Chapter 4: Lingering Scents and Nightmares

And yet, he couldn’t stop sniffing his own body.

It was because of the faint scent that remained.

‘Is this a pheromone?’

The scent was a subtle lingering fragrance, slightly different from what he had smelled at the hotel.

If the scent at the hotel was a concentrated aroma of a dense forest bursting with trees and flowers, the one he smelled now was a gentle forest scent that was both addictive and nostalgic.

When he was young, he used to follow his Buddhist grandmother to a temple located halfway up a mountain.

The pavilion on one side of the large temple was always empty, but if you sat quietly and held your breath, you could see mountain birds and squirrels you couldn’t find in the city, and if you were lucky, even a rabbit would come to visit.

It was a memory from so long ago that he had forgotten, but it was a warm memory that surfaced as he smelled the forest scent, which seemed to be the man’s pheromone.

Perhaps that was why Noah kept sniffing, chasing the lingering scent, until he suddenly realized how perverted his actions were, snapped to his senses, and hurriedly showered.

After his shower, sitting on the edge of his bed, Noah realized that the other person’s pheromones had almost completely vanished, and only his own remained.

A brilliant floral scent.

A tangy, fresh aroma mixed with a floral fragrance he couldn’t identify as either rose or lily.

He thought he could also smell the jasmine tea his mother sometimes gave him, and at the same time, the scent of lemon.

“I really have become an Omega.”

Noah was the one who had chided Choi Dongseok, who had bought and proudly worn perfume after becoming a college student, asking why a man would wear something so fussy.

To think that he himself had become a human air freshener was unbelievable.

‘They say Omegas have to control their pheromones well.’

In dramas, the pheromones of Alphas and Omegas were a common trope.

An Alpha falls for the scent an Omega releases due to poor pheromone control, then confines and obsesses over them…

Come to think of it, wasn’t that a common excuse for sexual offenders?

Claiming that the Omega seduced them by releasing their pheromones first.

Things he had previously dismissed as part of a world unrelated to him suddenly felt deeply significant.

Goosebumps covered his body, and he grew afraid of his sudden change.

Gazing blankly at the pamphlets from the hospital, Noah shook his head as if in denial, turned on his computer, and started searching.

[Omega pheromone control]

He typed in a rough search query and clicked on the first “KnowledgeiN” page that popped up.

[I’ve presented as an Omega, how do I control my pheromones?]

[Answer from gura****]
[Number of chosen answers: 3,411]

[If you try to control your pheromones only when you can already smell them, it’s too late.]
[You need to practice the control method in advance so it becomes second nature.]
[It’s especially difficult for Recessives to control their pheromones, so frequent practice is effective.]
[The method is to inhale with a ‘heup’ sound, hold your breath for about 3 seconds, and then exhale. Simple, right?]
[The important thing is to make a loud ‘heup’ sound when you hold your breath.]
[If you do this several times, your pheromones will absolutely not leak. (Based on my experience as a Dominant Omega, this lasts for 12 hours.)]
[For those who don’t quite understand, please refer to this video. (Link)]

Judging by the huge number of likes and comments below, it seemed like a pretty reliable post.

He couldn’t understand why there were Omegas who leaked their pheromones when the method was this simple, but the fleeting question just passed through his mind.

Once the immediate crisis was dealt with, the tension drained from him, and he felt sleepy.

Lying in bed, imagining his mother’s reaction when he told her, Noah’s exhausted body and mind fell into a deep slumber.

He dreamed of the man.

In the dream, it was Noah himself, crying and clinging to a faceless person.

His whole body tingled with an excitement he had never felt before.

A destructive desire to have anyone ravage him boiled up inside, and he pleaded with the man before him.

Just the man’s hand on his body sent a thrill through him.

When he licked the nape of his neck, the deepening scent seemed to gradually calm the area it touched.

He couldn’t help but beg for more, just a little more.

The man licked various parts of his body as Noah asked, but something was missing.

He wanted to grab the man’s head and suck on his tongue, but he had no strength in his body.

It hurt so much.

The first-time experience was so shocking that he couldn’t help but shed streams of tears, yet he couldn’t stop.

“Heuk, heuk, heuk.”

“Noah! Why are you crying in your sleep?”

At the familiar voice in his ear, Noah opened his sleepy eyes to find his mother’s worried face right in front of him. He shot up and hugged her.

“Huhu… Mom… What do I do?”

“What’s wrong with you? Why are you crying!”

As she patted the back of her son, who was crying about what to do and how his life was now ruined, Na Eunsun initially worried that he had gotten into some kind of trouble.

But she hadn’t seen him sob like this since he was a very young child, and a sudden fear gripped her.

Her child, whom she had raised alone after losing her husband in an accident early on, hadn’t shown any tears since his teenage years when he declared he had to protect his mother.

He tried to act responsible, claiming he was the head of the household, but in his mother’s eyes, he was still just a clumsy and careless child.

The sense of responsibility was probably why he started working right after graduating high school, having no interest in studying, and began bringing home a few hundred thousand won a month for living expenses.

But their family was no longer poor.

The detached house they lived in was old and shabby, but it was their own, with no debt.

The pork belly restaurant she ran had many regulars and was famous enough in the neighborhood to have been thriving for ten years.

They had enough financial stability to move to a better house, but they didn’t because this house held many loving touches from her late husband.

Thinking it was just a phase, Na Eunsun had been accepting the money and diligently saving it in an account under Noah’s name until he found something he wanted to do for himself.

Since it was Sunday, she had closed the shop early.

She had entered the house, steeling herself to scold her son for staying out all night without any contact, when she heard sobbing coming from his room.

After a long hug and many pats on the back, Noah finally stopped crying and lifted his head.

His face, a mess of tears and snot, was a sight to behold.

“Mom. hic… They said I became an Omega.”

In his dream, Noah had seen a scene that seemed to be a memory from the day he presented.

The scene of him clinging to a man presumed to be an Alpha was more graphic than he had anticipated.

The accompanying pain and the mental shock of a first-time experience.

He vividly remembered crying a lot at the time.

He didn’t feel the physical pain in the dream, but he could feel emotions that were too raw for it to be just a dream.

To have his first experience like that.

And with a man who had the same thing between his legs!

The fantasy Noah had about his first time was brutally shattered.

He wished he couldn’t remember it at all.

He was so frustrated and felt so wronged that he had unknowingly burst into sobs, and finding his mother before him, he had clung to her and cried for a long time.

His mother was surely angry at him for staying out all night without notice.

His plan had been to get on his knees and beg for forgiveness when she got home, then calmly confess about becoming an Omega over dinner.

But somehow, he had impulsively blurted it out while sobbing.

“What? What do you mean? Suddenly, why you?”

His mother seemed even more shocked than Noah.

And rightfully so, since Noah’s family was entirely composed of Betas.

In the end, it was Noah who had to calm his mother, who was so flustered she was momentarily at a loss for words and actions.

He promised to go with her to the hospital next week and gave her the informational pamphlets he had received.

The light in his mother’s room stayed on until late that night.

Lee Hanjoo stepped out of the cramped bathroom after a shower and couldn’t hide his dismay at the empty bed.

“No way… Did he run off?”

He was already annoyed by the tiny, suffocating standard room, his first time ever staying in one.

He couldn’t even count how many times he had cursed under his breath while trying to wash the unconscious person, who was drenched in sticky sweat, in the tiny bathtub.

They sell rooms like this and take money for it?

It was amazing that they were even in business.

Hanjoo thought of his uncle, the president of this hotel, and his sly face, then cracked his stiff shoulders and neck from side to side.

It had been a while since he’d moved his body to the point of being sore, but he was in top condition.

The Omega he had met by chance after the engagement party yesterday had given him an unforgettable sensation he had never felt before.

The image of the pretty face, with teardrops clinging to long eyelashes, clinging to him, naturally came to mind.

He didn’t have much experience with male Omegas, but this one’s face was beyond his preference, and his moderately soft body was flexible.

His face, flushed with excitement and overflowing with a vibrant sexiness, had looked like a gentle baby’s when he fell asleep after they were done.

He naturally became curious about what kind of face he wore on a daily basis.

The sensation of the Omega’s pheromones covering his body like silk was a first-time, absolutely unforgettable experience.

He had seen plenty of Omegas in a frenzy during their heat cycle, so excited they were out of their minds, but a pheromone that could turn even him, a Dominant Alpha, into a mere animal was by no means common.

‘Is he a Dominant?’

Dominant Omegas were by no means common.

He himself had never met one in his entire life.

He’d heard they were extremely rare and that many people wanted them, so they lived their lives hidden away in secret.

So, while he thought it was unlikely, he naturally assumed the person must have been a Dominant.

It was because of his own exceptional secondary gender; no Omega with ordinary pheromones could seduce him.

When his rut cycle, the Alpha’s estrus period, arrived, it was enough to sleep with an Omega who had a decent appearance and non-offensive pheromones.

He had been through countless rut cycles, but he had never once lost his reason during an encounter.

Until yesterday.