TRIPLE 7

Siyeon passed the lounge, which had been the waiting area, and searched for an exit. A red dot from a CCTV camera blinked in front of the lounge. The manager’s smoking time and his ID access records would surely be left behind in minute-by-minute detail.

But right now, I didn’t have the presence of mind to worry about that. I felt a desperate urge to leave the hospital before running into Chae Yoonoh or his manager.

‘Damn it… of all times….’

As if my fears had become reality, the manager who had stepped away to smoke was walking from the opposite direction. Just as the flustered Siyeon turned his body to press the elevator’s ‘down’ button, it happened.

— It is the seventh floor.

Timely, the elevator door opened. Thump—I quickly twisted my body to step inside, but because I was in such a hurry, I collided with a passenger already inside.

“Ah! I, I’m sorry.”

Siyeon stepped aside so the man could exit, bowing his head repeatedly to apologize. Then, the man’s breathing hitched for a moment, and I heard him mutter in a low voice.

“…Omega?”

The man, clad in a black suit with a cold impression, was very tall. As if he had caught a whiff of something unpleasant, the man crinkled his nose as he stepped out of the elevator.

By any chance, do I already smell like that heat… that estrus cycle thing?

I really had no time left. The man looked like he was about to say something more, but Siyeon quickly swallowed the inhibitors he had secretly taken on an empty stomach and pressed the ‘close’ button.

Unhit : Omega (Ω) Exclusive Inhibitor

Recommended dosage : 1 pill per day

Caution : Exceeding the standard dosage may amplify side effects and cause permanent disability.

By the time I checked the warning label later, five of the blue pills that suppress heat had already slid down my throat.

I slightly regretted making such a reckless choice, but I figured experiencing a few side effects was better than hitting a full-blown heat right on the street.

‘Now that I think about it, the protagonist took inhibitors, too….’

In the original work, there was an episode where ‘Omega Hong Siyeon’ had ingested a large quantity of the same inhibitor I have now. It was taken to avoid a heat, but unbeknownst to him, a life was already taking root in the protagonist’s womb at the time.

His first pregnancy after spending an estrus cycle with the Alpha couple. The subsequent development was more serious than expected. After terrible abdominal pain and fever, the child in his womb was miscarried, plunging the protagonist into deep guilt and depression.

The inhibitor episode was truly the turning point where 『The Alpha’s Trap』 veered into extreme, bleak territory. From that point on, the protagonist’s spirit, which had been asserting itself at least faintly until then, had been completely broken.

‘Omega Hong Siyeon stopped talking from that moment on.’

In the story, the Alpha couple began to treat the protagonist, who had developed aphasia from the trauma of the miscarriage, strictly as a ‘tool.’ They heaped the guilt of losing their child onto the protagonist, who had been sold into surrogate status, and trampled on his freedom.

The reason the couple broke him and cruelly suppressed him was to burden the protagonist, who had wanted to leave their side, with emotional guilt. However, the result was that the relationship between the Alpha couple and the protagonist was completely ruined.

It could be seen as the decisive moment that severed any budding possibility of them becoming loving partners or a family, cementing them into a vertical relationship of employer and employee—or master and servant.

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not pregnant right now… and I’m not going to see those jerks again anyway.’

Siyeon clutched his lower abdomen, which was inexplicably feeling a warm sensation. He vowed that he would not live the same unfortunate life as the protagonist.

∞ ∞ ∞

“Mister, please drop me off right there.”

Immediately after a quick assessment of the situation, Siyeon rode the elevator down to the front entrance and caught a taxi right away. I had almost run into Chae Yoonoh in the lobby on the first floor, but I managed to slip out secretly by avoiding him while he was busy on a call.

However, since the fifty thousand won I had begged from Chief Kang was my entire fortune, I had to get off in a hurry before the meter hit ten thousand won.

“Damn… now where should I go.”

I’d extinguished the immediate fire, at least. Getting off at a village bus stop, Siyeon rubbed his throbbing forehead. Was it because I overdosed on the inhibitors, or was it the remnants of the heat that had started to manifest?

My whole body was filled with a sense of heat, and my head was spinning. My leg in the temporary cast was aching, so my physical condition was, frankly, at its worst.

‘If I go home, I’ll obviously run into Chief Kang. The intercity bus terminal is dangerous, too. Then what’s left….’

Even after agonizing over where I should run, nothing distinct came to mind. In the first place, the original protagonist, ‘Omega Hong Siyeon,’ was a pitiful fellow who had no acquaintances to ask for help and no safe place to rest his head.

All that surrounded him were the pests drawn by his exceptional beauty or con artists trying to scam his kind-hearted nature. Perhaps because they were labeled with the ‘#submissive’ tag, they only ever thought of taking advantage of the protagonist’s naive and soft-hearted character.

But who am I? Although I share the same name as the protagonist, I am definitely not the type to be a pushover and get taken advantage of. To an orphan with no one to lean on, poverty was something that stuck to me naturally, like breathing. You could say I’m already used to situations where I’m kicked out onto the streets with no money. Siyeon steadied his heart, recalling his bleak past.

‘Stop whimpering and find a way to live.’

It was a shame I didn’t have a phone, but Siyeon decided to make an escape plan to avoid detection by Chief Kang. I planned to create confusion in the route by transferring between public transport as many times as possible to make tracking difficult.

Wondering where it would be wise to go, Siyeon cautiously got on a bus. Heading toward ‘that place’ the protagonist in the original work had never been to.

∞ ∞ ∞

“What brings you here, hyung?”

At the very moment Siyeon was fleeing to avoid the Alpha couple and Chief Kang, Chae Yoonoh, who had been left at the hospital, had just arrived on the floor with the VIP rooms. He was puzzled to have received a call from his spouse, Beom Yisu, with whom he never exchanged private calls.

Legally bound, perhaps, but aren’t they both Dominant Alphas? Since neither felt any romantic attraction, they lived as helpers whose interests were formed by a strategic marriage.

“Is there a problem with me visiting a hospital that I own?”

“You just suddenly called and asked where I was, so I was surprised. Since you never do things like that, I thought your time to die had finally come.”

At Chae Yoonoh’s smooth delivery of the joke, Beom Yisu clamped his mouth shut. Sensing his suspicious behavior today, Chae Yoonoh narrowed his eyes and pressed his spouse on paper.

“Hyung, you’re not actually sick, are you?”

Did he really come to the hospital because he wasn’t feeling well? Chae Yoonoh, feeling rushed himself, approached Beom Yisu, who was standing with a distorted expression while clutching his forehead.

Of course, it wasn’t out of any tender affection or concern. Even though his relationship with Beom Yisu was strictly formal, he had gained quite a lot through this marriage.

Since this was a marriage that had to be maintained for at least the next few years, it was obvious that his position would be disadvantageous if his spouse died now. This fact applied equally to Beom Yisu’s side.

“Fuck, what is this. Are you in heat?”

But that was only for a moment. Beom Yisu’s cold face, seen up close for the first time in a very long while, was flushed with an unidentifiable rosy glow. Chae Yoonoh, having entered his pheromone lounge, felt his stomach churn and began making retching, gagging sounds.

“Don’t go upsetting my stomach. Get away.”

“That’s my line! How old are you that you can’t manage your rut and are acting like this? No matter how much this hospital belongs to you, it’s a nuisance to go around acting like this in public.”

I felt immediately revolted by the faint, aroused Alpha pheromones. On top of that, there were traces of an Omega I had smelled before.

As Chae Yoonoh grumbled and held his nose, Beom Yisu loosened the tie that had been fastened tight to his neck, as if feeling suffocated.

Finally able to breathe, he exhaled faintly and brought up the main topic.

“Where is the Omega you brought in right now?”

“Omega? Ah… you don’t mean, my honey?”

“…Honey?”

“I was wondering why you smelled like an Omega anyway, but don’t tell me you got in heat and laid hands on him?”

“You still talk too much of nothing. Do I look like the type of guy to do something like that to you?”

Beom Yisu glared at Chae Yoonoh, seemingly annoyed by the trivial reproach. Chae Yoonoh just shrugged his shoulders as if it were just a passing comment.

“Well, true. You’re a guy who hates Omegas. You wouldn’t have.”

Beom-young Group, where Beom Yisu serves as the Representative Director, was a global company based on construction, medical facilities, transport, and semiconductors—to the point where people said the domestic market would be paralyzed if it didn’t pass through Beom-young’s hands.

As he held a high position, rumors about him were endless, the most famous being that he was an extreme germaphobe. Of course, some of it was true, but the exact illness Beom Yisu was currently suffering from was ‘Omega Pheromone Rejection Syndrome.’

Chae Yoonoh had also been quite flustered when he learned this fact after the marriage. He himself was a healthy Alpha with standard sexual preferences, but he had even suspected if his strategic marriage partner might be the type to get aroused by Alphas. Of course, that misunderstanding was cleared up not many days later.

“Answer my question first. Where is that Omega you brought in today?”

Beom Yisu asked the same question again. Now that I think about it, Chae Yoonoh didn’t even know his name yet. An Omega I met for the first time, yet somehow my eyes kept drifting to him. It was still just simple curiosity, but my insides twisted at the thought of another Alpha being interested in him.

“This is weird. Why are you looking for him? If you’re trying to interfere with my private life, cut it out.”

As Chae Yoonoh put up a defensive guard based on instinct and postponed answering, Beom Yisu pulled out a stack of documents he had been holding.

A vivid percentage written in red letters.

[Pheromone Matching Rate 100%]

Alphas could not produce offspring with Alphas. Since it was a strategic marriage from the start, it was a foregone conclusion that they would have children through a surrogate. Chae Yoonoh also knew that Beom Yisu, suffering from Pheromone Rejection Syndrome, was conducting separate matching rate tests for an heir, but I didn’t think he would actually find one.

But for it to be… the Omega I had marked as mine—is that truly a coincidence?

“Find that Omega right now and bring him to me.”