By Zephyria Lee Yoon-san, who became a third-year middle school student, was now a little free from the extreme abdominal pain. He still had to take painkillers regularly, but it was still better than the pain he had experienced in elementary school, and if he took his painkillers on time, he could live his daily life without any problems.
In addition, his weight had also undergone a clear change. Lee Yoon-san, who had maintained a weight that was classified as severe obesity beyond simple obesity for a while, was now closer to underweight than normal weight. It was the result of suffering from extreme abdominal pain for quite a long time since puberty began.
Of course, his weight did not drop in just 1-2 years. The weight loss that started when he was 12 years old, when his first puberty began, is still steadily progressing.
As a result, the degree of weight loss, which is not a phenomenon caused by effort and cannot be stopped as he pleases, has now reached a somewhat difficult level. The time he spent from the upper grades of elementary school to last year, his second year of middle school, suffering from pain and fever, left aftereffects.
From this year, when painkillers worked well and he was able to live his daily life, Lee Yoon-san often fell into deep sleep, as if he was compensating for the sleep he had missed, and his shortened appetite did not seem to return. The basal metabolic rate, which restores and maintains major internal organs, is enormous, but the amount of calories he consumes has decreased, so his weight is steadily decreasing even if he just stays still.
Lee Yoon-san’s parents were always worried about him, and although the hospital, which he visited regularly for check-ups, said that his digestive and reproductive systems were healthy and there was nothing to worry about, Lee Yoon-san’s drastically reduced weight still made the adults around him feel sorry for him.
Having just passed through summer, Lee Yoon-san still had milk chocolate-colored tanned skin, which made his thin arms stand out even more. His eyes, which were always droopy and straight due to being pressed by his chubby cheeks, were fully revealed as soon as he lost weight and regained their original size, and his face shape, which had always been round and had a vague jawline, became slender. He still had baby fat and chubby cheeks, but they no longer made his nose look low or his eyes look small as before.
Therefore, no one compared Lee Yoon-san to a pig or a large animal anymore.
Lee Yoon-san now had children who hung out with him like friends, and those children compared Lee Yoon-san to gentle and cute animals such as ‘rabbit,’ ‘deer,’ ‘squirrel,’ or ‘hamster,’ and that soon became his nickname.
From late spring, when the sunlight became stronger, until summer and autumn, Lee Yoon-san’s skin was always tanned and often maintained a chocolate color, so during that time, the modifier ‘dark’ was added before those nicknames. Lee Yoon-san’s skin only became milky and fair in winter.
“Lee Yoon-san!”
“Yeah.”
“We have to eat lunch quickly today. We’re going to play 3-on-3 soccer with the kids.”
“Okay.”
Lee Yoon-san nodded in response to Shin Soo-hyun, who came next to him and held out a bag of snacks, and pushed the bag of snacks in front of him away. He declined the offer to eat. Shin Soo-hyun didn’t add anything to Lee Yoon-san’s attitude and sat on the desk while eating snacks. It was Lee Yoon-san’s desk.
“What are you wearing tomorrow? I asked my mom to buy me clothes for the fall picnic, and she said something.”
“You buy a lot of clothes usually.”
“Hey, it’s a picnic, you can’t just wear anything! We’re going outside, so I have to buy something.”
“Well, we’re wearing uniforms anyway.”
“Ah, I’m asking if you’re not going to wear a cardigan or hoodie on top! The Maison Kidsney cardigan that came out this time is so cute.”
“I don’t know….”
Shin Soo-hyun, who seemed to be already excited about the fall picnic tomorrow, started searching for cardigans or hoodies on his phone. He showed some of the designs to Lee Yoon-san and asked for his opinion, but Lee Yoon-san thought they all looked similar to the cardigans Shin Soo-hyun already had.
Shin Soo-hyun is a classmate Lee Yoon-san made when he was in the second grade of middle school. The middle school Lee Yoon-san attended was a school consisting of Betas and a small number of Omegas, and among them, it was a place where male and female students were divided into separate classes. In fact, most schools that accepted second-gendered people were like that.
Centering on the majority of Betas, they would choose to accept either Alphas or Omegas. And within that, considering the gender ratio of the students, each school would divide classes by gender as the first gender, or by second gender and Betas.
For that reason, Lee Yoon-san was spending his middle school life in a class consisting only of male students for three years. The number of Omegas in one grade was not enough to fill a class, so they could not divide the classes into Omegas and Betas.
And Shin Soo-hyun is also a male Omega. He was also a friend who didn’t know about Lee Yoon-san’s obese days and treated Lee Yoon-san like a dark rabbit.
“Ah, I don’t think she’ll buy this because it’s expensive… Navy is okay, and beige is okay too. I want to buy them all.”
“Can’t you just buy something similar with that fox drawn on it? Yoo Shin-sa and Nephe also had them. I don’t think they were that expensive.”
“That’s fake. The brand is different. You dark rabbit, you really don’t know anything about clothes.”
“……”
Although the real reason Shin Soo-hyun calls Lee Yoon-san ‘dark rabbit’ is because he ‘runs away at the drop of a hat.’ It was a word referring to Lee Yoon-san, who showed a participation rate of less than half when he was coaxed to play together after school or go out to eat something. He runs away well. Anyway, Lee Yoon-san, who had been talking to Shin Soo-hyun, who was crunching on snacks and couldn’t take his eyes off the cardigan in his phone, was scolded for no reason and stared blankly at Shin Soo-hyun before turning his gaze away.
The classroom scene was not much different from the atmosphere of a normal male student class, even though there were a few male Omega children mixed in. The children were eating snacks, kicking soccer balls indoors, or burying their heads in their phones during breaks. Originally, phones were supposed to be collected while at school, but the school Lee Yoon-san attended was not like that.
Instead of arbitrarily collecting and storing the children’s phones, the school chose to strictly educate and manage them so that the phones would not interfere during class. As a result, most of the children, including Shin Soo-hyun, were busy burying their noses in their phones during breaks, but due to strict penalty point management, it was rare for phones to cause problems during class.
“Tomorrow, kids from other schools will come too, right? Because Neverland is a really famous place?”
“Are there many schools with overlapping picnic days?”
“Still, I wish someone would come. So I can at least see the Alphas.”
Shin Soo-hyun said, putting down his phone and starting to fold the snack bag, as if he had finished eating the snacks. Even though he said that, his tone and expression were not very enthusiastic or curious. Really just the minimum amount of interest to see the existence of ‘Alpha’? It was ambiguous to see it as interest in the opposite sex.
That’s because there were no schools with Alphas around Wonan Middle School, which Lee Yoon-san and Shin Soo-hyun attended. This was because school assignments were taken care of at the school district level to prevent possible accidents.
Lee Yoon-san and Shin Soo-hyun rarely had the opportunity to see Alphas. The most they could do was guess by looking at passers-by, and the children, who were only sixteen years old, did not have any Alpha acquaintances.
Occasionally, some Omegas started to get to know Alphas through academies, outside, or through acquaintances, but that was not the case for Lee Yoon-san and Shin Soo-hyun. Even the academies the two attended were places that were fully committed to gender separation.
In society, or even just by going to college, Alphas and Omegas live mixed together. The only time when the two genders are thoroughly separated is during adolescence and puberty.
The separation of the two genders during adolescence is a concept like a social safety net to prevent accidents caused by unstable Pheromones and Heat cycles. By the time they become adults, their hormones become quite stable, they become skilled at handling Pheromones, and their Heat cycles also become regular.
However, since thorough separation cannot be achieved even in places other than schools or educational institutions, meetings between Alphas and Omegas sometimes occur unexpectedly in crowded public places or other events.
Events such as school trips can be supervised and managed by teachers based on accommodation facilities, but it is difficult to manage and supervise places where they simply go to play, such as picnics, so this often happens. So Shin Soo-hyun seemed to be a little hopeful that he would be able to see Alphas at the picnic tomorrow.
There was no guarantee that only they would be having a picnic at a crowded amusement park, and there was no law that said they wouldn’t find Alphas of the same age there. Shin Soo-hyun just seemed curious about the existence of Alphas and wanted to see them. He seemed curious about how different they were from him, even though they were the same boy but an Omega.
Of course, he also seemed to have a very slight curiosity about the opposite gender. He keeps bringing up the topic of Alphas even though he’s trying to look as uninterested as possible.
“Kim Ji-hoo knows an Alpha and talks about him all day long.”
“Ji-hoo? So, is he dating that Alpha?”
“I don’t know. It seems like they’re flirting. They met at a study cafe and found out they live in the same complex.”
“Wow….”
“He gave him his Insta ID and he gets so many DMs.”
“Is he any different from us?”
“He’s the same age but he’s really tall. Like a college student. But he seems to have some bravado too.”Bravado?””
“But Kim Ji-hoo thinks it’s cute. He’s really tall and handsome, so he thinks everything he says is cute.”
“They’ll be dating soon.”
“His family will be in an uproar if they find out.”
The conversation about Alphas continued. Thanks to living in gender-separated classes for three years, most of the Omegas Shin Soo-hyun and Lee Yoon-san knew were boys.
Kids who were in the same class or are in the same class now. When the kids get together, they mostly talk about Alphas. Once, they said, “What’s so different about them from us, even though they’re the same boys?” But then they expressed curiosity, saying they wished they had an Alpha they knew.
Regardless of their second gender, they were at an age when they were very interested in the opposite sex. Since they were not much different from ordinary boys except for the reproductive organs inside them, they naturally gathered and talked about the opposite sex and had lewd or mischievous conversations. Even when they were talking about games, the story of a pretty Alpha Noona they saw at the PC cafe came up, and even when they were talking about streamers, the story of an Alpha Hyung who did streaming broadcasts with a handsome face came up.
Once the second gender has manifested, it is natural to be instinctively attracted to someone of a different second gender rather than the first gender. There were often cases where Omegas met each other or Alphas met each other, but in the world, such relationships were seen as homosexual relationships. Even in cases where the first gender is divided into male and female.
Of course, it is a society where all legal relationships can be guaranteed regardless of gender, and since gender has become complicated, it is tolerant of homosexuality, but anyway, that’s how it is.
Lee Yoon-san was not completely uninterested in Alphas either. Lee Yoon-san was also curious about the beings who were different from him and thoroughly separated.
Besides, mothers often expressed their worries that Lee Yoon-san would be popular with Alphas, and Hwang Hae-kyung’s parents, who occasionally heard news through the mothers, also said with certainty that a wonderful Alpha would appear to Lee Yoon-san.
Like this, Lee Yoon-san had been hearing words of praise from the moment his Heat cycle started, but he didn’t know who the ‘wonderful Alpha’ that his Auntie and Uncle were talking about was.
He once thought of their son, Hwang Hae-kyung, but Hwang Hae-kyung was a child with a pretty face, slender figure, and smaller height than him. He couldn’t come to camping because he was going through his Heat cycle, so he probably became an Omega like him.
Since he had declared his retirement from the kids’ model side, which he had been active in since he started going through his Heat cycle, it was a guess that there was no room for doubt. Usually, in the case of children or kids’ models who manifest as Alphas, it was common to announce a break due to the Heat cycle and start activities again after resting.
There were many cases where they took such a path even when manifesting as Omegas, but it was a bit exceptional in the case of a boy manifesting as an Omega. The pain of the Heat cycle is particularly severe, management is more difficult, and depending on the child’s disposition, they often fail to accept their second gender and become confused. And Lee Yoon-san thought that Hwang Hae-kyung was quite a proud type.
Therefore, Lee Yoon-san had no doubt that Hwang Hae-kyung had manifested as an Omega.
‘He seemed stressed about his height… I wonder if he’s grown a lot taller.’
Although the manifestation of the second gender has a big impact on height, genetic factors cannot be ignored. I remember that Hwang Hae-kyung’s parents were both tall, so Hwang Hae-kyung could have grown tall enough if he wanted to.
But since he would have manifested as an Omega, his bone growth would have slowed down significantly, so what would it be like? Would he be about the same height as me now? Lee Yoon-san thought aimlessly.
After growing up and thinking about it, it was a frequent thought since he realized that the height talk he had done without thinking when he was young could have been a big stress for Hwang Hae-kyung. Now that his height is 173cm, his growth has slowed down noticeably, so it seemed like they might be about the same height now. Still, since Hwang Hae-kyung was so small, he didn’t think he would be taller than him.
“Hey, crazy, Semyeong High School is coming to Neverland tomorrow!”
Kim Ji-hoo ran to Lee Yoon-san and Shin Soo-hyun, who were looking at the Kidsney cardigan again and wondering about Hwang Hae-kyung’s recent situation. It was Kim Ji-hoo, the male Omega who was ‘flirting with an Alpha’ who had just been on their lips. Unlike the two, Kim Ji-hoo was in the next class, but he had been in the same class in the previous grade, so he still came to play often. The reason was that there were no close Omegas in Kim Ji-hoo’s class.
“Semyeong High School? The high school that Alphas go to?”
“Yeah! I was searching on Insta earlier and saw a story, and there’s a class of first-year students there coming to Neverland tomorrow!”
“We’re finally going to see Alphas tomorrow.”
Unlike Kim Ji-hoo, who was speaking excitedly, Shin Soo-hyun, who smiled and rubbed the remaining snack crumbs on his fingers on Kim Ji-hoo’s uniform, said. Then Kim Ji-hoo was horrified and stepped back, and Lee Yoon-san frowned and pulled his upper body back, worried that the snack crumbs would reach him too. Then Shin Soo-hyun smiled mischievously.
“Hey, the volleyball team here is really famous for both men and women? Most of them are Alphas.”
“Volleyball team?”
“Yeah, all the Alphas who play volleyball gather here from all over the country. This is a famous volleyball school.”
“Of course they win a lot and become famous because they gather a few Betas and a lot of Alphas to play the game.”Anyway, 씨.” The Alpha I saw in the story earlier is also a first-year student in the volleyball team, and he posted that he’s going to Horror Days tomorrow and asked if it’s scary. Ah, I have to hang around in front of it tomorrow.”
“Hey, you have an Alpha you’re flirting with.”
“Who said I was going to do anything? I’m just going to see what high school Alpha Noonas and Hyungs are like.”
Kim Ji-hoo frowned a little at Shin Soo-hyun’s point and said as if making an excuse. Even if there was an Alpha he was getting close to, he was still curious about high school Alphas. Even though it was only a year apart, middle school students and high school students felt very different.
It was natural to be more interested in the group of high school Alphas, who felt a little more mature because they were one step above the Alpha in middle school like them. In the meantime, even a first-year student playing volleyball at a famous volleyball school posted on his story that he was going to Neverland tomorrow, so it was worth getting excited about.
Besides, Semyeong High School is a school that divides classes into Alphas and Betas, not men and women. This means that there are enough Alphas to fill more than two classes with only Alphas, and there will definitely be quite a few female Alphas among those Alphas. As Kim Ji-hoo said, Semyeong High School operated both men’s and women’s volleyball teams.
“It’s my first time seeing Alpha Noonas.”
“That’s right. Because there are so few of them like us.”
Kim Ji-hoo said, unable to hide his expectant expression, and Lee Yoon-san, who was listening, nodded in agreement. Shin Soo-hyun, who was listening to the story, was finally texting his mother. He said that the fox brand cardigan was essential.
“Ah, but that person is said to be at that school.”
“Who?”
“You know, the one who was a sensation as a kids’ model in the past.”
“Oh, really?”
Kim Ji-hoo brought up the topic of conversation again as if he had belatedly remembered, but Shin Soo-hyun’s answer, who was already enthusiastic about the cardigan, did not feel like it had a soul. Instead, this time Lee Yoon-san’s eyes twinkled a little. Kim Ji-hoo did not miss Lee Yoon-san’s expression and made eye contact with the listener who would listen to him and continued the story.
“He was really famous when we were young. Lee Yoon-san, you know him, right? Looking at your expression, you seem more interested than the Semyeong High School story earlier.”
“Who’s the kids’ model?”
“You know, the one who was famous because everyone said he dressed well and was pretty. Ah, I can’t remember his name. Anyway, I heard he’s also at Semyeong High School.”
“You don’t remember his name?”
“I don’t know. I know him when I see a picture, but not his name. He suddenly quit, so it was a sensation. I heard he hurt his face badly?”
“Ah….”
Lee Yoon-san’s mouth felt a little bitter at Kim Ji-hoo’s words. It was because Hwang Hae-kyung’s pretty face, who had hurt his eyebrow area because of him when he was young, came to mind.
He was interested at the moment he heard the story of the kids’ model, thinking it might be Hwang Hae-kyung’s story, but when he heard that he quit because he hurt his face ‘badly,’ he wasn’t sure if it was Hwang Hae-kyung’s story.
I think his eyebrow was scratched, but should that also be considered ‘badly’ injured? No, it’s true that his face was injured because of me, so is it right that it’s Hwang Hae-kyung’s story? But there’s no way Hwang Hae-kyung became an Alpha, right? Semyeong High School is a school that Alphas go to?
“Hey crazy, Mom said she’s going to buy clothes later!”
Lee Yoon-san frowned and tried hard to guess, but the topic of conversation quickly moved on due to Shin Soo-hyun’s excited voice. So he just stopped thinking about it. Besides, it wasn’t like there weren’t one or two people who had been child models, and if the reason Hwang Hae-kyung quit being a child model was because of an eyebrow scar, then the relationship between his parents and Hwang Hae-kyung’s parents couldn’t possibly be that good.
Wouldn’t they have given and received compensation appropriate for the injury and ended the relationship, or would Hwang Hae-kyung’s parents resent him?
But Hwang Hae-kyung’s parents still liked him quite a bit. Although they conveyed their feelings through his parents. Anyway, Lee Yoon-san stopped thinking about it around there. He knew very well that if he thought too deeply about it, it would spread to unnecessary thoughts.
“It’s disgusting. Didn’t you do that last time and buy an Acne sweatshirt?”
“So what.”
“It’s not like you get any better just because you wear expensive clothes.”
“Ugh, get lost!”
Whether it was the keyword of field experience learning and picnic that worked, or whether Shin Soo-hyun’s appeal worked as Kim Ji-hoo said, anyway, Kim Ji-hoo reacted with disgust at the news that Shin Soo-hyun had acquired a cardigan.
Lee Yoon-san recalled what kind of sweatshirt Shin Soo-hyun had bought last time among them. It was somewhat difficult for Lee Yoon-san, who didn’t know many brands and distinguished clothes by color, such as gray clothes, black clothes, white clothes, and blue clothes.
“Hey, anyway, Kim Ji-hoo, finish lunch quickly and come out. Join us for soccer.”
“You shitty bastards, you always get your asses kicked, but you always act up with the ball.”
“A shitty foot who’s a goalkeeper is saying ‘get your asses kicked’.”
“If you’re going to do it, do it with FIFA, you barbaric crazy person. It’s not like you don’t play FIFA when you go home, so why do you have to run around in real life too?!”
I really hate sweating, ugh. Kim Ji-hoo grumbled those words and left the class. It was because the class bell rang. Shin Soo-hyun grumbled at Kim Ji-hoo’s back as he left the classroom, saying, “I don’t know why that bastard, who does everything if you ask him to, always has so much to say.”
Only then did Lee Yoon-san remember the sweatshirt that Shin Soo-hyun had bought. But it was already a past topic.
✧✧✧
It was just another day, even though it was the day before the picnic. And that day, the soccer game ended in a victory for the team Lee Yoon-san belonged to. It was because Shin Soo-hyun, who had gotten the brand cardigan he wanted, was in a good mood.
“Mom.”
“Yoon-san, is your stomach okay? When did you take your painkiller?”
“I took it as soon as I got home.”
Lee Yoon-san, who had spent a fruitless day, came home, ate medicine and dinner, and played a console game for a while, ran to greet his moms when he heard them returning home.
After Lee Yoon-san entered middle school, both of his parents were able to return to their original jobs. The company was growing day by day, and thanks to that, the time his parents returned home was getting later and later, so now he could only see them after 10 p.m., but Lee Yoon-san always liked this moment. The moment when his parents returned home, he ran to the front door, greeted them, and hugged them.
“Take your medicine one more time before you go to bed.”
“Okay.”
“Is our Baby going on a picnic tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you pick out what to wear?”
“They told me to just wear my school uniform.”
“It’ll get chilly when the sun goes down, so shouldn’t you wear something else on top? Like a hoodie.”
Lee Yoon-san’s parents still treated Lee Yoon-san like a baby. It wasn’t something he couldn’t understand. It was his family who had watched most closely and worried about Lee Yoon-san losing weight during his Pheromone awakening, not being able to sleep or eat because he was in pain.
So Lee Yoon-san just accepted the treatment his moms gave him. He was quite taciturn at school, but he knew his moms always worried about him and were sorry for their busy schedules, so it was possible for him to accept it.
“Mom.”
“Yeah?”
“That… Hae-kyung.”
“Hae-kyung? What about Hae-kyung?”
“Is he doing well…?”
Lee Jung-won’s hand, which was going to the closet to find a coat for her son to wear tomorrow, stopped. Lee Ga-eun’s hand, which was looking at the delivery app to order a late-night snack, also stopped.
It was rare for Lee Yoon-san to be curious about Hwang Hae-kyung. After his Pheromone awakening started, until just two years ago, he was in so much pain that he didn’t have the energy to care about anything else, and from last year, he had made quite a few friends, so it was only natural.
It seemed like Lee Yoon-san himself was young and going through puberty, so he didn’t have a constant interest in his mom’s friend’s son, whom he had briefly seen every vacation when he was young and didn’t even have a good relationship with.
The only times Lee Yoon-san was curious about Hwang Hae-kyung, even in his mind, were when he had random thoughts about his height or when he occasionally overheard his moms talking to Hwang Hae-kyung’s parents.
Other than that, he wasn’t particularly curious about Hwang Hae-kyung, who would have become the same Omega anyway, and Lee Yoon-san’s moms weren’t the type to pass on news or words or make a fuss.
“Are you suddenly curious about Hae-kyung?”
“No, just because. I was thinking about when we played when we were young.”
“Hae-kyung is doing well. He must be a high school student.”
Lee Jung-won smiled and answered Lee Yoon-san’s words. In fact, Lee Yoon-san’s parents and Hwang Hae-kyung’s parents mainly talked about adults’ stories rather than children’s stories from some point on. The children who used to meet at the campsite stopped meeting, and they were too busy taking care of their own children who were suffering from their Pheromone awakening.
In addition, they thought there was no need to unnecessarily pass on each other’s children’s news during the period when Alpha and Omega were strictly separated and educated. The two families lived in different areas, and they were not in a position to have a family gathering right away. The parents or moms knew each other’s children’s well-being, but that was all.
They were too busy with work to take their children to meet and hang out together, and there was no reason to unite other than camping because their fields were different, so there was no reason to tell the children about each other in detail.
Above all, the adults knew very well that the children’s relationship was not good when they were young. At that time, they were regularly meeting and socializing with each other’s families, so they just hoped that the children’s relationship would improve.
“Did Hae-kyung quit being a child model because he hurt his face?”
“No? I haven’t heard anything like that.”
Lee Yoon-san asked a little more actively at the news about Hwang Hae-kyung that ended plainly from his mom’s mouth, but the answer was still the same. If Hwang Hae-kyung had quit being a child model because he was injured, he would have known for sure. Because he knew how much his moms liked Hwang Hae-kyung.
It’s not that his moms didn’t tell him about Hwang Hae-kyung, but he knew that they still celebrated Hwang Hae-kyung’s birthday, Children’s Day, and Christmas. Every year around Hwang Hae-kyung’s birthday, he vaguely heard his moms talking to Hwang Hae-kyung’s parents while going in and out of the house on weekends.
They gave Hwang Hae-kyung pocket money or electronic devices as birthday gifts through Hwang Hae-kyung’s parents. And Lee Yoon-san also received birthday, Children’s Day, and Christmas gifts from Hwang Hae-kyung’s parents every year.
The console game console that he was playing while waiting for his moms today was also last year’s birthday gift that Hwang Hae-kyung’s parents gave to Lee Yoon-san through his moms.
“Why, do you want to see Hae-kyung?”
“…No.”
When Lee Jung-won asked, holding an ivory hoodie zip-up in front of Lee Yoon-san, Lee Yoon-san pondered for a while and shook his head, denying it. He just thought of him today, but he didn’t want to see him. No matter how much he thought about it as he grew up, it was true that Hwang Hae-kyung hated him when he was young.
Of course, Lee Yoon-san himself hated Hwang Hae-kyung terribly, but his hatred had been greatly diluted, perhaps because of the last memory. He belatedly realized that he had unintentionally hurt Hwang Hae-kyung with his height.
He used to act simply according to his feelings when he was young, so the last memory of playing well with Hwang Hae-kyung erased a lot of the animosity at the time, but Hwang Hae-kyung wouldn’t know.
In his last memory with Hwang Hae-kyung, he had scarred Hwang Hae-kyung’s face, dropped his cell phone into the sea, and the boy, who was weak, had fallen into the sea with him and caught a cold, and his Pheromone awakening started that way, so they couldn’t meet anymore. The more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that Hwang Hae-kyung would have good feelings left for him.
But he still wondered what Hwang Hae-kyung meant by the words “Thank you” he had said just before they parted.
In fact, Hwang Hae-kyung had turned around quickly after leaving those words at the time. Without talking to him more or even promising what to do and play tomorrow. The words “Thank you” themselves have a friendly meaning, but that one word would not have meant that he would show him goodwill or promise him in the future.
“Have a good picnic tomorrow, son.”
“Follow your teacher well. And don’t do what your teacher tells you not to do.”
‘What the teacher tells you not to do’ included privately associating with Alphas from other schools. It meant fighting or falling in love and deviating from the teacher’s control.
Lee Ga-eun and Lee Jung-won picked out the outerwear and bag for Lee Yoon-san to wear tomorrow and stroked his hair. His docile, large eyes, latte-colored skin, and jet-black hair looked healthy, delicate, and innocent.
He was a son who had a delicate appearance that suited pale skin, but his tanned skin made him look a little more special. At the same time, he was also a son who was pitiful because he had lost too much weight and had a short appetite.
“Shall we eat a late-night snack together and sleep, Yoon-san?”
“No.”
“You won’t gain weight even if you eat. You’re too skinny right now.”
“It’s not because I’m worried about gaining weight. I’m just not hungry. I’m going to sleep.”
“Give your moms a hug and go to sleep.”
“Okay.”
Lee Yoon-san, who declined Lee Ga-eun’s offer to order chicken for a late-night snack, hugged both of his moms at once. He was a little proud that he was now taller than Lee Ga-eun. But he was still shorter than Lee Jung-won.
Lee Yoon-san said good night to his moms and came into his room. Before going to bed, he took another painkiller in his room and lay down on the bed, and he fell asleep in less than 10 minutes. It was the night before the picnic, but it was no different from usual.
✧✧✧
“Since we’re here for field experience learning, don’t cause any accidents, it’s good to have fun, but check the group chat frequently, and don’t leave the place!”
Before entering the amusement park, the homeroom teacher’s voice was stern as he shouted at his class, who were gathered in a crowd. The kids around him all had excited expressions. The Beta kids, who made up the majority of the class, seemed to be very disappointed that they didn’t come with the girls’ class, and Shin Soo-hyun seemed to be satisfied with the cardigan he had managed to get at the store yesterday, and he was busy tidying up his clothes. And Lee Yoon-san was just so-so.
If it had been Lee Yoon-san, who was cheerful when he was young, he might have been excited and out of his mind now, but the current Lee Yoon-san’s personality had changed a lot as he went through puberty and his Pheromone awakening.
Before and in the early stages of his Pheromone awakening, he felt a severe inferiority complex about his appearance, and after that, he became accustomed to acting passively and pretending to be indifferent due to chronic pain.
He was in pain every day, but it was from the moment he realized that his busy parents would worry seriously if he made a fuss and acted like a spoiled child whenever he was in pain.
He often felt lazy to move because of his painful body, and camping was also stopped at the same time, which further reduced his range of activity. Nevertheless, the reason why he lost weight was purely due to the hormones and pain that soared during his Pheromone awakening.
On the other hand, he also had some anxiety about taking medicine because he knew how much pain would come if he didn’t take painkillers on time.
In fact, many children with secondary genders became sensitive, anxious, or depressed as they went through their Pheromone awakening. So, it was close to a ‘fortunate’ thing that Lee Yoon-san’s personality had only changed passively, thanks to his parents’ devoted care.
Anyway, Lee Yoon-san was indifferent compared to the excited children. At Lee Yoon-san’s school, three classes were on a field trip to the amusement park, and Kim Ji-hoo’s class was among them.
Kim Ji-hoo had been making a fuss in the SNS story chat room where Lee Yoon-san and Shin Soo-hyun were from the time he came to Neverland, and even now, he was not listening to his class teacher and was busy looking around. It was as if he was looking for that group of Saemyeong High School uniforms.
“And Shin Soo-hyun, Lee Yoon-san, Kim Jae-yoon, Ji Ye-joon. You guys have to stay with me, so don’t fall behind.”
“Ah…”
The homeroom teacher, who had delivered all the instructions, gave freedom to the children in the class except for the four who were named separately. He let them ride the rides they wanted to ride and walk around, except for the gathering to eat lunch together and the gathering to say goodbye at the end. And the four, including Lee Yoon-san, who were named separately by the homeroom teacher, were Omegas in the same class.
Shin Soo-hyun’s face immediately frowned at the homeroom teacher’s words. He turned his head and looked at Kim Ji-hoo’s class, and Kim Ji-hoo was also glaring at their class teacher with a grimace. He seemed very angry at the special treatment that wasn’t special treatment.
“We’re walking around together for protection. You know that, right?”
The homeroom teacher smiled and added that, looking at Shin Soo-hyun, who was expressing his dissatisfaction with his face. The homeroom teacher also had a rather embarrassed and sorry expression. It was as if the free time that was allowed to other children was applied restrictively to Omega children.
But there was nothing that could be done. It wasn’t just Wonan Middle School children in the amusement park, and there were quite a few other Alphas, including adults, so there was no choice.
It was impossible to know what kind of accident would occur when Omega children, who were still physically immature, were exposed to the intentional sex Pheromone of another Alpha.
The children were taking their Suppressant, including painkillers, regularly, but it was impossible to guarantee the future if they were caught by an Alpha with high hormone levels and Pheromone concentration. If they intentionally leaked Pheromone to lure them out, it could lead to a crime, and the flow of stable management and sexual maturation could be broken.
If they were unlucky, there could be problems such as harassment such as ‘Pheromone shower’ or ‘marking’, which pours out Pheromone without the other person’s consent and leaves traces. Therefore, managing and taking care of immature Omega children was the best effort to prevent accidents in advance.
“Ah, damn it, I failed to see the Alphas.”
“You can see them from afar.”
“Hey, you have to see how handsome and physically good they are up close to really feel it!”
Shin Soo-hyun, who wasn’t as crazy as Kim Ji-hoo, who was going crazy in the SNS story chat room, seemed quite annoyed this time. Lee Yoon-san was also a little disappointed. They came to the amusement park, and other Beta kids were playing freely, but it was very frustrating and unsatisfactory that only a few of them couldn’t enjoy that freedom.
But what can they do? That’s what the adults told them to do.
“Let’s run away when we get a chance later.”
“There are only 4 of us, what chance are you talking about…”
“There are a lot of people inside, so you never know. Hey, are we just going to end up like this after coming all the way here?”
Shin Soo-hyun was unusually active. Lee Yoon-san stared blankly at Shin Soo-hyun and sighed. There were only 4 Omegas in the same class who had to go with the homeroom teacher, so would there really be a gap if the homeroom teacher looked away? It would be fortunate if they weren’t caught doing something else and scolded.
Even if it’s a minor matter, problems or deviations related to the secondary gender are bound to be reported home. It’s an unavoidable problem because it’s a case where they have to be strictly managed at school and at home so that they don’re get caught up in accidents.
“Let’s go inside first.”
Lee Yoon-san pushed Shin Soo-hyun, who still couldn’t hide his dissatisfied expression, on the back and entered Neverland. Right next to him were other Omega classmates and their homeroom teacher.
“Damn, the atmosphere is so different.”
As soon as they entered Neverland, a word like admiration burst out from the mouth of another Omega friend. Lee Yoon-san also agreed with those words and quietly looked around.
Just passing through the gate at the entrance made the difference in atmosphere between the inside and outside clear. Around them were people laughing with animal headbands on, and there was a large tree landscaped with colorful flowers. It was a moment when they felt the innocent atmosphere unique to amusement parks with their whole bodies. It made them feel excited and happy for no reason.
“Where should we go first? Shall we go to Lost Valley first?”
“Hey, over there.”
The homeroom teacher, who was excited by the atmosphere, was also the same, and he looked at the mobile map of the amusement park and asked for the children’s opinions. And at the moment when Lee Yoon-san approached the homeroom teacher to look at the map on the app screen together, Shin Soo-hyun grabbed Lee Yoon-san’s arm and pointed to one side over there.
“Those guys are Alphas. They’re wearing Saemyeong High School uniforms.”
In the place Shin Soo-hyun pointed to, tall men and women were standing. They were all wearing school uniforms, but it was difficult to recognize them as the same group at once because they were wearing hoodies, cardigans, or windbreakers.
Instead, their commonalities were striking. They were all tall, well-built, and exceptionally good-looking. It was as if they were flaunting that they were ‘Alpha’ to anyone who looked at them.
“Look at those insane physiques….”
They were the group of first-year Alphas said to be from Semyung High. Shin Soo-hyun stared at them with a somewhat dazed expression, probably realizing the stark difference as he looked at the clustered group of Alphas. Lee Yoon-san glanced at Shin Soo-hyun’s expression before turning his head towards the Semyung High Alpha group.
It was just as Shin Soo-hyun had admired. They were all tall, handsome, well-built, and exceptionally good-looking. Among them, the Alpha standing with his back turned had a zip-up hoodie draped over his shoulders, perhaps because of the warm weather, and even just from his back view, one could gauge his impressive physique.
Perhaps he was standing with his arms crossed, as the back of his school uniform shirt was pulled taut, and the outlines of his prominent shoulder blades and surrounding muscles seemed to be subtly visible. His shoulders stretched out long and straight, and the silhouette of his broad latissimus dorsi and comparatively slender waist was distinct. Even from afar, it seemed that the circumference of their torsos and their eye levels were different from theirs.
That was why it was difficult to take their eyes off them, and why they were envious. Even though they were the same gender, their growth was slowing down, and because of the hormones of their Omega gender, the difference in their body silhouettes was clearly revealed. Whether it was a lack of confidence or a sense of inferiority about the difference that the Omega gender gave, even though they were the same gender, it was unavoidable.
Wasn’t it inevitable that they would be concerned about such things at their age? Lee Yoon-san could finally understand Shin Soo-hyun’s feelings as he looked at the Semyung High Alpha group with a dazed expression.
“Okay, guys, let’s go.”
The other Omega friends were looking at the Semyung High Alphas as well, it seemed, as their homeroom teacher’s firm words were heard. And she wrapped her arms around the children’s shoulders, patting their arms as she began to walk forward. The children began to walk reluctantly, trapped in their homeroom teacher’s arms.
And then, from afar, an Alpha female student from the Semyung High group, with her long hair tied up high, turned her gaze towards Lee Yoon-san’s group.
“Hey, did that Noona just smile at us?”
And she smiled. Unlike the sharp and keen eyebrows and the straight line connecting her brow and high nose, her pretty eyes curved brightly in an eye-smile in an instant. The Alpha even waved at Lee Yoon-san’s group. This time, it was an undeniable greeting with a clear target.
At that, Shin Soo-hyun hurriedly raised his hand and waved back at the Alpha female student. He didn’t want to attract the homeroom teacher’s attention, so it was a rather passive movement.
The Alpha burst into a clear laugh at Shin Soo-hyun’s gesture and smiled even more broadly, and Shin Soo-hyun’s face turned completely red. And the other Semyung High Alphas around the Alpha female student also turned their heads towards Lee Yoon-san’s group. They seemed curious about who their friend was smiling at so brightly.
“Hey, she’s telling you to smile!”
The Alpha, waving her hand, made a gesture of pinching her thumb and index finger together, bringing it to her mouth, and then spreading it wide. At the hand gesture that seemed to be telling him to smile, Shin Soo-hyun quickly checked the Omegas around him. And since Lee Yoon-san was the only one not smiling and staring blankly at the Alpha group, the rebuke followed immediately. It seemed that the Alpha’s gaze was directed at Lee Yoon-san after all.
But Lee Yoon-san couldn’t smile.
“Huh…?”
The moment the Alpha who had been standing with his back turned, a zip-up hoodie draped over his shoulders, turned his head, his eyes met a familiar face.
“Hey, you guys, don’t get distracted and look ahead as you walk.”
The homeroom teacher urged the children in a stern voice. She knew well where the children’s gazes were directed and was giving them a warning. At that, the children’s heads, including Shin Soo-hyun’s, turned forward in unison. Disappointment dripped from their expressions, but they were just curious about the Alpha group they were seeing for the first time, not wanting to get close to them.
They were still young for that, and what the children had been taught throughout school was that they had to be careful of Alpha Pheromone. Therefore, Lee Yoon-san also turned his head soon after. He thought he had briefly met the eyes of a familiar face, but it was more urgent to avoid getting scolded by the homeroom teacher right now.
However, Lee Yoon-san’s arm had subtle goosebumps. A face that could never be in that group, a face that he had seen a long time ago and never seen since, came to mind so familiarly. Even though it couldn’t be.
“Let’s smile a little, guys!”
The homeroom teacher, who had taken the children to the character product store that was visible as soon as they entered through the main gate, shouted as if to cheer up the four Omega children who still couldn’t erase their sullen expressions. The homeroom teacher herself didn’t entirely dismiss the thought of whether she had to manage children who were already in the third grade of middle school to this extent, but she repeated to herself that it was unavoidable due to policy.
Of course, the children’s expressions still didn’t brighten. They felt awkward, as if they had been stopped for simply looking, not for trying to do anything to the Alpha group.
In particular, Shin Soo-hyun, perhaps because he had received a greeting from the Alpha Noona, still couldn’t calm his reddened face and had a sulky expression, and Lee Yoon-san was preoccupied with reflecting on the familiar Alpha’s appearance he had seen earlier with a dazed expression.
“Still, since we came all the way here, we should each wear a headband, right? Right?”
Amidst all that, only the homeroom teacher’s voice, trying to muster strength, was vigorous.
The school trip that Lee Yoon-san had gone on last year wasn’t like this atmosphere. Because he had met a strict and meticulous homeroom teacher, such sulking that showed on their faces didn’t work at all. They just went around as they were told, looked around, and locked themselves in their accommodations, sleeping in the same room as the homeroom teacher.
The children who shared a room with the homeroom teacher were all Omegas, and the reason why the homeroom teacher had controlled them so tightly was all for the purpose of managing the Omega children in her class.
At least this year’s homeroom teacher cared about the children a lot. She herself had gone through puberty, when she was curious about the opposite gender, and on the other hand, she felt sorry for the children, so she was paying even more attention. She thought that receiving the children’s sullen expressions or resentment was much better than the children getting into possible accidents.
Lee Yoon-san knew well that the current homeroom teacher was lenient enough compared to last year’s homeroom teacher, and that she had a lot of worries.
In particular, the homeroom teacher was a Beta, so she wouldn’t be able to sense the Pheromone that would seduce or harass the children. So she was probably trying to block even their gazes in advance. When he thought about it that way, Lee Yoon-san didn’t find the homeroom teacher’s control incomprehensible, so he didn’t even have a sulky expression.
It was just that he was a bit dazed because of the face of the Alpha he had seen earlier.
“Hey, you, Black Rabbit, pick one of these two.”
Shin Soo-hyun, who hadn’t been able to erase his red face and sulky expression the whole time, held out two headbands to Lee Yoon-san, who was still dazed, and recommended them. One was a deer headband with brown ears and darker horns, and the other was a headband with perky black rabbit ears.
Seeing that ‘HalloweenMD’ was written on the name tag, it seemed that they were headbands that were being sold specially only this season for the upcoming Halloween.
Lee Yoon-san chose the black rabbit headband and placed it on his head. It was also a choice that he had made unconsciously in response to the word ‘Black Rabbit,’ but it was also intended to cheer up Shin Soo-hyun, who still had a slightly sulky expression.
Shin Soo-hyun, who paid a lot of attention to clothes, was subtly proud when his friends bought or wore what he had picked out for them.
As expected, it seemed that Shin Soo-hyun was somewhat cheered up just by seeing Lee Yoon-san, who had really become ‘Black Rabbit,’ as he chose a fennec fox headband for himself and began to look at other souvenirs. The homeroom teacher, who was watching that scene, quietly put on a panda headband.
And with that as a starting point, the children’s atmosphere slowly began to loosen up. They chattered about how it suited each other or didn’t suit each other, and left the store wearing the headbands that the homeroom teacher had bought with her own money.
Originally, there was no need to buy such things with her own money, but this expenditure was purely at the discretion of the homeroom teacher, who wanted to cheer up the children and start off well.
“Hey, crazy, they’re doing a zombie festival because it’s Halloween season.”
The children, as befitting their age, quickly forgot about the Alpha group, and began to plan their route and check events while looking at mobile maps and schedules. Lee Yoon-san also participated in the conversation with the homeroom teacher and the children, and tried hard to calm down the one face that kept coming to his mind.
There was no use being curious about it now, and it wasn’t clear whether it was familiar because it was a face he knew, or familiar because it was a similar face.
“Let’s go to Lost Valley first. We’ll look at the animals and then go ride the rides.”
“Okay.”
The homeroom teacher seemed relieved that the children’s expressions had brightened. As she looked at the map and moved, the children followed behind her and moved together. Lee Yoon-san also moved with them and tilted his head up because the feeling of the headband squeezing his head was unfamiliar, and his eyes met the Alpha group in the distance. It was the same Semyung High Alphas from earlier this time as well. To be exact, it was one of the Alpha male students whose eyes met his.
The Alpha male student wasn’t the Alpha with the familiar face from earlier. It wasn’t the female student Alpha who had gestured for him to smile either, it was a face he was seeing for the first time.
But the Alpha male student stared intently at Lee Yoon-san before pointing at his ear. Seeing him point briefly at Lee Yoon-san’s perky black rabbit ears and smile, it was confusing whether he was teasing him or saying he was cute.
His handsome face disappeared as he smiled mischievously, and the gesture of tapping the other Alphas around him and pointing seemed light and excited. It seemed that being assimilated into the unique atmosphere of the amusement park wasn’t just for middle schoolers.
At that moment, another Alpha standing behind the male student put him in a headlock. The male student’s back bent and his head lowered, and the Alpha who had put him in a headlock made eye contact with Lee Yoon-san. And he smiled and nodded his head once. Only then did Lee Yoon-san become certain of the thought he had been vaguely wondering about.
“Hae-kyung….”
It was Hwang Hae-kyung wearing the Semyung High uniform. There was a distance, but he could be sure. The boy, who had been famous for being pretty since he was young and had even worked as a child model, had grown up to be a very handsome man. By far the most outstanding among the Semyung High Alphas who had formed a group.
✧✧✧
“Hey, what are you looking at?”
“Huh? Oh, nothing.”
He couldn’t seem to come to his senses at all. Hwang Hae-kyung was among the Semyung High Alphas he had seen earlier. To make matters worse, it seemed that their paths had crossed quite a bit while walking around the amusement park, as their eyes kept meeting.
Lee Yoon-san went around Lost Valley and looked around Safari Kingdom with the homeroom teacher and three friends. And the Semyung High Alpha group was moving with a considerable distance between them.
Alphas also needed the meticulous management of teachers, so it seemed that one class was moving as a group. That sight was both amazing and funny, as if he was watching a sports team or a military platoon. On the one hand, it was also a bit of a comfort. In that Omegas weren’t the only ones being controlled by their homeroom teacher.
Anyway, the Semyung High Alphas continued to move in a group, and it seemed that their paths crossed quite a bit with Lee Yoon-san’s group. If he squinted his eyes while being conscious of them, he would invariably meet eyes with Hwang Hae-kyung.
When their eyes met, Lee Yoon-san would usually be the first to be surprised and turn his head. Had he been watching all along? How did their eyes meet every time he tried to steal a glance? Lee Yoon-san tried to calm his rapidly beating heart while thinking such thoughts.
He also put a lot of strength into the corners of his mouth so that he wouldn’t get excited and say strange things. It was because he wanted to avoid being caught by the homeroom teacher and getting an earful, or having their route changed because they were conscious of the Semyung High Alpha group.
“Our paths keep crossing with them. Right?”
“Huh? Yeah.”
“Ah, I really want to stare at them, but I’m worried about what they’ll say if I get caught.”
Shin Soo-hyun, who was talking to Lee Yoon-san as if he couldn’t stand it, seemed to be in a similar situation. The homeroom teacher didn’t seem to be concerned that their paths were overlapping with a specific group yet. Or maybe she hadn’t noticed. It was also because the distance from the Semyung High Alphas was quite far, and the Omegas in the same class, including Lee Yoon-san and Shin Soo-hyun, weren’t staring at them openly.
In fact, if the Semyung High Alphas weren’t such conspicuous presences, it would have just ended with them thinking that another school had come on a picnic, a distance and situation that would have ended with just that.
Anyway, Lee Yoon-san scratched his neck because he felt embarrassed for no reason. He felt like Hwang Hae-kyung, among the Semyung High group a little behind them, kept looking this way. In reality, their eyes met every time Lee Yoon-san squinted his eyes.
Hwang Hae-kyung smiled when their eyes met, and he also gestured towards the homeroom teacher. Or he would just stare quietly, or make a playful expression of furrowing one eyebrow for no reason. He mainly gestured towards the homeroom teacher when Lee Yoon-san was so engrossed in looking at Hwang Hae-kyung that he was in danger of being caught by the homeroom teacher.
The two walked with a distance between them. They would occasionally look, their eyes would meet, and then they would repeat the process of looking at each other and being wary.
Shin Soo-hyun and the other Omega friends were busy talking about this and that while being conscious of such an Alpha group. They kept saying things like how their eyes kept meeting, how they seemed to be looking at them, and how they seemed like college students even though they were high school students because they were Alphas. They also occasionally heard complaints that they were annoyed because their physiques were different from theirs, but in the end, conversations that constantly made the Alphas the topic continued.
Then suddenly, Hwang Hae-kyung, whom he had glanced at again, was holding up and shaking his cell phone. He could see the cell phone logo with a fruit shape drawn on it. Lee Yoon-san took out his cell phone and pretended to take pictures of the surroundings, showing the logo of his cell phone as well, feeling happy. So that he could show that they were the same brand. And before long, a picture was sent to Lee Yoon-san’s cell phone. It was an image of an amusement park ride.
“Shin Soo-hyun, do you know what this is?”
Lee Yoon-san showed Shin Soo-hyun the ride in the image that had been sent via AirDrop and asked.
“This is the Hurricane. Are we going to ride this?”
At Shin Soo-hyun’s words, Lee Yoon-san looked towards Hwang Hae-kyung instead of Shin Soo-hyun. Hwang Hae-kyung was listening to something from the friends around him, but it seemed that Hwang Hae-kyung was the one who had sent the ride image. It seemed that the friends who had received the same picture were asking what it was.
Lee Yoon-san blushed, feeling a tingling sensation on the back of his neck for no reason, and tapped the homeroom teacher on the back.
“Teacher.”
“Yeah, Yoon-san, why?”
“Let’s go ride the rides now. I want to ride the Hurricane.”
Fortunately, the sound of his heart pounding inside wouldn’t be heard outside, and the slightly reddened face was given an alibi by the excited atmosphere of the amusement park.
“We’ll take this group here as well~!”
While waiting in line in front of the Hurricane, their turn was cut off right in front of Lee Yoon-san’s group. At that, the homeroom teacher was a little disappointed, and Lee Yoon-san turned his head and looked back in the distance. The Semyung High Alphas were standing in line behind them, with about seven or eight people in between.
“Ah, this crazy bastard, cutting in line and shit.”
“I’ll buy you a churro.”
“Okay.”
Behind the people who were looking down at their cell phones or whispering among themselves while looking around, the sounds of the Semyung High Alphas talking could be heard. The Alphas, who were a head taller than others, attracted attention wherever they went.
Lee Yoon-san listened to the sounds from behind and quietly counted the number of people in line. The Hurricane had a capacity of 40 people, and when he glanced, Hwang Hae-kyung was standing at the front of the Semyung High group.
Now that Lee Yoon-san’s group would start entering in the next round, it was confirmed that they would be riding the ride together. It felt like his heart was beating fast just from that. The moment when he would be closest to Hwang Hae-kyung since coming to this amusement park was approaching.
“Hey, Alphas really all have amazing physiques. Those Noonas over there all seem to be over or around 180 cm tall.”
“My mom is 180 cm tall too.”
“I’m so jealous. I want to be 180 cm tall too.”
That way, clothes would look better on them. Shin Soo-hyun glanced at the Alpha group and then made those remarks as if to be heard when his eyes met the homeroom teacher’s, and continued the conversation with Lee Yoon-san. The homeroom teacher glanced at Shin Soo-hyun with suspicious eyes once and then started a conversation with the other children.
Not all Omegas were short in height and physique. It was just that the aftereffects of restoring the dormant organs while going through puberty slowed down skeletal growth. But in the end, it was a matter of individual difference.
It wasn’t that Omegas were absolutely delicate, small, and short, but rather that they grew less depending on the individual. There were definitely quite a few Omegas who were sturdy or tall.
“Those who are next in line, please board~!”
After talking for a few words like that, it was their turn to board the ride. Lee Yoon-san went to one side of the ride and sat down as the homeroom teacher led him, and then people came in and started sitting in their favorite seats. It wasn’t very quiet even on a weekday, so the seats filled up quickly.
“It looks like they came on a picnic too!”
And finally, just as Hwang Hae-kyung’s group was about to board after the others, Lee Yoon-san’s homeroom teacher feigned a clumsy welcome, as if wanting them to hear. The Semyung High teacher, who had been disciplining the other Alpha by slapping his back, looked up, flustered.
“Oh, right! Let’s go over there, you guys!”
It was an awkward exchange, but the context was the same. It was obvious that the children who looked like Omegas were sitting huddled on the right side of the seats, so it was a request and acceptance to guide the children who looked like Alphas to sit on the opposite side.
The others seemed to have roughly caught on to the atmosphere as well, glancing back and forth between the groups of children and smiling as if they found it cute. As if they understood the teachers’ efforts to separate the students with secondary genders.
Hwang Hae-kyung took a seat directly opposite Lee Yoon-san. It was a seat directly across from each other on the amusement ride that was divided into left and right sides in a semicircle shape.
Although there was some distance between them. Still, thanks to Lee Yoon-san being pushed by his homeroom teacher to sit in a corner seat, they were able to avoid being obscured by the central pillar. Lee Yoon-san glanced again at Hwang Hae-kyung, who was sitting across from him and staring intently at him.
For some reason, he couldn’t steal glances at him like Hwang Hae-kyung did. Of course, the biggest reason was that his homeroom teacher was sitting right next to him.
‘Huh?’
And then Hwang Hae-kyung gestured with his hand above his head to Lee Yoon-san. This time, it wasn’t just a stare, but a gesture and a hint of something. Lee Yoon-san unconsciously leaned forward with a puzzled expression to understand Hwang Hae-kyung’s short gesture, and Hwang Hae-kyung smiled at him.
“Yoon-san, you should take off your headband. You’ll lose it.”
The answer to Hwang Hae-kyung’s gesture came from the side. It seemed the homeroom teacher had seen Hwang Hae-kyung’s gesture, as he took off Lee Yoon-san’s black rabbit headband and said that.
Perhaps he was in a hurry because he thought there wasn’t much time left before the ride started, but Lee Yoon-san somehow felt that his homeroom teacher was uncomfortable with even him making eye contact with an Alpha.
“You guys should take off your headbands and ride too, it looks like it’ll fly off because it spins so fast.”
The homeroom teacher said, holding Lee Yoon-san’s headband in his hand as he looked at him. And he reached out to the other children as well, collecting their headbands and holding them all in his hand. He immediately signaled to an employee, who approached and skillfully took the headbands, informing them to pick them up when they got off.
Lee Yoon-san looked at Hwang Hae-kyung just before the ride started. This time, Hwang Hae-kyung was listening to his friend’s story instead of looking at Lee Yoon-san. He was listening to his friend’s excited chatter with a frown, looking as if he didn’t agree with or was displeased with what his friend was saying. And that expression was no different from the one he had often shown him when they were younger, so he chuckled.
He had grown taller and bigger beyond recognition, and he was now a high school student who clearly looked more like a Hyung than him, but that expression was exactly the same as the one he had seen at the campsite when he was younger. He really felt like it was Hwang Hae-kyung. And thankfully, there wasn’t a single scar on his face.
Lee Yoon-san was so engrossed in watching Hwang Hae-kyung that he didn’t notice the homeroom teacher’s gaze on him. Lee Yoon-san’s homeroom teacher turned his gaze forward from Lee Yoon-san, who was smiling bashfully while looking straight ahead. There, a group that was obviously Alphas was sitting and chatting, and that fact made the homeroom teacher a little uneasy.
Immature Alphas are subject to management as much as immature Omegas, or perhaps even more so. Moreover, the Alpha group in front of him was large in number. It seemed that an entire class was made up of Alphas. The Beta homeroom teacher couldn’t immediately recognize what Pheromone those Alphas might leave or exude on his class’s children. That was the element that made the homeroom teacher uneasy.
So he hoped and hoped that the teacher of that Alpha group would strictly control his class’s children.
“Wow, this is so much fun!”
“Ah, I got goosebumps.”
If there was one thing Lee Yoon-san felt while riding the Hurricane, it was that riding the ride made his lower abdomen feel queasy, and he got goosebumps along with a feeling of needing to urinate. It wasn’t his first time coming to an amusement park, but it was his first time riding such a fast ride.
When he came to amusement parks, he mainly looked at animals or rode rides that young children could ride. Moreover, it had been rare for him to go out of the house at all in the past few years, so it was true that it had been a long time since he had been to an amusement park itself.
The children got off the ride with expressions of excitement after just one ride, and after finding the headbands placed in the basket and putting them on, they pondered their next destination.
However, even while escorting the children, the homeroom teacher kept an eye on the Semyung High Alpha group walking in the opposite direction. He didn’t let his guard down until the end, lest something happen that would involve them with the children.
But, making the homeroom teacher’s vigilance seem pointless, an Airdrop image arrived on Lee Yoon-san’s phone again. This time it was an image of the Swing Twist.
Lee Yoon-san had made eye contact with Hwang Hae-kyung, who was sitting directly opposite him, several times while riding the Hurricane, but Hwang Hae-kyung simply smiled brightly and refreshingly as if he was enjoying the spinning ride. Lee Yoon-san was often lost in thought while watching that, and when the Hurricane spun quickly and descended, he squeezed his eyes shut and screamed. It was scary, but it felt refreshing.
It seemed that Hwang Hae-kyung had judged that Lee Yoon-san wasn’t very scared of the ride at that time, as he sent a picture of a slightly more exciting ride this time.
And Lee Yoon-san, catching on, put his phone in his pocket and grabbed his homeroom teacher’s arm and said.
“Teacher, I want to ride the Swing Twist.”
“Really? Then, shall we go ride that? Are you guys okay with that too?”
There was no need to hear more of the opinions of the children, who were already excited by one ride.
At the Swing Twist line they arrived at, they could see Hwang Hae-kyung standing at the very front. The homeroom teacher looked a little uneasy, but since Lee Yoon-san didn’t particularly look towards Hwang Hae-kyung, there was nothing more he could do to stop him. After all, rides were all the same, and if you entered at similar times on weekdays and rode the rides, anyone was bound to overlap.
At the Swing Twist where they took their seats, this time Hwang Hae-kyung approached and sat at the end seat of the row he was sitting in. He had moved from the seat he had been sitting in earlier, and although it was a row of five seats, it was a vacant seat that was created because Lee Yoon-san’s classmate belatedly backed out, saying that he felt a little nauseous.
And it was a closer distance to Lee Yoon-san than the Hurricane they had ridden earlier.
Of course, there were other classmates, including Lee Yoon-san’s homeroom teacher, in between, so there was no chance for Hwang Hae-kyung and Lee Yoon-san to exchange glances. As if deliberately timing it, as soon as Hwang Hae-kyung moved and sat down, the safety bar went down, and at the same time as the teacher escorting Hwang Hae-kyung shouted at Hwang Hae-kyung asking what he was doing, the ride started moving. Even though he was sitting at the very end, Hwang Hae-kyung’s laughter could be heard.
After that, as soon as the ride stopped, Hwang Hae-kyung was hit on the back by his supervising teacher and dragged away. Hwang Hae-kyung’s supervising teacher did not forget to bow politely to Lee Yoon-san’s teacher with an expression of embarrassment for causing trouble. Even though he had deliberately pushed the children, including Lee Yoon-san, to one side, and Lee Yoon-san’s homeroom teacher was sitting like a wall next to Hwang Hae-kyung and riding the ride.
But even after that, the two rode the same rides. When Hwang Hae-kyung sent a picture of a ride via Airdrop, Lee Yoon-san would tell the homeroom teacher to ride it, or have Shin Soo-hyun pester him. In the meantime, the distance with Hwang Hae-kyung gradually narrowed.
Hwang Hae-kyung, who had been sitting far away on the opposite side on the Hurricane, sat at the end of the same row on the Swing Twist, sat three spaces away on the Double Spin, and sat directly diagonally behind him on the T-Express. Of course, as the distance between the two narrowed, they couldn’t exchange glances or talk.
Lee Yoon-san’s homeroom teacher, feeling uncomfortable, started to stick close to Lee Yoon-san’s side and take care of him, and Hwang Hae-kyung’s supervising teacher also realized that Hwang Hae-kyung’s actions were suspicious, so he was sticking right next to him. However, they didn’t say anything because they couldn’t find a definite excuse to forcibly separate the two, who weren’t even exchanging glances.
As soon as they got off the train, they became hungry. Hwang Hae-kyung’s group had already gotten off and was far away, and Lee Yoon-san blushed as Shin Soo-hyun poked him in the ribs with her elbow. There was no way Shin Soo-hyun wouldn’t have noticed the homeroom teacher’s suspicion.
“Hey, doesn’t that Alpha like you? Is he the one sending the Airdrops?”
“…We knew each other before.”
“What?! You knew him before?!”
“Hey!”
While they were going to have a meal, Shin Soo-hyun, who had been persistently asking questions, made a loud noise at Lee Yoon-san’s confession, so Lee Yoon-san widened his eyes and quickly covered Shin Soo-hyun’s mouth. Then the homeroom teacher and the other children looked at them, and the two awkwardly and exaggeratedly laughed as if they were just playing around to get through the situation.
“Crazy, hey, you should have told me if you knew such a hottie.”
“Can’t you be quiet? You’re being like Kim Ji-hoo right now.”
“No, that’s because you’re…! No, hey. Look at the chat room with Kim Ji-hoo. Right now.”
Only then did Lee Yoon-san realize that he hadn’t looked at the SNS chat room even once since he entered the amusement park because he was so engrossed in Hwang Hae-kyung’s Airdrops. When he belatedly checked the chat room, it was full of Kim Ji-hoo’s various annoyances and curses, and in between, there were links to other accounts. It was the Instagram link of the Semyung High volleyball team that Kim Ji-hoo had checked the day before.
Lee Yoon-san clicked on the link and looked around the account feed. The feed of the Semyung High Alpha had many pictures of him exercising or pictures of the surroundings, etc., but the image with the most ‘likes’ was a picture taken by someone else during break time with several members of the volleyball team.
And the person getting the hottest reaction in that picture was none other than Hwang Hae-kyung. The comments on that post were full of questions asking for Hwang Hae-kyung’s SNS ID.
“Hey, they say that the most popular guy on the Semyung High volleyball team right now is that person. But you’re saying that you knew him, how can I not shout?”
“…Hae-kyung doesn’t have an Instagram account? Why isn’t there a tag?”
“I don’t know. Anyway, everyone in the comments is talking about that. I don’t even watch volleyball, but I can totally see why he’s famous.”
The only sports that Lee Yoon-san or Shin Soo-hyun liked were soccer or baseball. In fact, they were more interested in soccer, and they ended up watching baseball because the kids in their class would turn it on whenever they were bored or watch videos on their phones.
On the other hand, they had little interest in ‘elegant’ indoor sports like volleyball, which were like the exclusive property of handsome and physically fit Alphas.
Of course, Alphas make up the majority of players in soccer and baseball as well, but it was nothing compared to sports like volleyball or basketball, which emphasize height. The proportion of Betas in sports where physicality is everything, like volleyball or basketball, was very, very small.
Volleyball was outside of their interests, and Shin Soo-hyun wasn’t very good at searching SNS. Lee Yoon-san also only created an account as an ID for communication with friends, so he didn’t know about Hwang Hae-kyung’s existence. Of course, it was also thanks to the fact that Hwang Hae-kyung’s SNS account was not revealed.
Lee Yoon-san, remembering it, entered the SNS accounts of his mothers that he had been maintaining since he was young and went inside. And he searched the accounts of Hwang Hae-kyung’s parents by searching their friend list. He went in hoping that there would be pictures or news of Hwang Hae-kyung, but their SNS were private accounts.
“Hey, Kim Ji-hoo is going crazy in the chat room right now, so don’t tell him that you know that Alpha.”
“Okay…”
“But I’ll probably blab it out soon anyway. My mouth is so itchy, and the more I think about it, the more amazing it is. How does Lee Yoon-san know that Alpha? Did you two overlap at a cram school? No, but you live in different places.”
“He’s just my mom’s friend’s son.”
“Ah, so you knew each other before your heat?”
“Yeah.”
Shin Soo-hyun put her arm around Lee Yoon-san’s shoulder and continued to whisper as she walked, following the homeroom teacher. Lee Yoon-san was just dazed, knowing the current situation and that Hwang Hae-kyung was the most famous ace in Semyung High, which was famous for volleyball. At the same time, he was also amazed by Shin Soo-hyun’s reaction, who kept asking questions from the side.
Shin Soo-hyun had been indifferent even when Kim Ji-hoo said that he knew an Alpha. Most of the information about the Alpha that Shin Soo-hyun was flirting with Kim Ji-hoo had been injected by Kim Ji-hoo, who had been blabbing about it first.
Even Shin Soo-hyun, who usually didn’t show much interest in Alphas, seemed to find Lee Yoon-san, who ‘knew Hwang Hae-kyung,’ amazing. And the other classmates, who were walking a little ahead and secretly listening to the story from behind, also glanced at Lee Yoon-san. They seemed curious as to whether Lee Yoon-san really knew Hwang Hae-kyung.
“Crazy, then, it’s true that he followed you around. He wanted to ride the rides with you.”
“He might be happy to see me since it’s been a long time…”
“Hey, do you follow people around to ride rides just because you’re happy to see them? Even while getting hit on the back by the teacher?”
“But we weren’t that close…”
Lee Yoon-san shyly confessed the truth at Shin Soo-hyun’s words, which seemed to be deliberately exaggerated. It was because he felt a guilty conscience for no reason.
In fact, Hwang Hae-kyung had never looked at him favorably in the past, had he? So Hwang Hae-kyung’s attitude today was something that Lee Yoon-san also couldn’t believe.
But apart from that, the fact that a handsome Alpha kept following him around, the fact that their eyes met every time he glanced, and the fact that he smiled at him several times just made him feel excited.
While he was burdened by Shin Soo-hyun’s fuss, it inevitably made the sixteen-year-old Lee Yoon-san’s shoulders a little proud. Even the fact that the other two classmates were glancing at him. It was the first time that Lee Yoon-san, who had felt a great complex about his appearance and had gradually become passive in his friendships and relationships, was feeling this emotion.
‘If we eat and the route changes, I won’t be able to see him anyway, right? The homeroom teacher seems to be constantly worried too. After we eat, we’ll probably move to another place…’
Lee Yoon-san was thinking that while smiling shyly at Shin Soo-hyun’s continued fuss. It was also strangely new to think that Hwang Hae-kyung had manifested as an Alpha, and above all, he was relieved that there were no scars left on his face. And he was still pretty and handsome, so his heart was a little fluttered for no reason. Above all, his face flushed at the attention he showed him.
‘Later, I should search for him on Instagram.’
Even if Hwang Hae-kyung didn’t have an ID, he was thinking of searching the feeds of Hwang Hae-kyung’s acquaintances. He might be able to find a picture that was accidentally taken together like this time, and if he was lucky, he might be able to see videos or pictures of Hwang Hae-kyung playing in a game.
He hadn’t been interested in fields like volleyball or influencers at all, so he didn’t know, but according to Shin Soo-hyun, who was searching and talking next to him, Hwang Hae-kyung was quite famous. It seemed like anything would come out if he searched.
Well, it’s not that I wanted to see him, but Hwang Hae-kyung was happy to see me today. So I’m just a little curious. This much interest is okay.
Lee Yoon-san entered a restaurant in the amusement park with that thought in mind. He thought that he should definitely tell his mothers that he had seen Hwang Hae-kyung.
✧✧✧
But, contrary to Lee Yoon-san’s expectations, the reunion with Hwang Hae-kyung was quickly realized.
It was a deviation caused by Shin Soo-hyun, who said that they should show their nickname’s worth since they had come to the amusement park.
The field trip dismissal time was 3 PM, and until then, they would gather again at the entrance where they had first gathered, check the number of people, and the children who wanted to play more would play more, and the children who would go home would move to near the school with the teacher and then return home.
The Omega children, including Shin Soo-hyun, had to move with the homeroom teacher whether they lived or died, so they had to act as a group even when going home. The homeroom teacher was even caught by the children who wanted to participate in the zombie festival after the dismissal ceremony.
The homeroom teacher respected the children’s wishes even with a rather tired look. He waited for the zombie festival to start while riding more rides with the students or looking around the zoo.
The zombie festival was an event held every Halloween season at the amusement park, where you could dress up as a ghost, watch performances, or experience horror by avoiding people dressed up in the zombie safari.
Shin Soo-hyun used this horror experience as an opportunity to persuade Lee Yoon-san. Her argument was that she wanted to roam freely, avoiding the homeroom teacher’s surveillance even for a short time, and Lee Yoon-san’s heart was moved to some extent by that argument.
He understood the homeroom teacher’s situation and thoughts, but he was tired and frustrated that he was being controlled like a dog being walked all day, tied to an invisible leash.
While searching around for the Alpha group from Semyung High, if he made eye contact with their homeroom teacher, the teacher would ask if he needed anything, and accompanied him even when he bought snacks or water. It was a time with literally no freedom.
It had become even stricter because he rode the amusement park rides making eye contact with Hwang Hae-kyung in the morning, and perhaps because of that, he couldn’t find even a trace of Hwang Hae-kyung or the Semyung High group all afternoon.
Eventually, Lee Yoon-san ventured to break away from the homeroom teacher’s group with Shin Soo-hyun. Under the pretense of getting zombie makeup, he ran away with Shin Soo-hyun while the homeroom teacher was busy overseeing the zombie makeup of other kids. The two of them boarded the zombie safari bus, and after the bus passed through the safari zone and reached a certain area, it dropped off the participants. And then, an unexpected variable occurred.
As soon as they got off in the zombie zone, Shin Soo-hyun, startled by a part-time worker in zombie makeup, ditched Lee Yoon-san and ran. Lee Yoon-san was the type to swallow his screams and freeze up when startled, so he stood there, and soon, while frantically running away from other zombie part-timers, someone grabbed his arm and he fell into a dark corner.
It was the safari zone relatively close to the exit, so it wasn’t a particularly dangerous place, just behind some landscaping trees where thick trees provided cover and low bushes grew densely.
“Eek!”
“Shh.”
Someone covered Lee Yoon-san’s mouth from behind, who was horrified thinking a zombie had grabbed his arm, and made a sound as if telling him to be quiet. And behind Lee Yoon-san, Hwang Hae-kyung was sitting. To put it another way, the place where Lee Yoon-san fell was between Hwang Hae-kyung’s legs, which he had bent and stretched out as he pleased.
“Hae-kyung…?”
“You still don’t call me Hyung.”
Whether people were screaming outside the bushes and trees or not, Lee Yoon-san looked at Hwang Hae-kyung, widened his eyes, and sat up halfway. But there wasn’t much room to move, so he was still between Hwang Hae-kyung’s legs. Hwang Hae-kyung looked at Lee Yoon-san and smiled brightly, speaking in a tone mixed with playfulness and a sense of futility.
But Lee Yoon-san couldn’t laugh along. He couldn’t believe the person in front of him who had pulled him in. It wasn’t the Hwang Hae-kyung from a distance that he had made eye contact with all morning, but the Hwang Hae-kyung right in front of him. His voice had become very low, as if he had completely gone through puberty.
“Is your teacher around here too?”
“No…”
“Did you ditch them to come here?”
Hwang Hae-kyung’s voice was relaxed as he gestured towards outside the bushes and asked. Lee Yoon-san didn’t even know Hwang Hae-kyung was on the zombie safari bus that came all the way here, so there was no knowing how long Hwang Hae-kyung had been here.
Lee Yoon-san shook his head with a dazed expression in response to Hwang Hae-kyung’s question about finding the homeroom teacher. Then, Hwang Hae-kyung asked, as if he knew he would, ‘Did you ditch them to come here?’, and Lee Yoon-san, still unable to shake off his dazed expression, nodded this time.
Hwang Hae-kyung’s pale skin and the dark circles under his eyebrows looked like a painting. Hwang Hae-kyung’s pupils had been light in color since he was young, but now they were completely hazel. His hair, which naturally covered half of his forehead, was also more of a brownish color than completely black, and his coolly defined mouth and the distinct angles and lines of his jaw were simply stunning.
In a word, he had a much more unreal appearance than when seen from afar or in photos.
“You’ve gotten really… big.”
Lee Yoon-san, who had been scrutinizing Hwang Hae-kyung’s face with his eyes, unconsciously spoke his mind. It was closer to a whisper, a compliment uttered unconsciously. His own voice was also maturing after going through puberty, but Hwang Hae-kyung’s voice sounded even more special. Perhaps it was because the changes in others were more noticeable.
His face, which had been pretty and doll-like, had also matured, and its lines had become clearer. Still, his appearance was reminiscent of a ball-jointed doll. And above all, what had grown the most was his height. Right now, they were both sitting on the ground as they pleased, so it wasn’t immediately apparent, but Hwang Hae-kyung’s height, as seen from afar, was quite tall. He was sure to easily exceed the 180cm that Shin Soo-hyun chanted like a mantra.
“You… haven’t changed much.”
“I’m not fat anymore.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Lee Yoon-san replied gruffly to Hwang Hae-kyung’s words. Then, Hwang Hae-kyung, who had been slowly scanning Lee Yoon-san’s face with his hazel eyes, laughed as if asking what he was talking about.
It was something Lee Yoon-san couldn’t understand. He had already experienced a great deal of teasing and appearance complexes due to his body shape, and Hwang Hae-kyung had also teased him when he was young. Although Hwang Hae-kyung’s annoying friends around him had teased him much more cruelly.
“You always fell down a lot when you were little.”
“…This time, it’s because you pulled me.”
“That’s right. I thought there wouldn’t be another chance if it wasn’t now.”
At Hwang Hae-kyung’s words, Lee Yoon-san finally realized that the topic Hwang Hae-kyung was talking about wasn’t his appearance but his actions, and he felt a little embarrassed.
And then, widening his eyes at Hwang Hae-kyung’s words that followed, he met his gaze. Outside the bushes, the sounds of zombie part-timers and people’s cheerful screams were still noisy. In the midst of that, Hwang Hae-kyung looked Lee Yoon-san in the eye and said.
“Did you pick out the headband?”
“Huh? Oh, this. My friend told me to wear it. And I didn’t think it was bad either, and it’s also my nickname, and this one is black too….”
Feeling somehow shy about being asked while making eye contact at such a close distance, Lee Yoon-san stammered, rolling his eyes to the side. It was an action that came out of embarrassment, and he felt like his face was burning, so it was hard to stay still. So he was just babbling anything, and then he heard Hwang Hae-kyung chuckle softly.
“A nickname? Rabbit?”
“…Yeah.”
“The kids in our class say you’re cute.”
“…Huh, huh?”
“So this is confiscated.”
Reaching out over Lee Yoon-san’s head, who was rolling his eyes as if troubled and couldn’t make eye contact with him at all, Hwang Hae-kyung took off the black rabbit headband. Then, he put it on his forearm and took out his phone.
Lee Yoon-san, who was still slow to grasp the situation and was just blankly staring, belatedly made an ‘uh-oh’ sound and blushed, staring blankly at his rabbit headband on Hwang Hae-kyung’s arm. The long, fluffy rabbit ears were drooping down.
Hwang Hae-kyung held out his phone to Lee Yoon-san. At the same time, Shin Soo-hyun’s voice calling for Lee Yoon-san could be heard from outside. It seemed like he had finally come to his senses. After getting off the zombie safari bus and finishing the zombie event, they would proceed to exit right away, so there probably wasn’t much time left.
“Hey, Lee Yoon-san! Where are you?!”
“Give me your Insta ID.”
Shin Soo-hyun’s voice shouting for him from outside and Hwang Hae-kyung’s calm voice overlapped. Nevertheless, what stuck in Lee Yoon-san’s ears was Hwang Hae-kyung’s low, calm voice.
It was a voice with a different atmosphere from Lee Yoon-san, who was filled with a bit of awkwardness, a bit of shyness, and the anxiety that came from realizing the exit time.
“I, I just have an account but I don’t post anything.”
“It’s okay.”
Whether Hwang Hae-kyung’s account was known or not, he was said to be popular on social media, so Lee Yoon-san preemptively made excuses, feeling embarrassed about his empty feed. But Hwang Hae-kyung didn’t back down, and Lee Yoon-san took Hwang Hae-kyung’s phone and entered his Instagram account ID.
Then, he immediately got a follow request. When Lee Yoon-san took out his phone to check, Hwang Hae-kyung’s account was visible. Hwang Hae-kyung’s account also seemed to be an account with not many posts, so he felt a little relieved.
“Hey, Lee Yoon-san!”
While blankly looking at the SNS screen where he had just followed Hwang Hae-kyung back, Shin Soo-hyun’s voice was heard once again. This time, it was a sound heard from a closer distance than before.
“I think I have to go now…!”
“Wait.”
Just as he was about to get up in a hurry at the approaching voice, Hwang Hae-kyung grabbed Lee Yoon-san’s wrist and took off the hoodie he was wearing. It was the same clothes that Lee Yoon-san had seen in the morning, draped over his broad shoulders.
“Wear this.”
“This….”
“It might be cold in the evening.”
Hwang Hae-kyung said that and draped his hoodie over Lee Yoon-san’s shoulders. The hoodie, which had been a decent oversized fit when Hwang Hae-kyung was wearing it, felt much bigger when Lee Yoon-san wore it.
That’s why Hwang Hae-kyung’s growth felt even more unreal. He had grown this much in the more than 6 years since they had parted so suddenly in the summer of when he was 11 years old.
“Take care of yourself.”
“…Uh-huh.”
“Watch out for Alphas.”
The last words were followed by a slightly mischievous tone and a playful expression. At Hwang Hae-kyung’s words, Lee Yoon-san blushed once again. Fortunately, his milk chocolate-colored skin and the darkened surroundings would hide his reddened face, but still, the last words were a bit risky.
Usually, the phrase ‘Take care of yourself’ has two meanings for Second gendered beings: ‘Take good care of your condition’ and ‘Be wary of the opposite sex.’
At first, Lee Yoon-san naturally took Hwang Hae-kyung’s words to mean the former, but if the following words were about ‘Watch out for Alphas,’ the meaning would inevitably change.
It was the same as Hwang Hae-kyung telling him ‘Don’t meet Alphas.’ So Lee Yoon-san, feeling unfairly resentful for no reason, properly put his arms through the sleeves of the hoodie and retorted gruffly.
Chapter
“You should be careful of Omegas yourself!”
At that, Hwang Hae-kyung burst out laughing as if he couldn’t hold it in. With his pretty jawline and refreshingly shaped lips, even his laughter looked charming and refreshing.
“Ah, damn it, where’s Lee Yoon-san! The homeroom teacher is calling!”
“Go on. If you stay any longer, you’ll get caught and scolded.”
Yoon-san stood up from his seat at Hae-kyung’s last words. Since he had been sitting on the dirt ground, Hae-kyung’s hand, which had been about to brush off the grass and dirt stuck to Yoon-san’s clothes, couldn’t quite reach and pulled away.
Though Yoon-san was too preoccupied straightening his hoodie to notice that touch.
“Hey! You crazy bastard, where’d you go?!”
“I ran away ‘cause I was scared of the zombies…”
“Anyway, damn it, ah, the homeroom teacher keeps calling. Didn’t you get any calls?”
“Uh… no, I have a ton of missed calls too.”
“Damn, we’re screwed now. Let’s hurry.”
✧✧✧
The voices of Yoon-san and his friend, coming through the grass and trees, gradually faded away. Even as a child, he always listened well to adults and was doted on, and it seemed he was still like that. You could tell from how overprotective his teacher was. Hae-kyung’s gestures as he stood up and dusted off the dirt were leisurely. The black rabbit hairband dangling loosely on his forearm swayed back and forth.
With a light movement, he left the spot and headed toward the safari exit, which had quieted down as people dispersed. Since they had released part-time workers dressed as zombies inside the safari for a temporary event, the return exit was also near the entrance.
Hae-kyung had known that path in advance, and as soon as he saw Yoon-san lingering near the zombie makeup booth with his teacher and friends, he had headed this way. He thought that if they happened to come this way, he might get to see them briefly, and if not, there was nothing he could do. Of course, as always, Lady Luck was on Hae-kyung’s side.
“Hey, Hwang. You crazy bastard, where’d you go alone?”
When Hae-kyung leisurely returned to the class group, his friends, spotting him, each cursed and grumbled. Their supervising homeroom teacher also approached Hae-kyung once more, smacking his back hard while scolding him relentlessly. Hae-kyung just smiled, offering his back to that harsh hand and the long commotion.
“You’re acting like a total madman today. Sending a ton of Airdrops and all.”
“I didn’t send them for you.”
“Who cares, damn it! At first, because you sent them to everyone nearby, all the iPhones around got Airdrop bombarded!”
“Guess someone was interested.”
At the complaint from Lee Seok-jae, a fellow volleyball team member and SNS addict, Ham Se-jin, who was tying up her hair nearby, chimed in. Se-jin was also an Alpha belonging to the girls’ volleyball team, the same Alpha who had waved and smiled at Yoon-san and Shin Soo-hyun that morning.
“That was totally obvious, and already done.”
“But what’s that on your arm?”
“Huh? Hey, isn’t that what that kid was wearing earlier?!”
When Seok-jae, glancing toward the homeroom teacher checking attendance up ahead, agreed with Se-jin’s words, the topic returned to Hae-kyung, who tried to evade it by just nodding once without any answer. Se-jin, having finished tying her hair, had spotted the black rabbit hairband hanging on Hae-kyung’s arm.
Then Seok-jae’s eyes lit up, and he rushed over, raising his voice, while the surrounding Alphas from the same class crowded around Hae-kyung.
“What is it, it’s cute. Ah, but this is the same as the one that cute kid was wearing earlier…”
“Don’t touch it.”
As Seok-jae giggled and reached to snatch the rabbit hairband from Hae-kyung’s arm, Hae-kyung smacked his hand away, frowned with displeasure, and drew a line. Watching this, Se-jin, who had been observing, also furrowed her brow and added her piece.
“You know, if you get involved with an Omega at this point, it’s at least a suspension?”
“I know.”
“Do you think your coach and the coaching staff will let you off? Hormone and pheromone management is already a bitch, and if you give them an excuse, you’re dead in my hands.”
“I said I know.”
At Se-jin’s threateningly scowled warning, Hae-kyung raised one eyebrow and replied dismissively. Though he disliked her rough manner of speaking, she wasn’t wrong, so he couldn’t argue further.
As a sports-specialized high school, Samyung High had a high proportion of Alphas. Among them, the boys’ and girls’ volleyball teams had the best performance, and true to its reputation as a volleyball powerhouse, Alphas aiming for volleyball gathered from all over the country. So the rumor that Samyung High became a volleyball powerhouse by only accepting Alphas was only half true.
It was correct that the Samyung High volleyball team, regardless of gender, was mostly Alphas, but originally, the school itself had a high Alpha ratio, and many applicants were also Alphas.
Since players were selected based on skill, it was inevitable that Alphas would dominate in a sport like volleyball where physicality is important. Combining Samyung High’s volleyball expertise with the players’ physical abilities, their results were bound to be better than other schools.
Above all, Samyung High’s coaching staff and trainers were famous for being strict about Alphas’ hormone management. It was their duty to thoroughly track and manage without gaps whether the players were properly taking their hormone and pheromone suppressants, their medication cycles, and their inseparable heat cycles tied to sexual maturity.
Hae-kyung belonged to such a team’s volleyball team and had recently risen to ace status following the middle and high school league tournament. Though only a first-year in high school, his performance had been good since middle school. It was possible because he himself was diligent about sports. So it was only natural that Hae-kyung’s hormones and pheromones were also strictly managed.
But if Hae-kyung caused any trouble related to the opposite sex in this situation, the fallout would inevitably hit the entire Samyung High volleyball team. So Se-jin, as a member of the girls’ volleyball team, had no choice but to speak up. Like all athletic Alphas, Se-jin was also fed up with the management required to suppress Alpha hormones and pheromones.
No, rather, Alphas who weren’t like that were rare. To kill the excessive desires triggered by hormones, most Alphas started sports from a young age. Even if they chose different paths later during college entrance season, basically starting them in sports when young made management easier, and that was simply the standard educational approach.
Just as Omegas suffer through slower growth during their presentation period due to abdominal pain from reproductive organ restructuring, presentation is painful for Alphas too. The incomparable growing pains compared to ordinary Betas were one reason, and the emotions made overly sensitive and scattered by hormonal effects, along with intermittently surging explosive desires, were another.
Moreover, heightened sexual sensitivity, emotions that could turn violent, excessively bursting desires, and the unique Alpha physicality—all these conditions were prone to leading to trouble.
Therefore, families with Alpha children put them in sports to at least drain their physical energy, and the teams that took them in strictly managed hormones and pheromones to prevent any chance of the child going astray. Of course, the fact that all the physical attributes of Alpha children were too valuable to not put into sports also played a big role.
Alphas who endured all those growth periods and matured properly possessed the most suitable condition as athletes. Excellent physicality and hardened mental strength, plus the habitualized self-management, were the results. Though not all Alphas who started sports ultimately chose athletics as their career.
In terms of population ratio, it was also true that the Alpha gender was most distributed throughout society’s leadership, not just in sports. Hae-kyung’s father was also an Alpha who had done sports but now ran a business, which was similar.
Hae-kyung himself didn’t have a particular dream of an athletic career, but for the reasons above, he was playing volleyball. The circumstances of Seok-jae and Se-jin, Alphas in the same sports club and his closest friends, were similar. Seok-jae enjoyed displaying his athletic self on SNS more than the sport itself, and Se-jin, like Hae-kyung, suffered from high hormone secretion and was placed in the sports club for strict management.
“But they were kinda cute, though.”
As if having vented all her anger, Se-jin said offhandedly while stretching her neck. At the cracking sounds each time she twisted it, Seok-jae looked disgusted.
“Especially that desert fox and the black rabbit.”
“They’re middle schoolers, leave them alone.”
“Hwang, were you into a middle schooler? Wow, you bastard.”
“The desert fox kid looks aloof, and the black rabbit seemed innocent. They look obedient and innocent, and with that skin tone, it’s unique.”
“I said shut up, Ham Se-jin.”
At Se-jin’s words, deliberately provoking, a cold voice escaped Hae-kyung’s lips. Seok-jae laughed as if to lighten the mood watching the two, but upon learning the kids he thought were cute were middle schoolers, his interest seemed to rapidly cool.
In contrast, Se-jin kept her eyes on the black rabbit hairband on Hae-kyung’s arm, deliberately egging on a reaction.
In fact, few didn’t know that Hae-kyung had gone to great lengths to follow that middle school group around today. It was that obvious, and unlike Hae-kyung’s usual self.
The volleyball team Alphas, including Hae-kyung, usually had no leeway to be interested in the opposite sex, regardless of gender, because their coach and the coaching staff were fierce and strict. Whether the kids’ first or second gender, if they showed even a hint of interest in the opposite sex, the coach would notice like a ghost. Then from that day, both the training program and practice intensified.
The kids weren’t unaware that the adults were deliberately doing this to prevent unsavory incidents in advance. They followed along, albeit grudgingly, because they knew it.
Also, because of that, the kids in the volleyball team gave no room for thoughts about the opposite sex. Showing interest itself was asking for trouble, so it was natural.
Hae-kyung was decidedly an Alpha among those kids who showed no interest in the opposite sex. They say he was very small and weak as a child, an effect of enduring the growing pains of presentation more harshly than other Alphas.
And above all, whenever he went home, his parents had a habit of saying: When you become an adult, we’ll naturally find you a pretty partner, so don’t even show interest in that direction now, you’re a minor who doesn’t have the ability to handle or take responsibility even if the worst accident happens.
He thought the former was just talk, but he acknowledged the latter, so he didn’t go looking for the opposite sex, especially in his tired state from sports.
His SNS activity was the same. Perhaps because of memories of suffering as a kid model when young, he was somewhat indifferent, even feeling a slight aversion to that sort of thing.
But that Hae-kyung had openly shown interest in an Omega. And in an Omega from another school, one wearing a rabbit hairband.
Moreover, that Omega and his group of friends were all uniformly cute. Omegas would mostly grow up to be so-called ‘beauties,’ but those kids had chubby cheeks and looked like boys their age. Their neat attire actually stood out, and despite their slender builds and large eyes that made them look like they couldn’t handle rough rides, they enjoyed all sorts of amusement rides, which was unexpectedly cute.
Se-jin, being one of the Alphas who had followed those kids and ridden rides since morning, knew well. She had also noticed that the Alphas in their class were eyeing those Omegas too.
The word ‘cute’ was frequently heard, and in the afternoon, some kids joked about buying rabbit and desert fox hairbands like those kids when passing by the souvenir shop. Of course, they got kicked in the butt by Hae-kyung and failed to purchase.
Se-jin also recalled the Omegas’ homeroom teacher, who had been wary of them like highly sensitive wild animals. At first, the teacher’s wariness seemed ridiculous, but soon she could understand. All four Omegas that teacher was leading had striking appearances.
Plus, their Alpha group numbered twenty. A gender ratio that could lead to trouble in the blink of an eye if hormone management failed and they deliberately released pheromones.
“Hwang Hae-kyung.”
“…….”
“This is a real warning. I get that he’s cute, but don’t cause problems because of it.”
“That won’t happen, and you don’t need to know that he’s cute.”
“Don’t you remember last month, because of that photo with me and Hye-yoon, they said it was physical training and made us do agility drills like crazy?”
“Ah, you crazy bitch. Was that extended program because of you? I felt like some border collie being worked to death…!”
“Lee Seok-jae, you shut up.”
At Se-jin’s continued words, Seok-jae flared up but couldn’t finish his sentence under her forcefulness.
Samyung High’s volleyball team held joint responsibility for trouble, regardless of gender. If an incident happened in the girls’ volleyball team or the boys’ volleyball team, disciplinary training programs were added to both teams.
Last month, there was an incident where someone posted a photo with the opposite sex on their personal SNS, and the training program was changed to instill awareness about lax mental attitude—it seemed the cause was Se-jin.
Of course, from Se-jin’s perspective, it was a bit unfair. Se-jin was a tall, handsome, and pretty Alpha, and true to the volleyball team, her physicality was good, reaching 183cm. And that was a figure still growing.
With that, it was inevitable she was popular even at other schools. The games where Se-jin was selected were especially packed with young boy and girl fans. There were about three or four players who drove popularity in the boys’ volleyball team, but in the girls’ volleyball team, Se-jin was unrivaled. She had what’s called an ‘Alpha-like’ appearance, which made her fanbase even more solid.
The person Se-jin took the photo with was a friend named Sung Hye-yoon, a Beta from another school. It was just a photo with a Beta, not even an Omega, and SNS was a personal space, so she posted it without much thought, but the problem arose because Hye-yoon added a heart emoticon underneath.
The coaching staff, who snooped on the players’ SNS, raised the issue: regardless, if the second gender is different, it’s the opposite sex, and isn’t this a sign of a lax mind?
Even though it ended with just short-term additional training because the other party was a Beta girl, the atmosphere suggested that if it had been an Omega, it might have led to disciplinary action.
So Se-jin’s words to Hae-kyung weren’t baseless venting.
“It wouldn’t be good for them either. You saw how their homeroom teacher was wary.”
“Enough already.”
Hae-kyung tapped Se-jin’s shoulder, who was speaking with a troubled expression, and turned his gaze as if to end the conversation. Then the teacher conducting the dismissal assembly up front pointed at Hae-kyung’s arm and said,
“Hwang Hae-kyung, what’s that on your arm? I didn’t see you buy it.”
“He said he found it! On the street!”
Thanks to Seok-jae, who shouted dismissively as if covering for him, the talk about the hairband ended there. The Samyung High Alphas, with the assembly over, headed en masse toward the buses parked in the parking lot. Since it wasn’t a Beta class, the homeroom teacher had to accompany the Alphas until the end too.
Only then did Hae-kyung lift the rabbit hairband he had kept on his arm and examine it closely. From the inside near where it had been attached to the head, there was a faint, soft scent.
It seemed it was likely Yoon-san’s pheromones, as there was no other way to describe it. No matter how much they suppress it with medication, a faint trace of that scent tends to cling to items worn for a long time. Especially Alphas with high hormone levels like Hae-kyung were sensitive to such pheromones, so they could distinguish it.
“Hey, but what about your clothes?”
“…I lost them.”
So that’s why he had covered Yoon-san with his own clothes. The homeroom teacher wouldn’t escort him all the way home, so it would be obvious to anyone that he was wearing someone else’s clothes.
And to let him experience the very, very faint trace of his own pheromones left on them. Even using the lame excuse that the weather was chilly.
Of course, if Yoon-san wasn’t sensitive to pheromones, he might not notice, but that was fine. Just the fact that he had dressed Yoon-san in his clothes made him feel a bit better.
It wasn’t that he felt something emotional for Yoon-san right away or anything like that. But Hae-kyung didn’t mind his current mood. Yoon-san was a childhood friend he hadn’t seen in a long time, and the younger sibling his parents had always emphasized he must protect.
Though in the last moment of that summer, it ended up being Yoon-san who protected him, but dressing Yoon-san in his own clothes was in a similar context to what Yoon-san’s homeroom teacher had been doing.
Hwang Hae-kyung thought about Lee Yoon-san, rubbing the inside of the rabbit headband with his fingertip.
It felt a little awkward and dazed that Lee Yoon-san, whom he used to look up to, had become smaller than him. The sensation of Lee Yoon-san’s chubby arm, which he couldn’t budge no matter how much he struggled and pulled, fitting comfortably in his hand was also unfamiliar. On the other hand, hearing Lee Yoon-san being called cute only slightly bothered him; it felt natural. Lee Yoon-san had heard that a lot from adults when he was younger.
Anyway, Hwang Hae-kyung kept thinking about Lee Yoon-san even on the bus. The eyes he had met, the wrist that fit in his hand, the body that had fallen and sat between his legs.
Perhaps because it was an unexpected reunion after a long time, those thoughts and sensations were not forgotten and continued to occupy Hwang Hae-kyung.
✧✧✧
On the night he returned from his field trip, Lee Yoon-san confessed to his parents, who came home late, that he had seen Hwang Hae-kyung. He was sure that his parents still liked Hwang Hae-kyung, so he expected a welcoming reaction. But his expectations were beautifully dashed.
‘Yoon-san, you weren’t with Hae-kyung, were you? You shouldn’t get close to or meet Hae-kyung right now.’
Lee Yoon-san’s parents told their son with expressions that couldn’t hide their distress. The words sounded like telling someone not to approach a trained animal, so Lee Yoon-san couldn’t understand his parents’ reaction.
On the other hand, Lee Yoon-san’s parents felt a little complicated by their son’s news. They had known for a long time that Hwang Hae-kyung belonged to a very strict and prestigious volleyball team, and they knew how harshly Hwang Hae-kyung’s Pheromone season was being managed. Above all, they were Alpha and Omega themselves.
Moreover, the high school Hwang Hae-kyung was currently attending was the school that Lee Yoon-san’s Alpha mother, Lee Jung-won, had graduated from. Lee Jung-won had played basketball, but even back then, the volleyball team’s player management was quite infamous. The success of the players’ hormone management and Pheromone suppression was the decisive know-how that created the volleyball powerhouse reputation, even the teachers openly talked about it.
So Lee Jung-won couldn’t help but know Hwang Hae-kyung’s current situation well. She would be taking medication to regulate her hormones and Suppressant to suppress her Pheromones. She would be subjected to a training program and control that wouldn’t allow her to divert her attention or energy elsewhere. There might be talk about student rights, but there hadn’t been much change from the past, as incidents involving underage Alphas and relationships still regularly made the news. Above all, a few Alphas in leading positions in society had come forward to showcase their children’s strict management several years ago, and that event had been quite effective.
It created a new trend that the more strictly controlled Alphas were, the more likely they were to belong to the upper class of society. Since then, the phenomenon has become even more solidified as words began to circulate that abstinence and moderation were characteristics of old money or families with family offices. Within the upper-class Alphas, they even talked about it as an extension of ‘noblesse oblige.’ Behind the scenes, they committed whatever misdeeds they wanted, but in front, they displayed at least the appearance of making an effort.
Since the social atmosphere was like that, Lee Jung-won in the past and Hwang Hae-kyung in the present were living lives that were not much different. Lee Jung-won felt bitter about this and hoped that her Omega son wouldn’t shake Hwang Hae-kyung. Therefore, she decided to control her son. Besides, an Alpha who was still immature and living under control while suppressing all desires was dangerous enough to her son. Even if it was excessive protection, it couldn’t be helped.
Lee Yoon-san was the only child of Lee Jung-won and her husband, and it would be too late after something happened. Even if it was a very slight possibility, Lee Jung-won had a duty to protect her family. Even if the target identified as a risk factor was the boy Hwang Hae-kyung, whom she adored. So Lee Jung-won tried to explain the situation to Lee Yoon-san and make him understand, at least roughly.
Hwang Hae-kyung and you haven’t finished your Pheromone season yet, and just like you’re sick, Hwang Hae-kyung is also taking medication because she’s suffering from growing pains, and she must be very tired because of school and sports. So it would be best not to meet Hwang Hae-kyung or create situations where you might be curious about each other until you become adults after your Pheromone season is over.
The decisive reason why the camping gatherings that they could enjoy without any worries when they were young ended was not just because of the accident. It was because the children’s secondary genders had been divided.
But Lee Yoon-san couldn’t fully accept his mother’s words. He had been constantly educated about the instability of the Pheromone season, including the desires and suppression of secondary genders, but his guard was lowered because the other person was Hwang Hae-kyung.
Hwang Hae-kyung, who was smaller and thinner than him, Hwang Hae-kyung, who had never been a threat to him even though he hated him, and Hwang Hae-kyung, who had smiled brightly and taken off his clothes for him when they met again. Even when he thought of all these Hwang Hae-kyungs, he couldn’t think of any danger at all. To be exact, it was more accurate to say that the danger of an immature and unstable Alpha was not connected to Hwang Hae-kyung.
So Lee Yoon-san just nodded to his parents, who were giving him enough warnings, and went into his room. He carefully folded the hoodie that Hwang Hae-kyung had put on him, which he had proudly spread out on the bed, hugged it, and lay down on the bed. He buried his nose in the clothes and sniffed, but there was no smell at all.
So this time, he buried his face inside the clothes and smelled them a little more carefully, and he felt a refreshing, wind-like scent. It wasn’t a smell that he could smell in everyday life, so it was definitely a scent that he was sure was Hwang Hae-kyung’s Pheromone. Lee Yoon-san fell asleep that night hugging Hwang Hae-kyung’s clothes.
And starting the very next day, Lee Yoon-san’s day began to change little by little.
First of all, he started to check his SNS account, which was completely empty, more often, and he spent more time looking at Hwang Hae-kyung’s ID in his friend list. No message came from Hwang Hae-kyung, who he thought would send him a DM right away.
While he was pointlessly wasting his battery by checking his SNS account, which he didn’t usually check often, Lee Yoon-san was able to find news of the person he wanted on the timeline he clicked on carelessly, one class before school was over.
It was a photo that Hwang Hae-kyung had uploaded with the concise content of ‘Tan-Dan-Ji Diet’ [Carb-Protein-Fat Diet]. The photo showed a lunch box with a balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fat, and a part of the black rabbit headband was slightly visible behind it.
Even though Hwang Hae-kyung’s face wasn’t revealed, it was just a lunch box photo, but from the moment Lee Yoon-san found the rabbit headband in the corner, his heart was beating like crazy and he couldn’t control it. The rabbit headband in the photo was his headband that Hwang Hae-kyung had taken yesterday. Lee Yoon-san looked at the photo in his phone, looking around with a flushed face.
Comments and ‘likes’ were already pouring in under the image that Hwang Hae-kyung had uploaded. Everyone was surprised that something had been uploaded to his SNS, which had only a few photos of the sky taken clumsily, uniforms, and training camp photos in his existing feed. In the comments, questions such as ‘Is this Hwang Hae-kyung’s Instagram?’ and questions from friends who couldn’t hide their surprise, saying ‘Are you doing Instagram now?’ were increasing in real time. Even though it was a photo that was uploaded only 20 minutes ago.
Lee Yoon-san hesitated quite a bit and then pressed ‘like’ on the photo. He thought this much would be okay. Fortunately, nothing was tagged in the image that Hwang Hae-kyung uploaded, and perhaps because Hwang Hae-kyung’s SNS was not known, no one mentioned the rabbit ears in the corner of the photo.
No, in fact, it was to the extent that no one would have noticed it unless it was Lee Yoon-san, who was the owner of the headband. It wasn’t like the entire shape of the headband was shown, and it wasn’t like the entire rabbit ears were shown, it was just a vague appearance of some part of the middle of the headband hanging ambiguously in the corner.
But the courage was worth it. Less than 5 minutes after Lee Yoon-san pressed ‘like’ on Hwang Hae-kyung’s photo, Hwang Hae-kyung’s profile picture changed,
“Wow, uh…!”
It was a photo of what was presumed to be Hwang Hae-kyung himself in the Seyoung High School volleyball uniform and a black rabbit ear headband.
The uniform, which symbolized Seyoung High School’s volleyball team, had the number 11 written on it in black letters, and the two ears of the jet-black rabbit ear headband placed next to it were standing straight up. And soon after, an alert popped up on Lee Yoon-san’s phone that he had received a DM. The sender was, of course, Hwang Hae-kyung.
My back number looks like your ears
It was a simple yet playful sentence that omitted greetings.
✧✧✧
After that, Lee Yoon-san often exchanged DMs with Hwang Hae-kyung, and photos were often uploaded to Hwang Hae-kyung’s SNS. He wasn’t good at taking pictures, so the main backgrounds were always roughly taken diet lunch boxes, training grounds, or auditoriums, but there wasn’t a single photo of himself among them. Instead, the rabbit headband was always taken with the diet photos.
Every time Lee Yoon-san saw that photo, he felt inexplicably excited and his heart seemed to beat faster. He often looked around, and he would show that he had seen the photo by pressing ‘like’ every time. And then, without fail, Hwang Hae-kyung would send him a DM that day. Most of the time, they couldn’t share long DMs, and there were days when DMs didn’t come because he was very busy with his training schedule. Sometimes, he would spend a day just waiting for Hwang Hae-kyung’s contact, but still, Lee Yoon-san found this new daily life, which was exciting and strange, to be new.
“Hey, crazy, Seyoung High School’s Hwang Hae-kyung is doing Instagram?”
One day, while he was spending days like walking on clouds, Shin Soo-hyun said as he poked Lee Yoon-san’s arm.
Shin Soo-hyun would make a fuss like this every time, and he had tried to sound out Lee Yoon-san about Hwang Hae-kyung several times since the last field trip. The main content was ‘Did you get Hwang Hae-kyung’s number?’ and ‘Do you contact him?’, and the two Omegas in the same class who had walked around with him that day were also quite curious and often asked about Hwang Hae-kyung.
Of course, Lee Yoon-san lied that he didn’t get the number and didn’t really contact him. In fact, it was true that he didn’t get the number. Because he got the SNS ID instead of the number.
Lee Yoon-san, who hadn’t really had anything to lie about in his sixteen years of life, knew well that there was nothing good about being honest this time. His parents, who liked Hwang Hae-kyung so much, told him not to meet Hwang Hae-kyung, and above all, just looking at the homeroom teacher’s attitude at the amusement park, he knew that contacting Hwang Hae-kyung, who was an Alpha, was something that adults told him not to do.
“Really?”
So, as always, he pretended not to know this time.
“Yeah. He doesn’t upload his own photos and he doesn’t have a verification badge. Above all, because the back number has changed, people couldn’t find him and they’re making a fuss now that they know.”
“He changed his back number?”
Shin Soo-hyun had become very interested in Hwang Hae-kyung, Seyoung High School, and high school volleyball since the last field trip. He would find and show Lee Yoon-san volleyball game videos that Lee Yoon-san didn’t even ask for, and he even knew which players were on the Seyoung High School volleyball team and what their SNS accounts were.
Lee Yoon-san was also very interested in Hwang Hae-kyung and the Seyoung High School volleyball team that Hwang Hae-kyung belonged to since that day, but he was actually distracted by exchanging messages and ‘likes’ with Hwang Hae-kyung. So he didn’t know as much as Shin Soo-hyun.
He was busy looking at Hwang Hae-kyung’s feed and looking back at the DMs he had shared, so Lee Yoon-san was unfamiliar with the words that Hwang Hae-kyung had changed his back number. That’s because the Hwang Hae-kyung that Lee Yoon-san knew had been number 11 from the beginning.
Wasn’t it the late afternoon of the day after they met at the amusement park that he changed his profile picture and sent a DM, saying that his back number resembled Lee Yoon-san’s rabbit ear headband? So it was a strange thing for Lee Yoon-san. Even after that, Hwang Hae-kyung was still number 11.
“There’s a player named Lee Seok-jae who plays left in that volleyball team? He’s mainly an assistant on the left, and he runs his Instagram like an influencer. But I think his account was revealed when he tagged Hwang Hae-kyung’s ID and it’s a mess?”
“It’s a mess?”
“It’s a mess. Hwang Hae-kyung is the most popular player on the Seyoung High School volleyball team, you know?”
“Q, quiet down!”
Shin Soo-hyun was sitting on Lee Yoon-san’s desk and continuing to look at Lee Seok-jae’s SNS on his phone.
Most of the friends that Lee Seok-jae followed were school friends or volleyball teammates, and Ham Se-jin’s account was also among them. Shin Soo-hyun seemed to be quite concerned about Ham Se-jin after learning that the female Alpha who had smiled at him and Lee Yoon-san on the field trip was Ham Se-jin.
However, most of the volleyball players, except for Lee Seok-jae, had meager SNS accounts. It was unknown whether it was because they didn’t have enough time to run their SNS enthusiastically or because they weren’t interested, but anyway, most of them were like that.
There were even many players with private accounts. Presumably, it wasn’t because of the coaching staff’s control. If that were the case, Lee Seok-jae was running his SNS too actively. Therefore, Shin Soo-hyun concluded that they didn’t like being noisy or didn’t want to open their private space to an unspecified number of people.
So he decided to scan only the things that were shown enthusiastically. With that mindset, Shin Soo-hyun began to look through Lee Seok-jae, Hwang Hae-kyung, and Ham Se-jin’s feeds. However, there were only a few photos on Ham Se-jin’s SNS, and he thought it would never end if he kept looking at Lee Seok-jae’s SNS, so he moved to Hwang Hae-kyung’s feed. And at the same time, he had no choice but to turn his head to Lee Yoon-san with a shocked expression.
“Hey, you crazy, crazy bastard, you this…!”
“Hey, shh, shh. Be quiet!”
He had found the black rabbit headband that was fully shown in Hwang Hae-kyung’s profile picture. And then, even the rabbit ear headbands that occupied a spot in the photos in the feed below. Shin Soo-hyun glared at Lee Yoon-san with an expression that was half shocked and half betrayed, and Lee Yoon-san covered Shin Soo-hyun’s mouth from the start, sweating coldly.
He was reminded of the fact that he had forgotten that Hwang Hae-kyung’s SNS had not been known for the past few days. That is, Shin Soo-hyun and the Omega children in the same class knew about the rabbit ear headband that Hwang Hae-kyung had taken. Of course, the homeroom teacher did too.
Of course, it was a problem that could be glossed over by saying that Seyoung High School also played in the same amusement park at the time, so Hwang Hae-kyung might have accidentally bought the same thing. However, it was difficult to deceive Shin Soo-hyun. Shin Soo-hyun already knew that Lee Yoon-san knew Hwang Hae-kyung. Lee Yoon-san had said it himself to Shin Soo-hyun.
“Hey, if the homeroom teacher finds out, you’re going to get screwed, really.”
“I don’t think the teacher is that kind of style…”
“Anyway, if they find out you’re meeting an Alpha, things will get big!”
“I’m not m, meeting him!”
“Your black rabbit ears are with him? You crazy, that big coat you wore that day, is that his? Huh?!”
“……”
Lee Yoon-san, who had nothing to say because everything was a fact, closed his mouth. Then Shin Soo-hyun flicked Lee Yoon-san’s forehead with a look of disbelief.
“Ah…!”
“Did Hwang Hae-kyung put Pheromone on you? With that coat?”
“No, crazy, what are you talking about! I told you we’re not like that?”
“But why are your ears with him, and you showed up wearing his clothes?”
“He just gave it to me to wear because I looked cold.”
“Fuck it, shit.”
“Why are you pronouncing Korean words like English swear words…”
“I thought Kim Ji-hoo would be the one to cause an Alpha accident, but I never thought it would be Lee Yoon-san.”
“I told you it’s not like that?”
“Guronggo yaeni ryeonyae gyae!”
Even though he knew that Shin Soo-hyun was just teasing him, he couldn’t help but sweat coldly. He was afraid of getting caught by the homeroom teacher and getting scolded and disciplined, but according to his mother, Hwang Hae-kyung was in an even stricter environment. So if it was found out that he and Hwang Hae-kyung were communicating privately like this, he didn’t know what kind of punishment Hwang Hae-kyung would receive.
“Don’t tell anyone, anywhere. Don’t show it either.”
“Are you crazy? It’s not like I’m trying to screw you over.”
Eventually, Lee Yoon-san looked a little relieved only after hearing a definite answer from Shin Soo-hyun. On the other hand, Shin Soo-hyun was watching Lee Yoon-san, convinced that his thoughts were correct. For Shin Soo-hyun, it was the first time seeing Lee Yoon-san, who had been attending school indifferently, making such a fuss. He only looked like a black rabbit; in reality, Lee Yoon-san’s behavior was closer to that of an FM bear. Slow, steady, and obedient to adults.
“But… when did you change your jersey number?”
“Hwang Hae-kyung?”
“…Yeah.”
After exchanging several words calling Hwang Hae-kyung’s name, Lee Yoon-san, belatedly noticing Shin Soo-hyun’s mention of Hwang Hae-kyung’s full name, hesitated and nodded, looking around. It seemed to be a question he had been curious about throughout the conversation, so he wanted to ask as naturally as possible, but it seemed his true feelings were inevitably revealed. Shin Soo-hyun snorted with a sly look on his face.
“I’ve been looking up Seyoung High’s volleyball game videos on WhatTube these days, and Hwang… his original number was 10. When I looked it up, they said volleyball positions and numbers aren’t that closely related, but if you look at the games he played after entering school or their school’s practice videos, he’s always wearing number 10. Even in middle school game videos.”
“But now it’s number 11…?”
“Looks like it hasn’t been long since it changed.”
Shin Soo-hyun kindly found and showed Seyoung High’s volleyball team videos on the video streaming platform. Indeed, in the video, Hwang Hae-kyung’s jersey number during a meeting practice was 10. It was a video taken from afar, and it only appeared briefly as it was a vlog of a volleyball team player from another grade, but it was clear. Lee Yoon-san stared blankly at Hwang Hae-kyung’s jersey number on the paused screen. Looking at the date the video was uploaded, it was this summer, which meant that Hwang Hae-kyung’s jersey number was really 10 until recently.
“Hey, look at Hwang’s profile picture again.”
“Huh?”
While he was staring at Hwang Hae-kyung’s jersey number in the video, Shin Soo-hyun, after a while, snatched his phone and said, taking it away. It seemed he had been looking at Hwang Hae-kyung’s SNS account on Lee Yoon-san’s phone, which was placed on the desk, and he gave the phone to Lee Yoon-san.
And Lee Yoon-san’s eyes widened as he checked Hwang Hae-kyung’s SNS profile picture on his phone. Hwang Hae-kyung’s profile picture on Instagram, which had been changed the day after Lee Yoon-san and Hwang Hae-kyung met, was still the same, but there was no name written above the jersey number in the picture. It was not a formal player’s uniform with Hwang Hae-kyung’s name on it, but a temporary uniform. In other words, it was as if he had to wear it urgently because he changed his number on purpose.
“He swapped numbers with another player.”
“…No way.”
“When I looked up the kid who originally had number 11, he’s wearing number 10 now.”
It was as Shin Soo-hyun said. Shin Soo-hyun had already searched Lee Seok-jae’s SNS with his phone and was checking the jersey numbers of other players there, showing them to Lee Yoon-san as well. Indeed, in the old photos from below, the player who originally wore number 11 was now wearing number 10. It seemed Hwang Hae-kyung had swapped numbers with him, as Shin Soo-hyun said. It seemed to be something possible because he was a high school student and a freshman.
Even if Lee Yoon-san didn’t know much about volleyball, he knew that a jersey number, once decided, couldn’t be changed as easily as flipping a hand.
Lee Yoon-san sent Shin Soo-hyun, who was looking at him with a strange expression, back to his seat and opened the DM window with Hwang Hae-kyung. And he typed and sent a message.
Why is your number 11?
It was disjointed and a sudden question. So he couldn’t even question why the message that should have been sent as ‘Since when’ came out as the question ‘Why’. But he couldn’t think of anything else because his emotions were so overwhelming, like a balloon filling his chest.
He was curious about what it all meant: Hwang Hae-kyung’s jersey number, which suddenly changed the day after he met him, the nameless number 11 uniform, and the rabbit ear headband next to it. Even more so because he had been exchanging messages with Hwang Hae-kyung for days without much thought while looking at the profile picture.
Fortunately, Hwang Hae-kyung’s reply came quickly. It was rare for the protagonist of a schedule filled with training and classes.
Cute, like rabbit ears
And Hwang Hae-kyung, who sent the reply, probably didn’t know. That with just that one answer he sent, Lee Yoon-san couldn’t concentrate on class all day that day.
For days after that, Lee Yoon-san kept going back to, recalling, and looking at that answer Hwang Hae-kyung sent, not knowing what to do. He would look at the message left in the DM again and again, and then leave the DM several times, worried that Hwang Hae-kyung would send a DM right away and realize he was looking at the screen. He tried to calm his excited heart by interpreting it this way and that way, but then a pointless sense of anticipation rose.
He couldn’t even dare to guess what the anticipation was for, and it was too much to even think that far. Lee Yoon-san was just overwhelmed by reflecting on Hwang Hae-kyung’s changed jersey number, the rabbit ears, and that time they briefly encountered each other at the amusement park.
Lee Yoon-san’s state lasted for quite a long time. It was inevitable. It was a situation and emotion he had never experienced before, and the interest and affection that someone his age showed him for the first time made his heart flutter so much that he couldn’t sleep for a while.