A Friend in Tatters
“Hm?”
Se-gun had been following Seo Rin into the residential streets when something caught his eye and brought him to a sudden stop. Startled, Seo Rin stopped with him — and that was when a voice called out from the roadside.
“S-Seo Rin! Rin!”
“Huh? That voice…?”
A young man in a beggar’s state — grim-faced, crouched in a corner — had spotted Seo Rin and pushed himself upright. He staggered toward them. Dried scabs of blood clung stiffly to his body, and he reeked of the gutter. Seo Rin stared at him in shock.
“Hy-Hyuk-jin? What the hell happened to you? You look like a total wreck.”
“Shhh!”
The guy immediately clapped a hand over his own mouth, signaling them to keep quiet. Seo Rin shut up at once and glanced around. Nothing in sight yet.
“Why?”
“Cops are here. Keep it down.”
“……Ah. O-okay. But seriously, what’s going on? Why are you out here like this? I was worried about you.”
“Y-yeah.”
Hyuk-jin said it while flicking a wary glance at Se-gun. His whole expression made it plain he wanted Se-gun gone. Se-gun only snorted.
“Ah, this hyung’s been a huge help to me, so… uh, his name is…”
Han Se-gun was a wanted man. Seo Rin knew he needed to invent some other name, but the thought of just blurting out whatever came to mind and setting Se-gun off scared him. He looked to Se-gun for a cue. Se-gun cut him short.
“No need to tell him my name.”
“Man, that temper of yours never quits.”
The moment Seo Rin muttered it, Se-gun and Hyuk-jin both clamped hands over his mouth at the same time.
“Shut up.”
“Anyway, Hyuk-jin. What the hell’s going on? Why are you even here?”
Heading to the vending-machine office to ask whether they had contact info for Seo Rin… that would have been the model answer.
But Se-gun was watching Hyuk-jin with open suspicion. This guy… he didn’t smell human. Something else rolled off him in waves. And unlike the friend Seo Rin had described, there was something off-kilter in his eyes — a personality that no longer quite lined up. Compared to this, even vampires like Phantom, Argon, or Maria looked more human.
And they’d just happened to run into him on the way, before the police even came into view? Se-gun was not optimistic enough to call that good luck. Sure, it saved them the sweat of searching under this brutal heat — that was the only upside. This bastard was not someone you could trust. Still, Se-gun decided to leave it to Seo Rin for now and kept his mouth shut.
“……Ugh. F-first, let’s get out of here.”
“Ah. Yeah.”
Seo Rin swung a leg over his bike at once and jerked his chin for Hyuk-jin to climb on behind him. Hyuk-jin’s eyes went wide at the motorcycle.
“W-what is this? Looks insanely expensive. Why the hell are you suddenly riding something like this? You win the lottery or what?”
Being stunned by the R-1 was only natural. Not long ago Seo Rin had been so broke he’d fretted over a hundred won — and now he was tooling around on this? One look was enough to tell it had been heavily tuned for performance.
Of course the truth was that Se-gun had kept upgrading his own bike and used leftover parts to soup up the R-1’s frame. Even so, it was still a serious machine.
“…You even have a license?”
“Nope.”
Seo Rin answered with perfect confidence — and took a smack from Se-gun for it. Se-gun lowered the edge of his hand and fixed Hyuk-jin with a hard stare.
“Enough already. Quit digging.”
“Ah, hyung. Just leave him alone. He’s my friend.”
Like calls to like — Seo Rin took Hyuk-jin’s side. So this was what friendship looked like?
Se-gun closed his eyes for a moment at Seo Rin’s attitude. No matter how he looked at it, this Hyuk-jin character was nothing but suspicious. Letting him near Seo Rin might already have been a mistake. But he had decided to entrust this matter to Seo Rin, so he would see it through.
“Fine. Do it your way.”
Either way, the idea of Seo Rin riding around on something that looked that expensive left Hyuk-jin staring back and forth between the two of them in open amazement.
“Then what the hell do you even do? How’d you get this?”
“Ahh, this isn’t mine. It’s a work bike.”
“You do motorcycle deliveries? Looks way too nice for that. If they just handed you something like this, I’d do deliveries myself.”
“Something like that.”
Seo Rin brushed it off. Just then Se-gun kicked his bike into gear and pulled ahead. He stopped in front of a bathhouse. Conveniently, one sat right at the mouth of the alley they were in — only a few steps away.
“Wash him first.”
Se-gun pointed at the bathhouse, voice cold.
“Huh?”
“I’ll go buy clothes. You get inside and scrub him down. Hard to walk around looking like that. If you don’t want the cops noticing, at least look human, yeah?”
“Ah… yes.”
Hyuk-jin answered, but he frowned at Se-gun’s high-handed tone. Se-gun found Hyuk-jin just as distasteful.
All his friends slaughtered, kidnapped by Giovanni and then “released” — and the guy was still standing on his pride over something this petty. Which meant he didn’t care much that his friends had been murdered in the first place.
The fact that he’d kept his true nature hidden and played the friend with Seo Rin all this time, plus the way he looked down on every human who wasn’t himself — it all pointed to the same conclusion. This bastard was sharp, and thoroughly rotten.
Se-gun sized him up by eye.
“T-shirt size… XL. Waist twenty-nine, right?”
“…You can tell just by looking?”
“I’ve got a knack for that sort of thing. I’ll buy the clothes. You wash this guy. Got it?”
“Yes.”
Even after saying it, Se-gun didn’t leave. He didn’t know what might happen if he left Seo Rin and Hyuk-jin alone.
“Get inside the bathhouse. Now.”
“Got it.”
Seo Rin was starting to read him well enough to understand. Suspecting his own friend… On any other day it might have stung, but with Se-gun this level of distrust felt about right. If Se-gun ever stopped being suspicious, that would be the real cause for worry.
Seo Rin moved to head into the bathhouse with Hyuk-jin.
The place had a little aluminum-framed booth under the stairs where the attendant took the entrance fee; the first floor was the men’s bath, the second the women’s.
Seo Rin paid the set fee and called Hyuk-jin over. The old man taking money at the counter stopped him.
“Hey, kid.”
“Yes?”
“Even so, that’s a bit much, don’t you think? When you factor in the water and all…”
He pointed at Hyuk-jin in protest. Who in their right mind would be happy about a filthy beggar walking into a bathhouse?
“We really need this. Here, then.”
Seo Rin paid the extra without hesitation. The old Seo Rin would never have imagined doing something like that.
“Ah. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. He’s my friend.”
Seo Rin said it like it was the most natural thing in the world, then bought shampoo, a razor, and a few other odds and ends before heading inside. Hyuk-jin followed without a word.
By the time the bath was finished, the clothes and shoes Se-gun had bought were already waiting at the counter. They changed and walked out together. Se-gun, who had been sitting in the shade, came over.
“All right. What now?”
“Let’s grab something to eat while we talk.”
“Yeah? Fine. Let’s go.”
Se-gun pulled on his helmet, swung onto the bike, and started the engine.
Seo Rin and Hyuk-jin followed him to a family restaurant near the station. Se-gun stopped out front.
“Here.”
“Eh? A place like this?”
“A place like this is better.”
Se-gun said it with certainty and walked in. Lunch hour was winding down, but the place was still fairly full. Even so they managed to find an indoor table with no one nearby.
“All right. Start talking.”
Se-gun sat at the table and stared Hyuk-jin down like he was conducting an interrogation. Hyuk-jin turned to Seo Rin with a look that clearly asked whether this man could be trusted.
“Uh… Seo Rin.”
“It’s fine. This hyung basically saved my life. If you can’t tell him, you might as well not tell me either. Don’t worry about it too much.”
Seo Rin laid it on a little thick. Se-gun had in fact pulled him out of Giovanni’s hands, so calling him a lifesaver wasn’t exactly a lie — but after spending every other day needling him, suddenly holding him up as a savior felt a bit rich. Hyuk-jin, who knew none of that context, just nodded along.
“Ah. R-right?”
Hyuk-jin began his story, trembling.
“T-the truth is… the guys and I were out messing around one night.”
“Messing around?”
“Some couple was getting on our nerves, so we were just giving them a hard time.”
According to the victims’ statements, what they’d done went far beyond “a hard time” into outright brutal assault. But Hyuk-jin chose his words carefully, framing it in the most self-serving way he could.
“And then?”
“And then this huge Black guy just showed up out of nowhere. Next thing I know he’s coming at us for no reason… God. You won’t believe me, but my friends all died in a single hit. I-I still can’t tell if I was dreaming or… I hadn’t even been huffing anything.”
Hyuk-jin said it with what looked like genuine gravity. Seo Rin felt a deep pang of sympathy for the terror on his face. Dropped into a world crawling with monsters while still only human — how could anyone not be afraid?
Se-gun, though, was watching him with a faint smirk. Seo Rin jabbed an elbow into his side.
“Cut it out. You’re scaring him.”
“Whatever… keep going.”
Se-gun’s tone was pure mockery. He clearly didn’t believe a word. Having told Hyuk-jin to continue, he turned his attention to a waitress taking another table’s order, as if he had no intention of listening at all. Hyuk-jin cleared his throat and pressed on.
“I don’t know about the others, but the one who looked like the boss spoke fluent Korean. He asked me if I was Choi Hyuk-jin, Seo Rin’s friend. When I said yes, he knocked me out cold in one hit and they took me. When I came to, I was… like this.”
He picked up a table knife, pressed the edge hard against his skin, and dragged it. It was a butter knife without a real edge, but under that pressure the skin split and blood welled up.
Only for a moment. The wound closed as if it had never been there. Seo Rin whipped around in alarm, but the other diners luckily seemed not to have noticed.
“Th-this is—!”
“…He told me I’d become a were-rat. That huge guy. He laughed at me and said there was nowhere left for me to go — that the police already had a warrant out, and that I’d turned into a monster, so living among humans was impossible now.”
“O-oh my God.”
Seo Rin couldn’t help being genuinely shocked. Hyuk-jin had been turned into a lycanthrope, same as him. He looked at Se-gun in dismay. Se-gun only smirked again.
“Nice. Real nice. Hilarious story. So basically you hadn’t done anything wrong, some random bastard grabbed you, turned you into a monster, and you somehow managed to escape? Sounds exactly like one of those tokusatsu cyborg shows.”
“I-I’m telling the truth. You’re watching the wound heal right in front of you and you still don’t believe me?”
Hyuk-jin said it in a flustered rush.
But the behavior itself was suspicious. If Giovanni had told him Seo Rin’s true nature — and Se-gun’s — then asking Seo Rin about Se-gun just a little while ago made no sense.
And if Giovanni hadn’t told him, then showing off a regenerating arm in front of Se-gun was the last thing he should have done. Se-gun had no reason to leave a lycanthrope alive if it wasn’t a Ririm. The guy’s head worked well enough to scheme, but the world wasn’t that simple — fooling people was harder than he thought.
Still… there was no scent of a lie on him, no change in his heartbeat. For Seo Rin, who mainly judged truth that way, the story would be almost impossible to see through.
“So how did you escape?”
Even Seo Rin found that part strange. Hyuk-jin answered while looking not at Seo Rin but at Se-gun, the one who clearly doubted him.
“I didn’t escape. They just laughed and let me go. Blindfolded me, dumped me outside. When I got back, there was already a warrant out. Even if the cops caught me and I told them everything, they wouldn’t believe me. And more than that… my body scares the hell out of me right now.”
Claiming he’d escaped would have been impossible to swallow. Saying they’d simply released him raised the credibility by a wide margin. No matter how capable Choi Hyuk-jin thought he was, a brand-new lycanthrope who had just been human could never have slipped Giovanni’s grasp on his own.
But if Giovanni had deliberately let him go so he would make contact with Seo Rin and Se-gun, that was a different story. In that case, releasing him made perfect sense… Of course, even then, this bastard wasn’t reliable. He himself might be the trap. There was almost certainly a transmitter or a bug planted on him.
Seo Rin, though, seemed not to care about any of that. He just kept nodding.
“Y-yeah. Yeah. I know exactly how that feels.”
Right then the waitress approached, and Se-gun silenced them both. The conversation they were having was not the kind of thing you wanted a complete stranger overhearing.