Even Hellfire Would Be Sweet
“So in the end, it came to this.”
Wilhelm Meier simply could not understand the eccentricities of his master, the Jinma Phantom. Other Jinma built vampire clans and openly embraced the darkness they were. Phantom alone stood apart and lived like a human being.
He could hate like a human. He could pity like a human. If he had been capable of shedding tears, he would gladly have wept even for the arrogant, wicked Jinma hunters.
His mercy was nothing new, and it was thanks to that same mercy that Wilhelm still drew breath—if only as a vampire. How could he defy his master’s will? And yet this was going too far! A vampire bringing home a human girl—and keeping her alive and whole, no less!
“Come now, be generous with your understanding. Her condition was far too poor to send her back to a hospital. And do you really think a few empty words or a bouquet would have comforted her? If one is going to meddle in another’s life at all, it is better to meddle thoroughly.”
“If the premise is that she requires consolation, then Master’s course of action was the correct one.”
Wilhelm said as much and looked down at the sleeping girl. Yoon Mi-hye, was it? Once she might have been a rather pretty young thing; now long confinement in a hospital ward had left her wasted and hollow, without a single spark of life remaining in her eyes.
What did Master intend to do with a half-wit like this? Surely not eat her.
“So how exactly does one deal with an autistic patient?”
“Lock her in a gas chamber and feed her sarin.”
Only Wilhelm dared answer his master’s empty questions with barbs. Even so, the Jinma Phantom merely snickered and gazed out the window.
“I understand how you feel.”
“No. You understand nothing. I am so frustrated I could die.”
“Which brings me to my next thought—shall we go out somewhere?”
“Pardon?”
“All of us together. You and… ah… Yoon Mi-hye as well.”
He still hadn’t memorized the name. Wilhelm thought as much, yet his master’s suggestion held undeniable appeal. It had been nearly sixty years since Wilhelm became a vampire, yet his body remained that of a boy, and his heart was little different. Going out to play—how intoxicating a prospect was that?
“Ahem. Does Master still see me as a child?”
“Well, from the perspective of someone older than Jesus Christ himself… But if you dislike the idea, so be it.”
“No. Once you have raised a topic, you may not simply withdraw it.”
Wilhelm answered that way, then closed his mouth upon realizing Phantom was laughing at him. As ever, Master treated him like a child. There was nothing to be done about it. Appearance dictated how others responded, and those responses shaped social feeling. Frozen forever in the shape of a boy, he might well remain a boy for eternity.
Yet he had never once blamed his master for that.
“Then where shall we go? Ah—would you like something delicious to eat? Do you suppose Miss Yoon Mi-hye would enjoy it as well?”
“Ladies are not ordinarily seduced by food.”
“True enough, but now that I think of it, dinner time has already passed.”
“Starving an autistic patient—how utterly vile. It may be worse than the hospital.”
Wilhelm’s verdict was mercilessly blunt. Phantom’s face went pale.
“Good heavens! What a wicked thing to do! Santa will never bring me Christmas presents now!”
“……”
Master’s theatrics were always first-rate. Wilhelm sighed and examined the autistic girl once more.
“In that case we should reserve a fine restaurant first… and this young lady will need some work at a beauty salon. Simply changing her clothes will not erase the dingy air of the hospital ward.”
“Right. Ah—we’ll need to bring the bodyguards along as well, won’t we?”
“……”
Now that he thought about it, Silvester was already in Korea—and Master proposed to go out? Wilhelm could not forgive himself for having been so easily tempted by the word “outing.” The Jinma hunter had already attacked Phantom once that very morning.
Even a Jinma was, after all, a vampire: beneath the sun their VT drained away and they grew infinitely weaker. That was why even Phantom, strongest of all vampires, had been forced to bleed.
Once night falls, Master cannot possibly lose!
Wilhelm believed it. Attacking a Jinma—king among the night’s people—after dark was unthinkable. Unless the attacker were a Jinma hunter.
“You intend to go out with the bodyguards in tow?”
Human bodyguards made the finest shield against Silvester. In the Republic of Korea nearly all firearms were illegal weapons, and discharging one earned an unspeakably heavy sentence. Was there another country that controlled guns so strictly?
Employ humans, therefore, and even Silvester would hesitate to open fire. No matter how legendary a Jinma hunter he might be, he could never defeat Phantom bare-handed… and yet there was always the one-in-a-million chance.
“Perhaps we should not go out. We could simply call for room service—”
“No.”
Master was immovable.
“Otherwise this place is nothing more than a hospital room stuffed with luxury goods. Now that I have taken her from the hospital… is it not my duty to provide her with something better?”
“Even so…”
Wilhelm fell silent. He knew that once Master spoke in that tone, persuasion was impossible. He was, after all, of Phantom’s bloodline; constant contradiction of one’s master was absurd. And more than that…
Having only just risen for the night, Wilhelm himself wanted to go out and play.
Rain was falling for the first time in a long while. The autumn rain soaked everything gently, washing away the exhaust that always clung to the city. The air felt clean; breathing was easy.
Yet while lugging a hundred-kilogram projection television, one could not help gasping for breath or keep the sweat from pouring down like rain itself.
“Goddamn it! What kind of bastard ships something like this by courier? This needs a dealership truck or—”
“Shut up.”
Se-gun silenced the self-styled Sung Si-kyung and shoved back the hood of his rain gear. Steam rose steadily from his head; the misery was extreme. Why were there so many heavy loads today? The section chief who never gave them anything was more hateful than ever.
The Jinma Phantom, huh.
Se-gun loosened his shoulders and recalled Silvester’s words.
The quarry Silvester hunted were the twenty-four Jinma… and among them Phantom had taken the identity of a businessman named Row Gibson and settled in Korea. Silvester had returned to Korea in pursuit of him.
He is the most repulsive of them all. His form is beautiful, his heart is kind, he is capable, intelligent, and refined. He manipulates humans, plants them in front of my muzzle, and erases me from behind.
Standing in the darkness, Silvester had spoken thus. Silvester himself was a refined and beautiful being, yet whenever he spoke of the Jinma Phantom that beauty vanished, locked away inside a dank, humid hatred.
Se-gun could not understand Silvester’s contradictory words. Repulsive? Then what of everything that followed? Was that not pure praise?
Why do you call him repulsive?
Se-gun had asked. In that instant Silvester’s silver-blue eyes flew wide and fixed upon him. For a single moment Se-gun wondered whether he had somehow taken Psychedelic Moon again without noticing.
Distance shattered; vision melted. From that melting point hazy death-masks rose, and strange screams reached his ears—yet more terrifying still was Silvester himself.
The priest with streaming silver hair glared at Se-gun with eyes as vivid as a demon’s. That rage rode atop razor-sharp reason and was therefore like a blade of pure ice; that gaze was a bullet that pierced clean through the soul.
Se-gun, paralyzed with terror, tried to close his eyes. Yet his gaze remained nailed to Silvester, and even his mind was no longer free.
Silvester had deliberately laid a psychic domination upon him.
To be charmed by a vampire, to fall under psychic domination—these were the things a vampire hunter must avoid above all else. And to avoid them required a powerful negative conception of vampires… or else a burning desire for the money their blood could bring.
Why could a vampire never cast off the yoke of ugliness even when it wore a beautiful form and performed kind deeds? Without understanding that truth and submitting to it without question, one could never be a vampire hunter.
The notion that a pure heart alone can keep one free of sin is nothing but the empty vanity of humans. Do you believe you lost your family because your own mind was broken? Do you believe that those who wallow in misfortune and sin are simply wrong, and therefore everything beautiful and kind must be wise and upright?!
His frenzy mounted. The more it mounted, the deeper Se-gun sank into brilliant hallucination, as though being sucked into a bottomless swamp…
Therefore good and evil, beauty and ugliness, do not exist in human judgment. Ugliness? From a vampire hunter’s perspective it means everything that runs counter to the purpose for which God created. Do you understand? Every living creature is fated to bear sin—yet a vampire cannot even shed the tears of repentance that a crocodile manages. There is nothing more repulsive than such a creature appearing beautiful and righteous.
With those words Silvester released the domination. Barely free of the psychic hold, Se-gun gasped like a man dragged from drowning and braced himself against the ground with both hands.
Enough. If he is repulsive, then so am I.
Silvester said it and exhaled a low sigh. Such was the conversation that had passed in the night at Arjuna.
“Ah—lunchtime. Lunch. Hey, Se-gun! Stop the belt and let’s go eat!”
“……”
Se-gun looked at Kim Seong-ju—the self-styled Sung Si-kyung—and rose from his place. Come to think of it, why was Silvester a vampire hunter at all? He did not seem to be an exorcist dispatched by the Vatican, so why did he hate vampires so fiercely without even harvesting their blood? And would the girl Phantom had taken truly become a vampire, just as Silvester predicted, and take revenge on Jin Yu-mi and her friends?
Of course she will, Han Se-gun. Look at yourself. You who affirmed revenge cannot deny hers.
Silvester’s low voice echoed in his ear. Se-gun told himself that his own actions were different from vengeance. The objects of his revenge were already dead. And to a modern human the idea of collective guilt seemed unjust—to load an entire group with the crime of one individual was wrong… Yet if that were so, why had Se-gun become a vampire hunter?
“……”
Certainly he could not deny her revenge. And the vampire known as the Jinma Phantom would not deny it either. Did that mean Jin Yu-mi and her friends were now in danger?
Well—none of my business, is it?
Thinking so, Se-gun forcibly erased the image of Jin Yu-mi that rose in his mind.
Last night had been pleasant. For one who had passed through thousands of nights, pleasure had grown so familiar it might now be nothing more than self-hypnosis.
Yet without believing in oneself one could never endure thousands of nights. And one would never keep one’s sanity either.
For now, think only of this young lady.
Row Gibson thought as much while sprawled on the sofa in a careless posture, tapping at a wireless keyboard.
Upon his knee the girl rested her head, sleeping as quietly as a puppy; to keep from waking her he could not move his lower body. Gibson yawned and looked down at her.
With Wilhelm—who still looked underage—along for the ride, the places one could go at night were limited. Late-night movies, late-night performances, bowling at a bowling alley. Even that was more than enough to make the night far too short. In the end the girl had been knocked out cold, and Wilhelm had retreated once more to his bedroom and fallen asleep.
“In the end, no matter what anyone says, he’s an eternal child.”
He muttered the words and closed his eyes. Outside the window the rain poured down. Mixed into the sound of that rain came a strange noise.
Only a Jinma could hear it: the requiem sung for themselves by those who stood on the border between reality and death. It was the symptom called the Haunt, which came upon vampires like destiny—those whose vessels of life had cracked and who must therefore replenish themselves through blood.
Spiritual senses maximized on the boundary of death and life allowed one to hear sounds that did not belong to this world. That was the root cause that drove most vampires mad.
It might sound absurd that vampires—monsters themselves—should fear ghosts of similar station, yet because of that possession-like symptom most vampires failed to live long and simply went insane. They grew mentally unstable and were tormented by destructive impulses.
Moreover, for those who could no longer obtain orgasm through intercourse, the sole remaining outlet of desire was the act of drinking blood. Even one who had been gentle in human life would, under the continuous lash of madness, become a monster before long.
“But living means valuing endurance more highly than pleasure.”
He murmured the words and stroked the hair of the girl whose head rested on his knee. It had been entrusted to a famous hairdresser, yet the damaged strands from long hospital life had not improved much. Living life fully was difficult even for humans. How much more so for a vampire… Yet the Jinma Phantom had kept that endurance.
Just then the girl quietly opened her eyes.
“Endurance?”
The first words she spoke upon opening her mouth were a question directed at Gibson. The mighty vampire gazed out at gray Seoul soaked by autumn rain and nodded. The ashen, dark sky was pushing its way into the penthouse.
The light cast by the sun beyond the rain clouds had faded to a murky white and was no longer light at all. Against a city sky that would not have been strange if thunder and lightning struck, this vampire was as cold and beautiful as a statue.
Not every vampire was beautiful. Those who stood on the border of death and life could, with only a little accumulated power, inspire unholy passion in humans—but that was an evil force far removed from beauty.
The Jinma Phantom, however, was truly beautiful. His sharp features, which had never surrendered their masculinity, were like a statue carved from marble. Possessing a beauty humans could recognize, he was no longer merely the kind-hearted rich man she had known until now.
And yet the compassion for a dying life that filled him was, after all, very like him, was it not?
“It is the strength to endure suffering and go on living in the world. If there is something that must be protected through endurance, even the flames of hell become sweet, little lady.”
It might have been an ordinary sermon, yet his voice was as sweet as something heard in a dream. That voice, which conquered a heart that offered no resistance, was not magic… yet in itself it was already black magic. Upon a girl who had only just broken part of the shell of her self, it would surely exert tremendous influence.
“Do you truly think so?”
“Of course.”
He answered and tilted his head slightly.
“Though I have no intention of forcing the idea upon you.”
“……”
She sank once more into her own self and into thought. The Jinma Phantom looked at her and felt pity.
Her wounds were far deeper than he had expected. In a small Eastern country whose emotional immunity regarding sex was weak, he well knew that what she had suffered was no small affair.
In this conservative land a woman who had been gang-raped could not possibly remain sane. Yet even so, was it not better to think of the future that remained rather than the past that had already gone? Anger and regret were inevitable, but was there any reason they could not be overcome?
“If one lives, good things are certain to come as well…”
The final words might have been spoken to himself. A lie told in order to deceive himself… the same lie he had repeated over and over until now…