🎶 Phlake - Pregnant

"You are pregnant."

When I heard those words, only one thought came to mind. They say if a person is unlucky enough, they can choke to death on a sip of water. I must be insanely unlucky.

Was it the alcohol? Was it the pheromones? Or was it both? Or was I just crazy? Yes, I must have been crazy to do something like that. The problem was that I couldn't remember who the partner was from a month ago.

Only that he was an Alpha. That something happened that night. And that the result is now inside my stomach. Those were the only three things I remembered for certain.

Was I in heat, or was he in rut? Maybe it was both. Whatever it was, the situation had already reached a point of no return.

A university professor, swayed by pheromones overnight, had an accident with an Alpha whose face he couldn't even remember. And got pregnant.

If word of this got out, it wouldn't just be a matter of privacy. My entire life was at stake. In a world where the social standing of Omegas and Alphas is distinct, the last 36 years I've lived as an Omega have been anything but smooth.

I worked like a madman. Just so I wouldn't be undervalued for the sole reason of being an Omega. I survived more fiercely than anyone.

Do you know how long it took me to get to this position?

So I decided. Let's settle this as if nothing happened. It was an act I could never fully apologize for to the life that had come to me. My heart felt a cold ache at the thought.

But I didn't have the confidence to take responsibility for this life. Not yet. No, probably never. I thought I just needed to return everything to the way it was.

However, the world did not move the way I wanted.

"Patient, I'm sorry, but we cannot perform the surgery without the consent of the biological Alpha."

My mind went blank the moment I heard that.

"Legally, it's not something we can proceed with at our discretion."

So. It meant I couldn't settle the pregnancy I created on my own, nor could I take responsibility for it on my own. It wasn't that I hadn't expected this.

A subgender-equal society.

I know how long the voices calling for the equal protection of Alpha and Omega rights have persisted. I was the one teaching that from the podium, after all.

But once it became a matter of my own body, I realized. How ridiculous the world's version of equality is. In the end, at the crucial moment, the Alpha's rights still come first.

It's my body. I'm the one pregnant. Yet the right to decide isn't in my hands.

But actually, there was a bigger problem. I didn't even know who that Alpha was. I wasn't just saying that. I truly had no memory. A man who usually gets tipsy off half a can of beer had downed three glasses of 40-proof liquor.

Add the Alpha's pheromones to that. It was a miracle I had any memory left at all.

I forced myself to dig up memories of that night a month ago. I think he had black hair. No. Was it brown? At this point, I clearly had some sort of facial recognition disorder.

In the midst of the blurry memories that made my head feel like it would explode, there was only one thing that remained strangely vivid.

The voice.

Excessively low and deep. So distinct that it remained lodged in my mind even in that crazed state of consciousness. It was a bass tone I had never heard before. In the end, relying solely on that voice, I began to search for the partner from that night myself.

The place we first met.

Of course, a professor teaching ethics at a university frequenting gay bars every evening was, in another sense, risking his life. But the situation was urgent.

I went there every evening. However... No matter how many times I went, that Alpha never appeared. Instead, by exposing my pregnant body to the pheromones of this Alpha and that Alpha, my condition only grew worse.

It was maddening. Time was not on my side. A day passed. Then another week. The life inside my womb was clearly growing.

I grew a little more anxious every week. Afraid that I might reach a point where I could no longer decide anything. The thought alone stifled me, but time eventually flowed on.

Until the start of the semester.

---

In the end, I had to be the perfect professor in the body of a pregnant Omega. Dozens of students with different subgenders filled the classroom, and countless pheromones mixed together.

My stomach was uneasy and my head throbbed with a headache, but I could never let it show.

"I will check attendance first."

I called out the names of over forty students one by one. One. Two. Three. Every time I called a name, a student answered. I looked at the students with the face of a perfect professor.

Forty-two students. Finally, it was the last one. The name written on the last line of the attendance sheet.

Guest.

I opened my mouth without much thought.

"Yes, Professor."

In that moment. My fingertips stopped.

Uh...?

I slowly raised my head. A student was looking at me from his seat. And again, I heard that voice. This time, more clearly.

"Yes."

The moment it entered my ears, that ultra-low tone pierced straight into the depths of my mind. I saw a few students nearby glancing at him. It made sense. It was a voice that stood out.

But for me, the situation was far more horrific. My heart sank. I just knew the moment I heard it.

I found him.

But actually, the biggest problem was something else. Why. Why did that voice have to be heard in a situation where it shouldn't be heard, by a person of a status that shouldn't be heard?

I looked down at the attendance sheet again. The Alpha from that day. The person who is the source of the life currently in my womb. Is barely in his early 20s. And to top it off, he's a student taking my lecture.

I know the world is small, but this is too much.