NUTMEG 1

“Hyung, you’re a beta, right?”

Choi Wonoh was staring at him with an expression he had never seen before in his life.

The youthful face, thick with the hint of a smile, looked four or five years younger than he was now. Cheon Minje was a little bewildered. Not only was he not a beta, but Choi Wonoh had never called him hyung either—in the first place, there was hardly any reason to be called that—and whenever their eyes met while Choi Wonoh was secretly staring, there was a high probability that a look close to contempt would be returned. Every time that happened, didn’t he lower his gaze, feeling as though his very existence was a sin?

But that same person was now smiling at him, his long, almond-shaped eyes curving. Minje could see a deep dimple forming on one cheek. It was a smile so sweet it seemed to come straight out of a movie.

Minje swallowed hard with a gulp. He had never dared to even imagine that Choi Wonoh’s smile could be directed at him, so this smile felt like a luscious fruit growing in an empty garden. I want it. If I secretly picked just one and ate it, it felt like no one would ever know…

How can I have it? Should I answer that I’m a beta? But I’m not a beta. I’m just a vulgar omega who goes around leaking pheromones, just as I’ve been told my whole life.

Thinking that far, he grew sullen at the thought that this was, after all, just a pipe dream.

A dream?

Am I having this dream because I died while thinking about Choi Wonoh?

No, I definitely died.

🍊

Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep— Good morning—

Cheon Minje gasped as if cold water had been thrown on his face, his eyes flying open. A sudden bright light poured into his pupils, momentarily blinding him. He reflexively shut his eyes, then slowly blinked them open, and the first thing he saw was a yellowish ceiling. It was a narrow, crude ceiling.

Where am I?

‘A hospital…?’

It was the most realistic guess. He had shoved pills down his throat with the will to die, but it might not have been enough to kill him. Did his manager find him and end up taking him to the hospital? Minje closed his eyes again. He was tired. This damn life. Can’t even die when I want to. It was dizzying to think about what his manager or the group leader would nag him about when they found out he had woken up.

Just then, the loud alarm sound assaulted his ears again. Minje frowned and fumbled around, searching for the source of the noise. A familiar white cell phone came into his hand. No, to be more precise, it looked familiar, but it wasn’t his.

Without even a moment to sort out his thoughts, the alarm blared loudly again, and Minje, flustered, turned it off. Only then did he slowly sit up and look around.

A faint, damp, and musty smell of mold. The gaudy floral-patterned blanket he was under, so worn out that the cotton was showing in places. A small, dirty room where five steps from the entrance would take you to the opposite wall.

This was the cheap, semi-basement room at the top of Haebangchon where Cheon Minje had lived alone before his debut.

‘What is this…’

Am I dreaming? Minje raised both hands and slapped his own face, making a smacking sound. It stung. He pinched his forearm again, hard. A groan escaped him, “Ah!”

Is this a prank…? A variety show? The possibility that his manager or the members were tricking him, keeping it a secret from him, was more than plentiful. Conscious of a camera that might be hidden somewhere, he let out an awkward laugh, “Haha,” but an unknown anxiety made his chest churn. For something that was just decorated, the tiny corner of the room matched his memory too perfectly.

For instance, this full-length mirror he had picked up off the street. He had tried to peel off the hideous brown contact paper but had given up midway, so the edge of the paper on the bottom right corner was always dangling. Minje fumbled for that spot with his hand and swallowed dryly with a gulp.

Is this… something like a time slip?

‘No way.’

In the movies and dramas Minje enjoyed watching, things like that only happened to the protagonist. Not to a person like Cheon Minje, who had no talent or perseverance and was just coasting through life.

Minje hesitated, then cautiously met his own eyes in the mirror. Two small moles, one above his left cheek and one next to his mouth, were clearly visible. He tried wiping his cheek with his long fingers, but they remained. His fingertips began to tremble slightly.

He had always covered those two small moles with makeup since his debut, and then had them removed with a laser procedure during a break at some point. It was because flawless, porcelain-like skin was in vogue.

This wasn’t the twenty-eight-year-old idol, Cheon Minje. This was…

Just then, the phone rang again with a loud ringtone. Startled, he looked at the screen and saw the name saved as ‘Store Manager’ displayed. After a moment of hesitation, he fiddled with the phone to press the call button. It was definitely a phone he had used before, but he was so used to the latest models that he couldn’t find the call button on the old phone right away.

“H-hello?”

—Mr. Minje, where are you?

“Y-yes…? I’m at home.”

He swallowed the words, I think. Despite his stuttering, the man on the other end of the line continued speaking in a cheerful voice.

—You know you’re 30 minutes late, right? There’s no one to take over, so I’m watching the counter. Get here quickly.

“What? Ah, I-I’m sorry.”

—Hurry on over~.

He gave a clumsy “Yes, yes,” and the call ended.

He had hesitated because he couldn’t remember the person saved simply as ‘Store Manager’ without a name, but hearing the voice brought back a faint memory.

Minje stared blankly at the date displayed on the screen. January 9, 20XX.

It was the same as his memory. Five years ago, after his only blood relative, his grandfather, died and left him alone, Minje moved to this semi-basement room and began to live on his own. He had to get a part-time job to make a living, and the person who called was the manager of the café where Minje worked.

His grandfather, born in an era when the concepts of alpha, omega, and beta were still vague, had lived tenaciously until the turn of the century and held the same prejudices against omegas as any ordinary beta man of his age. Due to his peculiar constitution, Minje was prone to getting into minor incidents and accidents even in middle and high school. His grandfather was ashamed of him. He considered everything to be the fault of his vulgar grandson who couldn’t even control his pheromones properly.

Since that was true to some extent, Minje became withdrawn and isolated both at school and at home. There was no way such a grandfather would allow Minje to attend university or get a proper job. His attitude was that it was better to quietly do chores at home than to cause trouble for people because of that damn constitution of his.

So it was no wonder that his grandfather’s death felt like a liberation and a new opportunity for Minje. He wanted to work like other people and become a university student. He started studying late for the college entrance exam, but to others, he was no different from a jobless person. Minje, having no affiliation, was not treated like a human being anywhere.

However, this man, the store manager, had addressed the young-faced Cheon Minje as ‘Mr. Minje’ from the very beginning, using polite language. He remembered that at the time, although the title felt unfamiliar and ticklish, he liked it because it felt like he was being acknowledged as a proper member of society.

Why did I quit this part-time job again…?

He couldn’t clearly understand any of it, but time was ticking away. The innately timid Cheon Minje was not the type of person with thick enough skin to ignore the fact that the manager was covering the counter for him. In the end, without even the luxury of thinking it over, he washed up in the tiny bathroom that didn’t even have a bathtub, like a man on the run.

I don’t know what’s what, but it seems I’ve become twenty-three again.

Minje thought to himself as he washed his hair with cheap shampoo, without even conditioner.

Wiping his dripping hair roughly with a towel, Minje unzipped the fabric hanger cover. The clothes inside were ones he thought he wore quite neatly back then, but to eyes that had grown accustomed to brand-name clothes during the peak of his idol career, these shabby clothes were hardly appealing.

Minje sighed softly and slipped his arms into the clothes that looked the least worn-out. He missed the idol Cheon Minje’s dressing room, which was packed with clothes that still had their price tags on.

Missed it?

You’re crazy, Cheon Minje. How long has it been since you decided to throw it all away and die, only to have that resolution shaken by mere clothes? He knew to the point of being sick of it that he was inherently weak and foolish, but he found that version of himself so ugly and ridiculous that he had to laugh.

Outside, a pale sleet, neither snow nor rain, was falling. Without a proper winter jacket, he threw on a field jacket padded with only a thin layer of cotton, ran down the steep hill as if sliding, and got on a bus.

Recently, he hadn’t been able to take a single step outside without a mask and a hat, so it had been a really long time since he used public transportation with his face exposed. He boarded the bus nervously, and the first person he made eye contact with, a high school girl, indifferently turned her head away. He tried making eye contact with other people, but no one seemed to recognize him. The feeling was truly strange. He found it so unbelievable that he barely resisted the urge to grab the person in front of him and ask, ‘Don’t you know me?’

It wasn’t ten or twenty years, just five, so it didn’t feel like the era had changed at a glance like in a drama or movie. People’s clothes didn’t seem much different from now either.

Minje absentmindedly stared out the window at the completely hazy Han River, mulling over his current situation.

Have I really become the twenty-three-year-old Cheon Minje…?

Why?

The moment he decided to die, his mind had felt so clear, as if he had finally found an answer. Did he have to start all over again from twenty-three? Minje let out a long sigh. The five years he had to live through again felt like fifty.

Just then, a loud laugh came from the monitor installed behind the driver’s seat. He glanced up without thinking and saw two people bantering about ‘the way to be victorious in every blind date.’

—Honestly, the way to be victorious in every blind date is to become an alpha man. Then it’s just game over.

—That’s not something you can become just by wanting to, you fool.

—When I was young, I believed that if I prayed, I’d present as an alpha, so I prayed every night. I even pestered my mom to get a hormone test every year. You know, right? Nowadays, you can predict your presentation with hormones, like a growth plate.

—With that much dedication, you’ll definitely present as an alpha in your next life.

—Right?

At the sound of scattered laughter, he suddenly remembered the wish he had made before dying.

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

Could it be that this absurd thing happened because of that wish? If so, it would be nice if his omega sub-gender had changed too. A time slip itself was beyond common sense, so it wouldn’t be strange if his sub-gender had changed as well.

If that were the case, it would be exciting. How many filthy incidents had he experienced because of his damn omega pheromones? An omega whose pheromones leaked out in a world where everyone of his sub-gender hid or controlled their pheromones. To put it politely, he was alluring; to put it bluntly, he looked promiscuous.

At least he could breathe a sigh of relief among betas, who couldn’t smell pheromones. But it was a world where everyone looked like a beta. Cheon Minje, who was insensitive to alpha pheromones due to being recessive, always had to be on guard, never knowing when or where an alpha pretending to be a beta would suddenly turn vulgar, his eyes gleaming.

Cheon Minje raised his wrist and buried his nose where his pulse beat. He tried hard to catch a scent, but he couldn’t smell any particular body odor. Even when he was an omega, he couldn’t really smell his own pheromones, so it wasn’t a particularly strange issue.

After getting off the bus, Minje jogged slightly and arrived at a large franchise café on Garosu-gil.

He made eye contact with the manager at the counter and another part-timer cleaning the sink, and greeted them. Before he arrived, they were people whose names and faces he couldn’t recall, but seeing them in person brought back a faint memory. The manager smiled forgivingly at Minje, who was nearly an hour late, and told him to go change his clothes.

In a small storage room, so full of supplies that only two people could barely fit inside, Minje quickly changed into a thin denim shirt and tied on a black apron. Fortunately, perhaps because of the weather, there were few customers in the store.

“Um… I’m sorry… for being late…”

The female part-timer washing mugs at the sink shot Minje a cold look before averting her gaze. Seeing that, he bit his lip bitterly. It could just be irritation directed at Minje for being an hour late, but for some reason, he had a feeling it wasn’t just that.

It was the familiar gaze that ‘omega Cheon Minje’ received, not ‘idol Cheon Minje.’ Minje let out a quiet sigh. Unaware of this atmosphere, the good-natured manager gestured for Minje to come over.

“Mr. Minje, you’re here? What’s up, you’ve never been late before.”

“Ah… I, I’m sorry…”

“It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s a good thing we don’t have many customers today.”

The manager smiled and adjusted his thin-framed glasses.

“We don’t have many customers, but we’re completely out of coffee beans. Mr. Minje, could you go get some beans from the storage room? You know which ones we use, right?”

“Ah, yes.”

He had come back to the storage room on impulse, but Minje could only stand there blankly inside. Costa Rica, Brazil, Guatemala… each sack had a different country of origin written on it, and he had no idea which of these beans the café used. After pondering a little longer, he finally gave up and was about to leave the storage room.

Click.

The manager came into the storage room.