In upstate New York, bordered by the Hudson River to the west and a protected nature reserve to the east, stood Stone Creek Psychiatric Hospital—a structure that overwhelmed visitors from the very first glance. Towering like a high-rise spire, the stark white building was adorned with Gothic-style windows and architectural details. Under the midday sun, it almost seemed to emit its own pale glow.
With his sunglasses perched on his nose and his head tilted upward, Baekgyeong stared up at the building for a moment before walking in without hesitation.
The hospital lobby was filled with warm natural light pouring in through tall windows. It must have been a slow time of day, as only a single middle-aged woman with neatly braided red hair was seated at the reception desk, absorbed in her work.
Baekgyeong knocked on the counter to get her attention.
“Excuse me.”
The woman looked up absentmindedly—then blinked in surprise at the unexpected appearance of such a strikingly handsome man.
“H-how can I help you?”
Baekgyeong met the wonder in her eyes head-on and pulled a business card from his wallet.
“I’m Baekgyeong. Director Catherine Choi’s son.”
His tone carried no arrogance. He simply revealed his identity to get straight to the point.
Director Catherine Choi was the founder of Stone Creek Psychiatric Hospital. As a titan of the pharmaceutical industry, she had navigated a labyrinth of regulations to establish the facility—giving rise to countless rumors. Chief among them: that she'd built the hospital to keep her deranged son safely isolated from society.
Because of that, during his stay, Baekgyeong had become the hospital’s most infamous patient. Whispers circulated that the director’s son suffered from severe depression—or mania—or even violent schizophrenic episodes, controlled only through physical restraints.
But none of it had ever been confirmed. Hardly anyone had actually seen him, since he'd been admitted to Ward 3—twelve kilometers away from the main building. The staff and patients there rarely, if ever, crossed paths with those in the main hospital.
The receptionist, now face-to-face with the real Baekgyeong, found all those rumors laughably implausible. She blinked in awe, overwhelmed by his presence, then quickly collected herself and offered a somber expression.
“What happened to the Director... I’m truly sorry.”
Baekgyeong said nothing. With a bitter expression, he leaned on the high reception desk and spoke.
“I’d like to speak with the hospital director.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No. I don’t.”
She called the director’s secretary, had a brief exchange, then looked up with a warm smile.
“The Director will see you right away.”
With the receptionist guiding him, Baekgyeong took the executive elevator to the seventh floor, where the Director’s office was located.
Contrary to public speculation, the founding of Stone Creek Psychiatric Hospital had not been about isolating Catherine Choi’s son.
After Isaac Bazelli set fire to the BRI (Federal Biological Research Institute) and escaped, Project AX-66—focused on the study of “traits”—was terminated. Dr. Tigri, formerly of BRI, lamented this and persuaded Catherine Choi of the need for a new research center to continue investigating alpha traits.
Together, they agreed to build an advanced facility for alpha research, disguising it as a psychiatric hospital. They established a secret lab within Ward 3—a closed ward set apart from the main building—and named the new project AX-666.
There was a critical distinction between AX-66 and AX-666. The former had been designed to militarize alpha traits for national defense. The latter focused on understanding the genetic and physiological advantages of alphas and applying that knowledge to medical treatments.
Alphas showed rapid cellular regeneration and strong immune responses compared to ordinary humans. These characteristics held the potential to slow—or even reverse—the progression of various neurological disorders: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases.
What fascinated Catherine Choi most was the potential to treat brain death. The tumor in Baekgyeong’s brain had less than a 15% surgical survival rate. She had postponed his operation for as long as possible due to those odds. But if Baekgyeong transitioned into an alpha, it could not only prolong his life—it might make him a valuable research subject.
She considered this seriously when founding the hospital. Ward 1 housed the main facility; Ward 2 treated patients with severe mental illness; and Ward 3—presented as a closed psychiatric ward—was actually the alpha research center.
This secret was known only to the top leadership: the hospital director, Catherine Choi, Dr. Tigri, and a handful of researchers. But the project, once progressing smoothly, had stalled after a series of devastating blows.
“You’re saying the helicopter crash might have been a deliberate act—an assassination orchestrated by those who wanted Director Choi dead?”
Stone Creek’s hospital director, Paul Moore, looked Baekgyeong in the eye and asked calmly.
“I think there’s a high chance.”
“And your evidence?”
“...A gut feeling?”
A thin crack spread across the Director’s face at that reply. Suppressing the irritation that bubbled beneath, he continued speaking gently, like addressing a child.
“The helicopter crash was just an unfortunate accident. It was a bird strike. A flock of birds collided with the helicopter mid-flight, damaging the rotor. The pilot lost control and crashed into the ocean.”
A little over a year ago, four researchers from Ward 3 had perished in that crash. It had happened just after they’d completed the rut suppressant and begun preclinical testing. They were returning from a visit to a pig farm, where they’d studied ways to induce estrus earlier in near-mature swine—when the incident occurred.
“There were rumors it was a drone crash.”
“Some conspiracy theory like that might have been floating around the lab, but no. Director Choi personally confirmed the findings. If someone had handed down their death sentence, it would’ve had to be God. The same goes for Dr. Tigri. He died of a long-standing illness.”
The Director looked at Baekgyeong with concern. It felt like just yesterday he’d congratulated him for walking out of the hospital under his own power. Now, after the shock of his mother’s death, Baekgyeong seemed to be showing paranoid delusions—textbook signs of schizoaffective disorder. Carefully, the Director probed further to assess his condition.
“So... did you come here to graciously warn me my life might be in danger?”
Baekgyeong answered with innocent sincerity, his tension plain.
“Who knows. Maybe both of us are already walking on the edge.”
[Headline]
“Yoon Siron, Don’t You Dare Show Up to the Funeral!” – Baekgyeong Reacts with Rage
(Photo)
Following the sudden death of Vile Group’s Chairwoman Catherine Choi, her younger son Baekgyeong appeared at the airport to prepare for the funeral. Known for avoiding the press, Baekgyeong appeared visibly uncomfortable under the barrage of reporters’ questions.
When asked whether Yoon Siron—once embroiled in a sex scandal—would attend the funeral, Baekgyeong replied sharply:
“Why the hell would he come to the funeral?”
The outburst suggests that lingering tensions between the two remain unresolved.
Baekgyeong’s volatile response threatens to shift public focus away from mourning the deceased and back onto his scandalous past—reigniting public scrutiny and unwanted attention.
Hi-Focus | Reporter Kim Jungsoo
kjs0001@y**.com
“Baekgyeong, that lunatic. Has he actually lost it?”
Siron stared at the headline plastered across the front page of Korea’s major portal site in disbelief. When he scrolled down and read the article itself, rage exploded inside him.
In the photo, Baekgyeong’s eyes were wild—half deranged. He was glaring murderously at someone off-camera, and anyone reading the piece would assume that someone was Yoon Siron. Four years after disappearing from the public eye, Baekgyeong had once again seized everyone’s attention—making himself a spectacle.
“That bastard should’ve been a celebrity. Just stirring shit would’ve fed him for life.”
Thanks to him, Yoon Siron’s name was trending again. “Yoon Siron Scandal,” “Yoon Siron Funeral,” “Baekgyeong Yoon Siron”—search terms like that were everywhere. Old articles about their bad blood resurfaced alongside new ones. Siron didn’t even have the courage to look at the comment sections. He slammed the page closed.
He didn’t believe Baekgyeong had said it to humiliate him. But the public would take it at face value.
“Why would he come to the funeral?”—the phrasing made it sound like “How dare someone like Yoon Siron even think of showing up at my mother’s funeral?” It was Baekgyeong’s own damn fault for letting that cursed mouth run wild and feeding the misunderstanding.
Siron curled up under the blanket, wrapping himself tight, and let out a silent scream. He was no stranger to being dragged into online communities to get his metaphorical face beaten in—but he’d always dreamed of making a comeback in Korea. Now his name was once again branded with shame, and the pain was unspeakable. He wanted to vanish from the world entirely.
“Fuck! I was hiding so well—how the hell did they find me again?!”
As if the whole beard thing hadn’t been miserable enough, now this. One blow after another—how was he supposed to endure it? As he writhed beneath the covers, the edge of the bed dipped beside him, and a gentle voice spoke.
“What’s wrong?”
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