The Pilgrim Meets Her God
As twilight settled over the city, the streets finally stirred to life. Streetlamps and neon signs flickered on one after another, as if the city itself were opening its eyes.
"Aaaah. I'm bored to death. Isn't there anything fun going on?"
A handful of young men and women lounged beside a motorcycle parked at the curb, murmuring as they watched the city wake. People freed from the day's work streamed past in a busy current—something utterly strange to those who lived in stopped time. Where were they all hurrying off to with such purpose?
Jin Yu-mi, a school dropout who had never held a job and drifted through each day without meaning, watched them go. Of course they were heading home after work. Or maybe to drink, or meet friends, or lovers. Either way, it barely mattered to her. The entire street held no reality for her at all.
It felt like being locked in a room and forced to watch TV commercials forever.
Zapping. Zapping. Zapping…
In that endless channel-surfing, the only reality that existed for her was Kurt Cobain.
She could call herself a pilgrim toward that single truth. These streets of Seoul were the wilderness where she wandered in search of her god, the road leading to the holy land.
All day she hummed songs in English she didn't understand, the way a believer sings hymns of praise, and worshipped the boyishly pure Kurt Cobain who had died too young. That was the whole of her life. Yet today, somehow, she felt something good might happen.
"Huh?"
Just then a young man cutting through the crowd caught her eye. Exhausted eyes, the look of a wounded beast, a gaze that seemed to claw across the vast city—he looked no older than she was.
The autumn air wasn't cold enough to justify it, yet he buried himself in an aviator jacket, his hair a peculiar green bleach job.
"Oh my. He looks just like him."
Like Kurt Cobain, she meant? She muttered the words without quite knowing why, and kept watching the young man weave through the throng.
"Hey. Yu-mi! Jin Yu-mi!"
A voice called her name. She turned from the little no-parking barricade on the sidewalk. There stood the girls she lived with—friends so close they might as well have been family.
"Yeah?"
"Listen, we're kinda short on cash these days. Seong-min says if you're okay with it, we can crash at his place."
Her friend Kim Jeong-suk was nothing like her demure name; she was the unofficial leader of their little non-circle.
"Will he feed us?"
Yu-mi asked the question while still tracking the young man. With a tired face he was gathering free classified papers from the rack in front of the station.
Looking for work? The whole country was in a recession, so she understood—but that worn-down look was one of those rare "realities" that still managed to reach her, and she didn't like it. Almost without thinking she stood and walked toward him.
"Um…"
"Yeah?"
The young man looked up from the papers. He half-hid them with his body in a shy little gesture that somehow touched her. Maybe it was the holes that butane gas and paint thinner had burned through her brain, making normal thought impossible. She stammered.
"D-do people ever tell you… you look like Kurt Cobain?"
"Huh?"
He seemed genuinely surprised, eyes widening. The girl in front of him looked every bit the party girl—plastered in designer labels, heavy makeup. She'd spent money, but clearly didn't take care of herself: the classic runaway-teen look.
I've heard "You into the Tao?" plenty of times, but this is a first.
He stood there blankly. Then a man came up behind him—some guy who had unilaterally decided he was Yu-mi's boyfriend. She didn't even know his name. Just one of the countless men who groped her body like dough whenever the glue and thinner left her floating.
"Yu-mi. I've been calling you. You deaf or what? Huh? Answer properly! Who the fuck is this punk?"
"…"
The young man turned without a word. It wasn't the look of someone scared and ready to run; it was pure contempt. The man swung a fist without warning.
"You little shit, I'm talking to you—"
Thud!
What followed was pure lightning. The young man spun and drove a back-spin elbow into the man's jaw, shattering it. The move was so clean that even those standing close never truly saw it.
That speed told them everything: the turn itself had been a trap meant to draw the attack. Nothing else explained reacting so fast to someone lunging from behind.
"Gyaaaah!"
The man collapsed in the middle of the main road, screaming. The young man merely shrugged.
"Sorry. Might be cracked."
"You fucking bastard! You looking to die?"
The rest of the men weren't cowed. The girls watched with the weary resignation of people who had seen this a hundred times. And the green-bleached youth…
"Come on, you son of a bitch. I'm gonna kill you!"
Afraid he might run, they ringed him and herded him off the main road. The young man surveyed the area with a cool expression. Front of a subway station, evening rush—plenty of people, yet not one glance turned their way. No one was going to jump into a fire, after all.
"Police would be a pain."
He muttered it and patted his coat. Thankfully he'd left the gun behind, but he still carried a little product. Not yet legally classified as a psychotropic, but if things went sideways there would be no covering it up.
Meanwhile the men led the way into a back alley. Garbage bags from the shops formed mountains; unidentifiable liquid leaked from them, rotting and reeking. The young man glanced at the ground and grimaced.
"You little shit. Looking to die? I'll fucking kill you!"
One of them charged and kicked. The young man twisted, caught the foot lightly in both hands, and snapped it outward.
Crunch!
An indescribable wet sound followed as the knee ligaments tore and the leg broke. A injury that severe might leave him limping for life. The other men stared, stunned. The youth who moments earlier had been dragged along silent as a cow to slaughter had, in the blink of an eye, become the butcher himself.
"You pieces of shit think you can kill someone?"
His low voice held a volcano about to erupt. Or maybe it already had. His eyes glittered with venom; veins stood out along his forearms. Madness… rage burst out of him like a geyser, wrapping him whole.
Whether the rage was aimed at these pathetic men or at himself—almost certainly the latter—he was lost in it.
"Fuck! Wreck him!"
They sensed things going wrong yet still rushed him. Four of them, one of him, and they all had knives. The odds looked good—if the opponent had been anything resembling human.
Crack!
But the young man was a monster. A straight punch driven with the middle-knuckle joint smashed into an eyeball and buried it deep in the socket. The one reaching into his pocket for a knife took a heavy hiking boot square on the thigh above the pocket.
Fingers jammed into the pocket snapped; the man crumpled forward and drove his head into the garbage heap.
"You sons of bitches!"
The young man was roaring. Unable to contain the flood of feeling? Another man went down with the wet crack of breaking bone. He stomped the writhing face with brutal force. Front teeth shattered; blood spread a dark-red film across the garbage juice.
"F-fuck!"
One terrified man slashed a knife into the young man's back. The thick aviator jacket and the motion of the fight blunted most of the damage, yet the tip still bit flesh.
The next instant the young man snapped the man's arm, ripped the knife free, and drove it through the cheek. The cheap butterfly knife tore through one side of the face, crossed the mouth, and punched out the other cheek.
Thwack!
Still not finished, he seized the man's head, leapt, and drove a perfect flying knee into him.
A jumping knee strike—called the vacuum knee or khao loi—the kind of technique that regularly flattens heavyweight boxers. Using it on a man who already had a blade through his mouth was the same as telling him to die.
"You… bastards. Kill me! You said you'd kill me, right? Kill me! Kill me! Try killing a person, you pieces of shit!"
He stomped the fallen and screamed it. Anyone who tried to rise caught a merciless kick to the gut; anyone already down got crushed underfoot. The beating was savage enough that death would not have been surprising.
"Ah!"
The girls, drifting into the alley to stop the men, froze at the choking spectacle of violence. Blood formed a sea; every man lay broken on the ground. And the one raining blows down on them radiated a bizarre passion, hair flying like a rock singer mid-scream.
The smothering scent of destruction mixed with garbage stench and the copper of blood into a perfume of pure evil.
"Ahh…"
Then the young man staggered and pitched forward. Like a traveler finally reaching a bed after a long journey, he collapsed into the garbage heap and lay there bleeding.
"Ah!"
Even a brain riddled with holes from thinner, glue, and butane gas felt this moment with crystal clarity. Yu-mi marveled at the vivid sensation—the first real thing she had ever experienced. Reality that had suddenly erupted from the endless flow of ordinary days.
Ah. The pilgrim of Seoul had finally met her god.
The end of endless exile.
Even if that god was only a young man collapsed in a trash heap, it was truly, completely real.
Only a year ago Yoon Mi-hye had been an ordinary student at H Girls' High School. Then she had been caught up in the notorious assault-incitement case that rocked the country and spent the year in a hospital bed.
"There doesn't seem to be anything physically wrong with her."
At Yonsei Medical Center, head nurse Kim Suk-ja looked at the foreign man standing before her, head held high as he delivered his opinion.
This man was the one who had brought the girl, Yoon Mi-hye, to safety. He fretted over her health far more than any mere savior had a right to.
"We'll handle it ourselves. Visiting hours are over and the patients need rest. If you don't leave I'll call the police!"
She answered firmly. He raised both hands.
"This is ridiculous. I'm doing this out of goodwill. Row Gibson has taken an interest in her."
Even that failed to move the head nurse. Paradoxically, even a man who ranked among the world's hundred richest couldn't improve Korea's medical services by sheer force of will.
"If you want some token of gratitude from her family… leave a contact number."
"Eh?!"
While Row stood speechless at the sheer absurdity, the head nurse spun on her heel hard enough to raise a chill breeze.
"Hmm. Is she the president's daughter or something? Then a millionaire master might actually get a 'proper' thank-you."
The boy named Wilhelm needled the head nurse's words. Row shrugged at the remark.
"I didn't do it for a reward."
"Just leave the yellow girl to live or die on her own. Master doesn't need to worry about her."
"Didn't I tell you I'm a romantic?"
Row said it, but Bill only lifted his laptop bag in reply.
"Escape from work and there's no room left for romance. If you really want romance, finish every last job first and then show up with a bouquet."
"That's a good idea too."
Row answered, sweating. Wilhelm stuck out his tongue, sulking.
"I never knew you had a taste for yellow girls. Master needs to choose women of higher birth and refinement."
"What exactly do you take me for, huh?"
Row said it and climbed into the Viper.
Millionaires carry one great social duty—far more important than welfare projects or environmental causes. It is the duty of "looking busy."
Countless people want to believe that the rich are somehow frantic, plagued by family problems, and never truly happy. Answering that belief is the obligation of those who monopolize the world's wealth.
"Marx must be weeping in his grave."
Having finished every review, Row lifted an empty crystal glass. Wilhelm refilled it with champagne.
Row had already spent roughly ten million dollars acquiring companies. Buying up shares in public corporations and solid firms, securing majority stakes. People called it aggressive M&A, but with enough capital it was child's play.
Scooping up companies with overflowing ammunition was something Row had repeated countless times. Even a fortune of ten million dollars swinging back and forth in a single day required neither time nor effort.
Wilhelm spoke quietly to his master.
"Master. There's a little footage of Silvester recorded. Would you like to see it?"
"It's just low-quality security video anyway."
Row Gibson brought the champagne to his lips. Wilhelm shrugged, tape in hand. From the royal suite of the Lotte Hotel, Row drank champagne while gazing down at the night view.
"So you won't watch?"
"No… I should. Better take a look."
He spoke like a mischievous kid faced with overdue summer homework and held out his hand. The boy placed the tape in it; Row simply tossed it into the VCR. The throw was hard enough to worry about the machine, yet the tape slid home with perfect smoothness.
Soon the wall-mounted PDP in the living room flickered to life.
Zzzzzzt.
Silent security footage, so noise stood in for sound. In the grainy image a black-clad priest walked toward a warehouse in the distance. Row Gibson leaned back on the sofa and murmured.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…"
He recited the requiem. At the same moment the priest on screen slowly raised a claymore. The vampire kneeling before him had already lost both arms and most of its fighting strength. What remained was pure slaughter—artful massacre performed by a beautiful silver-haired demon.
Time flowed and the world changed, yet this situation never did. Too monotonous for a sitcom, yet steeped in tragic grandeur all the same.
"Begging for your life? You who fill your veins with other people's blood dare claim to be a living creature?"
As if dubbing a voice actor, Row shouted the lines the priest on screen would speak. He wasn't even looking at the screen, and the priest's mouth was never visible. Yet if the video bathing the living room in blue light was a silent film, then Row was its narrator—an outstanding one, a true voice actor.
"Then cry. Cry and prove your innocence, you slut!"
Of course vampires do not cry. Whether their tear ducts have atrophied or every emotion that could produce tears has long since vanished, they cannot weep.
It belongs with the woman's beard of old fairy tales.
To bind the monstrous wolf Fenrir, the dwarves forged an unbreakable cord: Gleipnir, made from the sound of a cat's footfall, a woman's beard, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird.
Those six materials simply meant things the ancients found hardest to obtain. Myth is only myth. Yet a vampire's tears, too, were a mythic impossibility.
"That is your limit, slut."
Slut, or vamp… the flavor differs, but the meaning is the same. That is why Silvester calls vampires whores.
On the screen the butchery unfolded. Limited by security-camera quality, the bloodbath Silvester painted never rose above the crude special effects of old films. Blade flashes stretched long; elegant swordsmanship writhed like World War II newsreel footage.
Yet the blood that dyed the screen was his destiny.
Father Silvester's destiny—and soon Row's own.
One of the twenty-four Jinma, Row Gibson watched the footage end with the camera's destruction and lifted his empty glass. Silvester's Desert Eagle A.E. had smashed the lens with sniper precision.
"Same as ever. A poet whose repertoire never changes is disqualified, Silvester."
Row Gibson murmured it. Wilhelm stood like a shadow at his side and quietly refilled the champagne. Inside the well-soundproofed suite, only the soft pour of champagne filled the air.