Chapter 11: The Weight of Absence

“Let’s look into the symptoms you’ve mentioned through further consultations. A more pressing issue is that you haven’t been able to resolve the accumulating pheromones. An imprinter’s rut or heat cycle can only be resolved through each other, which could be a problem.”

“What?”

“Due to the absence of your imprinted partner, you haven’t been able to go through a proper rut for the past few months, and your pheromones have become concentrated. If this continues, it could lead to health problems, so for now, you should try to release your pheromones as much as possible and take suppressants regularly.”

“Release my pheromones?”

“I’m referring to intercourse with an Omega.”

The doctor said such words with an extremely business-like attitude.

“If a normal relationship with a partner is difficult, you should at least take care of it yourself, once a day or more, without fail.”

Hanjoo was dumbfounded by the ensuing prescription.

He was reminded of a dairy cow being milked every morning.

What was the difference between that and his own situation?

Hanjoo tried to remember the last time he had taken care of himself and pressed a hand to his forehead.

“Are you alright?”

Hanjoo glared once more at the doctor’s still-innocent face, then sighed and opened his mouth.

“I’ll have my secretary pick up the suppressants. I’ll see you at my next appointment.”

Hanjoo stood up on his long legs and walked out.

Watching the back of the strikingly tall Alpha, Department Head Song Minjae was reminded of the young Omega who had presented and gotten pregnant at the same time a while ago.

He thought about how the timing of that Omega’s pregnancy and this Alpha’s imprinting were similar.

But he shook his head at the absurd thought, tidied up his seat, and left the VIP consultation room, which he had never been in before.

A few months after being diagnosed with the imprint, Hanjoo was thankfully able to eat again.

The doctor also diagnosed it as a temporary phenomenon caused by depression and moved on.

He felt like he could breathe a little now that food was going down his throat again.

But there was still a practical problem he had been putting off while searching for the Omega.

On his way home from work one day, as usual, he was summoned by his father.

When he entered the main house, the atmosphere was ominous.

His fiancé, Oh Sihyeon, and his father, the bank president, were sitting in the reception room.

It was the first time he had seen their faces since the nominal engagement.

The bank president’s mood was foul as he received Hanjoo’s greeting.

Sihyeon glared at him with red eyes, as if he had been crying.

“You. You’ve imprinted on another Omega.”

“…”

He resented Director Kim’s loose lips, which couldn’t keep a secret for even a year.

It was an expected turn of events, but he had at least wanted to be the one to end this engagement first.

He had been so focused on finding the Omega that the engagement issue had been pushed to the back of his mind and forgotten.

In the meantime, the milk had been spilled.

“Hyung! Is it true? Aaaaargh! Do you want to see me go crazy? Who is it? Who is it?!”

Sihyeon, taking Hanjoo’s silence as an affirmation, screamed like a madman.

No one could stop him, an act that would have been unthinkable under normal circumstances.

Sihyeon’s father was also furious, but he couldn’t act rudely in front of Chairman Lee, so he had to let his son’s outburst vent some of his anger.

“Father! I can just pretend to be the Omega he imprinted on. I don’t care!”

Sihyeon said in a voice trembling with excitement.

No one paid any mind to his irrational words.

The annulment of the engagement seemed to have already been agreed upon between the two elders.

“I apologize, President. I’m sorry, Sihyeon.”

When Hanjoo bowed his head respectfully in apology, no one in the room could blame him.

The uncomfortable silence was proof of the broken engagement.

“Sir. Are you alright? Sir.”

A strange voice woke Hanjoo.

Perhaps it was because he had been drinking for days without a wink of sleep.

Hanjoo had fallen asleep without realizing it, his head propped up on his hand.

It must have been a light sleep, but it was hard to open his eyes easily.

When an employee gently shook his shoulder, his vision finally cleared.

The body of an imprinted person without a partner was steadily deteriorating.

‘I’ve made a scene.’

Leaving a more generous tip than usual, Hanjoo left the bar and headed for a luxury hotel in Gangnam.

After the designated driver left and he had the car valet parked, Hanjoo took the elevator straight to his room.

No matter how he thought about it, he felt like he was going crazy, so he had been trying to avoid hotels, but he couldn’t get any sleep at home.

He had developed a tolerance to the sleeping pills he had been taking for a long time, and they no longer worked.

The doctor had explained that an overly healthy Alpha’s body, while resistant to disease, also had a tendency to treat drugs like poison and try to detoxify them.

He had said that both sleeping pills and suppressants would eventually reach their limit.

Room 1206.

The room he entered with the card key from his wallet was incredibly modest.

In the room that felt cramped for the large Alpha, Hanjoo naturally took off his clothes and opened the room’s closet.

As if they had always been there, several suits and articles of clothing were hung neatly.

For several years, Hanjoo had been sorting through the emotional battle he had been fighting alone for the imprinted Omega.

He was no longer angry, nor resentful.

He simply swallowed the heavy longing and waited, feeling sorry for the Omega who was likely suffering a similar pain.

After a shower, Hanjoo collapsed onto the bed.

It had been four years, but this was the one thread he couldn’t let go of.

It was the room where he had spent one night with that Omega.

“Yunoah-ssi, just a moment.”

Choi Jeongmi, the owner of AB Design where Noah worked and the head of the planning and editing team, called him into her room.

It was such a small company that the team hierarchy consisted of only the team leader, one assistant manager, and Noah, the employee.

‘If it’s nothing important, just say it. Why do you always have to call me into your room?’

Since there were only three of them on the team, there wasn’t much of a difference in their work.

The team leader was in charge of competitive presentations to clients, but Noah, who knew nothing, had to learn by doing and handle all the preparations.

It was a hopeless company where there was no such thing as a handover, as if all the previous employees had left in disgust.

As Noah got up from his seat, he felt the sharp gaze of Assistant Manager Lee Daehoon from the next desk on the back of his head.

It happened every time the team leader called for him.

He tried to ignore Lee’s glare, opened the door to the team leader’s office, and unknowingly slammed it shut.

“Noah-ssi! You’ll break the door!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Alright, alright. Sit there.”

Team Leader Choi seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood.

She was humming a tune and even took out the expensive raw chocolate she usually hoarded for herself, urging him to eat.

‘How much work is she going to pile on me after giving me this one piece…’

In his short time at the company, Noah had learned the truth that the company’s performance had nothing to do with his own quality of life.

Would working at a big company with a high salary and generous bonuses really increase efficiency?

Even if they gave him a few percent in performance bonuses on top of his meager salary, it would still be a long pittance.

Knowing this, Noah did not welcome Team Leader Choi’s kindness.

“We’ve got a huge request this time. You know the Jade Hotel? A subsidiary of the DN Group!”

“…”

“They want to sign a contract with us for the magazine to be placed in their hotel rooms!”

Why, of all places?

Noah suppressed the urge to shout, “Why would they do it with a shabby place like this?”

“Wow, that’s amazing. They must have recognized your sense, Team Leader.”

“Oh… it’s not like that.”

Despite Noah’s soulless reaction, the corners of Team Leader Choi’s mouth soared without limit.

It was understandable that she would be in a good mood, as it had been a long time since they had gotten a big project.

“It turns out the head of their PR team is a classmate of my brother-in-law’s cousin’s older brother. Since it’s a subsidiary of a large corporation, we have to do a competitive presentation, which is annoying, but it’s already a done deal, so we just have to work on it as if we’re making a draft.”

So that’s it…

He had wondered how she had managed to land a big project, and it turned out to be through some kind of blood, regional, and school ties.

Other than Noah, the team leader was the only Omega in the company, and her entire family was made up of special secondary genders.

It was only after entering the workforce that Noah realized that the upper echelons of society were occupied by this minority of secondary genders.

The company, which had no experienced staff other than the team leader and the design team leader, fumbled through even the smallest tasks.

There was a lot of trivial work, but the pay was low, so people would quit just as you were getting to know them, and just as they were getting used to the work, they would quit, making even simple tasks inefficient.

Even Noah, who knew little about company work, was aghast when he figured out the situation after a couple of months.

He wondered how the company could even function like this, but there was a reason it was still running.

Regardless of the quality of the final product, work kept coming in through the Omega team leader’s connections.

He had heard that their designs were unremarkable but were well-received because their prices were lower than other places.

The price was set with the low salaries of the employees instead of experienced and skilled staff.

Whatever the company’s reputation, the job market was tough, and there were plenty of Betas who just wanted to add a line of experience to their resumes.

Noah was one of them.

He had been working here for six months now.

Noah’s goal was to complete two years and then move to another company.

He was grateful that they had hired him, even though his major was completely unrelated, but the biggest reason he stayed at this company was that there were no Alphas.

Since they only ever hired employees and assistant managers at a minimum-wage level, he was confident that no Omegas or Alphas would be joining in the future, which was a merit in its own way.

“I’ll work on the draft with Team Leader Jeong, and you, Noah-ssi, will come with me to the presentation next Tuesday. Come dressed up nicely.”

“…Yes.”

You really have to listen to the end of what Koreans say.

The most important part of everything she had said to Noah was the single sentence, “Come dressed up nicely.”

By the way, how many suppressants did he have left?