The Night That Vanished
The shocking night, scarred by a gunfight that could have passed for urban warfare, finally ended. What had become of Seoul’s public safety? The incident that filled people with doubt and horror was sinking ever deeper into a labyrinth of unanswered questions.
Every corpse recovered from the scene had been reduced to ash in a fire at the hospital under whose jurisdiction they fell. The spent rounds found at the site were identified as entirely standard Republic of Korea issue—Poongsan 5.56 mm rifle ammunition. The monster’s body had been discovered in the alley from which the gunfire had echoed, yet it was already so thoroughly decayed that only bones remained, as if decades had passed in a single instant. Those bones, too, vanished in the hospital fire.
No ordinary blaze, no matter how fierce, could consume bone so completely that not a single trace remained. That simply did not happen in a normal fire.
There were no solid witnesses, and the upper ranks refused to assign additional personnel. Once the media storm quieted, the police gradually scaled back the investigative manpower as well. A political scandal erupted at precisely the right moment, the press lost interest with unnatural speed, and a strange situation resulted: Detective Sim Gu-jin of the Yeongdeungpo Station Juvenile Division—a man with fifteen years on the job—was left as the sole officer responsible for the case.
“Damn it! You think my eyes are screwed on crooked? Now you’re telling me it was Poongsan ammo… Does that even make sense?”
Detective Sim raised his voice into the receiver, but the other party cut him off without the slightest regard. He had called the forensic science unit—short-staffed, overloaded, and staffed by people with impressive degrees and higher ranks who were genuinely too busy to waste time on a frontline detective. Being ignored was only natural from their side. From his, it was impossible to accept.
“A full-blown gunfight in the capital of the Republic of Korea—rockets, the whole circus—and the police are sitting around sucking their thumbs! Why the hell did I get shoved into this mess? Huh?”
The self-pity that slipped into the rant was a little odd, yet Sim Gu-jin was, in his own way, a detective who still carried a sense of mission. Even back in Juvenile, that same “mission” had sent every troublemaking kid straight to reformatory; the petitions from parents and school principals had bounced him from post to post until he landed this impossible assignment.
“Uh… Detective Sim. Coffee.”
A combat-police conscript with artfully tousled short hair wandered over, yawning, and set a paper cup on the file stack. Combat police were supposed to handle riot control, but protests were rare these days; a lucky posting meant ferrying coffee and playing games at the computer.
“You worthless little shit! What is this? I said black!”
Sim snapped at the conscript and drank the coffee anyway. It was vending-machine swill either way—black or milky made no real difference—yet he made a production of it. The conscript apologized half-heartedly. Dark circles under his eyes looked thick enough to measure; he had clearly spent the previous night’s duty shift deep in online chat.
“Damn it… the rifling marks should still be there, but they claim they don’t know a thing… Are we actually investigating this, or are we just pretending?”
Sim sighed as he leafed through the files. Outside the window the world was already bustling with Christmas preparations, as if that night of slaughter had never happened. Autumn was gone; winter stood on the threshold. A roasted-sweet-potato cart was even visible.
“Got some balls, that one.”
Only a fearless street vendor would drag a cart right past a police station. Sim rubbed his face and stood. The section chief glanced over, but Sim was a discarded stone in the game of go—whatever he did no longer mattered.
“I’ll be heading out, then.”
“Yeah, sure.”
The chief answered absently, tapping ash into the tray.
“Man, what a waste. If we’d drained every last drop of that vampire blood and sold it, we could’ve made a real killing.”
The arms broker and courier who introduced himself as Kenneth Yang made a theatrical fuss while staring at Silvester. Se-geon, Silvester, and Song Deok-yeon had left Seoul for the safe house Kenneth provided, waiting for the police heat to die down. Until then they had no choice but to endure his grating chatter.
There was, of course, a reason for the chatter. Standing right in front of him was a Jinma hunter whose name was already legend among vampire hunters—and looking astonishingly young at that. Any arms dealer would be stunned. Yet while Kenneth might feel amazement, he felt no suspicion.
Silvester’s appearance alone made it impossible to regard him as an ordinary man. Clean silver hair, cold eyes, a body that was muscled yet never bulky—smooth as sculpture—and a charisma so intense that even vampires trembled with the fear of death. This was the only human who had ever killed a Jinma: Father Silvester, the Jinma hunter.
“From the way you talk, you already know those guns were taken from vampires… Did you supply them with the weapons?”
The legendary figure turned a murderous glare on the arms dealer. Kenneth flinched theatrically, then grinned.
“Sharp as ever… I was going to mention it later—”
The soft rasp of steel cut him off. Silvester’s claymore leapt from its scabbard. Before the man could even register shock, the blade kissed his Adam’s apple. The cut first appeared as a white line, then began to bead with blood.
Se-geon had once tested the claymore out of boredom: a single breath of air across a strand of hair was enough to sever it clean. Had Silvester truly meant to take the head, nothing would have remained. That same blade could shear through a car roof wrapped in metal and fiber.
“Ah… that stings.”
A remarkably ordinary remark for a man who had just been nicked across the throat. But this was someone bold enough to trade weapons with vampires. Silvester was not impressed by mere courage.
“Never do that again. Next time a vampire is holding a gun, I’ll treat you as one of them. I don’t drain and sell vampire blood, after all. Killing a human or a vampire is all the same to me.”
“Hahaha! Yes, I’ll be careful. When I dealt with them myself, they put a gun to my back and made life miserable for a while.”
“…”
Instead of answering, Silvester swung the claymore once more. Kenneth’s bangs fell cleanly to the floor.
A heavy click as the blade returned to its scabbard. Suffocating silence pressed down on Kenneth and Se-geon alike.
“What the hell are you laughing about? Don’t smile in front of me again. It makes me want to kill you.”
“…”
Even Kenneth, who prided himself on bluff and swagger, found his mouth sealed shut. Se-geon watched the ugly scene, stifled a yawn, and switched on the television.
Light spilled across the dark safe house. A music-show broadcast filled the screen.
“Already Sunday, huh?”
Se-geon muttered as he began field-stripping the guns. Instead of collecting vampire blood, Silvester had taken their weapons and handed every last one to Se-geon. No longer would he have to rely on a pair of feeble Tokarevs.
“Music show? Figures. Looks like the rest of the world already forgot the whole thing.”
Song Deok-yeon entered, glanced at the screen, and started grumbling. He dumped the contents of a plastic bag onto the table. Se-geon caught a bottle of mineral water and turned back to the television.
At first the night had been called “the night of shock” and dominated every channel. Now, somehow, it barely registered. People forgot quickly—but this quickly?
“Vampire influence, I suppose?”
Se-geon murmured weakly and sighed. The safe house was a two-story building, fully bulletproofed, standing alone beside a national highway in Gangwon Province with nothing but fields around it. That night they had loaded the interior with fish, blocked the entrance, and broken through the police cordon in a refrigerated truck. Upon arrival they had signed a two-week contract and spent a full week sealed inside.
One small mercy: South Korea simply did not have enough police. A full-force surveillance net could last three days at most, and even that faded into half-measures with time.
Song Deok-yeon’s face had been seen by residents of the neighborhood, which was a concern, yet people woken by distant noise in the dead of night or at dawn were unlikely to remember a figure that far away. The people who had met Se-geon and Song at the PC bang would remember more clearly, but no such faces appeared on the airwaves. Television interviewees vaguely described Song as some kind of special-forces operative.
The idea that special forces had been deployed to kill a monster was so absurd no one truly believed it—yet it also possessed a strange persuasive power. Meanwhile, public interest continued to drift away.
The families of those murdered by the Corrupted still remembered. They had even formed a truth-seeking committee and occasionally demonstrated outside the station. That, too, would soon be forgotten.
“Still… firing an RPG-7 in the middle of the city and tossing grenades into the river, and nobody saw a thing? That doesn’t make sense.”
Se-geon tilted his head while continuing to strip the various service rifles. The simple joy of finally possessing superior firepower against vampires made him hum under his breath despite the grim situation. Kenneth watched, shrugged, and spoke.
“The Tetra Anax clan landed in Korea a year ago. About time their influence started working, don’t you think, rookie hunter?”
“I don’t know. Even if vampires have that kind of power, can they really shut people’s eyes and mouths so easily?”
“Of course. Are human eyes and mouths even still eyes and mouths? Control the newspapers and the networks and you can steer the public without breaking a sweat. For the children of Tetra Anax, who possess Trans Emphasis, it’s child’s play.”
Se-geon set the guns aside and sighed. The notion that Korea’s powerful figures were already falling into vampire hands was hard to swallow. Creatures that could not even walk in daylight, controlling people? Difficult to accept—yet when he considered their magical power, he could not call it impossible either.
“So what happens then?”
“Nothing changes. How much difference do you think a new set of top dogs makes to the ordinary citizens who serve them from below? The ruled class is simply ruled. The only real change is that their hypnosis erodes belief in vampires and monsters. People start treating the existence of vampires the way they treat conspiracy theories or alien stories—rationally denying it.”
“And the people who still believe?”
“They become fanatics, obviously. Don’t you know? Having both believers and non-believers mixed together only makes the whole thing less credible.”
Kenneth smacked his lips and started chewing bubble gum.
“Want one? Ah—Jinma Hunter, sir?”
“No. Not interested.”
“…”
Kenneth gave an exaggerated shrug and blew a bubble.
“I’ll clear out, then. Once the contract ends I’ll be back. Until then, make free use of the facilities.”
He finished speaking and walked out. The large cruiser parked in the yard roared to life and departed. Se-geon exhaled in relief. Something about Kenneth made him hard to deal with. A man who would sell weapons to vampires if the price was right—you could never truly trust someone like that.
“As long as money moves him, he’ll value his own credit. How much money it would take to break that credit, though… I don’t know.”
Silvester murmured while gazing out the window, then sat at the table. On the television a giant Christmas tree in front of City Hall filled the screen.
“Damn it. This place is a prison.”
Se-geon grumbled about being cooped up for days and retreated to his room.
Detective Sim sighed as he examined the abandoned vehicles at the scene. He needed no forensic team to understand that an enormous firefight had taken place; the ballistic vests and personal effects on the corpses told the story clearly enough. Witness statements suggested heavy weapons had been used as well. Bomb fragments recovered from the water pointed to composition-type fragmentation grenades—military-grade hardware. Armed factions had collided.
“You damn clowns! But the important part is missing. The bastards who actually did this—where the hell are they?”
The vehicle’s registered owner was some entertainment production company that claimed total ignorance. They said the car had been parked and stolen the very day of the incident; digging further would yield nothing. An entertainment agency hiring a mercenary company was ridiculous, so the story could not even be treated with suspicion. Stolen cars, unregistered guns, switched ammunition, and no remaining bodies—the case was pure fog.
Weapons never before seen or heard of in the Republic of Korea had been used in a street battle, yet not a single lead remained. That was the greatest difficulty of all. It felt exactly as if someone had deliberately and carefully buried the entire affair.
“Khh… damn it.”
Sim soothed his frustration with a cigarette and stepped out onto the street.
“Ah… nothing beats the old wife after all.”
He drew the smoke deep, exhaled slowly, and allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. Police were never supposed to work alone, but with December’s crime-prevention push redistributing manpower, a case already considered spilled milk received almost no additional officers.
“Ah, shit. What a mess.”
He flicked the filter away and headed for the hospital. A fire had erupted in the empty morgue; the corpses had been completely incinerated—bones and all. It resembled the so-called spontaneous human combustion phenomenon, itself of dubious authenticity, yet an entire group of bodies had undergone the same fate. That defied understanding.
Strange, when he thought about it. Spontaneous combustion appeared in photographs and rumors, yet few truly believed in it. Even those who half-believed treated it as a remote possibility. And the moment this case had begun to attract serious attention, every scrap of physical evidence had burned away to nothing.
Sim pushed the ominous feeling aside and kept walking.