Adapted to the Mad Moon
But even though it concerned him personally, Se-gun could offer no answers. All that drove him was a certain obsession with hunting vampires. Yes—one could even call it a sense of mission.
"What a useless emotion," he muttered, fiddling with his radio, finding it absurd even to himself. What he used was a small wiretap fitted with a bone-conduction earpiece—a device for monitoring police channels that violated radio regulations outright. Modern police radios were encrypted, of course, and the codes changed daily, but with a fixed decoder you could learn the day's key and feed it into the scanner until the system locked on and the police wireless came through.
At retail the thing would have been ruinously expensive, but Se-gun had gotten it free. A vampire hunter Bill Murray had known had been killed by vampires, and while the estate was being liquidated, Bill had handed Se-gun the gear as payment for earlier help. So far, though, only tedious traffic came through—assaults over game-item deals in PC bangs, petty thefts by shoplifters. Nothing that suggested vampires.
A vampire would never expose their identity over motives that cheap.
If it's going to be like this, I'd be better off going back to the hideout and reading another line of that heavy-equipment operator's manual. Or is Arjuna still open?
Thinking that, Se-gun turned the bike toward Arjuna. Finder reports had been dwindling lately—clear evidence of how many vampire hunters had been dying to powerful vampires. Like snack shops near a newly landed McDonald's, wiped out overnight. When corporate-scale vampires arrived, only corporate-scale hunters like Sarhyuk's crew could hold out. In that sense, Sarhyuk had been something of a pioneer.
"In a case like this—"
He stopped the bike. Two figures ahead, two more to the side. Cheap, slapped-together vampires no matter how you looked at them. Vampirism, transmitted by blood, spread easily in big cities. Administrative oversights born of population density—or clans manufacturing disposable fodder—that was how trash vampires like these were born.
"This is… a headache."
He said it, but his face did not look particularly troubled. Kill vampires. The proposition had become so self-evident it was a steel rule ruling his heart. Not a shred of guilt in killing them. Or rather—he carried guilt around so constantly that he had gone numb to it. Se-gun drew his Glock 18 and leveled it at the vampire in front.
The vampire saw the muzzle, panicked, and leapt. Se-gun fired lightly, putting three Parabellum rounds into the airborne body. Then vampires and ghouls burst from the side. But Se-gun's bike was already surging forward, leaving them behind and charging straight into the vampire standing at the front.
The suspension bounced; a satisfying impact ran through him. Hit with that much force, even a vampire went flying.
"You son of a bitch!"
Vampires and ghouls from the side gave chase. Se-gun twisted backward, pumping rounds into the fallen vampire while gunning the bike forward to open distance again. Using that gap he fired once more… The Glock 18 with its thirty-round long magazine annihilated most of them in seconds.
"Does Tetra Anax think it can ignore me? Sending out trash like this."
He collected the spent casings from his frantic fire, dragged the corpses into the brush, and began drawing blood. A vampire hunter had to avoid attention; even after winning, you could not let your guard down.
Besides, the quality of these vampires was far too low. If low-grade vampires mounted an organized ambush, their leader had to be nearby—somewhere with a clear line of sight…
"Hmm! Time for a dose!"
The thought struck; Se-gun immediately dropped prone and hid among the flower beds. He opened the front of his helmet—the mask section—and downed Psychedelic Moon. The moment the drug hit, a killing intent sharp enough to pierce skin pricked at him.
Heh. Looks like this one's a proper vampire.
Realizing how hasty his earlier judgment had been, Se-gun grinned. Killing intent this intense meant the opponent was reckless—not sniper material. Of course all vampires had a sniper's aptitude, so he could not safely stick his head out of cover, but at least he could think about countermeasures.
Preparing for close combat, he loosened the strap of the scabbard on his back and buckled it at his waist so he could draw at any moment. Then he crawled slowly sideways across the ground. He swapped magazines on the Glock 18 and readied to fire. But then the killing intent vanished all at once.
"……"
Se-gun waited calmly for a reaction. Had the enemy gone into sniper mode, or lost interest and left? One thing was certain: lying in a park waiting for an attack from an unknown direction did not suit his temperament.
He took out a small metal pendant and opened the locket inside. Using the little mirror as a reflector, he could not tell how much he would see. Even Psychedelic Moon had limits. Bill Murray's aspirin-plus-cocaine-plus-Psychedelic-Moon combo gave balanced ability for both melee and sniping, but pinpointing a position via mirror was still nearly impossible.
Still, from the reflected buildings he could roughly estimate the sniper's location. That instant a bullet came soundlessly. It had aimed precisely at the arm that had poked out past cover.
Pak!
The metal locket in his hand flew away in a burst of sparks. Se-gun instantly gauged the direction of fire and rolled. With only a pistol he could not return fire at that distance.
"So move? But…"
He looked back at the motorcycle. The sudden shooting was an order to force him into a fixed path of movement. And an attack on the bike left exposed outside cover—if they ignited the gasoline left in the tank they might not kill him, but they could hurt him a little. Not great damage tactically, but once you create an opening in this kind of fight, anything can follow. More than that, though, he hated the idea of blowing up a bike he had only just bought.
No more bullets came; a lull stretched out. Tight tension ran down his spine. Carefully Se-gun lifted his helmet above the blind spot. No reaction. Maybe they had given up on sniping, or maybe the cheap tricks were not working—but this was someone who had been doing induction fire to control his movement.
Doesn't feel like a sniper rifle, though.
A proper sniper would not spray rounds and give away their position. Induction fire was more the work of a rifleman dug into a pillbox. Se-gun narrowed down the likely buildings and rose beside a tree.
Thuk!
That moment a bullet punched into his left upper arm! Startled, Se-gun threw himself sideways to dodge further shots. This bastard was circling the park! Probably leaping building to building. To cover that enormous distance on foot and still get hit—Se-gun snorted at his own carelessness.
The hit was where no ceramic plate protected him; he could not stop a rifle round, and the bullet punched straight through. Se-gun injected vampire blood into himself and focused.
One, two…
Instead of three he burst out, spraying the Glock between the buildings. About two hundred meters, rounds through a suppressor—the ballistics were pure chaos, not aimed fire so much as a spray-and-pray curtain. Somehow the vampire leaping between buildings still caught one!
Is that guy an idiot?
Amazed he had hit anything, Se-gun swung onto the bike. He always killed vampires who charged him on the spot. Killing them did not stop information from leaking, but call it the old Soviet-style annihilation battle. Ultimately, the hunter's axiom—kill every vampire—meant you cut their numbers whenever you saw them.
In practice vampire numbers kept falling and blood purity declining, so even prestigious clans had to mass-produce disposable vampires as cannon fodder when they fought.
"Kraaaagh!"
The vampire who had hit the ground recovered balance almost at once and rose. Se-gun poured Glock 18 fire into him and charged. Not a place without pedestrians, but Se-gun casually dove into an alley! Hit the vampire and kept going! Scraping the vampire along the alley wall, he slammed into a utility pole.
"Ghk."
Only then did Se-gun stop. He drew the Japanese sword at his waist.
"Khh. Y-you crazy bastard."
"That so? Heh."
Se-gun rested the blade against his own cheek and looked up. Between the buildings, above the narrow alley, the sky was stained red by smog.
"I'll take 'crazy.'"
The blade fell straight onto the vampire's neck.
Arjuna stood in its usual place, as free of tension as ever. The base of Father Silvester, who held an eternal enmity with vampires—by rights it should have been a natural target for vampire terrorism. Absurdly enough, however, in this case the vampires held higher social standing, so they could not casually commit terror. No fool strikes another when he himself has more places to be hit. Terrorism is the attack of those who have nothing against those who have something.
Se-gun walked carefully into Arjuna. Ever since a transmitter had been stuck to his bike after parking here before, he paid full attention even in this place.
"No vampires, looks like."
He muttered and stepped cautiously inside. Being a teahouse, once night settled it drifted toward closing and there were no customers. Anyone still hanging around an occult café this late would have to be a maniac of the highest order.
The familiar brass chime rang and the door swayed. Se-gun looked around and saw the owner, Kim Seong-hui, at the counter holding a cocktail shaker. Using a shaker in a teahouse that did not sell alcohol? Se-gun registered no particular surprise and headed for the counter.
"Oh my, welcome, Se-gun. It's been a while. I was just thinking you might drop by one of these days."
Kim Seong-hui smiled as she spoke. As always, she had refined beauty—the sense that she knew everything, yet something soft about her. The fact that she could put a Snoopy T-shirt on Silvester already proved how formidable she was. Se-gun dropped his body, exhausted from the recent fight, into a chair as if throwing it away.
"One cup, please."
"Of what?"
"How about whatever you're making with that shaker?"
"Ah, this is iced coffee."
"Iced coffee in spring?"
"Better cold than scalding your palate on something hot, no? I'm surprisingly sturdy—I won't get an upset stomach from cold drinks."
"Huh?"
Se-gun briefly imagined Kim Seong-hui with an upset stomach. The image would not form. A woman like this probably never even used the bathroom.
"What about the part-timer? Did she quit?"
"I can't keep a girl working this late. Sent her home first. The world's so dangerous these days. Here—iced coffee."
Kim Seong-hui poured the coffee from the shaker into a glass and smirked. Something on Se-gun's face must have been funny just to look at. He deliberately turned his gaze aside. An African totem mask on the wall gave him a curious stare.
"Mm. Se-gun—are you just going to keep being a vampire hunter? You're too young to live like that."
"I don't know. Is there some other way? I'm already a drug addict. A little late to back out now…"
Se-gun could not finish. Why was this woman suddenly asking that? Go back now? To where? For someone who had cut off every place he could go, one by one—yes, severed his own limbs one by one to get this far—where exactly was he supposed to go?
She seemed to realize her question had been off the mark and closed her mouth. She was the one who had watched from the side as he became a hunter.
"Where's Silvester?"
"Out, as always."
"Hmm. There's something I've been curious about for a while. Can I ask?"
"Anything."
"Why are you doing this work?"
Se-gun asked that. Ordinarily she would not answer. Vampire hunters all had their pasts, and everyone connected to this work kept silent about their own. He had asked her simply once before and gotten nothing. But maybe, catching her in the slip she had just made, he could pry an answer free. On that calculation he asked.
"Mm. Well, I didn't have much else to do. Yeah—I was broken myself, you could say?"
"That's not very specific."
"I have no intention of boring you to sleep with a long, dull story. My story isn't that interesting. And if someone listening to it dozed off midway, I'd be hurt."
"Well then I won't listen. Thanks for the drink."
Se-gun shoved off from the counter and stood. She had never charged him for tea anyway. This place looked like a shop, but it was not for making money—it was a front to fool other people's eyes.
Kim Seong-hui suddenly watched Se-gun's departing back. The purple light of a streetlamp laid a soft silhouette over his body. Knowing it was rude, she asked again.
"But really… have you never once thought about it? About quitting?"
"Not at all."
Se-gun stopped. He looked up at the night sky for a moment and smiled faintly.
"Seeing how well I've adapted to the world of the mad moon, I guess I'm a madman too."
When he first opened his eyes, Han Se-gun wondered if he had returned to his own childhood. But the wallpaper of his childhood had been Disney, not Bart Simpson.
"When did I fall asleep here?"
He sat up and looked around. Sleeping in Silvester's room—probably the fight yesterday had drained the tension right out of him and he had simply crashed.
"Good grief. What did I even do."
Feeling the kind of regret people feel when they black out after drinking and try to reconstruct the night, Se-gun got up. From outside came the sound of a morning TV program. Watching a morning show—for Se-gun, who lived like a vampire, waking at night and sleeping by day, it was a landscape he had not seen in a very long time.
And on the sofa in front of that TV sat Silvester, tearing into white bread. He glanced once at Se-gun waking, then looked back at the screen.
"Ah—water."
"Fridge."
At Silvester's answer Se-gun opened the refrigerator. Inside, canned goods, vampire blood packs, and groceries sat in unbalanced company.
"Cans don't need refrigeration."
"I agree. So why were you sleeping in my room?"
"So Silvester does sleep, then?"
"Of course I sleep."
He rolled up the remaining bread bag and flung it toward Se-gun while the fridge door was open. The bag bounced once off the door and, impossibly, slipped inside and settled. Se-gun thought the trick was neat but said nothing, closing the door with a straight face. Then Silvester asked him:
"I heard you bought explosives. Planning to blow up Tetra Anax?"
"Yes."
"……"
A long silence passed. On the TV, as if to break it, a home-shopping ad blared enthusiastically.
"It might work in its own way, but can a single crate of C-4 destroy a building that size?"
A vein jumped on Se-gun's forehead. Damn Kenneth Yang—how did even the exact amount get out? If Silvester knew, Tetra Anax certainly knew, and the plan to plant bombs at Tetra Anax's base—the Flex Medical headquarters—would hit snags.
"I don't know. Should I hijack a plane and ram it instead?"
"Good idea, but it's dense with skyscrapers—hard to get a clean hit. Can you even fly a plane?"
"……"
He had meant it as a joke; the response was rather serious. Se-gun cleared his throat and looked at Silvester.
"I'll hand over the materials I have. So wait until the printing's done."
"Huh? You're not going to stop me?"
"You're volunteering to handle the dirty work for me. No reason to stop you."
Silvester looked at Se-gun as if to ask what he was talking about. If they set off explosives, all-out war with the vampires would be unavoidable—and he was not only allowing it but offering help. Se-gun thought of Arjuna.
"If you help me, won't Arjuna take damage?"