The Trigger He Couldn't Pull
"Don't come out!"
Seo Rin shoved the truck with everything he had. It lurched back a good two meters and only just missed the vampire. The moment the creature landed in the space where the truck had been, Seo Rin charged.
"Hahahahahaha! So Han hasn't shown up yet?"
The vampire called out Han Se-gun's name as he raked his claws through the air. That same grotesque whistling of wind rose again, but Seo Rin roared and threw himself at the creature anyway.
Crack!
Seo Rin's fist smashed into the vampire's face. He put everything into the blow, and a single strike shattered the jaw. The vampire took the punch, turned with the force of it, and used the spin to whip a roundhouse kick. Seo Rin got an arm up and blocked—but the impact launched him skyward all the same.
Boom!
His body slammed into a wall. Whether vampire or lycanthrope, their strength so far outstripped their body weight that most strikes worked best delivered from below on an upward diagonal. Drive one straight down from above, and the reaction force would send you flying yourself.
"Ghhhk…"
Seo Rin flipped midair and snatched up his gun again. Even through the brawl, the submachine gun had stayed with him, hanging from its sling. The strap had thrashed around and bruised his side, but the important thing was that the weapon was still there.
If he wanted to live, he had to fire it.
But the cold bite of the trigger under his fingertip was unbearable. Should he pull it? Of course he should. The monster in front of him was trying to kill him. The only way not to die was to kill it first. There was no value worth dying to protect.
And yet—if he pulled that trigger… wouldn't he be crossing a line he could never come back from? If he fired a gun in the middle of Seoul, wouldn't that mean he would have to keep living as a resident of this moonlit night forever after?
Even if he somehow returned to the human world… could Seo Rin ever forgive himself? Could he spend the rest of his life repeating the lie that he'd had no choice if he wanted to survive?
Honestly, the only reason he had stepped into this world was because Se-gun was hurting. He had wanted Se-gun's approval, however he could get it. Se-gun had looked after him, so he had wanted to repay that somehow.
But the moment he actually held a gun, his whole body started to shake. To pick up an illegal weapon and kill someone just to win another man's favor… how could he entertain such a reckless thought?
Seo Rin felt the weight of the ground under his feet, the gravity of every step he had taken to get here, and he shuddered. How had Se-gun ever walked into a world like this of his own free will?
While he hesitated, the enemy came at him again. They had traded one clean hit each—Seo Rin's fist had broken the vampire's jaw, and the vampire's roundhouse had only launched Seo Rin into the air.
Objectively, Seo Rin's strike had been far more effective. But his opponent didn't care about the damage. He charged like a berserker who couldn't feel pain, and the sight of it froze Seo Rin's blood.
"Ugh!"
Seo Rin planted a hand on the ground, tumbled forward, and snapped a wheel kick. The motion was big and telegraphing, but against an enemy who charged in without a second thought, it worked.
Crack!
The vampire rocketed into the air as high as a house. Even rotting, a shad was still a shad—when it came to raw physical power, the lycanthrope Seo Rin held an absolute advantage. He recovered his balance at once and leapt after the enemy still hanging in the air.
Grab!
He seized the head of his still-unbalanced opponent mid-flight and drove it into a utility pole. The body slammed into the iron climbing spikes meant for electrical work; blood sprayed, and flesh tore.
Seo Rin kept hold of the head and hurled the vampire into the opposite wall. The creature crashed into a parked car, and the anti-theft alarm started to scream. Seo Rin didn't stop—he kicked the enemy still embedded in the vehicle without mercy. The car lifted, dropped with a heavy thud, and the alarm cut out mid-wail.
"Graaaaaah…"
"Haa… haa…"
Seo Rin felt his heart hammering as he barely managed to catch his breath. He hadn't realized it while he was on the receiving end the whole time, but he really was a monster after all. To think he could overwhelm an enemy in a state of pure instinct…
But what now?
If Se-gun had been here, he would have told him to finish the creature off on the spot—but Seo Rin still didn't want to kill. Leaving it alone wasn't an option either. The wounds were regenerating so fast he could watch them close, and that made him uneasy.
"Heh heh heh. Still a wet-behind-the-ears brat."
The enemy moved again.
Seo Rin reflexively kicked—but this time the vampire slipped aside cleanly, as if he had been waiting for exactly that move. Of course a repeat of the same trick wouldn't work twice. Dodging once, though, wasn't enough to flip the fight. Seo Rin just had to reset his stance and counter—
Thud!
Except something went wrong. His foot punched straight through the side of the car. The door crumpled around his leg, and when he tried to pull free, the metal bit into his flesh like a set of teeth.
"Damn it!"
The vampire that had slipped to the side stretched an arm toward him. The limb elongated on the spot, twisting into a grotesque spear.
"Ugh!"
Seo Rin ripped the door free and swung his trapped leg—door and all—into the spear. The steel panel punched through, but when he twisted the door, the arm snagged and couldn't drive any deeper.
"Huh?"
The next instant his body spun. The vampire's other arm had come in low and scythed across his legs. He had been so focused on the attack from above that the one from below caught him clean.
Seo Rin threw out a hand, caught himself on the ground, and twisted to land—but the leg that had just taken the low blow was broken.
"…Shit!"
And that sound was still going. Nearby windows rattled; his ears screamed. The eardrums that had already regenerated once tore open again, and blood flooded his ear canals. He would heal either way, so it didn't matter to him—but what about the ordinary humans? Come to think of it, the woman who'd been driving that mini truck…
Seo Rin whipped around in alarm. Thankfully the cab looked intact. The glass seemed to be blocking the sound. But her expression said she was far from fine.
Not that anyone would be, watching monsters tear each other apart right in front of them. She kept cranking the ignition, trying to flee, but after the solid shove Seo Rin had given the truck earlier, something must have gone wrong—it wouldn't catch.
"Heh. Distracted, are we?"
The creature flung an arm toward the mini truck's windshield. Seo Rin saw the motion and went cold. This bastard—he was going to kill the bystander!
"Like hell I will!"
His palm split open and blood poured between his fingers. It was no different from catching a blade barehanded. The calcium-mutated arm-bone tore through Seo Rin's grip like a knife. Even so, he couldn't let go.
Crack!
Seo Rin clenched down and the arm snapped. No matter what tricks the vampire pulled, raw physical performance still put Seo Rin far ahead. But in that same moment a kick slammed into his torso.
"Ghk—!"
He had taken his eyes off the fight for far too long. His body lifted and crashed into a flight of stairs. Rotten luck put a stair edge square against his spine and popped a vertebra out of place.
"Th-this—!"
He had let his guard down. He'd been told, and he'd still looked away. An enemy he could have beaten, and a single moment of carelessness had left him with a critical injury. Seo Rin tried to move in a panic, but his lower body was already completely paralyzed. With the spine that carried his nerves hit, the result was inevitable.
"Keh-keh-keh-keh-keh!"
The vampire seemed to grasp the situation and sneered. With superior physical ability and actual weapons, Seo Rin had no reason to lose. And yet the vampire's attacks had still put him down with a mortal wound. On top of that, Se-gun—who had practically been shielding him until now—was nowhere in sight.
"Uuuugh…!"
Seo Rin raised the submachine gun. If his legs wouldn't move, he would use the weapon his upper body could still handle! But the instant his finger brushed the trigger, terror surged up through his chest again. Like a single drop of ink blooming through water, the fear that had fallen into him spread through his entire body.
Shhhhhhhhh—!
The rain kept pouring without a hint of tiring. Water poured down the stairs Seo Rin was slumped against like a waterfall. Pooled runoff ran along the curb and made a sound almost exhilarating in its force. Listening to it, Seo Rin carefully leveled the muzzle at the vampire.
"…Not going to shoot?"
A cold voice came from behind him. Startled, Seo Rin looked up—and found a man sitting on the stairs above. Jeans, a round-neck tee, a white ponytail. Without a doubt, it was the man who had introduced himself as Argon.
"Huuuuuh."
He had a cigarette between his lips and was drawing on it with the weary face of a brothel girl at the end of a long night. His lung capacity must have been considerable; the cigarette flared and collapsed into ash the instant he inhaled.
The vampire facing Seo Rin spotted Argon and lifted his head in surprise.
"Why are you here?"
"Cough, cough. Goddamn it."
Argon coughed, and a pale blue smoke spilled from his nose and mouth. In that haze, the death-masks of pitch-black wraiths flickered into view.
"Kh… So that was the Magic Bullet of Deep Black after all. Landed a real hit on me. Body's still a mess. Nearly bought it."
He clutched his midsection and flicked the cigarette into a puddle. It hissed out.
"You… did you come here to kill me?"
Seo Rin lifted his head to look at him. In that same instant the vampire's arm moved again, lashing for Seo Rin's throat. Startled, Seo Rin threw up a forearm to block, and blood sprayed.
"Ugh!"
The vampire's bladed arm drove in to take his neck. It couldn't punch through Seo Rin's arm bone. With his bleeding arm, Seo Rin lined the gun up on the creature with perfect precision—and still couldn't pull the trigger.
"What? You can't even kill a vampire?"
Argon watched, puzzled. At that range, all Seo Rin had to do was squeeze, and he would hit. And yet he wouldn't attack. Growing curious, Argon kept staring down at him.
Judging from the look of it that the man had no intention of intervening yet, Seo Rin turned his glare on the vampire still chewing through his arm. At this distance there was no need to check the sights—pull the trigger and the round would land.
And right now the enemy was trying to kill him. That wasn't even the half of it. This vampire had murdered plenty of humans already. If Seo Rin killed him, there wouldn't even be a moral problem!
But… a normal human who ran into a serial killer didn't throw themselves into murder "for justice," or because "he's killed a lot of people." Even if Seo Rin's own life was on the line… he was the same.
He had blindly followed Se-gun's orders to win his approval, but standing face-to-face with an enemy, he couldn't bring himself to kill. He didn't want to. He knew perfectly well that what he was afraid of was staining his own hands. In the end it was nothing more than simple selfishness—he just didn't want to get dirty.
Unlike Se-gun, his family was still alive. He had people to protect and a world to go back to, and so he did not want to foul his hands. No matter how pathetic Se-gun found him, no matter how exhausted and sorrowful those eyes became when they looked at him—what he couldn't do, he simply couldn't do!
But how long could his body hold out? If he died like this, it would be a ridiculous way to go.
"Damn it—!"
Seo Rin put his strength into it and shoved away the arm that was trying to sever his own. The vampire's limb snapped and went flying. It was hard to believe. Just by pushing, he had broken that arm? Startled, Seo Rin looked down at himself. The wound from a moment ago was already closing as if it had never been there.
"What?"
Suddenly his regeneration accelerated. He scrambled up—and found his lower body working again, starting to move. His spine had settled back into place.
But the vampire regenerated his own wounds just as fast and burst into manic laughter. Yellow-blond hair whipped through the rain of its own accord, and beneath it eyes whose whites had gone entirely red blazed with madness. A few swung arms would never stop this thing. Until its throat was cut, it would keep coming no matter how badly the odds stacked against it.
"S-stop!"
As his regeneration sped up and power flooded his body, Seo Rin felt a surge of fear and backed away. What was this? It felt as if someone were ordering him to fight. His terror of the enemy drained away by the second, and every cell in his body lit up.
"W-what's going on?"
A savage force welled up from deep in his chest. Startled, Seo Rin looked at his watch.
"That's it! Moonrise?"
And a full moon, at that. He had lived through several full moons already without anything this abrupt. So why now? Why was the reaction this strong?
"Graaaah!"
The vampire attacked with his regenerated arm while snatching his severed limb off the ground with his teeth. But the sharpness from earlier was gone. To Seo Rin now, every strike was a slow, yawn-inducing motion.
Seo Rin slipped the attacks. Midway the arm bent and the trajectory warped wildly, but he avoided even that and raked his claws across.
Slash!
The vampire's arm sheared off in a single stroke. It was like fighting a patient poisoned by heavy metals—touch him and he broke, shattered. Under the full moon, the vampire was no match for Seo Rin.
Seo Rin had already outclassed him in raw physical ability, but now it wasn't even a contest. The way vampires could toy with humans before killing them… right now Seo Rin could toy with a vampire the same way. With power like this, losing to a vampire would be nothing short of suicide.