He was a fox who loved to run around outside.
According to The Fox Child-Rearing Manual, which Kessler had read, one should avoid controlling baby foxes as much as possible. Letting them explore the unfamiliar world on their own was said to greatly boost their creativity. So Kessler followed that advice.
But sometimes, stern discipline was necessary—such as when a fox recklessly put himself up for auction at a ghost market.
After pulling the fox off the stage, Kessler brought him into the lord’s safe, secure kitchen, far from the dangers of the outside world.
“What the hell were you thinking, going out there? Are you a sane fox or a brainless one?”
But the fox didn’t answer. He just drooped his ears and tail, trembling all over.
“You think staying quiet like that is gonna fix everything?”
Just then, the fox began flailing his paws in the air wildly.
Nyang-nyang-nyang-nyang-nyang-nyang-nyang-nyang.
Nyaang♥
He’d never once properly thrown a love token before, but now suddenly, he was acting all cute.
Kessler checked the photo that got a “Like”—it was a picture of pudding, the baby fox’s favorite.
“Wanna go eat?”
Shake shake.
“You feeling weak? I’ll bring you some food. Can you wait here just a moment?”
Nod.
Claiming he was too hungry to move, the fox flopped onto his back and lay flat.
Kessler looked at him a moment, then stepped outside.
A hollow laugh escaped. The fox was acting. Normally, after eating just one pudding, he’d lie down satisfied and even burp like a baby.
And now, fresh off his pudding binge at the auction house, his belly was bulging.
“Pretending to be hungry just to run away? You’ve gotten way too spoiled.”
Kessler played along for now, but the baby fox’s cleverness was irritating.
Stopping in a long hallway, he reached out with a pale hand bathed in moonlight, scanning the space. Shadows slipped from his fingers and clung to the walls.
[System]: Recursive curse has been set. Duration: 90 minutes.
With this in place, even if the baby fox wanted to escape, he wouldn’t be able to.
As soon as he finished the setup, Kessler leaned against the wall. Just as expected, footsteps echoed from beyond the corridor.
But something about them was off—too heavy for a fox.
“Acting just like a real fox, huh?”
Then came a voice—human. Not the strained nyang-nyang mimicry of a beast.
Kessler’s calm gaze turned razor-sharp, fixing forward.
Soon, a figure emerged at the far end of the hallway, swallowed by Kessler’s shadows. Under the veil of that shadow, someone scurried about clumsily.
It was that useless player he had given orders to once. Kessler approached. The closer he came, the more the player lowered his body.
His posture strangely resembled the way the baby fox curled up his tail and lay down.
“Kessler-nim.”
Kessler stared down at him, as though observing something under a microscope.
“I came to report—sorry for the delay.”
“Go ahead.”
“The fox and Jung Da-hoon are getting along fine. It was all a misunderstanding. I think it’s best to call them both in and observe their reactions in front of each other.”
Kessler stared into the player’s face as he babbled, scraping for an excuse.
Behind him was a sealed room. The only one inside had been the baby fox. Yet now, his presence was gone—and this guy had come out instead.
The player, who had pretended to face him calmly, shrank back under Kessler’s pressure.
Like a perfect piece clicking into the last slot of a puzzle, everything lined up. It fit too well—like that hole of his had.
“You really had a rough time that day, didn’t you?”
“……”
“Getting pounded by me.”
“If it were up to me, I’d have pounded you instead—but you didn’t have a hole.”
“Right. The one with the hole is the one who gets pounded.”
The way he sassily snapped back overlapped with the baby fox’s belly-bumping tantrums.
“That was you back then, wasn’t it?”
“…What do you mean, ‘back then’?”
“The hotel.”
The night at the Oasis Hotel, when he lost his virginity. Kessler had been searching for the thief who’d jerked him off and then bolted.
Half out of a desire to punish them—half because he wanted to feel that strange satisfaction again.
The player’s pupils shook. The ever-shifting expressions on his face screamed confession.
That night, too—he had been alone in the closed hotel room with the baby fox. And ever since then, the fox had started acting strangely shy.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The player pretended not to know until the very end. Even lifting his frozen gaze to meet Kessler’s was bold, considering he stood before a man who had once killed him.
“Worthless husk.”
“Yes.”
“What did you say your name was?”
“Yeo Woo-rim.”
“Yeo… Woo-rim.”
He slowly murmured the name.
“You really won’t let me go?”
Not the baby fox—this was the player, Yeo Woo-rim, pleading for release. Something about that request stirred an odd surge of fury in Kessler.
“Sounds like you think you won’t die.”
But Kessler instinctively knew what he had to do right now.
He reached behind himself and detached the couple item he shared with the fox—the tail cloak—one piece at a time, and shoved it into Yeo Woo-rim’s asshole.
Each time he embedded a piece, Yeo Woo-rim held his breath and widened his eyes, and that expression seared itself into Kessler’s retina.
“We’ve built some emotional intimacy, after all.”
“……”
“This much… I’ll give you.”
Punishment only had meaning while the person was still alive.
“Go.”
Kessler retrieved the shadows smeared along the walls with a touch of his finger.
“Thank you. I’ll return the tail to you later.”
With a firm nod, Yeo Woo-rim turned and walked away, tail fluttering behind him, vanishing down the corridor bathed in light—and beyond that.
Kessler walked toward the hallway Yeo Woo-rim had just exited and stared up at the largest portrait hanging there.
It was a painting of him and the fox together.
He reached out and draped it in shadow. The once-happy image was consumed in black.
Then, he pulled out a handful of Jewel Ice from the jewel box and bit down hard. It was supposed to cool his frustration, but it did nothing.
The fox was a person. Even with all the proof in hand, it still didn’t feel real.
He’d had sex with that baby fox. That part felt even more unreal.
In the end, it was the fox himself who had sold the collar. And the one who claimed that husk was the culprit had actually been describing his own experience.
A self-mocking laugh slipped through his teeth. From beyond his idle hand on the table, shadows stirred, watching his every move.
The room was filled with a heavy fog of something—emptiness, or maybe disillusionment.
“If the fox was human… what do you think?”
“What a load of bullshit.”
“What if it’s not bullshit—but fox shit?”
To say Yeo Woo-rim had tricked him felt inaccurate. After all, he had openly confessed to being the baby fox himself.
“If the fox you’re waiting for turned into a human… and that human is me. The fox who loves bone broth pudding and Jewel Ice more than anything… urgh…”
It was he who dismissed Yeo Woo-rim’s confessions and testimony as nonsense.
By now, the room was thick with shadows Yeo Woo-rim had left behind. In the engulfing darkness, Kessler buried his face in his hands.
“Whoa! Look at that—crazy! That looks fun as hell!”
“Isn’t that the thing Kessler used to wear?”
“Looks like he’s steering with the tail.”
Voices of players floated in through the window. Kessler looked up.
Outside, Yeo Woo-rim was descending from the sky, gliding gently with his tail spread wide, as if completely one with it.
……
It was a high-difficulty skill that even Kessler himself hadn’t managed to pull off yet.
Maybe it was because he’d lived with that tail—he wore it as naturally as if it were always part of his body.
Kessler watched him with an impassive gaze.
Shashasak!
He landed lightly, rolled between corpses, and with quick hands stuffed loot into his backpack. He was the very image of a fish in water—no, of a baby fox freed from belly fat.
“That’s it. I’m done.”
He would no longer concern himself with the baby fox—nor with the player, Yeo Woo-rim.
That tail… it was his final parting gift to the baby fox who still lived in his heart.
That’s how Kessler decided to interpret his instinctive action.
Yet his gaze never left Yeo Woo-rim. Unconsciously, he kept finding traces of his baby fox in the boy’s every move.
Just then, the husk approached Yeo Woo-rim. The two of them walked along, chatting sweetly.
The moment Kessler saw them like that, the nature of the shadows in the room changed.
“Have they lost their damn minds?”
Yeo Woo-rim was smiling freely—a smile he’d never once shown Kessler.
“This is infuriating.”
At that moment, Kessler slammed a hand against his own chest. Frustration gave way to a sense of loss, and then betrayal.
After all the time they’d spent together, he felt robbed of those memories.
Irritated, he yanked the curtains shut. Hot air flared from his nostrils. Still unsatisfied, he yanked the blanket up to cover himself completely.
Kessler’s heart sank deeper into darkness. And then he remembered—the Relationship Panel.
They shared a couple tab that documented their daily life.
Only his location had ever been visible. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. He’d always kept his whereabouts open, but the baby fox had gone out of his way to hide himself.
He probably didn’t want his player identity discovered.
This was a scam relationship.
“Even if we break up, we’ve got things to settle first.”
Kessler threw off the blanket and shot to his feet.
