Yuji hadn't slept in two days.
His apartment looked like a battlefield - empty ramen cups, crumpled sketch drafts, and caffeine cans lined up like fallen soldiers around his desk. A cold tablet screen glared back at him, displaying a dramatic fight scene frozen in time. The clock blinked mockingly: 4:56 AM.
"Just one more panel," he muttered, hand trembling as he dragged his stylus across the screen.
His hero was mid-air, ready to punch a cyborg assassin into next week. It should've been epic. Hell, it was epic - if only his eyelids didn't weigh a thousand tons.
"I swear if this deadline doesn't kill me, the editor will," Yuji groaned, cracking his neck. "Who told me to add five extra pages last minute? Oh right - me. Because I'm a genius. A stupid genius."
He hadn't showered. He hadn't eaten anything solid since… Monday? Was it even Monday?
His phone buzzed on the corner of the desk. [Editor: Just checking if we're still alive :) ]
Yuji threw it face-down without replying.
The last stroke of shading finally done, he hit 'Save' and collapsed backwards with a dramatic sigh, arms flopping over the chair like a ragdoll.
Then it happened.
The world spun. Not in the usual "I haven't slept" way, but in the "oh no, something is definitely wrong" kind of way.
His body went heavy. The buzzing in his ears grew louder. And before he could even curse one last time, everything faded into static.
___
Yuji woke up to the sound of birds chirping outside his window - and a mild headache that throbbed behind his eyes like a warning siren.
He groaned.
Not because of the headache, but because the ceiling above him looked exactly like his ceiling back home. Which was a problem, considering the last thing he remembered was blacking out mid-deadline submission.
"...Did I die?" he muttered, rubbing his temples. "Is this heaven? Because if heaven has water stains on the ceiling and my moldy futon still smells like instant curry, I'm gonna file a complaint."
Everything was... the same. Same small apartment, same half-cracked mirror on the closet door, same work desk covered in empty cans of Boss Coffee. Even the crumpled pair of boxers on the floor hadn't magically disappeared. Tragic.
Yuji sat up and blinked at his drawing tablet, which still glowed faintly. His stylus rested where he left it, mid-line stroke on a panel of his latest comic.
"Okay... So not dead."
Pause.
"Probably."
He shuffled to the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face, and stared at himself in the mirror.
Same shaggy black hair, same tired eyes with dark circles, same oversized 'I Hate Mondays' T-shirt. He looked like himself. He felt like himself. But something was off. Not wrong, exactly - but... different.
He sniffed the air.
It smelled... cleaner. Sharper. Like someone turned up the saturation on life.
And when he walked to the corner store an hour later, everything still looked normal. The streets, the buildings, the vending machines - even the grumpy auntie at the cashier was still yelling at kids for trying to shoplift gum.
It was like the world hadn't changed at all.
Except... it had.
Yuji couldn't quite figure it out, until the guy paying in front of him turned around and gave him a weird look. Not an unfriendly one. Just... interested. His nostrils flared slightly, as if he was trying to smell something.
Yuji took a step back.
"Uhh... can I help you?"
The man blinked and cleared his throat. "Sorry. Didn't mean to be rude. Just... you smell kind of... warm."
Yuji stared.
"Did you just say I smell warm?"
The guy nodded earnestly, as if that was a perfectly normal thing to say to a stranger.
"Right. Okay. You're weird. I'm leaving."
He left the store with his favorite melon pan and a bottle of tea, muttering to himself.
That was the first clue.
He missed it completely.
___
The second clue came a week later when he was in the middle of sketching a new fight scene and his neighbor, a sweet old lady who always fed the stray cats, knocked on his door with a gentle smile.
"I made some stew," she said. "Thought you might be having a rough heat."
Yuji blinked. "A rough what?"
"Heats can be unpredictable at your age. Be careful, okay?"
"...Sure," he said, still confused.
He took the stew, thanked her awkwardly, and googled rough heat as soon as she left.
What he found? Confusing. Alphas. Betas. Omegas. Pheromones. Mating cycles. Biological hierarchy.
He leaned back in his chair, eyes wide.
"What kind of trashy romance novel dimension did I wake up in?"
It took him a few more days - and a few more weird encounters - to realize that this wasn't Japan anymore. Not his Japan, at least. It was a mirror of his world, but with different rules.
An omegaverse.
A world he never cared about, never read about, never wanted to know anything about.
Now, apparently, he was living in one.
And worst of all...
He was an omega.
Yuji didn't panic. That wasn't his style.
Instead, he groaned, dragged a pillow over his face, and yelled into it.
___
Still, after a few weeks, he adjusted surprisingly well.
He continued drawing comics for online clients - same passion, same hustle. His new landlord didn't ask many questions. The rent was cheap, and no one looked too closely at his ID, which now mysteriously listed him as an "Omega-Class Citizen."
Yuji kept to himself. Wore scent-blockers. Took suppressants as soon as he figured out where to get them.
He even got used to the way people sniffed the air when he walked past. Creepy? Yes. But manageable.
What mattered was that he could still draw, still eat melon pan, and still binge old martial arts films at 3 AM while working.
As long as no one asked him to fall in love, get "marked," or have a heat-induced breakdown, he was fine.
Until that doom day.
___
It was a Wednesday evening, and Yuji was tired.
He had spent the entire day finishing an emergency commission for a client who wanted an action hero fighting a genetically enhanced wolf with lightning powers.
Art was suffering. And right now, he was starving.
He grabbed a bento from a nearby vending machine and decided to take a shortcut back home - an alley between two closed convenience stores that shaved off ten minutes from his walk.
Yuji had taken this path before. Quiet, unlit, but safe.
At least, it used to be.
He was halfway through the alley when the silence shattered -
BANG!
Gunshots. Sharp, echoing, too close for comfort.
He froze. Bento dropped. Heart thudding.
"What the hell?!"
Another shot rang out. Then shouting.
Yuji ducked behind a pile of crates, knees pressed to his chest.
"I swear, if I die again, I'm going to sue the afterlife."
Footsteps pounded nearby. Someone yelled in a language he didn't understand. Another gunshot. The crack of something metallic slamming against the wall.
Yuji didn't move.
He barely breathed.
This wasn't part of the omegaverse cliché. Where were the fluffy rom-com tropes? The awkward coffee shop meet-cutes? This was action. Gunfire. Chaos.
"This feels way too much like one of my comics," he whispered to himself, eyes scanning for an exit.
Then a body dropped in front of him.
Not dead. Just unconscious. Bleeding from the arm.
Yuji clapped a hand over his mouth to stop a scream.
What is happening?!
Suddenly, someone else turned the corner - a tall figure in all black, holding what looked like a military-grade weapon, moving like a shadow.
Yuji's breath hitched.
The figure stopped.
His gaze swept the alley, cold and calculating.
Yuji shrank back further, barely concealed behind the crates.
But then, their eyes locked.
Silver. Icy. Familiar.
Yuji's stomach dropped.
That face. That expression. That aura of don't-mess-with-me-or-die.
It was him.
Nikolai.
One of the villain characters Yuji had drawn in his comic months ago.
Yuji blinked hard, thinking he was hallucinating.
But no. The man was real. Solid. Deadly.
And walking straight toward him.