Chapter 3: The Morning After

He’d had a few puppy-love relationships in school, but he’d never gone all the way.

It was an unknown territory that made him nervous just thinking about it.

Yet, in a single night, he’d done something that was unimaginable even with a lover.

Maybe the man didn’t want it at all, and he… Hah, Noah gasped.

The thought that he might have forced the man sent shivers down his spine.

He quickly got up and picked up his clothes.

The clothes felt fresh and fragrant as if they’d just been laundered, but he had no time to dwell on that.

His whole body ached terribly.

He wondered if he’d caused a scene and gotten beaten up by the man.

When he lifted one leg to put on his pants, the muscles around his groin and thighs screamed, and he nearly fell over.

His dead phone and wallet were neatly placed on the table.

Thankfully, there was some cash in his wallet.

He placed all the cash from his wallet, including the 50,000 won he’d earned from work yesterday, on the table.

‘This should cover at least half the hotel bill.’

His anxious gaze darted around restlessly.

He felt uneasy, wondering if it was rude to leave the money without an envelope.

He wanted to at least say something, but just as he hesitated, lacking the courage to face the man, the sound of water from the bathroom stopped.

Eek!

Noah screamed internally, scribbled something on the notepad on the table, placed it next to the money, and hastily fled the room.

Thankfully, an elevator arrived quickly.

Noah repeatedly pressed the lobby button, and only after the heavy doors slowly closed could he finally let out the ragged breath he’d been holding.

Conscious of having done something wrong, he squeezed his eyes shut and repeatedly apologized in his mind.

He was getting farther from the scene, but his heart was still pounding uncontrollably.

It seemed the saying that people can’t live with sin was true.

“Hey!”

“…”

“Can’t you hear me? Wow, such a jerk.”

“…Yes? Me?”

Yes, you!

One of the two men in the elevator spoke to him in an incredibly irritable tone.

The other one was pinching his nose behind the man who had shouted at Noah.

‘Do I smell?’

It seemed possible, since he’d left without showering.

He had a high fever yesterday and couldn’t even wash up.

Hah…

With a deep sigh, Noah couldn’t believe he was causing so much trouble for everyone.

He lifted his arm and sniffed his armpit, but there wasn’t a particularly foul odor.

Except for the deep forest and flower scent he’d sensed from that man…

“I’m sorry.”

Noah apologized first.

The two men got off the elevator before him.

The man who had been pinching his nose stumbled, and the one in front supported him by wrapping an arm around his shoulder.

When he arrived at the lobby floor and started looking for the exit, he felt eyes on him.

He looked around and saw that people were looking at him strangely.

Some were pinching their noses like the men in the elevator, while a few were openly pointing at him.

‘Ah, sh*t, how can you point at someone so openly?’

At this point, Noah was getting really annoyed.

It wasn’t like he’d been rolling in a trash can; he had just sweated a bit and couldn’t wash.

Noah felt it was incredibly unfair, as he’d never been told he had body odor his entire life.

“Excuse me, sir.”

An employee in a uniform called out to Noah.

The employee’s tone was gentle, but their expression looked very troubled.

“I apologize if this is rude, but it seems your pheromones are out of control. Shall I call an ambulance for you?”

“Ph-pheromones?”

“…Aren’t you an Omega?”

“I’m a Beta…”

At the employee’s words, Noah’s mind went blank.

No way, no way.

After being tormented for all three years of high school, had it finally happened?

Seeing Noah’s dazed expression, the employee gave a serious look and gestured to another staff member.

“It seems you’ve suddenly presented. If you leave like this, you might run into trouble, so please come this way until the ambulance arrives.”

“…”

Suddenly, a wheelchair appeared in the hotel lobby from out of nowhere.

An employee, claiming it was a pheromone neutralizer, sprayed Noah’s entire body with a strange substance, then sat him in the wheelchair and took him somewhere deep within the hotel lobby.

[Emergency Room – Department of Secondary Gender Medicine]

The place he arrived at, after riding in an ambulance for the first time in his life, was the emergency room of a general hospital near the hotel.

Noah learned for the first time today that there was a separate emergency room for secondary gender medicine.

As instructed, he lay on a hard, narrow bed while nurses came in one by one, drew his blood, and pressed a device coated with a slick gel against his stomach.

Being healthy, Noah hadn’t been to a hospital many times, so this general hospital felt very unfamiliar.

After a series of unknown tests, a doctor in a white coat approached him.

“Mr. Yunoah, you’re 20 years old. You’ve presented as an Omega. It’s a late presentation. Congratulations.”

“Doctor! What are you talking about? Me, an Omega! Huhu…”

He had expected it, but the doctor’s declaration that he was an Omega hit Noah with the same shock as a terminal illness diagnosis.

Everything that had happened since yesterday’s incident was something Noah had never imagined in his life, and he was terrified.

The moment he heard the doctor’s congratulations, he realized it wasn’t entirely his fault that he had lost consciousness or that people had looked at him like he was an insect, and the emotions he had been holding back burst forth.

After crying for a long time, Noah composed himself, and the doctor began to explain calmly.

Usually, a person’s secondary gender can be determined by a test at birth, and presentation occurs around puberty.

While presentation after the age of twenty wasn’t unheard of, it was extremely rare.

“By any chance, did you not know you were an Omega at all?”

“No. I was mistaken for one a lot, though.”

“Well, 20 years ago, secondary gender testing at birth wasn’t mandatory.”

If one of his parents had a special secondary gender, they might have had him tested, but both of Noah’s parents were Betas.

A child from a common Beta family in a working-class neighborhood where Alphas and Omegas were rare.

Back then, Noah’s family wasn’t well-off enough to pay for an expensive secondary gender test.

“You don’t seem to be able to control your pheromones at all right now, so you’ll get a suppressor shot and a prescription. More detailed results will be out next week, so schedule an outpatient appointment before you leave.”

“Okay…”

After getting the shot, Noah received a pile of pamphlets about secondary gender education from a nurse.

All the knowledge Noah, who had grown up as a Beta, had about secondary genders was the shallow information he’d seen in TV dramas.

‘What’s with all this studying…’

Noah, who hated studying so much that he started helping at his mom’s shop and working part-time right after graduating high school, scrunched up his face in disgust.

When Noah arrived home, he was relieved to find no one there and went straight to his room.

His mother, who ran a restaurant in a nearby market alley, would be at the shop today, even though it was Sunday.

He plugged his dead phone into the charger, stripped off his clothes, tossed them into the laundry basket, and headed for the bathroom.

“Aaaargh!”

His appearance was so unbelievably hideous that it was hard to believe he’d come home like this.

His hair was a mess, and his eyes and lips were swollen.

Below his face, it was even worse.

His body was covered in marks much worse than what he’d glimpsed at the hotel.

Moreover, the mark on the nape of his neck was clearly a bite mark.

“Crazy… Did a dog bite me?”

This wasn’t something a person could do.

Earlier, he’d thought they were bruises from bumping into things and falling, but upon closer inspection, the bite marks were vivid everywhere.

“I was shirtless at the hospital earlier. Why didn’t they say anything?”

The part of his chest that had stung with a tingling pain whenever his clothes brushed against it was red.

Belatedly ashamed of having been seen in such a state, Noah took a long, elaborate shower in water so hot his skin turned red.

He even scrubbed his entire body with his mom’s exfoliating towel, which he usually avoided because it hurt, until his arms ached.

It was an act to remove something unseen, something sullied.

It was almost pathological.

The reality check from seeing his body’s condition was brief, followed by an unexpected realization.

That his body wasn’t as dirty as he expected.

For a moment, goosebumps covered his entire body.

The clear traces, no matter how much he tried to deny them.

If someone whose face he couldn’t even remember had bitten and sucked him hard enough to leave marks, it would be natural for their scent of saliva or body odor to remain.

But no matter how much he sniffed, there was no human smell at all.

‘Don’t tell me… he washed me while I was unconscious?’

An image of a psycho with a creepy smile, dragging his naked, unconscious body to the bathroom and dunking it in water, popped into Noah’s head.

‘So creepy!’

To think he’d been violated not just by a man, but by a crazy pervert!

The guilt he felt, thinking it was his fault for pestering the man, shattered in that instant.

Noah’s body trembled with fear.