Scent of the Eighth Idol

You wake before the alarm because Byeol has decided your hair is a mouse.

Her claws knead the pillow beside your ear. The sound is wet and patient. You lie still in the dark and let her work, because the apartment is cold and her small brown weight against your skull is the only warmth you can afford. The baseboard heater ticks when it tries to turn on. It doesn't. It hasn't since February. You stopped asking the landlord in March, around the same time the rent went up and the ceiling in the bathroom began to peel in long gray strips.

Byeol meows once. Not hungry, just announcing herself. You reach up and run two fingers down her spine. Her fur is soft and long, white at the chest and brown along the back, and her eyes find yours in the dark, huge and gold-brown and unblinking.

"I know," you whisper. "I'm getting up."

You do not want to get up. You never want to get up. But the alarm will ring in four minutes anyway, and the bus comes at six-forty, and the company building waits at the end of the line with its mirrored glass and its cold air and its hallways that smell like floor wax and other people's perfume. So you sit. You swing your legs over the side of the mattress. You count the places where the springs press through.

Four years. Four years you have worked in that building, and you have made yourself so small that the security guards nod at you without seeing you. Four years of too-big hoodies and ugly glasses and hair wrenched back so tight your temples ache by noon. Four years of holding your elbows close and your voice lower than natural and your head down, down, down.

Because omegas get used up and thrown away.

Your mother's voice is not a memory. It lives in your sternum, just under the bone. It breathes when you breathe. It is the reason you wake at six and not at six-thirty, the reason you double-check the seam of your pants, the reason you count your suppressants every morning like a prayer.

You count them now.

The blister pack is on the nightstand, under a water glass you never use for water. You crack it open with your thumbnail. One pill, then the second dose you are not supposed to take. You swallow both dry because the tap in the kitchen runs brown some mornings and you cannot risk gagging. The pills scrape down your throat and settle in your stomach, and you wait for the familiar bloom of nothing—the slow flattening of your own scent, the way the world dims at the edges, the relief of becoming undetectable.

It comes. It always comes.

You feed Byeol before you feed yourself. She gets the good food, the wet food with the fish on the label, because she did not ask to live in a basement apartment with a roof that leaks and a girl who sometimes chooses pills over groceries. You get instant noodles. The last pack. The seasoning dusts your fingers, and you think about the market, about the price of eggs, about the way the pharmacist looked at you last month when you paid for suppressants with coins.

Then you stop thinking. Thinking is a luxury you cannot afford before seven a.m.

The hoodie you pull over your head is navy, two sizes too big, soft from too many washes. The slacks are black and shapeless. The lanyard hangs heavy around your neck, the plastic ID cold even through the fabric. You are a beta. You have always been a beta. The badge says so, and the suppressants promise so, and if your body sometimes disagrees—if the heat flushes through you in dreams you cannot control, if your own scent rises unbidden in the middle of the night, sticky and floral and desperate—you wake and you swallow more pills and you tell yourself it is enough.

It has to be enough.

The bus is late. You stand at the stop with your shoulders hunched and your hands deep in your pockets, and you watch the other commuters without looking at them. A man in a gray suit checks his phone. A woman with a stroller digs for a snack. None of them look at you. You are a nondescript beta in a too-big hoodie, and that is the point, that is the armor, that is the whole of your life. When the bus comes, you take the seat by the back door and press your knees together and keep your eyes on the window, and the city slides past in gray and brown and the occasional flash of neon.

The company building rises out of the block like a black glass fist. You swipe your badge at the service entrance, not the main lobby, and the lock clicks open with a sound like a small dog snapping at your hand. Inside, the air smells like cleaning fluid and cold coffee. The fluorescent lights buzz. You walk the familiar route—past the mailroom, past the vending machines, past the door marked STAFF ONLY—until you reach the small room where you keep your clipboard and your schedule and your extra pair of shoes.

You change into the shoes. You check your reflection in the dark screen of the locker. Ugly glasses, pale face, hair pulled so tight it makes your eyes look wider. Good. You look like no one. You look invisible.

The first hour passes in a blur of small tasks. You refill the water station outside the practice rooms. You wipe down the mirrors in Studio B. You lay towels in neat stacks on the shelf by the door, because the boys—they—will come in after their vocal sessions and they will sweat, and they will need towels, and they will never think about who put them there. That is the job. That is the point.

You are on your knees, straightening the last corner of the last towel, when the door opens behind you.

"Oh," a voice says. Warm. Surprised, but not unkind. "You're here already?"

You do not turn around. You know the voice. Everyone in the building knows the voice. It belongs to San, the one with the dimples and the smile that makes the managers relax and the staffers blush, and you do not want to look at him because looking at San is like looking at the sun—it makes you feel too seen, too warm, too much like the thing you are pretending not to be.

"I'm almost finished," you say to the towels. "I'll be out of your way."

"You're never in the way, Minsoo-ssi."

He says your name. He knows your name. Your stomach drops, and you hate yourself for the way your fingers tremble against the cotton. You stand too fast. The clipboard clatters to the floor. San takes a step, as if to help, and you take a step back, and the whole thing becomes a small, awkward dance that ends with you pressed against the towel shelf and San holding your clipboard.

"Here," he says gently. His eyes scan your face—the ugly glasses, the tight bun, the mouth that will not smile. "You okay?"

"Yes." Your voice is too quiet. You make it louder. "Yes, thank you, I'm fine. I should go."

You take the clipboard and you go. You do not run, but it feels like running. The hallway stretches long and gray, and your shoes make no sound on the polished floor, and behind you the door to Studio B closes with a soft click that sounds like San sighing.

You do not look back.

In the staff break room, you allow yourself two minutes. You stand by the sink and breathe. The mirror above the counter shows a girl in a navy hoodie, pale as milk, freckles scattered across her nose like crumbs. The glasses hide your eyes, which is good, because your eyes would give you away. They always have. Big and brown and too expressive, your mother said once, before she taught you to stop expressing.

The door swings open. You leap away from the sink like it burned you.

Yeonjin glides in on a wave of expensive perfume and corporate cheerfulness. Her eyeliner is sharp enough to cut paper. Her nails are painted the red of a stoplight, and her smile is bright and white and practiced, and she says your name like a song.

"Minsoo! There you are. I was looking for you everywhere."

You blink at her. Yeonjin has never looked for you anywhere. Yeonjin is the kind of woman who commands rooms, who wears her ambition like a second skin, who laughs at the right moments and touches the right elbows and gets promoted past people who work twice as hard. At first she was friendly—too friendly, maybe, but you told yourself you were being paranoid. Now her friendliness has edges. Now her smile lingers a beat too long.

"I was just—" you start.

"Helping with the towels, I know, I saw you. So diligent." She steps closer, and her perfume fills your nose—something floral and heavy, the kind of scent that clings to the back of the throat. "You know, I've been meaning to ask. How long have you been with the company?"

"Four years."

"Four years." She says it like a verdict. "And you're still an assistant. That must be hard."

You do not know what to say to that, so you say nothing. Yeonjin smiles wider.

"Don't worry. I'm sure management sees how hard you work. The way you're always there before anyone else, always cleaning up, always watching." Her eyes flick to the door, then back to you. "I see it, too."

Something cold crawls up your spine. You want to tell her she is wrong, that you do not watch, that you keep your head down and your eyes on the floor and your whole body turned away from the eight alphas who run this company like a kingdom. But the words stick in your throat, because Yeonjin is right. You do watch. You cannot help it. They are eight suns in a building full of moons, and even with your head down you feel their gravity.

"I should check the schedule," you manage.

"Of course." Yeonjin steps aside, but not all the way, so your shoulder brushes hers as you pass. "See you around, Minsoo."

You spend the rest of the morning avoiding her.

The work is simple and endless. You refill water bottles. You check the temperature in the recording booths. You deliver schedules to the managers' offices and take lunch orders you will never be thanked for. At eleven, you slip into the empty conference room on the third floor to eat your noodles in silence, and when you are done you wipe the table twice so no one will smell the seasoning.

At noon, the building shifts. You feel it before you hear it—a change in the air, a low hum of energy that rolls through the hallways like the first note of a song. They are here. The eight of them, or some of them, moving through the company like a weather system. You press yourself against the wall and let them pass.

Mingi goes by first. Tall, long-limbed, his dark hair falling over his eyes. He is mid-sentence, laughing at something San says, and then his head turns—just slightly, just for a second—and his nostrils flare.

He looks at you.

He always looks at you.

You do not understand it. You are a beta in an ugly hoodie, a smear of nothing on the edge of his vision. But Mingi's eyes find you in every crowd, and his nose twitches, and there is a question in his face that he never asks. You look away first, always first, and by the time you look back he is gone, swallowed by the hallway and the laughter and the other bodies.

Your heart is pounding. You tell it to stop. It does not listen.

Later, you are in the staff break room again, wiping down the counter, when the door opens and Seonghwa walks in.

You know his silhouette before you see his face. He is the oldest, the steadiest, the one the others orbit around, and there is a grace to the way he moves that makes the room feel smaller and quieter and more careful. He is carrying a paper bag.

"Minsoo-ssi," he says. His voice is low and even, like a hand laid flat on a table. "You forgot your snack."

You stare at the bag. "I didn't—"

"You left it on the assistants' table." He sets the bag down on the counter between you, and when he pulls his hand away you see the logo of the convenience store on the corner, the one near the bus stop. "Gimbap. It's yours."

It is not yours. You have never left a snack on the assistants' table in your life. But Seonghwa is looking at you with his dark, tired eyes, and there is something in his face that makes arguing impossible, so you take the bag and you bow, low and quick.

"Thank you."

"Eat it while it's fresh." He pauses at the door. "You work too hard to skip lunch."

Then he is gone, and the room is very quiet, and the gimbap in your hands is warm through the paper.

You eat it standing over the sink so the crumbs do not fall on the floor.

Yeonjin sees.

You do not know she is watching until you look up and find her in the doorway, her red nails curled around the frame, her smile so sharp it could draw blood.

"Seonghwa-oppa brought you food," she says. "How sweet."

You swallow wrong and cough. "He was just being kind."

"He's never brought me food." Her voice is light, but her eyes are not. "And I've worked here longer than you."

You do not know what to say. Yeonjin holds your gaze for a long, awful moment, and then she laughs, bright and brittle.

"Don't look so scared, Minsoo. I'm just jealous. We all notice how the boys treat you. You must have some secret."

There is no secret. There is only the suppressants and the ugly glasses and the four years of silence, and you want to tell her that, but your mouth will not open. Yeonjin watches you fail to answer, and something shifts in her face—a decision, a door closing.

"See you tomorrow," she says, and leaves.

You finish your shift in a daze. Your feet carry you through the evening tasks—the towel counts, the equipment checks, the last sweep of the practice rooms—and then you are outside, the night air cold against your cheeks, the bus stop empty and yellow under the streetlamp. The city hums around you. You stand very still and try to feel invisible again.

It does not work.

Byeol is waiting at the door when you get home. She winds between your ankles and complains about the hour, and you scoop her up and bury your face in her fur and stand there in the dark apartment, breathing in the smell of her, warm and alive and entirely yours.

The noodles are gone. You have no dinner. There are eggs, maybe—two left in the carton, if they have not gone bad. You crack one into a pan and eat it standing over the stove, the heat of the burner rising against your face, and you think about Seonghwa's gimbap and the way Mingi's nose twitched and the way San said your name like a question.

Then you think about your mother.

Omegas get used up and thrown away.

The suppressants are on the nightstand. You swallow them dry, two more, double dose, and you lie down in the dark with Byeol on your chest and the ceiling pressing down like a hand.

Tomorrow, you will do it all again. The bus. The badge. The towels. The watching without looking. The hiding in plain sight.

And no one will see you.

That is the plan. That is the only plan.

But in the dark, with Byeol purring against your ribs, you cannot shake the feeling that something has already shifted—that Yeonjin's smile meant something you do not understand yet, that Seonghwa's gimbap was not just gimbap, that you are being watched in ways you did not ask for and cannot control.

You fall asleep counting the cracks in the ceiling.

They have always been there. You just never let yourself look.