Not Knowing This Was Hell

Life has a way of throwing the strangest things at you.

Like getting hit by a car and dying on the very first day of your teaching appointment. Or opening your eyes after death only to find yourself inside a high school romance webtoon you'd been reading out of mild curiosity about your future students.

The school name Seowol High and this distinctive uniform design left no room for doubt. A sky-blue checkered necktie paired with clothing in vibrant colors — a uniform so artistically styled it could only belong in a comic.

Well, I had been reading it until just yesterday.

The problem was that out of a completed 150 episodes, he'd only read up to episode 35. After that, sleepiness had him skimming in a rush, reading in scattered fragments, or simply glancing at the art as he scrolled past. Mostly thinking, Wow, the artist really can draw.

If I'd known this would happen, I would have stayed up all night and finished all 150 episodes.

Who could have guessed he would die that day?

In any case, the owner of this body was named Shin Cha-heon.

Having entered this body, memories began to flow in — who he was, where he had been, what he had done. That sort of thing. Not everything poured in at once; the memories resurfaced in sparse, intermittent fragments.

...We have the same name. Except for the surname.

The original owner of the body, Shin Cha-heon, was a third-year high school student who seemed to have transferred into this comic's school on the first day of the new term.

But more troubling than any of that was the vague memory rising up of something called a "secondary gender."

This body looks male on the outside… but it's similar to a woman's. …So I have female reproductive function and also produce pheromones, as a man?

Even after recalling it, he couldn't make sense of it. He stood there for a long time like a broken robot, then went over it a good fifteen times before he finally understood.

In short, the male and female sexes people had always used were more like a custom skin, while Alpha and Omega were another set of genders determined by internal organs and pheromones. Betas, he guessed, were equivalent to the ordinary men and women of his original world.

Hmm. …So if I simplify it, I basically became a woman? Only the custom is male. And these pheromones come out — like a perfume that seduces men?

After much thought, Cha-heon accepted the conclusion.

Right. Starting today, I'm gay in this world.

Beta women, Omega women — welcome. Standing here was a male-presenting Omega whose looks, at least, he could be ridiculously confident about. End of story.

Since it wasn't his own body to begin with, he had no business thinking about romance. Still, if he had to choose, it seemed wiser to aim for men whose outer appearance was a different sex from his own, while their internal organs preferred the same sex he did.

Having sorted his thoughts that far, Cha-heon checked the date and time on the phone and got ready for school.

Today was Shin Cha-heon's first day transferring into high school. Possession or not, the important point was that this body was a student's — and a student had to go to class.

...Ah. What do I do.

It was thoroughly awkward. Having memories suddenly surface was fine, until an unignorable detail came flooding in right after.

...So Shin Cha-heon was born female, but think of him as a woman without the organs for pregnancy? Is that it?

He packed his bag and stood at the door of his room, only for the revived memories to throw him into confusion again. Cha-heon thought it over carefully, then shook his head.

No. From the start, the secondary gender was Beta. Not just the custom — the sex is male too.

As a Beta he should have been the same as a man from the original world, but being born between an Alpha and an Omega had produced a pheromone-secreting gland inside his body. And of all things, it was an Omega's pheromone gland, not an Alpha's.

So to people with secondary genders like Alphas and Omegas, he registered as an Omega — but if you went strictly by physical condition, he was a Beta male.

...Aha. So that's why I'm a half-baked Beta.

In Cha-heon's memories, a voice — family or acquaintance, he wasn't sure — called him a half-baked Beta brat. Probably Cha-heon's older brother.

...You had it rough too, didn't you. Still a minor.

Shin Cha-heon never appeared in the parts Cha-heon had read, so he was probably Extra Number 40 or so in the comic. But in this life, this person was definitely the protagonist — and so Cha-heon found a goal.

First, let's try calling the original Shin Cha-heon back here. Should I buy a book on necromancy or something?

Maybe because, while packing Shin Cha-heon's things earlier, he'd spotted the word "necromancy" on one of the books on the shelf. Holding onto that ridiculous thought, he walked all the way out the door.

Thud—

"Ah, fuck!"

"……."

Lost in thought as he walked, he collided with someone. The other person spat out a rough curse and began to glare at Cha-heon with a menacing look.

"Ah, this dumbass Beta bastard — is your eyesight fucking halved too?"

Startled by the raw stream of curses, Cha-heon stared blankly ahead and saw a sleek young man in casual clothes. A handsome man with a slightly sharp, unfinished edge to his looks. …There was a strange sense of familiarity. This was probably Cha-heon's older brother.

"Hey. I told you to keep your eyes down when you walk."

…What was he supposed to do? Lower his eyes, or look properly?

...This kid is insane. Completely insane…

Cha-heon glanced at him once, tossed out an apology, and decided to head for school. As a rule, one did not even converse with the mad.

More than that — this house is ridiculously grand.

Looking around, he saw the textbook image of a wealthy household. Cha-heon's room was on the first floor, but there was a separate staircase leading up to the second floor in the center, and the first floor itself was so broadly divided that it felt enormous.

"Shin Cha-heon."

He'd briefly zoned out when someone called his name. Turning around, he found a middle-aged man in a suit watching him near the front door — the kind of man who must have been popular in his youth.

"…Ah. Fath—er…"

Well over 180 centimeters, with a solid, uncluttered build, the man radiated a thoroughly intellectual air. His pitch-black eyes assessed Shin Cha-heon.

"How is your body?"

…How was his body?

Some kind of morning greeting…?

"I—I'm fine."

"Good. Let's go down. I'll drive you to school."

It was so oppressive that on first meeting he almost refused out of pure reflex — then realized that if this was how things had always been, refusing would look even stranger. Cha-heon answered obediently and followed the man.

Ah, but having the same given name as me is still kind of unsettling.

It wasn't a common name, so the overlap was jarring.

...Mm. From now on I'll stick the surname on and call him Shin Cha-heon. Shin Cha-heon. Yeah. Shin Cha-heon.

He had no idea what he was doing talking to himself like this.

Maybe it was because the class he would have been assigned right after his teaching appointment was high school kids. He couldn't help feeling a little concerned.

For now, on Day One of Project Restore Shin Cha-heon's Soul, Cha-heon intended to give school life his best effort until the day the original Shin Cha-heon returned.

Not knowing this was the beginning of hell.

That plan to do school life well hit a snag from the very start. In this world, a Dominant Omega was clearly the equivalent of a female idol.

Piecing the memories together, Shin Cha-heon was a Beta — but the pheromones his gland produced happened to be those of a Dominant Omega. Scattered recollections of serious flirting even in middle school surfaced because of it.

Of all things, why did the pheromones coming out of Shin Cha-heon's body have to be dominant.

As far as he could tell, this pheromone system grew more seductive to the opposite sex the higher it ranked from recessive to dominant. Roughly speaking, it felt similar to how better-looking people were more popular — pheromones seemed to work along those same lines.

...He transferred, right? Only ten days into the new term.

…And.

The number of times I've been hit on by guys is already five.

Until he arrived at high school, nothing particularly strange had happened. Feeling guilty about showing up as a student instead of a teacher was one thing, but his classmates seemed decent, and adapting to school hadn't looked difficult — until the ones called Alphas started taking an interest. That was when everything went sideways.

Getting a confession every other day was bad enough, but the Beta kids seemed uncomfortable around those Alphas and had begun avoiding Cha-heon the moment the Alphas started clustering around him.

...I'm going to lose my mind.

Worse still was the fact that Cha-heon did not like men. The only ones who could smell these pheromones were Alphas — and Alphas, of either sex, seemed to come equipped with externally protruding genitalia.

In other words, whether they look male or female on the outside, both of them are guys with that attached.

To put it bluntly, from Cha-heon's perspective even a female-presenting Alpha was just a man wearing a woman custom.

There was a reason his whole body recoiled with instinctive revulsion and goosebumps when a pretty-faced girl asked if he was interested in going out. Of course he had no intention of dating a minor either, but the one thing he was sure of was that his skin had broken out in full chicken flesh.

Be that as it may, under these circumstances Cha-heon began adapting to this world without major incident — except for being treated like a ghost at home.

Though they had every reason to treat me like a ghost.

He remembered later: originally he had lived with his birth mother, and after her death Shin Cha-heon had come here following the man called his father, Shin Chae-il. He had been staying in this house for quite some time. Then, for some reason a year ago, he had left school and was only now returning.

His father, Shin Chae-il, at least paid some attention to him — but even that felt awkward.

After all, this man already had a proper family, and in the end he was the one who had an affair and produced Shin Cha-heon.

...Anyway, in that house he wasn't just cold leftovers — he was a stone underfoot. And now I get why that sharp-edged friend hates me.

Shin Cha-heon was a kid with a lot of baggage.

Anyway. The truth was that his original body was either dead or in a coma, so he had already tried to return this body to Shin Cha-heon and find some way out himself.

Even if Cha-heon himself was dead, this body wasn't his — it had to go back to the student.

First I have to meet the kid…. Ah, where on earth did this one go.

Because of that, he'd even bought a necromancy book at night and tried a summoning. Summon, my ass. He wanted to sue every single person who'd written that book for fraud.

Shin Cha-heon's precious hundred thousand won. I'm sorry. If I can pay it back, I will.

…That was blood money to a student. His heart felt heavy.

But the real problem started when this world's sub male lead appeared. On Day 33 of being in this world, Cha-heon met an unexpected ambush.

"Ah! Please, why are you doing this?"

"Hyeong, go out with me, okay? I'll treat you so well for real."

Cha-heon was desperately shoving away the large young man clinging to him. Until now, every Alpha brat had backed off when he refused — but this one stuck to him on a completely different level.

This was Baek Yu-gyeong, Sub Male Lead Number One of this high-teen romance world. For the record, his role had definitely not been a good one. Cha-heon had only read up to episode 35, but Yu-gyeong was the type who bullied a friend until things went sour with the female lead — and after that he would keep locking horns with her, wearing that chilling expression.