NOT 5

Haon couldn’t tear his eyes away from Cha Jeong-won’s retreating back, which was now completely distancing itself from him this time.

“Did I say something unnecessary?”

His heart grew heavy.

“Ah, whatever, let’s not dwell on it.”

The fact that he wasn’t seriously injured meant he had already done enough for Cha Jeong-won.

Haon left the hospital through a different door than the one Cha Jeong-won had used.

The temperature difference between inside and outside was quite significant.

“It’s cold at night.”

His body shivered from the chilly March night breeze.

After sniffling once, Haon was about to step toward the direction of his studio apartment but stopped short.

“Ah. 5885.”

Only now did his friend’s number come to mind. But it was too late.

“I’ll just pay him back.”

Even though Cha Jeong-won had said it was an accident caused by him and that he should take it, Haon had no intention of accepting it so readily.

“The cost of one emergency room visit… yikes!”

His body was suddenly pulled backward. Haon flailed his arms as if grasping at thin air. The sound of ice cracking came from beneath the soles of his sneakers.

He barely managed to brace himself with his hands on the ground before his butt hit the floor. Still, his heart was pounding wildly.

“Hah, I almost died for real.”

Haon stood up, clenching his teeth tightly.

Even though he had only almost fallen, cold sweat broke out down his spine. Haon brushed off his clothes and let out several heavy breaths.

In that moment, his own reflection in the hospital’s glass door caught his eye. He was standing there with one hand pressed to his chest, looking utterly foolish.

“Why is there still ice in March…?”

Muttering to himself, he looked down.

Between the edge of the sidewalk and the drain, in a shaded spot, a thin layer of ice seemed to remain.

Shattered ice fragments, shaped like footprints, were scattered about.

“If I had slipped wrong here, I would’ve ended up back at the hospital.”

He recalled again how much an emergency room visit cost. For no reason, the bridge of his nose felt cold, and he sniffled.

＊ ＊ ＊

As soon as Haon entered his studio apartment, he let out a rough breath. His back was damp with sweat.

Kim Hyun-gyu, Haon’s classmate and roommate who had just finished washing up, paused while drying his face with a towel and looked at Haon.

“What’s with your face? Are you still not feeling well? Did you escape from the hospital?”

“The elevator was broken.”

Haon leaned against the door as he took off his shoes. Even his voice sounded breathless.

Only after taking off his socks did the strength leave his legs. It wasn’t even a very high floor, but perhaps because his muscles were so startled, his thighs were trembling.

“Hey, if it was broken, you should’ve at least called the manager or something.”

Kim Hyun-gyu hung the towel around his neck and frowned.

“No one was in the management office, and I didn’t have my phone either.”

Even as he grumbled, ragged breaths kept escaping him.

“Oh, right. Here. Your phone.”

As if just remembering, Kim Hyun-gyu found Haon’s phone and handed it over. It must have fallen somewhere when he tumbled down the stairs, and Hyun-gyu had picked it up for him. Among all the misfortunes, that was at least a bit of luck.

“Nothing’s going right today.”

When had things ever gone this wrong before?

As Haon quietly mulled over the day’s events, a sudden surge of emotion made him glare at Kim Hyun-gyu.

“Hey. So you’re saying you saw everything, that I passed out and was taken to the hospital? I almost died, and you’re acting so nonchalant? What’s with that attitude!”

“No, I went to the hospital with you too! Besides, Jeong-won sunbae was there. I figured he’d take good care of you. He even told me to pack your stuff.”

What? Cha Jeong-won hadn’t passed out? So he was awake earlier? Did he fall back asleep?

Even so, how could this guy? He knew everything, yet he didn’t even visit his friend in the hospital?

Just as Haon was about to breathe fire, the doorbell rang.

Ding-dong.

“Ah, the chicken’s here!”

Kim Hyun-gyu slipped on his slippers and ran to the front door. He was using the chicken as an excuse to escape.

“I ordered it to help you recover.”

And he was even trying to bribe him with food.

Before Haon could respond, the door opened, and the delivery driver held out a plastic bag.

“Unit 501, you’re the one who ordered, right?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

While Hyun-gyu received the bag, Haon glanced toward the hallway. The elevator door was wide open.

The floor indicator display brightly showed the number 5.

“Enjoy your meal.”

The delivery driver naturally bowed his head in greeting. Then he walked toward the elevator.

Haon blankly watched his retreating figure.

The elevator door slowly closed.

Immediately after, the descending number lit up. From 5 to 1.

The machine moved smoothly, as if nothing had ever happened.

“It’s going down just fine.”

Haon let out a hollow laugh. The sweat and breath he had expended climbing the stairs moments ago suddenly felt utterly futile.

“Why am I really like this today?”

“Must be an unlucky day. Come in quickly and eat. When you’re hurt, meat is the answer, after all.”

At Kim Hyun-gyu’s offhand remark, Haon recalled one person’s face.

When the statue had fallen toward Cha Jeong-won, Haon had thought anew that he was truly an unfortunate person.

He had just had one unlucky day, but Cha Jeong-won probably lived like that every day.

“Kind of pitiful…”

＊ ＊ ＊

Throughout the taxi ride home after leaving the hospital, Cha Jeong-won kept rubbing his wrist.

Because it was bandaged, he couldn’t bend his wrist, and a faint pain rose from it.

For someone like him, who frequently got injured in the accidents he constantly experienced, this level of pain was bearable.

In fact, considering he had tumbled down stairs and a statue had fallen toward his head, it was fortunate it ended with just this level of injury. However…

“Tumbling twice is a bit excessive, isn’t it?”

And with the same person, no less.

The words he muttered under his breath seemed to hit the taxi window and bounce back.

Once on the stairs, once in the lobby.

At this point, it was almost embarrassing to call it a coincidence. He had always been the type to break people or things no matter what he did, but he had never involved the same person twice in a row.

Maybe there just wasn’t time to avoid it, so it happened twice.

The words that had slipped out unconsciously in the hospital lobby came back to him.

‘Is it you? The Omega Amulet that’s come to strike me this year.’

The profiles from the documents his mother had pushed flashed through his mind. Among people who judged compatibility based on lineage, academic background, traits, and combination, Omegas were always treated as safety devices.

Talismans to ward off misfortune.

That’s why he had doubted the very existence of that junior who introduced himself as Yoon Haon. The sweet pheromones wafting from him were so stimulating that it was impossible not to know he was an Omega.

No matter how much he was acting on his mother’s instructions, to participate in such a dangerous act… He was angrier than at any previous Omega.

So he thought he had driven him away more harshly than usual. But Yoon Haon acted unpredictably, like a ball bouncing back.

Moreover, the words he blurted out without any ulterior motive struck Cha Jeong-won’s chest.

“Lucky?”

As the taxi stopped briefly at a signal, Cha Jeong-won looked at his reflection in the window. The face reflected in the glass was steeped in chronic fatigue.

‘If I’m lucky, we won’t meet again.’

Yet, he felt that if he went to school tomorrow, they would run into each other somewhere again.

He couldn’t shake that feeling.

Whether it was because of his own jinx, because of the talisman, or because the body temperature that had twice fallen into his arms on the stairs and in the lobby still lingered at his fingertips—he couldn’t reach a conclusion.

＊ ＊ ＊

“Oww!”

Haon stretched upon seeing the morning sunlight and let out a scream. It seemed he had muscle soreness from tumbling around yesterday.

Kim Hyun-gyu, who had just come out of his room, saw him and spoke up.

“Looks like you’re alive. Do you know what’s going to happen if you go to school today? Huh?”

Haon twisted his neck this way and that and replied indifferently.

“They’ll probably mock me, asking if I had a nice trip to the emergency room. Whatever.”

“You know it well. It was the talk everywhere. Thanks to you, I thought calluses were forming on my ears.”

Kim Hyun-gyu rubbed his ears.

Haon looked at him with a disgusted expression and leaned back.

“Then just don’t listen. Why are you listening to everything?”

“Can’t do that.”

Kim Hyun-gyu grinned, pulling his lips back. Smiling made him look even uglier. Haon frowned even more deeply.

“Please, stop smiling like that. How come even after ten years, I still can’t get used to that smile?”

Their tedious relationship, which had started in middle school, had bound them together under the title of best friends through university. At Haon’s disgusted words, Kim Hyun-gyu draped an arm over his shoulder and leaned in.

“I could let stories about you slide, but when Jeong-won sunbae gets mentioned too, the story changes, doesn’t it?”