Sympathy Is Only for the Strong
It was an age when men climbed the moon, planted their flags, and came home again. Human dominion had advanced so far that nowhere on Earth remained unknown. Yet even in this modern world, where blank spaces had vanished from the maps and mystery itself seemed spent, the fall of night still brought things that moved beyond the reach of human understanding.
When that happened, the world became something else entirely. Creatures of the non-human path, slipping into the dark beyond the eyes of ordinary people, beguiling their ears, vanishing into shadow. Seo Rin had become one of them, but everything still felt strange to him.
"Get up, you bastard!"
A rough hand seized Seo Rin by the hair and hauled him upright. The streetlamp in front of his eyes reeled and spun. Only then did he realize he had been lying on the ground.
Crack!
A slap landed without mercy. Whether meant to jolt him awake or simply to vent rage, the hand was merciless. When his head was nearly wrenched halfway around, Seo Rin came to his senses and looked at the figure standing over him.
"Ah… hyung."
He stared at the one who had dragged him up. A young man wrapped head to toe in a jet-black racing suit glared down at him as if he were the most pathetic thing alive. Deep inside those black irises, a faint blue phosphorescence burned—so subtle that only someone extraordinarily sharp would notice it. But Seo Rin saw that light clearly.
Those eyes, like a predator's… This was the vampire hunter known by the moniker of the Beast: Han Se-gun.
He's seriously pissed.
Seo Rin shuddered at the look on Se-gun's face.
He had seen it often enough. The feeling Se-gun harbored toward him was a kind of long-smoldering grudge. Through the eyes of a man who had thrown away nearly his entire life to fight vampires, Seo Rin must have looked hopelessly complacent. Honestly, he couldn't entirely blame him for that.
"How many bastards are after your throat, and you can't even handle one low-grade vampire? Do you even give a damn about staying alive?"
Se-gun grabbed Seo Rin by the collar and raised his hand for another slap—then stopped. Perhaps he realized even he was letting his temper run too hot. He drew a slow breath and lowered his arm.
Thud.
When Se-gun released him, a few buttons tore free from Seo Rin's collar and clattered down. Seo Rin straightened his sleeve and shot Se-gun a faintly resentful look.
"I know I screwed up by letting my guard down. But dumping me in front of an enemy out of nowhere and then losing your temper because it went badly—isn't that a bit much?"
Having watched Se-gun for some time now, Seo Rin had a fair grasp of how the man operated. Violent and cruel, yet also impulsive and almost devout… He showed a bewildering complexity, but everything was subordinated to Se-gun's own values.
If something violated those values, Se-gun would not forgive even himself. So whenever Seo Rin protested like this, he measured Se-gun against those same values. Sure enough, Se-gun reined in his anger and took a moment to assess the situation.
"What, that little scrap counts as 'dumped in front of an enemy'? Enemies don't wait until it's convenient for you to show up!"
Se-gun had recognized that Seo Rin's complaint didn't hold water, but the fact that he was even arguing meant the immediate crisis had passed. Seo Rin looked away, feigning indifference.
Then a man caught his eye. A shabby suit of indeterminate age, socks ridden up over the cuffs of his trousers, a scruffy beard—no matter how you looked at him, he was a beggar or a vagrant. He lay collapsed against a utility pole, clutching a garbage bag. Several plastic packs were stuck into his back, blood being drawn out by a portable pump.
"What—what are you doing?!"
Startled, Seo Rin hurried toward the man. A foul reek of blood stabbed his nostrils. Unlike the fresh, chemically treated blood drawn by the pump, this was the rank scent of blood exposed to air and beginning to oxidize. Seo Rin frowned as he took in the man's condition.
"…Ugh. This is—"
Up close, the man's head was a mass of blood. Injuries that would have killed an ordinary human, yet the man still drew shallow, rattling breaths. Seo Rin immediately reached to tear the plastic packs from his back.
"Stop!"
Han Se-gun stared at him, dumbfounded. Seo Rin turned to look at him.
"What the hell is this? Drawing blood from a living person? You're not the Red Cross. Ah—right, he's not a person, he's a vampire, but as far as stealing blood goes, how is this any different from what vampires do?!"
The dig at a certain organization was absurd, but Seo Rin's point was fair enough. Drawing living blood from someone was, from his perspective, an act he could never accept. And the man was wounded, no less.
"Haa. Your soft-headedness is really going to drive me insane."
Han Se-gun pressed his fingers to his forehead and shook his head. He seized Seo Rin's wrist, yanked hard, and in the same motion swept him around the waist and flung him to the ground. Startled, Seo Rin tried to catch his balance midair, but the force of Se-gun's swing was anything but ordinary.
Thud!
Seo Rin hit the pavement and agony flooded through him as if every bone in his body had shattered. Se-gun planted a knee on his throat and looked down at him. The streetlamp behind Se-gun cast him into silhouette, so that to Seo Rin it seemed a pair of vivid blue predator's eyes were burning side by side in the shadow.
"Whether you act like this because you love people or because you're an idiot is none of my business… but at least don't waste pity on vampires. Sympathy is a privilege reserved for the strong. Got it? You piece of trash."
A cold gun barrel pressed against Seo Rin's forehead. To a man who had survived countless brutal nights in a human body, every single thing Seo Rin did was an irritation. To possess such overwhelming power and still not know how to use it—to endanger himself with careless actions…
And what made it even more maddening was that, for now, he could not simply let this idiot die. Until now, Se-gun had never protected or guarded anyone. He had only ever been a taker, a destroyer, ambushing and killing the vampires who clung to their privileges.
And now he had to protect this walking liability. Just looking at him made irritation boil up.
"Trash? I'm trying in my own way, you know."
Seo Rin thrashed and tried to rise. When Se-gun lifted his knee, Seo Rin barely managed to get up and glared at him—like a teenager rebelling against a parent, eyes full of defiance.
"If that's what you call effort… then I suppose members of the National Assembly are breaking their bones for the good of the country."
Se-gun sneered, walked over to the vampire, and yanked out the blood packs. With a sound like a compressor valve being pulled free in an auto shop, the vampire's body began to collapse slowly in on itself.
Se-gun left the dissolving corpse where it was and stowed the blood packs in his backpack.
"So vampires suck human blood… and vampire hunters suck vampire blood."
Watching, Seo Rin made no effort to hide his contempt. If the act of drinking blood itself was so evil that vampires deserved condemnation, then Se-gun in this moment was equally guilty. Of course that argument would never land with Se-gun. He had transcended good and evil; he simply hated vampires.
"Yeah. A place crawling with monsters that bite and tear at each other. And you're no exception. No—you're the pure-blooded thoroughbred among those monsters."
Having said that, Se-gun checked his wristwatch.
"Sunrise isn't far. No point wandering around any longer. We're pulling out."
It was a tone that brooked no argument. Not that Seo Rin had one. He was, after all, a child Lilith had borne to multiply the lycanthropes. Se-gun's description of him as a pure-blooded thoroughbred among monsters was perfectly accurate.
"It's not like I wanted this…"
Seo Rin walked toward the parked motorcycle, glancing once more at the vampire slumped beside the garbage heap.
That one hadn't wanted to become a vampire either. Just a poor soul who had been an easy target, contaminated by vampires and turned into one of them.
But Se-gun had killed him without mercy and left him by the trash. Once sunrise reduced the body to ash, only the rags he had worn would remain, a heap of refuse. No one would remember him. The whole affair would be buried.
And it would keep happening. Seo Rin carved that knowledge into his chest and followed after Se-gun.
Outside the window came the sound of insects frying to death. Se-gun had installed ultraviolet lure lamps throughout the house to draw bugs in and burn them. Thanks to that, the house itself stayed relatively free of pests.
"Haa."
Seo Rin, a towel draped over his head, watched through the window. Insects that had no idea they were flying to their deaths, lured by the light, hit the mesh with a crackling electric snap. Even as the eastern sky slowly brightened, the bugs did not stop. With a forest nearby, the swarm was only to be expected.
"Haaaaa."
Seo Rin heaved another sigh deep enough to hollow out the earth. The image of the vampire who had just died clung to his eyes and would not let go. It wasn't the first time he had seen vampires slaughtered so thoroughly. Only a few days earlier, an entire company of them had marched on this very house.
Se-gun had butchered them with ruthless efficiency, drained every last drop of blood, and burned the corpses until nothing remained. And that wasn't all. He had ordered Seo Rin to search every single body, and Seo Rin had obeyed.
Rummaging through a mountain of corpses, pulling out their belongings—blood-caked notebooks, fountain pens still stuck with shreds of flesh—had been truly horrific.
Yet Seo Rin had finished the work without much feeling. Born something of a beast himself, he felt no visceral revulsion toward blood or scraps of meat. Besides, the enemies had come here of their own will to attack; Se-gun's resistance could be called self-defense.
This time was different. A single vagrant dying with his arms around a garbage bag was somehow sadder than that Hamburger Hill of carnage. Unlike those who had swarmed in with murderous intent, this one had been nothing but a victim.
The homeless and the vagrants made easy prey for vampires. Some of the more careless ones infected their victims with their own nature—and that man had been the result. Thinking of him, a man who had simply fled the sun by instinct without understanding why, made Seo Rin's chest ache.
If Se-gun had only tried talking to him, he might not have been beyond reason. Yet Se-gun had killed him without a second thought. And more than that—no matter how useful and profitable vampire blood might be—to drain him dry…
"Damn it!"
Seo Rin looked around his room. A large desk with attached bookshelves, a bed, the computer on the desk, the ducted air conditioner…
Every piece of furniture was far better than anything he had owned in his old house. But the thought that all of it had been bought with vampire blood made it unbearable.
"…I can't do this."
It wasn't that he found Se-gun loathsome or hateful. Watching a man who hated vampires so fiercely that he was devouring even himself was so purely self-sacrificing that Seo Rin simply could not bring himself to hate him.
Even if Se-gun sold vampire blood for money, the money was never the goal—only a means. He didn't kill vampires to make a living; he made a living so he could keep killing vampires. The vampires who died that way were pitiable, but so was the man who killed them. When merely watching became painful, though, it was simply too much of a burden.
So Seo Rin decided to go see Maria. The thought that it might be a trap did cross his mind, but…
If she had truly meant to deceive him or take him by force, the match would already have been decided the moment he and Maria first faced each other. As weak as he was now—unable to handle even a single ordinary vampire—Maria could have captured him in an instant if she had wanted to.
The next day, once the sun rose, Se-gun finished his training and went to bed. Confirming that Se-gun had turned in, Seo Rin immediately went outside. There had been a time when Se-gun had even wiretapped Seo Rin's house, but now that they were living together he had loosened the reins considerably.
Se-gun was faithful to his own principles; once they shared a roof, he no longer invaded personal privacy. It was almost funny. When they were strangers he had tapped without a second thought, yet the moment they lived together he simply left him alone… That was Se-gun's principle, and while Seo Rin was grateful for it, he still could not make sense of the man.
Of course, Se-gun could not let go completely, so tracking devices were still planted on Seo Rin's body here and there—but even those had all been placed with Seo Rin's consent.
"What a weird personality."
Seo Rin unlocked the chain on the motorcycle parked beside the garage. To contact Maria he would need a phone, and he couldn't do it from the house or his cell. So he planned to go out and use a public phone.
As he wheeled the motorcycle onto the road, magpies perched on the utility pole across the way set up a racket. Once they had been considered lucky birds that announced visitors; these days they were known as pests that pecked open bags and shorted out power lines. Seo Rin looked up at them.
The breeze was cool, and clouds drifted slowly across the sky. The sunlight was strong enough to bleach the color from the heavens, but the wind felt wonderfully fresh. Birds sang, and the pine grove along the national highway cast its shade.
In a quiet place like this, last night's events almost felt like a dream. But every corner of this peaceful countryside was laced with the surveillance cameras, sensors, active explosives, and armories Se-gun had installed. Seo Rin reminded himself once again of the situation he was in.
He rode along the road until he came upon a large discount supermarket. Next to it stood a furniture outlet. Having lived in Seoul, Seo Rin could not understand how a big-box store and a furniture warehouse could stay in business out here in the middle of endless rice paddies. Fortunately, a public phone booth stood right in front; he pulled up and stopped.
"…For all I know, this phone is tapped too."
Splice into the line beside the cable, run a recorder or transmitter back to the house, and wiretapping became trivial. And Se-gun was enough of a surveillance obsessive that he often installed equipment even in places that seemed to have no need for it.