Damn! Damn! – Chapter 10

Author: nicotine

Achim stared intently at the translucent liquid, as if the reason lay hidden somewhere inside the beer glass.

“And the guy is incredibly cunning and shrewd.”

As Achim added this, his gaze still fixed on the glass, Linus asked, “What?”

“Everyone is being fooled. If you look closely, Michael might not be the representative of Maaconi, but a cult leader with countless followers.”

“Honey, what on earth are you talking about?”

Finding the explanation insufficient, Linus crossed his arms and asked. Achim sighed and recounted to Linus everything he had experienced at the mansion.

Naturally, after hearing the story, Linus widened his eyes in disbelief. When Linus asked, “Is that for real?”, Achim simply waved his hand listlessly, as if he didn’t have the energy to say another word.

“If that’s true, it’s truly amazing.”

“I’m telling you, it’s the truth. If I could, I’d use a recorder and expose him.”

“Hmm…”

Linus fell into a deep silence before speaking up.

“Why?”

“I don’t know either. If I knew the reason, I wouldn’t feel so aggrieved.”

Achim irritably tousled the back of his hair. Linus tilted his head and asked as if talking to himself.

“What reason could he have to hate you?”

“…Who knows.”

For a moment, the lace-trimmed underwear Achim had shoved into his drawer crossed his mind, but he didn’t feel the need to voice it.

Linus, deep in thought, scratched his chin, which was sparsely covered in stubble from lack of shaving.

“He wouldn’t know that you’re a man, anyway.”

“…”

“What could be the reason that man hates you…”

“What?”

“Huh?”

Linus threw the question mark right back at him.

Achim, who briefly wore the expression of someone who had been blindsided, shook his head. Right, that’s impossible. If he knew I was a man, I would have been kicked out long ago. Maybe it wouldn’t have ended with just being fired, either.

Achim quickly sorted out his thoughts.

“Anyway, that’s really unexpected.”

“What is?”

“I didn’t think you would be hated by him.”

Linus shook his head with a very serious look.

Achim shrugged, wondering why that would be so unexpected, when suddenly, Linus slammed his fist onto the old wooden table. Bang!

“This can’t be, honey!”

Startled by the sudden action, Achim looked up, and Linus said in an excited tone.

“I even made a bet on when your cherry would be popped! Of course, because I believe in you, I bet on the shortest time—within a fortnight. Then there were options for a month, and the longest was four months. ‘It won’t be popped’ wasn’t an option!”

“…”

“…What?”

Achim broke the long silence to ask. Realizing his mistake, Linus, who had been speaking like a bullet, let out a sharp “Hup!” and clamped his mouth shut.

Achim’s expression hardened into something lethal.

“Damn it, why are you using someone else’s ass to…”

Linus pushed his chair back. This time, it wouldn’t have been strange if the beer glass had come flying at him. Linus hurriedly opened his mouth.

“Calm down, honey.”

I didn’t say your name. At Linus’s addition, Achim narrowed his eyes sharply. Is that supposed to make it better?! Achim, who was about to lash out, summoned every last bit of his remaining patience. Getting angry would only waste his own energy.

Just as Achim was rationalizing it for his own mental health, Linus, thinking he would definitely get hit at least once, spoke like a man on the run.

“Achim, instead, I found out some interesting news.”

“…”

“Of course, it’s a story about Michael Bernhard.”

As Achim hesitated, Linus didn’t miss the opening and his eyes sparkled.

It was Linus’s excellent way of surviving. A truly perverted method: tickling the soles of one’s feet with a feather, then offering a sweet candy just as the opponent is about to explode in anger.

But right now, it was an excuse that would work on Achim better than anything else.

As Achim narrowed his eyes, Linus figured now was the time and quickly spoke.

“Michael Bernhard, you see. They say he hates Omegas.”

“…Omegas?”

As expected, Linus knew how to successfully change the subject in his own way of surviving. It was certainly a topic worthy of interest.

When Linus nodded with his eyes still sparkling, Achim tilted his beer glass and asked.

“Are there really Alphas who hate Omegas?”

“That’s why it’s interesting.”

Achim agreed with that statement.

Alpha to Omega, Omega to Alpha. They were placed in a relationship where they had no choice but to be drawn to each other, like an absolute, unchanging law of nature.

The reason was ‘pheromones.’

Alphas and Omegas reacted to the opposing type—the pheromones the other emitted—and became physically aroused. There was no “why” for it. Alpha, Omega, pheromones. Just as gender was divided into female and male from the beginning of time, it was simply a matter of course.

Of course, normal Betas didn’t apply to this. Betas neither emitted pheromones nor could they feel them.

They were, quite literally, ‘ordinary people.’

“Coming from you, Linus, my trust is a bit low.”

Achim narrowed his eyes and leaned back into the chair.

There was no information broker as good as Linus, but even for Achim, this was hard to believe. While the topic was appetizing, it was, conversely, so unrealistic that it lacked credibility.

“Um, at Michael Bernhard’s mansion, you see.”

When Linus folded his forearms over the table and leaned his upper body forward, the old table creaked.

“There was someone who got in after breaking the recruitment conditions.”

“What kind of person?”

“Achim, do you remember?”

The recruitment conditions, I mean. Linus said, his eyes curving into slits.

“Beta female.”

At that, Achim widened his eyes slightly. Linus, feeling momentum, continued.

“They say there was an Omega who hid their secondary sex and got a job under false pretenses. But lo and behold, as soon as they were found out, they met a miserable end.”

“A miserable end?”

When Achim asked back, Linus nodded and whispered small enough for only Achim to hear.

“They say they died.”

“What?”

Achim asked, eyes wide. Linus scratched his sideburns, as was his habit.

“I could understand hating Omegas, perhaps, but I didn’t believe the story that he even killed them.”

“…”

“Usually, the more extreme something is, the more sensational it becomes, honey.”

Linus finished what he had left to say, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

“Other than the fact that an Omega got a job under false pretenses, everything else is uncertain, but still…”

“…”

“It’s interesting, isn’t it?”

Did he really go as far as killing them? The possibility that it was just a groundless rumor was high, but just as Linus said, it was enough to spark interest.

Hid their secondary sex, huh. Agreeing that it was interesting, Achim nodded.

“Then, did they take ‘that’ drug?”

He didn’t ask because he didn’t know the method. Methods existed to temporarily or mid-to-long-term block pheromones. Most were in pill form. However, a major downside was that the known drugs contained components far too toxic, making them harmful to the human body.

It was different from ordinary suppressants. Suppressants were usually taken when Alphas or Omegas wanted to accelerate or delay their heat cycles; while the pheromones would temporarily fade during intake, they didn’t disappear entirely.

In other words, to hide one’s secondary sex and pretend to be a Beta, one had to ingest that ‘toxic’ drug.

It was so toxic that even a person with a healthy body could die within just a few months.

That was why the government designated it as an illegal drug, yet it was still traded in the shadows.

“Why would someone go to such lengths, cutting their lifespan short?”

At Achim’s muttering, which sounded full of incomprehension, Linus clapped his hands as if he’d just remembered.

“My mind… I almost forgot to mention this.”

Achim lifted his eyes from the beer glass.

“That drug the Omega took.”

“…”

“They say it’s different from the toxic drugs we know.”

Different? How? When Achim asked, Linus countered with a question.

“Do you happen to know of something called ‘Henet’?”