The Flower of the Gutter
I had a dream.
A memory from the far side of recollection. An old nightmare etched into my brain like a tattoo—impossible to erase. A viciously cold, gut-wrenchingly foul nightmare from long ago.
Whoosh—!
Rain poured down in torrents as if the sky itself had been punctured. Beneath the ashen heavens, the world was nothing but a churning sea of mud.
A sewer overflowing with rotten food and filth.
Buried in that mire, I was starving to death with no hope of salvation.
Driven by pure instinct, I crawled across the muddy ground. I was searching for any scrap of bone that might be floating in the sludge—something even a passing dog would ignore—so I could gnaw on it.
“How dare you!”
But even that pathetic hope was stolen from me.
Thud! Crunch!
The powerful kick from a gang of beggars slammed into my ribs.
“Ugh…!”
I was sent tumbling through the muddy water. The metallic taste of blood and the foul flavor of sewage flooded my mouth at the same time.
I’m… so hungry…
My stomach had shriveled until it felt glued to my spine. The twisting agony in my guts was so terrible that I wished my breath would simply stop. I wanted it all to end.
It’s so cold…
The raindrops striking my skin felt like a thousand needles piercing my body.
Am I… going to die like this?
I wasn’t even sad.
From the beginning, I had been an orphan without roots, without a clan, without even a name. Born like a rat, rolling around in the gutter, freezing to death in some back alley where no one would ever know. That was the only ending permitted to me.
Yet the moment I tried to give up on everything and embrace that peace—
Splash.
A shadow fell across the mud, cutting through the curtain of rain.
…?
Was this the grim reaper, come to take my life?
I forced my blurring vision to focus and slowly lifted my head.
“……”
There stood a man who seemed entirely out of place in this sewer. He wore dazzling white silk robes and gazed down at me with eerily transparent eyes.
“Do you want to live?”
His voice cut through the rain—low, gentle, yet carrying an undeniable power.
“…Ugh… ugh…”
I didn’t have the strength to answer, not even to nod. But the instinct to survive made my dying heart beat once more.
Grab.
With a trembling hand, I desperately clutched the hem of his trousers.
Black sewage and the bloody marks from my fingers ruined his robes, but he didn’t even flinch. Instead, seeing the fierce, blue-tinged killing intent in my eyes, the corners of his mouth twisted upward in satisfaction.
“Such venom in one so young. Not bad at all.”
He crouched down without caring that his knees sank into the filth and slowly stroked my mud-caked, blood-soaked hair.
Flinch.
I instinctively squeezed my eyes shut and shuddered.
Having been trampled and kicked my entire life, I had learned that any hand reaching toward me only brought pain.
Slide.
Ah…
His hand gliding through my hair was bloodless, cool, and cold—like the touch of a corpse. Yet to me, freezing to death, that dry chill felt hotter and kinder than any brazier in the world.
It was the first time anyone had ever touched me without intending harm.
“Hey, look at that guy? Those clothes are no joke.”
At that moment, greedy wild dogs caught the scent and began to gather.
Four beggars who had been lurking nearby charged at the man, wielding wooden clubs and shards of broken pottery.
“Kill him and take everything he’s got!”
The man didn’t even turn his head.
He simply lifted his hand from my hair and gave his sleeve a light flick, as if shooing away an annoying insect.
Slice—
A horrifying tearing sound ripped through the rain.
“Huh…?”
The charging beggars froze mid-motion.
Splat!
Their bodies exploded into pieces.
Thud, thud.
Arms, legs, heads, and torsos fell to the ground like meat chopped by a razor blade. Geysers of blood mixed with the pouring rain, creating a crimson mist.
It was an overwhelming slaughter that happened in the blink of an eye, yet not a single drop of blood stained the man’s pure white silk robes.
“....”
The man didn’t spare the corpses at his feet even a glance. He simply turned back to me and extended his hand once more.
Reach.
A hand so white and delicate it was hard to believe it had just killed people.
“You have nowhere to go, do you?”
He looked deeply into my terrified—or perhaps reverent—eyes and offered a small smile.
“Will you come with me?”
I knew.
The moment I took that hand, I would never return to this gutter. And I would gladly never return.
Squeeze.
Without even asking where we were going, I gripped his ice-cold palm with all my strength.
That was how it all began.
The only person who had pulled me, a creature lower than an insect, out of the sewer.
The person who fed me my first steaming bowl of white rice, gave me warm water to wash my filthy body, and clothed me in silk.
Yin Snake GhostSado Yun.
He was my savior, my father, and the god I was meant to serve with my life.
The days after I followed him were a continuous hell of agony.
Training in hidden weapons and assassination techniques, having my bones broken and muscles twisted back into shape—these were routine. Every night, under the pretext of building poison resistance, I was forced to swallow near-lethal doses of toxins.
My organs burned. I writhed on the floor, vomiting black blood from every orifice.
Every time I wanted to bite my tongue and die, the only thing that kept me going was his cool, serene smile.
“Do you understand? From now on, kill each other.”
The final gateway to becoming an assassin of Salmak.
The place I arrived at was a cave filled with the thick stench of blood, where more than a dozen children were locked inside. It was a den of gu poison where they had to tear out each other’s throats and stab each other’s hearts to survive.
Slice. Stab!
I didn’t cry.
I didn’t even scream for help.
I simply raised my blade against the children I had eaten with, trained with—my brothers and sisters—so I could survive and see him again.
“Aaaaagh!!! S-Spare m—”
Stab.
I slit the throat of the child begging for life and pierced her heart. I was kicked repeatedly by children larger than me and cut by their blades, but the pain of torn flesh and broken bones meant nothing.
“Magnificent.”
His single word of praise as he smiled at me—the only one left standing, drenched in blood, inside that hell.
Thus was born Baek Mo-ran, the Flower-Killing Assassin, one of Salmak’s proud Ten Great Assassins. A flower that bloomed from blood.
Before I had even come of age, I threw my whole body into completing every assassination order he gave me.
The only force that allowed me to walk such a hellish path was my blind, fanatical loyalty toward Sado Yun, the god who had saved me.
---------------------
A secret office lit by a single flickering candle.
“You’ve come, Mo-ran.”
This was a memory from right before I arrived at Monghwagak.
The memory of the last conversation I shared with him.
“I have a very important mission to entrust to you.”
With the same smile as always, he picked up an object from the table and handed it to me.
A leather cover dyed the color of dried blood.
And upon it, ominous characters that made one’s mind reel just by looking at them.
Flower-Plundering Art
“Learn it.”
“This is…?”
“A secret manual that will bring immense power to our Salmak. The key to our great cause.”
He forced the cold tome into my hesitant hands and gently wrapped his arms around my shoulders.
“What is it? Are you afraid? Compared to the hells you’ve already overcome, this mission is nothing, isn’t it?”
His gentle voice paralyzed my reason.
“Master this technique and go to the place I designate. There, you will not live as an assassin, but bloom and wither as the most beautiful flower in the world.”
Hiss…
Was it my imagination?
The wicked, sticky energy emanating from the leather cover felt like a living snake crawling up the veins of my palm toward my heart.
This is dangerous.
My assassin’s instincts screamed in warning.
An unprecedented sense of dread that made every hair on my body stand on end, a nauseating revulsion. But I could not refuse. The man before me was my savior, my father, my one and only master whom I could never defy.
“I will obey your command.”
With trembling hands, I clutched the book of destruction to my chest. At that moment, his eyes narrowed like a snake’s, and a strange red glow flickered deep within his pupils.
Just as he had done when we first met, he reached out with his cool hand and slowly stroked my hair.
“Yes. That’s my flower…”
His face, the surrounding scenery, everything blurred like spilled ink. The world spun. Along with dizziness came an unbearable smell of blood that brushed my nose, and I plummeted into deep darkness.
--------------------
“Haaah! Hah, haa……”
Baek Mo-ran opened her eyes with a gasp, breathing like someone who had just surfaced from water.
What greeted her was a familiar ceiling.
The top floor of Monghwagak—her own bedchamber.
“A… dream?”
It had been unbearably vivid.
A dream of her past, of the path she had walked. A dream she had rarely had since coming here.
Baek Mo-ran wiped her sweat-drenched forehead with the back of a trembling hand. Her skin felt cold to the touch, yet strangely, the inside of her body burned as if lit by fire.
This is strange.
Normally, after such a nightmare, she would be groaning from a headache that felt like her skull was splitting open.
Yet now, although her entire body felt languid as if soaked in water, her mind was clearer than it had been in ages, free of any fog. The sticky discomfort that had flowed through her veins and the suffocating pressure on her chest had vanished completely.
Why did I suddenly dream of the past…?
As she stared blankly at the ceiling, Baek Mo-ran suddenly noticed an unfamiliar, heavy weight against her waist.
Thump. Thump.
The hot body heat pressed against her back. The clear heartbeat. The regular breathing that tickled her ear. Baek Mo-ran slowly turned her head as if in a trance.
“……!”
On the disheveled bed, right beside her, a woman lay fast asleep.
“Mmm… mmh…”
Completely uncovered, pure white naked skin. Long black hair spilled across the sheets like silk. A beauty sleeping without a single thread on her body. Even another woman would be enchanted by that breathtaking figure, and a faint blush rose on Baek Mo-ran’s face.
Her neck, collarbones, and the slopes of her full breasts were covered in red bite marks and nail scratches blooming like flower petals. Her slightly parted, swollen red lips let out soft, even breaths and gentle sleep-talking.
“W-Wait…!”
The moment she faced that peaceful, innocent sleeping face, Baek Mo-ran’s pale complexion flushed bright red like a perfectly ripe persimmon.
Aang! Seol-hye-nim, Seol-hye niiim……!
Deeper… harder, please……!
Haaung, I like it, I like it too much! I’m dying, I’m dying!
Those had definitely been her own voice.
The cruelty and coldness she once possessed as an assassin had vanished. Instead, she had panted like a beast in heat, clinging to another woman’s body and begging shamelessly with obscene, lewd cries.
Seol-hye-nim, Master……! Please love me more……!
The instant those raw, naked echoes from last night replayed vividly in her ears—
“U-Uwaaaaa?!”
Baek Mo-ran clutched her head and let out a silent scream.