Bang!
Han Se-gun arrived at Arjuna soaked to the bone.
He worried Silvester might be furious at how late he was, or worse, that the man might already have gone somewhere else. But the black Corvette Coupe parked out front said otherwise. Se-gun propped the RX-125 up by the entrance and stepped inside.
"Welcome. Oh—Se-gun?"
Kim Seong-hui, the owner of Arjuna, greeted him with her usual polished composure. Still dripping, Se-gun wiped his boots on the mat and scanned the room.
"Where's Silvester?"
"Just nearby for a moment…"
Speak of the devil. The back door opened before she finished, and Silvester himself strode in, just as thoroughly rain-soaked. His silver hair was pulled into a ponytail, and he wore a shirt printed with Snoopy on a skateboard.
"You're finally here?"
He raised one eyebrow at Se-gun, then peeled the shirt off.
"!"
The body underneath was pale as porcelain—lean, stripped of every unnecessary ounce of flesh, all sharp muscle. Years without sunlight had left the skin deathly white, almost unhealthy. But what stopped Se-gun cold were the diagrams winding across that flesh like snakes. If you flayed Silvester's skin and spread it flat, those marks would form a complete magic circle—no question.
Se-gun stared, speechless. Blood-red crucifixes and Latin incantations covered the man's entire torso. Against that corpse-pale skin, the crimson magic circles crawling like serpents looked shockingly, almost obscenely, sensual. Se-gun gazed as if his soul had been pulled out of him.
Silvester ignored the stare completely. He lifted the shirt and wrung the water out.
"Why did you call me?"
"Did you get any information?"
"You're not already planning to move, are you?"
"No. To you it only feels like now. To a patient who sank into autism, it feels like from this moment on."
Silvester's cut was razor-sharp. An autistic person collapses inward, into the self. But a person driven into autism by rape, retreating into that shell—what thoughts fill their days? Obvious ones.
They loop the cursed events like a video stuck on repeat, chewing endlessly on regret and hatred.
In a society with looser sexual taboos, healing might still be possible. In South Korea, not a chance. For Phantom to claim responsibility for a girl like that was far too easy a thought.
"A human's grudge… is stronger than a vampire's. How does some creature that's lived forever, drowning in wealth and power until its bones went soft, think it can save a human being?"
"…Then what would you do with her? What's the view of a man of the cloth?"
Se-gun asked on impulse. Silvester lifted his head. Mercury-gray light from a streetlamp cut through the rain and bleached his pale skin even whiter. Against that blue-white flesh, the red crucifixes stood out sharper than anything else in Arjuna's dim interior. He formed a gun with one hand and set the barrel against his own temple.
Yellow ginkgo leaves choked the streets. Uijeongbu, nestled against Bukhansan, was clogged with cars funneling toward Seoul.
Se-gun threaded the RX-125 between the tight lanes of traffic. According to Kim Seong-hui, another vampire dealer was operating out of Uijeongbu. Old Man Ju still refused to do business with him, so this was the only lead left.
Issuing business cards was already suspicious enough. Having those cards read Yoga and Ki Therapy made the whole thing absurd.
"Damn it."
But Se-gun had nothing else to trust. Working part-time for a measly thirty thousand won a day would never buy him gear or a decent place to live. He needed to get out of the goshiwon, at the very least.
An aging building soon came into view. The sign—Ki Therapy, Spiritual Healing, Yoga—was stamped with a huge Star of Solomon. Looking at it, Se-gun felt in his bones just how refined an occult shop Arjuna really was.
Compared to this place, Arjuna had nothing to be ashamed of.
Inside, the building looked as if it had never been renovated once since construction. The corridor still had fluorescent fixtures strung on chains no one used anymore. Thirty years old at least—it reminded him of Hong Kong's sealed-off Kowloon Walled City. Not that Se-gun had ever been there, but the place was carpeted in old newspapers and trash the way a street gets buried under autumn leaves.
"Hmm…"
He parked the bike and looked around. What had once been a commercial entrance was now stacked with rusted scooters, bikes turned to scrap, and piles of rags. Mold-blackened wooden doors suggested rain drove straight into the building every time it fell.
Come here for treatment and you'd leave with a disease. What kind of healing happened in a place like this? Se-gun knocked.
"Anyone home?"
Instead of an answer, the roar of a sports broadcast spilled out. Hockey? He eased the door open. A burly Black man sat watching television.
"Excuse me…"
"Sheeeee."
The man gestured for silence and turned back to the screen. The ancient set glowed a washed-out blue—probably color once, long since faded. In that light, the man's rapt face held something almost religious.
So Se-gun said nothing and surveyed the room instead.
Trophies and photographs lined the walls, along with a VT meter and other machines. In the pictures the same man wore a military uniform and a sharp, proud expression. Now he sat slack-jawed in front of the TV. At last the match ended.
"Oh… God! Coo~!"
A frenzy of words Se-gun couldn't even parse. When it was over, the man switched off the set and hit eject on the battered VCR underneath. The tape popped up with a clunk.
He was watching a tape!
Se-gun stared, floored. A customer walks in and you don't even pause the video? Then again, vampire dealers were usually rich enough that a little contempt for their hunter clientele never cost them a meal. Still—an ancient VCR that spat the tape out the top…
Only after retrieving the cassette did the man finally look at Se-gun.
"Oh. I'm Bill Murray. Welcome to Murray Healing School."
"…I'm here to sell blood."
Se-gun produced the vampire blood. Bill Murray shrugged.
"Preservative, not good. No refrigerator, no cooler—hard to give full price."
"Old Man Ju never cared."
"Not the same. I give better price. Much better."
The man who called himself Bill Murray took the blood pack and fed it into a machine. Left sitting too long, the freshness might have dropped—but the VT still read around 34.
"How much?"
"Four million. For the freshness, this is very generous. But first customer—I like. Credit. Good."
"…"
Yong-jin's face flashed through Se-gun's mind.
He had shot the boy as the vampire transformation took hold, then poured vampire blood over the writhing body so that even the corpse vanished… and that blood was worth four million won?
A man who had killed someone fretting over money was a sick joke—but broke as he was, the sum still stung.
"Fine. Deal."
Haggling with a dealer was never wise. Se-gun accepted Bill Murray's terms. The man counted out a thick bundle of bills at once.
"Count it."
"Yeah. It's good."
"Ah. Buy equipment. Lots of Psychedelic and cocaine too."
"…"
Even with vampire blood in hand, how did the man trust a first-time seller so easily? Still—Se-gun needed the drugs. Pure Psychedelic Moon gave pain relief and hallucinations, but it lacked the aggression combat required. Blended with cocaine, it not only filled that gap but could unlock sharper effects through the unusual mix.
"I need them, but I'll come back later."
Se-gun left. Behind him the Black man was already loading another tape.
"No preservative, better price. Don't forget."
"Again?"
The silver-haired priest, a long case slung across his back, glared across the hotel lobby. Outside, a blood-red Viper rolled past in formation with a black sedan. Bodyguards in the sedan kept perfect pace, shielding the sports car.
At that point there was no clean way to take them. You couldn't block them with a car and pick a fight in front of a hotel, and a sniper shot was too risky.
"…"
Priest and Viper passed each other. Silvester never so much as glanced at the car; he simply walked on, case in hand, eyes forward.
"Heh. Even Silvester can't do a thing like this. Ah—where shall we go?"
Row Gibson watched the priest through the window and asked the girl in the seat beside him. She lifted her head. The autism seemed to have lifted, but the darkness around her had not.
"You're rich, aren't you?"
"Hmm… rich enough that denying it would be pointless."
Row answered while checking the priest in the rearview mirror. The girl exhaled a long breath.
"Then there's nothing you can't do. So why take an interest in me?"
"Why the interest… that's a hard question. Call it a matter of temperament, I suppose."
The word fate might carry more weight in the East, but a Western man felt a sharp duty toward a life he had once saved. Saying so aloud, though, might wound her pride—so Row closed his mouth.
"Will you really give me everything I want?"
"Everything… might be a stretch. I'll do what I can."
It was the only answer he could give. He already had a fair idea of what she wanted—and it suited his own palate. Letting monsters who ordered a gang rape walk free just because they were minors violated his sense of justice. But he could not let her do the work herself.
And yet revenge only meant something when you did it with your own hands. Outsourced vengeance left nothing but emptiness. The pleasure of revenge was a sacred thing you had to taste yourself. At least, that was how Phantom saw it.
"I want to go where they are."
"…"
Worst possible answer.
Row sighed in quiet regret. Why that, of all things? But if she chose revenge, he would affirm it. Whatever the outcome, that was his principle.
"In the beginning the Lord fashioned Adam from dust and Eve from Adam's bone, and death is the sacred rite of returning to the origin. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes…"
Se-gun murmured the requiem as he stood atop a hillside wall and looked down. About eleven meters of sloping road fell away beneath him, lined with single-family houses. High-rise apartments cluttered the view here and there, but from this foothill the scenery wasn't bad.
"That's dangerous."
Jin Yu-mi beamed at him, inexplicably cheerful, and tried to stop him. Se-gun sighed. He would have preferred never to see her again. Spending time with a girl this broken felt like it would crack him open too.
But Silvester was right—to drag the vampire king out of his fortress, someone had to watch this girl. She and her so-called friends were the objects of that king's woman' s hatred.
But how long… how long is this supposed to last?
Dealing with her was agony. Their positions were different, yet every time he looked at her he saw himself reflected back, and it hurt.
And she was far from whole. Her body was wrecked, and those "friends" of hers clearly didn't care about her—they only used her for the house. In the end, she had no one she could truly open up to. So why did she trust Se-gun? Because he looked a little like Kurt Cobain?
I don't think I look like him at all.
Se-gun stepped out onto the railing. Wind rose hard from the slope below, but not hard enough to throw his balance. He walked with both arms out for steadying.
Then a blood-red Viper turned into the alley. The street was so narrow only one car could pass, and illegal parking left no room for anything larger than a motorcycle. The Viper stopped at the mouth of the alley and sat still.
"…"
Se-gun knew a little about the vampire king—one of the Jinma, the one called Phantom. Everything came from Silvester, but the red Viper alone was enough to identify him.
He's here.
Se-gun carefully touched his chest. The weight of the Tokarev nested inside his jacket pressed against his palm. Catching a Jinma with a cheap pistol like that was pure fantasy.
One wrong move and he was dead. Cold sweat ran down his back, but he forced a calm face and kept walking the rail with his arms spread, as if he were just some stranger out for a stroll.
"Huh?"
Suddenly the Viper reversed. After all that tension, it simply pulled away? Even with his mediocre eyesight, Se-gun caught a flash of amber glass. Binoculars. So the man had only come to look?
"What's wrong, Se-gun?"
"Nothing… nothing. How's your body holding up?"
"Mm. The medicine you gave me. It was so good."
"…"
Psychedelic Moon was not a drug anyone should ever call "good," even as a joke. Better than paint thinner or butane, sure—but still.
"Yeah. Glad to hear it."
It was all he could say. Unless he was ready, like Silvester, to put a hole through her head…