Not Jack O'Lantern
“Hmm.”
Se-geon slipped on the night-vision goggles Silvester held out. A vampire hunter who used Psychedelic Moon had little need for such tools, yet inhaling Psychedelic Moon merely to deal with humans would leave nothing of his body intact.
“That… is the kid?”
“That’s right.”
Silvester wore a leisurely expression and leaned against the wall. The building, with its artistic dormer windows, stood among the famous private residences of Gangnam. For a mere personal dwelling it appeared often enough in Korean architecture pamphlets—the work of a renowned architect. It served as a perfect illustration of property values in the area, and of the fortunes of those who lived there.
“A rich kid, huh.”
Se-geon spoke with open dissatisfaction, even though he himself had grown up in a reasonably well-off household. Then again, a delicately raised young master would never climb onto someone else’s roof on a rainy night.
“Being a rich young master, what more could he want that he’d go and kill people?”
“Don’t ask me. I don’t know the guy.”
“…Well, true enough. Still, it’s galling.”
Se-geon kept grumbling. Silvester glanced downward, perhaps mindful of the people inside the mansion. Lights were on; residents were definitely present. Simple black magic already muddled sound recognition, so noise posed no problem, yet if anyone climbed to the attic and discovered these two strange figures… it would not even be troublesome. From the standpoint of a man who erased memories with magic, there was no reason for awkwardness. He simply preferred not to lay hands on people unnecessarily. For the moment Se-geon’s reaction concerned him more.
“What? Now that you’ve seen him in the flesh, the urge to kill has left you?”
“Hardly. I’m not some Hollywood film producer. Why would I spare him just because he’s a child?”
Se-geon denied it with brazen certainty. He had kept silent, yet his hatred burned hotter than before.
“An impressive declaration. Still, there is something you should understand.”
“Yes?”
“Right now he is not Jack O’Lantern.”
“Huh?”
Se-geon stared at Silvester, who had uttered something incomprehensible, and wore a blank, foolish look. Jack O’Lantern yet not Jack O’Lantern? They were hardly trading jokes—what did he mean?
“Before he connects to the internet, he does not possess Jack O’Lantern’s personality.”
“Keh!”
Se-geon was so furious he let out a short cry. What—did the boy suffer from a split personality? A human who had driven more than a dozen people to their deaths had simply partitioned that self away? Guilt, responsibility, pleasure—all of it filed in separate drawers?
“This may sound strange, but I believe a murderer should at least be aware he has killed. Whether that awareness brings pleasure or guilt!”
Se-geon voiced his conviction. The statement, which even made room for the extreme pervert who found ecstasy in murder, was odd enough, yet not beyond understanding. If oblivion was a torment worse than death, then forgetting those one had slain marked the worst kind of killer.
“That damn brat! I feel like beating him to death!”
Seeing Se-geon truly inflamed, Silvester gave a short laugh. Such raw emotion. It hardly seemed the reaction of a man who had entered the world of the mad moon. Still, the ability to rage like this might prove a useful means of overcoming depression.
“So what do you intend to do? Charge into that house right now and kill him?”
“That’s…”
Se-geon’s expression grew awkward. Climbing onto another man’s roof without permission was one thing; smashing doors or windows and rushing inside to commit murder was another.
“I don’t have the confidence I won’t get caught by the police.”
“…Don’t expect me to solve even that for you. Shall we head back for today, then?”
“Mmm.”
Se-geon uttered a low groan. Anger scorched his gut and threatened to spill from his throat, yet he forced it down. If the boy’s house lay nearby, tailing him would reveal his movements easily enough. Having located the residence, Se-geon judged it wiser to wait for a better opportunity. He leaped from the roof ahead of Silvester.
The building rose two stories with an attic besides, yet Se-geon landed lightly on the ground, vaulted the wall with ease, and dropped to the lower street. The grand mansion stood high above the road; jumping from the outer wall meant another three-story fall.
Still Se-geon used the momentum and touched down without injury. Even ordinary humans, properly trained, could land unharmed from six to eight meters; this was precisely such a case.
“Oh?”
Silvester watched Se-geon escape safely and felt an inward flicker of admiration. Training the boy through Deok-yeon had already proven a sound investment more than once. Yet that success had stemmed from Se-geon’s mental state—more decadent and desolate than most—so doubts still lingered about his physical ability.
Whether this fellow could truly fight and defeat a proper vampire remained uncertain. Looking at that agility now, however, he was not a man to be underestimated.
“So that’s why Sarhyuk has his eye on him?”
Silvester quietly launched himself from the mansion.
“Shall we go, then?”
“Yes. But it is certain that kid is Jack O’Lantern, right?”
“…If you cannot believe it, better to confirm with your own eyes. The words of spirits are rarely trustworthy, after all.”
Silvester took the Corvette’s wheel. Even if the target was another vampire called Jack O’Lantern, the opponent remained a child. Could Se-geon actually kill him? And if he did?
“…”
The brief silence shattered as the Corvette’s V8 engine roared to life.
Is an online persona the same as the one that walks the real world? Opinion remains divided, yet the prevailing view holds that they are not. In the ocean of the internet, where the chain linking rights to responsibility has been severed, the suppressed second self awakens with almost inevitable ease. And every human being possesses such a second self.
How many people living in modern society can claim they do everything they desire, that they suffer no repression and therefore harbor no secondary personality? When that suppressed self is released and fuses with the present one, the result is the personality that exists on the net—a mask of the net, if you will.
Jack O’Lantern was one such mask. The name beneath the mask was Song Hyun-woo: a somewhat precocious fifth-grader with excellent grades. That a boy only a little above average could drive countless people to suicide, film their deaths, and set the world abuzz was a fact almost impossible to believe.
“I’m off.”
Hyun-woo left the house and climbed into the car. A routine morning—riding along on his father’s commute and being dropped at school. Superficial praise, mostly about his grades, reached his ears, yet the words lay far from warm paternal affection. Listening, he could never decide whether he was being praised for studying well,
or for having inherited his brilliant father’s genes,
or simply for belonging to the bloodline of a man with superior genes.
…It was all suspect.
After pouring out praise that bordered on self-congratulation, his father always added the lesson: “Don’t grow arrogant over a few good grades.” If the boy called Hyun-woo was only “a little excellent,” the remark amounted to malicious understatement. He was a prodigy in every sense—precocious enough to deserve the titles of genius and gifted child. The private lessons that rained upon him already matched the intensity of a high-school senior preparing for university entrance exams. Far beyond the usual “lay a foundation in Korean, English, and math,” this was genuine elite education.
“Have a good day, Father.”
A maturity unsuited to a child. That maturity bought parental trust, and trust brought money. Tallied up, the so-called allowance rivaled a new graduate’s monthly salary. Compared with the spending habits of other wealthy children in the district, the sum was meager reward for Hyun-woo’s performance—yet money still accumulated.
No matter how freely he spent, the hours consumed by tutoring left scarcely any time to spend it.
Repression, repression, repression, repression… Everything was repression. Without needing to borrow André Gide’s image of the rolling mill that flattens people so they may pass through a narrow gate, the life of an elite was itself a rolling mill of pressure and constriction. Must one endure this repression in order to reach paradise?
Ding, ding, ding…
School lessons flashed past like bullets. The teacher, explaining things the boy already knew as though addressing infants, almost inspired pity. Amid children who had already mastered everything through private lessons, the teacher raised his voice for the sake of the ordinary “children” squeezed among them. Hyun-woo ignored that voice and packed his bag. The teacher earnestly warned them about the danger of Jack O’Lantern.
“Don’t listen to Jack O’Lantern or anyone like him. No—don’t even go online. You must endure for a while. Understood?”
An order dressed as a request—yet had there ever been a more abject commander? The moment the final homeroom ended, Hyun-woo snatched up his bag and bolted into the street. Feet and more feet headed for academies… yet he ran toward a PC bang to meet Jack O’Lantern.
“Hah… hah… hah…”
Perhaps because tutoring left no room for exercise, Hyun-woo could not control his ragged breathing as he pulled a PC-bang card and headed for his usual seat. He had to change the IP address. Yet the seat beside the computer he always used was already occupied by a young man whose hair was dyed a vivid green.
What a ridiculous skull.
Hyun-woo himself lightened his hair a shade, but he never went so far as to court attention. People of superior intellect naturally drew eyes; there was no need to alter one’s appearance for the purpose. A little natural styling was enough. Hair dyed so loudly only proved the head beneath it was empty.
“Ahhh.”
Hyun-woo stretched and powered on the computer. He scanned for spyware and the like, extracted the hacking tools, and launched them. The program that slipped into a clustering research network at a South African university’s computer department and disguised the IP bore the name Jack O’Lantern.
A ridiculous logo appeared—a ghost with a Halloween pumpkin head holding a lantern—then the connection opened.
Today, as always, countless fake Jack O’Lanterns roamed the internet.
“Hahaha.”
The boy laughed. Hyun-woo—or rather the boy called Jack O’Lantern—sneered to his heart’s content at the fools who tried to imitate him. No, no, that would never do. The enlightenment Siddhartha Gautama attained beneath the bodhi tree might, in a sense, be one of the countless themes adopted by children’s programs such as Bbo-Bbo-Bbo or TV Kindergarten. Did that mean those who merely nodded along with the light moral of such shows were suddenly saints equal to the Buddha?
Not in the least.
Likewise, no matter how the counterfeit Jack O’Lanterns aped his ideology and tried to follow him, they could never become the real thing. Because the real one was right here. Even if they rolled empty cans to mimic the genuine article, they only deceived the eyes of fools; those who knew what the can truly held merely laughed.
“Hooo!”
Perhaps the relentless schedule was taking its toll; the boy stretched again. At that moment the green-haired youth in the next seat rose. Without a word he tossed a scrap of memo paper onto the boy’s keyboard.
“…”
What sort of rude person does that? Hyun-woo looked down at the memo—and froze solid. Written upon it were the words:
Hello, Jack O’Lantern?
If you don’t want to be dragged off by the police, why don’t you come with me for a bit?
The handwriting was crooked and abominable, yet to the boy it stood out with terrifying clarity.
“Ahh, I need to use the restroom for a minute—could you settle my bill?”
The young man handed his card to the PC-bang clerk. The phrasing suggested he intended to leave the shop and travel quite a distance. Hyun-woo fell silent for a moment. If he kept the card, the clerk could testify about him in an emergency; the man would not be free to do as he pleased. Yet if the fellow were a reckless killer, that precaution would mean nothing. And to beg the police for help at this point was something his pride could not accept. Carefully he returned the card and followed the youth outside.
Last night’s rain had left the air clean; spring sunlight finally shone, and the city glittered. The young man led him through the bright streets into a secluded corner. Should he turn and shout for help? The thought crossed his mind, yet even if he went to the police the youth held every advantage—because right now he was Jack O’Lantern.
No. Now he was Hyun-woo. Himself.
Online and offline personalities could not help but differ. Yes—only then did Hyun-woo realize that he himself had been Jack O’Lantern all along. And that was precisely what the young man wanted.
“Well then…”
Finding an empty place in Seoul was never easy, yet somewhere a vacant pocket always existed.
“…W-what do you want?”
Hyun-woo asked in a trembling voice. Money? Yet in that instant the youth raised his hand and struck the boy across the cheek.
Crack!
The force was terrifying. The speed was nearly invisible—an attack that could only come from someone carrying genuine murderous intent.
“Ghk!”
The boy crumpled to the ground. His head rang; teeth shattered and blood filled his mouth. Never in his life had he been hit so brutally.
“Spit it out. You’ll choke.”
The young man spoke as though accustomed to violence, utterly unmoved by a child bleeding. His low voice carried a killing intent far from satisfied by a single blow.
“Kh…!”
The boy spat blood and teeth. Molars had come out cleanly, roots and all. Most of them had been healthy. Darkness closed over his vision.
“Is death beautiful?”
The youth set his hand-blade and whipped it toward the boy’s throat. Hyun-woo could not even dodge; the strike landed again. In the gloom the hand-blade blended with the man’s black clothing and became invisible.
“Guh!”
A strangled cry; his throat locked. Blood from the broken teeth poured into esophagus and windpipe, choking him. Consciousness swam as though someone were strangling him; coughs burst free.