The Hostage
“Well… all right. Fine. Do whatever you want.”
Kim Seong-hui said it with a sigh and turned her gaze on Seo Rin. A lycanthrope with hearing like his could not possibly have missed that phone call. Sure enough, the color had drained from his face.
“Th-they took my little sister? Is that true?”
“Mm. Ah, well. I figured it would come to this.”
Kim Seong-hui shook her head as if she had seen it coming. Seo Rin shot up from his seat.
“You figured it would come to this?! How does that even make sense? My sister has nothing to do with any of this! Why would they—”
“But she is your sister, isn’t she?”
Kim Seong-hui’s tone was cold. Nothing else mattered. The simple fact that she was Seo Rin’s younger sister made her worth kidnapping. But Seo Rin, who had lived his whole life in a human world of laws and order, could only shake his head in helpless denial.
“Even so…”
“There are villains like that in the world. The kind who, if they need something, will put a blade to complete strangers without a second thought. It’s not exactly a rare type, is it?”
“I’ve never seen any,” Seo Rin said, raking his hands through his hair and shaking his head. The sheer malice of their enemies was worse than anything he had known. Debt collectors who used to storm into workplaces and throw their weight around suddenly looked like saints by comparison. Next to these vicious mages, those thugs were practically the living embodiment of humanism.
“It’s fine. If a villain who turns his blade on the innocent out of necessity is a foot soldier, then Se-gun is a master. He’s got a sense of duty about his evil. He said he’s going to rescue her, so just wait and try not to worry.”
“Hearing that only makes me more worried!”
“Well, true. Looking at Se-gun, worrying is the natural reaction. Hmm.”
Kim Seong-hui had to agree with that. Se-gun still lacked the delicate technique to erase only selected pieces of a human’s memory. He would never lose to a handful of second-rate mages—but whether Seo Rin’s sister would be brought out safely was another question. He might even kill her to eliminate a witness.
As if her worry had infected him, Seo Rin, who had been fidgeting restlessly, stood up. With obvious reluctance he grabbed a set of clothes that could only have belonged to Se-gun and headed for the bathroom. A moment later he reappeared dressed in Han Se-gun’s clothes and walked back to Kim Seong-hui.
“Where is she?”
“In the state you’re in, where do you think you’re going?”
“But… my sister is in danger. How am I supposed to just sit here?”
“In the state you’re in, you’d only get in the way. Don’t you understand why they took her? They’re using her to lure you out.”
She said it, yet she made no real move to stop him. With a resigned air she rose from her seat.
“Come on. We’ll take my car.”
“What? But—”
“It’s too far to walk. Even if you are faster than a normal person.”
“…Thank you.”
Seo Rin followed Kim Seong-hui outside. Only then did he get a proper look at the shop’s exterior. It sat in a quiet pocket with a playground-slash-park out front—an occult café that, no matter how you looked at it, seemed unlikely to do good business. He eyed the name on the sign, Arjuna, with open puzzlement.
“Does a weird shop like this actually make money in a place like this?”
“Weird shop, huh… It does well enough to cover the rent.”
Kim Seong-hui answered, then slid a key into a sleek black sports car that Seo Rin could not begin to identify.
“Wha—”
Just enough to cover the rent… and then this? Stunned, Seo Rin shot her a questioning look.
“Ah, this? A Chevrolet Corvette doesn’t cost that much. It’s been tuned a little, sure, but it’s not that expensive. Besides, I’m just looking after it for someone I know.”
“N-not that expensive… Not that expensive… Hahahahaha.”
Kim Seong-hui watched Seo Rin laugh like a man who had lost his mind, looking thoroughly puzzled as to why, then opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Hurry up. Before Se-gun kills them all first.”
She said something terrifying enough that anyone overhearing would have flinched, and turned the key.
The Knights Templar were said to have amassed enormous wealth by plundering the vast treasures of Islamic civilization during the conquest of Jerusalem. By the standards of the time, the figure was almost certainly exaggerated. But centuries had passed since then, and no one knew how far that original sum might have grown.
Yet the mages who claimed to be the Templars’ heirs were gathered in a rundown single-family house along the national highway linking Seoul and Seongnam. Judging by the choice of base, they hardly looked like men sitting on a fortune.
“Damn it, why are there so many eyes on us out here?”
A young mage kicked the door open and dumped several plastic bags on the floor. Foreigners were rare in Korea, so they drew stares wherever they went—and this was not even the capital, but the suburbs.
In most non-Asian countries, freestanding houses outside the city center were preferred and well regarded; in East Asia, the urban core was everything. Of course, rent in the hearts of New York or London was no joke either.
Either way, the suburbs meant foreigners were scarce, so standing out was inevitable. The real problem was that their status was far from legitimate.
“Deal with it. Just pretend we’re monkeys in a zoo.”
“Yeah, right. Looking at the evolutionary line, you probably aren’t that far from a monkey yourse—wait, what the hell is that girl?”
Only then did he notice the girl whose hands were zip-tied to the door. She wore a two-piece high-school uniform and was unconscious. There was no mistaking her for anything but East Asian. None of their original members looked like that, so she had clearly been brought in from outside—and they had suddenly decided to stash a schoolgirl here.
“Oh, no. You pervert. You’ve got a thing for high-school girls.”
“It’s not like that, Tito!”
Paolo raked his curly hair and glared at his colleague. Tito stuck out his tongue. A mestizo with a finely cultivated mustache, he twirled the ends between his fingers and needled Paolo further.
“If it’s not that, then what is it?”
“What do you think? She’s the target’s little sister.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. You’re taking hostages now?”
“That’s the idea.”
Tito made a gesture of pure exasperation. Ten people, ten opinions—getting everyone on the same page was never easy—but he simply could not bring himself to endorse the hardline methods of people like Paolo and Mackenly.
“There were peaceful options. We could have been honest, asked for cooperation. The target’s finances weren’t great—throw some money on the table and a deal might have stuck.”
“…Then we couldn’t raise the intensity of the experiment. And in the worst case, we might have to kill him.”
“That’s a conversation for later. Did you even consider buttering him up and stringing him along first? For seekers of forbidden knowledge, you’re awfully crude…”
Tito let out a long sigh and looked from the bound high-school girl back to Paolo.
“You didn’t beat her up or anything, right? Why is she out cold?”
“I just injected a little something so I could dig through her head and pull the information. She won’t die.”
Paolo spoke as if it were nothing while he checked his firearms. Startled, Tito rolled up the girl’s sleeve. Sure enough, an ugly blue bruise blossomed on her arm.
Using a truth serum on a student whose body had not even finished growing… He had almost certainly decided it on his own without exchanging more than a few words with her.
“‘Just injected a little something’? Are you insane? That’s worse than beating her, not better.”
“I simply prioritize efficiency.”
“Crazy bastard. I’ve never met a guy who chases efficiency this hard and turned out decent.”
Tito, speechless, examined the girl more carefully. A truth serum did not instantly turn someone into a vegetable. But the process of extraction itself left deep scars on the human mind.
Wrecking a person that thoroughly in a single day was impressive in its own ugly way… yet he could not stop worrying.
“No one followed you on the way here?”
Mackenly emerged, still wrapped in bandages. Ever since his first clash with the target had ended in defeat, he had been keeping a low profile. He eyed the schoolgirl with open hostility and checked the contents of the plastic bags Tito had brought.
“No tail that I could tell. Anyway—how’s the body?”
“Yeah. Fully healed.”
Mackenly, who had injected himself with vampire blood, said it while frowning as if a headache were coming on. Vampire blood delivered through the veins granted formidable regenerative power. But only for those whose bodies accepted it well; others complained of headaches, dizziness, nausea, and the like.
“Damn it. That cocky little brat! I’ll make him pay for this.”
“Where are Dyke, Barley, and Anthony?”
“Holed up near the house, keeping watch.”
“Huh. I didn’t spot them at all.”
Tito had felt no presence whatsoever on his way in, which left him puzzled. Paolo and Mackenly both fixed him with looks of pure contempt.
Unlike the others, who had received tactical training in militias or mercenary companies, Tito had been born into money. His magical talent might be excellent, but in every other respect he lagged behind. That was why he remained on the outside among the six of them—a classic clash of class and background.
“Well…”
He knew it, so he had nothing to say. An awkward silence stretched—until the girl stirred.
“Uuunh… ah…”
“She’s awake.”
“Ah—aaaaah!”
A sudden wave of headache and dizziness wrenched a scream from her. First time under a psychoactive drug; the reaction was only natural. Tito, unable to watch, hurried to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and came back with a bottle of mineral water.
“Drink this first.”
But she thrashed convulsively; the bottle slipped from Tito’s hand and spilled across the floor. Paolo watched the mess with open scorn while he cleaned his gun.
“We can’t play nice with her at this point. What are you wasting time for?”
“I’m not trying to play nice or curry favor.”
“Then what?”
“If you want to dilute the drug, you make her drink water.”
Tito picked up the mineral-water bottle again and prepared a fresh one. In that moment a soft burst of static crackled from Paolo’s radio. Someone had pressed the transmit switch and held it without speaking.
“What?”
“Shh.”
Pressing only the transmit key produced no sound on this end, but if they keyed their own radio in return, a wash of noise would pour out of the other unit. Paolo had arranged that as their contact signal with the men hidden outside.
“Still… that was a fast response.”