Ashes to Ashes
Se-gun rested his chin on his knee and smiled out at the sea. The sound of the waves washed in soft and steady. Everything was over now. Everything he could do had just come to an end. All that remained was to wait like this for the sun to rise.
“Would’ve been better if it were the East Sea. I’d burn the second the sun came up. Always wanted to see the sun rise out of the ocean once.”
He’d seen it a hundred times on TV and the like, yet somehow he’d never once watched the sun climb out of the real sea. Se-gun let out a long breath. A glance at his watch, though—still only half past two in the morning. An MX-1500 could easily get him to the East Sea before sunrise.
“Decision made.”
He dusted himself off, stood, and swung a leg over the bike. Even with the vampiric change, today’s battle had pushed past the limits of a human—no, of a vampire. The moment he settled onto the seat, every ounce of accumulated exhaustion crashed down on him like a weight.
Screeeeech!
Right on cue, a sports car came tearing along the coast. It had been hammering past three hundred kilometers an hour; the driver spotted Se-gun just as he fired up the bike, cut hard sideways, and slammed into an emergency stop. The speed had been so extreme the braking distance stretched absurdly long.
“…So you came after all.”
Se-gun remembered the promise. That if he ever became a vampire, Silvester would make him a good one. That was what he had sworn.
“I thought I had nothing left undone tonight. Almost forgot the promise.”
Se-gun locked only the front brake and scrubbed the rear tire hard into the asphalt, carving a circle. Far down the road the sports car, having spotted him, came after. Looking at that coupe, Se-gun felt a sudden spark of excitement; fatigue forgotten, he opened the throttle.
“Even if we made a promise, killing me only means something if you have to catch a bastard who’s thrashing not to die!”
The words worked on him like a magic spell, pouring vitality back into his limbs. Because someone was trying to kill him, the will to live flared up! It looked like a contradiction at a glance, but for a man hunting for even the flimsiest reason to keep breathing, what a perfect excuse it was.
The problem was that the excuse in question—Silvester—was no ordinary opponent. With a few bombs left he might have stood a chance, but he’d burned every last charge thinking Sarhyuk would be the end. Six rounds left in the Beast at best; everything else was Glock and Tokarev ammo, and none of that would do a thing against Silvester.
So the only thing I can trust is the black sword?
Se-gun gritted his teeth and drove on. That prickling sensation as every hair on his body stood on end—how many times had he felt it today? How long had he kept up this life-or-death war? His body had already hit its limit. Stronger than a human frame, yes, but a vampire’s flesh still had to meet the basic conditions of a living organism. Fatigue had piled onto Se-gun’s body until it was at the breaking point.
Still—I’ll run.
He clenched his jaw and forced his blurring mind back into focus.
Silvester chased after Se-gun and opened the Barrett’s case. Kim Seong-hui stared at him in shock.
“What are you doing?”
“That willpower is enough to scare even me. If I don’t cut it short now, I can’t say what’ll happen to me either.”
As he spoke, Silvester checked the speedometer. Already past three hundred forty kilometers an hour. Being summer, insects of every kind slammed into the windshield and plastered themselves there in thick clumps. Sticking your head out the window at that speed was as good as throwing your life away. He shoved the Barrett out the window anyway—and then his whole body after it.
Clack!
“Don’t!”
Kim Seong-hui seized Silvester around the waist and yanked him back. She pulled at exactly the moment he squeezed the trigger; the shot went absurdly skyward.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“You promised. Se-gun goes to me!”
“I have no memory of agreeing to any such promise.”
Silvester said it coldly, eyes still fixed stubbornly on Se-gun. Just then Se-gun abruptly slowed the bike.
“Hm?”
At over three hundred kilometers an hour, a hard brake on a motorcycle usually means you flip. But Se-gun’s MX-1500 had such monstrous rear-brake power that it was no exaggeration to say most of its stopping force came from the back wheel. Using that astonishing braking force, he came to a dead stop and sent Silvester’s coupe shooting past him.
“Ugh!”
Silvester grabbed the wheel at once and stomped the brake. In the same motion he threw the car into a drift, scrubbing speed down to a hundred twenty and sliding the rear tires. With astonishing control he whipped the coupe through a full one-eighty doughnut right where he stood.
“Silvester could put a racer to shame, too.”
Ordinarily a spin meant you lost the car’s balance, left the course, and piled into something—that was the rule. If a drift lived on the knife-edge balance between grip and inertia, a spin was the accident zone where inertia smashed clean through grip. But with truly elite control, even a chassis deep in spin territory could still be mastered. Silvester spun the car around and came charging at Se-gun again with savage intent.
“But how about this?”
Se-gun glanced sideways, cut the handlebars, and dropped off the pavement onto the unpaved dike between the rice paddies. A low-slung sports car could never cross that kind of rough ground. Take this route and even Silvester would have no way to follow. Hayabusas and Kawasakis and the rest of the racing replicas might be all the rage with the kids these days, but the reason Se-gun had always stuck to an off-road style was precisely this—the freedom to choose any route he wanted.
Bang!
A gunshot cracked, and the MX-1500’s rear tire blew out.
Damn it. That’s Silvester for you!
Se-gun regretted it, but it was already too late. The round had hit just as the bike touched down and the tire pressure peaked; the whole machine went airborne.
Live, MX-1500!
Praying his beloved machine would stay intact, Se-gun kicked free of the bike midair and vaulted clear. At the same instant he raised the metal knuckle blaster to cover his heart.
Thud!
As expected, Silvester’s Barrett blasted the knuckle blaster clean off in a single shot. The left arm inside it was completely destroyed as well—but by some miracle the bullet’s path was deflected just enough that it missed his heart.
“Tch!”
His left arm was gone and it didn’t even hurt! Se-gun gritted his teeth, spun through the air, and landed on the road.
Crash!
His beloved MX-1500 hit the paddy embankment and, mercifully, survived. Se-gun spared it one brief glance and then sprinted for the nearest building. Thinking about it, a man who was about to die had no real stake in whether the MX-1500 was wrecked or not. He wouldn’t be riding it anymore either way.
“Damn it. Since when was I this sentimental?”
Se-gun drew the Beast and leveled it behind him. The silver-haired priest approached slowly, radiating unmistakable pressure.
Tch!
Se-gun squeezed the trigger on pure reflex. In that same instant Silvester’s figure vanished.
“Ugh!”
With monstrous reaction speed Silvester hurled himself forward and drew both the Beast and a Desert Eagle. Se-gun threw himself behind a fence standing at the junction of paved and unpaved road.
Bang!
A gunshot like a small explosion tore the fence clean away. Watching wood splinters spray up one after another, Se-gun sprinted along what remained of the fence line. Both of them were armed with Beasts; wood was no obstacle at all.
Boom!
Sure enough, a birch tree failed to withstand a Beast round and toppled. It only stopped when it caught against a two-story church building.
“Kh! A church?”
Se-gun snapped a return shot at Silvester with the Beast, dumped the cylinder empty, and dove through the church doors.
The rural church Se-gun had fled into to escape Silvester’s assault was little more than a single bare sanctuary wrapped in red-brick walls. The battered pews looked like cast-offs bought for scrap years ago, and the red carpet down the center aisle was stiff with every kind of filth kids had tracked in—ice cream, chocolate, who knew what else. On the central cross a carpenter had clearly taken some pride; the figure of Jesus Christ was surprisingly well made. Moonlight poured through a skylight in the ceiling and laid a pillar of light straight down upon that Christ.
“…Not bad.”
The words slipped out of Se-gun the moment he stepped inside. But what a cynical situation this was. A vampire taking sanctuary in a church to hide from a priest?
“Ironic.”
Se-gun threw himself beside a pew and trained the Beast on the entrance. The instant Silvester came through that door—he would fire. In a narrow, confined approach, no matter how fast and agile Silvester was, he would not be able to dodge that round!
That’s it! Dying now would just be a joke! Shoot him! And survive!
The phantoms howled in a single voice. To wound Se-gun’s soul and drag him down to ruin was their only hope—only then would they gain a new comrade. But Se-gun was not fighting Silvester because the phantoms willed it.
Pathetic. You’re all pathetic. If I’d been some other weakling you’d have eaten my soul already, wouldn’t you? Trash. And now that things aren’t going your way, you bark and try to move me however you please.
Se-gun sneered at the phantoms. If fighting vampires until now had been his own will, then fighting Silvester now was his will as well. Finishing a life proven through struggle with one last struggle wasn’t such a bad way to go.
Then the door opened and a priest’s shadow stepped in.
BOOM!
Se-gun squeezed the Beast’s trigger on pure reflex. Silvester would never fall for such an obvious ambush! That was the thought behind the shot—so what the hell was this? The shadow took the hit full on and its head blew clean off!
“Ah—!”
Se-gun shot to his feet in shock. This was a surprise attack, sure, but it was also the absolute basics Deok-yeon had drilled into him! There was no way a Jinma hunter would simply stand there and eat a shot like that!
“Fool!”
But the shadow vanished exactly like what it was—a shadow. Se-gun felt the phantoms’ warning and flinched, but the stained-glass window was already shattering as Silvester came through it.
“Kh!”
Se-gun drew the black sword and caught Silvester’s strike. Argent Harpesion! The silver saber clashed against the black blade. Before, Silvester’s raw power had driven him back—but the Se-gun of now was different. Fully transformed into a vampire, his body answered with force equal to Silvester’s and held the blow.
“You’ve improved considerably, Han Se-gun!”
Silvester shouted it as he pressed the attack, then carved upward in a reverse rising cut. Se-gun flipped the black sword and caught the blow on the pommel. Silvester only raised the pressure, stepping in and yanking the saber upward as if drawing it free.
“Ah!”
In that instant the black sword tore free of Se-gun’s grip and sailed toward the church ceiling. Silvester’s weapon was a far lighter silver blade than the black sword—yet it was Se-gun’s sword that went flying.
“Go!”
Without a flicker of hesitation Silvester drove the saber straight at Se-gun’s heart. In desperation Se-gun blocked with his bare hand, only to have the blade punch through his palm and carry him with it, impaling him against the wooden Christ. The crucifix toppled backward; Se-gun went with it, ending up on his back under the pillar of moonlight, staring up at the moon.
“Guh—!”
Perhaps because the Psychedelic Moon was wearing off, sensation was flooding back; Se-gun screamed. Silvester planted a boot on his chest and looked down at him with the moonlight at his back. He drove Argent Harpesion through Se-gun’s hand, flung wire, and bound him completely to the wooden cross. Only after stripping him of every last scrap of freedom did he draw a silver dagger from inside his coat and set it against Se-gun’s throat.
“….”
In the dark sanctuary of the night church, at the heart of the moonlight pillar, Se-gun and Silvester faced each other like that. The cold edge of the blade promised to open his throat at any second, yet Silvester only looked down at him in silence. Se-gun looked up as well, but the moonlight was so blinding that he could make out nothing but a faint silhouette.
“…Cry.”
That was what Silvester said.
“Cry. Tears will prove your purity!”
“Ah…”
“Cry!”
The voice that had begun low and level filled with raw emotion; the boot grinding into Se-gun’s chest bore down with crushing force until his ribs screamed. But Se-gun shook his head.
“…No.”
“What?”
“Haa… haa… No vampire… is going to cry just to beg for his life.”
Se-gun closed his mouth. Now that he had become the very thing he had so hated, with death right in front of him, every emotion imaginable bloomed at once. But he was not afraid of dying. Neither did he think of death as liberation.
Even if he lived and went back, the only place waiting for him was a cheap room with Chae-wol’s painting on the wall—living alone with the memories of his human days would be pain. But because it was pain and happiness both, because to dig through old memories and lick the wounds in his chest was both suffering and joy, death was not something to fear, and it was not freedom either. That was why he could say this to the blade resting against his throat:
“…Kill me, Silvester. You promised. You promised you’d kill me.”
“Of course. It’s nothing to boast of, but I have never broken a promise.”
Silvester said it—yet he did not bring the knife down. Astonishingly, he found himself reluctant to kill this boy. Reluctant? Had he ever once felt reluctance when killing someone?
But thinking about it, this boy was… something Silvester himself had made. Knowing full well this ending would come, he had invited Se-gun into the world of the mad moon, and that invitation had finally run to catastrophe and destroyed him. Of course Se-gun had agreed to it himself; every choice, in the end, had been Se-gun’s own. No one had ordered him to hate vampires this deeply.
“This bastard!”
Silvester laughed. Who was it who’d said it? Some playwright had claimed that human beings could not be extreme. And so? People called humans half-hearted, middling creatures… If that was the case, then live half-heartedly and drop dead!
If you were going to kill someone with a half-hearted heart, kill yourself first! To harm another without going to the extreme was the ultimate mockery of fate. Do not destroy others without offering yourself as sacrifice!
In that sense, Se-gun—driven to the extreme—was the purest and most correct form a vampire-slayer could take.
Whether he had gone to the extreme because he hated vampires, or had hated vampires in order to go to the extreme—the order of cause and effect no longer mattered. Would a man like that shed tears to stay alive once he himself became a vampire?
Never. He hated vampires too much, and hated himself too much; he would die gladly.
Silvester intoned the funeral rite as he set the knife against Se-gun’s chest. That was when Se-gun smiled.
“Ending like this… isn’t so bad either.”
“…!”
In that instant Silvester froze, knife halted mid-motion. Se-gun was… crying. Right now, without any doubt, tears were running down his face.
“This—!”
Silvester flung the knife to the floor and hauled Se-gun upright. A vampire who cried, after all this time!? He had hunted for one for so long without ever finding a single example—and now one was right in front of him. Silvester could hardly believe it.
“Silvester?”
Se-gun saw the sudden change in Silvester’s expression and only then looked frightened. But Silvester quietly seized a fistful of Se-gun’s hair and licked his eye with his tongue.
“….”
In the moon-drenched night, framed by Silvester’s silver hair, Se-gun could not move; he could only endure whatever Silvester did. His hands were pinned by Argent Harpesion, his arms bound tight in wire. All he could do was watch Silvester taste his tears.
Silvester closed his eyes a moment as if judging the flavor, then set Se-gun back on the floor and stood.
“No. Just residue left in the tear ducts, is it?”
Silvester looked toward Kim Seong-hui, who had been sitting at the church entrance watching the whole scene. Only then did Se-gun realize she had come inside, and he startled.
“…D-Did you see that?”
“Mm. Quite the show.”
“….”
In that moment Se-gun’s face flushed a red so deep it could hardly get any redder. Strictly speaking, Silvester’s search for a crying vampire was nothing new, and what he’d just done had been a pure act of appraisal with no ulterior motive—but Se-gun couldn’t help being mortified.
“Silvester. Hand Han Se-gun over to me.”
“But a vampire is a vampire. There is no way to turn a vampire back into a human.”
Silvester’s voice was absolute. Kim Seong-hui, however, set a finger to her cheek and smiled with a cuteness that didn’t match her age.
“Are you so certain there isn’t? And either way, Se-gun cried. Didn’t you swear you would never kill a vampire who shed tears?”
She weighed the two vows Silvester had made against each other and slid a clever blade of rhetoric between them. Silvester’s eyes widened.
“Wait. You can’t mean… you’re going to transplant that.”
“And why not?”
As she spoke, Kim Seong-hui dragged over the travel trunk she had left at the church door. Silvester looked at it and sighed.
“Even though that sure method exists, we still say there is no way to turn a vampire human—because not a single person who underwent the procedure has survived. It’s a gamble with no odds.”
“But as a sample, isn’t Se-gun rather exceptional? He’s eliminated three Jinma—Zein, Juyda, and the Messiah.”
She said it while looking at Se-gun, who still had no idea what any of this meant. Pinned to the cross, Se-gun’s gaze flicked back and forth between the two of them.
“I—I don’t understand. What exactly are you planning to do to me? Weren’t you going to kill me?”
“Well. If Se-gun truly wants to die, I suppose we could grant that wish—but I don’t think that’s it. There is one method for saving a human who’s become a vampire… Want to try guessing what it is?”
“….”
Se-gun clenched his teeth. Judging by Kim Seong-hui and Silvester’s manner, such a method clearly existed—but if it did, why hadn’t they used it long ago? Begging for his life now, for no good reason, would be a denial of everything he had been until this moment.
“What the hell are you talking about!”
“Se-gun, death solves nothing. And that hard drive you stole—when you factor in the time it’ll take to recover and decrypt the data, someone has to keep the decryption computers safe from the vampires until then. A man takes responsibility for what he’s done, all the way to the end.”
As she spoke, Kim Seong-hui poked and pressed at the cheeks of the Se-gun still collapsed against the cross. To him the words made no sense. Was she telling him to keep fighting vampires while he was one himself? That would be pure ruin! Everything he had fought for—standing against the entire species of vampires—would be wiped out. And above all, what about the destroyer of vampires himself, Silvester?
“You’re not going to keep your promise?!”
Se-gun glared at Silvester with naked resentment. But Silvester answered in a voice of ice.
“Is that so. A loathsome vampire. Why should I go out of my way to cut the life-string of a man who is begging me to kill him? If you want that cheap life ended, do it with your own hands. You know perfectly well the promise was never about cutting the throat of someone who wants to die.”
Those words snapped the last thread of Se-gun’s reason. He thrashed without caring that the wire was tearing his arms.
“What kind of sophistry is that! I’m not joking! You’re telling me to live on in this body now?! I—I cried? You’re just spouting nonsense that doesn’t mean a damn thing! And at the end you’re going to leave me alone as a vampire?! I wouldn’t do that! If it’s a vampire, every last one! Even if it’s a friend! Even if it’s a wife! Even if it’s a child! Even if it’s family! I’d kill them all! That’s right! Even if it were me! Whether I cry or not, a vampire is a vampire! I refuse to accept that entire existence! The world of the mad moon! I’ll end that world with my own hands!”
“My, my. You could forgive yourself a little, and yet you’re still so strict, Se-gun. But do you know something?”
Kim Seong-hui kept smiling as if thoroughly entertained and drew something like a metal needle from the trunk. It wasn’t long, but it was broad, with a few small needles along its surface.
“…This is a forced-circulation device that continuously injects the stabilizer that is the root of Psychedelic Moon for a set period of time. In principle it stabilizes vampire blood and manufactures Psychedelic Moon in its place—but because there’s no outlet, the Psychedelic Moon just keeps circulating inside the vessels. In other words, you live permanently high on the drug.”
“…!”
“But in exchange, even in a body that’s already finished mutating, it completely removes the vampire factor—so you become a human who is not a vampire. Not so bad, when you put it that way. Of course, no one has ever survived a Psychedelic Moon seizure so far, but I’m betting on Se-gun’s willpower. Understood?”
“What? What did you say?”
Se-gun was stunned. So he would have his VT carved down until he returned to being human—except pure Psychedelic Moon would be generating constantly in his bloodstream? That was nothing a normal human would do. But he would no longer be a vampire. He wouldn’t be fully human either, of course—yet for Se-gun, simply not being a vampire carried enormous weight. And the words of Father Silvester, standing in the doorway with his arms stubbornly crossed, were colder still.
“The loser has no right to choose. Han Se-gun’s life is yours. Carry out the sentence.”
“Ah. Quite right. We were the victors, weren’t we. Now then, Mister Loser—try not to thrash about, would you? This is a rather important procedure.”
Kim Seong-hui nodded at Silvester’s sulky pronouncement and drove the metal tube into Se-gun’s spinal cord. It was something that should have been inserted through proper surgery, but she planted the devices into his body with her bare hands as lightly as if she were setting acupuncture needles.