The Second Shot
Seo Rin forced a bitter smile, then carefully crawled along the hallway and opened a window. Fortunately, no sniper fire came from this side. He opened a rear window of the school and leaped outside.
“Seo Rin!”
Startled, Seong-chan rose in spite of the sniper’s threat and practically threw himself at the window to look out. Jumping from the third floor with his body still wrecked—yet when Seong-chan peered outside, Seo Rin had already vanished.
“Huh?”
Seong-chan stared blankly at the rear of the school building.
On the rooftop of a building, Paolo reloaded his sniper rifle. A mixed-race man of South American descent, he wore baggy hip-hop pants, a white T-shirt, and a thick green headband. Looking like that, no one would ever guess he was one of the mages of the Isaac Faction.
The Rosenkreuz, who hunted Lilith, and their branch the Isaac Faction, had originally been a social club for medieval nobles. No one looking at him now would ever associate the word “noble” with him.
He had draped himself in urban camouflage netting and locked into a firing position with the sniper rifle fixed. The muzzle protruding through a gap in the rooftop railing was already camouflaged so thoroughly it looked like an antenna or a utility pole.
In place of the comrade who had clashed head-on with Seo Rin, he had scouted the area around the school since the previous night and found an excellent sniper’s nest. As a result he had managed to put two rounds into Seo Rin.
“An ordinary vampire or lycanthrope would already be dead. Impressive.”
He grumbled while checking his ammunition. The bullets gleamed silver—genuine silver rounds. Even after taking rounds that were devastatingly effective against both vampires and lycanthropes, Seo Rin was still alive and moving.
“Tch. Where’d he go?”
He lifted tactical binoculars and tracked Seo Rin’s position. But Seo Rin had slipped into the blind spot behind the building and disappeared. Nothing to worry about. The distance was considerable, and pinpointing his location from only two shots was no easy task. He stowed the rifle in its case and prepared to withdraw.
“Oh, right…”
He pulled a bottle of gun oil from the case, smeared a little on his hand, and rubbed it into the floor—leaving a strong scent of himself. If that lycanthrope chased him and somehow reached this place, he would approach to catch the smell.
“Then shall we move to Point Two?”
Paolo relocated at once. If Seo Rin came to the spot where he had been sniping, he would snipe him again. For that purpose he had already set up a sniper automatic rifle two blocks away.
The expensive killing machine—a sniper rifle mounted on a large manipulating arm and operated by remote camera and remote controls—was aimed precisely at this rooftop. The reason for going to the trouble of using such costly gear was to prepare for a counterattack if the lycanthrope was not neutralized by this latest volley either.
The distance from the school to here was roughly a kilometer, so even after a shot there would be a certain margin of time. But the high-rise directly opposite that could fire on this rooftop was only about fifteen meters away. If he himself moved in person, he risked losing his life to a lycanthrope’s retaliation.
“Heh. What a fool.”
He snorted, thinking of the colleague who had thrown himself into danger and been wrecked for it. A mage was, above all, a seeker of the esoteric. Challenging monsters like vampires or lycanthropes head-on was the act of those driven mad by revenge—never the attitude of a wise mage.
By that measure he too had jumped into a pathetic fight, but the bait had simply been too tempting to resist.
After leaving a heavy trail of his own scent on the rooftop, he donned a vinyl suit. The garment, which looked like a raincoat, was essentially a protective suit that sealed him almost completely from the outside and kept most of his scent from leaking out. Considering a lycanthrope’s—especially a werewolf’s—powerful sense of smell, failing to control scent would make the trap useless.
“I’ve gone to this much trouble. He’ll take the bait, right?”
Full of expectation, he slipped away.
Contrary to the mage’s hopes, Seo Rin could not locate the mage’s position. The school sat on fairly high ground, so the surrounding houses offered no real cover, and the sniping had been carried out from such a great distance that finding him was impossible.
Of course he could make rough guesses, but with his current body he had no confidence he could avoid other people’s eyes. And the thought of blindly charging in the direction of the sniper fire only to take a round through the head this time terrified him.
Humans usually sense their own death when they suffer a major wound. In Seo Rin’s case, however, he had no idea just how badly he would have to be hurt before he actually died. Moments earlier he had taken a penetrating wound through the chest and still not died…
“Damn it all. What the hell did I even do wrong…”
A choking tightness filled Seo Rin’s chest.
This was never going to end with a single incident. From now on there would always be people hunting him, and he would never escape them for the rest of his life—unless he fought his way free himself.
Seo Rin now understood with bone-deep clarity why Maria had given him weapons. The bigger problem was Seong-chan. After the display just now, Seong-chan would at least realize something was wrong with Seo Rin. The wound that had pierced Seo Rin’s chest had already healed so completely that not even a trace remained.
“…I’m screwed.”
Seo Rin scratched his head. Healed this cleanly, there was no way to bluff his way out of it. Unless someone was blind, they couldn’t miss something like that.
Hugging the building wall, Seo Rin carefully walked toward the opposite side of the school. Enough time had passed that students and people heading to work were beginning to spill out into the streets.
They glanced at Seo Rin—pressed against the wall, warily scanning his surroundings—as if he were some weirdo, then hurried off on their own ways. Seo Rin had the vague feeling he was putting on a farce, yet he had no desire to savor that terrifying bullet taste again. No matter how strong his regeneration, the pain was still hellish.
“…The only bastard who can help me right now is that guy.”
Seo Rin glared irritably at the morning sun. He wanted to ask Maria for help, but Maria was unmistakably a vampire. Whether the rule that vampires could not act while the sun was up still applied to modern vampires, he didn’t know—but every time he had met Maria it had been after the sun had set or before it had risen.
Judging by that, she was a creature who could not step out under the sun. That left only Han Se-gun. How exactly the man had come by such power remained a mystery, but at least Seo Rin knew he was not a vampire.
The problem was that Seo Rin did not have Han Se-gun’s contact information.
“What now?”
Whenever something happened, Han Se-gun always approached first; Seo Rin had never gone looking for him. He knew the location of Han Se-gun’s hideout, but it was out in the suburbs—quite a distance away. Seo Rin had no means of getting there, and since he had only clung to Se-gun’s back on the way, he barely remembered the route.
Seo Rin sank into thought. Moreover, the current situation felt somehow connected to Han Se-gun.
Ever since he had become entangled with Maria and Han Se-gun, all sorts of incidents had erupted one after another… It was hard to dismiss as mere coincidence. Of course, by that logic Maria would also have to stand on the suspect list, but compared to her relatively friendly attitude, Han Se-gun’s had been so hostile he seemed ready to tear Seo Rin apart at any moment.
People said that some men who looked rough on the outside were actually good at heart, but the Se-gun that Seo Rin saw was nothing of the sort.
Clutching the bullet-riddled upper half of his school uniform, Seo Rin carefully surveyed his surroundings. Then he suddenly remembered that his house was under surveillance. Han Se-gun did not seem to be monitoring the recordings at all times, but contacting him that way still felt like the best option.
Having decided that, Seo Rin immediately headed for home.
“Ah?”
At that moment Seo Rin felt something strange and lifted his head. Continuing along the wall, he saw an old officetel building ahead. The instant he approached its vicinity, a peculiar force brushed across his skin.
It was like static electricity making the fine hairs on his body stand on end. Seo Rin realized he had come into contact with something abnormal.
“Here?”
He recalled the previous day. The man he had met in the city had sprayed him with a submachine gun, and the muzzle had not even had a suppressor like the ones in movies.
Yet gunshots had echoed right in the middle of downtown Seoul and not a single person had come running, not a single police officer had arrived… not so much as a rat had stirred. Considering that, some strange method must have been used to keep people from hearing the shots.
To open fire on a high school in the heart of Seoul, some supernatural power had to be involved. That meant this place was without a doubt the sniper’s nest!
Seo Rin sprinted up the stairs. Anyone watching him carefully as he raced up the rusted outer iron staircase would have noticed that his footsteps made no sound at all. But the office workers hurrying to work and the students equally rushing to school paid him no attention.
Seo Rin easily reached the rooftop of the building. The sight he had hoped for, however, was not there. The enemy had probably already withdrawn after firing.
“Fast bastard. Damn it! Hits me as much as he wants and then just runs—is that it? Piece of shit!”
They say a person’s mind changes between entering and leaving a bathroom; right now Seo Rin was pure rage. Completely different from when he had been shot and seized by fear. After all, the enemy had tried to gun down a defenseless high-school student who had never harmed anyone. And then simply vanished without a trace…
But then a sharp smell of oil suddenly struck his nose. Startled, Seo Rin dropped to the floor and sniffed.
“Sniff sniff… Hmm, this is…?”
Sensing the lingering scent of a person mixed with the foul reek of oil, he carefully approached. Sure enough, the smell of gunpowder, gun oil, and—faint but definite—a human scent still remained. Lying flat, Seo Rin meticulously examined the area, hoping to find even a single hair.
Bang!
At that very moment… blood sprayed from Seo Rin’s head.
“Ah?!”
The surprise attack was so unexpected that Seo Rin wore a blank expression. Suddenly blood gushed from his forehead, flooding his vision. At the same time his consciousness blurred. Feeling himself dying, Seo Rin collapsed to the floor.
Thump-thump…
His heart pounded powerfully. Yet the brain’s functions were shutting down faster than the wound could regenerate.
Thump-thump…
As if rejecting the death that was claiming him, his heart beat even harder, pumping blood. Seo Rin’s body convulsed, spurting blood from the wound. And then—suddenly—Seo Rin’s body rose. Without even placing a hand on the ground, as if the footage of him falling had simply been rewound, he stood using only his feet and staggered like a man dead drunk.
“Grrrrrrr…”
Seo Rin growled like a beast, glancing around. The demonic glint in his eyes showed that reason had already fled. And slowly, his frame began to grow larger. At that moment a second gunshot rang out.
Thwack!