L*st and Death

Baek Kyung glared at Anna, clearly irritated by her barrage of questions.

“Cut it out. Keep acting like that and I’ll just walk away from this whole thing.”

“You can’t!”

Panicking as if her most precious possession was about to be stolen, Anna rushed to the table, grabbed the case with the rut suppressant, and distanced herself from Baek Kyung.

“I’m not giving this to you.”

“Huh?”

“Just make Lewis do it! Anything, as long as it’s not a crime!”

“Anna, why do you get to decide that?”

Baek Kyung lifted his head toward the grumbling voice coming from upstairs.

The rapist—Lewis—had just finished a shower and was casually walking down the central staircase that connected the second floor to the ground-level lobby.

“Shut up and find Yoon Siron!”

Anna snapped irritably, cutting off her brother’s resistance.

“How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

“...I don’t know.”

Anna glanced at Baek Kyung and muttered in a tone that betrayed her uncertainty.

“But he might know.”

Even someone as indifferent to others’ opinions as Baek Kyung didn’t enjoy being treated like a clueless idiot. Still, there was no way he could admit he was planning to use Lewis as a tracking dog, so he bluffed.

“I don’t really have a plan either.”

At his irresponsible answer, both Anna and Lewis shouted at once.

“What?”

“What did you say?”

Faced with the siblings’ sharp glares, Baek Kyung smoothly adjusted his statement.

“I meant we’ll just start by poking around. If we figure out Yoon Siron’s commute route, we can at least track down where he lives.”

Anna, clearly unimpressed, sighed heavily. Like a teacher assigning a project, she shifted the mood and refocused the two men’s attention.

“Actually, I heard something from the Curry King owner today. Apparently, Yoon Siron always used the free trolley for his commute.”

“The free bus?”

“Not a bus—technically it’s a trolley car. I checked. Luckily, there’s only one free route that passes a stop within fifteen minutes’ distance of Curry King. Since public area CCTV doesn’t require a warrant, we might be able to get the footage. We can start searching from there. I can help with that.”

It was a promising lead. If they could identify which stop Siron got off at after work, Baek Kyung’s tracking hound could sniff out the surrounding area and pinpoint his home with ease.

Baek Kyung stared coldly at Lewis, who was towel-drying his wet hair. Despite having his face nearly bashed in by Baek Kyung, Lewis still wore that vacant, dazed look—an expression that seemed to believe the world would never truly harm him.

Is he actually just a dumb bastard?

Baek Kyung couldn’t make the calculation. The conversation he’d had with Isaac about “superior alphas” kept nagging at him.

He didn’t like the idea of being tied to Lewis through the suppressant. This guy didn’t even know what an omega was, yet he’d managed to track Siron all the way to Curry King just by following traces during his rut. That alone showed the terrifying obsession an alpha could develop toward their “mate.”

And if too much time passed and Siron manifested fully as an omega, Baek Kyung might not only have to deal with Isaac Bazelli and Lewis McCarthy—but countless alphas.

If it came to that, Yoon Siron would be destroyed. Some alphas, unable to possess him, would inevitably try to ruin him so that no one else could have him either.

“Omega pheromones—there’s no alpha on Earth that doesn’t react to that pure chemical signal. And the pheromones released during an omega’s heat? They completely activate the Class-X sensory receptors in an alpha. It creates a kind of shock, something they’ve never felt before—drives them into a frenzy for reproduction.

And knotting? It’s a physiological reaction where the tip of the alpha’s cock swells up like a canid’s inside the omega to increase the chance of conception. It forms an invisible link between them.

...You don’t believe me, do you? Why? Do you feel like you’re the protagonist of some filthy, perverted novel?”

Baek Kyung recalled the lively, curious face of the man who had turned him into an alpha, who had flipped his entire life upside down. The image of that man’s aged, wrinkled face made him want to laugh for some reason.

Yoon Siron, an omega. The very man Baek Kyung had believed was his destiny... and he turned out to be the omega—the only salvation for all alphas.

Baek Kyung wanted him. Desperately. He wanted to be the protagonist of that filthy, perverted novel.

So he had to find Yoon Siron—before anyone else figured out what he was.

“Let’s go. Now.”

But Anna ignored Baek Kyung’s urgency. With a mischievous smile, she dragged him to the mirror near the lobby.

“I get that you’re in a rush, but maybe clean yourself up first? If you walk around looking like that, people’ll think Halloween came early.”

In the mirror stood a man looking like he’d been dumped in a sack of flour—pale as a ghost. Despite sweating buckets in a suit under thirty-degree heat and sleeping in his car, even Baek Kyung had to admit it: he looked absolutely disgusting, like something no one would ever want to touch.

Five minutes later, freshly showered and clean-shaven, Baek Kyung stuffed the sandwich Anna handed him down his throat. Jittering with impatience, he urged Anna and Lewis to hurry up and eat. Finally, they rose from the table.

“Move it! We need to get to the 77th Street stop in fifteen minutes.”

“Fuck’s sake! If we miss it, we’ll just chase it down, so stop yelling! I’m starting the damn car!”

Infuriated by Baek Kyung’s relentless nagging, Anna shouted back as she climbed into the driver’s seat.

Whether it was Baek Kyung’s pressure or her own rush, Anna ended up speeding toward the 77th Street trolley stop—Siron’s usual boarding point, and the one closest to Anna’s house.

As they neared their destination, they spotted a blue trolley car—looking more like a toy train—chugging toward the stop in the distance. They pulled over hastily between the sidewalk and the road, then ran for the platform.

“We’re investigating a missing persons case. Could we review your CCTV footage?”

Letting the other passengers, Lewis, and Baek Kyung board first, Anna flashed her badge to the driver as she climbed aboard.

The driver carefully compared the badge photo to her face, then looked back at the passengers, awkwardly smiling.

“Well... we are in the middle of a run...”

The passengers stared curiously at Anna and the driver. She realized she couldn’t reasonably halt the trolley mid-route for an indeterminate video review. She backed off.

“You could just give me the memory storage. We’re looking for footage from between ten and seven days ago.”

The driver reached toward a hidden monitor under the dashboard but paused at the time frame she gave.

“Ah, sorry. We don’t store footage that old onboard. You’d have to visit headquarters or send an official request.”

“Oh—right, of course.”

Anna flushed bright red. In her rush under Baek Kyung’s pressure, she’d made an embarrassingly basic mistake, forgetting standard access procedures.

As awkward silence filled the air, the driver glanced nervously at an Asian man nearby who was watching them wide-eyed, then offered timidly:

“Would... would you like the number for the main office?”

Anna’s expression turned uneasy—she clearly wanted to keep this low-profile. Before she could respond, Baek Kyung cut in, exasperated.

“Do you recognize this guy?”

He shoved his phone toward the driver’s face. On-screen was a photo of Siron, staring blankly at the camera.

“This guy supposedly rode this bus—or trolley, or whatever—for work.”

Baek Kyung might be an asshole, but he wasn’t the kind of idiot who judged others based on his own stupidity. Still, to him, the McCarthy siblings seemed undeniably dumber than he was. Anna, meanwhile, felt convinced that Baek Kyung had somehow infected her with his dumbass virus and blamed him for the humiliating misstep.

While the two exchanged invisible barbs, the driver, squinting at the photo, suddenly lifted his head with a warm smile.

“Oh, I know this person.”

Anna and Baek Kyung spoke at once.

“You do?”

“You recognize him?”

“Yes, he stood out. Asians are pretty rare in Baggers City, after all...”

Staring at the face in the photo, the driver asked, visibly concerned:

“...Is this the missing person?”

Baek Kyung nodded.

“That’s him. Do you remember which stop he used?”

Anna jumped in to clarify.

“He commuted between ten in the morning and one in the afternoon. We want to know where he got on.”

With the narrowed timeframe, the driver recalled right away.

“I remember now. He boarded at Little River. No doubt about it.”

“Thank you so much. That’s a crucial lead.”

Anna looked to Baek Kyung beside her, then over to Lewis seated nearby, watching them.

“Got it? From here, it’s your job to track him down. I’ll join when I can.”

Then, with a sudden seriousness, she added:

“And whatever happens—don’t fight.”

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