NUTMEG 0

Cheon Minje is handsome.

Even without listing one by one his tall stature, small face, the peculiar atmosphere that draws one’s gaze, or the shape of his features, it could be easily proven by the countless business cards from entertainment agencies he had received since his teens. However, the gazes of his peers as they looked at him were far from the admiration one might have for something more beautiful and superior than oneself. It would be more accurate to say they were rather dark and vulgar.

Because he is an omega.

Of course, this isn’t to say that in the 21st century, his sub-gender alone could explain the reason. The perception that treats alphas and omegas as beings close to animals ruled by pheromones, or that treats omegas like wombs for an alpha’s reproduction, has long become an outdated story found only in early modern literature from around the 1930s.

What is being discussed here is his pheromones.

Since the 1980s, complete control of a sub-gendered person’s pheromones and heat cycles has been made possible through medication. In other words, a modern person with common sense would have no reason to leak pheromones in daily life.

All the problems lay in the fact that Cheon Minje had a peculiar constitution where he was unable to control his pheromones himself, and medication did not work on him. The only fortunate thing was that because he was a recessive, the amount and scent of his pheromones were subtle, but it was that very subtlety that felt like a rather tantalizing temptation to alphas, which accounted for eighty percent of Cheon Minje’s misfortune.

Cheon Minje is a fairly successful idol singer.

Cheon Minje, who was still unhappy even after becoming an adult, dreamed that a life-changing opportunity would miraculously come his way. And then, he received a business card on Garosu-gil. The agency’s business card and the formulaic pitch were nothing new, but there was just one thing that captured his heart.

It was the promise that they would have him debut in just three months. The person who handed him the card added that the omega member of a five-member idol group, which had already finished its preparations, had to leave due to personal circumstances.

An idol? A singer? Both were careers he had never even considered, but it sounded like he could become a completely new Cheon Minje in just three months. Cheon Minje seized that opportunity.

However, the members hated him. Cheon Minje did not think that the members had not given him a chance. It was simply because he, as always, was introverted, passive, and even slow-witted, making him a nuisance. It was only natural that he was hated, since a half-baked omega who had rolled in out of nowhere had snatched the opportunity that the other members had long prepared and waited for. This large apartment with its marble floors, the fans’ love, and his popularity were all practically obtained for free thanks to the members.

Cheon Minje had an exceptional talent for self-deprecation.

🍊

As he gathered his lanky limbs, which were splayed out on the cold marble floor, and pushed himself up, he felt a lukewarm liquid flowing from behind him. His whole body, still unable to shed the heat from the lingering aftereffects of his heat cycle, was still burning up.

‘Why are you crying, do you feel wronged? You don’t. Our Minje’s ass likes it, though, doesn’t it?’

Just as the man said, Minje also could not understand why he was crying.

‘Tsk, you look pathetic when you cry. You’re getting old too, Cheon Minje.’

He was taken aback by those words. Because the man often complimented Minje’s face, at least, Minje was quite obsessed with his own face. The face he had worked so hard to maintain and care for. At the words that he had become pathetic and unsightly, tears kept pouring out.

‘Ah—this is killing my mood. Touch your front yourself. Don’t rub on me disgustingly, you fucker. Why the hell do you keep crying so unluckily.’

Minje, panting from the heat, hiccupped in an attempt to stop his tears as the man had told him to. But as if in reaction, not only tears but also a clear fluid began to run from his nose. The man grabbed Minje’s hair as if looking at something filthy and slammed him onto the floor.

With a dull thud, one of his cheeks was smashed into the cold marble floor. Thump, thump. While he was being pounded from below, his cheekbone scraping against the floor stung. It would probably bruise. Then he would become even uglier.

‘If you feel so wronged and miserable, then just give it all up. You don’t want to do that, do you, our Minje. You’re crazy for money and dick too, aren’t you.’

That was the only thing the man said that was wrong. Cheon Minje had no interest in money or dick. If asked what he was interested in, then, well… he wasn’t sure.

The man soon came inside Minje and carelessly tossed the tissue he used to wipe his groin onto the floor. At the feet of the prostrate Minje, several clumps of tissue and one empty pill packet lay scattered.

The man sat at the island counter and lit a cigarette with a silver Zippo lighter. The distinctive click sound was heard. He took a deep drag on the cigarette until his cheeks hollowed, leisurely watched TV, then tossed the cigarette butt onto the sink and left, grabbing his car keys. Minje left his languid and feverish body lying on the marble floor and stared blankly at the TV the man had left on.

On a familiar public broadcast channel delivering entertainment news, a man as handsome as if he had been sculpted was walking on a red carpet. At his appearance, a reporter with a high-pitched, hard-to-listen-to voice raised her pitch even higher.

‘The son of Director Choi Cheowon and actor Baek Hwao, the leader of the group Uncontrol, and now the star of a ten-million-viewer movie! It’s actor Mr. Choi Wonoh!’

On the screen, he stood with a perfect smile amidst a barrage of flashes that burst like they were shattering.

After watching up to that point, Minje turned off the TV and got up. It was because the man’s words kept floating through his mind.

‘If you feel so wronged and miserable, then just give it all up.’

He had no idea why he couldn’t forget those words. He had managed to hold on and endure somehow until now, and today was not much different from any other day, yet those words felt like an answer, a sweet salvation.

If he had to keep living like this anyway, he wanted to quit at this point.

Yes, let’s give it all up.

Cheon Minje walked to the kitchen, unconcerned by the lukewarm liquid flowing down his thighs with every step. Then, as if possessed, he pulled out a sharp kitchen knife. But when he actually placed the knife against his wrist or chest, his right hand trembled violently. Funnily enough, he was afraid of pain. Then what should he do? Looking around, the Zippo lighter the man had left on the island table caught his eye.

Right, let’s start a fire. Wouldn’t he be able to die from smoke inhalation? It would be better than the pain of being stabbed by a knife. But soon, he thought of the white dog that lived in the apartment across the hall. A dog or other people can’t be harmed because of someone like me….

Minje rummaged through the kitchen drawers and cupboards but couldn’t find anything suitable, so he searched his bedroom like a madman, turning it upside down. And he found a medicine bottle he had put deep inside a bedroom drawer. Tranquilizers and sleeping pills. They were pills he had taken regularly until a short while ago. Recently, he hadn’t even had the motivation to take his medicine, so he had forgotten about them. When he opened the bottle, it was full of pills. Naturally, the words of the doctor who had prescribed them came to mind.

‘If you take these with hormone-related drugs, it can cause major problems with your hormonal system. An overdose is, of course, even more dangerous. It can even be life-threatening, so you must absolutely refrain from taking them when you are taking heat inducers.’

This is it.

Minje was about to swallow a handful of pills but paused again. He was stark naked, and his face and hair were a mess. If he died in this state, his manager would discover his pathetic-looking corpse. Funnily enough, he absolutely did not want that.

In the end, he unwillingly went into the bathroom, squeezed out a generous amount of his favorite body wash, and carefully washed his body. After thoroughly cleaning out even the semen remaining inside his ass, he put on his favorite clothes and poured the pills deep into his throat. Only then did he lie down straight on his neatly made bed.

Before long, a fierce wave of nausea and a headache struck. All his effort in washing and changing into new clothes was in vain as his entire body became soaked in a cold sweat, and his heart beat so fast it felt like it had come out of his chest. His body began to escape the control of his reason, just like when his heat had come.

Tears streamed down his face, and something that was either saliva or foam bubbled up around his lips. He couldn’t breathe properly. Unable to bear it any longer, he turned his head to the side and retched. The pills, not yet dissolved in his stomach acid, revealed themselves one by one within the foam. A sudden fear that he would vomit up all the pills seized Minje, and he picked the pills out of the vomit and swallowed them again.

After repeating this several times, a sense of calm gradually set in. His heart had begun to beat very slowly.

The bed he was lying on was a mess. He had thrashed about, kicking the things on the nightstand and the blankets so wildly that it looked as if a robber had broken in, and his favorite clothes were soiled with vomit, along with his once-neat face. It was a life where not even the act of dying went his way.

As he willingly threw himself into his flickering consciousness, Minje unconsciously recalled the image of the picture-perfect dominant alpha from the TV.

Choi Wonoh. Had there ever been a time in his life when things didn’t go his way? There was no way. His life, having been born with everything, was probably similar to walking straight down a smoothly laid red carpet. And the red carpet he stood on and the filthy bed he lay on were worlds apart.

If possible, he wanted to live like him, too.

Not living by just going with the flow, being pushed this way and that like a buoy floating on the open sea, but by planting his feet firmly on the ground and building a life for himself.

If only he weren’t an omega, if only he didn’t have this goddamned constitution, maybe he could have gotten a little closer to that.

If, just by chance, God showed mercy and gave him a new opportunity.

Please don’t let me be born as an omega.