One Wolf, Too Many Hunters
In the multi-family rental housing for the low-income known as the beehive, every stripe of humanity could be found.
Even among them, Seo Rin stood alone. A Slavic-Mongol mix was hardly remarkable from an anthropological standpoint—but transplant that mix into Korea, and the story changed. On top of that, Seo Rin carried a secret he could never speak aloud: he was a werewolf. At that point it stopped being a matter of colorful human types and edged into X-Files territory.
And now the hunters had come for him. After yesterday’s life-or-death struggle near Yongsan Station, Seo Rin sat slumped in his room, sighing without end.
It was four in the morning. School was only a few hours away, yet the thought of stepping outside filled him with dread. So he stared at the body armor and submachine gun laid out before him and sighed again.
“There’s no way this fits under a school uniform.”
The racing-suit-style ballistic vest was never meant to be worn under clothes, and the submachine gun was no better. Of course, this particular weapon was the TEC-9—infamous among students, the same cheap, reliable piece that had become notorious after Columbine and had already been a social problem long before that.
Survival demanded he put on the armor and take the gun. But if he did, he would no longer be an ordinary Korean high-school student. As Se-gun would put it, he would have set foot in the night world for good.
Then again, I was born into that world to begin with.
Seo Rin exhaled until the floorboards seemed ready to give way under the weight of his birthright. Sighing solved nothing. By process of elimination the gun and vest were useless. Walking into school with a firearm and getting caught in a bag check would make him front-page news; expulsion and juvenile detention would be the best he could hope for. In that case there was no more room for hesitation.
“This is no time to sit around.”
Hunger finally drove him to his feet. The wounds from yesterday’s fight had once left him so ravenous he had almost wanted to fall upon a human being. That unnatural hunger had receded with time, yet his body still screamed for massive amounts of fuel.
Unlike Se-gun, Seo Rin did not have to force down absurd quantities every day—but after losing large volumes of blood and taking serious damage, he needed the same heavy nutritional intake. So he bought rice and cooked a curry loaded with vegetables.
Using a laundry cauldron, he produced enough curry to feed an ordinary person for a week. He had already polished off half of it the day before.
“Might as well pack a lunch.”
He opened a lunchbox and heaped it with cold rice and leftover curry. Living alone forced every meal to be as simple as possible. Still, curry counted as a feast. Compared with most students scraping by on their own, his table looked downright luxurious.
“Time to head out. I’ve fallen way behind on studying.”
Lately too many things had been rattling him; the certification prep had stalled. He decided to arrive early for once and hit the books, then shoved the door open and stepped outside.
“…Finally out, huh?”
Parked in front of Seo Rin’s place was a motorcycle. Se-gun sat astride it, methodically working his way through a sandwich. He forced the last bite down and looked up.
“Looked like you were doing a lot of thinking.”
He pointed to the earphone in his ear. The moment Seo Rin saw it, he bristled. The bastard was still wiretapping his apartment—even knowing the owner was aware of it.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“You tangled with some idiot yesterday, didn’t you?”
Se-gun said it with shameless nonchalance, already fully informed. Seo Rin wanted to snap at him, but the memory of the fight sealed his mouth.
Right now the only people he could even half rely on were Se-gun and Maria. Asking Maria for help would only get Han Se-gun attacking her. Come to think of it—was Maria even all right? Seo Rin pictured the doll-like vampire girl with her radiant blond hair and shot Se-gun a sidelong glare.
“You knew and just sat on it?”
“I don’t follow you around twenty-four seven. I only found out after I played back the recording.”
Han Se-gun pulled out his MP3 phone. The handset accepted external memory cards, and Se-gun had jailbroken the firmware for high-speed playback. With it he sifted through audio captured by listening devices planted near Seo Rin’s building and all over Seoul.
In his other ear sat a specialized module that let him monitor police radio. Walking around looking like a full-blown intelligence officer—what would this man have become if he hadn’t turned vampire hunter? Seo Rin entertained the thought as he brushed past him.
“Well, that’s a relief, then. Either way, move. I have to get to school and study.”
“Study, huh… Don’t tell me it’s that real-estate broker exam.”
Se-gun eyed the workbook in Seo Rin’s hand with pure incredulity. The look said you don’t stand a chance, and Seo Rin bristled again.
Because he attended a vocational school, people always gave him those same sour looks whenever he cracked open a certification book. Other kids’ envy was just childish nonsense, but Se-gun’s skepticism cut differently.
Han Se-gun was probably sneering, A lycanthrope trying to live like a human? The thought alone made Seo Rin’s blood boil.
“Yes, of course. I’m going to make a mountain of money and support my family. In Korea, how else do you do that except real estate?”
“Then you don’t need the license.”
Se-gun shook his head slowly.
“What? Why not?”
“After the IMF crisis the number of real-estate agencies exploded. Individual offices are barely scraping by. Study the books if you want to learn how to invest—but ditch the idea of making money off the certificate itself. It’s the same as trying to get rich with a Word Level 2 cert.”
“That’s not—”
“And without seed money you can’t buy land anyway. You know that, Seo Rin.”
The words left Seo Rin speechless. It was true. Had everything he had studied until now been completely worthless?
“Maybe so. Then what is someone with no money and no connections supposed to do to turn their life around?”
“Lottery. Or the bar exam.”
Se-gun’s answer was so blunt and simple that Seo Rin almost sat down on the spot.
“You’re joking, right?”
Seo Rin retied a loose shoelace and glared. Se-gun looked elsewhere.
“Not joking. If that doesn’t appeal, the civil-service exam or the foreign-service exam would be better. These days even lawyers can’t find clients; the money’s drying up.”
“….”
“Demand for judicial scriveners keeps climbing, though. What’s with the face?”
“You’re surprisingly well-informed. Did you pay attention to that stuff when you were a student?”
Come to think of it, Se-gun must have had school days too. Only then did Seo Rin realize how little age separated them. At first glance Se-gun looked early twenties at most, yet once you talked with him the impression evaporated.
How many trials had he endured to make a man barely past twenty feel so much older? They weren’t far apart in years; if things were different they might even have joked around as hyung and dongsaeng…
As if.
The man was a legendary bomb-maker who had openly declared he would kill Seo Rin—a vampire hunter. There was no chance of friendship. He was only sticking close because Seo Rin made useful bait.
While Seo Rin thought that, Han Se-gun answered the question.
“I was… a delinquent. At least I never made model student.”
He had spent his days clinging to motorcycles and bicycles chasing a motocross career; model student was never in the cards.
Se-gun let the school memories surface for the first time in ages, then snapped back to himself. Since entering the night world he had never once looked backward. Yet Seo Rin’s limp question had dragged every memory up again. He eyed Seo Rin warily and put distance between them. Sensing the discomfort, Seo Rin pressed closer, seizing the opening.
“Hmm. Academic track? Or vocational?”
“Academic.”
“Please. Academic-track delinquents don’t even count as real delinquents.”
Seo Rin snorted. Han Se-gun scratched his cheek. Trying to argue that academic kids could be just as bad was the kind of stupid contest only idiots entered—boasting over who was the bigger loser. Knowing that, Se-gun kept quiet.
They stopped at a traffic light. Talking as they walked, they had somehow reached the intersection in front of the school block. Class was still a long way off; not even a rat’s shadow stirred nearby. Se-gun and Seo Rin stood by the light, Se-gun pushing the dead motorcycle along, and kept talking.
“Anyway. You’re really just going to stroll into school like nothing’s wrong?”
“Of course I am. What, you think I shouldn’t?”
“If you don’t have any personal enemies there, why not drop out before something big happens?”
Se-gun pushed the idea of quitting as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He himself had been pulled into the night world while still in high school. After losing his entire family he had become a living embodiment of hatred, thrown himself into that world, and fought vampires while clinging to that sacred resolve. Naturally he had dropped out.
Yet Seo Rin had the gall to keep attending school as if he were still human. Another attack would put every student there in danger.
“Huh? Why? Drop out? You’re telling me to quit?”
Seo Rin shook his head without a care. He had no intention of leaving. Hardly surprising. Se-gun was already a seasoned veteran of the mad-moon world—used to ambushes, assaults, hostage situations. Seo Rin, after only one attack, still could not imagine what the enemy was capable of.
“Your friends won’t make it out in one piece. You must really have it in for the whole school.”
“It’s not like that… Even if they’re lunatics, the school is right here in Seoul, capital of a country under the rule of law. Can they really hit a place like that in broad daylight? Vampires can’t come out under the sun, so I’d only have to watch for lycanthropes and mages—and they won’t want to show their faces on the news either.”
“…A shame Sarhyuk is already dead. I’d have loved to introduce the two of you.”
Han Se-gun muttered the name of someone Seo Rin had never heard of and gave up trying to persuade him.
“Do whatever you want. I’ll just hope the enemy stays away in daylight, like you said. Later.”
Han Se-gun made no effort to hide his irritation. He kicked the motorcycle to life; the engine roared, and he vanished into the distance.
Seo Rin watched him go, then looked down at the thick workbook he had been so eager to study only minutes earlier. After Se-gun’s words the book felt nothing but heavy and resentful.
“So everything I’ve done so far was a complete waste of time?”
Giovanni sat in the chair prepared for him inside the sealed room, a cigar clenched between his teeth, eyes closed. The Ritz-Carlton suite he had chosen as lodgings was pitiful compared with the mansion he had left behind. Yet Giovanni could endure it with magnanimous patience. The mere fact that a perfect blackout room could be created meant the suite had already done its job.
“Boring.”
This optimistic South-American vampire had been born through the vampire-regeneration project planned by the vampire overlord Tetra Anax; in the dark he was called a Successor. Yet his name in the light outshone anything the night offered. Giovanni Vantero—genius businessman, drug lord of Colombia and Peru who had driven out the CIA and built a powerful plantation empire. He loved the title he had seized with his own hands far more than the empty label of Successor.
“Aaaah, this is truly dull. Taking the ship was a mistake. In the movies, passenger liners mean beautiful women, swimming under warm sunlight, cocktails… I wanted that too.”
As if he had forgotten he was a vampire, Giovanni grumbled. His attendants stood with hands clasped behind their backs, faces blank. Two pale men in suits, hair tied back, faces nearly identical.
They had once been the famous hitmen known as the Bernardo brothers. Working under the plantation owner Kona Daston, the cold-blooded pair had earned the nickname Vampire Twins. Giovanni had liked the moniker enough to make them his personal attendants. Because they still needed to move under the sun he had not turned them, but he had used his secret arts to strengthen them and bind them to his will.
Even so, the Bernardo brothers were in far better shape than most. The day Giovanni stormed Kona Daston’s plantation, Daston and his one hundred sixty private soldiers had all died with every drop of blood drained from their bodies.
The brothers regarded their master with empty eyes, then spoke in slow unison.
“If that is what Master desires, we can arrange sunbathing this very moment, Don.”
“We will also secure beautiful women.”
“Enough. Honestly, you two… no sense of humor. And I told you not to call me Don. I’m not Italian mafia.”
Don was not exclusively a mafia title, but Giovanni forbade its use. Perhaps he simply hated the bland anonymity of “Don Giovanni.”
He warned the Bernardo brothers once more, then chewed his cigar in restless irritation. At that moment the door to the sealed room opened and humans entered, setting wooden crates of weapons before him.
“Excellent, excellent. This should be more than enough firepower. This hunt is going to be fun.”
Giovanni chuckled as he inspected the arms. A drug lord personally coming after one Korean high-school student was already ridiculous; the boss taking up a gun himself was worse. The Bernardo brothers shook their heads. Their leader carried terrifying titles—drug king, vampire—yet behaved exactly like a child.
“Do not ignore orders from above, Don. There appears to be an extremely dangerous hunter in Korea.”
“Ah, that disciple of Silvester? Hmm… Why should the next-generation Jinma and future king fear a nobody like that?”
Giovanni spoke with absolute confidence. How a man with that attitude had ever annihilated the CIA’s South American branch and carved out the Colombia-Panama golden drug route remained a mystery.
“Still, we should observe for now. At this rate the mages and Esprit will reach him first. That will be the perfect chance to gauge the hunter’s true skill.”
“And if they snatch the prey?”
“Then it becomes a rational opportunity to take Argon’s blood, does it not?”
The Bernardo brothers spoke the taboo with perfect calm. A lower-ranked vampire of a different bloodline seizing a Jinma’s blood was forbidden in vampire society—yet it was also the thing everyone secretly longed for.
Very few ever enjoyed such fortune. To revel in the taboo one first had to escape Tetra Anax’s control, and that meant standing naked before the savagery of human civilization.
Yet here was Giovanni, Tetra Anax’s own hitman, joking about it with his men—and the joke carried too much weight to remain a joke.
“True enough. Mages and Esprit… So Jinma Argon himself is coming? One wolf, and far too many hunters.”
Esprit—the liberal faction of vampires who neither supported nor opposed Tetra Anax—was led by a powerful Jinma called Argon. Whether the man had been infected by long-outdated hippie ideals or had invented them himself, he had thoroughly sown that free-spirited philosophy among vampires.
Given how many vampires lived for centuries, it was only natural that some preferred Esprit’s liberalism to Tetra Anax’s iron-fisted rule and rigid hierarchy.
To the elite-minded majority, Esprit looked like nothing more than lazy prodigals. Even so, a Jinma was a Jinma. If Argon himself was moving, something of real importance had to be at stake.
“He is a very precious wolf, after all.”
“Yes… If things go well we might even peek at Tetra Anax’s secrets!”
Giovanni watched the flicker of dismay cross the Bernardo brothers’ faces and smiled sweetly.