IS Vol 1 Prologue

I had a dream. There, too, I was alone. Could I not return to happier days, even in my dreams? In the dream, I endlessly replayed the events of that night. The more I did, the more the boundary between reality and dreams blurred, and occasionally, I would fall under the illusion that I still had not escaped that villa.

Everything in the hospital room felt cold. Though it wasn’t because the heating system was broken. The blankets were coarse and dry, becoming damp whenever it rained. I spent several months alone there. While my miserably broken body slowly mended and started to resemble its former self on the surface, I was utterly alone in this strange place, save for a man who visited time to time. Unidentified. That was my status at the hospital.

Where did it all go wrong? I think about that sometimes. Those thoughts often lead me to question whether I should have been born at all, and I feel guilty toward my parents. I never meant to resent them. It was simply a matter of bad luck.

Yes, I was just unlucky. That’s why the only blood relative I had left after my parents passed away was an uncle who tried to sell me off. My uncle was greedier for more than he actually possessed. I was just an ordinary recessive Omega, but my uncle wanted to sell me for a high price. He hoped to use me as a way to turn around his own wretched, gutter-like existence. So, he must have felt like it was a waste. That he had to sell me for nothing more than gambling debts.

My foolish uncle, who was so obsessed with gambling and betting that he failed to realize that debt only breeds more debt, had no choice but to hand me over to the creditors without even being able to negotiate properly. This was the same uncle who had kept me out of school in order to preserve my market value. At a certain point, I was even been forbidden from leaving the house as I pleased.

If I had run away from my uncle sooner, could I have avoided ending up like this?

Would I have never met you?

That train of thought always leads back to you in the end.

I kept thinking of the boy I met in the place where I had been sold to pay off my uncle’s debt. Whenever he came to mind, my chest would ache as if someone were gripping my heart tightly and refusing to let go. Choi Hyun-seo, your voice calling my name. Hyun-seo, your warmth of your hand holding mine. The way you looked at me. Those short summer days we spent together.

How do you remember that time now? Do you hate me enough that you can’t even bear to think about it? Do you, who became the very alpha you hated so much, ever think of me at all?

I was horrified by myself—finding that even in the moment I had lost everything and was left with nothing, my thoughts still turned only to you. In exchange for receiving a new name, I became someone who no longer exists in this world. Hyun-seo, your voice calling me now lives only within my memories; it has become something that can never be real again.

As expected, perhaps it would have been better to just die back then if it was going to be like this, Woo-kyung. If I had to live like this…could this even be called a life? Do I even have the right to live, having left you there and escaped alone? If I could, I wanted to ask you. I wanted to leave my fate in your hands. Then, I felt like I could live even if I died.

It was the day I was told that my pheromones had finally vanished. The price for meeting you was harsh. Even the faintest traces of my omega nature had completely disappeared.

I wished I could have just been strangled to death by the longing I swallowed in silence. After all, the Choi Hyun-seo you knew will no longer exist anywhere in this world.