Inside, more than a dozen guests who looked to be in their early to mid-twenties were enjoying the party.

“This is my cousin who’s about to turn twenty. The kid is so clueless, I thought I’d help him get some experience.”

“Oh, is that the youngest one I’ve heard of – the smart and handsome one? Wow, he’s even better up close. If he’d made his debut, he could have charmed everyone with his looks alone.”

The woman handed him a glass filled with a purple drink and gave him a playful wink. Not knowing what it was, he drank it.

Everyone else was holding the same drink, and even his cousins accepted and drank it without hesitation, so he assumed it was just one of those common soda drinks.

Since all of his cousins were studying abroad, he thought it must be a drink they’d gotten used to overseas and brought back with them.

It had been a bad choice. At some point, people stopped looking like people to him. Distorted eyes, noses and mouths were the least of it. Some had crocodile heads, others swam through the air.

His vision flashed with thousands of colors, and sounds repeated or jumbled unpredictably. It was like a worn-out turntable endlessly skipping through an LP – just like that.

“This one looks sleepy. Want to go upstairs and rest?”

The environment had changed slightly. But he had no memory of whose hand had led him up the stairs or how he had gotten there.

His synaesthesia, unrestrained by the drug, raged like a beast. There was no way to control his senses.

He’d spent his whole life desperately hiding and pretending he didn’t feel it, afraid of being labeled mentally ill – and now he couldn’t understand how some people could take drugs just to experience this very sensation.

Someone kept slipping their hands under his clothes, kneading his stomach and lower back. It felt like insects slowly crawling over his skin.

“Aren’t you nineteen now, turning into a legal adult? Your body doesn’t look like it belongs to someone who sits and studies all day. Every part I touch feels like it’s bursting with muscle. I’d believe you if you told me you were an athlete.”

“He must look amazing with his clothes off. But can we really have the honor of popping the baby’s cherry?”

“How many times do you have to ask? I told you-that’s why we brought him.”

“We’re not going to have any trouble later, are we? I mean, this is a jackpot – look at that face, that family background. Even with extra hallucinogens mixed in, he doesn’t jump on us right away, so this must be his first time. What if we screw up and it comes back to bite us hard?”

“That’s why they say you need experience to handle good meat. We deliberately called only you so that you could pick out the pretty ones. But this boy is too young – he doesn’t even know how to have fun. Still, when he comes to his senses, he’ll probably thank us and beg us to take him back.”

Several hands clung to him. He thought he told them to stop – but whether he actually said it, or just imagined saying it in his drugged state, or whether they just ignored him, he couldn’t tell. For whatever reason, his refusal never got through to the women.

“Up close, he really looks like a painting. How can someone with a face like that still be a virgin? You don’t see kids that innocent anymore.”

“Look at his frown – so cute.”

“Did we give him too much? He looks kind of pale.”

“It’s probably just because it’s his first time. His body hasn’t warmed up yet.”

The women giggled as they indiscriminately pressed their lips to his face and neck, then pulled away. They treated their own bodies as if they were public property.

“Wow, he’s big. If he’s that big without even being hard, how big will he get when he’s hard?”

It was then that the most aggressive of them unfastened his pants and slid a hand under his pelvis. Despite his limbs going limp under the influence of the drugs, he twisted and struggled with all the strength he could muster.

He barely managed to shake off the disgusting attack and pull himself upright.

But his vision, clouded by the drugs, remained blurred. He couldn’t see a thing.

“Huh? Hey, where are you going?”

“Get him!”

Several voices overlapped, and with them came a chaotic swirl of corresponding colors. His stomach, already queasy from the drugs, churned violently. A wave of nausea rose.

He brushed off every touch on his body and stumbled forward, letting his legs carry him as usual, and staggered out of the room.

“Hey, hey, hey! It’s dangerous that way!”

Someone shouted a warning, but he didn’t care. As long as he could get out of this place, the danger didn’t matter.

With a vision no better than that of a blind man, he ran blindly. Suddenly, the ground disappeared beneath his feet.

He had lost all sense of perception and didn’t even have time to realize what was happening. It was only after he tumbled down the stairs that he vaguely realized he was falling.

Unfortunately, he must have hit his head hard during the fall – hot blood poured down his forehead in thick, rushing streams.

His heated body temperature carried the blood down the side of his face, collecting in a growing puddle under his chin.

Hot blood poured down his forehead in thick, pulsating streams, probably from the impact. Carried by his feverish body heat, it flowed down the side of his face, pooling in a warm puddle under his chin.

“Ah! Over here! Someone just fell!”

“There’s way too much blood coming out of his head – does anyone have anything to stop the bleeding?”

“Didn’t we have a room on the third floor for people who overdose and collapse? There should be a first aid kit there, right?”

“The third floor? Where on the third floor? I’ve never been up there…”

“End of the hall on the third floor, room on the right. Somebody go, now!”

That was the last he heard – screams and shouts scattering in all directions – before he slipped into unconsciousness.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a hospital.

Thick bandages wrapped tightly around his head throbbed dully against his temples. He blinked slowly, dazed.

His consciousness slowly returned. Each time his eyelids closed and opened, his previously chaotic vision became a little clearer.

He slowly pieced together his memories. He had gone to his family’s house to meet his cousin’s sister, but the plans had fallen through.

Then, after meeting his cousin’s brothers, he had been taken to a mansion he didn’t even know existed.

There he was given hallucinogenic drugs. The sensations he had spent his entire life suppressing were completely overturned. Surrounded by his cousin’s brothers and a group of women who claimed they were going to make him a man…

“Oh, you’re awake! Do you feel more awake now?”

He locked eyes with the caregiver. There was only one person in the room – no adoptive parents, no cousins who had caused all this. The caregiver quickly pressed the nurse call button to summon medical personnel.

“Sir, are you fully conscious now? Your name is Lee Seol-won, correct?”

The nurse who had rushed in checked his chart as she confirmed his personal information.

“The doctor will be here soon. In the meantime, I need to ask you a few questions to confirm a few things.”

At the time, he had no idea how much upheaval this hospitalization would cause.

It was an accident caused by drug use. And he wasn’t even an adult in civil law – he was the heir to a conglomerate family and had recently received national attention for scoring a perfect score on the college entrance exam.

That’s why he wasn’t immediately placed in the VVIP ward upon arrival. If word got out that a young male patient had been admitted to a ward with astronomical fees, reporters would quickly pick up on the suspicious circumstances and swarm the place.

But when his blood test results came out and the secret-that he wasn’t a biological child-was revealed, his situation took a sharp turn for the worse within a single day.

Those who had caused the incident remained unscathed, while he was the one who was effectively confined to a hospital room.

It hit him with new clarity – without blood ties, he was nothing in this family. That was how quickly he could fall out of favor.

“What is the point of bringing a cuckoo chick into the house when we already have sons who will inherit the business? Should we share the family wealth with him? Are you out of your mind?”

“And those sons? How many drug scandals and cases of violence have we covered up with money for them? What exactly makes you think they’re fit to run the family business?”

“We’ve already spread articles everywhere about Seol-won getting a perfect score on the college entrance exam – now if we suddenly say he’s adopted, won’t that bring shame to the family?”

The relatives fought day and night. They argued when they gathered at the main house, over the phone, and even barged into his hospital room, causing a commotion that often disturbed his rest and sleep.

“Hey, I heard you were adopted. That means you and I are strangers, right?”

His cousin, who showed up after hearing the rumors, no longer treated him as the youngest brother. Even when they drew a line and called them strangers, he didn’t even blink.

After such a big incident, he found that his nerves had become stronger. If they wouldn’t acknowledge him as the younger brother, he saw no reason to treat them as the elder. What else could he do?

For now, he just wanted some quiet time alone. He didn’t mind being confined to the hospital room as long as there was a way to get away from all those loud, harsh, piercing voices – red, black, and burning.

-“Maybe it’s because they gave you such a cold name… They say that a man’s destiny follows his name, and it seems that this young master’s life is already off to a bitterly cold start. But life doesn’t stay cold forever. Just wait a little longer. The warm spring will come soon.”

-“When will spring come?”

-“Do you see the cherry tree in the garden? When pink petals fall from its branches, that’s when spring has come.”

He had lived his whole life crushed under hundreds, thousands of echoes. When stimuli came like tidal waves, he couldn’t resist – he could only endure, as if being beaten over and over again without a break.

What his life needed was a moment of emptiness.