Cannonball
Even after parting ways with Deok-yeon, Se-gun’s daily routine barely changed. He couldn’t do anything that required a partner or cost real money—range time, sparring sessions—but he never skipped the conditioning.
Wearing a lead vest and sandbags, he hiked up to the mineral spring at the top of the mountain, then hammered his heart rate past two hundred with jump rope. A few sets of free weights later he slipped straight into shadow boxing. The outdoor weight machines by the spring were rusted from rain and wind, but free was free, and that was advantage enough.
“Hoo…”
Se-gun wiped the sweat off and dropped onto a bench. Everyone else was already at work or school; only a handful of old men remained. He tipped his head back. Against a field of pure white cloud, a few magpies wheeled overhead.
They nested on power poles and cost Korea Electric a fortune, yet watching them cut through the sky he couldn’t quite hate them. Se-gun stared blankly upward and waited for his breathing to settle.
Late-autumn sky was a clean, high blue. Seoul had been choking on smog lately, but up here near Gwanak the air was still pure. He pushed damp green-dyed hair off his forehead. The color suited him more than it should have. Looking a little older than his years was a problem, but after growth-hormone therapy he figured he had no right to complain.
“Sitting here won’t fix anything. Better go check on the bike. Even if it isn’t ready, I should look at the estimate.”
He muttered the words to himself. Roughly five million won left in the accounts, plus two packs of vampire blood he could fence for five hundred each—call it ten million total. Ten million was a lot of money, yet for someone who still had to eat and re-equip it was nowhere near enough.
The Sangdong-pa might be crawling with vampires, but you couldn’t enter uncaught prey into the ledger.
“Guess I need a part-time job…”
He tried to picture it. A vampire hunter stacking shelves at a convenience store or pouring beer in a hof—ridiculous—but right now even that looked necessary. Bike repairs alone would bleed him dry. Straightening a bent frame was temporary; the metal would fatigue and fail. Full frame swap meant stripping the engine, every component, rewiring the whole machine. The bill would be ugly. Se-gun drew a long breath.
“Figured as much.”
Jeong Yong-jin nodded into his phone. A few calls to the shops had confirmed it: an RX-125 had come in. You couldn’t drop a bike off without a license and registration, so the owner’s identity was hard to hide.
The man Cheon Yeong-hu was hunting was Se-gun after all.
The RX-125 looked ordinary on the outside, but the owner had sunk serious cash into suspension and discs and wanted those replaced along with the frame. The plate showed wear from constant on-and-off swaps; the rider clearly knew his way around tools.
Name on the ticket: Han Se-gun. The kid who had vanished for a year was suddenly the crazy bastard who had put half a gang in the hospital.
“That’s him.”
Yong-jin snapped the phone shut. He still remembered the shock of Se-gun’s skill, remembered laughing together while they tore up the night streets, but they had never been close enough to bare their guts. Envy and resentment had always been closer to the truth.
So eight million won was enough to sell him out. Still—how had that punk from a year ago half-killed a pack of thugs and stacked them neatly in hospital beds? And a gun?
“No way. You’re serious?”
The brown-haired girl beside him asked, eyes sparkling. Bracelets stacked on one wrist, a tiny stud in her nose, earrings dangling heavy enough to tear her lobes—yet she swung her head left and right without a care. Hwang Seon-yeong, Yong-jin’s current girlfriend, had always thought Se-gun was cute. She refused to believe he was the one who had cleaned house on the gangsters.
“You’re overthinking it. Yeah, Se-gun rode better than you and looked better too, but that doesn’t mean you have to—besides, he was one of us. Taking money to sell him out feels wrong.”
She cracked a beer can as she spoke.
“Deep drive to left! It’s going… going… gone!”
In a corner of the underground parking garage, ancient televisions were stacked like a Nam June Paik installation. Blue light from the screens washed over the faces of the gathered riders. They’d scavenged the sets from the dump; lined up like this they really did look like video art. Reception was garbage underground—heavy noise, constant static—but for a while the whole crew sat hypnotized by the glow, as if a fox spirit had them.
“We were comrades, sure.”
A few nodded with Seon-yeong. Most of them just kept tasting the eight million.
“That punk’s rude enough to ice gangsters without blinking, yeah—but where the hell did he get that kind of skill? And a handgun?”
“Just tip them off for two mil. Loyalty’s a thing, and this feels dangerous.”
“Two mil split among all of us is pocket change.”
That last line did it. Yong-jin snatched the beer from Seon-yeong’s hand.
“Hey! I wasn’t finished—”
Too late. Yong-jin hurled the can with murderous force. Screens exploded in a shower of glass and sparks.
“Fuck it! Who cares? This is Korea! Even a psycho doesn’t just start blasting! And comrades? When did that arrogant little shit ever think of us that way? Cocky punk! Let the Sangdong-pa kill him or not—none of our business!”
“So you’re going after him? If he really has a gun, corner him and he might shoot.”
“No… I’m not planning to use violence.”
He clenched both fists.
“We’re settling the score we never finished.”
The other riders traded looks. Yong-jin thought he was declaring resolve. They thought something else entirely.
“Score we never finished? He wrecked you.”
“Seriously. Is there anyone here who can beat that guy on a bike? Didn’t think so.”
“……”
A young man in an aviator jacket and jeans cut through the crowd. Chronic fatigue shadowed his face; he wore the expression of someone who found the whole business of living mildly annoying. Yet his stride still carried power, and aside from the mental exhaustion his skin showed no special wounds or injuries.
The one striking detail was the dark green of his hair. Dye, obviously—but an unhinged color choice.
“So yeah… that guy…”
“Oh my god, I can’t believe it.”
People brushed past him, their cheerful chatter pouring into his ears. He never once glanced at them—until the Bloodstone Pendulum hanging at his throat gave a faint twitch.
“Ah!”
He spun, scanning. The pendulum only moved when it sensed a vampire. But the sun was still high. The only vampires who could walk under full daylight without losing power were the twenty-four Jinma.
“Jinma…”
Except for the Jinma hunter Silvester, no human could stand against a true vampire. They bent minds, turned into mist or bats, commanded storms and dropped lightning. The low-VT bloodsuckers that had shown up in Korea so far were powerless beasts compared to that purity and strength.
Had one of the Jinma returned to Korea? The young man looked wildly through the crowd.
But a real Jinma might not register on the pendulum at all—and if it did, the vibration would be far stronger than this faint tremor. That left only one answer.
“Psychedelic Moon? Or mid-transformation.”
A human who had taken the stabilized mutagen called Psychedelic Moon would ping the pendulum. So would someone whose unstable vampire factor was still rewriting them.
“Either way, it’s a problem.”
He muttered it yet never slowed. He left the main road for a side street; foot traffic thinned until a large repair shop appeared—rare in modern Seoul. Cars were the specialty, but they handled bikes too.
“Took you long enough.”
A familiar voice called from the entrance. Se-gun turned. A wall of motorcycles blocked the way. Astride the still-solid Kawasaki Vulcan 800 sat Jeong Yong-jin.
“Long time, Se-gun. Almost didn’t recognize you—you’ve changed that much. What’s with the hair? That dye job is insane.”
“That so? I don’t remember any of you.”
Se-gun shrugged. From the rear seat of the Vulcan, Hwang Seon-yeong squealed.
“Wow, you got huge, Se-gun!”
He ignored her theatrics and eyed the pack of riders.
“What’s this about? Whole crew out like this? Doesn’t look like coincidence.”
“Still got that mouth on you. Kid who hasn’t even grown into his age yet.”
“You didn’t drag everyone out after a year just to complain about my manners. If you’ve got nothing else, move.”
He started forward. Yong-jin blocked him.
“Of course we didn’t come just to bitch.”
A year later, Se-gun looked genuinely lethal. Yong-jin had always thought the kid was scary and strange, but now the eyes were sunken as if he were on something hard, and the light inside them cut like a blade. He looked less like a person and more like the killer from a horror film.
Matching the new face, Se-gun spoke a single cold line.
“I’ll kill you.”
Street trash threw that kind of threat around all the time. But the voice carried a killing intent no actor could fake. The whole lot went dead silent. They already knew from Cheon Yeong-hu that Se-gun had a gun; no one wanted to move first.
“……”
Se-gun’s gaze slid to the bandage wrapped around Yong-jin’s forearm. Not a serious wound, yet something about it felt wrong.
Don’t tell me…
He forced himself to ignore the riders and walked into the shop. The clerk, who had been fretting that a brawl was about to start right outside, hurriedly printed the estimate the moment Se-gun approached.
“So, straightening the frame would run about five hundred sixty thousand. Full replacement, frame plus everything else… we’d need at least eight hundred eighty…”
He kept glancing past Se-gun at the waiting gang. Se-gun pulled a thick stack of ten-thousand-won notes and laid it on the desk.
“Write me a receipt. I need to ride right now—lend me a bike.”
“Huh? Lend you one?”
“I’ve got to convince those idiots outside.”
It was a tall order, but better than a motorcycle gang camping the front door. The clerk reluctantly led him to the storage bay where finished bikes waited for pickup.
“They’re all customers’ machines. Be careful.”
“Yeah.”
Se-gun scanned the inventory. Kawasaki KDXs, Honda CRMs, even a few Ducatis you almost never saw in Korea. What caught his eye wasn’t the shiny imports, though—it was a battered MX-125.
The frame looked ancient, but the engine and suspension were brand-new. Modified bike, no question. A closer look made him whistle.
“That’s… a V2 two-stroke racer engine.”
Slapping a monster mill into a lightweight MX frame was the definition of unbalanced. The clerk, who had opened the bay in resignation, suddenly panicked.
“Th-that one won’t work. Almost nobody can handle it.”
“Why?”
“Crack the throttle halfway and the rear wheel pushes so hard the front end comes up. It’s a two-stroke—after an RX-125 you’ll get killed.”
An RX-125 ran a stable four-stroke; jumping onto a wild two-stroke was a different animal. Same gear, same lean, same throttle—four-stroke RPM climbed smooth, two-stroke jumped like a grenade. Pure off-road race machine.
Riding an unfamiliar, balance-be-damned monster like that was asking for a crash. Se-gun just smirked.
“This is my major.”
He swung a leg over. The Hyosung MX-125 was an older model than the RX, but almost everything had been swapped—headlight excluded. Engine, oil, suspension, brakes, absorbers, spokes, wheels, bearings, clutch…
“This is basically a custom bike. Where’d you even find a V2?”
The clerk sighed heavily.
“It’s mine. Got lucky finding it, so please don’t wreck it.”
“I’ll be gentle.”
Se-gun cracked the throttle. Outside, the waiting riders jumped at the sound.
“What the hell is that?”
“MX-125? No… every part’s different.”
Se-gun rolled the monster up to Yong-jin and stopped. Ten meters from bay to entrance had already taught him how hard the thing was to tame—like riding an angry tiger. Good parts alone didn’t make a good bike. Still, he kept his face blank and looked Yong-jin dead in the eye.
“Sangdong-pa put you up to this.”
“Ho. Figured it out that fast. Saves me the trouble of answering questions.”
“How much they offering?”
“Eight hundred. Not huge when we split it, but not pocket change either.”
Yong-jin answered surprisingly straight. Se-gun exhaled and thumbed the starter.
“Eight hundred got this many of you out. You really are cheap labor.”
He looked at the pack with something close to pity—especially Yong-jin. He already knew the fate waiting for him. Anyone who made the Bloodstone Pendulum twitch was on the road to becoming a vampire. Without knowing it, he’d crawl into sunlight, take the direct rays, collapse, and burn until nothing remained.
Se-gun felt the pity. He felt no urge to save him. Once the change had started, even God had no cure.
“Killing you lot is more trouble than it’s worth. Bikers have their own code, right? Let’s settle it that way. Chicken race like old times?”
“No. I already know how good you are. Cannonball.”
Cannonball was the simplest race: first to a fixed point wins. Pure machine performance. Sitting on a Vulcan 800 and challenging a guy on an off-road bike to a cannonball was pure cheek—but Yong-jin knew Se-gun’s skill too well. Any other format and he had zero chance.
“Fine. Accepted.”
What Se-gun was riding wasn’t even a replica. It was a genuine race-engine monster.
Bwaaaaaang!
“How far for the cannonball?”
“Entrance to the Gyeongin Expressway! Ready?”
Yong-jin grabbed an empty can.
“When this hits the ground, we go!”
“Works for me.”
Se-gun held the brake and revved. Yong-jin matched him, then flung the can. A thin brown stream of leftover coffee spun out of the mouth as it tumbled.
Clank!
Both men dropped their brakes and launched. Clutch work, reaction time—Se-gun owned every metric. The violent launch yanked the front wheel skyward; for a second it felt like the bike would throw him over the back.
The two-stroke’s high scream tore the air like a siren.
Eeeeeeeeng!
Se-gun never put the front end down. He just kept flying. The MX-125 swallowed the Vulcan in a single breath and pulled away.
“What the hell is that thing?!”
Yong-jin screamed and gave chase.
Bwaaaaaang!
Two motorcycles tore across the sunlit streets at full throttle. Se-gun and Yong-jin—second race in a year, and almost certainly the last—had begun.