The Alchemist's Offer
“I haven’t seen Silvester around much lately…”
Se-geon asked as he poured syrup into his teacup. Kim Seong-hui smiled as she answered.
“He’s been busy with one thing and another ever since Christmas. Ah, and though he won’t say it out loud, I get the feeling he’s genuinely grateful to you.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Something about never expecting you’d go around thrashing things with so little regard for your own life?”
“…Did I really stir things up that badly?”
Se-geon raked a hand through his hair and asked himself the question. Still, the strange gleam he’d been catching lately in the eyes of birds and beasts nearby made one thing clear enough: the vampires had started watching him.
At least around Arjuna, Silvester had put defenses in place. Vampire influence didn’t reach here. That was why Se-geon showed his face at the café every single day.
Jingle-jingle.
The door opened and a group of men filed in. Among the rough-looking types who could have passed for street thugs at a glance stood one man whose features were unusually refined. His hair was combed back with practiced care and tied into a ponytail that hung down his back; the high bridge of his nose suggested he wasn’t purely Korean. Mixed blood, probably—and flawlessly handsome, though the damp, oppressive charisma that clung to him was enough to sour a man’s mood just looking at him.
Guys like that are usually the boss, aren’t they?
Se-geon watched them with a thought that was half prejudice. For organized crime, their training levels looked far too high. And something else… a strange sense of kinship.
Psychedelic Moon?
Se-geon felt it instinctively—they were hunters. Had they felt the same about him? The handsome man in the long coat approached.
“Hey. We’re looking for Father Silvester. Any idea where he might be?”
“He hasn’t shown himself at all lately. What business do you have with him?”
Kim Seong-hui answered at once in a politely deferential tone. The man looked her over, then drew a business card from his coat.
“My apologies. This is who I am.”
Illegal Blood Distribution Association
Director — Sarhyuk
Kim Seong-hui’s face went blank as if she’d been slapped. The card boldly declared him director of the Illegal Blood Distribution Association: Sarhyuk.
“…So you’re Mr. Sarhyuk. May I ask what brings you here?”
“Oh, just thought I’d have a cup of decent coffee. Right?”
He drawled the words with shameless cheer and dropped into the seat beside Se-geon.
“So, young friend. Any interest in going into business together?”
“Business? What do you mean by that?”
“Seems you still can’t tell the scent of your own kind. Hmm. You favor mucosal absorption, don’t you? Bad habit, that. Of course, eating it wrecks the stomach and injecting wrecks the kidneys, but ruining the mucous membranes is no better…”
Sarhyuk launched into a thorough explanation, detailed enough that Se-geon found himself unsettled. To talk about narcotics this openly in public!
“Ah, I’ve put you in an awkward spot, haven’t I? My apologies. Consider this my way of saying sorry.”
He pulled an envelope from his coat and held it out. Se-geon was about to refuse the absurd gesture when the man clicked his tongue and waggled a finger.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. You look younger than me, so don’t you know it’s proper manners to take what your elders give you?”
“W-well, that’s true, but…”
Se-geon felt the envelope and peered inside. It held a single five-thousand-won gift certificate. One lonely voucher.
“….”
He spent a moment debating whether to get angry. The entire situation sat squarely in the realm of the incomprehensible. Thoughts ranged from mild pity—was this man simply insane?—to the paranoid suspicion that he was being mocked.
“Well, I’ve been fretting over the shortage of good people these days, but a young fellow like you—I could treat very well indeed. Health insurance might be a stretch, but you’d draw a base salary separate from performance bonuses, and cooperative play with a proper team can produce some truly excellent results. The welfare facilities are first-rate, too.”
“….”
Se-geon was so floored he simply shut his mouth. Was this man seriously proposing they form a company to hunt vampires? Granted, if the vampires themselves operated like massive corporations, there was no law saying vampire hunters couldn’t do the same—but an offer this ridiculous was a first, and Se-geon couldn’t decide on the spot.
“Getting interested? For starters, we maintain our own stabilization gear, VT meters, and Psychedelic Moon extraction equipment. We can lock down distribution channels in no time, so what we hunt goes straight to market with no brokers and no middleman cut. That profit margin is how we can afford to pay base salaries. You know better than anyone how much those brokers have been skimming.”
“Huh? Is that so?”
When Se-geon offered a noncommittal nod, Sarhyuk warmed to his theme.
“And there are plenty of advantages to working as a group. You can hack police intelligence, manufacture witnesses, shake trackers with team tactics—teamwork has endless perks.”
He wasn’t wrong. Numbers allowed for real division of labor. If everything until now had been cottage industry, a cooperative team system would be factory mechanization.
But that reduced the work to nothing more than a way to make money. Se-geon didn’t like that. It wasn’t that he hated money—but if he started fighting purely for cash, he had a feeling he’d end up worse than the vampires themselves.
“I appreciate the offer, but I’ll pass.”
“Shame. You’ll regret it, baby.”
Sarhyuk said it, but he hadn’t been that fixated on Se-geon to begin with, so he let it go. He’d probably just needed someone to talk at.
“Anyway—when is Father Silvester expected?”
“Hard to say.”
Kim Seong-hui set a coffee cup in front of him with an ambiguous answer. In the distance, the exhaust note of a V8 engine rolled closer.
“Well, well. Speak of the devil. Here he comes.”
Sure enough, the door opened and a silver-haired man entered, cassock visible beneath a black coat. His long silver hair looked sharp as a honed blade even under the gray winter sky. And those eyes…
“What are you people doing here.”
Silvester had already registered that every one of them was carrying concealed weapons. Sarhyuk spun on his counter stool with a grin.
“Well, well! The Jinma hunter himself. I’ve heard the name often enough, but you’re far younger than I expected.”
“Hmph.”
Se-geon rose from his seat. The other customers, sensing the café’s atmosphere turn ugly, stood and filed out as well. Only the waitress, Lee Jin-hye, remained frozen in place, looking helplessly from one face to another.
“Jin-hye.”
Kim Seong-hui took the girl’s hand and pulled her behind the counter. If things went wrong, she could duck down out of sight. Arjuna’s counter was bulletproof glass—capable of stopping rounds from an ordinary assault rifle. But Sarhyuk, seeing the temperature plummet, waved both hands.
“Wait, wait! I didn’t come looking for a fight! There seems to be some misunderstanding.”
“Misunderstanding. I’m not a man with the leisure to spend time and effort clearing those up.”
Silvester strode inside as he spoke. Sarhyuk’s smile only widened.
“That makes two of us, then.”
“One nose, two eyes, one mouth. If you’re going to claim kinship over shared features, start with those.”
“Ah…”
“State your business. Stop prying open a nauseating trash bin. Keep it brief at least. Your silver tongue reeks of rot!”
Silvester swept a cold glance over the men around him.
“Otherwise you wouldn’t have marched in here in broad daylight packing submachine guns, would you? And you’re not even out hunting vampires.”
“Ah—my apologies for the discourtesy… We truly didn’t bring them with that intent. We’ve simply made a few too many enemies.”
Sarhyuk offered the apology, but Silvester was not the sort to accept one.
“I told you to state your business. I don’t recall asking for an apology.”
“No, you see, our team—”
“Rejected. So get out.”
The smile Sarhyuk had been holding cracked for the first time. He could be cruel and lawless toward others, but he had never imagined being treated this way himself. Silvester, however, simply walked over and sat down beside Se-geon.
“Se-geon. How’s the body holding up?”
“Uh, look—”
If you show interest in me right now, those bastards are going to start watching me even harder!
Se-geon screamed it inwardly, but Silvester either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He pressed on without so much as a glance at Se-geon’s expression.
“Don’t overdo the drugs. If you bite off every job that comes along, your body won’t keep up with the dose. Ah—I’ll handle this myself.”
He took the coffee pot straight from Kim Seong-hui, poured into a cup, added a spoonful of vanilla essence, then cream and syrup in measured amounts. Vanilla essence in coffee was an eccentric combination, but the aroma alone was ferociously intense.
“Ahaha…”
Sarhyuk cooled his temper and sat back down.
“Wouldn’t it be wiser to hear us out before deciding? We haven’t even finished listing our advantages. If you mean to hunt Jinma, won’t you need people who can shake the vampires hard enough to force openings?”
“You’re businessmen. That alone ends the negotiation.”
Silvester set his cup down.
“Different purposes. No reason to join forces. And no matter how prettily you dress yourselves up, you’d be useless against a Jinma. Unless, I suppose, one of you became President of the United States.”
“Kh…”
Sarhyuk was thoroughly sick of Silvester’s arrogance. Of course, that arrogance was a mirror of his own—but when someone else does it, it’s an affair; when you do it, it’s romance. Other people’s excesses were always harder to endure.
“Then… we’ll take our leave.”
Sarhyuk laid money on the counter and stood. His team rose as one and flowed out of Arjuna like the tide. Silvester watched them go from the corner of his eye, then lifted his cup to his lips.
“Tsk, tsk. An Alchemist. What a headache.”
“Alchemist?”
“An alchemist, yes. Rumor has it American blood prices crashed because of that man. Looks like the mafia pushed him out and he fled to Korea. This is going to be troublesome.”
Silvester knew the man well enough. Still a full rank below Silvester himself, but as a human vampire hunter he had reached the absolute peak—Sarhyuk, a name spoken in the same breath as Bouffheim, Sanada, and Doctor Weng. And now he was in Korea.
“But to have the gall to invite me onto his team. Should I just kill him?”
“P-please restrain yourself?”
Se-geon hurried to check him.
“But an alchemist—what does that mean, exactly?”
“I dislike teaching people things. Understood? Passing you that much information is already more than necessary. If you’re curious, go attach yourself to them and find out yourself.”
Silvester’s tone dripped ice. Se-geon stood.
“Tetra Anax is already watching me, and they don’t seem inclined to leave me alone—so maybe I will.”
“Fine idea. But that Sarhyuk is not right in the head.”
Se-geon dumped a handful of coins onto the table and headed for the door.
“Neither am I.”
“Ah—Se-geon!”
Lee Jin-hye called him back. She glanced at her master, Kim Seong-hui, received silent permission with a look, then hurried after him.
“Um, just a second.”
“Ah… what is it?”
“It’ll only take a moment.”
She took his arm and led him outside Arjuna. In the parking lot out front she stopped and turned to face him. Her expression was confused; the sudden shift from the café’s warmth into the cold had flushed her cheeks.
Wow. Shampoo scent.
The pleasant fragrance rising from her made Se-geon feel his own face heat. She was three years older than him—a theater major at S University who’d weathered every kind of hardship imaginable. Currently on leave, she juggled shifts at Arjuna with work for a theater troupe, yet somehow still carried herself with an uncrumpled, sunny energy.
Looks and figure both worked in her favor—years of jazz dance had left her long-limbed and lithe—and it was a mystery how someone like her could spend Christmas without a boyfriend. Right now, though, she looked thoroughly unsettled.
“What on earth was all that about? V-vampires? What kind of crazy talk was that?”
“Mmm.”
Unfortunately, at this distance Silvester would hear every word. And if Se-geon started explaining things to a civilian, Silvester would not simply let it slide.
“Come on, noona… you don’t actually believe that stuff, do you?”
“But you were answering so seriously. It was way too serious to look like a joke.”
“Mmm…”
Se-geon’s irritation was starting to rise. That lunatic Sarhyuk had barged into Arjuna, flashed a vampire-hunter business card, and loudly proposed they go vampire-hunting together—of course bystanders would be shocked.
“Ugh, this is a problem. I’m making a run for it!”
He swung a leg over the XR-250 as he spoke.
“Wait! Se-geon!”
Jin-hye tried to stop him, but Se-geon pretended not to hear and twisted the throttle.
Before going anywhere else, Se-geon headed for the black-market doctor’s apartment. He had received treatment from her before and never paid, so he was going back to settle the debt.
True, she was holding his resident registration card as collateral—but there was zero chance a back-alley doctor would actually call the police over it, and a lost ID could always be reissued at the local office with a simple report. As things stood now, though, spending five million won barely registered as a problem for Se-geon.
“Honestly. Should I be happy about this or depressed?”
Becoming a target for high-class vampires had, perversely, made it easier to earn money. High-grade vampire blood sold for a premium. The samples he’d taken during Detective Sim Gu-jin’s case had gone for five million won apiece… he’d cleared more than twenty million in a matter of days.
But keep facing vampires of that caliber and even multiple necks wouldn’t be enough to keep his head on his shoulders. He’d managed last time only because he’d gone down to the countryside, dug a trap, and waited. Fighting a vampire with those abilities in the middle of Seoul would have ended with him dead for certain. The power to peel spiders out of one’s own body was more dangerous than firearms in a dense urban core full of cover where heavy weaponry was impractical.
“Maybe I should just head for the provinces…”
He muttered it, but it wasn’t a real option. Lingering near Arjuna was still the best protection he had.
While he turned the thought over, he arrived at the apartment complex. Se-geon dismounted and locked the bike.
“Damn. Running low on fuel. Mileage isn’t great compared to the RX-125.”
He muttered as he headed inside. Across from the complex, redevelopment work had laid down dirt and tarps, making the place look even more rundown. Slumified, almost. Not quite on the level of Bill’s Healing School, but it left Se-geon with a similar impression. A Russian woman living off illegal work, Bill Murray living off vampire blood—same damp shadow either way.
“As if anyone would mistake this for legitimate work, living in a place this seedy.”
Ding-dong…
He pressed the buzzer, grumbling, but there was no answer from inside. She’d managed to rent a proper apartment, so she probably wasn’t an illegal overstayer—why was she out? Did she leave during the day as a rule? Or was it just a simple outing?
“Well, whatever. As long as I leave the money, right?”
With that, Se-geon simply shoved the envelope of cash through the milk slot and walked back out of the building.