To Catch a Tiger
It was an absurd enough story that no one would take it at face value the moment they heard it—but that didn't mean they had to sit there looking like a bunch of freaks, either.
"Ah, what do you want to drink? I'm going lemonade."
"Refillable cola, obviously."
"I'll take a refillable Mirinda too."
Se-gun shot Hyuk-jin another look. For someone who'd just been kidnapped, released, and was still putting on a trembling-victim act, he sure answered without missing a beat. The silent glare was pure, wordless scolding: Have some shame. Hyuk-jin flushed and mumbled,
"I-I'm just hungry, that's all."
"Then food? I'll just go with the lunch set."
"No way. Hyung, you need to eat a lot. Order big."
Seo Rin said it to Se-gun. The waitress gave Se-gun a faintly surprised once-over, but his lean frame didn't look like it belonged to a heavy eater.
"You talk like you're the one paying. Well, yeah, I do need to eat a lot, but… damn it, whatever. Just order. What about you two?"
"Ah, I'll just take the lunch set too."
"I'll have the spareribs."
Se-gun placed the order. The waitress smiled brightly and looked back at him.
"You came with your little brothers, I see?"
"Ah, yeah. Something like that."
Se-gun slid his sunglasses down just enough to flash a smile, then mercilessly stomped on Seo Rin's foot under the table as the kid snickered beside him. Once the waitress left with their order, Se-gun eyed Hyuk-jin and pulled something from his pocket.
"Anyway, putting that aside for a second."
He switched on a small radio-frequency detector. Commonly sold as a hidden-camera finder, it hunted wireless electronics—and was useless against hardwired cameras installed in inns or hotels, which made it practically worthless for that job.
Wired cameras were cheap and sturdy; wireless ones demanded massive data throughput. And if someone really wanted a hidden camera, they just stored the footage on internal memory and collected it later. There was no reason to risk real-time transmission and get caught.
Even so, the detector had its uses. With a little modification it could catch a wide bandwidth, making it excellent against listening devices.
"Hm. Figures."
Sure enough, there was a bug inside Hyuk-jin's body. Probably surgically implanted. Se-gun sighed and seized Hyuk-jin's wrist.
"Hold still a second."
"Huh?"
Ssssshk!
Something pitch-black seeped from the wrist Se-gun gripped and sank into Hyuk-jin's body. Hyuk-jin yelped and tried to wrench free, but Se-gun's grip was so brutal the wrist simply snapped. Even then Se-gun didn't let go.
"Y-you…!"
Hyuk-jin snatched a fork off the table and lunged to stab him. Se-gun yanked the arm he still held, deflected the strike, and shoved Hyuk-jin hard into the booth seat.
"Ghk—!"
"It's in the torso."
Whatever the probe had told him, Se-gun snapped a kick under the table straight into Hyuk-jin's midsection. Backed against the booth, with the opposite table empty, a full push-kick would have sent the whole seat sliding and drawn every eye in the place. Se-gun's kick was razor-precise—struck only the torso and withdrew clean.
He returned to his own seat as if nothing had happened. The kick had been delivered half-sprawled under the table, yet the shock punched straight through without launching Hyuk-jin backward. No one nearby even noticed Se-gun had kicked him.
"Khak!"
Hyuk-jin crumpled face-first toward the table. Se-gun smirked.
"Hmm. Good. Looks like it broke."
"W-wait a second. Hyuk-jin looks broken too! You do that just to smash a bug?"
"…A Lycanthrope's body is tougher than a listening device. But this guy's pretty good. The second I gave him a little pain he grabbed a fork and came at me. He's starting to look like a real person."
Apparently Se-gun's standard for "being human" meant going from shy and awkward one second to stabbing someone with a fork the next if things went south.
Seo Rin decided he didn't like that definition of humanity and looked at Hyuk-jin. Hyuk-jin was trembling, glaring at Se-gun. Getting treated like that and not getting angry would have been the weird part.
"E-even so, this is a restaurant. What if he throws up?"
"You said he became a were-rat, right? Rats have a hard time vomiting. I thought it through, so stop panicking, Mickey Mouse."
In short: he won't puke, so I hit him with a clear conscience. From the receiving end the words were enraging enough to make your eyes roll back, but the sheer speed and cruelty of the act made fear arrive before anger.
"Ugh… you…"
Hyuk-jin was still shaking when the next thing happened—something even more infuriating. Seo Rin heard Se-gun's explanation, eyes going wide with surprise, then—
"Aha!"
—clapped his hands.
"What's with the 'aha,' you!"
Hyuk-jin snapped at Seo Rin. That delighted look of having just learned something new only made him angrier. Still, Se-gun was the one who really got under his skin.
Just what the hell was this guy? Hyuk-jin was a Lycanthrope now too, yet Se-gun handled him like a child—snapping his arm without a second thought. That strength wasn't human anymore. And he treated the whole thing like he'd stepped on someone's foot… no, even lighter than that.
Anyway, it looked like the bug had been found and destroyed. Hyuk-jin figured he could finally breathe and let out a sigh. Then Se-gun spoke to Seo Rin.
"I smashed the listening device, sure, but it could just be a smokescreen. When you find one, you usually relax, right?"
Too sharp by half. No—at this point he already knew and was just squeezing Hyuk-jin for fun.
"Well, yeah, but there's no way he has other gear, right? It's not like there's a video camera attached or something."
Seo Rin disagreed. Friendship really did bend the elbow inward. From Hyuk-jin's point of view, this Se-gun character seemed to enjoy deliberately maneuvering Seo Rin into defending him.
"There could be a suggestion planted. Or this guy might be cooperating with him of his own free will. In the extreme, there could be a telepathic link. Giovanni's side doesn't seem to have that kind of talent, but if mages get involved it isn't impossible."
And there it was—that possibility laid out on the table.
Hyuk-jin flinched and looked at Se-gun. Yeah. You couldn't fool this man. The madman who'd sent terror warnings nationwide and then actually carried them out… But if that was true, why keep Hyuk-jin alive? Why pretend not to know? Just to convince Seo Rin? The risk felt far too high for that.
Whatever the case, Hyuk-jin's life was already a chip on the gambling table. He waited for the food and carefully observed Se-gun and Seo Rin.
"Th-that can't be. Hyuk-jin's my friend."
Seo Rin bristled at the suggestion that Hyuk-jin might be willingly working with Giovanni. Se-gun stayed cold.
"Most people who go bankrupt co-signing loans… go bankrupt co-signing for friends. A real friend isn't the one who hates being suspected. A real friend is the one who takes suspicion and being suspected as natural—no pressure. Some guy who uses your friendship as collateral to force a dangerous gamble on you? Call that a friend? Don't make me laugh."
"Then why come into a place like this? If you don't trust him, you'll just handle things the way you want no matter what I think, right?"
"I don't care either way. If it goes south I'll kill him and feed him to the fish. Come to think of it, killing a Lycanthrope doesn't even pay. Pure loss compared to vampires. Shoot one and you don't even cover the bullet cost—and if you're unlucky you catch a murder charge."
"There he goes again. Ah, just ignore him. Even when he talks like that, hyung is actually really kind."
"…"
Hyuk-jin felt his appetite evaporate. He was already a bad guy who'd gone too far himself, but Seo Rin's sense of calling someone like that "kind" was completely beyond him.
A guy who blew up an entire building, drained vampires of their blood to sell, refined and peddled drugs—no matter how you sliced it, that was a villain among villains, wasn't it?
Then the food started arriving and they paused the conversation. The earlier heat had drawn occasional glances from nearby tables; it was starting to get on their nerves. Three set meals filled the table completely.
On top of that the place was newly opened, so staff training was strict—they refilled drinks from a slightly crouched posture that felt uncomfortably attentive.
"Anyway, so… right now I really don't know what to do. What should I do?"
Hyuk-jin asked while cheerfully slicing meat with the same knife that had been aimed at his arm moments earlier. Se-gun answered while cutting his steak.
"Go to the police station."
Short. Irresponsible. Seo Rin shot him a look, but Se-gun had no reason to care about Seo Rin's opinion.
"And say what?"
"Ask them to lock you up."
Se-gun calmly popped steak into his mouth. For him, eating had long since stopped being about savoring flavor; it was pure nutrient intake. He chewed mechanically and pointed his fork at Hyuk-jin.
"You're joking, right?"
Hyuk-jin asked, cold sweat beading.
"Or reveal that you're a Lycanthrope and turn yourself in nicely to a university hospital or research lab. That works too. Tetra Anax might not clean it up before the media gets hold of it. Sounds fun, doesn't it?"
"…I know better than anyone there's nothing good about telling the world. I'm the one living it."
Hyuk-jin was even stammering now. Do what Se-gun suggested and he'd spend the rest of his life as a lab specimen. Not that "the rest of his life" would be very long. Other Lycanthropes and vampires would never let him live after that.
"Good that you know. Makes things easier."
Se-gun pushed his empty steak plate aside. Seo Rin fidgeted, watching his expression.
"Hyung… I still want to help Hyuk-jin, though."
"You're crazy. Are you in any position to help other people right now?"
"But hyung. Don't you even know the Nolbu story?"
Suddenly Nolbu? Wasn't it Heungbu? And was there anyone in Korea who didn't know that tale? Still, once Seo Rin started talking he would definitely twist it into some bizarre argument of his own. Se-gun snorted.
"Grind Nolbu into powder and fry him into a pancake—that's Nolbu-jeon."
"…No, not that. In the story Heungbu fixes a swallow with a broken leg and the swallow brings back a gourd seed. Like that anecdote shows, if you do someone a kindness, someday it comes back as a reward even bigger than the kindness itself. And I mean huge returns."
When Seo Rin finished, Hyuk-jin and Se-gun both stared.
"Scary kid. Looks like you'll have to work yourself to the bone, huh?"
Se-gun said it while glaring at Hyuk-jin. Matching the ROI on Heungbu's gourd seed would take a lifetime of labor—or at least a lottery jackpot.
Was Seo Rin always like this? Hyuk-jin broke out in a cold sweat. But right now he needed Seo Rin's help no matter what. Getting into Se-gun and Seo Rin's hideout was essential if he wanted to complete the mission Giovanni had given him. If they abandoned him he'd be dodging police for real.
The kids were all dead, but that man and woman were the problem. Damn Giovanni had rewritten every vampire-killing memory as Hyuk-jin's own; living as a normal human in this world was already finished.
Still—being treated like the swallow that brought the gourd seed? Hyuk-jin was so dumbfounded he said,
"…Gourd seeds are a bit much. I could maybe bring pumpkin seeds, though."
"Just eat your food. Well, fine. I'm not expecting gourd seeds or pumpkin seeds, but we can't just turn a Lycanthrope loose on the street either."
So it ends up like this after all? Se-gun sighed.
His claim that Hyuk-jin was cooperating with Giovanni might have been pure speculation. The circumstances suggested cooperation, or at least that he'd heard some plausible information from Giovanni… but that didn't guarantee he was actually working for the guy. Sometimes people just played along as a temporary way out of a tight spot.
And depending on what he did going forward, he might even flip to Seo Rin's side, right? If not, they could always use him as bait to draw Giovanni out. Plenty of utility either way.
"Uh, so…?"
"We're taking this guy with us."
Se-gun made the call. But he absolutely did not trust Hyuk-jin. If Giovanni weren't insane, he never would have planted a single bug in a hard-won captive and let him go.
There was definitely a trap here. Whatever it was, bringing this guy inside was dangerous. But… without accepting that risk, they couldn't properly intercept Giovanni.
"To catch a tiger, you have to enter the tiger's den."
Hearing Se-gun mutter to himself, Hyuk-jin couldn't hide his unease.
In the end Hyuk-jin made it all the way to Se-gun's hideout. For a while it had looked dicey, but Seo Rin's relentless persuasion had sealed the deal.
"This is it?"
Hyuk-jin couldn't close his mouth at the scene before him. Nestled among a sparse stand of pine trees stood a red-brick church, and attached to its side was a prefab building with a slate roof.
The church's slate ceiling was rusted through with holes, weeds sprouting everywhere—a complete mess. Living and sleeping in a place like that… did they pitch a tent or something? The thought flashed through his mind, but as he drew closer he saw that wasn't the case. The slate building next door was half warehouse, half living quarters, and he could see the air-conditioner's outdoor unit running.