Under the Red Moon
How long had she spent fleeing the eyes of humans and vampires alike?
Jeong-ya found herself wondering. Of course, it could not really be called a long time. When one considered the lives of vampires, for whom eternity was no exaggeration, two years was hardly anything at all. Yes. This painful stretch was never truly long. Not compared to the nights still to come…
"You all right?"
Chang-hyun lifted his hat, arms full of triangle kimbap. He had not managed a proper haircut in days; the unruly length that refused to stay under the brim gave him a rough sort of charm—or so he liked to believe.
But when you had been reduced to skulking about to avoid vampire eyes, where could you possibly settle? Chang-hyun had tried hiding in COEX Mall, figuring vampires would avoid human attention there, but that had been a waste of effort too. CCTV was never going to stop vampires or the hunters who pursued them with their more-than-human force. Even now, the thought of what might have happened if that suspicious Jinma called Phantom had not stepped in still made his skin crawl.
The strange part was that, for all of it, he felt no anger toward the one who had turned him into a vampire in the first place—Jeong-ya. At first he had wondered if she had somehow manipulated his mind, but that did not seem to be it either. And the blood she had shared with him had been so vast in quantity that Chang-hyun himself had become a Jinma.
More than anything, he could not simply abandon her, trembling as she was with cold and hunger and loneliness. And she was a beauty that made a man sit up and take notice, besides.
"I'm just a little dizzy."
Jeong-ya waved him off and forced herself upright. Was it because she had not fed? Creating Chang-hyun as a Jinma must have cost her far too much VT.
As the last bus slipped out of the city center, silence settled over the world. The fading rumble of its engine drained away along the road like water disappearing down a sewer, vanishing toward the outskirts.
Walking the tree-lined street, the two vampires tore open their triangle kimbap and ate without a word.
"Where should we spend the day today?"
Jeong-ya caught up her pure-white dress skirt and hopped over a tin can on the sidewalk as she asked. Even if he was a vampire she herself had made, Chang-hyun was skilled at combat and at other work—mostly the kind that hurt people. She lived on the money he brought in, and so she had no choice but to overlook the damage. Had she turned him into a vampire so she would not have to dirty her own hands, and so that he would protect her?
"Technically we spend the night, but… hmm. What about a PC bang? One in a basement would be quiet, no chance of sunlight getting in, and not a bad place to sleep either. I hear some of them even have showers."
Chang-hyun laughed mid-sentence, wondering if he had gone too far. A man might get away with it, but if a woman like Jeong-ya sprawled across a PC bang chair and snored, what would the people around her think? Most would probably just stare in mild curiosity and move on, of course. But her looks were never the sort anyone simply walked past. Chang-hyun himself would admit it: if the woman who turned him into a vampire had been grimy and built like she could punch out a cow bare-handed, he would have burned gloriously in the sunlight rather than become a Jinma.
"Shall we do that, then?"
Jeong-ya spun lightly on her heel. Her bright voice rang clear through the cold night air; the cute, slightly childish dress on her small face suited her perfectly. If one wanted to be old-fashioned about it, she looked like an angel come down into the night. Of course, she was a vampire.
I really did pick well.
Chang-hyun was hopeless with women's clothes, but she seemed to like what he had chosen a great deal. Looking at her, he felt an unearned satisfaction.
No, no. This is no time to be standing around dazed.
He forced his thoughts back toward the grim side of things. Their fate looked as bleak as the night road they walked, that long avenue of trees leading out toward the suburbs. Those who hunted their blood would cling to them until the day their lives ran out. And even if they did not, living among humans would be impossible. Forever dodging other people's eyes—what joy was there to find in that?
Just then Jeong-ya spotted a PC bang sign beside the road and looked at Chang-hyun.
"How about that one?"
"Basement. Perfect. Let's head in."
Chang-hyun checked the surroundings, then sprang in a single bound and cleared the six-lane road. Crossing a span that wide without a running start was something no one but a vampire would even dare attempt.
"Come on over."
He grinned, pulled off his hat, and spun it idly in his hand. Jeong-ya glanced around; after the last through-bus of the night had gone, the suburban road looked unlikely to see another car for a while. She squeezed her eyes shut and leaped, sailing lightly across all six lanes. Anyone watching would have doubted their own eyes at the sight of a slender young woman clearing the road so lightly.
Chang-hyun started down the stairs. True to form for a PC bang, the fans were running hard, yet the smell of cigarettes still hit strong. People said the anti-smoking campaigns had left smokers with nowhere to go, but clearly that was not the whole story.
"Welcome."
The clerk greeted them without taking his eyes off the online game running on his own machine. Jeong-ya and Chang-hyun took cards from the counter and sat in adjoining seats. Something that looked like ventilation ducting ran overhead; outside the cigarette smell had been thick, but inside it was cleaner. They toyed with the computers. Dawn was still a long way off, and neither of them was particularly sleepy, so for a while they simply fiddled with the machines.
"There's something I've been meaning to ask. Why did those two—Chang-woon and Juk-yo—come looking for you?"
Chang-hyun tried the question. But Jeong-ya had headphones on and seemed not to hear. Or perhaps she was simply avoiding that particular conversation with him. A vampire's hearing was not the sort of thing ordinary headphones could block. Still, if she did not want to talk about it, Chang-hyun was not hard enough to pry it out of her.
I'm an outsider to her, after all.
He made a bitter face and turned his eyes back to the screen.
It took her a long time to realize the ragged breathing was her own. Beast-like gasps, pain and terror ruling every inch of her body. Like a dog afraid of its own tail, she was running from a fear she could never shake free. She could not explain what she fled. But one thing was certain: the shadow stuck to her feet, and the vast shadow of the city streaming behind it, showed no sign of falling away no matter how hard she ran. And the red moon hanging between those towering skyscrapers…
An unpleasant moon.
It was like a red eye. A gaze that would never leave her, no matter where she went. She ran to escape that eye, toward the buildings, thinking their shade might hide her from the moon's sight. But every step she took, the buildings stepped back; whichever way she turned, she only pounded in place.
Even that endless marathon, though, found its ending. Absurdly, her foot caught and she pitched forward. With a short scream she hit the cold ground, and only then did the buildings that had never drawn near, and their shadows, begin to close in. Like a pack of jackals that had waited for their quarry to drop from exhaustion, the skyscraper shadows rushed her; her own shadow was still running, and the moon rolled its eye. The towers that had been charging the woman collapsed on the ground took human shape before she knew it. But people frightened her more.
"Aaaaaah!"
She screamed until her throat seemed ready to tear, but no one here would hear it and come to help. Of course not.
"Kieeeeeek!"
Yet the shadows shrieked strangely and fell. And before her—she never saw him arrive—stood a man. He had killed the shadows and now came toward her with their black blood on his hands. She scrambled back in terror.
She was so frightened her body would not answer; she fled on all fours like a child. Then a shadow that was not hers wrapped around her. She looked up and found another man standing with that same moon-eye at his back.
The shadows that had been lunging at her a moment before became skyscrapers again, and the man standing high and alone atop them raised his left arm and aimed a long shadow at her and at the man behind her.
In an instant the arm of the man on the skyscraper exploded—and at the same moment her body, and the blood-smeared man reaching for her from behind, exploded with it. Her body flew; only her head remained, rolling across the cold concrete until it stopped, and then the red moon, impossibly huge, filled her vision.
…She kicked the blanket off and woke with a violent start. Because she had run so hard in the dream? The sticky, viscous sweat coating her whole body felt like residue from the nightmare.
"Ah!"
Jeong-ya shuddered and sat up. She had escaped a dream of her throat being torn away only to find herself in her own room, the same as always. The place was bleak in a way that did not suit a young woman—the fourteen-pyeong studio apartment where she lived alone.
This isn't right. This place is definitely…?
But she could not think further. Something felt wrong, yet her thoughts only circled in place, as if under anesthesia.
Wheeeeeee!
The night was still deep, yet outside the building the wind howled fiercely. The building stood on the twentieth floor, high enough already, and the electromagnetic waves from the transmission tower on the hill made the wind sound desolate in every season. A newly enrolled college girl living alone in a studio had to accept that much as a penalty.
But if the house her remarried father had given her while almost cutting ties was like this, that was a real problem. Then, suddenly, she heard a flapping sound. Jeong-ya, who had just climbed out of bed and switched on the water heater to wash off the sweat, spun around in shock. Ah—there was moonlight pouring through the window. The yellow light that punched through the curtain and flooded the room lit up the bleak apartment that did not look like a woman's at all.
She stared outside, half wonder and half fear. It was three in the morning… was it the moon that had cast the city's shadow?
"Am I just jumpy?"
She looked away from the window. In that moment a single bat slipped soundlessly from the apartment and vanished into the moonlight.
Beneath the hold of an old fishing boat, soft moonlight seeped through the cracks in the wooden planks. Under that light sat a man with a blood-and-oil-stained towel draped over his head. He sat in the middle of the hold, silently savoring the moon.
Around him, people worn thin by poverty squatted in the dark. The space had originally been meant for storing fish, but now it carried passengers. This smuggling vessel bound for Korea, where entry screening was strict, disguised itself as a fishing boat and transferred people at sea to another fishing boat coming out from Korea.
It was the most suitable route from China into Korea, the one smugglers and peddlers who hated paying taxes closed their eyes and used.
"Not yet?"
The man with the towel over his head carefully rolled the dark eyes that showed through the gap. He had already endured a long time of pitching waves in the cramped, musty hold, yet the boat showed no sign of moving on. Waiting for the rendezvous on the Korean side? He glanced once at the people around him, then lifted his head and watched the moonlight seeping through the boards. The moon seemed unusually bright tonight.
Then the upper deck grew noisy, and with a creak the hatch opened. A man in a battered fishing vest and a pulled-down beanie came down the narrow ladder, followed by two heavies who looked like his men. Brokers for illegal entry, no doubt.
Strictly speaking they took money from passengers to ferry them across, but some of their kind murdered people at sea and sold the organs, so tension was inevitable. When the three men came down, every person in the hold held their breath.
"Ah, a brief announcement for the passengers currently aboard. This vessel is now passing through Chinese territorial waters…"
One of the heavies stepped forward from behind and spoke as if holding a microphone, cupping both hands. The swaggering act only made the people more uneasy—until the man beside him suddenly shoved him aside.
"You screwing around? Just say it. Hey! Everybody cough up another thousand yuan each!"
The hold that had been dead silent erupted into chaos. Everyone looked stunned at the sudden demand for more money. The usual arrangement was to pay a deposit up front and the balance only after safe arrival. A few of the merchants stood up outright and began to protest.
"What about the twenty-five hundred yuan we already gave you? You said you'd send us cheaper, that's why I didn't take a regular boat and came here instead—huh? This way there's no difference!"
No matter what the man argued, they had clearly already decided to squeeze the extra fee. Even if they charged more than a legitimate ship, they waived customs duties and needed no visa or passport, so the customers would not dry up.
"Has this guy never even ridden a bus? You don't get to transfer free, do you?"
It was not much of a comparison, but the oily arrogance of it made people shut their mouths. Not persuasion so much as forced surrender. Sensing the dangerous turn of the atmosphere, the master who had come down first added,
"We're supposed to transfer to a fishing boat in Korean waters, and we've got to pay those people too."
"So you're telling us to invent money we don't have. What do you want us to do?"
The man in the beanie pulled it down even lower. At the signal the ones behind him stepped forward in his place, like backup dancers moving into formation.
"Ah, if you don't have the money we won't make you produce it right this second—but how about signing this contract?"
When people who lived by illegal means suddenly produced a contract, it was usually bad news. The man who glanced at it recoiled and demanded,
"What? A waiver of bodily rights? You—!"
But the broker drove a body blow straight into the man's gut.
"Ghk!"
"Talks a lot, doesn't he. Keep it down a little, yeah?"
The man's glasses hit the floor, and he followed them down. The cheap twenty-watt bulb caught the lenses and flashed for an instant. The man with the towel over his head watched and let out a quiet sigh.
"Your body is a gift from your parents, right? If you don't want a knife in it, go catch shrimp right now! Hm? Pick one!"
The broker cracked his knuckles and laid down the threat. Terror swept through everyone in the boat. He had finally stopped pretending. But then the man who had only been watching stood up. Without even removing the towel he strode toward the brokers. Walking so naturally on a pitching deck, with his eyes almost covered, gave off a wrongness that was not human at all.
Even the brokers, who had seen every kind of hell, stared at him with blank faces.
"What? What is it? You want a piece of this? Hm?"
Perhaps ashamed of having been briefly cowed, the man turned on the towel-headed stranger with an even rougher, more aggressive stance. But the stranger ignored him completely, looking around and counting heads.
"Including me, eight people—so eight thousand yuan?"
The broker who had been bristling with murderous intent a second earlier glanced at his companions.