The Foundation of Industry
"Ugh, it's lukewarm. Hope we don't get food poisoning from this."
"Should I start carrying a portable fridge around? Ah, right. That would've been possible if someone hadn't wrecked the car!"
Monty said it with a pointed glare at Rat, who only snorted and waved him off.
"Now, now, my friend. Cars have a scrap date built into them. I know how much you loved that thing, but its lifespan was already fixed the day it rolled off the line. We have to get used to grief, knowing that every meeting ends in parting. Of course, if we stopped feeling the grief entirely, that would just make us cold-hearted. But friend… for now, look toward tomorrow and swallow those tears of sorrow! Speaking of which — don't tell me there's no CD player? I brought one of mine."
"Oh, I sold that, of course. Didn't fetch much. Don't be too sad, friend. Every meeting ends in parting — those were your own words just now."
At Monty's reply, a crack appeared in the broad smile that had been plastered across Rat's face. Not a Total Recall crack, with someone crawling out from under the skin — but an emotional one, without a doubt.
"…"
It was a rare sight, this cheerful Black man turning gloomy. Still, he put on a hangdog look and shook the CD in his hand.
"Friend. I am suffering a great wound right now. To think you hate music like some alien. There's an old movie where they drive aliens off with rock music, you know."
"Shut up. I don't have the time or the interest for that kind of B-movie garbage. Anyway, I brought new work."
"Hm?"
"This."
This time he produced computer power cables. Fitting plugs onto wires was the kind of bargain-basement piecework that, no less than stringing beads, was more than enough to scrape the bottom of Rat's patience. Last time it had been the proverb about stringing three mal of beads to make a treasure; now it was this?
"…So we get ten won per cable?"
"Five won."
"Even worse. Friend. I'd rather earn money in a more lively, cultured way, you know."
Rat said it with a meaningful smile. Monty stuck out his tongue.
"These computer power cables are the precious foundational labor of the entire IT industry. If that isn't cultured, what is? Besides, foreigners like us can't hold proper jobs here! Every time I bring this stuff back, people get suspicious, so I have to use hypnosis. You're not seriously suggesting crime, are you? If Argon finds out, we're finished."
Rat grinned.
"Of course, as one who enjoys Argon's favor, how could I ever commit a crime, my dear friend? If I truly meant to break the law, I could make money with that hypnosis of yours — or at the very least hop a few garden walls and be done with it! But I have ideas of my own, so don't look at me like that."
"Ah, your ideas are truly something to look forward to, 'friend'! But now that I've brought these in, we still have to meet the quota. Otherwise we pay for them. So finish the job, would you?"
Monty said it with a chilly face and tossed the cables over. Rat accepted them with a forlorn expression.
"Friend… you don't hold some kind of grudge against me, do you?"
"Put your hand on your heart and think. The answer should come to you."
The two idiot vampires stared at each other, then sat back down and went to work on the cables. For a while Rat clicked plugs into place in silence, then suddenly asked,
"Hey. Did you send this month's report?"
"I did."
"What did Argon say?"
"Now that the alchemist has become a Jinma, he's bound to start devouring other vampires and Jinma, so we should act with extreme caution."
"Mm. That tracks. But is Tetra Anax just sitting still?"
Rat asked while clicking cables together with a practiced hand. Monty let out a long sigh.
"Lilith appeared in Estonia. The rest of the clan members have already been dispatched there to secure her. I doubt anyone has attention left over for the alchemist."
"Lilith, huh."
Lilith — the name of a witch from the biblical apocrypha. But in the world of the Mad Moon, it meant something else. A mythical witch who conceived demons through human wombs; an enemy to vampires, lycanthropes, mages, and witches alike, belonging to no side. Even Tetra Anax, the officially strongest being in the Mad Moon's world, was said to be unable to see through her purpose!
"Come to think of it, there were rumors that Prester John's sacred vessel, Juyda, was also Lilith's handiwork. So basically that alchemist is a glutton, right?"
"Right. Which means right now we need to find those two young Jinma as soon as possible and protect them."
"…Friend. It is a sad thing. Time is of the essence, and yet here we are laying the foundations of the IT industry. It's an important duty in its own way, but I can't help worrying that while we do, those two poor young Jinma will fall into the alchemist's hands, suffer every kind of sexual torture and abuse, and end up bound in leather restraints shooting hardcore adult films!"
"…"
The sound of cables being fitted grew steadily faster.
Kim Hyung-nam fled the drinking party arranged by Choi Jeong-in, owner of Seongran Gallery, and burst out into the night streets as if escaping.
"Haaack — ptoo!"
He spat a thick wad of phlegm without ceremony and turned his eyes to the road. Countless taxis raced past with their lights on, following the sleepless night of Seoul's entertainment districts.
"Goddamn it…"
He muttered a curse that might or might not have been aimed at anyone and waved a hand at a taxi. Was the liquor already hitting him hard enough to make the world sway? He registered that he had caught a cab, but whether it was a taxi or a magic carpet was anyone's guess. He threw himself onto the seat like a man sprawling in a boat on a river of light and muttered obscenities alone.
"Damn it. Snap out of it, sir. Where are you going?"
The driver had let a drunk into his car and was privately fretting that the man might vomit as he hauled Kim Hyung-nam upright. But driving a taxi at this hour was not a job you took unless you were prepared to deal with drunks. There was even a cabbies' proverb: The surcharge isn't free money.
"Donam-dong."
"Yes, sir."
Relieved that the man's voice was surprisingly clear, the driver pulled away.
"Hahahahahaha."
Having spent his youth in dissipation, he did not get this drunk on mere alcohol. But he felt intoxicated by something else entirely. A solo exhibition packed with ordinary visitors. Attention pouring in after only a single day. It was as if he had returned to those wild young years when he had trusted his talent absolutely.
The difference was that back then he could believe in his gift without a shadow of doubt — and now he could not. Because every painting he had hung this time was…
"Hahahahaha."
He understood, viscerally, why musicians fell into drugs. To hunger for something you did not have; to borrow the power of chemicals so you could do better. Ah, how splendid. If you could pursue a finer art regardless of what it did to your body, that was a true artist. But he knew perfectly well he did not belong among them. Because right now, even the frayed edge of glory that had come back into his grip made him this happy. To rejoice so much over work drawn with inspiration and talent that were not his own — that was theft of honor.
"Damn it. Is he crazy?"
The driver grumbled openly at the passenger laughing unpleasantly in the back seat and loosened his necktie. The days were growing hotter. Seoul especially, blanketed by murky clouds of exhaust, never seemed to shed its heat even at night. Perhaps the sleepless city itself was already radiating heat.
That young man…
Kim Hyung-nam suddenly remembered the green-haired youth who had come to the exhibition that day. The young man had been moved by his paintings. Like a Muslim who had completed the lifelong pilgrimage to Mecca, there had been something almost religious in his passion.
Maybe he, too…
Thinking that, Kim Hyung-nam surrendered himself to the rocking taxi seat and slipped into sleep.
A narrow alley where buildings huddled so close they suggested a dense jungle; garbage bags with swollen, bursting figures piled everywhere, vomiting filthy water into the street. A giant of a man walked through it with his hands shoved in his pockets.
"Hmm…"
He took a Lucky Strike from his coat, stuck it between his lips, and lit it. Blue cigarette smoke drifted softly into the air. This alley was so narrow that even if someone set a fire, no one would notice — and so tight a fire truck could barely enter. It had thoroughly gone to seed.
Alleys this narrow evoke a vast forest: trees grown thick and tangled, their branches woven so that not even a palm-sized scrap of sky shows through. But unlike any forest, this place was a concrete jungle full of filth and ugliness.
And the ugliest thing of all was the man now surveying his surroundings with a cigarette in his mouth. He stepped into a small lottery shop at the corner of the alley.
"Welcome."
A middle-aged man with a half-bald head greeted him with a full smile. He was a little short, but broad-shouldered, giving an overall impression of thick, solid bulk; a glimpse of tattoo showed at his neck. The man who had come through the door snorted and ducked his head. He was so enormous that he had to lower it just to clear the threshold.
"Looking for something?"
"I want the most expensive one."
"…"
The smile vanished from the owner's face.
"That's difficult, customer. You know how… that kind of business has gotten… tricky lately."
The owner favored the vague pronoun "that" whenever he needed to dodge something. He was a fairly well-known information broker who ran a lottery shop and occasionally dealt with people who came to buy "the most expensive ticket." Being an information dealer was a profession that could get you killed ten times over — the perfect job for getting tangled in ugly business.
Which meant this man's nerve was nothing ordinary. But lately, with police surveillance so tight, everyone in this line of work was lying low. A customer who showed up at a time like this set the nerves on fire regardless of courage; if you got marked as a police snitch, you would be wearing silver bracelets by nightfall.
"There's a pack of yakuza who came in recently, right? The ones who just got wrecked. I want information on them."
"…"
The man who had entered as a customer said it outright and threw the owner into a panic.
"Y-your voice is too loud."
"It's fine. My voice only reaches you right now."
He stepped closer as he made the claim.
"Sounds inside here don't reach outside either. And no one can see us. Test it if you don't believe me."
"What?"
"For example…"
In that instant the man's hand touched the owner.
Crack!
Simply — effortlessly — the collarbone snapped.
"Aaaagh!"
The man screamed and collapsed. This was an alley, yes, but one block behind lay a main road where people passed constantly. To use violence here! More than that, he could not understand how a bone had broken. The man had not thrown a punch; he had merely laid a hand on him. Why had the bone of a man who was not even osteoporotic shattered like a dry reed?
But right now, pain and terror ruled his brain more thoroughly than any such question.
"Aaaagh! H-help! Somebody!"
"Sorry. My temper's gotten short lately. Now we can have a frank conversation, yes?"
The man muttered and sat down in a chair.
"Urgh… I don't know! I don't know anything like that."
"Ah. I find it hard to believe you don't know. A pity. Then I'll just have to kill you, extract the information, and analyze it myself. That work for you?"
"…"
He wanted to take it as a joke, but the man meant every word. And the trick with the broken bone, the pressure he was radiating now — none of it was a game.
An information broker must never yield his knowledge for free under violence. The moment he does, the business is finished. But this case was more like a disaster. The sharp-eyed broker understood that the man opposite him was something that had left humanity behind — a calamity in human shape.
"N-no, I'll tell you everything. So please, just do something about this."
The owner begged, looking at the left side of his body, which shook violently around the broken collarbone. The man snorted, picked up a scratch-off lottery ticket, grabbed the plastic ruler from the table, and started scraping it as if he owned the place.
"Pain makes you mature. Bear it and talk."
Any more maturity and the fate of his remaining hair would become a serious question. But the owner endured and spilled the information. The yakuza group that had recently entered the area had been forced to flee by a mysterious attacker, and most of them had been annihilated.
The Jeoksu Faction — the organization they had chosen as their beachhead — was helping the retreat, but another unknown force had intervened, and the Jeoksu Faction itself was no longer intact. The owner explained it all in detail and wrote the address of the safe-house operator who had taken the remnants in on a scrap of paper.
"One way or another, Zein made a complete fool of himself. After a humiliation that bad, a Jinma has his pride — he probably doesn't even want to keep living. All right. So I just go here?"
The man took the memo and stood. Then he held out the scratch ticket he had been holding a moment before.
"Ah, this one's a winner. Keep it as a gift. I'm too soft-hearted for my own good. Well then."
He left the injured human where he was and walked out of the lottery shop.
Wedged among construction sites busy with redevelopment stood a building that still wore its old, ugly face. A suspicious sign reading Bill Murray Healing School hung on it; despite its shabby exterior, the place was packed with high-tech equipment and gulped down enormous amounts of electricity every day.
"I didn't understand it before, but I do now."
Se-gun parked his bike in front of the building and looked around. Ghosts drifting in the air, clots of tangled thought from the vast city, lined themselves up to avoid the high-tension lines. From the way those ghosts wavered in waveform, you could tell how powerful a current was flowing inside.
Even so — putting something like a factory facility right in the middle of the city. Bill Murray's Healing School clearly had deep roots. Se-gun slipped past the fog-like ghosts and walked inside.
The season was slowly racing toward summer, and the sunlight outside pricked the skin gently. But the interior of the building was cold as a refrigerator. The only light that reached the corridor came from a single small window facing north — and that no wider than a bathroom window of a foot or two, yet it was what lit this hallway.
If not for the high voltage, it would have been the perfect place for ghosts to swarm.
"Surely he didn't run the voltage as a barrier. That can't be good for anyone's health."
Se-gun muttered as he went deeper and knocked on the door. Machinery was running, so he had thought someone might be inside — but a sign reading Closed hung in front.
"Great. Do I wait?"
He muttered and tugged at his suspenders, checking the jet-black sword on his back. With evil spirits watching him, that weapon was as good as a lifeline for fighting them. Se-gun sat down in the corridor and hugged the sword to himself.
"Ah-hahm. I definitely slept a little…"
He yawned and rested his head between his knees. Maybe it was all the nights he had spent running around because of the evil spirits. The moment he thought he would have to wait for something boring, sleep crashed over him.
I think, therefore I am. Every human being possesses a world of his own, and that world shares a common denominator called "reality," through which exchange with other humans becomes possible. Those who share something beyond that "reality" — that common denominator everyone holds — and the world they create: people call it the Moonlit Night, or the Mad Moon.
That world, crawling with vampires, mages, and mythical monsters, clearly exists outside ordinary human perception. If the two worlds ever reached a point of convergence, civilization as it stands would never have developed. Human perception itself would change; the very reason that built civilization would shake. Would a new paradigm emerge? Or would mythic violence simply trample human reason? Either way, the union of the two worlds would bring destruction — and rebirth.
Preventing that is the mission of Tetra Anax, who leads this world of the Mad Moon. In a certain sense, one might even call it noble. But that is a lie. Things that devour the humans of reality and live on their blood, claiming they will protect the world — all they are doing is hiding themselves beyond human perception, ruling this world from the shadows, and clinging to their dominion. An ugly greed, nothing more.
And even if the union of those worlds did bring a new paradigm, it would be no more than another kind of upheaval, like the invention of electricity or the automobile. Humans would adapt to the change and go on living.
"Hey, boy. You sleep out here, you'll catch a cold."
"…Mm."
Se-gun had been dreaming a tangle of strange thoughts; only then did he come to himself and lift his head. Bill Murray stood there with a sports bag. Ah — this was the front of his shop. He had thought a little drowsiness was hitting him, and he had actually fallen asleep… awfully carefree for someone living with his life on the line. Se-gun reflected on that as he stood.
"What brings you here? Ah — don't tell me your girlfriend dumped you?"
"If I made a girlfriend like that, I couldn't do this job."
Because he might die at any moment, he did not create anything to love. Of course, in a wasteland of a state like his present one, loving anything at all was impossible anyway. So that line was, in the end, the excuse of a man who could not love others — and that was not wrong. But Se-gun did not care.
The one-hundred-percent macho claim that a man fights to protect what he loves may be handed down like a maxim among a certain type of people, but it is a profound discourtesy to the "thing he loves." Do not drag the word love into the glorification of fighting and violence. Do not lean on someone else to compensate for the weakness of your own will!
"But do you know about this?"
Se-gun pulled out the pamphlet for the Chae-wol-hwa exhibition and handed it to Bill Murray. Bill, who had been unlocking the door, raised his eyebrows.
"Bull shit!"
"Hmm. So you're only just seeing this. Instead of watching the same boring football every day, maybe gather a little information once in a while?"
"Goddamn. Who the hell…? Well, I knew something like this would happen the moment we put it on general sale."
"Did you?"
Se-gun leaned against the wall and sent him a cold smile. But he was in no position to sneer at anyone else. Turning vampire blood into a drug and selling it. That meant there were buyers. And that money flowed in and filled Se-gun's own pockets. Nothing to laugh at.
"Hahaha! This is a masterpiece. So what are you going to do? Kill him and shut him up?"
"…Can't do that. He's a customer, after all. Kill him for a reason like that and the sales channels get tangled."
Bill Murray muttered as if to himself.
"Ah — can I keep this pamphlet, boy?"
"Suit yourself. But, mm, I'd like you to introduce me to him through the sales channel."
"If you promise not to kill him."
"Is a vampire hunter's promise worth more than ten won?"
Se-gun shot back, but he had never intended to kill the man in the first place. Having someone peek into his world — the world of the Moonlit Night — was as unpleasant as having your naked body seen in the bath. But a body that had already sold its soul to hatred… if he had paid a fair price for Psychedelic Moon, then he had every right to enjoy it. He might profit from the paintings he made after glimpsing that world, but those were still lives and landscapes of a kind. There was no reason to condemn a painter simply for copying the objects that entered his canvas as they were.