D Church

"Did you come all this way just to ask that one thing?"

"No. Just checking how your body is holding up."

Se-geon said it lightly and swept his hair back, then shoved his hands into the pockets of his worn jacket.

"Well then, I'll be going……."

He offered a brief farewell to Silvester and Lee Jin-hye and stepped outside. The weather had turned so mild that only morning and night still carried a chill; by midday the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠temperature climbed hard and fast. He vaguely remembered learning from childhood textbooks that Korea's four seasons were beautiful—maybe those textbooks needed revising soon.

"First things first, I should look into D Church."

Se-geon muttered the thought and pulled out the memo Bill Murray had given him.

D Church was a megachurch that had stirred social outrage three years earlier when its founder, Pastor Park Seong-geun, handed the entire church corporation down to his son—the classic hereditary ministry. Worse, the son, Pastor Park Jin-young, had advanced divergent interpretations on four points that set him apart from existing denominations and finally earned the church the brand of heresy. After successive heresy debates with the Korean Christian Federation, the Korean Presbyterian Federation, and others, D Church had chosen its own path, established the Korea Christian D Church as a legal corporation, and gone independent.

Yet now the congregation was expanding at a terrifying rate, and an uncanny situation had begun: even foreign believers were streaming in without end. Pastor Park Jin-young had once been a reformist who actively opposed speaking in tongues, the laying on of hands, and revival meetings. Though criticized as a hereditary pastor, he was an elite who had majored in Hebrew and Arabic at K Theological University, published numerous useful works, and held master's degrees in theology and Hebrew studies.

The present D Church, however, was aggressively drawing people in through miracles and revivals. And behind those miracles, those in the know suspected the hand of vampires. Even if that were true, the number of vampire hunters had been sharply reduced by the Jinma Agni; there was almost no one left to stop them. Finder Broadcast's Korean edition had been shut down and reduced to an English homepage alone—so many hunters had Agni killed.

"Hmm. First, maybe I should just go check out the church building."

The main sanctuary of D Church stood in Jung-gu, Incheon, right in a crowded district. It defied understanding that a church openly branded heretical would plant itself on such expensive land, but for now he had no choice but to head there.

Se-geon filled up with high-octane gasoline at a station and took a moment to catch his breath. He had raced there like a storm; his throat was dry. He fed coins into the vending machine and looked around. Just around this intersection, D Church would come into view.

"That'll be twenty-seven thousand won."

The woman who looked like a part-timer spun her red cap and spoke in a housewife's voice. Se-geon handed over cash at once and, on a hunch, asked:

"Excuse me—do you have any old newspapers saved up?"

"Sorry?"

"Old newspapers. Past-date ones. You keep any?"

"Oh, those? Hang on a second."

She disappeared into the office and soon returned with a thick bundle. Se-geon began combing through it, focusing on the flyers. In this neighborhood there was bound to be something tucked among the inserts.

"Sure enough."

He found the church flyer with ease. It was a glossy sheet proclaiming Pastor Park Jin-young's Great Holy Spirit Revival Meeting!, packed with florid promises that the Holy Spirit would surge forth and make people happy at once.

The claims were common-sense impossibilities. With vampire blood, though—well. Opening a blind man's eyes might be possible. If you extracted the eyeballs and continuously administered vampire blood, the eyes might regenerate; but that was only a possibility, never a complete cure.

"Then again, plenty of Holy Spirit revival meetings claim to heal the blind without ever using vampire blood."

Se-geon gathered the leaflets and slipped them into his coat. The gas-station attendant watched him with open curiosity.

"What are you going to do with those?"

"Dunno. Maybe post them on some shock-value board."

"Oh my…… You'll get scolded for saying things like that."

"Will I?"

Se-geon looked blank for a moment, unsure who exactly would do the scolding. Amusing place, in any case. The real problem was how to slip inside.

"It's not Sunday—they won't be holding a service…… And if that place is suspicious, then from their point of view I'll look suspicious too."

He grumbled as he swung onto his bike. Ever since middle school he had forced himself through three hours of trial-bike training every day—workouts that would put most school athletic clubs to shame. These days he climbed Mangyeongdae on Bukhansan every morning, never skipped his striking practice, and had even committed murder. The result was a naturally bleak, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠desolate air that anyone could read as dangerous. The same barren aura he had once felt from Silvester had clung to him like a curse. Would a church really let someone like that walk through the doors?

Maybe a little disguise would help.

Having decided, Se-geon skipped the church for the moment and ducked into a nearby shopping mall. New clothing specialty malls had sprung up everywhere, so buying clothes was easy enough. He reset his hairstyle, put on a pair of non-prescription glasses, and managed a passably human look. Then he took a room at a nearby inn, composed his expression, and began gathering everything he could on D Church, piece by careful piece.

Pastor Park Jin-young was an intellectual cleric who, at the age of forty, already held two master's degrees. That was why, even after being branded a heretic, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he had been able to gather and embrace such enormous numbers of believers. Moreover, his personal life was impeccably clean. He had a devoted wife, drove a Matiz, and raised well-behaved children. D Church itself, however, threw up lavish buildings without restraint, violated neighboring properties' rights to sunlight, drove their values down, and then bought those devalued buildings—expanding its power by the same method again and again.

He was a textbook example of a spotless individual operating a thoroughly corrupt organization, and he understood perfectly the Korean tendency to rely on personal attacks and black propaganda. People often failed to distinguish between an individual's private life and an organization's vices.

He grasped that thoroughly and never allowed a single personal blemish. The organization might accumulate sins, but if he himself displayed a pious life, those organizational failings would be covered as well. So he worked hard at performing piety—while privately savoring the congregation that grew larger every day.

There were those who pushed back against that expansion, however: the merchants' association of the shopping district visible from his senior pastor's office. They had gathered to protest a church that blocked their sunlight and, every Sunday, choked the streets with cars until business became impossible. Now they were demonstrating out front.

"Mmm. All of this is simply the Lord's trial."

Pastor Park said it calmly to the flustered deacons and ordered that only one of the merchant representatives be brought up. On the eighth floor—in a lofty senior pastor's office that seemed to echo the medieval church's will to draw as near as possible to heaven—he summoned the people who had come to protest him. Soon a merchant with a face flushed red and purple strode in.

"Welcome. The Lord greets you."

"Cut that crap. It's pissing me off. I don't know what the hell you people are thinking, buying the land right in front of the shopping center entrance and refusing to sell it to us! Sell us that land!"

The merchant representative was an old hand who had rolled through this district for years; he answered the polite pastor's welcome with pure roaring. The land D Church had purchased for a parking lot was, absurdly, the entrance to the shopping center's own parking. Sunlight rights and the Sunday parking chaos were one thing, but buying the land and openly surrounding the complex was no different from announcing they meant to swallow the entire shopping district whole.

"That was a negotiation that fell through because we couldn't reach agreement on price, wasn't it? I even have the content-certified mail from that time right here."

"Yeah, because you offered that ridiculous price. You think we don't know what you're after? We've collected signatures—sell us the land."

"D Church belongs to every resident. Even if I am the senior pastor at present, that does not mean I have the right to dispose of D Church property. This matter requires sufficient discussion with the believers……."

"You really don't get it, do you?! Keep this up and we'll sue—remember that! Shit. I'm too disgusted to keep dealing with you. And this huge building—what the hell do you even need it for? Where I used to live, a two-story place was more than enough to cover us! Guess heretic churches really are different, huh?"

The merchant representative threw down the threat, but in front of a pastor with two master's degrees he was nothing more than an uneducated shopkeeper. Even if they sued, their odds of beating Pastor Park approached zero. From the beginning he had laid his plans with cunning enough to stay just inside the law. Filing a lawsuit now would only be digging their own graves.

"Is that so? Still, I suspect that petition will turn out to be invalid."

"What? Invalid? The hell are you spouting—jerking off into thin air? You think this thing becomes invalid just because you say so? Huh?"

"Do I?"

Pastor Park smiled with his whole face. He had been expelled from the pastoral ranks, yet D Church was registered with the state as a religious corporation, and he himself was registered as clergy and exempt from earned-income tax. No matter how loudly the denominations cried "heretic," D Church had obtained its religious corporation by legitimate means before the label ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ever stuck, and that status could not be revoked now. D Church had become, in every sense, a den of evil. These merchants were simply the wretched ones who had been bitten by that devil called D Church.

The reason for the pastor's confidence was simple: twenty percent of the people who had signed that petition had already become members of D Church. Once the church bought their shops at bargain prices, the majority of the shopping center's rights would fall into D Church hands. The petition would become void, of course—and D Church would become the de facto majority shareholder of the complex.

Placing the church parking lot flush against the shopping center entrance was merely the opening move to swallow the remaining eighty percent even more cheaply. In the end the powerless merchants would have no choice but to hand over their shops at fire-sale prices and get out.

This was not a technique unique to D Church. It was one of the basic real-estate investment methods common to countless school corporations and other social entities.

"There, there—you seem far too agitated…… Let's leave it at that."

"What did you say?! You—!"

Church deacons swarmed in, seized him, and dragged him out. The man gathered phlegm in his mouth and spat it hard onto the floor of the senior pastor's office.

"Damn it! Just you wait and see!"

Bang!

The door of the senior pastor's office slammed shut with brutal force. The smile that had lit Pastor Park's face until that moment drained away, leaving a shadow in its place.

"Trying to do the Lord's work against these ignorant types is exhausting."

Since when God had gone into the land-grabbing business was anyone's guess, but the heretical pastor spoke in a voice heavy with worry, putting on every appearance of gravity.