Was it because his mind was in disarray after watching the emotional act? Eugene felt like he was being too careless. Even earlier, in the cafeteria, he threw a jab at Ashley.
But...well, it wasn't exactly something he needed to keep as a secret--unlike Hannah's existence--so he wasn't feeling flustered. It was just...unpleasant.
Looking at the alpha beside him, Eugene suddenly wondered about what the man said earlier. That thing about how it was also cruel when a direct family member didn't want to own them seemed to allude to his own situation.
Was he a child of divorce, and neither of his parents wanted him, so he ended up living with his grandparents and cousin?
That was possible.
If he thought about it, being thrown away was also caused by someone feeling like they owned you. Because they thought they owned you, they could easily control you or discard you because, in the end, you were nothing but possession for them.
Again, that sense of familiarity was knocking on the wall of defense Eugene had stacked around him.
And perhaps...telling this alpha about his unpleasant past might be a good deterrent. People wouldn't want to pursue someone with a complicated family situation, after all.
"Yes," he said after a few seconds. "My older brothers locked me inside a shed when I was fifteen."
Arthur clasped his mouth in an effort to stop himself from shouting in shock. "Your brothers?!"
He had brothers? Also, what kind of brothers lock their baby brother inside a shed? Even Ashley in her most mischievous era would never entertain such a thought!
Arthur was already fuming before even hearing the reason behind it. Whatever it was, he was sure it wasn't Eugene's fault!
Looking at the alpha's face, Eugene had a desire to laugh instead. He walked to the railing and sat down at the top of the porch steps, looking at the lawn that had started to grow wild grass. In his memory, the shed was much darker; the grass was much taller, and the sky was much gloomier.
It wasn't on private property, but a mountainside with an unknown owner. The shed seemed to be used to store farm equipment in the past, until the field was abandoned, and the shed became a fragment of horror imagination.
Arthur looked at Eugene, unsure of what he should do. The omega seemed melancholic all of a sudden, but there was this invisible wall made of thorns that made Arthur hesitant to invade Eugene's personal space. Perhaps it was the deep, distant gaze filled with bitterness.
As he leaned toward the railing, wondering if he should say something or leave Eugene alone, the omega suddenly opened his mouth.
"I hated being an omega."
Arthur froze, eyes widened at this sudden confession. Eugene was looking at the lawn and the dark brown bark of the trees with a distant intensity, as if he was digging into a memory.
"My father wanted me to be an alpha," Eugene continued. "He taught me 'how to be an alpha' before I manifested."
Arthur arched his brow. "They are that sure you're going to manifest as an alpha?"
"I had two, much older brothers who manifested as alphas rather quickly," Eugene explained. "My father seemed to think that his 'superior genes'--as he called it--would only produce alpha descendants."
"How outdated," Arthur muttered, belatedly clasping his mouth. "Uhh...sorry."
"What for?" Eugene sneered. "Anyway, they put me in all kinds of exercise and...practice, to make sure I manifested as an alpha."
Arthur shifted closer while frowning. There was something in the way Eugene said 'practice' that made him feel uneasy. "Did it involve locking you inside a shed?"
"Yes," Eugene chuckled darkly. "You know how it is--alphas should be fearless and whatnot."
Arthur pursed his lips. He wasn't very attuned to the social life, but that didn't mean he didn't know the stereotypes out there. That was why he couldn't tell people about his face-blindness, which would make him flawed in the eyes of society.
"The first time, it was rather fine. I treated it as an initiation of some kind--you know, brotherhood or whatever," Eugene laughed self-deprecatingly.
The first time?! Arthur almost gasped.
"When I ended up manifesting as an omega, they threw me to the shed again," Eugene continued. "They were trying to see if I could reverse it somehow and turn into an alpha."
At this point, Arthur was flabbergasted. No wonder Eugene looked so bitter while talking about direct blood ties earlier!
"Is that even possible?" he grumbled, sitting down on the floor while leaning against the porch railing beside the steps. "What a stupid endeavor."
"I was diagnosed as a hybrid initially, so they were probably thinking the alpha hormone could still be jolted awake or something," Eugene shrugged.
"A hybrid..." Arthur muttered with widened eyes sparkling in enlightenment.
A hybrid was someone who carried both alpha and omega hormones inside their body. They could end up manifested as an alpha or omega, or they could live their whole life as a hybrid, and be tethered precariously between both worlds.
So that was why an omega could have the physique of an alpha. All of those exercises and supplements reacted with the dormant alpha hormone and affected his muscle growth.
Perhaps it also suppressed his omega hormone and made his scent appear fainter.
Arthur didn't know much about hybrids, but he had heard that a lot of them suffered from an identity crisis and disassociation.
"I hated being an omega, simply because my alpha father and brothers hated omegas," Eugene said, as if replying to Arthur's thought. "I was raised by people who considered omegas only useful for breeding purposes."
"That's--"
Arthur furrowed his brows deeply. Growing up with loving grandparents who valued family and a cousin who felt like a real sister, he couldn't comprehend that kind of constructed value.
At the same time, however, he knew that a lot--if not most--alphas out there still saw omegas in a belittling way, only different in the degree of intensity. As an alpha himself, he felt like whatever he said would just sound like some bullshit self-defense. He could do nothing but press his lips and sigh.
As if responding to their darkening emotions, the sky started to weep quietly. Droplets of water hit the lawn and brought a subtle scent of what Eugene thought Arthur's scent would smell like.
As expected, a spring rain was fragrant--Eugene smiled. It smelled of grass and blossom, of new life. It did not smell of despair like the rain he had on the second time he got locked inside a shed.
The day when he was locked inside the shed after becoming an omega, it was also raining. The gloomy sky made the surrounding seemed darker, and the battering rain made Eugene feel like he was showered with bullet hail.
That shed scene in his story was probably his coping mechanism, since he did imagine all sorts of situations that would make being trapped in a dark place when it was raining heavily outside seem okay.
Eugene had always been told that he didn't have a romantic bone in his body, perhaps because he never showed any desire to be in a romantic relationship. He flirted and slept with people purely out of carnal needs.
But honestly, Eugene was just like any other person. He, too, imagined fortuitous encounters and romantic scenarios when he was young. Meet cute or whatever people say these days. Yeah, when he was young.
But that romantic desire was also the cause of his manifestation as an omega. As he grew to hate his identity as an omega, he gradually buried those romantic tendencies inside his heart.
The cabin scene in Invisible Scent was his effort of digging up his teenage fantasy. Since he wrote it when he already lost his instinct, however, it was only a simple one-paragraph mention without any details.
The scriptwriters were the ones who eagerly filled in the blanks.
How nice would it be, if someone did come and found him in that shed? He didn't even wish for someone to help him, just to accompany him through the dark, scary, rainy night.
In the end, when his brothers came to drag him out of the shed, Eugene had to abandon any romantic thoughts. All he got from the experience was an assurance that he was alone, a certainty that he could only rely on himself.
"Do you think...Jude would help Ian if he didn't have any feelings toward him?" Eugene found himself asking the alpha beside him.
Leaning against the railing, watching the raindrops through the reflection inside the cabin's window, Arthur exhaled slowly.
"He would," the alpha said, as if he wanted to get lost in a mountainside and run across an abandoned shed. "Jude would help anyone who needs help as long as it's within his means to do so. That's why Ian fell in love with him."
Falling in love with a valiant, heroic alpha--what a juvenile fantasy for an omega in distress. And yet, Eugene couldn't erase that part from his story.
He laughed cynically at his past self. The Eugene who wrote that draft also probably wanted a hero to appear and help him at that time. He didn't get a hero, but he did get a friend.
The alpha, who couldn't say that he wanted to be the omega's hero, asked curiously. "Is that why you did not divulge that you were an omega at that time?"
Eugene chuckled. "Part of it," he nodded. "The other part was because I got tired of people's reaction when they found out I was an omega. They either did not believe me or looked at me as if I was a freak of nature."
After giving birth, the omega hormone seemed to settle a little bit and made him look more delicate. Back in the day, however, he was sharper and leaner, making it easier for people to think he was either a beta or a recessive alpha.
Eugene turned toward the real alpha, who was looking at him, and smirked.
"So, I decided to just let them misunderstand on their own."
Naturally, Arthur was one of those who misunderstood and thought Eugene was a beta without even asking, merely because he couldn't smell Eugene's pheromone.
In a way, it could be said as a kind of scam. Arthur, however, couldn't think about that at the moment. Hearing Eugene's story, he couldn't help but think how fortunate he was. He used to think that being unwanted was bad, but...at least he didn't have to be tormented;
At least he still had his grandparents, his late uncle and aunt, as well as his cousin. People he felt sorry for because he had become such a burden for him, but also people who he knew would never throw him away.
Arthur wondered if Eugene had those kinds of people back in the day. He wondered how much Eugene had to endure, being tormented by his own blood brothers and his own father. He wondered how Eugene could still appear unfazed, even six years ago. He wondered how Gin could look so mature and put together even though he had to go through unpleasant family circumstances and self-hatred.
Arthur wondered if he could act composed like Eugene with that kind of problem in his life, but he already knew the answer: he couldn't. He was already a mess even though he had a full support system in his back.
As expected, Gin is so cool!