My Sins Run Too Deep

The price of vampire blood was climbing by degrees. Of course, if the cost rose too high, the market could always regulate supply by importing from overseas. But the expense of that was nothing to sneeze at, so Sarhyuk’s side could not afford to ignore Se-gun. In the whole of this broad Republic of Korea, the only regular suppliers who shipped vampire blood week after week, like clockwork, were Sarhyuk and Se-gun—those two alone. They hunted and delivered almost every week, as if competing with each other.

Sarhyuk’s crew had numbers; that much was fair. But Han Se-gun was killing that many vampires alone. And the funnier part was the tempo of his hunts—so frantic it looked like a terminal writer racing a deadline with death breathing down his neck.

“Hell of a thing. Who’d have thought that wet-behind-the-ears kid would blow up like this.”

Sarhyuk muttered it as he hung up on a client. Compared to his own half-hunting, half-farming operation, Se-gun’s pure reliance on the hunt made him all the more dangerous. As long as Silvester stayed out of the trade, no one was going to touch Han Se-gun for sole first place in production. Sarhyuk sat down, dragged the keyboard closer, and hammered at the computer.

He was only using the calculator that came bundled with Windows—nothing fancy. Even so, a few simple numbers led him to the same conclusion: Han Se-gun’s body was wrecked almost to its limit.

“Say he fights once a week… Fine. Even if he skips the Psychedelic Moon on the small fry, the kid’s got narcotics running through his veins instead of blood.”

That he was still functioning at all had to be down to monstrous willpower and training volume. But how long could that last? Moving that hard, he was probably dying that hard. Was he so consumed with hatred for vampires that he would tear his own flesh apart at this rate? He didn’t even seem the type for outstanding family devotion.

“Though, come to think of it, the kid does take after me.”

Sarhyuk stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lifted his lighter. Han Se-gun kept cutting away his own exits, flogging himself forward. A wounded beast of the most dangerous kind—an asura who would never forgive the least weakening of his own fighting spirit. Which was why Sarhyuk liked him so much. But that pride of his was a blade that cut both ways.

For victory’s sake it would have been better if the kid had followed him. The moment Se-gun chose his own road instead, Sarhyuk had understood: this was someone he could kill and still never own. Maybe that was why he wanted him all the more.

Separate from that, though—when the kid interfered with business, the appropriate measures had to be taken. The spike in vampire-blood prices had actually increased their revenue. But without Se-gun, monopoly became possible. Price inflation through monopoly was the dream scenario of every merchant. Microsoft, a handful of oil companies—they had ridden that charm all the way to a beautiful market structure.

“He runs his weapons through Kenneth, doesn’t he? Then I suppose I should go do a little lobbying. Just throttle the supply, right?”

Personal interest was personal interest; business was business. Keeping the two cleanly divided was one of Sarhyuk’s countless virtues. (?)

Se-gun was up on Bukhansan, bringing a wooden sword down on a tire. Plenty of people would tell you that real combat mattered far more than training, that swinging a blade at empty air would never make you strong—but Se-gun’s body lived that “real combat” almost every night. If he didn’t train for it in the quiet hours, even a little, he would die.

“Haa.”

He peeled off the shredded gloves, set them down, and took up a fresh pair. When he had first started, his palms had split and bled freely; these days the calluses were so thick he barely felt anything. It defied common sense that a man’s hands could stay intact while the gloves tore, but over this past year of practice Se-gun had broken double-digit wooden swords and gone through a tire once already. Without the superhuman will that bloodlust and madness lent him, even a natural fighter would never have done something this insane. He had hauled three tires up the mountain himself and cut them into targets with pruning shears.

“Mm.”

He cooled the sweat with the mountain wind and checked the wooden sword. A fine lengthwise crack—this one was finished too.

“Time to head out, then.”

His phone rang. How many people even had his number? Mildly surprised, he checked the screen and found Old Man Ju’s number.

“What’s this old bastard want with me?”

Half-guessing the purpose already, Se-gun took the call and cut straight to it.

“What is it?”

“Listen, kid… how about dealing with us?”

“I’m young, and I doubt I’d meet your standards.”

“Don’t be like that. I’ll cut you a good price. Better than Bill Murray, even.”

“Hmm. I’ll think about it.”

Se-gun said it even though he was drowning in money to the point of growing mushrooms. Talk like that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and cut them off, or the old man would keep calling with that greasy persistence. Still, the thought that he had become this much of a player already left him a little puffed up. Of course it was less that he had grown and more that other vampire hunters had gotten themselves killed doing reckless things—but the fact that Se-gun had hunted this hard and still not died was because he was better than the rest of them, not because he was lucky.

If anything, luck’s been rotten for me.

He started carefully down the mountain. Running into a vampire up here would be the absolute worst. One small mercy: the vampires didn’t know the local terrain, so he could seize favorable ground first and call them to it. These foreign vampires had no idea what they were thinking, charging in when they couldn’t even find the roads.

If you thought about it, Se-gun was not a hunter trying to make money off vampire kills. He meant to blow up Tetra Anax, strip the vampires of their brains, and sharpen the rivalries among them—to drive the overall damage higher. Everyone already knew how the Juk-yo-line vampires who lost Tetra Anax’s protection had fallen, didn’t they?

Tetra Anax handled most of vampire society’s functions. Paralyze them, and you could deal a catastrophic blow to the whole race.

“The problem is Kenneth Yang.”

The fact that he had sold Se-gun ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠explosives was already common knowledge in the trade. Se-gun had meant to move quietly, but a whole crate of C-4 was such a dangerous item that information about its circulation was bound to leak. In that case, Kenneth Yang’s life was definitely at risk. Killing Se-gun was one way to keep explosives out of his hands—but squeezing the distribution network itself was another. And if spite entered the equation, they might simply kill Kenneth. He was a famous pipeline, after all; he had even dealt with vampires once upon a time.

“I’ll need to open up other suppliers.”

Se-gun had a bad feeling that leaning on Kenneth any longer would end in disaster. And from now on he should stay away from Arjuna as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠well. If he failed and the vampires retaliated, Silvester would be fine—but Kim Seong-hui, Lee Jin-hye, and other uninvolved people might get dragged in. Kenneth too.

The joke of it was that precisely because the word was already out, he could no longer simply walk away. Se-gun came down the mountain path to where he had parked his bike, switched on the transmitter scanner, and checked the machine over. Looking for deliberate sabotage, scanning for explosives—to anyone who didn’t know better, he would have looked like a textbook paranoid. But he had been burned before.

The remnants of the Juk-yo faction—their leader, In—had already forced most of his remaining subordinates out of the country. Korea still ran a resident-registration system: the state numbered individuals and managed personal records, a strong apparatus of social control. It was freer than the old communist bloc, of course, but for vampires without legal identities it was still poor ground for living.

Worse, the Juk-yo faction no longer had a future. Their Jinma, Juk-yo, was dead, and his blood had already passed to another. An official kill order had been issued—take him, take the blood—but that was really Tetra Anax tightening its grip and keeping other vampires in check. No one believed an heir to a Jinma’s blood would be so easy to hunt.

And now they had come again, dangling tempting terms and asking the faction to handle one particular human.

“Strange. He’s only a single human hunter. Why do you need our strength?”

In asked it, half-disgusted. He knew perfectly well ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠who the target was: the vampire hunter Han Se-gun, known as Silvester’s disciple—the beast that starved for vampire blood.

“Call it giving you an opportunity. What more needs saying?”

The broker set down a wooden crate. In opened it and found a .45 Magnum revolver that looked like it belonged in a Dirty Harry movie, a kukri, and an Ingram. Weapons of that caliber would put a vampire and a vampire hunter on even footing.

“‘What more needs saying,’ is it.”

In’s eyes gleamed in the dark of the abandoned building. In plain terms: shut up, take what’s given, and stop asking questions. Not wrong, exactly—but still hard for a proud vampire to swallow. This was a time for endurance. He would endure.

“Then we’ll take the job.”

“A wise choice.”

The human (!) who seemed to be a Tetra Anax errand-runner let out a breath of relief and walked out toward the sunlight. With money’s power you could keep humans working even in broad day. In thought of that power and sighed. The Juk-yo faction had been full of free spirits; instead of accumulating wealth and social leverage, most of them had killed and drained as they pleased, living up to the old vampire legends. That difference had opened into this gulf.

When Sarhyuk found Kenneth Yang’s warehouse, Southeast Asian bodyguards were locked down in iron perimeter. Kenneth waved them off and let Sarhyuk in.

“So. What’s this about?”

Dust lay thick in the old cold-storage building and billowed at every step. Sarhyuk slapped the grime off a sofa and sat.

“I want you to stop supplying weapons to Han Se-gun.”

“Already did.”

“Hm?”

“I’ve got a brain too. That kid is seriously dangerous. He pays well enough, sure—but I’m not dying on a side hustle.”

“Well. That makes this easy.”

Sarhyuk glanced at Kenneth’s guards with a faintly deflated look. Kenneth clicked his tongue.

“You came all this way just for that? Fine, I already decided—but waltzing in alone and casually telling me who I can and can’t deal with? What kind of nerve is that?”

“Ah, that. One of my countless virtues. Decisiveness, you know.”

“Bullshit.”

Kenneth sneered. Sarhyuk’s face turned serious.

“I’ve got a question, though. How often does that Se-gun kid hunt that so much blood is pouring out of him? Hm?”

“Him? Almost every day.”

“…Every day?”

“Yeah. Doesn’t skip one.”

Sarhyuk was stunned all over again. At that rate there really would be narcotics in his veins instead of blood. It took forty-eight to seventy-two hours for a drug to metabolize properly—and he was doing it daily? Drink like that and you’d die.

“First time I’ve met someone crazier than me.”

He said it with pure admiration. What worried him more was that Psychedelic Moon was no soft drug. Heavy users always paid in side effects—and those side effects, if you were unlucky, turned you into a vampire; if you were merely unlucky, they drove you mad. Se-gun had to know that. Kenneth just waved a hand.

“He’d jump out of his skin if he heard you say that.”

“Why?”

“Who wouldn’t get pissed being compared to you? Anyway, I’m not in the mood to stand here grinning at your face, so get lost. Or did you forget the time you beat the hell out of me?”

In the end Kenneth threw him out. One thing was certain: he would not deal with Han Se-gun again. Of course that was only half true. Who had provided Se-gun’s place to live, after all? But getting any deeper risked drawing the vampires’ rage.

Well. Even without me, arms dealers are a dime a dozen. A kid with his talent will find what he needs and then some.

All Kenneth wanted was that none of the fallout from that kid landed on him. That was all.