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Kim Dokja’s new life had been quite peaceful to this point.
It was often the case in the isekai stories he read that those who had been isekai’d into different worlds would see themselves to terrible fates. Reincarnating as a villain, reincarnating as some monster, or reincarnating as an inanimate object were some of the things he’d briefly seen on his foray through novel websites. Of course, he preferred to read more sophisticated literature—as in, dungeon-crawling literary RPGs, chock full of meaningless stats and levelling—but he still retained knowledge of the few novels and manhwas he’s read with isekai plotlines.
In the case of isekai candidates, Kim Dokja had found himself pretty lucky. Not only had he been reincarnated as a noble, but he had also seemed to retain his name and appearance from his previous life. It made adjusting to his new life a breeze. Since he had no lingering attachments to his previous world anyway, it had been a rather smooth transition, if he said so himself.
Well, his life has been peaceful. Barring one particularly stubborn king, who had a penchant for tacking his full government name onto every sentence uttered out of his bastard mouth.
“Your Majesty,” Kim Dokja says, jaw set. “Please refrain from leaving your post so often. The rest of the kingdom needs you.”
As a lower-ranked noble, the King shouldn’t need to seek him out so often. And yet he does, pestering Kim Dokja with meaningless tasks, all the while drawing attention to Kim Dokja’s humble life. It has made his time working at the palace practically a living hell.
Kim Dokja hadn’t even done anything wrong to the guy. Other than, perhaps, disrespecting him more than once when they had first met. In his defense though, how was he supposed to know that that broody motherfucker was the King?
The sight of the royal carriage sitting outside his doorstep each morning has grown to become a common sight, giving Kim Dokja a greater migraine than necessary. Yoo Joonghyuk was apparently well-versed in psychological torture tactics, choosing to pick up Kim Dokja every single day from his humble abode, instead of letting him find a carriage himself to the palace.
Every time Kim Dokja tries to avoid getting in, Yoo Joonghyuk simply makes the carriage follow right behind him. After having the entire town’s gaze on his hunched body, Kim Dokja ended up relenting and choosing to hop into the carriage instead. Either way, all eyes end up latching onto him each morning, whether he likes it or not.
He just wanted a simple life after transmigrating, damn it!
Yoo Joonghyuk’s lips are set in a tight line. “You haven’t completed your task.”
Of course, because of the King’s pestering, Kim Dokja still has to work, even while he’s in a different world. As if just tormenting him alone wasn’t enough.
“Do you mean the budgeting?” Kim Dokja blinks. “It’s over there. To your right. You would’ve…”
His voice peters out as soon as Yoo Joonghyuk steps even an inch closer, his face coming close to Kim Dokja’s own. His flawless, tanned skin comes into view, each strand of his curled black hair swaying right in front of Kim Dokja’s face.
Kim Dokja backs away, his cheeks growing hot. Shit.
A whiff of Yoo Joonghyuk’s scent hits his nose before he recoils fast enough. At that faint smell, Kim Dokja feels heat pool in his stomach.
The one mystery that Kim Dokja hasn’t been able to decipher after transmigrating to this world is why his body heats up in the presence of this bastard. Nor why he smells so good.
“Ugh…” Kim Dokja mumbles.
Since he had isekai’d into this world, he’s gathered exposure to all different types of fragrances. It seemed in this world, perfume was something more valued than life itself. It’s a cultural thing, Kim Dokja had reasoned—but it still posed a hindrance to his work occasionally, when the scents had grown too pungent for his sensitive nose.
In this case, Yoo Joonghyuk’s scent seems to seep into every pore of his body—an unavoidable presence, even if he rears his head and filters the air through a cloth placed by his nose.
“You.” Yoo Joonghyuk grabs his chin, tilting his face from side-to-side. Kim Dokja has no clue what’s gotten into this bastard now.
Is it normal in this world for the King to harass people?
“What about me…?” Kim Dokja hisses. In an attempt to jerk his head away, he pulls backwards, almost falling straight onto the floor. Fortunately—or rather, unfortunately—Yoo Joonghyuk catches him with a well-timed arm to his waist.
This has the effect of bringing their faces even closer than they had been before. Kim Dokja can practically count each individual eyelash on Yoo Joonghyuk’s face at this distance.
“Kim Dokja,” Yoo Joonghyuk breathes. His eyes are dark, his glower practically molten. His warm breath fans across Kim Dokja’s face. His scent bathes Kim Dokja in a feverish haze that seems to overtake his body. “Do you wish for the entire kingdom to lust after you?”
What the hell is this guy on about?
Kim Dokja can’t even open his mouth fully before Yoo Joonghyuk buries his head against the crook of Kim Dokja’s shoulder, taking a deep sniff into his freshly ironed clothes.
“Ugh—you—!”
Kim Dokja pushes both of his palms against the King’s clothes. He doesn’t care if it’s treason or not to wrinkle his priceless uniform like this—not when Yoo Joonghyuk is acting completely nonsensical.
“Did you hide it?” Yoo Joonghyuk growls, “Your heat. Why did you come to work in this state?”
“What?”
What the fuck is this guy talking about?
Baffled is a complete understatement for how Kim Dokja feels. Yoo Joonghyuk meets his gaze, releasing a signature huff as he does so.
“You fool.” Yoo Joonghyuk grabs his chin again. Kim Dokja’s flailing does nothing against his hold. For some damn reason, Yoo Joonghyuk’s presence alone has somehow sapped all the strength from his body. “Are you not even aware of your own body? You’re in pre-heat.”
Kim Dokja takes more than a second to process his words, his body melting in Yoo Joonghyuk’s hold. He sucks in a sharp breath, before he finally sighs. His eyes still maintain their dazed glance on Yoo Joonghyuk’s visage.
He blinks at Yoo Joonghyuk. In response, Yoo Joonghyuk grabs his chin harder.
“You’re in pre-heat, Kim Dokja,” he repeats.
Kim Dokja blinks again.
What is this guy saying…?
“I’m in what?”
“Pre-heat.”
Kim Dokja gives Yoo Joonghyuk a blank look. Is repeating the phrase somehow supposed to make it stick?
What…?
He blinks, but Yoo Joonghyuk hasn’t averted his gaze from him. His lips are pressed in a tight line, his grip on his chin strengthening. Kim Dokja’s lips are forced closed with the force of his grasp, puffing out uncomfortably like a fish.
With Yoo Joonghyuk’s statement in the air, though, his grip isn’t even one of the biggest issues Kim Dokja has to tackle at the moment. He shouldn’t have expected anything else from this bastard, though. Elaboration is a lost art in this world, it seemed.
Does Yoo Joonghyuk think he’s a rabbit? Or an oven? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Kim Dokja massages his brow between his index and his thumb. He exhales in an attempt to reduce the burning warmth that courses through his body. With renewed strength in his arms, he finally manages to push Yoo Joonghyuk away from him, if only to rid himself of the agonizing fever he’s been afflicted with.
“Ugh, fuck…” he mutters. Yoo Joonghyuk still hasn’t averted his gaze from Kim Dokja, his glare scalding. He sucks in a breath, composing himself.
“Go back to managing your kingdom, Your Majesty. I believe it would do you better than indulging in these strange fantasies.”
No, really. If this guy starts spewing even more nonsense, Kim Dokja’s going to truly lose it all.
“Kim Dokja.” Yoo Joonghyuk takes another step forward. As if he hadn’t separated from Kim Dokja at all, his arm slots perfectly back on Kim Dokja’s waist, caging him in.
“Wh-what?”
Kim Dokja can’t pay attention to anything else with Yoo Joonghyuk’s face in front of him. Something in those eyes screams danger, forcing alarm bells to ring in Kim Dokja’s head. But, the scent around him makes his legs more useless than jelly, his knees nearly collapsing on him.
“Have you never taken a sexual education class?” Paired with that gaze, the harsh exhales of Yoo Joonghyuk’s breath on his skin, and the all-consuming scent suffusing his entire body, Kim Dokja feels like prey caught in a trap.
Is this some strange flirting method?
Kim Dokja swallows dryly. He suppresses a squeak that threatens to escape his lips as Yoo Joonghyuk somehow moves even closer. “What the hell does sexual education have to do with this?”
With another huff—as if Yoo Joonghyuk hadn’t huffed enough today—he says, “You’re an omega, Kim Dokja.”
What the hell…
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Kim Dokja’s brain stops for a solid three seconds—and this time, it’s not caused by Yoo Joonghyuk’s proximity towards his face.
Omega… omega… What the fuck could that possibly mean? Fucking omega? The last time he heard anything like that was when he was studying for physics during his CSAT years.
Yoo Joonghyuk tended to say shitty things, but the shitty things he’d say would absolutely make sense. This time, Kim Dokja must be the one missing something if he doesn’t understand this bastard.
There’s a faint inkling at the back of Kim Dokja’s mind. He should know what it means.
The feeling of realization hits him sooner than he expects.
In his past life, back when he’d been trying to stave off boredom, he picked up a plethora of trashy novels. Of course, in his time reading, he tended to forget details—the plots of many books so similar they ended up combining in his brain. As such, browsing wiki pages was a necessary task for a web novel connoisseur like him.
Searching up the names of web novels, of course, sometimes tended to return a few unsavory results, to say the least. One of those being fan-created content—of the raunchy kind, in particular.
Back then, he’d always known about fanfiction, but perhaps that day he’d been more curious than usual. The web novel he’d forgotten hadn’t been the most engaging in the first place, so perhaps that was what had prompted him to even begin thinking about how others perceived the plotline. Or that’s what he ended up telling himself.
Either way, in some way or another, he ended up clicking on a link that led him to what he’d personally describe as a strange piece of internet literature.
After clicking on it, reading through juvenile prose, continuing to read in spite of the increasingly racy scenes with characters he didn’t even remember, he sorely regretted his decision in the first place.
In that moment, he’d learned the true meaning of the phrase ‘curiosity kills the cat.’
But, he’d also learned something else. Something he’d repressed until now.
Something something, omegaverse, something something, male pregnancy, something something, alphas and omegas.
It’s all he can remember from that terrifying ordeal. But something much more prominent was the fact that this alpha-omega-omegaverse nonsense was essentially a second gender thing.
Thinking back… omegas and alphas were mentioned suspiciously often in the history books Kim Dokja had picked up, hadn’t they? And in the fiction books he’d read. And on the signs and posters he’d see plastered around town. And practically everywhere he looked.
Shit.
No, nobody could blame him for his ignorance. He just thought that this world had a strange propensity towards mathematics. Not that he’d suddenly gained an extra gender.
He can’t ponder on that thought any longer before Yoo Joonghyuk snatches him up, both arms practically squeezing the life out of him.
“You’re getting a day off today.” Yoo Joonghyuk slings him across his shoulder, drawing a sharp yelp from his throat. His hands clasp uselessly, trying to find grip on Yoo Joonghyuk’s clothes. His legs kick up a storm. Still, Yoo Joonghyuk remains standing—and even worse, he’s begun to move.
“Hey—! What… where—why the hell are you coming with me if it’s my day off?”
“I’m making sure,” Yoo Joonghyuk pauses, “that you rest.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Let me down, you brat!”
In the end, Kim Dokja somehow found himself in the same bed as the King.
“Is… this really necessary?” Kim Dokja flicks his gaze to Yoo Joonghyuk, who has found himself seated right behind Kim Dokja, embracing him while he’s surrounded by enough blankets and pillows to keep the entirety of the continent warm.
“It is.” Yoo Joonghyuk tightens his grasp on Kim Dokja, digging his face into the crook of Kim Dokja’s neck. “Omegas need an alpha’s scent during pre-heat for their own health. If I let you neglect your health, your work will end up worse than it is now.”
Kim Dokja leans his head back, biting down a curse. Even in this state, Yoo Joonghyuk finds every opening possible to insult his work ethic. Given all that he’s done, he’s not even that bad at his damn job!
He sighs.
Well. Still, he isn’t one to argue with the King, is he? (He absolutely is, but…)
If he’s being honest with himself—the proposition of Yoo Joonghyuk’s scent around him is something he couldn’t reject in a million years. If Kim Dokja really tried, it’d take him a century to find someone who could reject such a thing in this entire kingdom.
He sinks his head back onto Yoo Joonghyuk’s shoulder.
A day off is a day off, even if he has to spend it with his bastard employer, who just so happens to be the King of the entire kingdom.