Complete Suppression
Phantom laughed as he spoke.
“Should we all get together and start sticking electric cords and paper bags on things? I actually like that sort of thing. You know—playing at being poor.”
Hecate bit her lower lip.
“Then why make that kid Wilhelm bring the meal tray just so you can flip the whole table and yell, ‘What the hell is this side dish? What do you take your master for!’?”
“Exactly!”
“And drinking soju straight from the bottle too?”
“Ohh, you know me well.”
Hecate and Phantom bantered in perfect sync. Elliot took out his glasses and began polishing them.
“The reason I brought all of you here is, in truth, nothing other than this: a discussion about the complete suppression of Korea.”
“Complete suppression?”
Messiah’s eyes widened as she fixed Elliot with a hard stare. Most of the vampire hunters were already dead and even Finder had withdrawn, but if he meant complete suppression now, the remaining enemy could only be the Jinma hunter.
“You want to attack the Jinma hunter? I’ll say it plainly—that man is no easy mark. Phantom took quite a beating from him as well.”
“Hahahahahaha.”
Phantom put on a sheepish expression. It wasn’t only Phantom; Venom had been struck down by that same Silvester and had died because of it.
“Picking a fight with the Jinma hunter purely for the sake of complete suppression is hardly wise. He may be excommunicated, but the blade he carries was Argent Harpesion. The fact that a treasure of the Western Church remains in the hand of a man they cast out means their ties have never truly been severed.”
As she spoke, Messiah picked up the blueberry pie from the table and passed it to Maria. Maria speared it with her fork and beamed like a delighted child.
A sudden gleam lit Phantom’s eyes.
“Argent Harpesion. He only started using that after Juyda went on his rampage… but I was under the impression Messiah never entered that fight.”
“Of course I watched. Why? Does it gall you that much that I sat back and enjoyed the show while you all got your heads kicked in?”
Messiah said it without the slightest disguise. Hecate, who had been silent until that moment, shot to her feet.
“Of course it does! Is that even something you say out loud? You thieving cat! Were you hiding the whole time just waiting for your chance?”
“You didn’t fight all that hard yourself, Hecate. For someone supposedly avenging her children, you looked rather deflated, didn’t you?”
“Ohh? So you’re admitting you were waiting for an opening! You half-corpse!”
Hecate cleared space at once and climbed onto the grand piano. Messiah likewise sprang up from her seat. Neither Elliot nor Phantom made any move to stop them. If life-and-death could be settled that easily, vampire society would never have lasted this long.
“My, my. You are aware that combat between Tetra Anax–aligned Jinma is forbidden, correct? I’ll trust that you know. I’m only mentioning it out of courtesy, so please ignore me and by all means settle things once and for all.”
Elliot drank his tea with pure nonchalance.
“Ah, then you’re not eating any of this?”
Maria reached for the dishes on the table. With that, the side that kept fighting would simply look foolish; both women deflated and let their hands fall.
“Fine. So what do you want us to do? All pile in, raid the Jinma hunter, and beat him into paste? Then build a world where vampires cheer forever?”
Hecate stepped down in front of the piano and began pounding the keys. She was playing the Do-Re-Mi song from The Sound of Music, and she did it with a sneer.
“No. The ones who will handle that are already decided. I summoned you simply so that you might observe how the matter unfolds.”
Elliot rose from his seat.
“Well then, as I am rather busy, I shall take my leave. Please remain and enjoy yourselves a little longer. Surely none of you will ask me who they are?”
Elliot smiled with deliberate meaning. The unlit sky lounge was lit only by the glow of the nightscape outside. The piano continued its incongruous melody, and in that rather pleasant atmosphere Elliot melted into the dark.
“...Ohh. So that’s the plan.”
Messiah read the true intent behind Elliot’s words and smiled in satisfaction. There was no better way to vent the discontent every vampire carried. The new Jinma would deal with the Jinma hunter and cement their own positions. Everyone else would be rid of one of the vampires’ enemies without lifting a finger. All around, it looked like an excellent solution a ruler could proudly put forward.
That way the foundation never shakes, does it?
Phantom thought as much and clicked his tongue. At this rate he might have no choice but to sit and wait for that brat named Han Se-gun to actually blow Flex Medical to pieces.
Se-gun tugged his baseball cap lower and let out a low sigh. The weather had turned hot enough that he could no longer walk around in full ballistic armor. A vest was still possible, but the full-body ballistic suit was simply unwearable. Heatstroke or dehydration would rob him of function just as thoroughly, so forcing the issue would be pure stupidity.
“What the hell am I even doing?”
He stared at the brightening sky and heaved a long breath. Moments earlier he had finished training that would have left an ordinary man unconscious, relied on the black sword to slip past the evil spirits, and was now on the road back to the hideout.
Once training ended, Se-gun had nothing left. Training, more training, and then study of explosives and heavy equipment. A man who kept living solely on hatred for vampires was nothing more than a lump of charcoal that would simply crumble the moment the flame of hatred went out.
“......”
Never looking back on one’s path meant one was no longer human. Because Se-gun was still human, he looked back. Each time he regretted and suffered, yet he could no longer reverse the road he had chosen.
“...Ha. This body doesn’t have much time left either.”
Se-gun rested his hand on the black sword at his waist, then drew it and cut the empty air.
Chiiik!
A sound like the death of air accompanied the black arc that sliced the void. Fast enough—but he sheathed the blade and drew it again. The more he repeated the motion, the swifter the edge became, until at last the wind itself rose and scattered the trash across the ground.
“This is already beyond human.”
He hadn’t even touched Psychedelic Moon, yet he could do this much… Looking at the state of his own body, Se-gun felt genuine horror. With the destruction of the Enigma the boundary between soul and flesh had crumbled, and the body was gradually mutating. Or perhaps the sheer volume of vampire blood he had used had forced the change that produced this power. Either way, it was a clear notice that his ruin was not far off.
“If I become a vampire… the only choice left will be to end my own life.”
Se-gun parked the bike at the entrance to the hideout and scanned the interior. A quiet house with no one inside… If he ever turned in a place like this, he would have to die—by his own hand or someone else’s.
“This situation is almost fun… Hahaha. I think I finally understand why people fly planes into buildings.”
He faced the eastern sky and drew a deep breath. Fatigue had piled so thick it felt ready to melt his bones. He was lonely enough to cough blood, and even now—this very second—he still feared death and feared becoming a vampire. Yet inside his chest rested a blade he could never betray: the oath he had sworn while cutting his own flesh and severing his own bones…
“......”
Se-gun suddenly slipped a hand into his jacket. Inside lay a pocket Bible and a family photograph.
“Goddammit!”
He jerked the hand free as if burned. Unbidden, a scene from Eiji Yoshikawa’s Musashi rose in his mind. On the eve of the duel with Sasaki Kojiro, Miyamoto Musashi carves a Buddhist image and then smashes it. Bring a god into a fight against the self and the “self” one has lived until that moment simply vanishes. Had he been a believer from the start it might have been different, but Se-gun—whose body was already fouled by sin—could no longer cast himself upon God.
“Wash away every sin and love me no matter what? That… is impossible! Impossible!”
Even if a god truly existed who forgave every sin, what good was divine forgiveness when the sinner himself could not forgive? Even if the crime were pardoned and the punishment erased, the fact of having committed it—the memory—would remain. People must build the future out of the past.
Therefore, as long as memory lived, sin could never disappear. If forgiveness meant nothing more than the absence of punishment, such forgiveness was worthless. If punishment came for the crime committed, that was almost joyful. The more painful the punishment, the more one might finally come to forgive oneself.
Se-gun sank down at the head of the stairs that led to the basement. Sleepy. Exhaustion poured over him, yet if he slept he had no idea when he might wake as a vampire. At this rate, if he dreamed, would he travel through hell and heaven like Dante? He stared at the basement that truly looked like the mouth of hell and let out a dry laugh.
For now, sleep…
Punishment would come. Certain and sure. Yes—the ruin of this body itself was the punishment. It was the very penalty Se-gun had expected from the moment he first became a vampire hunter.
The pounding in his chest was less fear than anticipation. Waiting for that anticipation to be fulfilled, he lay awake like a child the night before a picnic. So for now he would sleep, and once strength returned he would kill vampires again. A few more… a great many more…
“This… Korea’s completely finished.”
Rat Gunip clicked his tongue and stared at the newspaper. Day after day the economic pages were plastered with screaming red charts of plunging stock prices. Rat couldn’t read a single Hangul character, but the pictures alone told him everything he needed to know.
A continuous muttering drifted from the kitchen.
“You’re really noisy. So what is it? Ah—sorry about the Excel. But that car was genuinely dangerous. The manufacturer must have hidden a bomb in the production line just to wipe out vampires. It went boom all by itself, I swear.”
“Last time you said a UFO fell out of the sky, hit it, and exploded.”
“Exactly—so the bomb was a UFO-summoning bomb!”
Rat waved a dismissive hand at Monty, who kept making a racket at him.
“Got anything else going on? Hmm? Friend, hammering the same topic over and over is only allowed when you’re confessing ‘I love you.’ If you love me, I’m ready to accept it in my own way, though.”
“…Shit. Anyway, what’s coming next is complete annihilation by the vampires! They’re going to wipe out every last vampire hunter!”
“Even if it’s ‘every last one,’ there aren’t many left, right?”
Rat muttered that, then suddenly shot to his feet.
“What? Is that for real?”
“You already know how those guys operate, don’t you?”
“Oh, shit! Fucking shit! That’s intense as hell. As expected of those bastards.”
Rat grumbled under his breath. Because so few hunters remained they called it complete suppression, yet the real targets were the Jinma hunter and his disciple. He knew full well they were anything but easy prey.
“So what do we do? Just stand back and watch?”
“Orders from above are… um, to monitor whatever happens. If it’s the Jinma hunter they’re going after, even Jinma are going to have a rough time. Especially the rookies—they’ll be competing for glory and getting themselves hurt…”