The Train That Wouldn't Stop
The train sailed right past the station as if the platform had never been there at all.
"Wh-what?!"
Jeong-ah spun around in shock and peered ahead. The door into the operator's cab was right in front of her — locked from the inside, of course, the way it always was.
"Hey! Hey!"
She hammered on the door without pause. She pounded until her fists burned, and when that still wasn't enough she seized the emergency fire extinguisher bolted beside it.
"Ugh!"
Hoisting the extinguisher over her head, she hurled it with everything she had. The door gave a little — a hairline crack spidered across the metal — but otherwise refused to budge. Behind her the ghouls were closing in. Then, from up front, came the sharp crash of breaking glass.
Screeeeeech!
The train began to slow. Jeong-ah felt a flicker of relief — finally stopping — only for the carriages to grind to a halt not at the station but midway through the tunnel. Panic wiped every practical thought from her mind; she never even considered the emergency door release. She simply grabbed the extinguisher again. It was heavy for a woman to throw, but the part-time work she'd been doing had put some muscle on her. She heaved it. The window spiderwebbed with a hard crack.
"I can't even watch this."
Something black whipped through the air and finished the job — the glass exploded outward in a glittering shower. Jeong-ah stared. What looked like an animal's tail swayed lazily just beyond the empty frame.
"Get out!"
A young woman's voice. Jeong-ah scrambled through the window and dropped — and the height of a subway car window, with no platform beneath it, was no joke. To someone whose athletic gifts were merely average, it might as well have been the Eiffel Tower.
"You've got to be kidding me."
The black tail-like thing cracked out like a whip, coiled around her, and set her gently on the ground. Jeong-ah looked up, startled, and found a young East Asian woman roughly her own age standing above her with a whip in hand. What she had taken for a tail was a whip. The woman jumped down from the train after her, every line of her face radiating pure irritation.
"We don't have time for this. Run!"
"Uh — who are you?"
"What does my identity matter to you?"
She cracked the whip back the way they had come. The weapon, which had looked no more than two meters long, stretched in a single fluid motion to nearly seven. It wasn't elastic — so how did it do that? Jeong-ah watched in fascination, but the principle eluded her. The whip snaked through the ghouls that had been about to give chase.
"Urgh!"
What followed was the predictable result: limbs flying in every direction. For someone with Jeong-ah's weak stomach, it was a sight she would rather have killed her curiosity than witness.
"What are you doing? Move! Freezing up in terror is the same as begging them to kill you!"
"Ah… right!"
"I'm not doing this so I can hear you answer! Get lost!"
Only then did Jeong-ah run in earnest. Watching her retreating back, the whip's owner — Tachihara Ayako — clicked her tongue. So that's the woman Chang-woon came looking for. Something sour and furious rose in her chest. Because of that girl she had become an orphaned vampire, forced into the ranks of the sly, perverse Vanishing Blood. Thinking about it only made her feel like a melodramatic tragedy, which made her angrier still.
"Urrrgh!"
She lashed out, tearing ghouls apart for the sheer satisfaction of it. Then, from the middle of the pack, a single hand shot out and seized the whip.
"Ugh!"
The grip was stronger than any ordinary vampire's. Startled, she let go at once. The ghouls parted like the Red Sea, and a man stepped through the gap.
"Y-you!"
"Hahaha! An assassin from Vanishing Blood, just as I expected. Against ghouls, numbers mean nothing to you, do they?"
"Juk-yo!"
She leveled a glare of pure hostility at him. In that same moment another train thundered past on the opposite track, flooding the narrow tunnel with a brief wash of light. Juk-yo took the pressure wave of the passing cars without so much as a flicker of expression, content to study Ayako's face.
"Hmm. So I was the target after all. Well? Think you can kill me?"
He spread both arms wide, offering her his torso. Ayako drew a spare whip at once. Even a Jinma had limits when his power was grounded in a physical body — leaving himself open like that was suicide.
"Hmph! Prepare yourself!"
Her whip cracked through the air and struck him clean across the midsection. His body couldn't withstand the force; it split cleanly in two. Or so she thought. Juk-yo's form dissolved into a swarm of bats that scattered around the lash.
Flutter-flutter-flutter!
Bats poured in from every direction and re-formed into Juk-yo once more.
"A pity. Even with Chang-woon's blood in your veins, a cheap vampire is still a cheap vampire. Your VT is high enough to walk in broad daylight, I'll grant you that… but surely this level of skill doesn't make you Chang-woon's Esquire?"
In a blur of impossible speed he closed the distance and clamped a hand over Ayako's face. At the same instant a single bat erupted from his chest, sank its teeth into her, and drove into her torso like a living dagger.
"Ghhhk—!"
"Ahahahaha! How does it feel to be host to my parasite? The moment I so much as think about it, that thing will rip its way out through your stomach."
He seized her with one hand, hoisted her clear off the ground, and slammed her into the tunnel wall.
"Someone like you — Chang-woon would never even bother to keep his guard up, would he?"
"Ghhhk—!"
Juk-yo's laughter rang out over the wet crack of breaking bone.
Jeong-ah hauled herself up onto the platform and stripped off the apron she'd been wearing. A convenience-store apron was only going to get in the way of running. Throwing it away would earn her a thorough scolding from the manager, but this was not the moment for that particular worry.
You had to survive first if you wanted to get scolded at all. She stuffed the apron into a trash can and punched the button for the subway elevator. Ordinarily it existed for the elderly and the disabled, but right now she had every right to use it. Running for her life and scrambling up onto the platform had left her scraped and raw from head to toe.
The adrenaline was carrying her for now — what about later?
Why is this happening to me?
Grumbling under her breath, she stepped into the elevator. Vampires or whatever they were — how were they even wandering around in the middle of the day?
What am I supposed to do?
She hunched over inside the car and tried to think. Asking that strange priest for help still seemed like the best option. But with this many enemies after her, could one man really protect her? The more she turned it over, the more doubtful she became.
A soft chime sounded, and the doors slid open. She walked out without looking and collided with a man.
"Ah, I'm so sor—!"
It was him. The strange man who had chased her all the way to the convenience store. The vampire. Hadn't he been fighting the priest?
"Found you."
He pulled her into a fierce embrace. He was trembling — with what emotion she couldn't tell — and the sheer intensity of it froze the terrified Jeong-ah solid.
Is this guy insane? Wait — in this case, do I call him a vampire?
Either way, once he had her this thoroughly there was no point in resisting. She squeezed her eyes shut.
"Um… excuse me."
The man jolted as if he'd been electrocuted and sprang back. His face was a portrait of pure, abject apology.
"Ah — excuse me. I'm sorry. Doing that when we've only just met… um. Was that sexual harassment?"
"No, that's not what I— ugh."
Jeong-ah clicked her tongue at the sudden, deeply awkward turn the air had taken. This man, she was beginning to suspect, had nothing to do with the monsters that had attacked her. It could all be an act, of course — but she had given him the slip at the subway station, and he had still arrived first. Escaping him was starting to look close to impossible.
He glanced around, clearly uncomfortable, and tried again.
"You're confused, aren't you? Let me explain. Shall we go somewhere else?"
"What? Ah… all right."
Startled by a reaction so far from anything she had expected, Jeong-ah studied him carefully. A breeze stirred Chang-woon's hair. The face it revealed was, on first impression, rather gentle — the kind of face that did not belong to a man who casually hugged strangers on elevators.
Chang-woon led Jeong-ah into a café and took a seat. He ordered green tea and slid the menu across to her. His manner was so completely natural he might have been some fashionable young professional out for a casual afternoon.
Jeong-ah's ideas about vampires went no further than the usual pop-culture generalities. She had seen the movies and the comics, sure — but watching a vampire sit down in a café and place a polite order with the waitress was not something she was prepared to simply accept with a thoughtful nod. Chang-woon, reading the bewilderment on her face, decided to put her at ease in his own way.
"It's fine. I have money."
"Huh? Oh — okay. Then… a parfait."
Chang-woon handed the menu back to the waitress. Jeong-ah eyed him with open suspicion.
"You sure? They're charging six thousand won for a slurry of sugar water, carbonation, and cookies."
"Yes. More importantly… hmm. Where should I start?"
"You're not exactly what I expected, I'll say that."
At those words Chang-woon brightened instantly. The expression that lit his face had more genuine life in it than any insurance commercial or home-shopping health-product host could ever hope to manufacture. (In this particular case, anything less would have been the strange part.)
"Really? You think so? What were you expecting?"
"Well, if you're a vampire, then there's the whole — ugh!"
Jeong-ah abruptly sketched a cross in the air with her fingers. It had exactly the effect one might expect, which is to say none at all. Chang-woon simply blinked at her hand.
"What is it?"
"Haa… never mind. Nothing. But why have you been following me? I've taken a lot of damage because of it, you know."
The waitress arrived with the tea and the parfait. Chang-woon accepted them with a small bow of his head.
"Ah — if I've caused you trouble, I'm truly sorry."
"Forget that. Just tell me why you've been chasing me."
"That is…"
Chang-woon hesitated. Say the truth and he would sound like a lunatic; keep silent and he was stuck. He was carefully sorting through the least insane words available to him.