"Thanks," Jisung smiled at the lady behind the counter of the canteen. She passed him a bottle of water. It wasn't uncommon for the fridge behind the self-service counter to get a few customers at the tail end of the day, especially for those who had to travel a while to get to school and would want a drink after a long day.
He turned around, waving the bottle at Donghyuck, Mark, Renjun, Jeno and Jaemin. "You don't have to hang around. I'm sure he'll be out soon."
"I want to wait," Donghyuck explained, and Renjun was a frequent user of the after school facilities like the library and the study classrooms. Mark clearly had nowhere else to be and the other two were trying to get Renjun used to their presences.
Jisung shrugged. Whatever they wanted to do was fine with him. "The teacher said she'd only be a little while with him. I'm going to pack my bag and meet Chenle at his locker."
The group made their way through the partially empty hallway to the youngest's locker, watched him open it and pack up his belongings. It was an eery silence for most who didn't spend much time in the almost desolate school, but for Renjun who was often here at these hours, he was at peace with the silence.
Donghyuck tightened his hands around the straps of his school bag, turning to look at Mark. "Do you want to go to the café with me later? I'm planning to work on my English homework there."
"Of course. I can help you if you'd like."
The beam sent Mark's way lit up his day. "Thanks, I'd appreciate it." His own heart fluttered with anticipation. These days it happened more often. His heat was completely over and yet the feelings lingered... I need to ask Chenle about this. Do I like Mark or am I looking for something where there is nothing?
"Where is Chenle?" Jeno asked lightly.
"Our Korean teacher held him back," Jisung and Mark answered together, then looked at each other with a sense of comedic jinx. A high five to the gesture wouldn't have been out of place, but they didn't.
They finished up and headed to Chenle's locker. Even from a distance they could see that he wasn't there. "What was she even talking to him about?" Mark wondered.
Jisung shrugged, "Your guess is as good as mine." But there was a familiar school bag right in front of his locker, leaning against the column. "Is that Chenle's?"
"Yup," Donghyuck nodded. Still, nothing was out of place. They couldn't quite sense the foreboding in the air. "He must've run to the bathroom or something."
"Yeah. Let's wait a moment," Jaemin yawned. He had spent a very boring class on the joys of budgeting with his business teacher, and now he was falling asleep standing up against the lockers. His head began to droop. Jeno smiled to himself.
Jisung put his own school bag on the floor to minimise his energy spent carrying it. A teacher walked past and curtly greeted them, curious as to whether or not Jaemin was actually asleep or just resting his eyes. They were all curious too.
A few moments later, Donghyuck and Jisung looked at each other unsurely. Unless he was being assigned a detention and was receiving a lecture, it was odd that Chenle was taking this long. Mark picked up on their unease, joining in on their mental conversation. "Maybe he's constipated."
"Oh my god, I did not need to hear that," Jeno sighed.
Instead of arousing laughter from them, Mark saw a different look in Donghyuck's eye. Renjun murmured under his breath, "Whose scent is that?"
Jisung eyed him strangely. And then, as if it was a passing smell on the street, he caught the whiff of something really good. It made his whole body tingle and he subconsciously began to step towards it. Donghyuck, who had picked up on it the earliest, suddenly pushed off the lockers. "Oh no, no, no!" He knew exactly who smelt like that.
Jaemin stirred awake and blinked. "Is that...?"
Before anyone else could react, Donghyuck moved to sprint in Chenle's direction which pointed towards the toilets. But a hand grabbed his shoulder. Jisung pulled him back. The scents of more than one alpha joined the mix and it wasn't Mark, Jeno, Jaemin or Jisung's. "Mark, take Donghyuck! Jeno, Jaemin, take Renjun!" From the tanned omega's reaction, there was only one person it could be, and it terrified Jisung.
Renjun was standing as still as an inanimate object, processing what was happening at high speed while also barely taking notice that both of his arms were being taken to lead him hastily away.
"Chenle is-" Donghyuck was cut off, trying to scramble away from Mark.
"He'll be fine!" Jisung yelled, "I'll make sure he is. Now get yourselves out before anyone can be triggered." He turned away without seeing that they did as he asked and ran full speed down the hallway, sliding around the corner. The scent, impossibly alluring, led him to the first floor bathroom. His heart was pounding so hard, but was it from alpha excitement or dread? He launched towards the main door into the toilets.
Immediately, a crashing wave of competitive pheromones and a blur of heat and alpha scents burned his nostrils. In the middle of the communal area near the row of sinks and opposite the cubicles, lay Chenle surrounded by four alphas. His jacket was on the floor a few feet away and his top was up around his wrists, lazily ripped off and not fully removed, while one of the alphas held his wrists above his head and the other three were attacking his neck, coming awfully close to a dangerous area for omegas to be bitten.
Ro Something-Or-Other was in the middle of removing Chenle's trousers, already prepared to take away the omega's innocence. They were so influenced by the heat that they didn't even notice the new arrival, and Jisung lunged at them, dragging Ro Something-Or-Other off Chenle and sending a punch at a very tall boy who was sitting between his legs. Chenle was radiating pheromones like there was no tomorrow.
Jisung wasn't in control of his own body as he pushed a very ugly guy off. "Chenle!" He exclaimed. There was no reaction and he realised that the boy had passed out before he even arrived. "Chenle, wake up!"
"Jisung, the fu-" Ro Something-Or-Other received a harsh fist to the gut. He doubled over. "We got him first!" He snapped, spitting a glob of saliva on the floor. "Wait your turn!"
His blood began to boil. The omega wasn't just an object to be passed around. "Do you have a death wish?" Even as he said it, he felt like a hypocrite. Seeing Zhong Chenle lying there in that state was both gut-churningly disturbing and managed to tug at the alpha part of himself. It was whispering to him to forget about self-control. And for a second, he almost did.
He darted over to Chenle and lifted his upper body into his arms, cradling it and fighting his hardest against the frenzied pheromones and scents. It was like asking a bird not to sing, or a fish not to swim. His tether was shortening. His gums itched for him to sink his teeth into the back of the omega's neck and do much worse things. But he cared about Chenle's safety more than his own growing compulsion. He lifted him up despite the urges and carried him bridal style, sitting him up on the counter.
"Did you know he was an omega?" Asshat asked, although Jisung had no such nickname for him. "I bet it's a shock. Weren't you two sleeping together?"
"Go on, get all your snarky comments out of your system now, and for every insult, you'll receive a life-shortening injury."
It was the sudden calmness and chill in Jisung's voice that made Haneul stop in his track. Missing Link threw a threatening glare his direction, but considering Jisung hadn't even used his alpha voice, he held an intriguing command over the room at that moment. Uggo's pride was too untouched to stay back and he stalked forward, only to end up tasting his own blood.
"I'll keep you updated," Mark soothed into the phone. It was jerking in his hand with each heavy step as he jogged down the hallway. He would be running full-sprint if he hadn't been on call with Donghyuck. The eldest had left the two omegas in the care of the two alphas so that he could double back and see if everything was okay with Chenle and Jisung. "Alright, I'll see you then. Don't panic. I'm sure he's fine." With that, Mark shoved the device into his pocket and approached the toilets, where an ominous cloud of foreboding was building.
No one else was alerted yet, meaning that the heat and possible ruts hadn't reached the second story of the school, where the library and study classrooms were in use. The staff in the canteen had probably left as soon as Jisung bought that bottle of water. In short, this was probably going to go unreported.
"Jisung?" He called and stepped into the bathroom. But it was much worse than he was expecting and he immediately felt dizzy. He held a hand to his nose, stepping back with the door to let the room breathe.
"Mark? Where are the others?"
"I-" his eyes widened at the scene in front of him. There were four alphas lying slumped against the wall. "I let Jaemin and Jeno take them to the café. They're waiting to be updated..." He then eyed the omega sitting on the counter, slowly gaining consciousness. "Oh my god, Chenle? What happened?"
Jisung, who had clearly just finished up with them, stepped over Uggo's legs to get to the said boy. He held his face, noticing the eyelashes fluttering gently, almost waking up. "I have no idea. I can assume, though, that Chenle was targeted much like Renjun was last year." There was no anger in his voice and it only made Mark more uneasy. Just because it didn't sound like it was there didn't mean it wasn't present tenfold. He felt that Jisung was too beyond expressing his anger but could snap at any moment, and he didn't want to give him cause.
The younger boy ran the tap and cupped some water. Then he sprinkled it on Chenle's face. "Chenle, wake up," he murmured. "Come on. We need to take you to the infirmary."
Mark, still suffering from the mix of pheromones and scents, decided that it was best to get both of them out of there before anything more could happen. "Can you lift him?"
Jisung held Chenle's cheeks again and furrowed his eyebrows. This type of situation was the reason why this lovely soul was prejudiced against alphas when they first met and Jisung had tried to show him otherwise. His heart clenched. "Well, he definitely can't walk for the time being." He moved the omega's arms around his neck and pulled him up bridal style, shifting towards Mark in the doorway. "Can you make sure these guys can't tell anyone about Chenle's omega status? At least until I can get back and talk to the principal."
"Of course."
With that, the eldest was left with the offenders and Jisung was on his way to the infirmary with Chenle. The arms around his neck tightened and the once limp body gained some semblance of structure. And then the heat-induced shivers began, forehead matted with his own hair, Chenle whimpered lowly. "Ji?" He croaked into the alpha's ear.
"Hey, it's okay," he soothed. "You're alright." The trembles continued and the perspiration along the omega's skin increased.
He was in so much pain. It was as if a ball was expanding in his stomach and pushing outwards, much much worse than anything he had ever felt on a previous heat. "Make it stop," he whispered shrilly and squeezed his arms tighter around his support. "Ji, I can't- I-"
"It's okay, we're going to the infirmary. Hopefully the nurse is still there." Much to Jisung's shame, he didn't know what was happening to Chenle. He hadn't learned the finer details around heat cycles and was unsure if the omega was supposed to be feeling this amount of pain. In fact, apart from Renjun's experience last year, he had never been in the vicinity of a heat before, let alone this close to the omega going through it.
Now that the boy was awake, his scent began to strengthen. Jisung picked up his pace. Soon enough they were in the furthest wing of the school where only the staff room and the infirmary were located.
"We need help," he explained, playing off the effects that Chenle was having on him.
The nurse, thankfully still on the school grounds but in the middle of packing up for the day, turned to the two arrivals and dropped her briefcase on the floor. "Jesus!" Her lack of tact made Jisung lower the façade and he placed Chenle on one of the beds, not really wanting to part their physical contact, stumbling back to lean for support against the door.
He panted lightly.
"If you're an alpha, then you should wait outside!"
He shook his head and removed his jacket. "It's fine. I can handle it."
She really didn't seem to want to comply with him but she also needed to understand the situation. Before further action, she sprayed the anti-pheromone mist around the room, although it had a minimal effect, but Jisung's mind cleared enough that he could think properly.
"He's obviously in heat. Is it his first time?"
"No, it's not." He remembered Donghyuck talking to Chenle about their usual routine of spending the first day with each other every time the cycle started. His mind was filled with worry as he observed the boy on the bed, once again passed out, but the shivers persisting. He was sweating buckets and curled in on himself, softly sobbing over the pain.
"Then he was triggered?"
"I wasn't there when it happened — I only intercepted, but I think that's what happened."
The lady's face went steely as she worked away with a syringe, filling it with a liquid. "Does he have any guardians I can contact? I need to cross-check if he has any allergies to the medicine."
"There's no one," he sighed.
Her hand stopped, the bottle of liquid and the syringe held still. "No one at all?"
"Not that I know of. I'm sure he was probably looked after by the government up until recently, but since he's eighteen now..."
She nodded. As she began to administer the drugs, she found herself glancing over at the alpha. He was sitting on the edge of a seat pulled against the door to keep it open and air the room. Otherwise, he'd have troubles resisting Chenle's pheromones. "So, do you know this boy very well?"
"...I do." He bit the inside of his cheek, hating that he didn't know what was happening. "Since there's no one else to note his current condition... do you mind explaining what's wrong to me?" His knee was bouncing anxiously. How could she not? He seemed like he was really worried.
"That I can do. You see, on the outside, the symptoms are similar to an omega's first heat. It tends to be uncomfortable and they'd have a relatively low drive for mating."
The alpha nodded along. "Is that why he wasn't trying to...?"
"Yes. They remain quite self-aware, so he wasn't trying to mate with you or whoever triggered him." The t-shirt he was in, even though it had been removed for most of the happenings in the bathroom, was drenched with his sweat. She frowned at him in sympathy. "But... do you see how he's in pain? That's an indicator that he's been forced into heat. It was so sudden and unexpected that his body didn't have time to register and prepare him for the cycle, and now he's reacting to this by trying to prepare in the span of an hour rather than over the course of two weeks. You see, an omega's body usually begins to get ready for their heat cycle around two weeks before it's due."
Jisung felt terribly responsible. Although Chenle had always been a pinnacle of rumours since before they'd become chummy, he knew in his heart of hearts that all this added attention was because of their relationship. If he had just continued on as he was, not forging a connection with Jisung, then maybe Chenle could have avoided all of this.
"You know, you're lucky you caught me before I went home. At least I could give him a sedative. He's asleep now, but there's not much I can do for him. Is there really no one to take him home? He's not in any danger, but the next few hours will be rough for him and I'm sure he can't administer his own pain killers, and he shouldn't wake up alone. He needs someone there with him."
Jisung sucked in a breath. He knew he couldn't keep an omega in heat at his own home, especially since he and his dad were both alphas. (Not that he believed his dad would do anything to his favourite troublemaker). Maybe Donghyuck? Or perhaps he could convince the nurse to let them use the infirmary for another hour until the group could reconvene to figure something out.
"It's not an immediate eviction. You can stay for another little while, but I need to talk to your principal before any of you go home."
"Thanks so much. I only wish it hadn't happened in the first place."
She ran her hand over the top of Jisung's head in a motherly fashion as she walked past to exit. "Look at him now. He's okay, you got him out of there in time. It doesn't look like he got pregnant." She was referring to his intact lower end, that was, he still had all his garments on. "Alright then, I'll be back in fifteen minutes. Feel free to avail of the anti-pheromone spray, but don't touch any of the medication."
He nodded and then she was gone, followed by the sound of her heels down the hallway to the principal's office.
Jisung stood up and shuffled over to Chenle. His hand felt his burning forehead and brushed the sticky hair out of his eyes. The shudders were no more, at least, and he was sleeping soundly without pain. "I'm so sorry," he whispered and sat down on the edge of the bed.
Even after all of the events this evening, he still looked beautiful to Jisung.