art, Seo Yi Kyung was a tender and kindhearted man. Their marriage remained peaceful entirely because of his efforts. He had adapted himself to Seung Jae in every possible way.
But the harmonious married life Seo Yi Kyung had worked so tirelessly to build did not last long.
[Have you been well? It’s been a long time.]
It ended with the arrival of another omega.
Min Ra Hyun.