Even If I Die
"Maybe I should call first before I just show up."
Se-geon muttered it without strength, reaching for his phone—then realized he didn't have her number. Charging over there blind was no safer. He'd already been ambushed by a vampire once; wandering around at night was a bad idea. At least, it was if the wounds were anything less than barely tolerable.
Throb…
His chest ached and hammered. From losing too much blood? The dizziness refused to lift, and his stomach rolled as if he might black out any second. A person could faint from spilling no more than two cans of cola; Se-geon had been leaking blood for days.
"At this rate, I'm better off going to the back-alley doctor even if I drop dead on the way."
He kicked the bike to life. If dying of blood loss and dying fighting a vampire came to the same end, better to die fighting. With that, he swung the machine around. He hadn't been standing there long, yet his blood was already beading and dripping onto the asphalt.
The harder he twisted the throttle, the faster Seoul's night skyline rushed into his face. Riding a motorcycle half-conscious from blood loss… it looked for all the world like a man set on dying. But if he died, so what? Se-geon watched the city lights and let out a long breath.
VRRROOOOM!
A truck sheared past; cold wind wrapped his body. Under the pallid mercury lamps he was pure dream-image—a silhouette that had already written life off and surrendered itself to speed. Even then, reality refused to come alive. In that sense, Jin Yu-mi might have been the lucky one. At least in the moments she lost herself in her idol, something real existed. For Se-geon, nothing real remained at all.
Speed. Life. Fighting. Drink. Drugs…
He could throw himself into any of them, and all that stayed behind was a savage emptiness. Had it been born the day he lost his family? Or was life simply something that dragged emptiness along like a shadow? Se-geon neither knew the answer nor wanted to. Empty or not empty—what difference did it make either way?
So it doesn't matter if I die.
He shouted it silently and wrenched the throttle to the stop. Air howled into the intake; the muffler spat a blast that threatened to tear itself apart. Streetlamps on both sides streaked backward as if spurred; oncoming headlights became camera flashes. Se-geon clung to the bike and fled without thought.
Huh?
Something felt wrong. He tilted an ear carefully.
VRRROOOOM!
An engine note different from the XR-250's. Four-stroke, from the sound—and with far more displacement than his own machine.
"What is this? Some kind of racer?"
It wasn't even past midnight; street racers hadn't come out yet. Still, the engine's oddly challenging note made him glance into the rearview. A bike mirror couldn't see far—but Se-geon picked out a GSX closing from a surprising distance.
"Ah…"
Instinct told him at once: the rider was a vampire. The silhouette matched the one from the night his arm had been broken. Body shapes weren't so varied that a bike suit alone proved anything, of course. Se-geon trusted his gut anyway.
"Well then… shall we try this?"
He shifted and poured on the gas, leaping to a hundred twenty in a single surge.
VRRROOOOM!
The GSX behind him answered by climbing as well. Human or vampire, it was clearly locked onto him. Se-geon decided to shake it and braked into a narrow two-lane side road.
VRRRAAANG!
The street was tight and almost empty of traffic—which meant parked cars lined it solid. Even if the GSX outpowered the XR, the advantage was useless here. Se-geon jumped the curb onto the sidewalk and shot forward at once.
"Kh…"
Excitement brought the anemia roaring back; he clenched his teeth. Lose consciousness on a moving bike and you die.
VRRROOOM!
The GSX entered the cramped alley and faltered. There was no question now—the rider was hunting him.
"Tch. Clever bastard."
Gyeong spat the words as he rolled into a lane that had become a parking lot. How did so many cars even fit? Every residential side street in Seoul turned into a garage after dark. Somehow everyone still managed to extract their cars by morning—a minor miracle.
"Ryeo! Surround him! Block the far end if you can!"
He called it to his fellow vampires, then muscled the GSX up onto the sidewalk. Uneven, heaved blocks made the worst possible surface for the machine—exactly like a string of speed bumps. No real speed was possible. Se-geon's XR-250, built for off-road, lacked power but ate this ground and simply vanished out the far end of the alley.
The other vampires, already riding in separate cars, raced along the main road to cut off the alley mouth. By the time they sealed the narrow exit, Se-geon was already gone.
"We lost him!"
Ryeo reported back to Gyeong, unable to keep the trail either. This many vampires, and they couldn't run down a single green human kid.
"Damn it! Slippery little shit!"
The moment Gyeong cleared the alley he planted the tires on asphalt and opened the throttle wide. Se-geon's figure was gone even from vampire eyes—but the wound was a silver lining. The scent of blood would lead them anywhere.
VRRROOOOM!
Gyeong flattened himself to the tank and chased the smell. Before long the XR's exhaust note rose ahead of him.
"Ah!"
Se-geon's XR-250 was running out front. Whether or not he had calmly shaken the others, Gyeong's GSX-R1100 still accelerated harder and ran faster than most cars. Two machines with completely different voices lined up on a straight stretch of road.
"Hm."
Half-blind with anemia, Se-geon leaned the bike right and climbed the spiral ramp of an elevated highway. A spiral overpass was no place for a GSX-R1100 to use its full speed.
"Damn it!"
Gyeong had no choice but to kill speed as he started up the coil. He had been going too hard; the rear tire skidded and kissed the guardrail, leaving a long black streak of rubber.
SCREEEEE!
"Kaat!"
With a vampire's monstrous strength he nearly manhandled the bike back under control and forced it onto the elevated road. The first thing he saw as he leveled out was the underside of the XR-250.
Se-geon had been waiting for him to crest—and charged with the front wheel already lifted.
"Damn—!"
CRAAASH!
A brutal impact flung Gyeong and the GSX across the pavement together. He had just finished correcting a slide; even a vampire couldn't stay upright under that kind of hit.
"Gah!"
The blow would have caved in an ordinary man's face. Vampires did not die so easily. Gyeong slid down the slope, barely caught his balance, and stood.
"Tough as advertised. Heh. Try a little harder."
Se-geon muttered it and swung the bike around. Pressing the attack now risked Gyeong simply hurling both him and the motorcycle off the overpass. Besides—a vampire who rode bikes? That was rare enough. Even between hunter and hunted, curiosity still had its place.
"Kh…!"
Gyeong watched Se-geon ignore him and race onward, then forced himself upright. If the boy had been reckless enough to go for the kill, Gyeong would have welcomed it. Allies were already waiting nearby. Instead Se-geon simply left him behind—and that cut far deeper into Gyeong's pride.
Maya Iolovich hated Seoul with a passion. Then again, she had hated Moscow as well; perhaps it was cities themselves she despised. It might have been nothing more than the pastoral romanticism that often seizes people born and raised in cities—but Siberia felt warmer to her than this place ever did.
It was a vast lump of rot. Between cold black buildings that never circulated blood, faceless East Asians flowed like a current. And when the sun fell and the neon of pleasure lit up, a moon dirtied by smog rose and glittered in the sky.
Of course, compared to the Moscow she had known, Seoul was far more stable and clean. Even the shabbiest cars on these streets would have been showpieces back in Russia; there were no mafias. Police had a poor reputation everywhere, but at least they were cleaner than Russian ones.
Here, though, she would always be a foreigner. Shooting an Arab because she couldn't stand the heat might have its charms, but most outsiders found mere survival exhausting enough—and lonely.
"Huu."
She slipped carefully into her apartment building. She was carrying drugs no one without a medical license had any business handling; caution was mandatory. A foreign woman living alone always drew eyes.
"Ah."
Then she saw the human shadow in front of her door. Her night vision was nothing special, but she could tell at once it was a man. Someone slumped against her entrance—and the closer she came, the stronger the smell of blood grew.
"Ugh…"
The way he stirred and groaned said he had lost a great deal. Because she worked the black market, people with stab or gunshot wounds sometimes found their way to her for treatment.
"Uuuugh…"
Up close she saw he was young. Early twenties at most—looking at the face, maybe even late teens.
"We've met."
Maya murmured it and got an arm under him. She was in no position to worry about anyone else's future, but a patient who came back this soon after treatment was not a promising specimen.
"Anemia. Shall we do a transfusion? You were AB, weren't you?"
She took an AB blood pack from the refrigerator and started the drip. Black-market work meant no real equipment and no luxury; she sat him on the sofa and propped a towel under the line.
She examined his shoulder and slowly shook her head. A through-and-through, by the look of it—yet somehow the bone had already knit. He clearly hadn't simply left the wound to heal on its own; if he had, infection would have killed him long ago. How did a wound like this even exist?
"Strange."
She muttered it, administered anesthetic, and began stitching. Most of the muscle had already closed; the sutures took little time.
"Kh-uuugh."
The anesthetic was working, but the needle in muscle still made the young man groan and open his eyes.
"Ah… in your debt again, I see? Kh."
"Better if you stay still. Ah—and one more thing."
She went to the cupboard, took out the resident registration card and a single ten-thousand-won note she had stored there, and handed both to him. Se-geon accepted them with a slightly vacant look.
"Next time, count the money properly."
"Ah… kh-kh-kh."
Se-geon laughed, half speechless. Running an illegal clinic yet this meticulous about pocket change—the woman really was strange.
"Ahh. Damn it. How much?"
"Treatment isn't finished yet."
She said it and pressed his head back. From the blood loss, maybe; Se-geon offered almost no resistance and sank into the sofa.
If that vampire tracks me here, we're in trouble…
Thinking it, he closed his eyes.
The vampires who had been hunting Se-geon had all been reduced to dogs that had lost the chicken. With startling skill he had shaken every one of them and simply vanished. As long as vampires could not outrun motorcycles, a road chase was a fool's game. And simply blocking traffic would never slide past the Korean police, who were not complete idiots.
"We'll need a wider net."
Gyeong said it, but the other children of Juk-yo looked less than eager. The lower vampires among them—those without high VT—could not keep throwing themselves into this forever. Without feeding, the blood-hunger only swelled until it became unmanageable. One of the younger ones stepped forward with an awkward face.
"Gyeong… about that. We don't have to follow Tetra Anax's orders this hard. And we're getting tired too."
"What? I already paid you."
Ryeo flared and glared at the younger vampires, but they only scratched their heads and looked troubled.
"…Damn it. Fine. I'll figure something out."
Gyeong said it and righted his bike. Ryeo stepped closer to help; he waved her off.
"Leave it. I'm just going to ride a while and clear my head."
He swung a leg over the machine and hit the starter.