The First Detox

It was a night of torrential rain.

On that day, when the heavy downpour weighed down everyone’s shoulders, a comet fell from the sky.

And before anyone could even don their armor, a ‘Gate Break’ erupted from the Gate known as ‘Blue Moon.’

Young, youthful hunters were deployed into the battlefield to hold back the beasts pouring out like a broken dam, ending their lives like wilting flowers.

On that day, as dark clouds rushed in like a torrential current, Lee Do-han—a Mutant Hunter—was also sent out as a boy soldier.

‘Mutant Hunters’ were those whose bodies had mutated after being exposed to the DNA of monsters. Once they turned 18, they were forcibly mobilized for ‘Gate Breaks’ under the orders of the government and the Association.

Lee Do-han was just one of those young sacrifices.

Blood splattered, flesh tore, and monstrous shrieks echoed through the air.

With no luxury to distinguish friend from foe, the hunters clung desperately to survival, ripping and killing everything their hands touched.

Meanwhile, the world saw the day fade, the night pass, and dawn arrive as naturally as the laws of nature.

Only after everything within sight was reduced to ruins did the ‘Gate Break’ finally signal its end.

By the time the light of dawn began to hover beyond the pouring rain, the surrounding area was packed with a massive crowd of people.

Medical personnel, reporters, and body disposal squads moved back and forth amidst the blaring sirens.

Lee Do-han sat crumpled against a pile of collapsed building debris, watching the scene with a cold, detached gaze.

Hunters lay scattered all over like corpses, waving their hands for someone to save them, yet not a single medic approached this area.

Listening to those screams that sounded like gutter rats, Lee Do-han listlessly stroked the hideous veins bulging out on his body.

It was around that time when someone entered his field of vision.

It was a child.

A tiny child, holding a small umbrella, was staring at Lee Do-han from amidst the crowd.

It was a strange feeling.

Even the pouring rain seemed to steer clear of the child.

Suddenly, the umbrella held in the small hand tilted backward.

The child looked startled.

With a body so frail it made one wonder if they were even ten years old, it felt as though the child would collapse at a single nudge.

The face barely peeking out from the raincoat was as pale as a peach.

It looked exactly like a white dot stamped onto a desolate, barren land.

A Guide?

Since no one except officials, reporters, and Guides was permitted to enter this kind of zone, the child was likely a Guide as well.

Guides were scarce in number, so once they awakened—even if they were just children—they had no choice but to travel back and forth from the front lines according to the state’s directives.

Moving from one place to another where casualties were mounting was their job, and treating and stabilizing hunters was their role.

Though, I doubt that has anything to do with a green, disposable hunter like me.

Lee Do-han let out a hollow breath and once again stroked his hideously swollen veins.

Blood was backflowing inside his body as if something was clashing within, causing agonizing pain.

He retraced several reasons in his mind, trying to understand why it was this painful.

Right then, from far away, the pale-faced child came running toward him.

The child squatted down in front of Do-han, blinking large eyes, and asked.

“…Does, does it hurt a lot?”

“Why, is the baby going to treat me?”

Do-han narrowed his eyes and sneered, but then he clenched his jaw as he realized his hand was instinctively trying to reach out.

Inside his wide-open pupils, a dark thirst for a Guide began to well up.

Swallowing dry saliva past his parched lips, he leaned toward the child, panting like a starved beast.

Wheeze, wheeze. His burning breath fanned the flames of his hunger.

He wanted to stretch out his hand.

Anything would do—he just wanted to grasp onto something and take in enough ‘detoxification’ to quench this bone-dry thirst.

Violent imaginations violently shook his mind, making it difficult to maintain his composure.

A Guide. The sole savior who had allowed him to quench his throat just once when he first awakened as a Mutant.

“Hmm? Are you going to treat me?”

Lee Do-han asked again, his dark eyes looking as if they would swallow the child whole.

He recalled the moment of his first detox.

That dizzying sense of liberation.

The soothing tranquility that made his mind hazy.

The vitality that poured water into his desolate body.

However, that moment never returned.

The Center and the Association prioritized the well-being of high-ranking hunters with broken wrists over Class-C hunters whose limbs were severed.

It was for that very reason that the treatment returning to boy soldiers with little combat experience was so stingy.

After all, they were nothing more than breakwaters to be used and discarded like waste.

“The baby… keeps crying.”

“Baby?”

You’re the baby here. Instead of saying those words, Do-han gritted his teeth.

An irritating pain surged all the way up to the inside of his throat.

As if sensing his pain, the child flustered, not knowing what to do.

No one noticed that the tearful eyes had quickly darted above the man’s head.

With trembling eyelashes, the child looked like a precariously shaking dandelion seed.

Suddenly, he thought about how he wanted to lick the back of his hand where the raindrops were splattering.

Reversed blood filled his throat, causing Do-han to burst into a cough.

Detox… he needed a detox.

He had to coax this child somehow and get a detox.

If not for this opportunity, when else would he ever…?

“The baby is small right now. It just… hatched from an egg. But it’s going to grow really big soon. It’s going to be the biggest one here. So until then, please take good care of it, older brother. The baby looks really pretty. No, it looks cool.”

It was at the very moment when his fierce thirst clumped together, and Do-han, unable to endure it, reached out his hand.

The hand splattered with raindrops brushed against Do-han’s cheek, and the child dove into Do-han’s embrace—which was stained with monster fluids and blood—tightly hugging the thick neck of the man whose veins were hideously bulging.

Lee Do-han was also startled.

“I-I’m not supposed to do this originally… but I’m doing it because of the baby. Originally, it’s not allowed. So it’s only for this once. Even if you see me again next time, you mustn’t pretend to know me. You really mustn’t. You’ll… get hurt, brother.”

Soft fingertips gently soothed Lee Do-han’s swollen veins where the blood was backflowing.

At first, he couldn’t distinguish whether what he felt was pain or not.

The pain manifested in an instant, like a burn.

His teeth ground together hard.

At the agonizing pain that felt like his brain was boiling, his throat seethed, and his vision pitched black.

It was right when Lee Do-han was about to savagely grab the child by the hair.

Following the horrific pain, an intense pleasure rushed over him, enough to make his brain squeeze.

In a different sense, his vision was paralyzed, and unrefined breaths were exhaled.

Every cell in his body ran wild to the point that his fingertips trembled uncontrollably.

It was a moment of ‘dilution’ so strong that it blurred his vision.

It was because of the ‘detox’ given by the Guide.

However, this was different from the ‘detox’ Lee Do-han had experienced when he awakened.

When his vision returned, Lee Do-han was letting out ragged breaths, hugging the child’s back so tightly it felt as though it would break.

A goosebump-inducing sensation lingered on his scalp.

His heart was still racing as if it would explode.

This… is a ‘detox’?

“Uh… is this your first time receiving treatment? I’m sorry. They say it hurts at first. Maybe next time… it won’t hurt.”

A filthy desire ran over his reason like a throbbing pulse.

The fatigue from fighting all night and the seething pain had already vanished without a trace, as if washed away.

Short, turbid breaths escaped heavily over his lips.

Suddenly, the child’s head snapped up.

Pale-colored eyes hurriedly looked behind.

Someone was calling the child.

Startled, the child scrambled out of Lee Do-han’s arms, abandoned the umbrella, turned around, and ran away.

As someone’s form flickered at the edge of the child’s path, blood rushed to Lee Do-han’s head in an inexplicable rage.

It felt as if something had been stolen from him, even though it wasn’t his to begin with.

So he reached out his hand, but someone blocked his path.

Step—

It was a man who stood out in a well-tailored suit that fit his body perfectly.

His fierce eyes, situated beneath downward-sloping eyebrows, were filled with mockery, as if he were looking at a bug.

“They say a guy who has tasted meat knows the flavor, so I guess a guy who has never eaten before thinks he’s something special after just one bite. A guy who lived his whole life without knowing what a ‘detox’ is must have felt so damn good receiving such a precious thing. I know. That feeling where your cock stands right up—I know it all too well.”

The man rifled through his inner jacket pocket, opened his wallet, pulled out a few checks, and let them flutter down onto Lee Do-han’s face.

“But that’s an undeserved treatment for a Class-C hunter to receive. So let’s just forget it. That kid is treated quite preciously in our Center, and if he gets any filth on him due to careless management, it’ll be quite troublesome for me. You understand, right?”

The man, who had bent down to sit, tapped Do-han’s cheek a couple of times and stood up.

While the broad back that turned away faded and disappeared into the rainy road, Do-han blatantly tracked his trace.

Filth? Understand?

Lee Do-han’s shoulders shook as he laughed like a madman.

Why on earth the child had come to him to give him a ‘detox,’ whether it was just a simple whim of the child or something else, did not matter anymore.

He had experienced a ‘detox’ so vivid that his soaring thirst had vanished.

The peak pleasure the child had left behind remained inside his throat like a scar, so what reason was needed?

Once. Twice. And dozens of times.

When the number of times he recalled the child surpassed well over hundreds of times, Do-han wiped his bloody mouth with his arm.

The corners of his eyes curved up into a smile.

It doesn’t really matter anyway.

He pushed his body up from the spot where he had been slouched.

The ‘detox’ bestowed by the child had shaken awake something he shouldn’t have known.

Just from the fact that the headache that had annoying followed him around was resolved, his impulses surged furiously.

Even at a single trace left by the child, the senses of his entire body ran wild terrifyingly.

The eyes fixed on the spot where the child had disappeared gleamed with obsession.

Is this why the high-ranking hunters struggle so desperately to monopolize a Guide?

“What is the baby’s name, I wonder.”

It had to be a pretty name.

Laughing low like a crazy person, he fixed his sharp, piercing blue eyes into the rain.

On that day, the ‘detox’ the child had given to a mere Class-C hunter was a drug with terribly strong aftereffects.

It was a potent hallucinogen that repeatedly conjured the events of that day like a phantom.

Even after several years had passed, that sensation chased Lee Do-han like a nightmare, strangling him.

He thought he would be liberated.

Filled with the anticipation of washing away the old pain, he had run for several years with his teeth gritted.

However, when he inquired and tracked down the child’s whereabouts, the child had already vanished from this world without leaving a single trace of warmth behind.

Death by accident.

Only that single phrase went around and around before landing in Do-han’s hand.

All that remained was that pale face that had looked at him through the faint rain.