Call Me Sonya
The bathroom door opened and the female doctor stepped out. From the sound of running water it was clear she had showered, yet she was already wrapped in a gown as she walked into the room. Se-gun sat out on the terrace, deliberately keeping his eyes fixed on the window and whistling as if he had noticed nothing at all.
“You already got up after barely any transfusion. What a rotten patient.”
She muttered the words in a cold voice while studying the young Korean man’s back as he pretended to be elsewhere. This boy kept getting himself torn apart without the slightest regard for his own body, and every wound was serious. That someone so young would already be treating himself so roughly was something she found strange even after five years in Seoul, a city that had shown her every kind of human trash imaginable—far stranger than anything she had seen in New York or Moscow.
What does it matter to me what this man does?
She crushed the rising curiosity under a layer of professional coldness. She had neither the right nor the reason to ask what the Korean youth was involved in. Selling a client’s secrets simply to satisfy curiosity was not something a doctor did. She might be practicing for money now, but she had still once sworn the Hippocratic Oath.
Se-gun, for his part, clearly disliked being scolded as if he were a child. He was a paying customer who handed over expensive treatment fees; being treated like a kid was not something he was inclined to accept gracefully.
“Well, I’m fine, so what does it matter? More importantly—how much is the bill?”
“Looks like you’ll be a regular. Shall we call it two million?”
She made the ominous remark while gazing out the window. The snow that had fallen overnight was already melting under the morning sun. For a moment she thought of Russia, but the memories were fragmentary and blurred. With not so much as a speck of affection left for her homeland, that was only natural.
“What about a shower?”
The patient’s absurd question shattered her thoughts. He wanted to shower with his shoulder wrapped in layers of bandages? She almost wondered whether he had showered right after a circumcision. Her reply was icy.
“The wound hasn’t closed yet. Best not to get any water on it.”
“Hmph. Understood. Oh, right—what’s your name? What should I call you?”
“Call me whatever you like.”
“Huh?”
“Fine…”
She sank into thought for a moment.
“Sonya. You’ve read Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, I assume?”
“Oh, come on.”
Se-gun grumbled, sensing she had no intention of giving him her real name. It wasn’t as if telling him a name would kill her, yet she was being so openly distrustful. Still, there was something more important than her name that he needed to know.
“Then what’s your phone number?”
It was a little ridiculous that a phone number mattered more than a name, but it was true. Instead of answering she simply pointed at a memo pad hanging on the wall. A mobile number was written on the top sheet. Leaving her number out in the open like that… Se-gun flipped through the pad out of curiosity. It was a brand-new pad from a Chinese restaurant called Gyeongboseong; only the very first sheet had her number on it. No room for misunderstanding or mistakes.
“Honestly. So unfriendly.”
As far as Se-gun was concerned, if he was going to keep living as a vampire hunter he absolutely needed her help. There were plenty of other back-alley doctors, but their skills were untrustworthy and their tools pathetic. Most of them made their living either doing tattoos or performing unlicensed urological procedures. Tattooing at least required real skill one could take pride in; shoving beads into a man’s genitals was nothing to brag about.
Handing life-or-death wounds over to people like that was pure insanity.
But what about her? Was she a doctor he could trust? The question suddenly rose in Se-gun’s mind. At that exact moment she pointed toward the front door and spoke in a distinctly irritable voice.
“If you can walk, you’re no longer a patient. Would you kindly leave?”
“Ah, yes, yes. I’ll do just that.”
Cowled by her force of will, Se-gun walked out the front door. The air, washed clean by the snow, was so cold it felt transparent.
“Ah—my bike!”
Once before he had left his motorcycle on the street after bleeding all over it and ended up being dragged to a police station. Doing the same thing again would be a disaster of a whole different magnitude.
“Ah.”
Fortunately his beloved XR-250 was waiting obediently by the roadside. Se-gun climbed on and looked back at the apartment building.
“Sonya, huh.”
He muttered the name and kicked the engine to life.
The alchemist Sarhyuk was not a particularly great threat to the vampires. His combat power was formidable, but the ones he hunted were mostly unaffiliated outsiders; even when he occasionally took down higher-ranking vampires it never rose to the level of a real crisis. Compared to Father Silvester, who had slain even Jinma, Sarhyuk’s menace was minor.
To vampire hunters, however, he was the single greatest threat. He kidnapped humans and kept vampires caged like livestock. Other hunters who had to find and kill vampires simply to obtain blood could never compete with him—it was absurd even to try. No one could claim his methods were righteous, but no one could deny they were efficient.
That was precisely why Deok-yeon could not tolerate him. Deok-yeon was not pure like Han Se-gun; he did not particularly care whether Sarhyuk murdered homeless people or raped vampires. He liked money, of course—but only as a means, never as an end in itself. Raising vampires for efficiency struck directly against the reason Deok-yeon had chosen the path of a vampire hunter in the first place.
“This isn’t something you can measure with money alone. Future business partners…”
Deok-yeon was speaking urgently into the receiver, trying to persuade other vampire hunters. He himself wondered when he had last argued so passionately. Sarhyuk’s arrival was as good as a death sentence for the hunters; the only way to drive him out was to gather as many people as possible.
Hunters fighting among themselves over their rice bowls was not proper, but when it came to someone like Sarhyuk the rules changed.
The voice on the other end of the line remained ice-cold.
“Still not interested in going up against the Alchemist. He completely wrecked Kenneth Yang.”
“Why is that such a big deal? Kenneth Yang is just an arms dealer—”
Deok-yeon started to argue, then his mouth fell open. Vampire hunters needed plenty of brokers for their illegal work, and Kenneth Yang was the best of them—weapons, safe houses, illegal entry, proxy businesses, he handled everything. If a man like that fell into Sarhyuk’s hands, it meant Sarhyuk now held the legal weak points of countless hunters and could shake them at will.
“Damn it. All the more reason we have to eliminate that bastard fast—”
“If you’re going to throw lives away on something like that, find a young, ambitious idiot. I’m too old for that kind of danger. Even three hundred million split among a group is pocket change, and I wouldn’t go even if Old Man Ju put up a billion.”
Beep…
The line went dead cleanly. Deok-yeon stared at the phone with a blank expression for a moment, then hurled it away in irritation and flopped onto the floor.
“Every last one of them. It’s not their own foot that’s on fire, is that it? Bastards! ‘Young and ambitious,’ my ass. Like anyone who gets high on Psychedelic Moon and fights vampires is going to be some model of ambition.”
Deok-yeon grumbled. Vampire hunters really were a breed that even money had trouble moving. How many soldiers would charge a bunker for prize money in the middle of a war? Hunters moved for money, yes—but money was something you needed after you stayed alive. What use was accumulating wealth when you never had children and could never live a normal social life? Psychedelic Moon was toxic enough to destroy any human.
In the end every vampire hunter was living on borrowed time. There was no future, yet money was still required if you wanted to enjoy the present. Anything beyond that was unnecessary. Deok-yeon himself had lived that way until now.
“Damn it. If you’re going to live like that, just die already. The alchemist will take care of all the vampires for you, so croak without regrets! Fucking assholes.”
He muttered the words while staring up at the ceiling. This was Old Man Ju’s commission, but it was also for himself.
“Should I just put an ad on Finder?”
He muttered and dragged himself over to the computer.
“Ack!”
Not particularly computer-literate, Deok-yeon was staring hard at the monitor and pecking at the keyboard with two fingers when a familiar name popped up and made him scream. Sarhyuk had shamelessly posted an advertisement offering to buy information on Han Se-gun.
“What kind of son of a bitch is this?”
Deok-yeon grabbed the mouse. Finder was crawling with vampire hunters, yet Sarhyuk himself had posted an ad there? Of course vampires had once put bounties on Corrupted. That had been before Tetra Anax properly established itself in Korea; they had hired humans with cash to keep their existence hidden. The man who collected that bounty had been Deok-yeon himself, so getting angry at Sarhyuk for posting an ad now would be hypocritical.
“But Se-gun of all people?”
Deok-yeon studied the screen carefully. Unless Sarhyuk had suddenly decided to stalk Han Se-gun for no reason, there had to be a motive. And guessing that motive was not difficult. Anyone who followed a human who had drawn Tetra Anax’s attention was bound to run into powerful vampires. If you were confident you could kill those vampires, it was excellent bait.
“Completely out of his mind. Heh heh heh. Well, fine by me.”
Deok-yeon muttered and began typing. If the other side wanted to hunt the vampires following Se-gun, then selling the information and letting Sarhyuk’s crew fight them was the right move. Selling Se-gun’s information for personal gain was not exactly righteous, but Deok-yeon was a vampire hunter too. Anyone who got hung up on morality could never become one in the first place.
“Fuck. Even typing is hard.”
He muttered and slowly pecked away with his two-finger technique.
Every vampire begins as a human. Whether they receive blood from another or slowly transform after a grave injury or illness, they first live a full human life. Then, when necessary, they become creatures capable of devouring humans. It is a tragic thing: every lofty principle they were taught during their human years turns into pure garbage.
The countless desires humans call “instinct” are, in the end, created and twisted by education—something those who become vampires understand more clearly than anyone.
“Can’t sleep, can you?”
Gyeong was lying in the dark underground parking garage, staring at the ceiling and letting various thoughts drift through his mind, when he heard the voice calling him. He started to sit up, but the voice stopped him.
“Don’t bother. I just want a short talk.”
“In… but still…”
Gyeong looked at In in an awkward half-rising posture. With Juk-yo dead, it was only natural that In—once Juk-yo’s right hand—now commanded the remnants of Juk-yo’s faction. Yet the pain felt by Juk-yo’s descendants, stripped of both money and power and stranded in a foreign land, was beyond description. So In had been smuggling vampires out to China or Southeast Asia whenever funds allowed. Of course some refused to return home. Gyeong was one of them.
“You must be working hard cleaning up after those Tetra Anax bastards.”
“Not at all. But… still no trace of the master’s blood?”
Gyeong asked. What In and the other vampires of Juk-yo’s line were searching for was the blood of their master, Juk-yo. A Jinma’s blood was still vampire blood and would burn if exposed to sunlight—but the blaze would be like napalm.
And at the construction site where the three-way battle between Jinma Juk-yo, Chang-woon, and Silvester had taken place, no such inferno had ever occurred. It was suspicious that the Jinma hunter might have destroyed the blood through some special ritual procedure, yet at the time the hunter had been too badly wounded to have the strength for anything of the sort.
To reclaim that Jinma blood they had been combing the city of Seoul as thoroughly as if they were hunting for lice.
“Rats, dogs, and cats have occasional seizures, but nothing definitive.”
In spoke while sitting down beside Gyeong. This was the underground parking garage of the very construction site where their master had met his end. With neither sunlight nor people, the abandoned place had become a refuge for the rootless vampires of Juk-yo’s bloodline.
“Haa…”
Gyeong let out a silent sigh. To break this stalemate they absolutely needed help from Tetra Anax or another clan. In the end they had no choice but to handle whatever work Tetra Anax assigned them.
“Tonight for certain. We’ll catch him no matter what it takes.”
Gyeong said the words and closed his eyes.