It was a small, windowless chamber deep within the administrative wing—a room that smelled of wood varnish, stagnation, and alpha pheromones. A place designed to make students feel small, stripping away the grandeur of the Academy's concert halls and leaving only the cold, hard bureaucracy beneath.
Jaemin sat on a stiff wooden chair in the center of the room. Facing him, behind a long mahogany table, sat five members of the disciplinary committee.
They didn't look like professors of music today. They looked like executioners.
"Seo Jaemin," Dean Valerius began from the center seat. He was a formidable alpha with a silver mane of hair and a reputation for prioritizing the Academy's endowment fund over its students—a fund heavily padded by the Choi family.
He didn't look at Jaemin; he looked at the file in front of him with a sneer.
"We are not here to debate artistic interpretation. We are here to address a fundamental breach of the Academy's code of conduct. Specifically regarding... secondary gender disclosure."
"I'm here because my work was stolen," Jaemin said, his voice raspy. He hadn't slept in two days, and his throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper. "Choi Seungcheol took my composition. The files I sent you—"
"The files regarding the composition are inconclusive," Frau Gertz, a severe beta professor from the Theory department, interrupted. She dismissed his life's work with a wave of her hand. "Metadata can be altered. Timestamps can be forged. However, the files regarding your admission are not."
She looked at him over the rim of her glasses, not with anger, but with the clinical distaste one might show a pest discovered in a pristine kitchen.
"You applied as a beta," she stated flatly. "You have spent four years residing in beta dorms, using beta facilities, all while concealing an omega presentation."
"I concealed it for safety," Jaemin argued, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. "The Academy's policy on unmated omegas is archaic. If I had declared, I would have been placed in the omega dormitory three miles off-campus, with a curfew that makes evening practice sessions impossible. I wanted to study. That is all."
"Deception is not a study habit, Herr Seo," Professor Baumann cut in.
Jaemin looked at Baumann. He had respected this man. Baumann was the Head of Composition, the man Jaemin had gone to first when he realized his files were missing. Now, Baumann looked at him with the cold disappointment of a man who felt personally insulted by Jaemin's biology.
"We have testimony suggesting that your recent... outbursts regarding Herr Choi's work coincide with a documented cycle of irregularity," Dr. Thorne, a consulting specialist in secondary gender biology, spoke up. He tapped a thick finger on a chart Jaemin recognized with a jolt of nausea. His heat cycle tracking. "Hysteria, delusion, paranoia. Typical symptoms of an unmated omega under stress."
"It's not hysteria," Jaemin snapped, gripping the edge of his chair until his knuckles turned white. "It's plagiarism. Look at the modulation in the second movement. The shift from C minor to E-flat major using the Neapolitan chord—Choi Seungcheol has never written a transition like that in his life. He plays technically, he doesn't write emotionally. That structure is mine."
There was a silence. After a moment, Professor Sato, the youngest member of the board and a gentle-faced beta from the Woodwinds department, looked at him.
She leaned forward slightly, eyes softening with what looked like pity, and Jaemin felt a spark of desperate hope.
She hears me. She knows.
"Herr Seo," Professor Sato said softly. "We understand you feel... attached to the music. It is common for students to project their own internal struggles onto the work of their peers, especially when their biological imperatives are driving them toward... connection."
The hope died in Jaemin's chest, replaced by a hollow coldness.
Even the kindness here was poisoned. She didn't believe him; she just pitied his "condition."
"I am not projecting," Jaemin whispered. "I wrote it."
"And yet," Dean Valerius drawled, "Herr Choi has provided logs of you spending significant time in his quarters during the weeks leading up to the submission. Witnesses say you were distraught. Clingy."
"We were partners," Jaemin said, though the word tasted like ash now. "Ask anyone. We were friends."
"Friends," Frau Gertz repeated with a dry, skepticism. "Mr. Choi stated that you became infatuated. That when he did not return your affections—knowing that a relationship with an undeclared omega would violate school policy—you threatened to claim his work as your own."
"That is a lie," Jaemin said, his voice rising. "He is lying to you!"
"Control yourself," Baumann barked. "This emotional volatility only proves Dr. Thorne's point. You are unstable, Mr. Seo. You have lied to this institution every day for four years. Why should we believe you now over a student with an impeccable record and a family history of integrity?"
Jaemin slumped back in his chair. They kept circling back to it. Every time he brought up notes, they brought up hormones. Every time he brought up logic, they brought up his gender. It was a wall he couldn't climb. He was screaming into a void that had already decided he was crazy.
"We will be the judge of the facts," Dean Valerius said coldly, closing the file. "The hearing is recessed for forty-eight hours while we review the final witness testimony. You are confined to your quarters until the verdict is read."
…
If the atmosphere inside the hearing room had been suffocating, the world outside was toxic.
Jaemin didn't know how it happened. Disciplinary hearings were supposed to be confidential. It was a closed tribunal. But by the time he made it back to the solitude of the hallway and pulled his phone from his pocket, the screen was already lit up with notifications.
Prodigy or Predator? The Omega Scandal at Prestigious Music Academy.
The headline glared at him from the campus news feed. Someone had leaked it. Not just the plagiarism accusation, but everything.
Jaemin's hands shook so hard he nearly dropped the device. He scrolled, his vision blurring.
The articles didn't talk about music theory or timestamps. They didn't analyze the concerto.
They talked about biology, and designations.
They painted a lurid picture of a desperate, deceptive omega who had infiltrated a prestigious institution under false pretenses.
The comments section was already flooding with bile. They spun a narrative of a student who, when his talent failed him, tried to seduce the school's top alpha to sleep his way to a grade, and when rejected, tried to destroy him.
> Always knew there was something off about that guy.
> Imagine lying about your gender just to get into the beta dorms. Creepy.
> Seungcheol is a saint for not reporting him sooner.
Jaemin felt the bile rise in his throat.
He ran the rest of the way to his building, heads turning as he passed, whispers trailing him like smoke.
He went straight into his dorm room and locked the door. He didn't turn on the lights. He crawled under his desk—a tight, dark enclosure, like the space under his bed where he used to hide as a child during thunderstorms.
For countless hours, he didn't move. He didn't eat. He sat huddled in the tight space, knees pulled to his chest, forehead resting on his kneecaps, surrounded by darkness, the silence ringing in his ears.
It was the only place that felt safe.
Suddenly, out of the blur of passing time, a knock came on his door. Jaemin flinched violently, curling up tighter into himself, holding his breath.
"Jaemin?"
Lukas. Jaemin recognized his voice instantly, even though it was muffled through the wood. It was the first familiar voice he'd heard in forty-eight hours that wasn't accusing him.
"Jaemin... are you in there?" A pause. Then, softer, "I brought some food. I know you haven't been to the cafeteria."
Jaemin didn't answer. He stared blankly at the grain of the wood on the underside of his desk, unmoving.
"Look, Jaemin... just open the door, okay?" Lukas's voice was laced with worry. "I saw the articles. It's... it's bullshit, right? I mean, I don't care about the omega thing. But the rest of it? That's not you. You wouldn't do that."
There was a desperate earnestness in Lukas's tone. He wasn't demanding the truth; he was pleading for reassurance. He couldn't reconcile the friend he knew with the monster in the news.
"Jaemin," Lukas pleaded. "Are you alright?"
Jaemin squeezed his eyes shut. Tears leaked out, hot and humiliating, tracking through the dust on his cheeks.
He wanted to scramble out from under the desk, throw the door open, and scream that he was the victim. He wanted to be held.
But the kindness in Lukas's voice broke him. It sounded too much like the kindness Seungcheol used to shower him with. Soft. Concerned. Fake? No, Lukas wasn't fake, but Jaemin was too shattered to tell the difference anymore.
If he opened that door, he would see the confusion and the pity in Lukas's eyes, and that would kill him faster than the expulsion. He couldn't bear to be looked at like the broken thing he was.
"Jaemin, please," Lukas's voice cracked. "Just tell me you're okay."
Jaemin bit down hard on his knuckle until he tasted copper, using the physical pain to ground himself, to keep from sobbing aloud. No matter how strongly the desire to wail and cry rose up within him, he fought it down, refusing to give any sign of life.
Eventually, the silence stretched out. He heard a heavy sigh, the rustle of a paper bag being set down on the floorboards outside, and the sound of footsteps walking away.
He wept then.
He didn't weep for his degree, which was already gone. He didn't weep for his reputation, which was currently being shredded by strangers on the internet who didn't even know him.
He wept for Seungcheol.
He wept for the man who had brought him porridge when he had the flu, who had sat up until 4:00 AM listening to his melodies, who had given him comfort when he was homesick and lonely. He wept for the strong arms that had held him when he was in pain, the voice that had whispered that he was brilliant.
He mourned him as if he were dead, because the person who had done this to him was a stranger wearing Seungcheol's face.