TIN 92

I remember the first moment I sensed pheromones. No, more precisely, the moment I realized it was pheromones. The day I learned that the warm scent emanating from the woman wasn’t just a smell.

“Why don’t I have that scent?”

“…Scent?”

When I asked that, the woman looked at me with an unusually serious expression on her face. A hint of unease flickered across her eyes, blue as the vast sky. Her voice, too, carried the same hesitation as she asked me back.

“Um, what scent?”

“The nice smell…that’s like sunlight?”

It was a scent difficult to define precisely. A cozy fragrance like well-dried laundry or fluffy blankets. The familiar scent that always pleasantly enveloped me when I was held in the woman’s arms.

“It comes from your clothes and things too, but not from me.”

The abundant fragrance was usually felt on my skin without even trying to smell it. Sometimes I would gather her clothes and crawl inside them because quietly savoring it made me feel good. When the woman was away from home for long periods of time, or when inexplicable fears crept in, it was the most effective way to overcome such feelings.

“How can I have a scent too?”

“…”

Though I asked with sincere desire, the woman didn’t answer readily. She just kept her lips tightly sealed, then crouched in front of me with a deliberately serious face.

“Little one.”

“I’m not a baby anymore.”

“…”

She responded to my sulky reply with a faint smile lingering on her lips. “Yes, you’re not a baby anymore.” After agreeing with me, she soon began again with a stern tone.

“Listen carefully.”

What followed was too ambiguous for my young self to understand. She simply explained that what I smelled wasn’t just a scent and that ordinary people couldn’t smell it. And then came the quiet warning,”You must never tell anyone.”

Who exactly am I supposed to keep this secret from? There were only the two of us here anyway. The only things I could possibly share such stories with were the seashells that washed up on the beach.

I came to understand the woman’s words years later. On the day my peaceful daily life was turned upside down, when I had to cross the sea hidden in a small box.

“Don’t ever let them find out…”

“…”

“Live.”

I must’ve instinctively known what she was talking about all along. What I shouldn’t let others discover, what I shouldn’t tell others, and what the woman was trying to hide.

More detailed information, what you might call common knowledge, I learned later at the child’s house. That humans had traits, that special traits produced pheromones, that only those with special traits could sense these pheromones, and that dominant eyes had different colors.

“I’m an alpha.”

In the child’s eyes as he proudly declared this, golden heterochromia flickered—something I’d never seen before. There was a reason the woman had told me there were even prettier colors when I told her I envied her blue eyes. Not everyone had black or blue eyes. I only learned this fact later on.

“I differentiated recently and got tested.”

Trait testing was based on pheromone levels in the blood. For betas, nothing was detected, while special traits typically showed minimal detection.

However, the blind spot in this test was that it was impossible to know whether someone would differentiate until they actually did. Before differentiation, special traits were indistinguishable from betas in terms of measurements.

Therefore, the only way to screen for undifferentiated special traits was through pheromone recognition testing. Special traits could sense pheromones from birth, so this test could at least distinguish whether someone was a beta or not. Of course, it couldn’t determine whether someone was an alpha or omega.

It was similar to a simple olfactory test. You had to sense prepared solutions with your nose and skin, and identify which ones contained concentrated pheromones. Since there was usually no reason to pretend to be a beta, it was considered to be quite reliable.

And I went through all of this as soon as I arrived at the child’s house. It was what you might call a health examination, checking height, weight, vision, hearing, and checking for infectious diseases, followed by trait testing and pheromone recognition testing.

“The test results confirm that you’re a beta.”

The adult in the entirely white coat continued talking while flipping through an unidentifiable chart. They quickly went over how my height was above average but my weight was far below, saying that although I was thin, I was healthy and there wouldn’t be problems if I ate well.

“Though you’re not yet at the age to differentiate…the possibility of differentiating later on is slim.”

No one doubted the doctor’s words. How could a young child of unknown origin possibly be a precious special trait? The trait test done alongside the health examination must have been merely a formality.

“It would be nice if you differentiated too, hyung.”

I couldn’t show any reaction to the boy’s casually expressed regret. He said he wanted to let me know his pheromones, and conversely, that he wanted to know mine.

“I’m curious about your pheromones, hyung.”

“…”

I didn’t have anything like that, not yet.

I had long thought I would differentiate someday. When I heard the doctor declare I was definitely a beta, when I pretended not to know the second solution contained pheromones, and every time I sensed the sweet fragrance from the child with sparkling eyes….

Yes, I’m just saying I knew it would end up like this eventually.

“…”

After staring at myself in the bathroom mirror for a while, I forced myself to snap out of it and returned to my room. My head felt numb, as if I’d been struck, while I dried my hair and put on fresh clothes. Only after collapsing onto the bed did a deep sigh escape from the pit of my stomach.

“…Hah.”

I happened to differentiate as an omega. Pheromones appeared overnight, and my perfectly normal eyes turned blue. The night I wanted to believe was just medication taking effect was, as expected, definitely differentiation fever.

Why now of all times?

I’d lived normally until twenty-five, so why did this have to happen in this house? If only it had happened a little later, in a safer place, at least somewhere without an alpha around.

“…”

I took deep breaths to control something stirring inside me. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the amount of pheromones being secreted wasn’t much yet. Unless I tried to forcefully release them, they could be masked by the dominant’s pheromones still lingering on my body.

The problem was, yes, my eye color. Eyes that had turned hazy like fog, with a faint blue tint.

It was fine for now. The change was subtle enough that people wouldn’t notice unless they looked closely. As long as I didn’t stand in sunlight or bright lighting, I could hide it by keeping my eyes down and avoiding eye contact.

But what came after was the problem.

For most special traits, differentiation didn’t end in just one day. It took anywhere from a week to a year. Time was needed for the pheromone glands to stabilize and for the body to gradually adapt accordingly. More precisely, it could be considered the time for the trait to develop.

I’d heard it took longer the younger and more dominant you were. Joo Do-hwa who differentiated at just six years old probably only got his current pheromones and eye color after a full year. While Lee Yuna probably took less time than that, Yoon Ji-soo might have taken just as long.

And in my case…

“…”

Feeling like I might retch at any given moment, I curled up with my hand over my mouth. My already changing eyes would undoubtedly turn increasingly blue as time passed. Just like that person who lived with me, whom I’d spent my life searching for.

“I’ll definitely be discovered.”

Unless I wore contacts, there was no way to hide it, and I had no way to get contacts right now. Furthermore, Joo Do-hwa was extremely dominant, so he would be that much more sensitive to others’ pheromones. Naturally, deceiving him would be impossible.

“Shit, really…”

Even knowing I needed to stay calm, I kept losing my composure. The future suddenly looming before me was far more daunting than I had imagined.

‘You’re not really a beta, are you?’

Joo Do-hwa had suspected I was an omega from the start. He had a habit of saying that he hated brats and that he just didn’t want an Omega. Since the ‘hyung’ he was looking for was originally a beta, I couldn’t even remain as a stand-in if I became an omega.

Even if I was lucky enough not to be killed immediately, there was no guarantee he’d keep me alive. Though he said he’d let me go if he got tired of me, I wasn’t sure if something that had outlived its usefulness counted as something he’d tired of. I’d be fortunate if he didn’t ask if I was really sent by his father and why I had deceived him.

Yes, in that case, rather…

“…”

Knock knock. There came a knocking sound on the door. Just as I had made up my mind and was about to lift the mattress. I hurriedly dove under the blanket, and the firmly closed door opened carefully.

“Still sleeping?”

Surprisingly, it was Joo Do-hwa who came in. Unusually, he had actually knocked, and his tone of voice was much more friendly than usual. Unable to bring myself to answer that I was awake, I remained still under the blanket, holding my breath.

“Hmm…”

I heard him hum thoughtfully. And the sound of the click of the door closing.

“…”

Did he leave?

However, that hope didn’t last long. I could sense him slowly entering the room at the same time. Tap, tap. It was the sound of indoor slippers hitting the floor and the rustle of clothing.

Then a quiet voice settled by my pillow.

“Why are you pretending to be asleep right now?”