By Zephyria 
〈Sunbae! Don’t just stay in the corner looking gloomy, come over here and look at the baby. He’s seriously so cute.〉
It was the day he had visited to congratulate Lee Yeo-jin on the successful birth of his son. He hadn’t dared go anywhere near the child, but at Kang Sook-ja’s urging to at least see the baby’s face while he was sleeping, he cautiously approached the cradle. The soundly sleeping infant intermittently pursed his lips, as if nursing in his dreams. Even his chubby cheeks were incredibly cute, but Jeil Heon couldn’t watch for long. He was just about to step back before the baby woke up.
The child opened his eyes.
Disaster. Before Jeil Heon could pull away, the child’s eyes had already captured him. As always—just as it had been with his youngest sibling and his nephews—the baby would surely burst into terrified, frantic screams. Just as he was about to call for Lee Yeo-jin in panic…
〈A-goo.〉
The child beamed a bright smile.
That smile froze him more than the malice of any Aberration ever had. The child was smiling at him. The shock bleached his mind white.
The baby raised his arms and wiggled them, as if touching dust in the air, and Jeil Heon, frozen blankly before the cradle, instinctively reached out his hand. The child firmly grasped that finger—a finger calloused and stained with the fluids of countless Aberrations.
Ah.
Jeil Heon groaned helplessly as his finger remained caught in the child’s grip. The baby fiddled with the finger as if it were a fascinating toy. Then, upon meeting his eyes, the child burst into a fit of giggles.
Whether it was because the mother was a Bearer and the child was accustomed to the energy, whether it was because he inherited his grandmother’s spiritual power, or for some other reason he didn’t know—it didn’t matter. This child smiled at him, seeing him as an ordinary human, even though he was destined to become a monster.
Beside this child, he could be human.
It was a thrilling wonder, as if the entire world were being redefined.
What had he done to such a child?
〈Team leader! What do you want for lunch today?〉
The child, who had been chatting excitedly with the team members about the lunch menu, turned and asked him. The sight of those small, moving red lips momentarily seized his gaze with a dizzying intensity, reviving the sensations of that time.
He had barely managed to brush it off, saying to act as if it never happened, but it could never truly be undone. A desire that had permeated once now seethed within his body. The image of wet, panting breaths, red lips glistening with saliva, and the red tongue glimpsed through slightly parted teeth blurred his vision.
〈…Ah, sorry. I’m not feeling well today.〉
He mumbled and left the office, but the terrible sense of guilt would not vanish.
Even now, he couldn’t understand the reason for that inexplicable impulse. Was it because the sensation of those lips, touching him while trembling with tension, was so intense it felt as though it would stain and melt him? Was it because the moment he realized it was the child’s lips touching his own, his rational consciousness was bleached away in an instant? Was it because the instinct of the Aberration, which had secretly boiled up upon entering the Aberrant Realm, had contaminated his human restraint? Or was it because something inside him had changed at some point while watching the child grow up in the blink of an eye?
No. No. Whatever the reason, it could not be an excuse. Jeil Heon had poured his desire upon a child who was so lovely.
If he hadn’t snapped back to his senses at the sound of the child’s sudden moan, if he had let the Aberration’s instincts run wild… he was terrified and horrified to imagine what he might have done and how far he might have gone.
A longing, even greater than the extreme hunger that occasionally surged, crashed over him like a tidal wave. This must not happen. This is the child of Lee Yeo-jin and Nam Hyeon-woo. This child is practically his own godson. This is a life entrusted to him by Lee Yeo-jin at the risk of his own. If this continued, he himself would become the harm that wounded and broke the child. He must not drag the child into his closed world.
Jeil Heon sought to castrate the instincts awakened within him. Restraining and governing himself to the point of asceticism was familiar to him, but suppressing this particular instinct was exceedingly difficult.
He trampled upon his own desire. He crushed the secret, writhing longing that was stimulated by the reality of keeping the child close for the child’s own safety. Though his composure was occasionally shaken by the child’s unexpected actions, he believed he had succeeded in suppressing this damp, gloomy impulse.
He was mistaken.
〈Ah, I like you, Mister.〉
He had done something wrong. He had made a very great mistake. If he hadn’t, there was no way this pure child would feel affection for him—a man twelve years his senior, a man who was desperately suppressing something inside himself even at this moment.
Where was it? Where and what mistake had he made? At Pilgyeongdang. At the Management Bureau. At the Jeonmae Five-Day Market. At the Hanseong Opera House. At the Eight Phases Mental Hospital.
Perhaps from the very beginning.
My very existence.
He, who was merely rotting away in a closed world, must never block the path of a jewel possessing brilliant light, a child more lovely than anything else.
「Mr. Je. The air is unusual; is something happening?」
Gong Ran-sa, who had approached the guest house out of concern for him, flinched violently. Jeil Heon spoke with great difficulty, resisting the instinct boiling within him to devour Gong Ran-sa—a pitifully weak Aberration.
“Please stay… far away from me…”
Before he could even tell if Gong Ran-sa had actually fled after hearing his panting, broken words, a terrible hunger swept over him like a storm.
He let out a self-mocking laugh.
Who does he think he’s protecting, when he can’t even last three days in the child’s absence?
With what nerve could he contact them for help? After committing such a wrong, how could he?
Since the age of fourteen, there had been only one constant in his life: hatred for anomalies. Hatred and revenge, carved into his heart with blood, were the only engines that drove him forward. Then, a new constant entered that life.
〈Sunbae, please help Jiha.〉
Protecting that child.
Had he remained in the past dominated only by hatred and revenge, he would not have survived seventeen years in the Otherworld. He would have been merged into a Blind Eater long ago, or gone mad, his human identity melting away without a trace.
The Blind Eater focused on staining and melting away the purpose of existence granted by the Smiling Man—the essence and identity that could prove he was human—down to the very last fragment. Merging with an anomaly was a repeated process of melting every element that composed the soul and body, from a piece of the subconscious to the ends of the nerve cells, mixing them into a chaotic mess, reconstructing them haphazardly, and turning them into mush once again.
However, the existence of the child, newly carved into his heart, was a value that was fragile and faint, yet never faded or corrupted. Jeil Heon was utterly indifferent to everything in the world except anomalies, but he knew of another symbol of eternal immortality. A diamond. A jewel. Relying on the light of that unique and eternal jewel, he had preserved his self-awareness as a human for seventeen years. At least, so that his shell could be perceived as human.
〈So it’s okay, Jiha. It’s okay. Don’t worry.〉
And then, the child entered the Otherworld. Since the true eye the child possessed had originally been his, Jeil Heon, who was half-Aberration, could sense the child in the Otherworld.
Ah. The child was alive. He had survived safely without a single scratch and grown into an adult.
The true eye he had passed to the child redefined his existence; he was no longer a fox demon merged with a Blind Eater, but the human Jeil Heon.
〈Still, I’m so proud of you, our Jiha. You must have had a hard time, yet you grew up to be such a kind and upright adult. I’ve fallen for Jiha all over again.〉
Jeil Heon fell for the child, who had grown up even more upright than he had imagined. For the child who had swallowed the poison of loneliness alone without becoming twisted, and who had bloomed into a kind nature without projecting his pain onto others.
The jewel he had relied upon was emitting a modest and beautiful light in reality as well. The light of the grown child captivated him even more enchantingly.
When the tiny baby in the cradle had grabbed his finger, he never knew he would be so deeply fascinated even after that baby became an adult. He didn’t know he was a person who smiled so easily. It wasn’t a habit of drawing a polite smile while dealing with others, but a smile that leaked out naturally, impossible to hide. Jeil Heon knew the name of this. It was love.
A loveliness that began the moment the newborn baby, while making infant faces, grabbed his finger without flinching. A special feeling that had become deeply engraved within him, who once believed that no one he cherished as much as his siblings would ever exist for the rest of his life.
The meaning of the lost twenty-two years—this was enough.
Hatred and revenge were no longer his burden. A new reason had emerged in his life: to protect the precious jewel in his arms from those who would try to break it and those who would try to steal it.
And now, Jeil Heon had to protect the child from himself as well.
The fox demon Jeil Heon had taken over had disguised itself as a daughter within a human family before being consumed by fire. Mae-gu had saved it and made it a sister, but the Aberration, who had eventually gone mad from the pain of its entire body burning, was dominated by a terrible hunger. A hunger that would not be satisfied unless it ate the livers of the brothers who had tried to kill it.
“Ugh…”
The body beginning to degenerate brought not only the hunger of the base Aberration but also pain. The phantom pain of hellfire, which would not be satisfied even after obsessively burning every last strand of hair, rushed in violently. His consciousness melted away in an instant, and his body temperature rose rapidly.
Despite this, Jeil Heon did not let go of his human self.
He bit his own flesh to suppress the hunger. He self-harmed to suppress the instinct to bolt outside and find prey immediately.
How much time had passed since he barely managed to send Gong Ran-sa away? He felt the presence of agents from the Annihilation Execution Department entering, perhaps because Gong Ran-sa had opened the path to Pilgyeongdang.