My Alpha Era Began with Gongjindan Chapter 8

“Are we really going on a date? Really? Once a week?”

I held up the contract toward Jung Pureum. The contract, folded in half with slightly crumpled edges, fluttered in the air.

Jung Pureum, looking at the worn contract with an odd expression, smiled innocently at me.

“Didn’t you read it all and sign it?”

“Hey, you still seem to think you’re a beta….”

“I’m not. I’m an alpha now.”

“A guy who knows that, but can’t even properly control his pheromones—what kind of date are you talking about?”

“Because I can’t do it well, hyung has to teach me.”

“….”

“Hyung said you’d take responsibility for me.”

From now on, if I ever hear the word ‘responsibility’ from anyone again, I’m going to change my surname.

Jung Pureum, who had stepped closer to me, slowly pulled me into an embrace. It was a slow enough hug that I could have pushed him away easily, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Every breath I took into my lungs was mixed with a refreshing scent. This wasn’t a failure of control—he was blatantly releasing his pheromones at me.

Jung Pureum, hugging me and burying his nose in my neck, took a deep breath.

Is this how a cornered herbivore feels? At a loss, I just stared at the crown of Jung Pureum’s head, his face pressed against me so hard I thought my nose would get squashed.

“So this is the scent. I’ve been curious all along.”

“Hey, you….”

“Hyung smells like sandalwood.”

Hugging like this with him isn’t that awkward of a thing. We’ve known each other for years. Jung Pureum was a child who was especially fond of physical contact, so when he was young, I used to carry him on my back a lot.

But now, the situation is a bit different.

Jung Pureum had already surpassed my height in middle school. His build is huge, needless to say. Now it’s no longer me hugging him, but rather me being pulled into his embrace.

When Jung Pureum was a beta, being hugged like this was just a bit suffocating, but now that he’s a dominant alpha, it’s problematic in many ways.

I squeezed all the strength from the herbal medicine I’d been taking and barely managed to push Jung Pureum away.

“Why are you being so gross.”

“I’m gross?”

“Then are you cute?”

“Hyung always says I’m cute.”

“Hey, that was when you were a beta.”

Ah, I shouldn’t have said that. At my words that slipped out, Jung Pureum’s expression became noticeably sullen.

It doesn’t seem right to call him gross after I made him into an alpha.

I quickly reflected. I added that he’s still cute now, just a bit intimidating, and Jung Pureum asked back innocently, “Why?”

“Do you really not know?”

I looked at Jung Pureum with a dumbfounded expression. You’re an alpha and I’m an omega! Unfortunately, I was born with a physical constitution that’s affected by that damn trait!

But what would Jung Pureum, who just manifested as an alpha, know? At this rate, it really looked like I’d have no choice but to take responsibility for him.

When I told Jung Pureum I’d ‘take responsibility,’ I never meant I’d become an alpha babysitter.

It was about making herbal medicine and giving acupuncture. My plan was to placate him like I would a minor car accident faker trying to get insurance money—give him some meds, have him receive some physical therapy a few times, and then smooth things over.

“As expected, you don’t want to?”

“It’s not that….”

“No choice. If hyung is really uncomfortable, I’ll just have to handle it legally….”

“Pureum, what are you saying? The law? Between us who are like family, what’s this about the law?”

“But you taught me that if you face injustice, you should put the other party on the stand of the law.”

“That’s only when the other party isn’t me.”

The half-crumpled contract in my hand rustled.

In a few days, I have interviews and TV appearances related to the Gongjindan development, and if he sues me, things get complicated.

Above all, I couldn’t afford to miss this critical opportunity to get back at Baek Wonhee.

Even if I’m a recessive omega who often gets caught up in pheromonal hierarchy, the other person is a neighbor dongsaeng I’ve known for a full seven years. Whether he’s an alpha or not, I can just control his trait the same way I delay my heat cycle cycle with herbal medicine.

I racked my brain as hard as I could in a short time. It felt like even Jung Pureum could hear the gears turning in my head.

But Jung Pureum just stood there quietly, waiting for my decision. Seeing him like this, he still seemed like a good, innocent dongsaeng, but occasionally he acted cowardly—I wonder who taught him that.

That inexplicable cowardice… probably learned from me.

“I can’t go on a date every time. I’m the director—I can’t leave the clinic. You overlooked the fact that I’m self-employed. Our clinic doesn’t even have a deputy director yet.”

“It doesn’t have to be going out. I’ll come to the clinic.”

“…Do you have that much free time? You just don’t know yet. Once you’re a university student, you get incredibly busy. You’ll have to go to meetings and stuff, and since you’re an athlete, the hazing from seniors will be tough.”

“If it’s to see hyung, I’ll make time even if I don’t have any.”

“Why on earth?”

“Because I like hyung.”

And thus, I heard that ‘I like you’ for about the 3,892nd time.

I like Jung Pureum too. But the affection we feel for each other is the fondness of neighbor family—it shouldn’t become something between an alpha and an omega just because his trait changed. That would truly be a ‘what are you doing, family?’ situation. Even makjang dramas would get criticized for going this far.

Jung Pureum and I getting entangled as alpha and omega? That’s an absurd assumption. How could I ever face the aunt next door again?

Imagine not only her son becoming an alpha overnight, but also being completely swept up by the trusted neighbor omega. Even I would collapse from high blood pressure if I were the parent.

Especially since Jung Pureum, having just manifested as an alpha, couldn’t yet distinguish between right and wrong. Since the only close omega he knew was me, he was clinging to me like a newborn duckling following its mother.

My head was a mess. No matter how hard I tried to think of a better way, an easy solution didn’t come to mind. I couldn’t just tear up the contract and say sorry, sue me. And if I just flatly said I can’t do this, he’d start sobbing again.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, I agonized for a long while. Jung Pureum patiently watched me pacing restlessly around the director’s office.

In the meantime, Kim Miyoung had come in and handed Jung Pureum some green tea. Even in this situation, Jung Pureum gulped down the cold green tea just fine. My insides were burning up, but he seemed completely carefree.

“Sigh, fine. You don’t know anything.”

We’ve known each other for so long—I should stay with him until he figures things out on his own.

I still didn’t understand why, when there were already two alphas in his own family, he had to come to me. But then again, it would be awkward to ask his sister and mother, ‘I became an alpha, what do I do?’

As he gets older and goes through university life, his perspective will naturally broaden. When the time comes, he’ll naturally become close to people other than me and become independent. Who knows whether an ugly alpha chick might grow into a swan.

“Whatever it is, let’s just try it—whatever kind of date it is.”

Now that he’s become an alpha, it’ll be hard to go back to our previous casual sibling-like relationship, but as long as I think of playing along until Jung Pureum is satisfied as fulfilling my duty as the neighbor hyung, I can endure it.

∞ ∞ ∞

Generally, omegas are delicate-looking. I don’t know why. The mystery of genetics is something for Western doctors to uncover, not my field of expertise.

But no matter how I looked at it—from this angle, that angle, front and back—I was far from the ‘delicate’ typical of omegas.

It’s true that I was born good-looking thanks to my mother, who was called a great beauty, but because I frequently wore a sullen expression, I heard more often that I looked rude than that I was pretty.

I didn’t really feel like refuting that, since it wasn’t wrong. In fact, I’m the aggressive type of Korean medicine doctor who pulls out a large needle from my kit and stabs anyone who picks a fight with me.

So, from the past until now, I’ve lived with no connection to dating.

In kindergarten, like everyone else, I had a sweetheart. At that age, everyone plays at dating. In early elementary school, there was something too. Back then, secondary sex hadn’t appeared yet, so if you were decent-looking, you were popular.

But after manifesting as a recessive omega, I kept my guard up. I had to stay clear-headed—if I wasn’t careful, who knew how I might end up devouring someone during a heat cycle.

There were a couple of times when people—alphas, betas, omegas alike—persistently pursued me, but I shut them all down. Especially alphas—they were all enemies to be defeated. All outside alpha bastards are wolves. There’s not a single trustworthy alpha in this world.

Rarely, even among omegas, there were those who expressed interest in me. Among my patients, some said they felt at ease because I ‘didn’t look like an omega.’

But I put up an iron wall against all of them without exception. Because for success as a Korean medicine doctor, dating is entirely unnecessary.

A lover? What are you going to do with one? You can’t decoct it into herbal medicine. A lover is less useful than velvet antler. They don’t make the price go up by 200,000 won when you put them in the medicine.

“Can I hold your hand?”

“…Why?”

“Because I want to.”

However, Jung Pureum is a bit different. He’s not an outsider alpha.

It felt wrong to be wary of my neighbor dongsaeng, who used to be a beta, just because he became an alpha. What did he do wrong? If taking the Gongjindan I gave him and becoming an alpha is a fault, then I, the cause, am the one who deserves to die.

Besides—though it’s a perfect way to be branded a pervert—Jung Pureum’s pheromones are truly killer. …Is this a dominant alpha? As expected, I’m a genius. Even when turning someone into an alpha, I made them dominant, not recessive.

The problem is that the pheromones of the dominant alpha I created are very well perceptible to me too.