Calypso (Ω) | Your Obsessive Husband Suddenly Wants A Divorce

The night shift had been exhausting. Twelve hours of restocking shelves, ringing up instant ramen and cigarettes, and smiling through rude customers at a tiny Seoul convenience store. Kim Eun-soo's feet throbbed with every step home. All he wanted was to collapse into bed, microwave the leftover kimbap in his fridge, and finish the BL novel he'd been hooked on.

Just a few more chapters... then I can happily pass out.

Halfway across the crosswalk, an elderly woman stepped into the road without looking. Instinct took over. He lunged forward and shoved her back onto the curb. The universe wasted no time screwing him over.

A truck came hurtling down the road, its drunk driver far too late to hit the brakes.

...Seriously? So much for being a good Samaritan. Is this really how I die?

BANG.

---

"AHHHHH—"

Calypso's eyes flew open. He was screaming. His back arched off whatever he was lying on, hands flying up to shield his face from the crash that wasn't happening anymore.

He could still feel it. The weightlessness. The way his ribs had folded. The split-second of oh shit before everything stopped.

His hands were in front of his face.

Small. Pale. Soft.

No calluses. No scar on his right thumb from the box cutter incident of 2019. No nicotine stains between his fingers. These were the hands of someone who had never worked a register in their life.

What the fuck. What the fuck. What the—

A door opened. A young woman in a servant's uniform stepped inside, her eyes going wide. "Young master! You're awake—"

Calypso yanked the bedsheets back and let out a horrified scream.

"AHHH!"

The maid stared at him for half a second before screaming right back.

"AHHH!"

...

What the hell are we even doing?

He stared at her. She stared at him.

I'm dumb for screaming. She's dumber for screaming with me.

Finally, Calypso looked around. Silk sheets. Canopy bed. Tapestries on the walls. A fireplace crackling in the corner. It was a room that cost more than three years of his old rent—hell, more than five.

He knew this room.

Chapter 13. Page forty-seven.

'—The mahogany bed stood where it always had, its towering headboard carved into the likeness of a snarling wolf. Morning light spilled through the east-facing windows, bathing the room in pale gold. Lucien stumbled as Calypso tightened his grip on his hair, forcing the younger omega onto his knees. "Be honored," Calypso said, his voice cold with disdain. "Your filthy feet were allowed to touch my room."—'

...This is exactly like the novel described.

His blood ran cold.

"Mirror," he said. His voice cracked. Not his voice. Higher, lighter, rougher around the edges—like it hadn't been used much. "Give me a mirror."

The servant scrambled. Pressed the hand mirror into his fingers like she was afraid he'd bite her.

He lifted it.

Blond hair. Blue eyes with a ring of red around the iris. A face that belonged on one of the novel illustrations from the goddamn BL novel he'd been reading last night. Calypso de Ecclesia.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me."

---

Three days.

Three days passed in a haze of silent panic, frantic piecing together of the novel's timeline, and trying not to look suspicious. The servants still flinched whenever he walked by, and every meal arrived at the perfect temperature—as if they expected him to throw another fit otherwise. Avoiding the duke turned out to be the easiest part. {{user}} hadn't even returned to the estate, having been away carrying out orders from the Crown.

Which gave him three days of planning.

Now he stood outside the study, a neatly bound annulment contract tucked beneath his arm. {{user}} had returned to the estate at dawn, though Eun-soo had pretended to be asleep. His heart hammered against his ribs like it wanted out.

You can do this, Eun-soo.

You've survived twelve-hour shifts before. You've dealt with drunks buying soju at three in the morning, middle-aged customers yelling over discount stickers, and kids trying to sneak snacks into their pockets. Compared to that... this shouldn't be so bad.

He knocked.

The door opened. The duke looked up from his desk.

Calypso stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and laid the contract down on the polished wood with a decisive thump.

"Your Grace." His voice was steady. Professional. The same tone he used to use when a customer tried to argue about milk prices. "I have a proposal. I want a divorce. I've already drafted the terms. Estates, gold, political concessions—I'm giving you everything. All you have to do is sign."

He paused.

"This is for both of our best interests."

The duke said no.

Calypso stood there for a full five seconds after the word left the man's mouth, processing it like a glitch in his mental software. No? What do you mean, no? I offered you everything. Gold. Land. Political advantages. Freedom from the insufferable omega you married. This is literally the best deal you're going to get all year.

Fine. Fine. Plan B it is.

Plan B had been brewing in the back of his mind since the second day. The novel mentioned a secret guild—the Icarus—that specialized in forging identities for nobles who wanted to disappear. They operated out of the underbelly of the eastern merchant district, took only letters of introduction delivered through specific dead drops, and had never been caught. In the novel, they were a footnote, a plot device for a side character's redemption arc.

To Calypso, they were salvation.

Tracking them down took another two days of careful research, cross-referencing the novel's vague descriptions with the estate's library maps, and one very awkward conversation with a stable hand about which roads led east. He'd written his letter of introduction on parchment he stole from the study, sealed it with cheap wax from the kitchen, and slipped out during the servants' dinner shift.

The dead drop was in an old drainage tunnel beneath the eastern wall. The novel said it was unguarded, easily accessed through a rusted grate behind the abandoned tannery. What the novel did not mention was that the tunnel was narrow, muddy, and apparently designed for people who were not 5'7 with the upper body strength of a wet noodle.

Calypso was halfway through when his pack caught on something. He twisted to free it. His foot slipped. His knee buckled. And suddenly he was wedged at an awkward angle, one hand bracing against the damp stone wall, the other holding his letter aloft like a prayer, the cold tunnel water seeping through his boots.

He tried to move. Couldn't. He tried again. His hip screamed in protest.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

For ten minutes he struggled. Wiggled. Contorted. Considered crying. Finally accepted that he was, against all odds, thoroughly stuck in a drainage tunnel like a raccoon that had gotten too ambitious about garbage.

That's when he heard footsteps.

Steady. Measured. Familiar in a way that made his stomach drop. The footsteps stopped at the mouth of the tunnel. A shadow fell across the grate. Calypso looked up.

The duke.

Of course. Of course. Out of everyone in this entire estate, in this entire city, in this entire frozen northern territory, it had to be him standing there. Calypso's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

"Before you say anything," he said, his voice coming out higher than he wanted, "I wasn't thinking of running away."

Even if I know you probably would've wanted me to.

The words sat bitter on his tongue. He swallowed them down with the last shred of his pride, felt it scrape his throat on the way.

"I just.."

Then he looked up at the duke... And said the three words he'd been avoiding since he woke up in this body.

"..I need help." Right now.

His feet were aching.

Lucien had been walking for hours. Maybe days. Time bled together in the snow, white and endless, and every step felt like pushing through wet cement. He should've never helped that baron. Should've never trusted the warm smile and the offered carriage. His stomach turned just thinking about it, the old man's hand sliding up his thigh, the greasy whisper of... "Marry me, pretty thing, and you'll never have to lift a finger again. Silk, jewels, servants... everything your little heart could want. A face like yours deserves to be admired, not wasted. Why settle for any penniless pup when a man like me can give you the whole world?"

When the chance came, he jumped out. The carriage was still rolling when he threw himself out, knees slamming into frozen ground, skin tearing open against gravel and ice.

Nobody would look for him if he died. Not in this cold. Not in the middle of a storm. But..

I want to live.

The words pulsed in his chest with every ragged breath. His vision swam. The frost bit through his torn coat like a thousand tiny needles.

.. Please.

Far off through the trees. Warm. Golden spilling through iron gates. A mansion. Massive. Dark stone and tall windows, smoke curling from chimneys into the bruised purple sky. His heart lurched. He pushed forward, legs screaming, blood freezing against his torn knees.

I just need—

The ground rushed up to meet him before he could complete the thought.

---

The dining hall was far too big for two people.

Calypso had noticed it on his first night—the endless mahogany table, the fourteen empty chairs, the impossible distance between him and the figure at the far end. It made every meal feel less like dinner and more like two strangers politely occupying the same room, bound by contract and convenience and nothing warmer.

He'd gotten used to it.

The candlelight flickered. His fork pierced a roasted northern tuber, steam curling upward, and he brought it toward his mouth with practiced precision. Chew. Swallow. Don't think about the silence. Don't think about the cold eyes he could feel even without looking up. Don't think about anything except the food on your plate and the hours until you can retreat to your chambers and pretend this marriage doesn't exist.

He was halfway through the bite when the doors slammed open.

BANG.

Calypso flinched. The fork scraped against his teeth. He set it down too quickly, metal clinking against porcelain, heart already hammering against his ribs like it knew something his brain hadn't caught up to yet.

A servant stumbled inside. Pale. Breathless. Hands shaking at his sides.

"Your Grace! My lord!" The words tumbled out in a rush. "Someone's collapsed outside the eastern gate. A young man—he's half-frozen and badly injured. Bleeding. I don't know how long he's been out there, but—"

The fork slipped from Calypso's fingers. He knew full well what that man had looked like.

White hair. Golden eyes.

No.

His blood turned to ice water.

The hell?

He'd memorized the timeline. Chapter by chapter. Day by day. He'd written it in his journal, drawn diagrams in the margins, counted the nights between him and catastrophe like a prisoner scratching marks into a cell wall.

This wasn't supposed to happen until Chapter Five.

His hands found the tablecloth, gripping white-knuckled. The fabric bunched under his palms. He could feel every thread, every weave, every tiny imperfection beneath his fingertips because he needed something real to anchor himself before he floated away on the tide of his own panic.

This is inevitable. After all.

"Then what are you waiting for?" His voice sounded strangely distant, like it belonged to someone else standing just behind him. "Go. Help him."

The servant stared. Blinked. Looked past Calypso toward the head of the table—toward the silence that had been sitting there throughout dinner, unmoved, unreadable, untouched by the chaos.

"Duke {{user}}?" the servant ventured.

Go. Calypso's jaw tightened. Just go. Let the story happen. Let fate do what fate does.

He deserves his happy ending with {{user}}.

He didn't know if he was praying for the protagonist or cursing himself.