The Arms Dealer
Kenneth Yang was a specialist arms merchant who dealt in firearms that were nearly impossible to circulate legally in Korea. Of course, he was no official weapons dealer. If he had been, he would have been handling far larger sums of money. After all, wasn't the Korean military the sort of institution that would pay millions of won apiece for scrap aircraft parts dumped from warehouses after their service life expired, or for junk components stripped from decommissioned ships?
But look at the civilian market and Korea's weapons trade was pitiful. From the standpoint of a lone gunsmith rather than a dealer for some major defense contractor, the country was a wasteland. One glance at the clientele who came looking for Kenneth Yang told the whole story.
Hunters who wanted illegal guns for "shotgun" use. Vampire hunters, whose numbers were dwindling by the year. Gangsters who stockpiled weapons they would never fire. Gun nuts willing to pay ridiculous prices just to own a real firearm. A customer base that made no money, was endlessly fussy, and left you holding the bag the moment something went wrong. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have preferred to avoid dealing with them at all.
But Kenneth Yang was a member of the underground organization known as the Black Network. The Black Network claimed the Green Gang and the Boxers as its spiritual ancestors; on the surface it looked like a Chinese mafia, yet it operated completely independently of them. In practice, the Black Network functioned as a kind of public utility for criminal organizations.
If any single group tried to handle smuggling and illegal transit itself, its expertise would inevitably thin out… So the Black Network had been created to outsource exactly those specialized jobs.
Which was why his real income stream was not weapons sales inside Korea, but serving as the Korean warehouse for the Black Network's Southeast Asian operations. The work being what it was, he had recently hired Filipino and Malaysian bodyguards. A client of his named No-yeon—who ran pirate operations in the Strait of Malacca—had insisted on assigning them after learning that Kenneth Yang had been assaulted by Sarhyuk, no matter how much Kenneth tried to refuse.
In Southeast Asia even drug lords kept mansions with armed guards posted out front. So the bodyguards who arrived here immediately tried to plant themselves in front of the warehouse. Kenneth had to explain—well, it was closer to a string of insults—that they were supposed to stay inside. They seemed to understand well enough. And then, without warning, the back door opened and a young man walked in.
"Security here is always a joke."
Han Se-gun had stepped into the warehouse. Kenneth fixed him with a sour look mid-lecture to the bodyguards. The guards themselves stared at Se-gun with pure I told you so expressions.
"You called me here. What's with the face?"
"You goddamn bastard. Hey. I got you the USAS-12. And the explosives you ordered—two crates of C-4, plus one crate of remote detonators. You're not planning some bombing, are you?"
"I've been studying demolitions lately, but my math's too weak. Can't make it work."
"…Don't do anything stupid."
Kenneth pulled a USAS-12 out of a box and handed it over. Se-gun checked the weapon and made a face.
"It's huge. Hauling this on a bike is going to be a problem."
"I'll deliver it. Don't worry."
"Look at you being all helpful. Since when do arms dealers do door-to-door?"
"Shut up. If you get stopped at a checkpoint with that thing strapped to your bike, I'm the one who suffers. And never mind the gun—what the hell do you need C-4 for?"
"Just in case."
"In case? What does a vampire hunter need plastic explosives for?"
"Yeah, well. I don't have to tell you that, do I?"
Se-gun, of course, did not expose his plans. Even Deok-yeon, the man who had raised him, had been known to dump Se-gun's information onto the Finder when it suited him. As long as you worked in this business, you trusted no one.
"Alright. I'm out."
"Don't cause trouble. In some ways you're more dangerous than Silvester."
"That so? Sounds like an insult."
"Silvester would take it as one too if he heard it."
"Hmph."
Se-gun swung onto his bike and tore out of the warehouse. The kid was a mad dog who barely feared death. And yet, strangely, Kenneth found himself liking him. That was the only reason he had gone to the trouble of securing a USAS-12 this time.
"But the ones like him always die young."
Kenneth Yang muttered the words and kicked the floor.
I open my eyes in the dark. Playing the hero is all well and good, but I am so hungry. How long has it been since I last went home? Three days?
Not that long, yet it feels as if I have been away for three years.
I look around. Nothing but patients. And… the cleaning lady is giving me a look that says I am thoroughly getting on her nerves. Fair enough. A kid who is clearly a runaway, sleeping through the day in a hospital emergency room—she has every right to be annoyed. She is the one who has to clean this place.
I slip away from her gaze, get up, and head back outside. What about school? And home… I have never once defied my parents. Is it really all right for me to have run off like this? But the sun is terrifying during the day.
"Hahaha. This is just like being a vampire."
Not just like—I am a vampire! I think it to myself, then glance around. Night has fallen, and vitality is slowly returning to my body; the fog of sleep drains from my skull. And once it does, the rage comes boiling up.
All of this is because of those bastards. What did I ever do to deserve their abuse and persecution? And in the end I became a vampire and lost any chance of going back to a normal life.
It's all their fault.
Yeah. They were the losers of this society all along. Once they graduated, the best they could hope for was delivering Chinese food. Whenever an elevator broke down, you were supposed to order from the nearest Chinese restaurant. And those sons of bitches… But when I snap out of the fantasy, the only thing left is myself, walking through the night.
Then the anger surges up from my gut and sets the gray matter inside my skull blazing red-hot.
"Hup!"
I suck in a breath, kick off the ground, and vanish into an alley. Move fast enough to dodge people's eyes and the sheer speed is exquisite. The night wind skimming past my ears—that rush. Yeah. Once I burn off the anger with this pleasure, it transforms into something else.
Contempt.
The same feeling they must have held for me, now turned back on them. Where did they usually gather? I heard they hung around some PC bang, playing online games and cashing out for pocket money. Yeah—was it there?
I find a PC bang not far from school. When I strain my ears I can already hear familiar voices inside. I don't even need a vampire's hearing; every so often their shouts carry out, raw with excitement.
This is the place.
I go up. The smell of cigarette smoke hits me first. The door opens and a gaunt-faced man—probably an employee—lets me in.
"Welcome."
"…"
I don't so much as glance at him. I walk straight toward the ones hunched over their games. Whether they know their friend has already been handled by me these past few days or not, they don't even look up. The game matters more, I guess. Fair enough—if it turns into real cash, of course it does.
"Hey!"
"The fuck?!"
Four of them shoot to their feet at once. Four standing, but the rest of the room is thick with their buddies. In other words, I have just walked into the enemy's den. Still—you don't need to read Jaurim's action comics to know the protagonist never loses.
"Who the hell is this little shit?! Aren't you that Jo Seong-gil brat?"
"You looking to die? Why the fuck did you come here, huh?!"
"Look at this bastard's eyes. He's staring us down."
They puff themselves up. One of them grabs me by the collar. I catch his arm and simply squeeze.
Crrrack!
The arm snaps. Bone punches through skin. Their eyes bulge white with shock. But for someone who has already been shoved off a third-floor building, this is nothing.
"You pieces of trash!"
I kick off the floor, close the distance, and rake my hand across one face. Young-chan—the pretty-boy delinquent the girls liked—has the skin of his face torn open; blood sprays like a fountain. I drink some of it while I boot the back of another one's chair. With a wet crunch he folds forward, jammed between seat and desk.
Putting them down does not take long. The one who bolts for the door gets an ashtray to the skull and goes sprawling; I am on him in a second and stomp him without mercy. Yeah. This is it. If they had just left me alone, I never would have become a vampire. They destroyed my life.
So I have every right to use this power I gained because of them to take my revenge. How long have I dreamed of this? And now the revenge I dreamed of is unfolding, sharp and absolute.
"P-please! Spare me!"
They soak the floor with their own blood and scream. All the swagger they used to throw around in front of the other kids is gone; they have collapsed into pitiful weakness, begging for my mercy.
Of course I have none to give. When I begged for forgiveness—when I had done nothing wrong—did they ever show me any? Not a chance. Everything they did is coming back down on their heads. If they took it with some dignity I might have considered it, but against sniveling wrecks I will simply beat them a little more instead of showing mercy.
"I-I'm calling the police."
The PC bang employee—looking as if he has not slept in days—lifts the receiver with trembling hands. For a second I consider silencing him too, then discard the thought. He is not guilty. Laying a hand on an innocent would make me no different from the bastards lying at my feet. I spin and sprint for the door.
"Forget it! I'm leaving!"
I burst out of the PC bang into the night. I never got to drink freely, but I took enough blood while thrashing them that my body burns hot, feverish. It feels good. And yet the thought settles over me, bleak and heavy: I really am a vampire now.
How am I going to hide from tomorrow's sun?
Se-gun spent his nights on the move, digging for information on the vampires. First among the facts he had confirmed: the owner of Flex Medical was none other than Tetra Anax itself. And the vast majority of vampires hung their survival on Tetra Anax's information network.
Absurd as it was, even Silvester refused a direct confrontation with them precisely because of that information-manipulation power; he simply tolerated their existence. It was the same reason the vampires, who clearly knew where Silvester lived, never launched an open assault. Some unspoken rule seemed to hold between them.
But for Se-gun, who had nothing left to lose, attacking Tetra Anax—the very embodiment of the vampires' grip on the world—was the simpler path. He was not ready yet. Once the preparations were finished, however, he would strike, and until then he kept gathering material.
"Distance from here is roughly four hundred meters. And the police station is… there. Still don't know the patrol routes, though."
He had already walked into the station once under the pretext of asking for directions, just to take a look around. Any more suspicious behavior and he would start looking like a spy.
"That'll do for today."
Foot traffic was thinning; soon the streets would empty of cars entirely. The vampires would start to prowl, and there was no sense drawing their attention by wandering around. Not that he hadn't already drawn plenty. They simply could not touch Han Se-gun from their position as managers of the status quo. The last time they tried, they had bled for it.
"Still… what are you going to do?"
Feeling Tetra Anax's eyes moving even in the dark, Se-gun parked his bike in a park. He had deliberately put himself somewhere easy to ambush. A park this size would swallow the report of a suppressed pistol without trouble.
"Grrrrrr…"
"Tch. Worst case."
Rather than risk exposure themselves, they had turned dogs into ghouls and sent them in. Humans reanimated as ghouls were obvious at a glance, but dogs? No problem. People would just assume rabies.
"Tch!"
Se-gun gunned the bike through the park. Ghoul-dogs were faster than humans, but they could not match a motorcycle. He opened the distance, then swung around and charged them. Collision—one went flying. He drew a military combat knife from his belt and flung it at the next that wheeled sideways.
The heavy blade punched through the ghoul-dog's skull with brutal force.
"Alright. Bye-bye."
Se-gun dispatched the rest with practiced ease, then rolled out of the park and into the night streets. He had made a point of being seen investigating Tetra Anax; now they would have no choice but to keep him in their sights. If he died like this it would be idiotic—but if he survived and actually scored a hit, the damage to vampire society as a whole would be catastrophic. Success or failure, though, what waited for Se-gun himself was unlikely to be a happy ending.
Doesn't matter. I decided this the day I became a hunter.
But could a man cut off from any future truly be said to be living? And did Se-gun, deep down, truly want some kind of change even if it meant accepting his own destruction?