I didn’t think they were in a worse position than Betas. It wasn’t a subject you could judge rashly.
My brother let out a small laugh and lightened the gravity of what I’d been saying.
“You know that line. If women are from Venus and men are from Mars, then Betas are from Pluto, and Alphas and Omegas might as well be from an entirely different solar system. Of course it’s hard to understand each other. I don’t even know what it feels like to live your whole life without the influence of pheromones.”
He lifted his shoulders in a shrug.
Taken literally, that was true. Because of structural differences in the body and the countless differences that branch out from there, it was bound to be hard for people to understand one another. Even setting pheromones aside, humans were divided into innumerable strata by nationality, culture, age, income, occupation, and level of education, and conflict between members of different strata was everywhere.
Society was built in a structure so complicated that people who spoke with one voice under one rubric as members of the same class, for the sake of the same interests, would under a different rubric become members of different classes and end up on opposing sides—and that happened often.
When my thoughts started reaching too far and I lifted my glass for another sip of wine to pull them back, the phone I’d left on the table gave a small buzz. The vibration was short—probably a messenger alert.
“It’s fine, go ahead and check.”
There was no reason for an urgent message to arrive, and we were in the middle of a conversation, so I hadn’t meant to look. But Inwoo pointed at the phone first and encouraged me to check it.
While I read the message, he leaned in with open curiosity. That playful smile of his looked ready to spill over the corner of his lips.
“What’s it say?”
“They’re asking if I’ll be late tonight.”
“Hm... Telling you to come home early? Only drink a little?”
“No, they don’t micromanage me like that.”
As I typed a reply into the chat—so... late, I’ll... be...—I glanced up at him. The face that had looked cheerful until then changed in an instant. Disappointment was written all over it.
“Lau Weikun. Not him?”
“Uh... it’s the chief.”
I didn’t know what made Inwoo so sure the sender would be him, but he grimaced as if genuinely let down.
While I took a sip of wine, another message came in from the chief right away. He asked if I was free for dinner tomorrow night. I sent a reply and flipped the phone face down again.
I looked at him slumped against the armrest like someone who’d just confirmed it wasn’t a lover’s message he’d been waiting for, and forced myself to speak first. I felt a strange responsibility to steer us back to the topic as quickly as possible.
“So Betas, then—they can’t detect pheromones at all.”
He shrugged once and sat up straight again.
“There are lots of movies and dramas where a Beta exposed to an Alpha’s or Omega’s pheromones describes it as an intoxicating scent... but that’s fantasy. Based on current research, it’s impossible for a Beta to detect pheromones or respond to them. Impossible.”
By repeating the word, Inwoo emphasized there wasn’t the slightest possibility.
Pheromones are transmitted through the nose, but they don’t act on the sense of smell itself. A Beta can’t even perceive the smell of pheromones. —Most information online said the same.
Still, dissenting opinions showed up now and then. And the comments under those opinions inevitably turned into heated debates, most of them condemning sentimental speculation for distorting verified facts.
“In an experiment where male mice had the vomeronasal organ disabled and were then observed, they exhibited sexual behavior toward both females and males. That’s evidence the organ reacts to female pheromones and prompts courtship specifically toward females. It also means pheromones heavily influence sexual behavior.”
An employee came over to refill his empty glass, and our conversation paused.
I tossed a meaningless stare at the rich, dark red liquid filling the clear bowl and recalled a few anecdotes I’d seen online. Most of them followed the same pattern—stories, or stories claiming to be experiences.
There’s an Alpha or an Omega in the office, and then a suddenly sweet fragrance floods the nose so hard your knees give out and you find yourself clinging to them, and it can only be explained as a deliberate pheromone release to seduce—those “experiences” from Betas online might have been fictions built on lies or exaggerations, but the fact remained: I had felt his scent thicken all at once and had been swept by a pleasure far outside ordinary bounds.
Or was my own experience nothing more than a Beta’s fanciful fiction with a sentimental gloss?
As soon as his glass was refilled and the employee withdrew, he tilted it back and drank it down as briskly as if it were beer. Then he looked at me and smiled.
“If a Beta feels sexual desire for some Alpha or Omega... that just means you’re drawn to that person, period. Not because of pheromones.”
I couldn’t tell whether he’d sensed the extent of my feelings and was speaking to them, or whether he was teasing me on a hunch, or whether he had no intention at all and I was the only one getting jumpy. I couldn’t sort out or be sure of my own feelings either, so I pretended not to notice and washed them down with wine.
“When you get nervous you keep drinking whatever’s in front of you.” —I had to concede his observation was precise.
“Alpha, Omega, Beta—before gender, we’re human. Live together and you can be attracted regardless of primary or secondary sex. Betas sleep together without pheromones too, swayed by looks and without feelings. That’s life. You don’t have to go through pheromones for Alphas and Betas, Omegas and Betas, Alphas and Omegas to... lock eyes, date, have a one-night stand. Right? We’re all human first.”
He wasn’t scolding me, but there was a trace of mockery in his tone toward people who treat Alphas or Omegas like beasts enslaved to sex. He cracked a nut whose shell he’d crushed earlier, popped the kernel into his mouth, and went on.
“If the only way you feel sexual desire is by pheromone activity... that’s a bit too savage, isn’t it? Then you’re no different from a mouse that mounts anything when its vomeronasal organ breaks. Alphas and Omegas can be drawn to someone regardless of pheromones.”
If I, a Beta who can’t detect pheromones, could be attracted to an Alpha, then the reverse would be true as well. But probably... in sexual allure an Omega’s pheromones would be unbeatable.
Shushu came to mind.
Even if I couldn’t sense the artist’s pheromones, he was an attractive person in himself. Compared to an Omega already sufficiently compelling without any help from pheromones, no matter how strong someone’s personal charm was, wouldn’t a Beta seem like a flat black-and-white film to an Alpha?
I startled at myself for making a ridiculous comparison between Shushu and me. Not because we weren’t even in the same league (though that was true), but because—what was that comparison for... The feeling I’d been hiding felt exposed, and I flinched.
“Oh, there’s a prime example right next to you. An Alpha who has a sex life without pheromones.”
He swallowed his wine in a hurry and tapped the table lightly. Then added:
“Phantom’s director.”
“......”
“He says he never opens pheromones to a bed partner. I wouldn’t know; I’ve never slept with him. But with a face, pull, and money like Lau Weikun’s, he wouldn’t need pheromones. Anyway, he’s a bit fastidious about that stuff.”
I vaguely remembered Inwoo teasing him the day I first drank wine at that Spanish-style bar. I’d known even less about Alphas and Omegas then, but Inwoo had joked that pheromones had to circulate to function properly, so he should release his and take in some Omega’s, too.
“He probably just wants to be different from lab mice.”
With a look I couldn’t read—mocking his fastidiousness or admiring it—he said that and crooked one corner of his mouth into a smile.
“He was a bit odd about that even back in school. He basically went to an Alpha/Omega-only school in all but name, so Betas were rarer on campus. There, an Alpha’s sense of entitlement is standard, and most of them try to coast on it. But he acted like being an Alpha was a complex. Plenty of guys looked down on him for putting on airs.”
I’d heard about it in the piece on Shushu—Hong Kong’s special schools for Alphas and Omegas. From everything I’d heard, he, Inwoo, and Shushu were all alumni of that school. As if recalling a stormy adolescence they’d weathered together, he stared down at a point on the table for a moment, then lifted his head and grinned.
“The funny part is, because he hated being jerked around by pheromones, he worked so hard on control that he ended up a top-tier Golden Alpha. Even aside from that, his genes made for strong Alpha traits, so he had good conditions—but control can’t be perfected by genetics alone. Ah, is this getting too technical?”
“No. I’ve... heard the gist.”
“From Gwon Juhan?”
When I nodded, he gave a knowing little laugh. Along with the advice that if I wanted accurate knowledge about Alphas and Omegas, I should let half of what Juhan says go in one ear and out the other.
“How was I? Did I do okay? As a man of letters.”
The way he tipped his chin up, half-showing off, made me laugh.
“Yeah. Way more helpful than Wikipedia. Thank you.”
“I’m not usually this diligent about explaining things. I’m only pretending to be especially kind because it’s you.”
I thanked him again; I couldn’t tell if he meant it or was joking. Whether he only “pretended to be kind” with me or not, I had, in fact, been treated kindly.
“Anything else you’re curious about?”
My questions about that night no longer had any reason to remain doubts, but there were other questions left. I hesitated at his prompt, then spoke. If I didn’t ask now, I doubted I’d have another chance.
“Before... why did you think I was an Alpha?”
“......”
His gaze and expression hardened, subtly. The next second, a sly smile aimed itself at me.
“Can I be honest?”
I nodded.
“I found you alluring.”
I’d told him to be honest, but the unfamiliar word made my face heat. Alluring... I had never once applied that assessment to myself.
“It’s not easy to be that drawn to someone when you know nothing about them... I couldn’t sense any pheromones at all, so you obviously weren’t an Omega. Then the default assumption is Alpha. That’s what I figured. Alphas and Omegas have a kind of pull that’s hard to explain in words even if they don’t release pheromones.”
From our first meeting he’d shown such interest that °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° it flustered me, but because he was so direct I’d read it as a joke. Even now he used the word allure, but I couldn’t tell whether it meant sincere attraction or was just a way to label the feeling. From the beginning until now he’d stayed exactly at that ambiguous distance, never coming closer.
“But that’s my side of it; I don’t know why Kun sensed you as an Omega. He’s a top-tier Golden Alpha—he almost never misidentifies Alpha, Omega, or Beta. You’ll be his first.”
His words sounded sweet at a glance, but being first didn’t automatically make something meaningful. Because I wasn’t an Omega but a Beta, I would be remembered by him as the first mistake.
He had been my first sexual partner. Seen that way, we each left one first with the other. The thought was so silly it made me smile.
What had made me plunge into a terrifyingly extreme pleasure near the brink of climax that night hadn’t felt like a simple scent.
But Inwoo’s explanation and the verified material said this: even if he deliberately opened his pheromones, as a Beta you couldn’t react to them—let alone feel arousal—you couldn’t even perceive their bouquet.
It was only possible between an Alpha and an Omega. Their language from another solar system could not be understood by a Beta. No—before that, a Beta couldn’t even hear what language they were speaking.
Juhan’s claim that someone like the director could trigger pheromone effects in a Beta if he really wanted to was nothing more than one of those baseless rumors you see online.
And if his rule—his fastidiousness—was never to open pheromones to a bed partner, then even if I had been an Omega, there’s no way he would have released them that night. The bold responses I’d shown were most likely nothing but my own passion for sex. No—by this point there was no need to speak in probabilities. I should just admit it cleanly.
I’d wondered for days whether the overwhelming focus and injected pleasure I felt with him in bed had been the influence of pheromones, but even if it had been, nothing would change.
As I’d already admitted, whispering filth into his ear and surrendering myself to extreme pleasure that night was an unexpected side of me, but not refusing him when he climbed onto the bed—was entirely my choice.
And now even the hypothesis was unnecessary. There were no pheromones.
His scent was just a scent.
