Under a Slender Moon
Even if someone tells you not to worry, who could stay calm when they're told, "I'm going to slice open your body and pull out what's inside"? Especially when the man has already sworn he has no intention of stitching you back up. Looking at him like that, asking whether he'd bother with anesthesia was a waste of breath.
Hyuk-jin tried to bolt in panic, but in that instant Se-gun mercilessly drove a straight punch into the back of his neck.
"Ha—always like this?"
Those were Hyuk-jin's last words before he blacked out.
Giovanni Vantero finished his regular report to Tetra Anax and let out a long breath. The higher-ups had been scolding him over the matter of turning Hyuk-jin into a lycanthrope. But Tetra Anax had already had its pride scraped raw by Han Se-gun, so they valued the idea of this as a preliminary skirmish for fighting him and let the whole thing end with a few sour words.
In vampire society, light discipline barely meant anything. Only the heavy kind carried any weight, so punishments were rarely handed out for anything less than a serious offense. If you were dealing with underlings on a payroll, docking wages or demoting them might work—but for those who weren't, there was no real tool for a light slap on the wrist. The list of brutal penalties was endless, yet mild ones barely existed, so the lesser offenses usually ended in nothing more than a warning.
"Whew. Still, that was lucky. I was half-expecting them to demand I hand over two liters of my blood."
Giovanni exhaled in relief. When Tetra Anax disciplined other vampires, they usually ordered a blood tribute—a deeply humiliating and nerve-wracking ordeal. Among vampires it was widely believed that donating blood to Tetra Anax lowered your VT. In truth VT was homeostatic, like a hormonal index in the body; drawing blood only dropped it by a trivial amount. But the higher your VT, the harder it was to raise and the easier it was to lose, so every vampire fretted over it.
After all, VT was treated as the very measure of a vampire's rank. Ordering a blood tribute was, in vampire society, a truly vicious punishment.
"Fortunate indeed."
The Bernardo brothers lit the cigar clenched in Giovanni's mouth, sincere relief in their voices.
"What do you intend to do, sir? The boy has infiltrated Se-gun's side quite well, but… even if he's exceptional for a human, he still can't match them as an enemy. And it's not as if he can extract any real intelligence either."
Learning the weapons mounted in Han Se-gun's defensive perimeter wouldn't tip the scales toward Giovanni. Those fortifications were designed for massed enemies; even a handful of elite vampires who could slip past them had never managed to break through Han Se-gun himself. It was no exaggeration to say that his greatest defensive asset was his own strength.
"Well… if you want to call that 'quite well,' I won't argue. The bug was completely destroyed in under two hours after they met, and he seems to have seen straight through the boy's identity."
Giovanni said it lightly, but the important thing was that Han Se-gun had let Hyuk-jin inside. At this stage, his plan was already more than half complete.
"Dragging this out any longer will only shake Choi Hyuk-jin's resolve. All right—time to get to work. Shall we call our friends, the magicians?"
"Yes, sir."
The Bernardo brothers picked up the phone. Meanwhile Giovanni rose and took hold of his cane.
"This time I can finally have a proper revenge match with Han Se-gun. Hahahaha."
The massive vampire snapped his cane as he spoke.
Haa… haa…
Harsh breathing filled the dark room. The girl lying on the bed clutched the sheets, trying to stifle the sound. It was no use—her breath had grown far too ragged. She bit down on her lip.
Her bed, cute and brightly decorated, had faded under the dim light into a two-tone wash of indigo and black. In the lightless dark she thrashed. The nightmare had seized her and would not let go.
"Ah—!"
Her mouth opened and a scream tore free.
Strange men had grabbed her and driven a needle into her arm. Faces, names, voices—none of them remained in her memory. They snarled in a foreign tongue she could not understand. They were beasts, pure and simple.
And then—from far away—a huge dog came running, black-bodied with green eyes. But it was far too large to be called a dog. Its legs alone were as long as a man; its charge was overwhelming.
A sudden storm rose, and a fierce wind whipped around her. The men holding her fought the monster bearing down on them. Their resistance was utterly useless. The creature's green eyes blazed like fire, and blue flames spilled from its jaws as it lunged.
With every charge, the men pinning her vanished one by one. At last only she and the monster remained.
"Young-eun."
The monster opened its mouth and spoke a human name. Startled, she lifted her head and looked full into its face—and it wore the face of her older brother, Seo Rin. A giant wild dog's body with a human face. The sight was so hideous that she screamed without sound.
"Young-eun, it's me. Your brother. I… I may be a monster, but I'm still your brother."
Seo Rin said it, but she was already drowning in panic. She scrambled backward, shaking her head wildly, desperate to get away from him. Seeing her like that, Seo Rin lowered his head.
"R-right… of course. A monster like me could never be family to a human, could he? How foolish of me."
He spoke as if resigning himself. Then his face melted into the monster's body, and this time it shifted into the form of a man she did not know at all. The entire beast dissolved, and a man appeared—green-haired, his solid frame wrapped in black clothes.
"Boring. Die."
The man swept his hand, and Young-eun's head was severed in an instant.
"Ah!"
Young-eun bolted upright in bed. She had risen so violently that the mattress sprang and nearly flung her forward. She threw out a hand for balance and tumbled off the bed. Fortunately something soft broke her fall, so she wasn't badly hurt.
Startled, she switched on the bedside lamp and looked—it was the stuffed animal her half-brother Seo Rin had given her.
"…Ah, ah… haha. I-it was a dream."
A nightmare far too vivid and foul. If she kept having dreams like this, her hair would turn white. She wiped cold sweat and glanced at the clock. It was already past two in the morning.
"Too awkward to try sleeping again."
She sighed at the clock. Then a draft brushed her cheek from somewhere.
"Huh?"
She looked at the window in surprise—and there it was. The window was cracked open, just a little. Something seemed to slip out through the gap with a soft rustle.
"Hm?"
Alarmed, she climbed onto the bed and peered outside, but nothing was there. In this house, where the veranda had been torn out so that the wall led straight to the open air, the idea of something passing by outside was the stuff of ghost stories.
"I must have imagined it."
She closed the window. Still—for her brother to appear in a dream out of nowhere… She shook her head hard. Born into a poor household and sent as an adoptive daughter to her mother's family, she had always wondered what became of her half-brother.
After days without word, a sudden message had simply arrived one day: he was quitting school and heading to the countryside to earn money. Shocked, she had begged her maternal grandfather to at least send Seo Rin living expenses—but the stubborn old man only snorted.
He had been so furious he even spat curses in front of Young-eun that no one should say in front of a girl.
You want me to feed, house, and clothe that whore's brat with my money? Never!
Young-eun sighed again and switched off the lamp. She was afraid that if she lay down she would fall into the same nightmare, but she couldn't simply stay awake. She needed sleep for tomorrow's studies.
"Really… Always going on about 'little sister, little sister,' and he couldn't even leave a single contact number."
Young-eun shifted under the covers and breathed a soft sigh.
The moon hung low in the sky, thin as a single thread. Tomorrow night it would almost certainly not rise at all. Beneath that moon, a young man walked along a shopping street where the traffic had long since died and people were scarce. His white hair, tinged blue by the faint moonlight, swayed pleasantly in the breeze. Hands in his pockets, he looked up at the moon and smiled.
"Today's really my lucky day. The guys would love this."
He snickered and tipped his cap. With the bandages stuck playfully across his face and that ever-smiling expression, he looked no older than his late teens or early twenties.
But he was a powerful vampire who had lived longer than any human could imagine—the Jinma Argon. Right now he was happily fluttering a scratch-off lottery ticket he'd bought from a vending machine.
Beside him, a blond man in a Hawaiian shirt trailed after him, shaking his head. At some point he had simply appeared out of the dark as if he'd formed from the shadows themselves. Argon wasn't surprised. He had known the man was following him all along.
"Argon. Join hands with me already. Then every problem gets solved."
"I've told you—I'm not interested."
The Jinma Argon said it flatly and shoved the lottery ticket into his jacket pocket, as if the man might pickpocket it.
"You got beaten by Han Se-gun, didn't you? And you still refuse?"
Word of his clash with Han Se-gun had clearly spread across every district. The incident had definitely wounded Argon's pride, but he still hadn't shown his true strength. By that measure Han Se-gun hadn't shown his either—yet people were already chewing it over. Argon frowned.
"Yeah… still no. Either way, he's more than qualified as a wildcard. I don't like the idea of the two of us ganging up to take someone like that. We're Jinma, after all. Living forever by scrabbling after enemies in cowardly team-ups doesn't sit right with me. What am I, Qin Shi Huang?"
"So you're volunteering to die, then?"
Agni muttered, exasperated.
Just then a black Peugeot sedan pulled up in front of them. A car stopping out of nowhere in the middle of the night—Agni immediately shifted into a defensive stance. It was a favorite method of Triad hitmen and the like, people he had fought many times: slam the car to a halt on the street and open fire.
But when the sedan's door opened, a golden-haired girl stepped out. She wore a black lace-trimmed dress with a gothic Celtic cross necklace at her throat, and a lace ribbon gathered her slightly waved blonde hair. Red beads rested in her hands as her subordinates escorted her from the car.
"Hello, Argon. And Agni?"
"Well, well—if it isn't Maria. Hey there."
Argon greeted her with a bright smile. Agni, however, eyed the girl who had appeared before them and licked his lips with a sly grin.
"Well, well… a half-baked Jinma."
"…Want to find out whether I'm half-baked or not with that body of yours?"
"I'd love nothing more. Time I stacked up a little VT, don't you think? If you imagine a few trinkets of magical treasure will let you stand against me…"
Agni bared his sharp fangs, clearly imagining the taste of a Jinma's blood. But in that moment a blade of cold ice appeared between them.
"Don't do anything stupid. Maria. Agni. I called Maria here. So going after her right now would be an attack on my guest—and that counts as a challenge to my territory, doesn't it? Stop thinking about fighting all the time and try something productive for once."
"Hey. Who interprets things like that? Territory, my ass—everywhere?"
"Fine, let's do this by the book. Argon, you got a land deed or a title? Use that for your territory. Right here I'm settling things with that arrogant Agni!"
Both Agni and Maria bristled at Argon's arbitrary reading of the situation. An intrusion on territory granted the right of self-defense. Of course Argon, who never paid much attention to Tetra Anax law, would simply strike if he felt like it whether that right was granted or not—but neither of them was willing to play along with him justifying himself that way.
"Heh. This little bitch has lost it. Your sister was the only reason anyone treated you like a Jinma. You think someone like you is even worth looking at now that she's gone? Why don't you go fetch your sister?"
The moment Agni mentioned Messiah, Maria bared her own fangs. Mutual provocation thickened the air until it felt ready to snap. Argon, unable to watch any longer, shouted.
"…Fine then. The three of us settle it right here—who dies and who lives? Winner absorbs all the blood, becomes a very-very strongman, and takes on Tetra Anax. How about it?"
At Argon's threat, both Agni and Maria shut their mouths. That would be an act of pure, unfiltered danger. Not something anyone would do for a simple thirst for blood.
"Anyway—about the thing I ordered. Argon, it's ready for now."
Maria said it calmly. Argon brightened and smiled.
"Thanks. Can you give it to me right now? I've got the payment ready too."
He patted the lottery ticket sticking out of his jacket pocket. Maria shook her head.
"Payment? Don't stretch a thin household. It's not that expensive—I'll give it to you free."
"…Do I really have to hear that kind of thing? Fine, then just hand it over now."
"Well—the item is finished, but I haven't brought it with me. There's also something I need to talk about, so why don't you come along and pick it up yourself?"
Agni exploded the instant she said it.
"Are you insane?! You think you're luring him into your nest? Argon, don't go. That artifact is Beidu Gangyu—it packs serious demon-slaying power. Pagun used to make and use those. Why the hell does this girl have one?"
"Shut up! You think I'm like you, eyes rolling back over bloodlust? Agni! You blood-swilling pig!"
"This tiny bitch has lost all sense of fear! Is this the age of lost fear? Going around without a scrap of it left?"
Argon and Maria snarled at each other again. The vampires guarding Maria drew their weapons as well.
"Enough. That's far enough."
Argon stepped between them once more. Putting yourself between two Jinma—even to mediate—was an act of pure risk. If both of them attacked him at once, even a powerful Jinma would be in real danger. But Maria and Agni stopped growling.