I put the heavy kettle on the makeshift stove, trying to turn the gas on. Of course, there was none. I sighed. I really, really wanted my tea. But it was the end of the month, and having gas in our pipes by then was unusual. My family could never afford it. Not for an entire month.

"Mum! Are there any logs? We have to use the log fire."

My mother looked behind her from where she stood at sink, drying some dishes. Our kitchen was tiny and messy, barely having any room for the two of us.

"I'll get some!" my brother, Madara, said, poking his head round around the doorframe to the kitchen.

"Thank you, sweetheart", my mother said warmly, and my heart melted. She was becoming old, yet so dedicated to her husband - our dad - and her two sons.

"Don't come in here! Your ass is too thick", I teased Madara. He stuck his tongue out. I put the kettle down on the ancient kitchen table with the four chairs, all broken and mismatched, and took Madara's arm. "I'm going with you."

We stepped out of the metal front door of the container that was our tiny home. It was on the third floor of a pile of five containers, surrounded by scaffoldings so that we could get down using the stairs. I remember how scary the rickety stairs had been when I was a child, but now, at eighteen, I was slightly more steady on my feet, thankfully. I'd let go of Madras arm as the stairs were not wide enough for both of us, but once down, he grabbed mine again.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

"Nervous", I said. "How... How was it for you? First day?"

"Fine", he said, but his grimace told me otherwise.

"That bad?"

"Yeah", he said. "Sorry."

"It's fine."

It was not fine. Just as my parents and my brother, I was an omega, which not only meant I was condoned to a life in poverty but aslo meant I'd learned from a very young age to be laid back, walk with my head held low and just stay out of the way of others. Which made me nervous about starting university tomorrow.

It was unusual for omegas to attend, but it did happen. Only to those who had the best grades, though. I had worked my heart out in order to get in.

"You're making history", Madara said.

"I'm not the first omega. You went to uni, too."

"Oh, stop that with your pretended humbleness!" he scolded me and shoved me playfully. This time, I stuck my tongue out at him. "You know what I'm talking about."

"Yeah..." I mumbled, looking down and blushing, yet I couldn't prevent a smile creeping up over my face.

He wasn't talking about me attending university per se, but about me attending med school. There had never been an omega doctor in our country, or even in the world, and me getting in as a result of both my grades and interviews had stirred up a lot of controversy. There had been newspaper articles about me. Yet none of the alpha or beta journalists ever having invited me to have my say, not even mentioning my name. Instead, they interviewed the Dean of the med school, an alpha. The opinion of me, an omega, just didn't count.

'"There's no denying it", the Dean said. "He did well. We would have wronged the system if we didn't give him a place."'

He had won a lot of respect from me then. Not that it matters, I thought as I took care not to stumble upon any junk as I walked beside my twenty-five-year-old brother, which was a difficult task as the ground was full of it. The junk, that is, not my brother. Although they were basically the same, I thought teasingly, lovingly, looking over at him. The junk and my brother. The trash and any omega. I love my trash brother, though.

Both of us matched our surroundings. The tall, grey containers matching our gangly bodies, the greyness of it all matching our worn-out clothes, although at least we were clean. The black electrical chords running between the staples containers were our hair. His hair and mine were both long and pitch black, but whereas his was cut in fierce layers and tumbled loosely around his torso like black lava, mine was a frail waterfall kept in a hair clip in my neck, cut in soft layers that framed my face as it was too short to be put in the clip. His hairs were thick little ropes, while mine where made of spun silk.

The electrical cords were as useless as our hair, providing electricity only a few nights a months. Those nights were a dream of watching soccer until late with the family. We had a secret stash of popcorn that we could pop in our ancient microwave we had found in a dump five years ago. It was a luxury out of this world, quite literally.

We walked in silence to our little storehouse where we kept our logs that we went with our dad twice a year to get. It was a long, half-day walk to the nearest forest, or the pathetic excuse thereof, but it was a necessity to get through the many nights a year where we needed hot water but had neither gas nor electricity.

As me and my brother walked back from the storage, a tarpaulin with logs between us, my thoughts went back to my upcoming first day at university. As was the law, the interviewers weren't allowed to know our status, but it was really no use; it was clear who was alpha, who was beta and who was omega just by our entire demeanour and the quality of our clothes. The omegas and some betas that were more to the left had criticised the system of discrimination, of only choosing alphas and, in rare cases, some betas. The people in charge of the system had retorted by stating that most applicants were, actually, alphas, and thus of course more of them would qualify than the rest; it was a matter of ratios. I had calculated the ratios and reached the conclusion that the alpha:beta:omega ratio of applications to med school nationally were 42:12:1 and the ratio of acceptance was 97:3:0. I knew you couldn't put a zero there but there were literally no omegas who got in, ever.

Until now.

I had hardly ever met a beta until my interview, the only ones being the dentists or doctors I visited, although very rarely because my family couldn't really afford it. And I had never met an alpha before. Tomorrow, that would change. The alpha:beta:omega ratio in my class was 247:5:1. I would be surrounded by them.

The sun in the sky, always filtered through ashen grey smog, reflected how I tried to imagine the alphas. They seemed large and intimidating, as the sun, yet I couldn't get a good glimpse of them because of the smog that was my own prejudices about them. I was frightened, yet also curious.

We arrived in our home after an interesting climb up the stairs with the tarpaulin between us, and me and Madara helped to light the logs on fire on the tiny, tiny balcony that only had room for the log fire; we had to sit inside to light it, sticking our hands out through the door. I put the kettle over it to finally, finally get my tea.

I never told anyone, but tea at the end of the day was my way of filling my stomach up as much as possible so I could fall asleep better. I knew our mother ate less than what she wanted to, saying she had a small appetite and was already full, so that the rest of her family could get more. But it was never enough for us. I didn't remember how it felt, feeling full. I honestly didn't think I'd ever been full. As I sat huddled in a blanket next to Madara, solving a crosswords in a newspaper we'd found on our walk to the storage house, my mother came and kissed me on the head. I looked up. My father was behind her.

"I'm proud of you, son", he said, his voice a little wobbly.

"Of course it had to be him!" Madara cheered. "If anyone can change the world, it's my Izuna."

I blushed. I had no plan on changing the world,  it they didn't need to know that.

"We have a gift for you, the entire family", my mother said. I looked up. I had never received a gift before. My family simply couldn't afford it. My father handed me something that was wrapped in newspaper. It was the size of my two palms, not very high but not entirely flat, either.

"It's not much, but..." my dad excused.

I looked at Madara. "It's from you, too?" I asked. He nodded, suddenly tearful. I'd never really seen my family like this.

I opened the package up carefully, as if I wanted to save the newspaper around it. Inside it was a stack of paper, envelope and stamps. Next to it was a beautiful, cobalt pen.

"This... This is-"

"The pen is from me", Madara said.

"It's not much", my dad said again, which was ludicrous. The paper was fine-quality, and the pen... It must have taken Madara a good couple of years to save up for that. "And we won't be able to write you back, but... Please write. Please write to us."

I saw the regret in his eyes then; the regret of being an omega, to bring his children into an omega world where your family wasn't just a phone call away, where no one you knew had ever even seen a cellphone.

"Thank you", was all I could say, opening my arms out so all four of us could gather in one big family hug. "Thank you very much."

If I had ever had any doubts about the choice of my path, about shouldering the role of a pioneer, it all culminated on the train station where I would take the train to campus. The student loan allowed my to pay for one train ticket, but I couldn't afford to bring anyone with me, so the goodbyes had to be made on the platform.

But what caused the doubt wasn't the tearful face of my mother, her crows feet even deeper as her face crumbled up, usually just marks in the earth now being deep stamps in the snow, as she hugged me goodbye. It wasn't the endless grey of my omega city reflected in the state of the train station, so full of litter, so deprived of hope. It wasn't the train, noisy and run on diesel with its chipped, dusty red paint, and how far away from all I had ever held dear it would take me.

It was Madara. It was Madara that put doubt in me.

As I had hugged my entire family goodbye, I turned to board the train. But just as I was about to put my foot on the first step, I felt two hands on my shoulders, turning me around, and I came face-to-face with my brother, a wild expression on his face.

"Izuna!" he said hurriedly as the conductor blew the whistle, announcing the departure of the train. It seemed like he wanted to give me a lifetime of advice in just a few seconds. "Whatever you do, don't let them... Don't let the alphas bring you down! Don't let them make you believe you don't belong. You were chosen!" His voice was disturbingly high pitched.

"Sir, you need to hop on board", the ticket guy, an omega, who walked past said.

Madara grabbed my shoulder, trying to shake his words into me. "And whatever you do, go to the hospital when needed. Promise me to seek medical attention. Okay?"

What on earth... "I promise", I said, placing my hands on his cheeks in the hurry, not knowing what else to do to make him believe I would be fine. Would I?

I walked as through a mist to my allocated seat, letting Madara's outburst sink in. What had that been all about? I slumped down, closed my eyes, leaned my head back. A trolley came, and the lady asked if I wanted something. I said no out of pure habit, forgetting that from this day, I got a student loan that enabled my day-to-day costs. Although I had no idea what normal day-to-day costs entailed.

I drifted off to a dreamless sleep, not wanting to sense how the diesel fueled my transportation out for my world and into something entirely else, not wanting to deal with Madara's outburst, and what it may mean for me.