I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)-Chapter 15: A Vague Story
"No, no, no! Cherion, you absolute idiot, don’t you dare kick the bucket now!"
Cherion winced at the glowing screen of his smartphone. His thumb hovered over the glass, scrolling through the digital pages of The Omega’s Eternal Winter with a frantic sort of desperation.
There it was. In black and white. The prisoner Cherion was led to the block, his eyes vacant, as the axe fell under the cold morning sun. Dead. Just like that. Finished.
He let out a breath that was half-hiss, half-groan. The novel was supposed to be a sweeping, epic romance between Yerel, the brooding Alpha Crown Prince, and Philia, the "saintly" Omega whose kindness was apparently so legendary it could solve world hunger or something. It was classic high-fantasy fluff. But Cherion had been sticking around for the side plots, specifically the mess surrounding the antagonist who happened to share his name.
Why on earth would the author kill him off now? There was so much story left! The war in the North hadn’t even reached its peak, and the political tension was still thick enough to cut with a dull taco spatula.
"Cherion! Break’s over! Get your head out of that phone and get back to the window!"
The voice of his manager, a man whose lung capacity was largely dedicated to shouting about "efficiency," echoed through the cramped staff room. Cherion sighed and pushed himself up from the linoleum floor. His joints popped in protest. He’d spent his entire thirty-minute lunch break hunched in a corner, hoping for a plot twist that never came.
He stuffed the phone into his pocket, adjusted his cap, and trudged back to his post at Taco Hell.
The drive-thru window was his personal purgatory. On paper, it was simple, take the money, hand over the bag of lukewarm burritos, and wish them a "taco-tastic day" without sounding like you wanted to jump into the deep fryer. In reality? It was a front-row seat to the worst of humanity.
He’d dealt with it all, like the "TicTac pranksters" who tried to hand him a live lizard instead of a five-dollar bill, the Karens who screamed because their soda had exactly three too many ice cubes, and the stone-faced commuters who treated him like a glitching vending machine rather than a twenty-four-year-old guy with a degree he couldn’t use.
Bag. Hand-off. Fake smile. Repeat.
It was a monotone routine, a grey loop of existence that could drain the soul right out of your chest if you let it. That was why the novels were so important. They were the only things that kept his brain from turning into mush during the eight-hour stretches of "Would you like to upsize that combo?"
Seeing his own name in The Omega’s Eternal Winter had been a shock at first. It wasn’t exactly a common name, and seeing "Cherion" as the petty, jealous antagonist who kept trying to sabotage the Saint’s life was... well, it was a trip. He’d joked to himself that he was reading a fanfic of his own life, except with more silk robes and fewer "dick" customers in SUVs.
But now, that version of him was gone. Executed. A loose end snipped off by a lazy author who probably didn’t know what to do with a character who wasn’t a saint or a hero.
The week dragged on. Cherion spent his late-night shifts and his bus rides home devouring the final Chapters, his frustration mounting with every paragraph. He’d finally reached the very end, the dreaded Q&A section where the author sat in their ivory tower and "explained" the choices they’d made.
He was sitting on his bed, the springs groaning under his weight, when he hit the author’s note about the antagonist’s "hidden potential."
Question: Why did Cherion have such a high spiritual resonance if he was just a villain?
Author: Actually, Cherion was meant to have a rare Omega healing ability. He could have cured himself and others through physical touch and pheromones. But I decided it made the plot too complicated, so I cut it.
Cherion stared at the screen, his mouth falling open. "What?"
He whispered it to the empty room, his voice cracking with genuine indignation. "He had a healing ability? He could have fixed things? He could have saved himself? He could have... he could have healed Zarius!" 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞
The author’s notes continued, casually mentioning how Zarius Valtrane, the "Cursed Alpha" of the North, was actually destined for a slow, agonizing death because no healer in the empire was strong enough to touch his curse. It was supposed to be a tragic subplot to make the world feel "darker."
"Ckck. What were the authors thinking?" Cherion muttered, tossing his phone onto the duvet in disgust. "What a waste. A total, absolute narrative crime."
He lay back, staring up at the cracked ceiling of his apartment. He thought about Zarius, the man who was depicted in the book as a terrifying, lonely mountain of a man. A man who was essentially dying in a cage while everyone around him waited for him to fall.
If it were him? If he were in that world, with that kind of power?
He wouldn’t have spent his time being a petty bitch to Philia. He wouldn’t have wasted a single second on the Crown Prince’s ego. No, he would have packed his bags, headed North, and grabbed that grumpy, coughing Alpha by the collar.
"If it were me," Cherion whispered, his eyes fluttering shut as the exhaustion of a double shift at Taco Hell finally won the battle, "I’d definitely do it. I’d fix him. I’d take the Duke, take the North, and tell the rest of the world to go to hell."
He didn’t know he was holding his breath. He didn’t know that his fan was beginning to sound like the rustle of wind through a pine forest. He didn’t know that the smell of old taco seasoning was being replaced by the sharp, clean scent of cedar and frost.
Inside his mind, one final thought flickered like a dying ember, God, if that guy is still alive in there somewhere... I could have saved him.
