My Alpha Era Began with Gongjindan Chapter 86

Jung Pureum entered the training camp right away on Monday. I couldn’t spend time with him just before his entry, in case I might affect his pheromones.

If his pheromones, which had been stabilized with such difficulty, became unstable again due to excessive physical contact, it wouldn’t just be difficult for Jung Pureum—it would also cause trouble for the other athletes. I’d heard that among the national team members in other sports, there were betas and omegas too, but generally about 80% of national team athletes were alphas.

[<Notice to Apartment Residents>

Please refrain from excessive public displays of affection within the apartment complex.

Shared facilities are not your personal bedroom! Strictly prohibited is the emission of pheromones in the apartment elevator, emergency stairwells, and other areas used by all residents.

Please kindly limit excessive displays of affection to your private bedroom.

Thank you.]

In the end, a notice like this went up in the apartment elevator. I’d expected as much. Since I’d gotten caught up in Jung Pureum’s rut and failed to spray the deodorizer.

How startled must the other differentiated residents of this building have been when they used the elevator after us? I felt a little sorry toward the neighbors I didn’t even know by face. It wasn’t like I’d meant to cause any trouble…

Of course, even if I had sprayed deodorizer, it would have been obvious that an alpha and omega had been clinging to each other in the elevator. Still, if I’d sprayed it in time, a notice like this probably wouldn’t have gone up.

Thanks to that, I felt absolutely mortified every time I rode the elevator. In a way, it was a stroke of luck that Jung Pureum entered the training camp before all sorts of rumors spread throughout the apartment.

I felt a little lonely, though…

Thinking I wouldn’t see him for months, even though video calls came in regularly, there was an emptiness in my chest.

I wondered if my body had been weakened by the changing seasons and even took tonic medicine with deer antler, but it was no use. Even the tonic prescribed by my grandfather—the god of Korean medicine, the light of Korean medicine, the world’s greatest in Korean medicine—couldn’t cure the emptiness in my heart.

It was fortunate that the clinic remained consistently busy. At least during work hours, I could avoid thinking about Jung Pureum. But whenever the time came when Jung Pureum used to visit the clinic, I found myself unconsciously checking the clock.

Nam Jungyoon criticized this as behavior you’d expect from a young kid dating for the first time. I ended up arguing childishly with my only vice-director again.

Kim Miyoung said I looked like a woman waiting for her boyfriend who’d gone to the military. Since Jung Pureum had also sniveled before his entry about not wearing his slippers backwards, I couldn’t easily dismiss Kim Miyoung’s words.

“But doesn’t Pureum call you regularly?”

“About once every two days.”

“Wow, even in the military you don’t get that much.”

Whenever the military came up, Nam Jungyoon shuddered. He said it was because being an alpha, he’d been deployed to the front lines.

Even a dominant alpha like Nam Jungyoon was sent to the front lines.

I once again fervently prayed for Jung Pureum’s military exemption. For a dominant alpha, unless he had connections somewhere, there was a high probability of being deployed to the front. If even the training camp was this draining, I absolutely couldn’t let him go to the military.

“How about we close the clinic before the Olympics and go to Japan as a group? To Osaka…”

“As a group? Director, can we afford that?”

“We can just expense it. If we think of it as tax-saving, it’s enough to take the assistant and vice-director.”

“Senior… I’ll be loyal until you close the doors.”

Nam Jungyoon, who had been bickering with me just moments before, immediately pledged his loyalty. It was a terribly fickle attitude, but I didn’t dislike him for it. Apparently, he’d never been on an overseas trip since becoming an adult.

“How tough was it until graduation? Not every Korean medicine student can live like you, senior—travel was just a dream. Then right after graduation, straight to the military. Since it was medical school, they wouldn’t even put me in as a medic—I thought I was going to die.”

Nam Jungyoon, like any man who’d served, shuddered at anything military-related. On top of that, he launched into a lengthy account of his military days that no one had asked about.

“But love really is something. When you yourself were sick, you wouldn’t close the clinic even if it killed you, but now you’re deciding to close just to watch your partner’s game.”

“Partner? We’re not at that level yet.”

“Not at that level? I saw the two of you biting and sucking in the treatment room last week…”

“Wait, assistant, when exactly did you see that? Are you a ninja or something?”

“If you’re exposed to medicinal herbs long enough, your hearing sharpens, and you also learn to move without making a sound.”

“…Korean medicine truly is amazing.”

“No matter how many times I hear it, I can’t keep up with this conversation pattern.”

“Vice-director, you’re being too rigid. When talking with the director, you shouldn’t try to understand things with your head. You just have to feel the vibe, the flow.”

Still, I was glad to have people around me like this. My situation was better than in college, when the only person I could speak openly with was Jung Pureum.

Kim Miyoung, saying this was also part of her job, sat at the reception desk and started searching for flights. Seeing her navigate price comparison sites with such skill, it seemed best to leave the ticket purchases to her.

“But wait, can you actually watch the Olympics swimming events?”

“Omegas can’t watch, can they?”

“Whoa, if omegas can’t watch, that’s something to report to the Human Rights Commission. I’d be so upset I couldn’t live, seriously.”

Come to think of it, it did seem like omegas might not be allowed into the stadium. If someone suddenly went into a heat cycle during a match, it would be a bolt from the blue for the alpha athletes.

I understood it logically, but just in case—again!—I frantically searched to see if omegas would be the only ones excluded.

Fortunately or unfortunately, for swimming, where the proportion of alpha athletes was overwhelming, only personnel were allowed entry. Regardless of being omega or anything else, if you weren’t authorized personnel, you couldn’t get in equally.

“If we can’t even watch, should we still go to Japan? Wouldn’t it be better to just watch on TV?”

“Hmm, we might not see swimming, but we can watch other events.”

“Right, if we assume they win gold in archery and swimming too, Korea would be sweeping gold in Japan—just seeing the local reaction would be entertaining enough?”

Just imagining sweeping gold in another country made me feel good. The fact that the host country happened to be Japan made it even more so.

“If all else fails, we can just go for sightseeing.”

That’s what I said, but I sat down next to Kim Miyoung and started web surfing to check the Olympic schedule.

Jung Pureum winning gold was the most important thing, but I was equally curious about other events. During the Olympics, it’s rare to find a Korean who doesn’t watch archery.

Our clinic moved busily to arrange about a week of closure during the Olympics. Even with boiling medicinal herbs and making Gongjindan every day, we were always short-staffed compared to the incoming orders, leading to a stretch of forced overtime.

After Wonhee Korean Medicine Clinic went under, I thought the spies would stop coming, but various clinics kept sending spies to try to obtain the Gongjindan formula, so hiring full-time staff remained difficult.

Even among contract workers and part-timers, there were occasionally people sent from other clinics. If Kim Miyoung didn’t have an incredible talent for sniffing out spies, the Gongjindan formula would have been stolen long ago.

That said, I couldn’t just hire people who hadn’t even graduated college. Unless they were someone trustworthy like Nam Jungyoon, even without experience.

In the end, my grandfather’s notarized older assistants came to our clinic on dispatch to help with various miscellaneous tasks. I’d tried not to rely on my grandfather’s help as much as possible, but I had no choice. There was no reliable talent available.

“If we post on the university job board, we’d probably get plenty of applicants.”

“Our alma mater? There aren’t any diligent people there.”

“Senior, you can’t measure college students by your standards. And graduates also check the university communities a lot, so it should be fine.”

“Is hiring normally this difficult?”

“It is difficult, but usually not this bad. It’s just that 80% of the people we thought were promising and hired turned out to be spies.”

“Hiring Kim Miyoung as a starter was a stroke of luck.”

“It feels like we used up all our hiring luck on that one move…”

To get one good person, I had to expend all my meager luck. Life really is hard-mode content.

Following Nam Jungyoon’s recommendation, I also posted a hiring notice on my alma mater’s community board. I specified that I was prioritizing experienced graduates, so now all I could do was cross my fingers and hope for just one decent candidate.

“Actually, for a clinic of our size, we really need at least one more vice-director.”

“I know that logically too.”

“Or, how about this—we just run things cozily with the three of us?”

A cozy operation sounds nice. But with so many customers coming in because of the Gongjindan I’d created, running our clinic with just the three full-timers including myself was impossible.

We need more staff! Even mobile tycoon games let you hire new employees when you expand. We shouldn’t have to run ourselves ragged rotating with just three people!

“I don’t know. Let’s just accept all the resumes that come in and see.”

At my words, Nam Jungyoon nodded.

Even Nam Jungyoon’s face had become a bit gaunt since joining our clinic. Though the monthly salary deposited in his account might serve as financial therapy, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for grinding him down.

Kim Miyoung, being a veteran in this field, calmly sipped her Job’s tears tea no matter what happened, but Nam Jungyoon was still a greenhorn—yet here he was, rolling around as vice-director.

I thought about my university classmates and seniors/juniors. Most of them were people whose faces I couldn’t even remember, so the chances of a familiar face applying to our clinic were slim.

I’d posted the hiring notice on the university board for the sake of staff welfare, but I was also worried. To be honest, my college life hadn’t been a particularly positive experience.