Face Your Friend's Death
Han Se-gun spoke in a calm, matter-of-fact tone. Hearing those words, Seo Rin looked at him in shock. To speak of death so casually. It had to be a joke… No. It had to be a joke. Thinking that, Seo Rin asked again.
"D-do you mean it? Really?"
"……"
Se-gun flipped the fried egg, slid it onto a plate, set it on the table, and sat down himself. Then he began to eat in silence.
Whoosh—
Wind swept through the forest, rattling the branches together. Cicadas answered at once, shrieking into the heat. Seo Rin stared at Se-gun with a vacant expression.
"You don't remember, do you? Well—considering how completely gone you were, I suppose that's only natural."
"Ah……"
Only then did the memory surface.
Hyuk-jin had definitely attacked him. He had even managed to kill Seo Rin once. Yes—he remembered that much clearly. But if the memory was true, the one who should be dead was Seo Rin himself, not Hyuk-jin.
So why on earth was Hyuk-jin dead?
"Ugh……"
His stomach lurched without warning. Startled, Seo Rin shot to his feet and bolted for the bathroom.
"Anyone watching would think you were pregnant."
Han Se-gun muttered that and went back to his rice.
He understood the circumstances well enough—but there could be no sympathy here, no comfort. Seo Rin had killed Hyuk-jin with his own hands, and that act was nothing less than a baptism now: the rite of passage for walking under the protection of the mad moon.
In this world, you could not live without killing someone. Sooner or later it was a line you would have had to cross. That the other person had been a friend was unfortunate… but what was done was done.
"Blaaaargh!"
Seo Rin retched up stomach acid and screamed without a sound.
Damn it. He didn't know the details—but Hyuk-jin's death had to have been by Seo Rin's own hands. No. He was certain he had killed him. Even in the chaos, the sensation of something driving through remained vivid in his palm. Even now, the moment he moved his fingers he flinched. It felt as if Hyuk-jin's corpse were still hanging from his fingertips, and he couldn't stand it.
"Urgh!"
He vomited again.
"Hah… hah…. You idiot! Why—why would you!"
The guy had charged him, so he killed him. Put that way, it was simple. To protect his own body, it had been unavoidable. Put that way, it was also simple. Yes—this was self-defense. Hyuk-jin had already gone mad, and Seo Rin had simply done his best not to get bitten by a rabid dog…
But was that really true? Seo Rin turned on the faucet to wash the bile from around his mouth, and as he rinsed his face he suddenly looked up into the mirror. His left eye—the red one—grated strangely against his nerves.
"Ah……"
All at once the Seo Rin in the glass was dyed red. Hyuk-jin's voice rose unbidden in his ears. Run. Get away—that screaming voice.
But Seo Rin had driven his claws into the boy's chest without mercy and torn it open. Unlike Seo Rin, Hyuk-jin was only a lesser lycanthrope; the moment his heart burst, he was already dead. Hyuk-jin collapsing forward with a wound too deep ever to recover from—and watching that, Seo Rin had been extremely happy.
The joy of killing an enemy… The guy was an enemy. He had been an enemy! A natural enemy you had to kill to survive! Who could possibly blame him for killing someone like that? Even if they did blame him—you had no choice if you wanted to live!
But he had also been an irreplaceable, precious friend.
"Why……"
Seo Rin looked down at his own hands. Why had it come to this? Why had someone who had been an ordinary student come to commit murder? And of his closest friend, at that…
"When your life is in danger, you force a transformation. You become a wounded beast with no friend-or-foe identification. Once that happens, anyone who approaches clumsily—friend or enemy—gets killed. Yeah…. Hyuk-jin was lying there dead, stabbed by your hand."
Se-gun spoke in a cold tone. Rage surged up in Seo Rin, and he raised his voice.
"How can this be! Why?! Why did I kill him!? He was my friend! My most precious friend! So why did he try to kill me—and why did I have no choice but to kill him?"
Seo Rin screamed. Sudden fury boiled over. What wrong had he done to end up in this situation? What sin had he committed?
Because he was a lycanthrope?
Or because he was Lilith's descendant?
But it wasn't as if he had chosen to be born as Lilith's child. Thinking that, anger flared toward Han Se-gun as well. If he was going to end up in this goddamn state, he never should have come to this world of the mad moon or whatever. Better to be murdered by someone without even knowing why. Better than killing his friend with his own hands…
But Se-gun answered coldly.
"The problem is the weakness that makes you lose your mind the moment you transform. And the problem is also that you got beaten so badly you were forced to transform or die. You're Lilith's child—every kind of bastard is hunting you—and you're still too weak. If you were a normal person it'd be one thing, but as long as you're Lilith's child, weakness is a sin. Get stronger. If you don't get stronger, things like this will keep happening."
Han Se-gun said that and cleared the table.
Even for Se-gun, this incident had been unexpected. Giovanni had pretended to kidnap Seo Yeong-eun while peeling himself away, successfully separating Se-gun from Seo Rin. Then he had used Hyuk-jin—whom he had prepared in advance—to attack Seo Rin. Up to that point, he had completely caught Se-gun off guard.
Fortunately, Se-gun had immediately defeated the Bernardo brothers and been able to return. Of course, even so, he had already given up. He had wasted far too much time fighting the Bernardos.
But when he came back, Seo Rin was sitting there stunned after killing Hyuk-jin, and no other vampires were in sight. Had Giovanni and the rest never intended to take Seo Rin at all?
Startled, he dug through the household security footage and learned exactly what had happened.
At first Hyuk-jin and Seo Rin had fought each other, and soon Hyuk-jin had killed Seo Rin. But then Seo Rin had forcibly transformed and counterattacked, putting Hyuk-jin in danger—and then Giovanni appeared. Up to there, everything had followed the sequence Se-gun had expected.
Giovanni easily subdued Seo Rin, and Hyuk-jin, seeing that, ran. But after that, astonishingly… Hyuk-jin, now armed, threw himself back in—this time to save Seo Rin. To throw his life away so recklessly for the friend he had even killed with his own hands—Se-gun couldn't begin to understand the guy's psychology.
Anyway, that attack barely succeeded in tearing Seo Rin free of Giovanni. That was remarkable in itself. He had fought Giovanni the Successor once before. The man definitely had the skill to claim the title of Jinma. For a freshly turned lycanthrope to push that hard against a vampire like that…
"But this is the result?"
Hyuk-jin, approaching to wake Seo Rin, was immediately pierced through the chest by Seo Rin's hand and collapsed. The recording quality was poor, but that single moment was etched crystal-clear in his mind. This was truly… the kind of footage that might drive Seo Rin insane if he ever saw it.
He had attacked him at first, sure—but in the situation as it stood now, he had been a friend who wouldn't even spare his own life to save Seo Rin. To ambush and kill a guy like that… If he showed this to Seo Rin, who was already suffering so much, what would happen?
"What a headache……"
If Seo Rin lost it here, Se-gun would have a hard time handling him. Even this dejected state was difficult enough to manage—if he went completely berserk, he'd be impossible to deal with. But should he hide this scene? He didn't want to do that either.
It was a strange business. When a fact was inconvenient, you just hid it and covered it up—but Seo Rin was far too complacent a kid to simply have inconvenient truths papered over for him. Only by staring harsh reality in the face would he be able to overcome the trials ahead. Thinking of that, this had to be shown.
"But if I show it now, it'll look like I'm tormenting him, won't it?"
Of course he was tormenting him. With spectacularly bad taste at that…. Se-gun sighed and kept replaying the footage. Up to this point, it was Giovanni's victory. He had been one step away from achieving his goal of luring Se-gun away and seizing Seo Rin in the meantime.
But midway, Argon appeared and the situation changed. Argon, arriving out of nowhere, drove Giovanni Vantero off—and for some reason, after chasing Giovanni away, circled Seo Rin a few times and simply left.
Argon was one of the Jinma who refused Tetra Anax's rule—so Seo Rin would be a card he couldn't ignore. That was probably why he had entered Korea in the first place. And yet he just left that card lying there and vanished. What the hell was that bastard thinking? Surely he didn't fancy himself some fair and upright gentleman?
Of course, among vampires there were often those bound by pointless principles. Live long enough and no matter how deep you sank into pleasure, everything grew tedious. So those vampires especially set rules for themselves to make their lives more varied and enjoyable.
In that sense, Argon had almost certainly established principles of fairness and justice. From a human perspective, it was thoroughly admirable and excellent. From a human perspective…
But the guy was a vampire. Nothing more than a blood-drinking vampire. For a creature like that to set his own principles, keep them, and feel satisfied with himself—how filthy and nauseating was that? The fact that he had received help from bastards like that made Han Se-gun's flesh crawl.
"These bastards……"
Han Se-gun chewed on his killing intent and stepped back from the computer.
Whatever the case, he would show the boy this footage now. Whether the kid shattered from it, or used it to stand and grow even stronger… Se-gun had neither reason nor right to hide this recording.
Seo Rin drew a breath as he watched the footage playing before his eyes. Recorded by the camera installed in the backyard, the video showed him and Hyuk-jin, and Giovanni and Argon, in full.
"This… goddamn!"
He clicked his tongue again as he watched. This footage, which laid bare his own ugliness and weakness, made bile rise in his throat. Not disgust at someone else, but hatred for his own weakness—it was like a rat flattened under a car tire, or the maggots writhing in the juice leaking from a torn garbage bag: a purely physical revulsion.
A curse upon that ugly self of his…
Yes. This was a curse.
Even if Hyuk-jin had tried to kill him at first, everything he had done afterward had clearly been to save Seo Rin. He must have been under some kind of control from Giovanni. Seo Rin didn't know the details, but that was the only way he could see it.
That friend, having come to his senses, threw himself in to rescue Seo Rin. He bravely swung his blade at a vampire of overwhelming power and tore Seo Rin free of his grasp!
That was Hyuk-jin for you. The guy had grown up in a dojo and trained in martial arts since childhood. Unlike Seo Rin, who had loafed around just because he was Lilith's child, Hyuk-jin knew when to commit and when to cut ties. No matter how outstanding the vampire, he wouldn't simply stand there under Hyuk-jin's furious assault.
But Seo Rin, knowing nothing, had pierced Hyuk-jin's heart with his hand like a beast.
It was only silent video, but he could almost hear the sounds of that scene in his ears. And the sensation of that heart… still vivid at his fingertips. To stab with his own hand the friend who had trusted him and come to save him!
Seo Rin looked at his hands and trembled violently. Looking at the hand that had pierced Hyuk-jin's heart, his eyes grew red.
"Ah, damn it all! Goddamn it! Goddamn it!"
Furious, Seo Rin looked at Han Se-gun. He couldn't understand the ulterior motive for showing him something like this. Had he wanted to torment him that badly? Was he so weak and pathetic that Se-gun couldn't rest until he showed him this?
But Han Se-gun answered calmly.
"……"
Se-gun's words stabbed into Seo Rin's chest like a dagger. No blood was drawn, but it was murder all the same. Seo Rin's heart was already in tatters, and enduring that pain was no easy thing.
But he had to look. He had to face this. He had to etch into his eyes and carve into his heart the terrible mistake born of his own weakness and foolishness.
"In the end… I'm trash beyond saving."
When the footage finished, Seo Rin gritted his teeth and stood. Then Han Se-gun spoke evenly.
"If you become trash beyond saving, then the friend who died for that unsalvageable trash is the one to pity. If you really think that, get stronger. Strong enough that even when you transform, you don't lose your reason! At the very least, manage that much. Otherwise you're nothing but an obstacle."
Han Se-gun's words were sound. Seo Rin headed for the training ground without a word.
Seo Rin had been so hard-pressed just making ends meet that he never had room for friends. People said friendship wasn't about money—but hanging out together inevitably cost money. And to keep up with conversations you needed at least the free time to watch TV: something Seo Rin had never had since childhood.
Working part-time jobs, coming home to handle the housework. Repeat that long enough and you naturally end up on the fringes at school. Even so, with his decent, neat looks and powerful physique, he never became what people call a target for bullying or ostracism.
But even he had one truly precious friend—and that was Hyuk-jin.
Like Seo Rin, Hyuk-jin almost never spent time watching TV and had no interest in trends or any of that. At first their similarities had led to a lot of fights, but before they knew it they had become the closest of friends.
Yeah…. When people meet people… awkward relationships force you to talk somehow. You have to draw interest with funny stories and win empathy with things they can relate to.
But a true friend doesn't need any of those words. For Seo Rin, that friend had been Hyuk-jin.
So when the guy first attacked him, he had been more than a little shocked. Being close friends, Seo Rin knew Hyuk-jin well enough to know he had a considerable complex about always losing to Seo Rin. But to pick a life-or-death fight with Seo Rin just to erase that complex—that had been so far beyond imagination he couldn't help but be stunned.
But in the end, the guy was still Hyuk-jin. Whatever the circumstances, he had charged Giovanni Vantero with just a few blades strapped on. His opponent was a vampire who had already kidnapped him once. He must have known the difference in power perfectly well himself.