Night Guests Get Poor Hospitality
Se-geon came home. He had already handed over the deed; the rest would pass to Kenneth Yang through the usual registrations. Still, for a while longer, he would have to live here.
"Shouldn't have bothered installing the internet," he muttered. "Barely going to use it."
Grumbling, he parked his bike, pulled agricultural film from his bag, and draped it over the machine. The forecast had been screaming about rain tomorrow, so he took the trouble of wrapping it in waterproof sheeting. Once that was done, he walked toward the front door.
"Oh, right."
On a whim he checked the mailbox, but of course it was stuffed with nothing but advertising flyers. His family was dead, and his relatives had no idea where he lived. After that day he had cut them off, become a vampire hunter, and prowled the city like an animal. The empty mailbox was only natural.
"Huh?"
He was bringing the key to the lock when he froze. The door he had definitely locked was standing open. A burglar? His heart lurched—not because he was afraid someone had stolen his money.
If a thief had gotten in and seen the bizarre arsenal piled all over the house, what would they think? And if that same thief got arrested and, under questioning about other crimes, carelessly started talking—that would be a real disaster.
"……"
Se-geon stepped carefully inside. In the unlit room, two green lights flickered like will-o'-the-wisps.
"So breaking into other people's houses is a hobby of yours now. You really are the worst."
Se-geon sneered. The other man rose from a chair. Tall—absurdly tall—he lifted a can of beer, bit into the bottom of it, and aluminum tore with a hiss of escaping carbonation.
He didn't stop there. He cracked the top open so air could rush in and the beer could pour free, then drained the whole thing in one go—the so-called shotgun method. Even water would have been hard to drink like that, but he emptied the can with ease.
"What the hell are you doing in someone else's house?!"
Se-geon barked again. The man crushed the empty can flat in his fist.
"Thin hospitality for a guest."
"Night guests get poor hospitality wherever they go."
"That so? And here I brought you this."
The man pulled an envelope from his coat and tossed it at Se-geon's feet. When Se-geon's eyes narrowed with caution, the man threw his head back and laughed.
"Relax. If I wanted you dead, I've got plenty of better ways."
"And that's supposed to put me at ease?"
Muttering, Se-geon picked up the envelope. A glance and a heft told him it was cash—tens of millions of won, judging by the weight. He gave a short whistle and fixed his gaze on the man: Sarhyuk.
"What's this?"
"What do you think? Payment for services rendered. I hate owing people."
"For someone who used me however he liked, you've got a pretty upright code. Under normal circumstances I'd love to throw this in your face, but……"
"But?"
"Money has no sin."
Se-geon said it and pocketed the envelope. Sarhyuk's expression flickered with something like disappointment, as if he'd been hoping for a more entertaining turn; the dark mercifully hid it.
Weird bastard.
Se-geon kept his guard up as he watched Sarhyuk's eyes. Ordinary human eyes don't glow like a predator's just because a little light hits them in the dark. Sarhyuk's burned green. Whenever a car passed and threw light across the room, that green flared brighter, more intense.
The eyes were strange enough, but the physical ability was stranger still. Strength on par with a vampire's was already far past human limits. If Silvester could be written off as a mage who had lived for ages—and Silvester was suspicious enough on that count alone—then what was Sarhyuk? An alchemist, the way the nickname claimed?
"I'll take the money, but I don't like the way you operate."
Se-geon said it and casually turned his back, walking to the fridge. He pulled out a plastic bottle, cracked it open, and brought it straight to his mouth.
"Ooh. Coming on strong. But what exactly don't you like? Hmm? Raising vampires after raping them? Or harvesting people's organs?"
"Ugh. Both."
Se-geon exhaled the fizz and set the bottle on the sink. Sarhyuk shrugged with a shameless little flourish.
"Well, that's me. Ah, fine, fine. Moving on. I made enough of a mess that the vampires are sitting pretty like demure little brides for now…… but don't go zoning out and get yourself killed by some random idiot."
"……"
Se-geon shoved the bottle back into the fridge, grumbling.
"Everyone's in an uproar over that Jack O'Lantern character these days. You think they'd still bother with me?"
"Hmm. Riding the coattails of a murderer, are we?"
Sarhyuk needled him. Thanks to Jack O'Lantern, the heat was off Se-geon's own "crimes," so wasn't he benefiting? The jab was deliberate, of course. Maybe Sarhyuk simply wanted to talk.
"Jack O'Lantern seems better than you. At least he doesn't rape people or cut out their organs after killing them."
Se-geon answered with a hostility so plain anyone could have read it. Sarhyuk snickered. The man with green fire in his eyes—his laughter was completely unexpected. Like a lone wolf staring down over a winter city that suddenly started belching and burping. The dissonance was about that sharp.
"Heh heh heh. So murder for profit is more evil than murder that isn't? Tsk tsk tsk. Looks like I overestimated you, friend. You've already left the realm of the normal…… left it a long way behind. You're a monster. Same as me, on that score. So why cling to petty morals and customs? No—forget clinging. How is some guy who kills for pure pleasure, ducking the law, supposed to be superior to me, who kills people and vampires for money?"
"The fact that you're getting riled up about it means you still put stock in morals and public opinion, doesn't it? I'm curious about whatever philosophy you've cooked up, but you're still stuck on judgment and perspective yourself."
Se-geon drove the point home in a cutting tone. He himself barely understood what he was saying—he'd thrown it out just to attack—but Sarhyuk took a real hit from it; his expression hardened.
"Hmm. Ah, fine, fine. We'll call it that."
"Not 'call it that.' It is that."
"Then we'll definitely call it that."
"……"
"Anyway, I'm living a pretty devoted life as a vampire hunter, so once the Jack O'Lantern business dies down, let's meet again."
"Huh?"
Se-geon turned the words over and understood. In short: the bastard would show up when the vampires came after Se-geon again. Handing an easy win to someone as rotten as Sarhyuk left a bad taste, but Se-geon was no absolute powerhouse like Silvester. He'd been knifed by thugs from the Sangdong faction and ended up in a back-alley clinic; even low-ranking vampires weren't to be taken lightly. As long as there was a real chance of dying to them, the man's protection was something he could accept.
"Kh!"
Se-geon ground his teeth watching Sarhyuk head for the door. Nothing was more galling than needing protection from someone you despised.
"Kuhuhu. Take care of yourself, then. My cash cow."
Sarhyuk grinned at him, thoroughly amused.
"Get out!"
Clang!
The beer can Sarhyuk had just emptied smacked the front door and rang with a light metallic note.
The rumors were spreading through the kids. Day after day the media hammered the name of a mysterious killer: Jack O'Lantern. Though calling him a killer didn't quite fit.
People were dying in a chain of suicides that were unmistakably his doing, yet he never got blood on his own hands. He always appeared by some uncanny route and distributed suicide videos and the like by uncanny means.
Take the recent suicide video that hit the XX Net community—the boy's death Se-geon had watched. Tracing the IP led straight to an address assigned to the National Police Agency Cyber Investigation Unit, and people reeled. The cyber unit was turned upside down, until it came out that Jack O'Lantern hadn't hacked the police at all; he'd only doctored that community's log files. That salvaged a little face. To anyone who didn't know about doctored logs, though, it still looked like a vast police apparatus being jerked around by one phantom called Jack O'Lantern.
Or maybe they really were being jerked around.
"Ah, look at these sons of bitches. This is completely fucked, isn't it?"
Detective Jo muttered, staring at the papers stacked on his desk. Everyone else had been on emergency footing; he'd fought with the squad leader just to scrape his way home, and when he came back his desk was a mountain of documents. George Mallory himself might have wanted a crack at a peak like that.
"Ah, senior?"
Detective Park, built like a bear, had come in early, finished everything of his own, and been waiting. Jo felt a sudden, queasy fear that he had underestimated the man all this time, and sat down.
"Summarize. What's going on."
"Looks like the bastard spoofed a police address and messed with a site's log files. Chief's special order: every department cooperates and we catch Jack O'Lantern……"
"Jesus. More hands don't let you scoop the ocean dry and catch every fish. Talk sense. So this is the case brief, and this is the chief's notice."
Grumbling, Jo stuffed the chief's notice—thicker than the case summary itself—into the trash. High-ranking officials always talked forever, as if a single word or a wave of the hand made the world move. One line—"Fail and pack your badge"—would have done it. How they managed to inflate that into this brick of paper was beyond him. Put them on a magazine serial and they'd make a fortune.
"Any decent leads?"
"Ah—there's a Jack O'Lantern fan club now. I was thinking of joining and watching the chatter……"
"Those fucking kids. You look and look and there they are. Are they out of their minds? If I were a prosecutor I'd round them all up for disturbance of the peace……"
Jo caught himself and reined it in. Park was right; latching onto those people for now was the smart play.
"Profiling packet and the laptop exam results?"
"On your desk. Oh—and senior, this……"
"Hm?"
Jo looked at the file Park held out.
"What is this?"
"TNT was used to blow the laptop, right? TNT isn't something that circulates among civilians, so I figured tracking that would be faster."
"……"
In that instant the words that flashed through Jo's skull were This bear's been playing dumb the whole time~! The guy who usually dragged his feet had a sharp head after all. Then again, it was obvious. If a bomb took out a laptop, you checked the bomb trail.
"Ahem. So the laptop's unrecoverable, as expected."
"Yes. Problem is, the timer was pretty high-end, and the fuze was Korean Chemical—military issue."
"No kidding. Impressive. You tracked how they got the explosives?"
"Still investigating, but looking at the emulsion, this TNT seems military too. I've already requested warehouse inventories and ledger copies by fax from the companies. And based on the student's statement about the stolen laptop, we've been talking to local fences in the area, but not much to show for it."
"Mm. Mm…… right. Right."
Jo nodded, but something felt off. Jack O'Lantern was meticulous—so why do something as reckless as sourcing explosives just to destroy a laptop? If the goal was filming a suicide and dumping it online, there was no need for wireless on a notebook PC at all. Set up a PC-bang camera and have the victim jump out a window. Or stand them in front of a camera and make them cut themselves apart with a knife……
"……"
Even Detective Jo, whose nerves had been toughened by years on the job, felt a cold shiver for a second. The computer on the desk—its monitor—suddenly seemed frightening for no reason he could name.