Chapter 1

Chapter 1

tw: non-con

A man was wandering at the bottom.

The torn and tattered clothes were yellow and dirty drops of sweat mixed with dust dripped from them. The man’s hair, with bright strands visible here and there, was clumped together in places as if it hadn’t been combed. The limbs, as thin and dry as pieces of wood in midwinter, protruded from under the frayed fabric and moved limply. From time to time, he stopped to take a breath and then continued moving. The place the man was heading to was the very bottom of the city.

A corner of that dry alley where even the pickpocket spat and turned around because no one had anything. The man’s place was under a dark shade where no light could enter.

He didn’t eat anything today. He didn’t eat anything yesterday either. The man’s stomach, shrunken to the point where it couldn’t even digest a sip of water, no longer cried. He knelt down on the stone road helplessly. He slowly laid his body on the ground as if he were dying. He even closed his eyelids.

There was no one in the secluded alley. There was no one to hate him, no one to beat him, no one to rape him, and no one to throw him away. The black shadow of the gray wall became a blanket and blocked the crimson world that was spinning even under his eyelids.

“Hey, wake up.”

A rough kick woke the man. The consciousness, which had just been engulfed in darkness, was disturbed and returned a little. The stinky boots crashed into him to the point his bones ached and stamped on his legs a few more times without a hint of mercy. It wasn’t until there was a cracking sound that the man opened his foggy eyes and floundered his arms like the legs of an insect that was having its final convulsion.

The guy, who woke him up by kicking his skinny body fiercely, threw the paper bag he was holding in his hand. It fell on his face and smelled extremely light and savory. The man barely stretched out his thin hand and grabbed the paper bag.

“Today, I brought a special one with raisins in it.”

When he pulled out the paper bag and managed to tear off the awfully tough paper, a warm, freshly baked piece of bread came out of it. The smell of bread seeped into his nostrils as he breathed in the thin air. The man’s mouth, which was as dry as a desert, suddenly salivated. He brought the bread closer to his face with both hands and opened his mouth.

When he took a bite of the savory food, the guy giggled and grabbed the man’s ankle. He pulled down the man’s dirty pants and spread his legs apart. Even in the meantime, the man was busy burying his nose in the bread and tearing it off big enough to keep his jaw from closing. The guy made him lie down on his side and spread his legs again. The skinny butt opened up again. The red flesh nestled within it was unsightly and covered in white mucus.

“You always manage to make me hornier than most passable prostitutes. On the subject of alpha bastards.”

When he had just become an adult, he inherited the title after his father passed away suddenly. The young Count, with gorgeous blonde hair like the family’s symbol, a golden lion, and blue eyes like the azure sky, was noted for never losing his aristocratic dignity and nobility at any moment. But he wasn’t like that from the beginning.

“Aelock, did you play a lot today?”

“Mother.”

A faint smell of medicine emanated from the Countess as he welcomed his young son. His mother, a male omega, was not originally healthy and was always lying in bed with a chronic disease as he forced himself to give birth to a child. The young son, not even seven years old, climbed onto the bed clinging to his mother’s skinny arms, now buried his face in his bony chest, and nodded quietly.

“Have you seen the rose garden? Could you tell your mother what color of roses bloomed today?”

The rose garden could be seen straight out of the bed’s window, but he always asked his son that. Then Aelock would give a lengthy explanation, using every color and exclamation in his vocabulary. Meanwhile, his mother stroked his round head that touched his chin with a hand like a dry twig.

It was around his seventh birthday when his mother passed away. At that time, Aelock cried until his eyes melted. At the funeral, the father standing next to his son looked as if he had lost the world and remained silent. He picked all the roses of every color from his wife’s favorite garden and threw them onto the polished coffin.

The father did not want any damage to the family’s prestige and raised his alpha son with extreme severity. He couldn’t tolerate his son constantly crying over small things especially after he lost his mother.

“Where do nobles show tears?!”

Occasionally, Aelock’s father caught him coming out of his mother’s room in tears, took him to the study, and gave him a severe beating. Aelock couldn’t even rub his swollen legs and had to hold back his tears.

When he missed his mother, he hid from his father and cried in the shade of the corner of the rose garden. He would tremble and sniffle, until the butler, who had the same stern expression as his father but held his hand kindly, came and hugged him affectionately. His eyes were red and swollen, buried in the scent of roses, and he couldn’t easily stop his tears, saddened by the fading scent of his mother in his memory.

After some time, the rain and wind made all the roses fall to the ground. In the meantime, through his father’s scolding, he straightened his shoulders and held his head upright. To walk gracefully without running no matter what, the seven-year-old had forgotten how to cry and had learned to smile.

His father, an aristocrat to the core, devoted his all to his duties as a nobleman. He did not simply assert and show off his authority but gave as much as he could for society with the enormous wealth he gathered from his massive territory.

Of course, the method was extremely ‘aristocratic’. While donating a significant amount to charity for starving children in the slums, he never directly got involved in the ‘bottom’. Rather, he hated the lowermost part of the city. It seems that he was displeased with the fact that such a filthy and lowly space existed in the capital within the reach of the Count’s authority. So his father decided to borrow someone else’s hand.

Among the commoners, the highly educated gentry or the collateral families who did not inherit the title among the nobles were sponsored and made to deal with unclean things on his behalf instead. It turned into a big event with considerable influence in conjunction with another tradition of the Count’s family, ‘Tea Party in the Rose Garden’. Since his father, fussy by nature and not in good health, was often sick, Aelock took over as the host of the tea party from the age of nineteen.

The young man, though not young enough to still be wet behind the ears, greeted and chatted with the guests with a subtle smile, wearing a navy suit that was adorned with his blue eyes and dark blond hair paragon of the Count family. Unlike others, it wasn’t that difficult for him to do so. No matter what the other person said, all he had to do was say “I see”. All the young people looking for a patron were eager to get his attention. Even though all of them were a few years older than Aelock, they were busy uttering words that bordered on flattery.