The service entrance is around the back of the main building, a heavy metal door with a lock that the custodial staff uses. I’ve picked it before, twice, both times on dares that Hongjoong instigated and I was too proud to back down from. The guys crowd around behind me as I crouch in front of it, pulling a bobby pin from my pocket. I always carry one. Not because I’m some kind of criminal mastermind, but because my hair gets in my face during PE and also because, apparently, being the omega in a group of alphas means you end up being the one with all the practical skills while they stand around being useless.
“Give him some room,” Hongjoong says, waving the others back even as he himself leans in closer to watch over my shoulder. I can feel his breath on the back of my neck, warm and smelling faintly of the mint gum he’s been chewing all day.
“You’re not giving me room either,” I point out without looking up.
“I’m supervising.”
“You’re hovering.”
“Supervising,” he insists.
I roll my eyes and focus on the lock. The pin slides in, I feel for the tumblers, apply pressure with the tension wrench I fashioned from a second bobby pin, and after about thirty seconds of working the pins, there’s a satisfying click. I pull the door open and stand up, brushing off my knees.
The guys erupt. Hands slap my back, someone ruffles my hair hard enough to mess up the style I spent twenty minutes on this morning, and Dokyeom lifts me off the ground in a bear hug that I immediately protest by kicking at his shins until he puts me down.
“See?” Hongjoong throws an arm around my shoulders again, pulling me against his side as he addresses the group with the pride of a parent at a school play. “Yoonjae’s always been the smartest of our crew. What would you idiots do without him?”
“Die, probably,” Jaeho says cheerfully.
“Get arrested,” Seungwon adds.
“Both,” Pilkyu confirms.
I duck out from under Hongjoong’s arm before the flush I can feel creeping up my neck becomes visible, and I gesture toward the open door. “Are we going or are we going to stand here complimenting me all night? Because I’m fine with either, honestly.”
We pile into the stairwell, our sneakers squeaking on the concrete steps as we climb. The sound echoes in the narrow space, amplified and overlapping, and someone starts humming a song that the others pick up until we’re all half-singing, half-whispering the chorus of some pop hit that’s been stuck in everyone’s heads for the past month. Hongjoong takes the stairs two at a time, his long legs eating up the distance, and I keep pace beside him because I’ve always been able to keep pacewith him, with all of them, even though I’m the omega and supposedly I should be trailing behind, delicate and winded. My brothers cured me of that particular expectation a long time ago.
The rooftop door bangs open and the evening air hits us, warm and tinged with the last heat of the day. The sky is streaked orange and pink, fading to a deep blue at the edges, and the city sprawls out below us in every direction, lights just starting to flicker on in the buildings and along the streets. It’s a good view, which is why this rooftop has been our spot since Hongjoong discovered the service entrance could be picked during our first year.
Things happen fast after that. Seungwon produces four bottles of soju from his backpack like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat, followed by a bottle of cheap beer and a bag of paper cups. Dokyeom dumps three plastic bags worth of snacks onto the concrete: dried squid, shrimp chips, chocolate bars, rice crackers, and an inexplicable bunch of bananas that nobody claims ownership of. Jaeho pulls out a portable music player, the kind with a tiny built-in speaker that makes everything sound like it’s being played through a tin can, and suddenly there’s music blasting across the rooftop, some upbeat track with a heavy bass line that the little speaker absolutely cannot handle.
Pilkyu is already cracking open the first soju bottle, pouring with both hands, and cups are being passed around. Someone shoves one into my hand and I take it without any real intention. I’m not supposed to drink. Omegas aren’t supposed to drink, it’s technically illegal, one of those laws that exists on paper and gets enforced selectively, usually against omegas who don’t have the social standing to push back. My parents have always been firm about it, not because they care about the law but because they worry about my health, about what alcohol does to omega biology. And honestly, I agree with them. I’ve seen what it does. I’ve watched omegas at parties lose control of their scentregulation after a few drinks, watched them become vulnerable in rooms full of alphas whose inhibitions are also lowered. It’s not a combination I’m interested in testing.
But I’m not about to explain all of that to a rooftop full of rowdy alphas on graduation night, so I hold my cup and I fake it.
“To us!” Hongjoong shouts, holding his cup high. The orange light catches his face, his sharp features, that damn dimple. His hair is messy from the wind, sleek black locks pushed back, and he looks so alive, so completely in his element, surrounded by his friends on a rooftop with stolen soju and bad music. “To surviving four years of hell and coming out the other side!”
“To us!” the chorus goes up, cups clashing together with sloppy enthusiasm, soju sloshing over the rims and onto fingers.
I touch my cup to Hongjoong’s and bring it to my lips. I tilt it back just enough to wet my mouth, then lower it. Nobody notices. They’re all too busy drinking for real, throwing back their cups and immediately reaching for refills.
The first hour is loud and golden. We rehash every stupid thing we’ve ever done within these school walls, and the list is long. Dokyeom reenacts the time he got caught sleeping in the supply closet during midterms by standing up and pretending to fall asleep standing, then jolting awake with a scream that sends Jaeho into hysterics. Pilkyu reminds everyone about the time Seungwon accidentally set off the fire alarm by trying to heat up a rice cake with a lighter in the bathroom, and Seungwon defends himself passionately, insisting the rice cake was frozen solid and he had no other options. Taejun brings up the legendary incident where Hongjoong convinced half the second-year class to skip the school assembly by telling them it had been canceled, resulting in a completely empty auditorium and a furious principal who spent the rest of the day hunting down the source of the rumor.
“That was my finest work,” Hongjoong says, leaning back against the rooftop ledge with his legs stretched out in front of him, cup balanced on his knee. “The look on Principal Kwon’s face. I thought he was going to have a stroke.”
“You almost got expelled,” I remind him.
“Almost,” he agrees, grinning. “But I didn’t. Because I’m charming.”
“Because your mom donated a new computer lab,” Jaeho corrects.
“Charm comes in many forms.”
I snort and shake my head, but I’m smiling. I can’t help it. These are good memories, even the ones that got us in trouble, especially the ones that got us in trouble. Four years of climbing fences and picking locks and talking our way out of detention, four years of being the omega who ran with the alphas and never once felt like I didn’t belong. That’s worth a lot, actually.
Someone puts on a slower song and Dokyeom grabs Pilkyu and forces him into an awkward slow dance that devolves into a wrestling match within seconds. Seungwon is trying to stack shrimp chips into a tower. Wonjoon is peeling one of the mystery bananas with a contemplative expression, like he’s trying to figure out where they came from. And Jaeho is on his third cup of soju and starting to get philosophical, which is always a sign that things are about to get either very deep or very stupid.
I laugh along with all of it, shoving Dokyeom when he tries to pull me into the wrestling match, throwing shrimp chips at Seungwon’s tower to knock it over, heckling Jaeho’s attempts at profundity. But my attention keeps drifting.
