PC | Chapter 1.3

“…No. It hurts, I, ahh!”

He pressed his thumb hard against the wounded wrist. The pain reverberated deep into my brain, choking off my breath. Soon, the hastily wrapped white bandage began to stain red. I clenched my teeth and swallowed the scream trying to burst out of me.

“Nothing changes just because you endure it.”

“…Ugh.”

“Say it with your own mouth.”

His grip loosened. I opened the eyes I had squeezed shut and looked at him. His gaze held a trace of impatience. Seeing that look, some strange certainty rose inside me. That I had mutated into an omega because of Jung Inhyuk. And that he had known it before I did.

Something hot surged up inside me. That crazy bastard had decided someone else’s life for himself, and not only that, he had mutated a beta into an omega. If I had had my way, I would have wanted to throw a punch and curse him out, but there was a clear power imbalance between us.

He was the predator, and I was the prey. A relationship of eating and being eaten. If I did not want to be devoured, I had to bow my head and flatten myself beneath his feet. It was as natural as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. I knew what Jung Inhyuk wanted, but it was hard to open my mouth.

“Director Yoon Pansu contacted us and said he wanted to cast you as the lead in his next project.”

“…!”

At Jung Inhyuk’s unexpected words, my eyes widened and I lifted my head.

Director Yoon Pansu was the director I respected and liked most. I had watched every film he made at least thirty times, and especially *Walking Through Memory* I had seen so many times I could recite the lines by heart. I had admired his direction and his ability to carry a story for a long time.

“R-Really?”

“If you’re going to shoot the phone ad launching this year, it’s about time you turned your face around once.”

Jung Inhyuk pulled a cigarette from the desk and held it between his lips. The flame from the lighter caught the cigarette, and pale smoke spilled over my face. I bit my lip and held my breath.

I had not originally been interested in acting as a profession. It was just something I did because Jung Inhyuk told me to. But the day I saw myself on the big screen, I felt excitement and exhilaration so strong my chest ached. Wearing the mask of an actor, I was neither so miserable nor so desperate nor so stupid.

When you spend months living inside another person’s life, created by someone else’s hand, you begin to hold a small hope that maybe you, too, can live by your own will. If I had not become an actor, I might have been living a life even worse than this one.

And once filming started, at least for ten months I could keep things loose with Jung Inhyuk. Besides, if I stayed silent now, I would learn the answer eventually anyway.

It was humiliating to say with my own mouth that I had become an omega, but the sweetness right in front of me beat me down. My lips had gone dry. I stared blankly at Jung Inhyuk’s face through the harsh cigarette smoke, then slowly opened my mouth.

“Actually,”

“….”

“I’ve mutated into an omega.”

The moment I said it aloud, it felt even more humiliating. I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood and sucked in a ragged breath.

“Your secondary sex,”

“Whatever my secondary sex is, it doesn’t matter. What matters is,”

“….”

“Whether or not you can carry my seed.”

I nodded weakly. At that, Jung Inhyuk’s face began to crack ever so slightly, and then he finally threw his head back and burst out laughing. He roamed around the office like a madman, snickering to himself. The more his laughter spread, the more my insides burned with self-disgust.

He was trampling me flat and grinding me down without mercy, as if I were nothing more than the bottom of a pit.

After laughing and staggering around for a while, Jung Inhyuk ground out his cigarette in the ashtray, walked up to me, and dropped into a crouch. Sitting cross-legged with one arm propping up his chin, he asked in a languid voice,

“Then our Shinjae can have my baby now?”

“….”

“It took a long time, but it was worth the eight years I spent cultivating you. I was unsure at first, but I never thought this would actually be possible.”

Jung Inhyuk’s eyes gleamed. That three-white gaze I once thought was sexy now felt disgusting. He stuck out his tongue and licked his lips. The red tongue brushed the corner of his mouth wickedly and vanished. A chill swept through my body. Jung Inhyuk looked less like a person and more like a demon.

Without realizing it, I backed up. But soon the hard desk pressed against my back. Then Jung Inhyuk followed me in, slowly crawling onto the desk’s inner side. The shorter the distance between us became, the harder it was to breathe. Jung Inhyuk was still smiling, and a strange scent I had never smelled before seeped into my nose.

“Shinjae, I can’t do without you.”

“….”

“If just breathing makes my dick get this hard, how am I supposed to find a substitute for you? Right?”

Jung Inhyuk’s fingertips started at my collarbone and traced a line straight down the center of my chest to my navel. Then he stroked around my belly button before suddenly pressing a finger into my abdomen. A cry burst out of me involuntarily.

“Now carry my seed here and have my child.”

“…No. I don’t want to.”

“You don’t have a choice. The reason you became an actor and an omega is because I wanted it. If I want it, you become it.”

“….”

“Just like you have been from the moment you were born until now.”

I had sworn I would never resent my mother, but moments like this shattered that promise. I hated this situation with every fiber of my being, a situation in which not even a speck of my own will existed. Nothing was wholly mine.

Suddenly Jung Inhyuk wrapped a hand around the back of my neck and pulled me close. In an instant, his lips were close enough that they might have touched mine. When I turned my head away, disgusted by his breath spilling over my mouth, Jung Inhyuk grabbed my hair and yanked me back.

“Ugh.”

“You haven’t had fun in a while, so stop ruining the mood and smile.”

The tears I had been forcing back since the hospital came flooding out. This was humiliation beyond misery. And yet the fact that I was still crying in a situation like this, even after so many times, meant my bottom was probably even lower than I thought.

“I told you to smile, so why are you crying?”

“….”

“This is why I like you. There’s not a single moment that gets boring.”

Jung Inhyuk let go of my hair and grabbed the waistband of my hospital gown. Ah! My eyes flew wide and I hurriedly seized his wrist. Jung Inhyuk’s face twisted horribly.

“Take it away.”

“Snff, Jigyu hyung…”

At that moment, with a sharp slap, my head snapped to the side. A hot burn flared across my face. I covered my cheek with my hand and swallowed my tears.

“If your intelligence is low, at least pretend to try. I’ve told you over and over not to call that bastard Kang Jigyu hyung.”

“….”

“Why the hell should that bastard get to hear hyung from you when I don’t even get to?”

Kang Jigyu was the only person who had no connection to Jung Inhyuk. When I was twenty, maybe? Jung Inhyuk’s rut had lasted three days. After being tormented by him for three days and three nights without eating or sleeping, I was on my way to school, trying to avoid the now-quiet Jung Inhyuk.

Cold sweat poured off me like rain, and my legs shook so badly I could barely walk. In the end I collapsed in the street, and when I opened my eyes, Kang Jigyu was there in a white coat.

When I stared at him with guarded suspicion, he smiled sheepishly, lifting both hands by his ears and saying he was not a bad person. He introduced himself as the doctor who had carried me to the hospital after I fainted on the sidewalk.

After checking my temperature and blood pressure and finally adjusting my IV, Kang Jigyu asked me carefully,

“Have you perhaps… been raped, patient? This is a hospital, so it’s safe, and if you need help, we can provide it.”

“….”

“So don’t be scared. Please tell me comfortably.”

I do not know how much I struggled at that moment. If I used the power of the authorities, could I escape this hell? But I shook my head small.

“…It’s not that.”

I had heard countless times from Jung Inhyuk’s own mouth that money sat above state power. Kang Jigyu looked at me with pity and, without saying a word, held my hand tightly.

The warmth, pushing back the chill, made me grasp his hand in return before I realized it. It was the moment warmth seeped into a heart that had only ever felt like a freezing winter under a north wind.

He was a good person. From then on, whenever anything was wrong with my body, I went to Kang Jigyu instead of Jung Inhyuk’s personal doctor. He was the only one Jung Inhyuk tolerated among the people tied to me as friends or acquaintances.

“Say it again.”

“…Doctor Kang said it would be better to avoid sex for now, and to stay away from alphas. He said it would be bad because this place, this place hasn’t settled properly yet.”

With trembling hands, I pressed down on my stomach. Jung Inhyuk looked at my belly, then suddenly cupped my cheek gently. His cold body temperature made my stinging cheek cool down in an instant, and my shoulders jerked. Ignoring that, he used his fingers to wipe the tear-stained mess from my face.

“If someone asked me to list all the reasons I like you, it wouldn’t be enough even if I stayed up all night.”

“…?”

Murmuring something incomprehensible, Jung Inhyuk pulled me in and sat me between his legs, then pressed his lips to the nape of my neck. He bared his teeth sharp enough to seem like he would bite through my skin, then licked lightly with the tip of his tongue. Every time his tongue brushed my skin, a strange scent leaked from his body.