A Dream of Dying
“About that murder case… I dreamed I was dying, senior.”
“What? You dreamed about a killer? Go buy a lottery ticket, kid. Scratch this one. Who knows? Maybe you’ll hit five million won.”
The man she called senior pointed excitedly at the tickets beside the newsstand, clearly thrilled. If the dream had been his instead of Jeong-ya’s, he might have grabbed every ticket on the stand and scratched them all.
“No, that’s not it—I mean a dream where the murderer kills me. I’m not joking, senior!”
“Really? Then it’s just a nonsense dream. Forget it.”
Yoon-chang—Jeong-ya’s upperclassman at school and coworker at the same part-time job—said that and turned away as if disappointed.
“Alright, shall we clock out? Jeong-ya, want me to walk you home?”
“No thanks. It’s not that far. Besides, you’re not exactly reliable, senior.”
“Hey now. What’s wrong with me? The unit I served in was a special-forces defense outfit people all over know about!”
Of course Jeong-ya lived by a firm rule: the moment men started talking about the military, treat them like rabid dogs and get out of there. Special forces or Vietnamski unit or whatever—they always believed their service had been the toughest, hardest, and most miserable no matter what. What could you say?
It wasn’t that she felt no sympathy, but a slick type like her senior left no room for pity.
“People are going to talk about you if you keep that up.”
“As if you’d have time to worry about me, senior.”
Jeong-ya shot the line back and said goodbye to the relief staff. When she stepped outside, the sun had already set and streetlights glowed red here and there.
Mercury-vapor light diffused hazily through the indigo air. Perhaps because of the smog, Seoul’s night somehow reminded her of London—a city she had never visited. It was bad for both body and mind.
After her father’s remarriage she had left home to attend school in Seoul, so she had no choice but to work part-time even if she hated it. Ending up with nothing better than a convenience-store job left her with a sense of self-loathing, but with the economy so bad lately even part-time openings had lines of applicants. She had to count herself lucky to have this place at all.
If I’d known it would be like this, maybe I should have trusted that guy who tried to pick me up on the street…
She recalled a few days earlier when someone claiming to be from an entertainment production company had approached her with a business card. Back then she had refused because the man seemed shady and she felt no particular attraction to becoming a celebrity, but now a twinge of regret surfaced. Wouldn’t it have been better in every way than this convenience-store job at two thousand won an hour? Of course she was regretting it now, yet she knew herself well enough to know she would refuse again if the same thing happened.
She looked toward the park and carefully walked in. Taking the road would mean going the long way around the outskirts, so cutting through the park was far more efficient. Still, as a woman walking alone through a park at night like this was hardly something she wanted to do. Just then the laces of her shoes came undone and she stepped on them.
“Oh for heaven’s sake. Why all of a sudden…”
She sat down right there and retied her shoelaces. But then a shadow fell over her head. Only then did Jeong-ya realize someone was behind her; she jumped up in fright. She ought to look back… but she was too scared to turn around.
“Excuse me.”
Contrary to her expectations, a young and gentle voice addressed her. Emboldened by a man’s voice that sounded even more nervous than she was, she turned her head.
There stood a young man matching the voice, his back to the mercury lamp, standing on the railing beside a flower bed. The backlight hid his face, but every movement of his body looked as flexible and springy as a reed swaying in a gentle breeze. Moreover, that figure looked somehow familiar. Yes—like something from those nightmares she had been having lately…
Jeong-ya covered her eyes with her hand, staring at the man with a dazzled expression, then felt the nightmare overlapping and spun around. She ran forward with all her might.
“Kyaaaaaaah!”
“Um… huh?”
The man stood frozen with his hand still outstretched toward her. It was only natural—he hadn’t even properly spoken yet, and he had deliberately called out from a distance so as not to frighten her, yet she had still panicked and fled.
Do I look that scary?
He asked himself that, then suddenly turned his body sideways. He formed a hand seal and took a defensive stance. Then came the following explosion! The young man had definitely blocked that attack. He should have blocked it!
“Guh-hack!”
But the bullet punched through his torso and struck the streetlight standing by the roadside. The large-caliber round tore through the metal pole, then buried itself in a tree with the remaining force; the streetlight, its base eaten away, toppled onto the tree. With a tremendous noise the tree fell as well. Jeong-ya, who had been running, looked back in shock at the explosion, and what happened next froze her completely in the face of the horrific tragedy.
She tripped while running and tumbled onto the sidewalk blocks. Then, forgetting even to get up, she stared blankly at the scene unfolding before her eyes.
“No kidding kid.”
With a rustling of bushes, a long silver-haired man rose to his feet. He was clearly the foreign man who had caught Jeong-ya’s eye earlier. The rifle he held at the ready—Jeong-ya didn’t recognize it, but it was definitely an M82A1 Barrett. A .50-caliber rifle wasn’t meant for shooting people, and as if to prove it, electric sparks crackled from the hit streetlight.
“Ah… ahhhh…”
But the one who had been shot still seemed to have life left; he groaned while turning his gaze toward Jeong-ya. Stunned by the situation before her eyes, Jeong-ya backed away and fell over backward. The silver-haired man carefully aimed the Barrett’s muzzle at Jeong-ya and took a step forward. Then the gunshot rang out again.
“Aak!”
Jeong-ya clutched her head and screamed, but the silver-haired man hadn’t shot at her—he had fired a pistol with his left arm at the man behind him. The man in the rear who had been twitching and trying to rise even after taking a Barrett round collapsed backward with a sound like a sack of rice falling.
“Pardon me.”
The silver-haired priest tucked the gun back into his waistband as he approached Jeong-ya. Of course, no matter that he wore priest’s robes, no one who had just watched him spray bullets into people would fail to run. But Jeong-ya couldn’t even properly collect herself and had to crawl across the ground like a spider. The silver-haired priest ran to her, grabbed her hand, and hauled her upright in one motion. Jeong-ya struggled and resisted, but the silver-haired priest lightly struck a pressure point on her neck and knocked her unconscious. Having done so, he pressed a finger to her forehead.
“Go back to your house, sleep deeply, and forget what just happened.”
A soft-voiced suggestion, but the effect was perfect—Jeong-ya turned with her eyes still closed and walked toward her home. After sending her off, the silver-haired priest hefted the Barrett and looked behind him. But no one was there. Hit by both the Barrett and a Desert Eagle and still vanished?
Along the deserted night street where even the cars had thinned out—save for the occasional taxi—a man walked. He staggered along the road, his already shabby clothes full of holes, looking thoroughly unsightly.
“Hah… hah. This is no ordinary wound.”
The firearm had been large-caliber, and the round itself was no ordinary thing either. But the true danger of his opponent lay not in the equipment; it lay in the agility that had let him close to that range while completely deceiving every sense.
“Dangerous.”
That man—Chang-woon—muttered the word. The one who had just attacked him was the same man who had already brought down the Jinma Sepia. His power rivaled that of other vampires and even stood on equal footing with a Jinma. For someone already under threat of death from the Jinma Juk-yo, this was one more dangerous enemy he did not need.
Bwoooooom!
Just then a truck roared past and blocked Chang-woon’s view. There was nothing strange about a vehicle passing in front of him while he waited for the signal to cross. But when a razor-sharp claw shot out of the truck’s shadow, the story changed. Chang-woon flung his body backward and lightly avoided the strike. He stood on the sidewalk blocks, one hand pressed to his wound, and glared at the truck.
“Hahaha! Found you!”
With a frivolous laugh, three shadows slid out from the truck. They looked exactly like cockroaches scurrying out from under a refrigerator.
“Kikikik, how was the greeting? Hope we didn’t disappoint.”
The first one who had attacked Chang-woon withdrew his arm and shifted back into human form. The ability to remain human in ordinary times and mutate only when needed was a specialty of vampires of Juk-yo’s line. Still, Chang-woon asked just in case.
“Who are you?”
“Tsk tsk, for a Jinma your head works awfully slowly. Hmm? Save the stupid questions.”
“Yeah. That wound—looks like you took another one somewhere else, huh? Keheheh.”
The vampires surrounding Chang-woon stared at him with greedy eyes, as if he were already as good as dead. Exactly like a pack of jackals eyeing a sick buffalo about to collapse. Then one of those jackals grew flustered and tried to talk his comrades down.
“Hey. Lord Juk-yo only told us to find this guy—he never said to mess with him…”
“True. And he never said not to eat him either.”
They made no effort to hide their greed as they closed in on Chang-woon. Deep in the quiet night street, only stray cats wandered. Suddenly Chang-woon wondered how they had managed to find him in this vast city. Of course he and Juk-yo were bound by the bond of brothers, which made them unusually easy to locate for each other—but these creatures were not Juk-yo himself. Judging by how weak their loyalty to their master seemed, they were clearly low-grade vampires…
Yet even low-grade vampires of Juk-yo’s bloodline surpassed every other kind when it came to fighting instinct and the combat power that backed it up.
“Hahahaha. So even I look like easy prey, do I? What—you’re after this completely useless strength of mine? My blood?”
A blue light flared inside Chang-woon’s eyes. He curled his fingers with force and slowly raised his hand.
“Quite a fine night for mosquitoes to kill each other, isn’t it? Come on!”
“Kahahaha!”
As if answering his taunt, the vampires charged. But Chang-woon passed between them like the wind and swept his left arm outward. With a wet crack the vampire standing to his left was sheared clean in two; the blood that erupted from the cross-section of the upper half flew straight toward Chang-woon and was sucked directly into his body. Yet one vampire, undeterred by his comrade’s death, opened his mouth wide and lunged—transforming mid-leap into the shape of a giant toad and whipping out his tongue. Chang-woon blocked it with his left arm to protect his throat while delivering a clean side kick. The vampire flew into the truck, slammed into it, and toppled the vehicle onto its side before sprawling on the ground.
Thud!
But in that instant another vampire sank his teeth into Chang-woon’s forearm. While his attention was split dealing with the first two, the creature began greedily sucking his blood like a child.
“Tch. A mosquito biting a mosquito.”
Chang-woon frowned and pressed his fingers against the vampire’s skull. Yet the creature, drunk on the taste of a Jinma’s blood, could not pull his mouth away even though he knew death was coming.
Crack!
With a dull sound the vampire’s body shattered. The blood of the one just killed, the one bisected moments earlier, and the one who had been kicked into the overturned truck all swam through the air and sealed Chang-woon’s wounds, healing them.
“Mmm. Improved somewhat, but not completely.”
Chang-woon looked down at his own body and fell silent. The wound the silver-haired priest had inflicted demanded high-purity vampire blood. Quantity could not fully replace quality, of course, but the fact that such low-purity vampires had dared look down on him and attack only made him angrier. He could sense exactly how little Juk-yo valued him now.
“Looks like we’re not enough on our own after all.”
The remaining two vampires had taken cover—one behind a streetlight, the other behind the overturned truck—still surrounding him. Even though their comrades had died so easily, they showed no sign of giving up.
“Alright then, let’s see how well my little trick works.”
The vampire standing on the truck spun his baseball cap backward, opened his mouth wide, and a swarm of moths poured out. But Chang-woon swung his arm in a great arc as if a softball pitcher hurling a ball. A powerful wind raced along the ground, kicking up dust.
Woooooom!
With a roaring wind sound a fierce gale rose in front of Chang-woon and collided with the ceaseless stream of moths. Instantly the moths, unable to withstand the pressure, shattered into pieces; the gale, still full of force, shot straight into the vampire’s open mouth.
“Do you know the myth of Tiamat?”
Chang-woon asked. Of course there was no answer. The vampire struck by the wind was torn apart exactly like Tiamat struck by Marduk’s winds. Chang-woon flung himself backward and charged the remaining vampire who was still reeling from the attack.
“N-no!”
Sensing that Chang-woon was stronger than expected, the vampire spun around and tried to flee. But Chang-woon had no intention of letting him go. If he escaped he would simply call more comrades. Whether he liked it or not, as the weaker party Chang-woon had to fight a war of annihilation.
Of course a fleeing creature with its life on the line runs with everything it has. It kicked off a wall and vaulted an entire three-story building in one bound. But Chang-woon was already standing atop that very building, on the roof of the rooftop room, gazing at the moon.
“Sorry, but I have no intention of letting you pass information about me to Juk-yo. You’ll die right here!”
Chang-woon leapt from the rooftop and charged the vampire. The creature snapped a nearby lightning rod to use as a weapon, but Chang-woon had already seized him by the hair, leapt from the three-story building, and drove him straight into the ground.
“Guuuh!”
With a dull impact the vampire became a bloody mess; that blood too rose into the air and was absorbed by Chang-woon. He drank it in without a thought—until suddenly he felt a powerful alien sensation. The wrongness raced through his veins and threatened to reverse-flow straight into his heart.
“Damn it!”
He instantly thrust his hand into his own chest and clawed at the inside of his body.
Crrrack!
His sternum twisted and blood sprayed like a fountain. Ordinarily his regenerative power and the binding force of blood would have kept him from bleeding at all, but right now he needed to force the invading poison out.
“Om!”
Chang-woon chanted a mantra that was almost a scream and forced the blood out of his chest. From the blood that erupted, a single black bat took shape.
“Kh!”
If he had left it until it reached his heart, even a Jinma like Chang-woon could not have guaranteed his life. Juk-yo’s mutation ability was so powerful that it could still transform even after his blood had been taken into another’s body. He had used that power countless times to eliminate rivals and solidify control over his subordinates.
But to feed his own blood to a subordinate and send that subordinate at Chang-woon… it was no different from strapping a bomb to a man and ordering a suicide charge. If Chang-woon had been even a little careless, he might have died on the spot.