The Exclusive Eden

Ki Soo-hyuk could never forget that terrifyingly intense pleasure. Amidst the mind-shattering bliss that made his lower abdomen ache, there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it. The sensation of every single ailment in his body evaporating on the spot felt just as refreshing as peeling away an old, stubborn scab.

At the time Ki Soo-hyuk received that detoxification, Lee Cheong-hyun was only five years old. Barely five. He was just a child who had stared back at him with wide, innocent eyes, completely clueless about what he had just accomplished.

It was from that exact moment that Ki Soo-hyuk, acting on the researcher’s advice, began tracking down people suffering from the mysterious lung disease to medical check them under the guise of offering compensation. Surprisingly, most of those afflicted were children under the age of fifteen.

The researcher manufactured a specific “medicine” for those children and shared the formula exclusively with Ki Soo-hyuk. It was that very drug that practically handed Ki Soo-hyuk his fortune on a silver platter.

The medical exams revealed that everyone who had caught the lung disease was undergoing a genetic mutation. Their cellular DNA was altering in the exact same pattern as Lee Cheong-hyun’s. The medicine provided by the researcher was actually a type of “awakening stimulant” designed to safely stabilize them into fully awakened Guides.

That was the fundamental reason Ki Soo-hyuk was able to establish the Center and lock the Guides under his control.

From that moment until now, Ki Soo-hyuk had dedicated his entire life to managing and breeding Guides. The researcher, who had long since vanished without a trace, was the architect behind the wealthy, breathless version of Ki Soo-hyuk that existed today.

To Ki Soo-hyuk, that researcher was a savior sent from above—God himself.

“Byeong-ho, how many Guides did we bring in this month?”

“About five, sir. The guardians held out for a bit, causing a delay, but once we threw in more cash, they signed the waivers without a single complaint.”

“Those bastards look for any excuse to milk more money out of selling their own flesh and blood, tsk… Well, actually, if they’re willing to sell their own kids for the right price, it works out beautifully for me.”

Ki Soo-hyuk let out a dry chuckle before bursting into a wicked, wheezing laugh. Even though ten years had passed since the giant tree was chopped down, Guides were still popping up across generations like mushrooms after rain. The thick pollen that had blanketed the nation during the bloom had integrated into human genetics, lying dormant until a child with the right conditions was born, triggering the mutation to awaken them.

Guides would continue to appear forever. And as long as they did, Ki Soo-hyuk’s pockets would keep getting heavier.

“Lee Cheong-hyun needs to hurry up and recover so I can finally get out of this miserable slump.”

“Don’t worry, Boss. He’ll adapt soon and get back to serving you.”

Ki Soo-hyuk stared dazed at his mahogany desk, which was painted crimson by the setting sun. His sluggish brain dulled the constant ache in his body.

“A Mutant who can’t receive detoxification is truly a miserable curse.”

Ki Soo-hyuk, who whispered those words out of habit, was also a Mutant whose body rejected ordinary detoxification. He had no idea why. He had searched for the root cause countless times, but in the end, he had no choice but to accept it. Of course, there was still one single loophole available to him.

And that loophole was Lee Cheong-hyun. Only Cheong-hyun’s detoxification could silence the agonizing torment that made Ki Soo-hyuk scream inside.

“Yeah. You need to get well… very quickly, Cheong-hyun.”

Ki Soo-hyuk rolled the familiar name smoothly over his tongue. Then, like a ticking tic, he muttered his pessimistic catchphrase once more.

A Mutant who can’t receive detoxification is truly a miserable curse.

Aside from Ki Soo-hyuk, there were only two other Mutants in the entire country who were entirely immune to standard detoxification. The one thing Ki Soo-hyuk shared in common with them was that they had all been caught in a catastrophic Gate Break back when the national alert level was classified as a ‘Red Moon.’

Currently, those two individuals had risen to become the foundational pillars of the Hunter industry, spearheading massive guilds that funneled astronomical amounts of capital directly into Ki Soo-hyuk’s Center. They held so much leverage that even the Hunter Association and the government would break into a cold sweat and back down whenever those two threw a tantrum.

Naturally, those two individuals were also Ki Soo-hyuk’s oldest, most elite clients. Lee Do-han, the leader of the Ehwa Guild, was one of them.

Beyond the glass window, snowflakes the size of thumbnails drifted down in shapeless patterns. The temperature had plummeted overnight, leaving the streets completely frozen solid. From the dead of night, through the early dawn, and up until the bright afternoon, Tae-eon—no, Cheong-hyun—sat by the window, staring blankly at the urban sprawl below.

The hospital room was situated roughly on the fifteenth floor, and every window was strictly engineered to open no wider than a single hand-span. It was a completely airtight cage; if the main entrance was blocked, there was absolutely no escape.

Security guards camped out in front of the door around the clock, heavily regulating the movements of everyone who entered, from the medical staff to the cleaners and the workers delivering meals.

Cheong-hyun had briefly opened the door during the dawn with the intention of slipping out, but the sight of two massive brutes standing guard like statues forced him to close the door and step back inside.

Since then, he had remained curled up by the window, staring out endlessly as the dark blue dawn melted into morning, and morning turned to noon.

“Guide… Center… Seo Won-woo, Kim Byeong-ho… Ki Soo-hyuk.”

He listed the names he could pull from his mind. Within his fractured memories, these were the few pieces that remained sharp. The fragmented mental images made it incredibly blurry to discern whether these were events he had personally lived through, or if someone else had experienced them for him.

However, as he calmly rationalized, organized, and methodically pieced the information together, a solid foundation slowly began to take shape. While most of the details were trivial regardless of whose memories they belonged to, the most powerful piece of information left behind was everything concerning the Center, which had now grown into a massive corporate empire.

The Center established by Ki Soo-hyuk, who was now a prominent businessman.

“The Center… the Center.”

When you work active fields as a civilian freelance Hunter, you naturally overhear all kinds of talk. And that talk inevitably revolved around Mutants and Guides.

He had always assumed those things belonged to a world entirely separate from his own. Unlike Cheong-hyun, those people were high-ranking Mutants laced with monster DNA, and Guides were the exclusive luxury of high society, locked away in heavily restricted institutions.

“f*ck, I seriously want to experience what that ‘detoxification’ from a Guide feels like just once. I heard it feels so damn good it drives you crazy.”

“Stop spouting absolute nonsense and just pop your pills. Why are trash like us dreaming about that? Besides, I heard those Guides only open their legs for the highest bidder anyway.”

“Look at this bastard acting like he knows everything. You know Myeong-jun from the team across from us, the C-rank guy? He brought his entire bank account straight to the Center just to get detoxed once before he dies. Forget about anything wild, those Guides act so damn precious that she barely let him hold her hand.”

“Hey, old man. If you were them, would you want to spread your legs for a D-rank nobody like yourself? They’ve grown proud up there; they don’t open up for anyone outside the corporate elite.”

“Well… I guess that’s true.”

Hanging around lower-class Hunter teams meant your ears were bound to be filled with vulgar locker-room talk on a daily basis. Among those conversations, Guides were a staple topic that never got old. Stories about who blew their life savings at the Center, who got kicked out of the front doors for being short on cash, or how painkillers stopped working entirely after tasting detoxification just once.

Listening to the endless ocean of rumors made it impossible to tell what was fact and what was fiction. Back then, because Cheong-hyun was just a regular civilian, he had simply let the giggling Mutants’ chatter pass through one ear and out the other without offering any response.

He had truly believed it was a distant story that had nothing to do with him.

“…”

Cheong-hyun brought both hands up and rubbed his face roughly.

Just as the public rumors suggested, the clientele seeking out Guides mostly consisted of high-ranking hunters or high-society figures tightly intertwined with the political and corporate elite. Receiving a Guide’s detoxification at the Center required an astronomical amount of money, a price tag that the vast majority of ordinary Mutants could never afford with their standard income alone.

Consequently, the Center’s main demographic was composed entirely of individuals with extreme wealth and power. That was the sole reason lower-class Hunters had no choice but to abuse highly dangerous, side-effect-ridden drugs as a cheap alternative to stay alive.

This was the extent of what the general public knew. However, the Center was nowhere near the paradise people on the outside imagined it to be.

“Tae-hoon…”

Cheong-hyun tightly closed his eyes, pinching his brow. Despite his desperate attempts to keep his mind off the kid while trapped here, the boy’s face materialised the moment he closed his eyes. Exhausted from a sleepless night fueled by an unexplainable mix of anxiety, fury, and terror, he couldn’t take it anymore.

Creak—

Clenching his jaw to force the suffocating thoughts away, Cheong-hyun finally pushed himself up. He marched directly into the bathroom. Scanning the toiletries laid out on the shelf, his eyes locked onto a specific item, and he snatched it up.

It was a razor. After inspecting the plastic razor blades, he threw it to the floor and stomped on it, shattering the handle and body to pieces. Retrieving a sharp blade from the debris, he walked back out, placed a small portable mirror by the window, and stood before it. He grabbed a handful of his shaggy, unkempt hair and pulled the blade through it, producing a strange, sharp sound.

Snip— slice—

Strands of roughly hacked hair began to rain down onto the floor. This continued for about ten minutes.

Suddenly, muffled voices drifted in from outside the door.

“Is… is Cheong-hyun doing okay inside…?”

“Yes. He briefly tried to leave around four in the morning, claiming he had to go, but he went right back inside after we blocked him. He seems to have skipped his meal, and he’s been perfectly quiet ever since.”

The voices belonged to two different people. Cheong-hyun didn’t bother turning around, focusing entirely on hacking away at his hair. Just as a messy pile of shorn hair pooled around his bare feet, the recessed handle of the door slid open, and people stepped inside. However—

“Wh-what… what on earth are you doing?!”

The person stepping through the threshold shrieked the moment his eyes landed on Cheong-hyun. Hearing the commotion from down the hall, loud, frantic footsteps came rushing over, and within seconds, another man barged into the room.

“You! You crazy bastard!”

The obese man with sagging skin took one look at the razor blade glinting in Cheong-hyun’s hand and lunged forward, his eyes turning bloodshot with rage. But before the man’s hands could lay a finger on him, Cheong-hyun calmly set the blade down on the windowsill.

Perhaps because he had been rushing to cut the hair himself, Cheong-hyun’s fingertips were stained bright red with fresh blood from where the blade had sliced his skin.