Welcome to the Mad Moon
By the time Cheon Yeong-hu and the bikers reached the entrance to the Gyeongin Expressway, no one remained. Not Se-geon. Not Yong-jin. No one at all.
"Damn it! You made us come all this way for nothing! You bastards!"
Cheon Yeong-hu bellowed the words while glaring at the bikers, but he was no fool—he wasn't about to throw punches with police standing right there watching. He reined in his fists and instead approached an officer to ask a few questions.
"Hey, mind if I ask you something?"
"Yes?"
"Any motorcycles come through here in the last few minutes? Last few hours?"
"Motorcycles?"
"Yeah, uh… what were they again?"
"A Balkan and an MX. One looked like a racing bike, the other kind of like a police motorcycle."
One of the bikers supplied the details. The officer shrugged. A whole pack of gangsters and street racers had shown up and were addressing him with careful respect; he could hardly refuse to answer.
Still looking uncomfortable, the cop said, "I just came on shift, so I don't really know. But if it was a Balkan, I heard one of those blew up earlier over at the apartment complex up ahead. Might've been that."
"What?"
Shock rippled through the bikers. In a chicken race you could walk away from a crash more often than not. A crash during a cannonball run, though—that usually meant death. Dangers you could see, like a wall or a river, made people careful. On a road where every second brought a new hazard, the moment you saw the danger was the moment you died.
Worried for Yong-jin, the bikers swung back onto their machines. Cheon Yeong-hu stayed put, looking as if he had bitten into something foul. He didn't need to go check. The owner of that motorcycle was already dead. He had realized, dimly, that Se-geon had handled the kid himself.
A vampire hunter. A murderer who would kill civilians if he had to, yet still enjoyed the legal protection of a minor. Cheon Yeong-hu and the Sangdong-pa might have just made a terrifying enemy.
"Shit. Gives me chills."
He admitted the fear openly. Returning to his Grandeur, he told the junior behind the wheel, "We're heading back."
"Yes, sir. But what about that guy? Aren't we taking him? The big boss is already losing his mind. We took a beating ourselves. If we don't bring him in, we're looking at another thrashing."
The driver rubbed the bandages wrapping his injuries as he spoke. Cheon Yeong-hu shook his head at the sight. Jeong Sang-dong's rages were hard to endure, but the man wouldn't kill them.
"You punks can't catch him with your usual trash games. Fall back for now and report to the big boss."
With that, Cheon Yeong-hu climbed into the car. At least these bikers seemed to know who they were dealing with. That alone made the trip worthwhile.
Se-geon returned the motorcycle to the shop and walked slowly home. Home was nothing more than a single cramped room in a run-down goshiwon. The moment he stepped inside he pulled out the Tokarev and began field-stripping it. Tears fell for no reason even as he worked on the gun.
He wiped them away. If moisture got inside the already worn-out pistol, its remaining service life would only shorten further. That he could still think about something like that while sobbing made him doubt the honesty of his own tears.
"Kh… uuuugh…!"
Weeping, he cleaned the weapon. Then he crouched in the corner and buried his face between his knees. He had killed a person. Not a vampire, not a monster—just a human being. No matter how stupid, violent, or guilty that biker had been, he had still been human, and Se-geon had killed him.
The excuse about vampiric transformation had been just that—an excuse. The truth was simpler and uglier: he had been terrified that people who knew his secret would step on his tail. He had put a bullet in a man simply to shut him up.
"Ugh… khhh…!"
Se-geon clawed at his own arms. The thick flight jacket protected him from his nails. He sobbed as quietly as he could. Even at this hour plenty of people in the goshiwon were still studying. He couldn't make noise.
Clink.
A medicine bottle tumbled from his jacket. Inside the clear plastic vial were capsules of every color. Without thinking, Se-geon reached out, opened it, and shook one free. Psychedelic Moon, only VT 13. He examined the capsule, then cracked it open.
Finely refined powder lay inside. He tipped it onto the back of his hand and carefully inhaled through his nose.
Outside the window, the moon watched Se-geon take the drug.
"Ah…"
He lifted his hand and looked at it. As Psychedelic Moon entered his bloodstream a strange sensation bloomed. A sense beyond the five ordinary ones tightened around his body; the sounds of the world were sucked inward. More shocking still was the change in his vision. Even in the dead of night every object stood out with perfect clarity, and he could read their colors as well.
Yet the outlines of those objects wavered, and color bled out of them. Like ink spreading across wet paper, hues leaked free and tangled together in chaos. At the edges where one thing met another the colors muddied into thick, oily paint.
Staring in horror at the outline of his own hand, Se-geon suddenly thrust it out the window. Beyond lay a vivid blue moon.
"Is this… the mad moon?"
He murmured the words while watching moonlight dissolve along the edges of his fingers—his entire field of vision transformed into a world of oil paint.
Welcome to the world of the mad moon.
That voice rang through his mind. A voice he had heard once before was welcoming him into this deathlike realm.
Row Gibson was one of the heavy hitters even Wall Street respected. Sole heir of the vast Gibson fortune, he possessed an investment instinct every bit as sharp as his father's, and he was both a broker and a financier of the first rank.
That such a man would walk into an ordinary beer hall in a tiny East Asian country like Korea—not even a luxury establishment—was remarkable in itself.
"Hmm."
He sat alone at a table and surveyed the room. Perhaps it was because a foreigner had appeared; the staff looked visibly tense, and other patrons stole glances at him now and then.
"Wow. Sparkling!"
He exclaimed in admiration at the dry-ice draft beer a waiter was carrying past.
The idea of packing dry ice into the base of a beer mug to keep the drink cold was hardly revolutionary, yet to a man who had spent his life in hotel suites it was still a novelty. The waiter approached him.
"Um… uh… What… order?"
The young man looked as if he expected Row Gibson to devour him. Having this much trouble dealing with a foreigner—was it because Koreans were so ethnically homogeneous? Row considered the thought, then decided that calming the waiter mattered more than anthropological curiosity.
"It's all right. Just speak Korean. I understand perfectly."
The fluent reply brought visible relief to the waiter's face.
"So, what can I get you?"
"Hmm. Do you have champagne?"
"Yes."
The waiter answered at once, then immediately regretted the careless reply. The car this foreigner had driven—a 2000 Dodge Viper GTS—was already drawing stares from passersby out front. Even on the streets of Sinchon, where foreign cars were not especially rare, a sports car more expensive than most luxury homes was an uncommon sight; there might not be two of them in the entire country.
A beer hall like this was hardly going to stock champagne fit for a VIP of that caliber. Yet the customer himself seemed to hold no great expectations. He opened the menu with elegant poise and studied it carefully.
Row Gibson was handsome enough to make Hollywood leading men look ordinary. On days when he appeared on the cover of The Economist, the editor would half-jokingly lament that the magazine had been demoted to Premiere. For all that glamour, his private life was almost Puritan in its cleanliness, which only added to the air of mystery surrounding him.
"Even for champagne there's only one kind, I see. I'll take that, then."
"Ah—yes."
Perhaps because Row spoke Korean so fluently, the waiter grew even more flustered. Row paid no attention and continued satisfying his curiosity.
"Oh, and… that billiard table over there. May I have a go?"
"O-of course."
The table standing in the middle of the beer hall had not yet been touched. Row walked over, smiling broadly, and picked up a cue.
"In movies people are always playing for money in places like this. Koreans don't seem to do much of that, do they?"
Watching his theatrical manner, no one would have believed this was a man ranked among the hundred wealthiest people on the planet. It would have sounded like a particularly bad joke.
Then it happened.
"Kyaaaaaah!"
Screams rose from the street outside. Row, cue still in hand, immediately headed for the entrance. A girl lay collapsed beside the Dodge Viper he had parked at the curb. She wore clothes marked with a hospital logo and looked frail. A blond boy stood over her, examining her carefully.
"Master!"
"Bill! What's going on?"
"I don't know. This girl just came out of nowhere and collapsed…"
Hearing that, Row opened his wallet and tossed a ten-thousand-won note onto the counter. That a billionaire who moved hundreds of billions with a single finger still carried small bills was almost comical; the words that followed were even better.
"I'll come back for the drinks later. That will be all."
He dashed out of the beer hall as he spoke. The blond boy holding the girl had brilliant blue eyes so luminous they might have belonged to a doll; the stares of the crowd clearly made him uncomfortable.
"Yonsei Medical Center. Not far."
Row said it and started the Viper. A ferocious engine roar filled the street. The boy lifted the girl into the car.
"Master, is this wise? Just leave the Oriental girl with the police…"
"Everything in this world is bound by fate, Bill. And I take that very seriously. Wilhelm, you of all people should know that best—after meeting me."
Row smiled as he spoke.
"Besides, I am a romantic!"
Se-geon opened his eyes quietly. Little light reached the goshiwon room; even though the sun had not yet set, the place was gloomy.
He sat up and flipped open his phone. Ironically, the moment he opened it the battery died and the screen went black. But he had caught a glimpse of the date, and he let out a long sigh.
"Two days already?"
He forced himself upright. After two days without food the world spun, yet he felt no hunger.
An aftereffect of Psychedelic Moon, perhaps?
Before taking the drug he had wept and raged without end; now his emotions felt strangely settled. He had reached no answers, yet the feelings had simply… quieted.
Se-geon clicked his tongue. More worrying than the pain of hunger was the residual stress still lodged in his skull. He had killed someone he had always despised rather than called a friend, and even that had left him this rattled by the act of murder. Could he keep killing vampires—and humans—after this? He asked himself the question, then shook his head.
"Ah… I skipped training for two whole days."
Looking down at his gaunt hands, he turned on the water at the sink. He lacked the stamina to fight vampires and money was tight; he would have to take ordinary part-time work for a few days at least. After washing his face he took the flight jacket from its hook on the wall.
"Really not a job that pays, is it?"
Se-geon muttered the complaint under his breath.