By Zephyria 
“I might get married.”
I shifted my gaze from the photograph I had been staring at blankly to the man standing beside me. The man, who had been standing side-by-side with me looking at the same photo, met my eyes and smiled.
“Really? ……Is this the right timing to say congratulations?”
His face showed neither joy nor excitement; it was the same as usual—no, it was more sunken than usual—so I pondered for a moment whether the man’s marriage was something to be congratulated or not.
“Let’s go out.”
We headed to a small cafe near the gallery. The man habitually ordered two coffees, and I took a seat at a corner table.
Americano.
I couldn’t understand what the appeal of this coffee was; it was just bitter and incredibly expensive. I preferred finishing a bowl of sundae-guk and then drinking mix coffee from a paper cup as a palate cleanser.
Taking a sip of the bitter coffee and swallowing it, I observed the man sitting opposite me anew.
A youthful face that suited a school uniform better than a suit or casual wear. His skin was exceptionally white, as if lacking pigment, and his hair and eyes were a light brown.
His bloodless face looked even paler, like a sheet of white paper, due to the cold weather, and his thin wrists visible beyond the slightly rolled-up sleeves and his hunched shoulders made him look frail.
The thin double eyelids, slightly slanted eyes, and pupils that vaguely looked like sanpaku eyes were the only sharp features of his face, but even those looked vacant when he parted his lips slightly while thinking about something.
Pale lips as if the color had faded, a beauty mark on his cheekbone that looked like a dot from a ballpoint pen, and faint dimples that appeared when he smiled. His exceptionally long eyelashes cast shadows beneath his eyes every time he blinked.
Describing him at length makes him sound like something, but to put it simply, he was just a pretty boy. Too young to be called a man, a bit too old to be called a boy—closer to an adolescent than a young adult—an adult, yet still lacking something in some way; various modifiers were needed. Since he had just turned twenty, it wasn’t wrong.
Marriage at twenty.
I wondered what the appropriate thing to say in this situation would be. I scratched my forehead with my finger, contemplating.
I was the same age, so I wasn’t in a position to give advice, and I was equally inexperienced; in fact, I had never even thought about the concept of marriage.
“……Did you mess up? Is there a baby?”
At my blunt question, his eyes widened, and then he let out a soft laugh.
“No.”
“Then why?”
“I wonder. I don’t know why either.”
His fidgeting fingers grabbed a tan-colored tissue with the cafe’s logo and began to tear it into small pieces. The movement of his fingers, creating countless pieces of trash, bothered me, so I tapped the table with my fingertips.
“Hey, keep your hands still. It’s annoying to watch.”
“I’m sorry. ……I do this when I’m anxious.”
I wondered if he didn’t realize that his anxiety was sufficiently evident on his face even without the finger movements.
“What kind of woman is she?”
“It’ll probably be a man.”
I had asked indifferently with my hand propping up my chin, but at the answer, my expression slipped. Can a man marry a man? I pondered for a moment and then accepted it, thinking, ‘Right, he was an Omega.’
“I didn’t see that coming.”
Marriage, something I had never seriously considered. On top of that, the partner might be a man; I truly had nothing more to say.
As I continued to rub my furrowed brow with my finger, he crumpled the torn tissues into a ball and placed them on the tray.
“Did your parents tell you to? Did they tell you to get married?”
“Yes.”
I became slightly curious about what kind of parents would push a kid who had just graduated from high school to get married.
Was it an issue of Alpha and Omega, or was this just how family planning worked for rich families, or were his parents simply the problem?
Since I was neither an Alpha nor an Omega, not a child of a wealthy family, and had no living parents, I couldn’t guess which of the three it was.
“Who is the partner? Is it someone you know?”
“There are three, but I don’t think it’s been decided yet. They only showed me photos of the people I’m supposed to meet for arranged dates. Lunch, dinner, and coffee in between. Do you know that one day is enough to meet three people?”
“Isn’t it amazing?” he asked with a slightly raised voice.
I didn’t know at what point his mood had lifted, but since it wasn’t uncommon for him to suddenly cheer up after being depressed or suddenly become gloomy after being happy, I just ignored it.
“Why specifically a man? If it’s an Alpha, there are women too. Wouldn’t a woman be better? No, wait. Whether you’re being fucked by a man or a woman, the feeling of being fucked is probably just as shitty.”
“Is there any difference between a woman or a man? They’re both Alphas anyway.”
Though he blushed at the vulgar choice of words, he tilted his head as if it were strange.
This must be the difference in perspective between a Beta and an Omega.
Unless one is gay, the mere imagination of marrying another man and living skin-to-skin would usually be horrifying. Unlike Betas, they seem to distinguish gender not as male and female, but as Alpha and Omega, so they have no hesitation at all.
Though I still cannot understand it.
“But seriously, why the sudden marriage? You just graduated high school and are about to enter college. Do rich families always marry people off this early?”
“It varies by family, but Omegas generally tend to marry early. Ah, that doesn’t mean they make them do it immediately after high school. It’s not that I’m getting married right this second; I’m just in the process of choosing a partner. I’ll get engaged first, and then probably marry in a year or two.”
That still seems incredibly fast. In many ways, it sounded like a story from another world, leaving me with no sense of reality or empathy. I just accepted it because he said so.
“Is there no one you like? They say marriage… is something you do with someone you like. Talking about love and all is cringeworthy, but anyway, it’s not a lottery; choosing one out of three to marry. What if you don’t like any of them?”
“Still, it’s better than having no choice. It’s one out of three, not one out of two. They’ve put a lot of thought into this.”
I feel this occasionally, but I can’t tell if he’s kind or just stupid. These days, even exam questions have five options. To think that the question of choosing someone to spend the rest of his life with only has three answers—and those answers were chosen by someone else.
“They’re all from decent families. One is the son of a pharmaceutical company owner, one is the son of a bank president, and the other is the grandson of a minister. I should be grateful for this.”
“Why are you the one being grateful? This marriage benefits your parents, not you. Your parents should be the grateful ones. And, being from a decent family isn’t evidence that the person themselves is a decent guy.”
The words ‘First of all, your parents are trash for selling their child’ rose to my throat, but I swallowed them down. They weren’t my parents, but I still didn’t want to go as far as insulting parents.
“I don’t know if it’s something to congratulate, but anyway, I hope you pick the best of the lot. Every Alpha I’ve seen has either had a screw loose or was just plain insane.”
Because Alphas were naturally superior in physical function compared to Omegas or Betas, they began to be called the ‘superior race.’
If it were just physical function, it would have ended with ‘it would be great to make them athletes,’ but at some point, rumors spread that Alphas also had above-average brain development and strong mental fortitude, and the slogan ‘Superior Alpha, Inferior Omega, Ordinary Beta’ spread.
Being ordinary isn’t a bad thing, but from a Beta’s perspective, it felt like being told ‘that’s exactly your level,’ which I disliked. What was even more ridiculous was judging human superiority and inferiority based on being an Alpha or Omega. Not based on individual effort and results, but simply because they were born that way.
Betas discriminate between men and women, while Alphas and Omegas discriminate based on whether one was born an Alpha or an Omega. Whether Beta, Alpha, or Omega, the things humans do are so similar.
Regardless, Alphas, who were superior to other humans in various ways, gradually took over the upper class. The presidents who were repeatedly elected were Alphas, the ministers and members of parliament were Alphas, the chairmen of corporations were Alphas; the majority of people whose names one had heard of through wealth and power were Alphas.
Even in an equal world, invisible castes exist, and those who reign atop them were always Alphas.
Even in the bottom world of the back-alley lower class, which ordinary people avoid for being filthy, the Alpha was the ruler. While the high-and-mighty pretended to be refined, these bastards were unrestrained trash—bad temper, violent, and on top of that, physically strong, making them no different from time bombs.
Ah, trashy Alphas. I really hate them.
Since my time in the orphanage until now, I had suffered so much that I gritted my teeth at the mere mention of Alphas. How could he live with those beast-like bastards? Is there a difference between a bottom-tier Alpha and an upper-class Alpha? Even if they gave me millions, I don’t think I could live with an Alpha. No, if it were millions, I might actually consider it.
“More importantly, you don’t look well. You seem to have lost more weight than the last time I saw you. Are you sick?”
While I was lost in my stream of consciousness, he asked, bringing me back to attention.
Reflexively, I rubbed my cheek with my hand. As my fingertips touched my sunken cheek, I felt rough skin rather than plump flesh. It felt similar to the skin of a dead, stiffened animal.
“Sick? What do you mean sick, it’s always the same. Do you think I’m like you, eating and living well? When I have money, I eat; when I don’t, I starve, so my weight just fluctuates.”
“Did you eat lunch? Do you want to go eat together?”
Two o’clock. Lunchtime had long passed. I’m the type to eat whenever I can regardless of the time, but he would be different; yet, he still invited me to a meal. He was kind. And stupid.
“I’m a busy person. I don’t have time to eat with you. I have to go work to make money.”
“……Stealing isn’t working.”
“What are you talking about? That’s a profession in its own right.”
“If that’s really a profession, how about changing careers?”
I looked at him as he suggested it with a worried face and a cautious voice.
As I thought, he’s kind but stupid.
To sit across from someone who got caught stealing his wallet, talk to them, invite them to eat, and even worry about them. He’s completely naive.
“Just as your marriage is something you have to do rather than something you want to do, I don’t do this because I want to, but because I have to. In that sense, don’t you think we’re a bit alike? The fact that we have absolutely no control over our own wills.”
I live like this because I have no parents and no money, but you’re the child of a wealthy family, so why do you live like that? I swallowed the urge to nag him and stood up.
Who’s giving advice to whom? Me? To him? It’s ridiculous to even feel pity for a guy whose spending units per month—no, per day—are completely different from mine.
“That’s it for today. I’m leaving.”
“Already? Stay and talk a bit more.”
“I told you I’m busy. Don’t you have any friends despite having so much money? Why are you clinging to me? Do you really have no one to listen to you?”
He lowered his head with a crestfallen face. His melancholy expression clearly showed he was hurt, but I lacked the mental leeway to care about that.
“If you need someone to talk to that badly, then, over there, hold hands and have a friendly chat with that knight who protects you.”
I gestured with my chin toward the man who had parked his car in front of the cafe and was watching us through the glass window.
A guy who isn’t even an Alpha, yet uselessly possesses great athletic reflexes. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have been caught while picking the pocket of this dim-witted Omega.
I heard later that his parents had hired and assigned an attendant capable of both driving and guarding, but at first, my pride was severely wounded by the fact that I was caught by a mere chauffeur and captured without even being able to resist.
“I don’t have personal conversations with employees.”
“What’s that? A sense of superiority? You don’t even want to mix words with the people you employ?”
“My father dislikes it. If he sees me getting close, he fires them, so several people have quit because of that. Not mixing words isn’t because I want to, but because I have no choice for the sake of those people.”
He lives such a difficult life. I thought if you were born into a wealthy family, you’d live comfortably, eating what you want and doing what you want. As expected, there are too many things a person doesn’t know until they experience them themselves.
“Anyway. This is the end of listening to your complaints. Save the rest for next time.”
“You’ll come tomorrow too, right?”
“Maybe.”
I’m not someone who values cultural life, nor was I so deeply moved by that photo exhibition that I would come to see it every day. Nevertheless, it was difficult to say ‘no’ to the boy looking at me with such pitiful eyes.
It wasn’t as if I had much time left to promise a future. Even though I nagged him for being kind and foolish and always spouting frustrating things, he was the only person who conversed with me without prejudice.
“Well, if I’m free tomorrow, I’ll come.”
“Thank you.”
Even though it wasn’t a definite answer, a smile spread across his face. I looked at the dimples that were slightly indented, like a toothpick poking into clay, and then turned away. Without saying whether I was coming or going, I pushed open the cafe door and stepped out.