2
“I might get married.”
I shifted my gaze from the photograph I’d been staring at and looked at the man standing next to me. We’d been standing side by side viewing the same photo when he met my eyes and smiled.
“Really? …Is this the right time to say congratulations?”
His face showed neither joy nor excitement, looking the same as usual—no, even more subdued than usual—so I briefly wondered whether his marriage was something to celebrate or not.
“Let’s go.”
We headed to a small café near the gallery. The man ordered two coffees with practiced ease, and I found us a table in the corner.
Americano.
Coffee whose taste I couldn’t understand was just bitter and ridiculously expensive. I’d prefer a bowl of blood sausage soup followed by instant coffee mixed in a paper cup to cleanse my palate.
Taking a sip of the bitter coffee, I observed the man sitting across from me with fresh eyes.
A youthful face that suited a school uniform better than formal wear or casual clothes. His unusually pale skin looked as if it lacked pigment, while his hair and eyes had a light brown tint.
His bloodless face, made even whiter by the cold weather, was like a blank sheet of paper. His thin wrists visible beyond slightly rolled-up sleeves and hunched shoulders made him look frail.
His narrow double eyelids and slightly upturned eyes were the only sharp features on his face, but even those just made him look stupid when his lips were slightly parted while thinking about something.
Pale lips lacking pigment, a mole on his cheekbone that looked like a dot made with a ballpoint pen, faint dimples visible when he smiled. His unusually long eyelashes cast shadows under his eyes each time he blinked.
It sounds impressive when described at length, but to summarize—he was just a pretty boy. Too young to be called a man but too old to be a boy, closer to a teenager than a young adult, technically an adult but still somehow lacking—all these modifiers were needed. It’s not wrong to say he had just turned twenty.
Marriage at twenty.
I scratched my forehead with my finger, wondering what would be appropriate to say in this situation.
I was too young to give advice, the same age as him, and I had no experience either. In fact, I’d never even thought about marriage.
“…Did you mess up? Is she pregnant?”
At my blunt question, he opened his eyes wide, then let out a soft laugh.
“No.”
“Then why?”
“That’s the thing. I don’t know why either.”
His fidgeting fingers grabbed a brownish tissue with the café logo and started tearing it into small pieces. Annoyed by the sight of his fingers creating countless bits of trash, 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.”
Did he not realize his anxiety was clearly visible on his face without the need for such expression?
“What’s the girl like?”
“Probably a man.”
I had been asking with my chin propped on my hand, looking uninterested, but at his answer, my face slipped. Can a man marry a man? After pondering briefly, I quickly realized, ‘Oh right, he’s an Omega,’ and understood.
“I didn’t expect that.”
Marriage—something I’d never seriously thought about. Adding to that, the fact that his partner might be a man meant I had even fewer words to offer.
As I kept rubbing my furrowed brow with my fingers, he crumpled the shredded tissues tightly and placed them on the tray.
“Did your parents tell you to do this? To get married?”
“Yes.”
I became curious about what kind of parents would push their child who had just graduated from high school into marriage.
Is it an Alpha and Omega issue, or is this what family planning is like in rich families, or are his parents just the problem?
Being neither Alpha nor Omega, nor from a wealthy family, and having no living parents, I couldn’t guess which of the three was the issue.
“Who’s the other person? Is it someone you know?”
“There are three people, but it hasn’t been decided yet. They just showed me photos of potential matches. Lunch, dinner, and coffee in between. Is one day enough to meet three people, do you think?”
“Isn’t that impressive?” he asked with a slightly higher voice.
I wasn’t sure at which point his mood had lifted, but it wasn’t unusual for him to suddenly perk up after being depressed or become gloomy after being happy, so I just ignored it.
“Why a man specifically? If you’re an Alpha, there are women too. Wouldn’t a woman be better? No, wait. Whether you’re getting fucked by a man or a woman, I guess being fucked feels equally shitty either way.”
“What’s the difference between a man or a woman? They’re both Alphas anyway.”
Despite blushing at my crude word choice, he tilted his head curiously as if finding it strange.
This must be the difference in perspective between Betas and Omegas.
Normally, unless you’re gay, the mere thought of marrying someone of the same sex and living intimately together would be horrifying. But unlike Betas, they seem to categorize sex as Alpha and Omega rather than male and female, so they don’t feel any aversion to it.
Still incomprehensible to me.
“But seriously, why the sudden marriage? You just graduated high school and were about to start university. Do rich families usually arrange marriages this early?”
“It varies by family, but Omegas typically marry earlier. Ah, that’s not to say they make us marry right after high school graduation. I’m not getting married right away either—we’re just deciding on a marriage partner. We’ll start with engagement, then marry in a year or two.”
That still seems extremely fast. In many ways, it sounded like a story from another world, lacking both reality and relatability. I was just accepting it because he said so.
“Don’t you have someone you like? Marriage is… supposed to be with someone you like, right? The whole love thing sounds cheesy, but anyway, this isn’t a lottery—picking one out of three for marriage? What if you don’t like any of them?”
“Having some choice is better than having none. It’s not two options but three. That shows they’re really considering me.”
Sometimes I wonder if he’s kind or just stupid. These days, even test questions have five answers. Yet for the problem of choosing who to spend the rest of your life with, there are only three answers, and they’re all chosen by someone else.
“They’re all from good families. One is the son of a pharmaceutical company, another is a bank president’s son, and the other is a minister’s grandson. That’s something to be grateful for, right?”
“Why are you the one being grateful? This marriage benefits your parents, not you. Your parents should be the grateful ones. Besides, coming from a good family doesn’t guarantee that person is decent.”
The words “Your parents are trash for selling their child” rose to my throat, but I swallowed them back. They weren’t my parents, but I didn’t want to badmouth anyone’s parents.
“I’m not sure if it’s something to celebrate, but anyway, I hope you choose the better one among them. Every Alpha I’ve met seems to have a screw loose—I haven’t seen a single one in their right mind.”
Due to their naturally superior physical abilities compared to Omegas and Betas, Alphas began to be labeled as the “superior race.”
If it were just physical abilities, it would be limited to comments like “they’d make good athletes,” but at some point, rumors spread that Alphas also had above-average brain development and mental strength. This led to slogans like “superior Alphas, inferior Omegas, and average Betas” spreading everywhere.
There’s nothing wrong with being average, but from a Beta’s perspective, it felt like being pigeonholed as “just that level,” which I didn’t like. What was even more ridiculous was judging people’s superiority based on whether they were Alpha or Omega—not based on individual effort and results, but simply on how they were born.
Betas discriminate between men and women, while Alphas and Omegas discriminate based on whether one was born Alpha or Omega. Yet whether Beta, Alpha, or Omega, human behavior is so similar.
Anyway, the supposedly superior Alphas gradually took over the upper echelons of society. The repeatedly elected presidents were Alphas, ministers and congressmen were Alphas, company chairmen were Alphas—the majority of people with wealth and power whose names you might have heard once were Alphas.
Even in an equal world, invisible classes exist, and those who rule at the top were always Alphas.
Even in the underworld of back alleys that ordinary people avoid as filthy, Alphas were the dominant ones. While the noble gentlemen at least pretend to be refined, these guys were unrestrained trash—bad-tempered, tyrannical, and with physical strength to match, they were like ticking time bombs.
Ah, those trash Alpha bastards. I really hate them.
From my time at the orphanage until now, I’ve suffered a lot at their hands, so I’m immediately turned off by any mention of Alphas. How could anyone live with those beast-like bastards? Are upper-class Alphas any different from bottom-feeding ones? I don’t think I could live with an Alpha even if offered billions. Well, for billions, I might reconsider.
“More importantly, you don’t look well. You seem to have lost even more weight since I last saw you. Are you sick?”
While I was lost in my train of thought, he drew my attention back with his question.
Reflexively, I rubbed my cheek with my hand. When my fingertips touched my hollow cheek, I felt rough leather instead of plump flesh. It felt similar to the stiff hide of a dead animal.
“Sick? No, I’m always the same. What, did you think I’d be like you who lives well and eats well? When I have money, I eat; when I don’t, I starve. That’s why my weight fluctuates.”
“Have you eaten lunch? Shall we go eat together?”
Two o’clock. Well past lunchtime. I’m the type who would eat regardless of time if possible, but he would be different. Yet, he was kind enough to invite me to a meal. Stupid, too.
“I’m a busy person. I don’t have time to eat with you. I need to go work to earn money.”
“…Stealing isn’t exactly working.”
“What are you talking about? That’s a job in its own way.”
“If that’s really a job, how about changing careers?”
I looked at him as he suggested this with a worried face and careful voice.
He’s definitely kind but stupid.
Sitting face to face, having a conversation, offering a meal, and even worrying about the person who tried to steal his wallet. He’s a person without guile.
“Just like your marriage isn’t something you want to do but something you have to do, I don’t do this because I want to, but because I have to. In that way, aren’t we a bit alike? Neither of us can do much of anything by our own will.”
I swallowed the reproach that rose spontaneously—I live like this because I have no parents and no money, but why do you live like that when you’re from a wealthy family? I stood up from my seat.
Who am I to give advice? To him? It’s laughable to feel sorry for someone who spends more money in a day, no, an hour, than I do in units of different magnitude.
“That’s it for today. I’m leaving.”
“Already? Let’s talk a little more.”
“I told you I’m busy. You have so much money—don’t you have any friends? Why do you cling to me like this? Do you not have anyone else to listen to you?”
He hung his head with a dejected face. His melancholy expression clearly showed he was hurt, but I lacked the emotional capacity to care about that.
“If you need someone to talk to so badly, go hold hands with your bodyguard over there and have a nice chat.”
I nodded toward the man who had parked the car in front of the café and was watching us through the glass window.
A guy with unnecessarily good reflexes despite not being an Alpha. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have been caught stealing from this slow-witted Omega’s pocket.
I later learned that this guy’s parents had hired him as an attendant capable of driving and providing security, but at first, my pride was severely wounded by the fact that I’d been caught by a mere driver and couldn’t even resist.
“I don’t have personal conversations with employees.”
“What’s that about? Some kind of chosen people mentality? Too good to mix words with people who serve you?”
“My father doesn’t like it. If he sees us getting close, he fires them, and several people have been dismissed that way. Not speaking with them isn’t because I want it that way, but for their sake—I have no choice.”
He lives such a complicated life. I thought being born into a wealthy family meant eating what you want, doing what you want, and living with peace of mind. Indeed, people cannot know many things unless they experience them firsthand.
“Anyway. This is as far as I go with listening to your complaints. We’ll continue the rest next time.”
“You’ll come tomorrow too, right?”
“I don’t know.”
I’m not someone who values cultural activities, nor was I deeply moved by the photo exhibition enough to view the same pictures every day. Nevertheless, it was difficult to say “no” to him as he looked at me with pitiful eyes.
I don’t have much time left to promise a later date. Even though I scold him for being kind, foolish, and always saying tiresome things, he was the only person who conversed with me without prejudice.
“Well, if I’m free tomorrow, I’ll come.”
“Thank you.”
It wasn’t even a definite answer, but a smile spread across his face. After gazing at his dimple that looked like clay poked with a toothpick, I turned away. Without saying goodbye, I abruptly opened the door of the café and left.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
