In his childhood memories, that room was always there.

A space completely sealed on all sides, where light couldn’t be found at all.

On days when his mother went to work and he was left alone with the man, he’d invariably be locked in that room. 

The man, reeking of alcohol, would shove him into that cramped space regardless of whether he’d done something wrong or not.

At first, he begged to be let out. But that never happened. That’s how he learned to give up.

As time passed, the initial fear faded and the space even began to feel welcome. At least while he was in there, he wouldn’t be beaten randomly. That’s what familiarity was.

That day was just another one of those days.

“F*ck, is that kid really mine? Is he?! He doesn’t look like me at all.”

The man, reeking of alcohol, had his mother in a death grip. His mother, who usually endured the indiscriminate violence silently, talked back that day.

“We’ve already done paternity tests several times.”

“Those can be faked. You b*tch, tell me the truth. Who’d you f*ck?”

“Gunwoo’s father, please don’t do this.”

“Then tell me. Whose b*stard is that kid?”

“No…”

Thwack—a harsh explosive sound rang out. At the sound, more intense than usual, Gunwoo covered his ears. After who knows how long, silence fell over everything.

Hic. Swallowing his tears, he carefully opened the door. Through a fingernail-sized gap, he could see his mother collapsed on the floor.

“This b*tch is putting on a show again. F*ck, not getting up?”

The man kicked his mother roughly with his foot. But the limp body didn’t even twitch.

Suddenly their eyes met. The man who’d dragged Gunwoo out in an instant roughly grabbed his head.

“Look. Look closely.”

His mother’s eyes, where the black pupils had completely disappeared, were filled with bloodshot whites. Only the sound of her gasping breath proved she was still alive.

“H-hospital.”

At Gunwoo’s plea, the man laughed in a skin-crawlingly unpleasant way.

“Hospital? She’ll be dead soon anyway.”

“Hic. Huuk.”

“This is all because of you, you unlucky b*stard. This b*tch ended up like this because of you.”

He was afraid. He was terrified. A fear he’d never felt even during indiscriminate beatings consumed his entire body. He turned his head frantically, but he was no match for the man’s strength.

“Watch carefully. This b*tch’s face as she dies because of you.”

Hearing the unpleasant laughter that followed, Gunwoo lost consciousness right there.

After that day, Gunwoo was transferred to an orphanage via the hospital. The orphanage was much better than the house he’d lived in with the man. 

Of course, life there wasn’t entirely pleasant either. The orphanage teachers looked at him like a monster because he was quick to learn anything and excelled at everything.

“He’s still young, but I don’t feel any affection for him.”

“Me neither. Even when friends cry their hearts out next to him, he doesn’t bat an eye and just does what he needs to do. He doesn’t seem like a child. When he stares at you, it gives you chills sometimes.”

“No matter how you look at it, he has a serious lack of empathy. I heard his parents were criminals. What’ll happen when a kid like that goes out into society?”

When he heard the conversation between the age-group teachers, he was certain. That there was something seriously wrong with him.

But having been conditioned to violence and indifference from birth, even that didn’t matter to him. His only goal was to survive safely.

Teachers who were wary of him, friends who wouldn’t come near him. Gunwoo grew accustomed to all those situations.

Until that person appeared before him.

The person named Lee Eunju came to the orphanage for volunteer work two or three times a week. Sometimes she came with a man.

Perhaps because she never frowned in any situation, the orphanage children’s faces bloomed with smiles on the days she came. To his eyes, even that felt fake.

Ironically, the one who held onto Gunwoo until the end, when everyone connected to the orphanage had given up, was Eunju.

“Want to be my son?”

Eyes that spoke words that were undoubtedly sincere, anxious about possibly being rejected, shook Gunwoo’s heart for the first time. But that was all. Anyway, like the other adults who’d tried to adopt him before, she’d be persuaded by someone at the orphanage.

His prediction didn’t miss.

“Gunwoo is too old and might cause problems later. How about adopting another child of a more suitable age?”

Even though he was right there, the malicious person didn’t care.

This woman will definitely be swayed by those words too.

Just as he was about to sneer at the predictable conclusion.

“You shouldn’t say things like that where the child can hear.”

Eunju’s expression turned serious.

“Don’t misunderstand. I’m saying this thinking of you, volunteer.”

Up to that point, it was the usual flow. But…

“This is what you’d call overstepping.”

How satisfying it was to point out wrongdoing while wearing a gentle smile. Gunwoo walked forward on his own in front of the director and took Eunju’s hand.

Warmth warmer than his own body temperature grasped back.

“I want Gunwoo. So please process the adoption.”

That’s how he became the adopted son of Eunju and Sangjin.

Of course, there were many twists and turns before ‘Kim Gunwoo’ became ‘Do Gunwoo’. But his adoptive parents tried hard to embrace the child bristling with thorns.

A clean environment, abundant food, warm attention.

Even though life had improved incomparably to before, he couldn’t adapt easily. So when night came and he was alone, he’d crawl under the bed. 

A dark space with little light—only there could he breathe properly.

Then he met that child. ‘Yoon Hyena’.

“Oppa, you’re really like a prince.”

The warmth of the child who grabbed his hand was different from what his adoptive mother gave. It was so pure that even he, bound tightly in darkness, couldn’t refuse it.

That child like sunshine brought light for the first time to his world that was entirely darkness.

***

Hyena practically lived at his adoptive parents’ house due to her dual-income parents’ circumstances. She was an excellent test subject for Gunwoo, who was deficient in emotions.

“I can’t play today.”

“Why?”

“My friends are waiting.”

“Can’t I come too?”

“That’s a bit difficult.”

Normally he would have agreed unconditionally, but not that day. He wanted to test how much Hyena’s heart was his. Hyena, tears brimming in her eyes, nodded. Gunwoo left the house right away.

The place he headed was the library. He had no intention of meeting kids who weren’t on his level anyway. He was just curious about Hyena’s reaction.

After skimming through a few books, several hours had passed.

By now she’s probably forgotten and playing.

Pushing away the somehow displeasing thought, when he returned, Hyena came running.

“Oppa, you’re back?”

She smiled brightly with eyes swollen from crying so much. The catharsis he felt then.

‘You’re the only one who can make me like this. So I should be the only one who can make you like this.’

It was the day his twisted possessiveness first stretched.

Handsome and good at studying—a model son.

That was the evaluation of Do Gunwoo, son of Do Sangjin and Lee Eunju. When stress built up, he’d engage in delinquency. But he wasn’t easily suspected.

A good brain and decent looks were very suitable tools for packaging twisted character.

Smiling appropriately, accommodating appropriately. But never letting anyone close. Gunwoo perfectly kept his own iron rules.

The first to notice the solidly built tower was his adoptive mother.

‘If you’re comfortable, that’s enough. Just don’t harm other people.’

If someone else had said it, he would have felt it was fake, but what his adoptive mother said was different. Maybe that’s why he was comforted.

And there was one person who gave comfort in a completely different way from his adoptive mother.

“Oppa’s in a bad mood.”

That was Hyena’s observation to Gunwoo, who was wearing an ornamental smile.

“I’m not in a bad mood at all?”

“No, you are. Your eyes are too cold.”

Hyena stated definitively.

“When you really smile, it’s not like that. Your eyes become so pretty. Like there are stars in your pupils, all sparkly.”

She only says things like that.

Gunwoo smiled without realizing it. Suddenly Hyena’s face came right up close.

“Wow, pretty. You’re really like a prince.”

Her hazel eyes sparkled in the light.

“When you’re with me, I hope you smile a lot like that.”

It was probably from that day. That he began lowering his facade, little by little, at least in front of Hyena. Hyena had already entered deep into his heart without any chance to stop it.

‘My thing that won’t change no matter what happens.’

The thought that at first just occupied part of his brain gradually swelled. To the point where his heart and body, perfectly dominated by reason, couldn’t be controlled.

The indefinable emotion dominated him like that.

His first wet dream, the object of his surging l*st—both were Hyena.

During adolescence when his body couldn’t be controlled because his c*ck automatically got hard when she was next to him, he had to distance himself from her for a while. Even a b*stard like him had that much sense. Of course, it wasn’t easy.

How pretty her face was, eyes sparkling like she’d received a great gift each time he showed his face sporadically. He wanted to pin her under him right away and shove his er*ect c*ck inside her.

Even knowing it was wrong for ‘Do Gunwoo’, living under a false name with countless deficiencies, to have the radiant ‘Yoon Hyena’, he didn’t want to give up.

So he lived harder. The label of adopted child couldn’t be removed for life, but he wanted to become a man worthy of Hyena at least.

That routine was broken one day in his senior year of high school. Someone blocked his path as he left school.

“Gunwoo.”

A man in shabby clothes stopped him.

“It’s Dad.”

At that moment, goosebumps rose all over his body. Even without detailed explanation, he could feel that the man before him was his biological father.

There was no way he could forget that d*mn face that had swung fists at him countless times.

“You’ve grown well, my son.”

Nausea rose at the calm face that seemed to have completely forgotten the fact that he’d abused his biological mother and him, claiming he wasn’t his son.

“I missed you.”

Greed colored eyes that held not a trace of sincerity. It was the dark side of humanity he was seeing for the first time since leaving the orphanage.

“Let’s go somewhere and talk.”

He was curious about the words that would spill out of that vile mouth.

Gunwoo nodded and followed the man.

The man said he deeply regretted the past. He even shed fake tears, saying he’d destroyed the family over a momentary misunderstanding. He smirked watching the performance that didn’t feel sincere at all.

Trembling hands throughout, the smell of alcohol irritating his nose, eyes with unclear focus while bloodshot and red. The man was still stuck in the past. If anything had changed, it was only that Kim Gunwoo, who used to tremble before him, had disappeared.

“Your adoptive parents’ house is pretty well-off, right? I’m in a bit of a hurry, so…”

In the end, what he wanted was money.

He had enough money on hand that the man would want. 

It was money his adoptive mother had given him, using what he’d received from adults—New Year’s money and such—that she’d carefully saved and he’d used as seed money to grow. 

But he didn’t have even the slightest intention of giving it to the man.

While pondering how to use this situation, he took out his wallet. Disappointment colored the biological father’s face as he snatched it whole. 

‘I should send this b*stard to h*ll.’ 

That was the thought that came to Gunwoo’s mind at that moment.

As expected, the man came looking for Gunwoo endlessly like a hyena before prey.

First in front of school, then a bit farther away, and then in deserted alleyways.

He perfectly grasped Gunwoo’s movements and showed up sporadically. Each time, his appearance became more wretched and his words and actions rougher.

“You little sh*t. Who do you owe for seeing the light of day? Without me, you wouldn’t exist. What do you know to act up? You little prick, are your ears blocked? Bring money. Money.”

“I don’t have any more.”

“Then make it. Steal it, I’m saying. One word from me and your life is f*cked. Can you handle the label of adopted child?”

The vilely smiling face was disgusting.

For him, who didn’t care at all about other people’s gazes, a label like adopted child didn’t bother him. He was confident he could succeed plenty with his own abilities.

But just one thing.

He didn’t want Hyena, of all people, to find out that a human scum like this was his biological father, that that filthy blood flowed in his body. Hyena had somehow become the center of his world. So now it was time to shake off the man.

Gunwoo took out what he’d been keeping in his pocket the whole time. When he pressed the play button, all the verbal and physical ab*se the man had committed was replayed.

“Wh-what’s this?”

“This is a preview. CCTV is a bonus.”

Gunwoo, who’d been acting like an innocent high school student the whole time, threw off his mask in one go. Eyes colored with confusion quickly scanned the surroundings. 

Then he stared at the CCTV installed nearby.