By Zephyria 
“Jeong-min, Yeong-min. Come on, say hello. This is Auntie Eun-jung, Mommy’s friend, and this is her son, Shin-woo.”
The two twins, born three minutes apart, had faces that looked as if they had been produced by a photocopier. With fair skin and a light flush on their cheeks, they looked just like peaches. Furthermore, their light brown eyes and jet-black hair doubled the loveliness of the two children.
As if they knew it, the two children blinked their star-like sparkling eyes and looked up at the boy named Shin-woo, who was slightly taller than them.
“Shin-woo, these are your younger brothers. The one with the blue button is Jeong-min, and the one with the green button is Yeong-min.”
“Hello. I am Shin Jeong-min.”
As the older twin by three minutes, Jeong-min—whose name was always called first—bowed first to greet his mother’s friend and her son. Yeong-min, who had been spacing out, only bowed deeply enough for his head to almost touch the ground after his mother gave him a nudge on the back.
“H-hello. I’m Yeong-min….”
The hat Yeong-min had been wearing pulled low fell to the floor. Not knowing what to do, Yeong-min looked at Jeong-min with his head bowed. Jeong-min gave a bright smile, placed his own hat on Yeong-min’s head, and picked up the hat from the floor. Just as he was about to put it back on, Shin-woo took a large step forward.
“No. It’s dirty. Hold on.”
Yeong-min hated dirty things, but Jeong-min didn’t mind. It hadn’t fallen in a mud puddle; it had fallen on a clean, tidy cafe floor, so how dirty could it really be…? However, Shin-woo took the hat from Jeong-min’s hand, dusted it off, and placed it back on Jeong-min’s head. Jeong-min stared blankly at Shin-woo. Shin-woo gazed endlessly into Jeong-min’s eyes before looking at Yeong-min’s eyes.
“Your eyes are really pretty. They’re like stars.”
At his words, which sounded like reciting poetry, Jeong-min and Yeong-min blinked.
“Oh my, Shin-woo, you’re quite the charmer.”
“Just like his father. He acts exactly the way Shin-woo’s dad does to me.”
The two mothers giggled, saying the children were too cute. Yeong-min smiled because his mother was smiling, and Shin-woo scratched his hair as if embarrassed. Jeong-min stared intently at Shin-woo.
Shin-woo said their eyes were pretty, but Jeong-min thought differently. To him, Shin-woo’s eyes were much prettier.
Straight eyes without double eyelids. It seemed to reflect his upright personality.
And despite being only one year older, he was a head taller and more dignified than the twins.
Though they were twins, Yeong-min was born weak and Jeong-min was born healthy. Because of this, the family’s attention had been focused on Yeong-min since they were young, and Jeong-min learned how to endure and yield to his brother, unable to say he was hurting even when he was. Just as he was becoming exhausted from having to act maturely and behave like an older brother, Jeong-min was happy to find a hyung he could lean on. And Yeong-min also took a liking to Shin-woo. After that, the three were always together. They had no choice but to be together.
Beyond the friendship between their parents—the mothers were friends, the fathers were business partners—it was because Shin-woo and the twins got along so well. Shin-woo, being an only child, adored the twins, and the twins loved having such a reliable hyung. While the twins had bubbly personalities, Shin-woo was quiet, so he played the role of indulging them or mediating when they fought, creating a perfect balance.
Growing up that way, they entered the same elementary and middle school, getting along like brothers and friends.
No, he thought they were getting along. All three of them were simply unaware that their relationship was slowly fracturing.
Jeong-min was the first to feel it. Or perhaps, it was a fact that only Jeong-min knew even now. As Shin-woo entered high school and the twins prepared for high school entrance exams, the three met more frequently. Jeong-min and Yeong-min found studying boring, but they worked hard because they wanted to enter the private high school Shin-woo attended, and Shin-woo helped them.
“Oh dear….”
“Hmm? Shin-woo hyung, what is it?”
Jeong-min, who had been solving math problems for a while, looked up at Shin-woo’s sigh and saw Yeong-min nodding off beside him. Jeong-min tapped Shin-woo’s arm with his pen.
“Hey, Shin Yeong-min, wake up. Shin-woo hyung is taking time out of his schedule to tutor us… how can you sleep?”
“Mmm….”
Yeong-min had no intention of waking up; instead, he fully collapsed face-down on the desk.
“Unbelievable. Ha….”
Jeong-min felt sorry toward Shin-woo. He knew it was the midterm period and that Shin-woo was making time to teach them.
Just as he stopped hitting him with the ballpoint pen and was about to wake him up properly, Shin-woo stopped Jeong-min.
“Leave him be.”
“But… Shin-woo hyung….”
“He must be tired.”
“Could he be more tired than you?”
“It’s okay. Let him sleep more.”
“Hyung, you’re too soft on Yeong-min.”
“Haha. Is that so?”
He wanted to answer, ‘Yes. Yes. You’re especially weak when it comes to Yeong-min,’ but he didn’t. It was because something was churning up from deep inside him.
Yeong-min’s health had improved after elementary school, but perhaps because he had been sick throughout his childhood, he had become a spoiled brat. Thus, both Jeong-min and Shin-woo had to indulge and accommodate his whims. Jeong-min was his biological brother, so that was inevitable, but he wondered what crime Shin-woo had committed to be this way; yet, he was soft on Yeong-min. He did everything Yeong-min asked and always prioritized Yeong-min whenever something happened.
“I’m going to the bathroom.”
“Okay.”
Feeling a stabbing pain in his chest for some reason, Jeong-min stood up and headed to the bathroom. In the bathroom, he caught his breath and looked in the mirror. He tidied his hair and straightened his clothes. He didn’t want to look disheveled. He always wanted to show a neat appearance to Shin-woo. Come to think of it, it’s getting late. Should I order some coffee?
“Shin-woo hyung, cof….”
His steps stopped as he left the bathroom and headed toward the desk.
Yeong-min was slumped over the desk on the terrace, and Shin-woo was looking at him as if he were adorable. Shin-woo’s long fingers carefully grasped and stroked Yeong-min’s fluffy hair. At that sight, Jeong-min felt as if his heart had stopped. Instead, another heart began to beat.
It was love.
The emotion he encountered for the first time in his life confused Jeong-min. It was sad, it was joyful, and it sent him spiraling into an endless abyss. When he saw Shin-woo, his heart raced and it hurt.
Why did he have to realize it then? He should have never realized it. If he hadn’t, perhaps he, Shin-woo, and Yeong-min would have all been more comfortable. But the Pandora’s box had already been opened, and it was uncontrollable.
Once the emotion of love emerged, he began to observe him more, and that’s when he realized something.
Shin-woo spent more time looking at Yeong-min than at Jeong-min. The number of times they made eye contact and the number of times he spoke to him differed by nearly double. When he realized this, Jeong-min’s shoulders slumped.
Even so, Jeong-min told himself this wasn’t love. He had to believe it wasn’t. After all, it was a man and a man. What hope was there for love between the same gender? Unless they were an Alpha and an Omega.
Then one day, Yeong-min threw away the homework he was doing, lay on the floor eating snacks, and asked.
“What will we become?”
“What do you mean?”
The question was strange, so Jeong-min also stopped his homework and looked at Yeong-min.
“Do you think you’ll be an Alpha, an Omega, or a Beta? We’ll be awakening soon.”
“Ah….”
Come to think of it, he hadn’t thought about that. Since his father was an Alpha and his mother was an Omega, the probability of the twins becoming Betas was extremely low.
“What do you want to be, Jeong-min?”
“I… I don’t mind either way.”
I see! I could actually awaken. He had never once thought about it. He just thought he would live normally like this forever.
“I see~ I want to be an Omega.”
Jeong-min was inwardly surprised to see Yeong-min stating his goal so clearly for the first time.
“Why? Why do you want to be an Omega?”
As far as Jeong-min knew, Omegas could get pregnant regardless of gender, and he had heard it was difficult because they went through something called a rut.
“I want to have babies. Oh, if I’m lucky, I might even be able to marry Shin-woo hyung!”
At the words ‘marry Shin-woo hyung…’, Jeong-min’s heart dropped with a thud.
“What? What are you talking about? Shin-woo hyung is a man…?”
“What are you talking about, you bumpkin. Omegas and Alphas can marry. What does it matter if it’s a man or a man?”
“Shin-woo hyung… is an Alpha?”
“Huh? You didn’t know? Hyung was sick a few months ago. They said it was because of awakening fever. I heard he awakened as an Alpha.”
He had never heard such a thing. Jeong-min was confused as to why he, for some reason, didn’t know this important fact while Yeong-min did.
“How did you know?”
“How would I know? Shin-woo hyung told me.”
Hyung told Yeong-min? Why didn’t he tell me? Does Shin-woo hyung really like Yeong-min? And does Yeong-min like Shin-woo hyung too? Otherwise, there’s no way he’d talk about marriage or being an Omega.
He wanted to ask Yeong-min what he thought of Shin-woo hyung, but he was too afraid to ask. Because if Yeong-min also liked Shin-woo, he wouldn’t know where to put his own heart. Jeong-min was miserable and frustrated. But there was nothing he could do right now.
Since he was only in his third year of middle school, he found it overwhelming to manage this sudden emotion, so Jeong-min had no choice but to immerse himself even further in his studies.
And both Yeong-min and Jeong-min were accepted into the high school Yu Shin-woo attended.