The Master and the Asset

His feet faltered, stepping backward. But before he could even take a full step back, while still staring up at the outside world in absolute daze, a rough hand violently grabbed Cheong-hyun’s hair and yanked his head back. It was Kim Byeong-ho.

“Ha…!”

His windpipe was instantly restricted, and his vision spun so violently his brain rattled. His surroundings blinked out for a split second before the light cascading from the high ceiling exploded back into focus.

“I wondered where the hell you crawled off to, and here you are, you little bastard!”

The moment the suffocating warmth of the man’s grip left him, Cheong-hyun was thrown brutally to the marble floor. Even as he hit the ground, he clamped his jaw shut and refused to let out a single whimper. His grip on the jagged piece of glass remained exactly the same. Though fresh blood was dripping heavily from his fingertips, he obstinately refused to let it go.

A flurry of aggressive, heavy footsteps quickly converged on his position. By the time Cheong-hyun managed to push his back against the wall to sit up, the main entrance was completely blockaded, sealed shut by a dense wall of security guards.

Even if he had somehow made it past those doors, he never would have escaped the Center.

The towering wall encircling the entire facility was thicker than an underground bunker, rising well over ten meters high. Drowned in the pitch-black night and patrolled by dozens of elite security personnel, escaping on his own was a physical impossibility.

“You piece of shit, you and I are going to have a long chat. Drop that garbage weapon right now!”

Several burly guards lunged forward, pinning Cheong-hyun’s arms and wrenching his fingers open to force the bloody glass shard from his palm. The moment his hands were empty, he was yanked up by his collar and dragged away once more.

He couldn’t utter a single syllable. A heavy hand had reached out from behind, clamping over his mouth like a vice.

The moment Kim Byeong-ho and his men shoved Cheong-hyun into the elevator, the manager aggressively punched the button for the top floor. Within seconds, the pristine interior of the elevator became smeared with Cheong-hyun’s fresh blood, looking as if a violent, grotesque struggle had taken place.

“I throw you in a room to get cleaned up, and you repay me by breaking the mirror and staging a f*cking prison break? Wow, you’ve really got some skills. You completely neutralized a high-ranking Mutant. He isn’t dead, but do you want to know why he’s completely ruined anyway?”

Kim Byeong-ho brushed off his rumpled suit jacket with sharp, irritable strokes. Running a hand through his messy hair to roughly fix it, he glared intensely at the digital floor indicator climbing higher.

“A useless bastard who fails to protect a single Guide gets buried alive at best. Don’t look at me with that pathetic, aggrieved face. You are the one who ruined that guard’s life. Why the hell did you try to run? You should have just quietly changed your clothes and waited like a good little doll.”

With his mouth still sealed shut, Cheong-hyun desperately twisted his shoulders to break free. But the guard holding him simply tightened his grip, violently snapping his head backward. The only sound echoing inside the elevator was the ragged, metallic rasp of Cheong-hyun’s heavy breathing.

The moment the elevator chimed at the executive penthouse level, Kim Byeong-ho grabbed Cheong-hyun by his shorn hair and dragged him out. Marching through the heavily carpeted, soundless corridor, they came to a halt before a massive double door. The manager paused, taking a long, deep breath to steady himself.

Knock, knock—

“Boss, it’s me.”

“Come in.”

The response cut through the door instantly, making it clear the man inside had been waiting for them. A sharp beam of brilliant light spilled into the hallway as the doors parted. Cheong-hyun winced against the brightness before being thrown ruthlessly into the room, collapsing onto the floor.

Only then did the suffocating hand leave his face, allowing him to frantically draw in a desperate lungful of air.

“Cough, ha…! Gasp… ugh.”

The built-up saliva in his mouth dripped helplessly onto the polished floor. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, noticing the dark smear of fresh blood. Staring at it blankly for a second, Cheong-hyun forced himself to look up.

The very first thing that met his eyes was a vast, pitch-black sky that completely swallowed the horizon. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall, the entire world looked like a distant, miniature landscape draped in shadows. In the center of the sprawling penthouse office stood a tall man with long legs, leaning casually against the edge of a massive executive desk.

He wore an incredibly expensive, tailored suit without a single crease—a wardrobe that practically screamed his desperate, meticulous effort to exude high-class nobility. Yet, beneath the expensive cologne, an undeniable scent drifted off the man. It was the foul, suffocating stench of damp, rotting fabric.

Cheong-hyun barely managed to steady his balance, staring blankly at the man with a completely hollow expression. The man returned the stare in absolute silence. Now that they were standing face-to-face, Cheong-hyun remembered exactly who he was. In fact, it felt completely absurd that his mind had managed to forget him even for a second.

The Mutant, Ki Soo-hyuk. During that long, agonizing night in the hospital ward where fragmented memories drifted through his mind, the very first thing Cheong-hyun had pulled from the depths of his subconscious was his childhood spent right by this man’s side.

He was the very first Mutant a young Cheong-hyun had ever detoxified. And it was because of that single detoxification that Cheong-hyun had been forced to live his entire existence bound by a heavy choke-chain.

He could never forget the hideous, predatory look in Ki Soo-hyuk’s eyes that day. Trembling violently as he drowned in the pure ecstasy of the detoxification, the man had stared down at a five-year-old child with a violent, terrifying gaze that made it feel as if he would snap the boy’s neck at any given second. Ki Soo-hyuk was twenty years old at the time. To a tiny child, the grown adult was nothing short of a monster.

It was from that exact moment that Ki Soo-hyuk’s absolute obsession with detoxification began.

However, the detoxification Cheong-hyun provided that day ended up being the first and absolute last one Ki Soo-hyuk would ever receive from him. When a Guide is consumed by absolute terror, their abilities become completely paralyzed. Back then, Ki Soo-hyuk looked larger than life, a terrifying titan that paralyzed the young boy with fear. The bulging veins on the back of the man’s hands felt like iron weights designed to crush him into dust; Cheong-hyun would burst into hysterical tears the moment their eyes met.

Thinking about it now, that pure terror had ironically become Cheong-hyun’s ultimate shield. By being entirely unable to perform under fear, he had managed to protect himself and survive.

Ki Soo-hyuk was the first to break the intense stare. Reaching into his tailored breast pocket, he pulled a cigarette from a sleek silver case and popped it between his lips. He struck a flame, inhaling a deep, heavy lungful of the toxic, narcotic smoke.

“Manager Kim, it seems your ability to handle the assets has degraded significantly during my absence. What did I say a Guide is?”

“…Ah… Yes, I apologize, Boss.”

“I said they are our corporate assets.”

Ki Soo-hyuk spoke smoothly, his eyes drifting down to the gaunt, bony shoulder exposed beneath Cheong-hyun’s heavily stretched hospital gown. He exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, his eyes greedily tracing the pale, exposed skin. The heavy white smoke swirled and contorted through the quiet office, matching the dazed, heavily intoxicated glaze in the man’s sleepy eyes.

Ki Soo-hyuk dragged a heavy crystal ashtray closer, tapping the ash from his cigarette. It was at that exact moment that Cheong-hyun suddenly broke the silence.

“Is that why… you terrorized me like a dog back then? Because a Guide is just that precious to you?”

The sheer amount of psychological torture and intimidation he had suffered during his childhood was entirely beyond count. While Ki Soo-hyuk had refrained from physically beating him, he had weaponized every single horrific tactic imaginable to force the child into submission, desperately trying to satisfy his own selfish desires. He had done all of that to a boy who wasn’t even ten years old.

The hand tapping the ash instantly froze solid. The gaze that had been lingering greedily on Cheong-hyun’s shoulder slowly slid up his neck. Ki Soo-hyuk locked eyes with a pair of dark pupils that carried a cold, worldly exhaustion. To anyone else, those large eyes might have looked completely innocent and naive, but to Ki Soo-hyuk, they looked entirely primitive, raw, and dangerously seductive.

The sleepy, heavy frame of Cheong-hyun’s eyes projected an almost obscene allure. It had absolutely nothing to do with physical maturity. Ki Soo-hyuk had felt this exact same bizarre sensation from Lee Cheong-hyun even before the boy had reached adulthood. It was simply his fundamental nature. Even the most worn-out street workers who sold their bodies for pennies didn’t possess an aura that felt this inherently filthy.

“Cheong-hyun.”

Ki Soo-hyuk let out a mocking scoff, speaking the name softly. He crushed the cigarette out into the glass tray and pushed himself off the desk. He took slow, fluid strides, advancing directly toward Cheong-hyun.

“Tell me what you see.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why you little—!”

“Manager Kim, step back. Barking out of turn is a trait reserved for stray dogs.”

Kim Byeong-ho’s neck turned thick with bulging veins as he prepared to scream at Cheong-hyun for playing dumb, but the moment Ki Soo-hyuk spoke, the manager instantly tucked his tail and stepped back into the shadows. Still, his prominent, bulbous eyes remained locked onto Cheong-hyun with lethal irritation. Towering over the gaunt boy, Ki Soo-hyuk’s impressive height cast a massive, suffocating shadow over him. He continued to stare down at Cheong-hyun’s slender shoulders, his eyes drifting across the bloodstains ruining the white hospital fabric.

“Cheong-hyun, I told you to tell me what you see. You can see exactly what kind of Mutant DNA cellular monster is attached to my body. Can’t you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t know? You were just glancing right behind my back… and you claim you don’t know?”

In a split second, a heavy hand shot forward, clamping tightly around Cheong-hyun’s jaw and violently forcing his face upward. The harsh glare of the overhead lighting stabbed painfully into his eyes. But right through the glare, he could clearly see the thick, monstrous hide reflecting the light. A sickeningly vivid, grotesque skin. The creature wrapped entirely around the man was so astronomically massive it practically filled the entire volume of the penthouse suite.

It was a snake. A colossal, primordial serpent was coiled tightly around Ki Soo-hyuk’s torso, its massive head hovering inches away, staring down at Cheong-hyun. Its pitch-black eyes closely resembled a deep, sunless abyss where dark seaweed drifted aimlessly. Cheong-hyun’s entire head was barely the size of one of the serpent’s pupils.

This was the exact same thing he had witnessed back at the clinic. The sole reason he had bolted from the ward in absolute terror was because of this very snake.

“Look closer. If you actually look, you’ll see it.”

Ki Soo-hyuk whispered in a low, raspy purr, his voice scratching right against Cheong-hyun’s ear. Right on cue, the giant serpent let out a sharp, vibrating hiss that rattled through the air.

“…I don’t know anything. I don’t see a single thing.”

Those words acted like an immediate detonator. A lethal, terrifying flash of pure bloodlust instantly filled Ki Soo-hyuk’s eyes. In the next fraction of a second, his heavy hand flew back, cocking into a violent, savage stance above Cheong-hyun’s head. It was a strike intended to split his skin open. Yet, Cheong-hyun simply stared directly into the incoming hand without blinking a single time.

The palm stopped a hair’s breadth away from his cheek. Though he had fully braced his body for the impact of the violence, the only thing that landed on Cheong-hyun was a low, disgusted click of the man’s tongue.

“…They say old habits die hard, and you really are a creature of habit.”

Habits.

Cheong-hyun squeezed his trembling hands into fists so tight that his knuckles let out a sharp crack.

From the exact moment they dragged him out of the lobby up to this penthouse, these people had treated him like an animal forced into a tight muzzle. They didn’t hesitate for a single second to grab his hair, seal his mouth shut, and physically pin his limbs down.

Was it really because a Guide had tried to escape the facility? Was it because he had incapacitated a security guard?

No. They had likely committed these exact same acts of violence countless times in the past. The savage, fluid motion with which they had grabbed his hair held absolutely zero hesitation. Every single action they took triggered a violent wave of déjà vu deep inside his chest.

Was this really just simple déjà vu?

Cheong-hyun forced his eyes down, watching Ki Soo-hyuk slowly lower his hand. It was a hand completely covered in old scar tissue. The skin over his knuckles was heavily calloused and dark—the kind of hands that made people on the streets whisper that he had spent his youth beating people to a pulp.

He had used that exact hand to strike this body. He had used those violent, thuggish hands to inflict pain and threaten the ‘young man’ who had previously inhabited this flesh.

When exactly did it start? What kind of horrific abuse had this body endured to be so entirely consumed by an ocean of silent, bitter resentment?