The Invisible Scream

Even when other Mutants visited the Center three times a week for detoxification, he barely crawled here once a week—or once every ten days—just to receive emergency triage before disappearing again. Given that the detoxification completely resisted his system, he was well aware that setting foot inside this facility was less effective than a direct dose of heavy narcotics; yet, by some rare anomaly, there were fleeting moments when the treatment actually took hold.

Of course, even during those brief occurrences, the effect was incredibly faint—entirely incapable of suppressing the absolute baseline of his physical agony—but it managed to grant him a temporary reprieve from his chronic insomnia. He, too, had reached his absolute limit. Though he was barely managing to remain seated, his immediate instinct even now was to reach for heavy narcotics before the Guide’s treatment could begin.

“I-If it was unpleasant, sir… we will correct it immediately. I will ensure nothing like this ever happens again… so pl-please, let us begin the treatment….”

“As if a piece of shit like me has any right to care whether it’s unpleasant or not.”

Lee Do-han offered a brief, detached retort as he pinched the bridge of his nose with immense exhaustion. It was right at that moment when a man whose presence had been entirely imperceptible stepped forward, extending an object toward Lee Do-han.

“Director.”

“Ah, right.”

The tone of Do-han’s reply was peculiarly chilling, scraping against the inside of the throat like a raw nerve. Even though the structure of his words technically conveyed a baseline of professional courtesy, the underlying nature of his voice carried an inescapable, crushing dominance. Perhaps because of his sheer lethargy, it bordered on sounding thoroughly decadent.

The object extended to Lee Do-han wasn’t a standard civilian syringe; it was a heavy, stainless-steel medical injector typically reserved for specialized research laboratories. Lee Do-han addressed the man who had handed him the device as ‘Secretary Ha.’

“Since you’re already here, Secretary Ha, you should receive a detoxification session before heading back. You’ve endured twenty full days of cellular corruption because of my schedule, so you’re long overdue.”

“I am perfectly fine, sir. I will receive my treatment separately after monitoring your session. Today, I should—”

“Don’t force me to repeat myself. Just do as you’re told.”

“…Understood, sir.”

Only after receiving his secretary’s submissive affirmation did Lee Do-han roll up his sleeve, violently driving the heavy needle deep into his forearm. He smoothly depressed the plunger, injecting the precisely calibrated contents into his bloodstream. It was a highly restricted, narcotic-grade analgesic frequently utilized by elite Mutants whose systems completely rejected standard Guide detoxification.

“Inform the pharmaceutical team that they need to synthesize something far more potent moving forward. This batch is barely taking the edge off anymore.”

“I was informed that his personal tolerance has grown dangerously high, meaning this specific dose was already pushed to the absolute legal limit of a Mutant’s lethal threshold. The pharmaceutical division will almost certainly refuse further concentration adjustments due to the extreme risk of catastrophic side effects.”

“Is that your personal assessment as well, Secretary Ha?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even so… it would still be infinitely better than enduring this current level of agony.”

Lee Do-han’s pupils rapidly unfocused, sinking into a vacant, bottomless mire like a heavy stone drowning in a swamp. His massive, limp frame slumped deep into the cushions, looking as if his entire physical form might melt onto the floor. Seo Won-woo quickly crept toward his side, dropping onto his knees to grasp Lee Do-han’s hand with highly erratic, trembling fingers. Perhaps because he lacked the courage to state the absolute medical truth to the tyrant’s face—that injecting heavy narcotics effectively rendered the Guide’s detoxification completely useless—he chose to keep his mouth tightly sealed.

However, the moment the cigarette—now reduced to nothing but a long stalk of ash—was crushed into the tray, the man casually massaged the edge of his eyebrow once more, his voice dropping into a thick, gravelly murmur.

“By the way… who is that over there?”

Those clouded, vacant pupils slowly drifted across the room, tracking toward Cheong-hyun. Instantly, every single eye inside the suite snapped toward Cheong-hyun, who remained stationed like a statue by the entrance. Though their gazes technically intersected, there was zero indication that the man recognized Cheong-hyun’s face.

Saturated as his mind was with heavy narcotics, his hazy vision lacked the clarity to distinguish the features of the individuals sharing the space. As if desperately tracing a faint, translucent silhouette, Lee Do-han knit his brows together, muttering in a low growl.

“The stench of blood… is absolutely deafening.”

From the precise millisecond he had stepped through those double doors until now, Cheong-hyun had not shifted a single inch from his coordinates. He stood perfectly anchored to the spot, as if drawing a highly rigid line of containment around himself like a secure quarantine zone. Sensing the sudden drop in the room’s temperature, a frantic Seo Won-woo rapidly interjected to speak on his behalf.

“H-He is a Guide who has been stationed at the Center since the very beginning. He only recently r-returned to active duty after a long absence… so he doesn’t know anything at all. He is simply going to stand there quietly.”

“Manager Kim did briefly mention something about an observer trailing the shift…. Did he call him Guide Lee Cheong-hyun? My memory is a bit foggy. Do you recognize him, Secretary Ha?”

Ha Jae-hoon hesitated for a brief fraction of a second, debating whether he should disclose that this was the exact same Guide who had instigated a violent physical altercation in the grand lobby just a few days prior. However, catching sight of Lee Do-han pinching his temples with immense physical exhaustion, he chose to swallow the information. It felt far more critical to lead with objective, historical data first.

“I cannot verify the exact medical file with absolute certainty… but he appears to be the specific Guide who plummeted from the Center’s high-rise balcony two years ago, prompting Director Ki Soo-hyuk to place the entire facility under a total military lockdown while mobilizing every available medical asset.”

“Ah.”

A quiet, hollow realization escaped Lee Do-han’s lips as the memory clicked into place. His lazy, unfocused eyes blinked with agonizing slowness.

“Director Ki’s expression back then was truly a sight to behold.”

A detached conversation concerning a body that didn’t belong to him drifted across the sterile air, parsed by the lips of complete strangers. Yet, as if he were listening to a fictional tale completely unrelated to his existence, Cheong-hyun’s facial expressions remained thoroughly immutable.

“Right… there was indeed a Guide like that back then.”

The heavily intoxicated voice echoed in disjointed, gravelly fragments. The thick veins mapping across the man’s massive forearm were so intensely pronounced that a single arm looked significantly wider than both of Cheong-hyun’s emaciated thighs pressed together. It was a jarring contrast that made it difficult to discern whether the man’s limbs were simply monstrously massive, or if Cheong-hyun’s physical vessel was just dangerously skeletal.

And the disparity wasn’t confined to his forearms. The heavily defined musculature anchoring his thick neck and the dense, boulder-like mass of his legs were fundamentally wider and more compact than any ordinary human civilian. Yet, because his skeletal framework was perfectly proportioned, the man’s physical presence strongly evoked the image of a sleek, highly lethal predatory beast belonging to the apex felidae lineage.

For some inexplicable reason, Cheong-hyun’s heart began to hammer violently against his ribs. The frantic, booming rhythm felt as if it might tear straight through his throat at any given second.

“I don’t care what you do… just wrap this shit up quickly and get him out of my sight.”

As if catching the sudden whiff of something profoundly repulsive, Lee Do-han aggressively snarled, wrinkling the bridge of his nose. To his heightened senses, the scent of fresh blood was nothing short of a lethal toxin—acting as a violent chemical trigger that aggressively simulated his predatory instincts. Seo Won-woo’s eyes darted toward Cheong-hyun with immense, trembling anxiety.

His face turned completely pale, his eyes wide with a desperate, frantic urgency as he stared toward the door.

“G-Get out… Cheong-hyun-ah, please walk out. Just wait outside.”

Dragging his knees across the carpet as he violently twisted his hunched torso around, Seo Won-woo looked on the absolute verge of spilling tears.

“I-If you wait outside, I promise I’ll be out in a flash.”

Staring down at the thoroughly terrified Seo Won-woo for a long beat, Cheong-hyun silently turned on his heel. Just as the man had stated, there wasn’t a single logical reason for him to remain stationed inside this suite. Furthermore, that monster hiding behind the dense shroud of cigarette smoke—

A creature indistinguishable from a blood-starved, man-eating beast was currently coiled deep within the shadows, radiating a foul, decaying stench.

Even as he drew shallow, rattling breaths on the verge of physical collapse, those blood-red eyes gleamed with a terrifying light that was entirely devoid of human intellect—radiating nothing but pure, unadulterated primal violence.

Cheong-hyun took a decisive step forward, breaking away from the secure perimeter he had maintained by the wall. Immediately, a heavy, booming thud-thud vibrated against his eardrums. It sounded exactly like the massive, weighted footfalls of a colossal beast violently trampling the earth as it lunged forward. Without offering a single glance back, Cheong-hyun pushed the heavy double doors open and stepped into the corridor.

Kim Byeong-ho, who had been leaning against the wall casually gnawing on a cigarette, instantly contorted his face into a furious scowl at Cheong-hyun’s sudden emergence. Snatching the unlit cigarette from his lips and shoving it into his pocket, he marched forward, his eyes glaring upward with intense hostility.

“What the f*ck? Why the hell are you out here already? Did you already pull another goddamn stunt in there?”

He had simply walked out because the client explicitly stated that the scent of his blood was thoroughly nauseating. If carrying an open injury counted as a corporate crime, then Cheong-hyun was undoubtedly at fault, but could this honestly be categorized as creating a scene?

“…He stated that the scent of blood was repulsive and ordered me to step out, so I left. If I were you, I would focus on worrying about your own skin rather than hounding me. From the looks of it, the people inside are currently sharpening their blades for your neck.”

“Me? They’re sharpening their blades for me inside? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Speak clearly, you little shit!”

Without a single shred of hesitation, a meaty hand violently clamped onto Cheong-hyun’s shoulder, shaking his frame with feral aggression. A low, painful groan escaped his throat as the immense grip dug deep enough into his flesh to hollow out the bone structure. Knitting his brows in pain, Cheong-hyun was just about to violently rip the hand away from his body when—

BOOM—!

A catastrophic, deafening explosion that sounded as if the absolute foundations of the architecture were collapsing tore through the air, forcing Cheong-hyun’s gaze to violently lock onto the double doors. The surrounding corridor remained suffocatingly serene. The atmosphere, the baseline temperature, the external environment—absolutely everything was completely unchanged. Yet, the ambient air pressing against his skin felt immensely heavy, weighted down by a crushing atmospheric pressure.

CRASH—!!

Another violent shockwave slammed against his eardrums. The concrete floor beneath his feet shuddered violently as a series of fragmented, bestial shriek-like roars continuously battered the interior side of the door. Despite the terrifying clarity of the acoustic feedback, not a single soul stationed in the hallway showed the absolute slightest hint of concern.

Instead, Kim Byeong-ho’s furious, vein-popping screams continued to scrape against his ears, aggressively demanding an answer. Those bloodshot, bat-like pupils remained intensely illuminated, looking entirely ready to swallow Cheong-hyun alive. Yet, through all of this chaos, the physical ground beneath his boots remained completely still, offering nothing but the soft, plush texture of the dense carpet.

Cheong-hyun extended his hand, frantically tracing his fingertips against the solid wall. He could feel the vibration. A continuous, relentless tremor that only Cheong-hyun could visualize and perceive was violently radiating from the other side of the concrete barrier.

THUD—!

Lee Do-han’s DNA beast.

The monster was violently hurling its massive, grotesque form against the structural boundaries of reality. Deep within the interior of the suite, the creature was slamming its colossal weight against the walls, unleashing a torrent of furious, agonized shrieks. Cheong-hyun’s eyes widened into a hollow, vacant stare. Suddenly, the image of those extraordinarily sharp, predatory fangs he had glimpsed filtering through the rolling smoke flashed across his mind. From somewhere entirely imperceptible, a thick, coppery stench of raw blood began to flood his senses.

“…Can you… can you honestly not hear that…?”

“Stop spouting absolute nonsense and answer the goddamn question I asked you!”

“I am asking you if you can hear that terrifying noise.”

“Why, you little piece of shit—!”

A frantic physical struggle ensued as Cheong-hyun desperately attempted to rip Kim Byeong-ho’s hands away from his torso. Successfully breaking free from the immense, crushing leverage of the manager’s grip, Cheong-hyun stumbled backward, his hand frantically gripping the wall to stabilize his frame. His fleshless, skeletal spine slammed hard against the solid concrete, pinned flush against the structure.

The faint, rhythmic vibrations traveling down the vertical wall continued to hammer aggressively against his bare skin. Even though there was absolutely nothing visible in the corridor—nothing but an empty, echoing void.

Click—

Without a single shred of warning, the heavy double doors glided open. A blurry human silhouette materialized through the opening before a head abruptly poked out into the hallway. It was the subordinate Guide assigned to the suite, his forehead completely drenched in a thick layer of cold sweat.

“Um, Manager…. The occupants inside have requested absolute silence out here.”

Slipping past the Guide’s shoulders, a massive wave of the heavy, narcotic-laced tobacco smoke violently billowed into the corridor. And riding directly atop that cloud, a putrid, decaying stench of infected blood aggressively forced its way into the air. The moment the doors had eased open, the invisible beast inside began violently thrashing about as if it were being systematically strangled—unhesitatingly engaging in brutal self-harm as it slammed its massive frame repeatedly against the concrete walls.

“They stated that the extreme noise is breaking their mental focus, making it entirely impossible to anchor the detoxification process… so please, ensure there is absolute silence out here. And Manager Kim…. Secretary Ha requested me to inform you that he will be personally paying a visit to the Director’s executive penthouse shortly.”

Wiping away the thick sweat pooling along his temples, the subordinate Guide finished delivering his warning before instantly vanishing back into the dark suite. A heavy, suffocating silence instantly crashed over the corridor once more. Kim Byeong-ho let out a hollow, dumbfounded chuckle before spitting out a quiet stream of curses. He leaned his heavy frame against the wall, pulling a fresh cigarette from his pocket and snapping a lighter open.

“You should have just kept your mouth shut and answered when I asked you, you f*cking piece of waste….”

the exact millisecond the heavy doors clicked shut, the putrid stench of raw blood vanished into absolute thin air. Yet, the violent, echoing shrieks continued to reverberate deeply within his ears, and the suffocating, decaying odor of infected flesh remained permanently burned into the absolute forefront of his memory.