The Jinma Next Door
Se-geon found a vampire reaction inside the neighboring boarding house and went pale with shock. Of all places to hide, this was one of the worst imaginable for a vampire. It was a space that barely managed to fulfill its purpose as a boarding house—somewhere you could just about eat and sleep—and slipping into a hole like that was nothing like the meticulous care of people who had gone so far as to plant a transmitter on his motorcycle. And if that wasn't the case, how had he failed to notice something this close until now?
But the reaction is real.
The Bloodstone Pendulum was clearly moving in a way that had nothing to do with ordinary oscillation. Of course, even a Bloodstone Pendulum could malfunction—but when lives were on the line, there was nothing strange about being a hundred times careful. Thinking that far, Se-geon drew a knife. The building had no window on the door side; the entrance sat at ground level, yet from the landlord's side of the house the place was a half-basement. Escaping through a window would be hard. Se-geon turned and went around toward the front of the landlord's house.
Let's see how fast they react.
Crash!
The instant he threw the knife through the window, he vaulted the row of earthenware jars and swung around to the back of the house. Exactly as expected, the door opened and a woman stepped out.
Thud!
The silenced Tokarev gave a dull report. He hadn't been able to get a proper suppressor for the Tokarev, so the one Kenneth Yang had handmade for him had cost far more than the gun itself. Even so, that much money didn't make the sound go anywhere—it was still fairly loud. And when the round punched through a door framed in aluminum sash and shattered the glass, the noise only got worse.
"Kyaaah!"
The crash of breaking glass was joined by a young woman's scream. Was she deliberately trying to call the police?
Se-geon pulled the trigger in rapid succession, then reflexively ducked back under cover. For a moment the worry rose that she might not be a vampire at all, just an ordinary person—but as if to blow that worry away, the counterattack came at once.
Whoooom!
With a howling rush of wind, shards of glass came flying and slammed into the wall. If he had left even a fraction of his body exposed, he would have been shredded.
"Tch!"
Se-geon scrambled up onto the fence. The neighborhood dogs were already starting to howl; it wouldn't be long before the area was crawling with police. Being a hunter, he had pulled the trigger without thinking—but his resident registration had been wiped clean. If anyone ran a check, not only he but Kenneth Yang, who had provided his hideout, might get dragged in too.
Did I kick up a useless ruckus?
Thinking that, Se-geon peered around the corner. He realized almost at once that it had not been useless at all. The woman who came into view was unmistakably familiar. Not a childhood friend, not a classmate from school. No—she was a woman wanted by both vampires and hunters alike.
"Ah! Damn it all!"
He had known she was a vampire, but a Jinma?! Se-geon threw himself back over the fence and hit the ground. The instant he landed and ducked, a terrifying gale tore through the air above his head.
"Wh-what's going on?!"
"What is that?!"
Of course a commotion like this in a residential neighborhood at night was going to draw attention. Gripping his pistol hard in both hands, Se-geon slipped quickly between the narrow fences.
"Ah!"
Jeong-ah's head was spinning from the sudden assault by the vampire hunter. Unused to fighting, she found even a human a terrifying opponent. On top of that, his movements were impossible to pin down. At first her sharp hearing could track the direction, but past a certain point sound lost all sense of orientation.
He's extremely skilled!
She bit her lower lip. Of course he would be—this was someone who had hunted vampires in a human body.
"Ugh…"
Then Chang-hyun, who had been lying in the room, pushed himself up. With a racket like this, no matter how bad his condition, he couldn't help but come to. Jeong-ah spun around in surprise. She hadn't wanted to drag him into it, and yet somehow she had done exactly that, and with flair.
"What the hell is going on?"
Chang-hyun stared at the wrecked interior and clicked his tongue in disbelief. The window was smashed, glass swept inward, the door half in tatters. There had to be some reason for all of this—but more than that, he was already worrying about the scolding and the damages he'd owe the boarding-house landlord.
"Get down!"
She immediately waved her hand, signaling him to drop. Body language apparently didn't work, though; he got up and walked toward her.
"What—did North Korea just invade or something?"
"It's not that kind of problem!"
Jeong-ah fought down a surge of irritation. She knew perfectly well how hard it was to convince a complete outsider of something she herself took for granted, but in a crisis this urgent, the mere fact that he wouldn't move the way she wanted made frustration climb through her. In that same instant, a searing pain punched through her shoulder.
"Ah!"
A crossbow bolt buried itself in her shoulder! The hunter had been coming and going through other people's property as if it were his own, and had sniped her with a crossbow from the roof of a two-story building. While her attention was elsewhere, Se-geon had reinforced his gear, taken Psychedelic Moon, and come back.
"Ugh!"
She seized the shaft and ripped it out in one motion. The bolt was silver—an ordinary vampire's wound wouldn't have regenerated—but she was a Jinma whose VT exceeded a million. The moment the arrow left her flesh, the wound closed as if it had never been there. Chang-hyun stared in open shock.
"Ugh… Be careful. The enemy is after me… You should run…"
"Don't be ridiculous! What is this even supposed to be?"
Chang-hyun couldn't believe what he was seeing. This wasn't a spy thriller or an action blockbuster—and someone was shooting people with a crossbow. It felt like waking up in the middle of a half-baked dream. But the smell of blood reaching him made it clear she had been hurt. "Had been" was the more accurate phrase now, yet even the brief scent of the blood that had spilled made the dizziness in his head grow heavier.
"Ugh…"
A sudden, stabbing pain drove through his skull. He didn't know what was happening, but his teeth ground together.
Waaaail!
Police sirens were already rising from somewhere far off.
"What an idiot."
Se-geon muttered in disbelief at how easily Jeong-ah had taken the bolt. If she was a Jinma, she ought to show a little of what that meant; fumbling like this, even he could take her. A Jinma who didn't know how to fight and kept exposing herself—was it because she was a woman?
Thud!
He loosed another bolt, but she slipped backward at terrifying speed and avoided it. Only now had she finally gotten out of the blind angle. Confirming that, he changed positions. In the distance he could see police cars with their sirens going, but it took a long time for them to force their way into a Korean residential maze. The cars packed into the alleys didn't vanish just because someone hit a siren; if anything, they only helped the suspects get away.
"Maybe I'll try a pursuit myself."
That Jinma and the one who had put a transmitter on his bike were not the same person. In other words, running into the Jinma Jeong-ya here was pure coincidence, and those vampires didn't know about it. An ambush from behind at any moment wouldn't be strange—but Se-geon couldn't let this chance go. Whatever else, the woman right in front of him was a Jinma whose VT surpassed a million, and she was far too weak. There was no reason to let a treasure like that slip—
Treasure?
Se-geon clicked his tongue at the word that had risen unbidden. See a thing and covet it—that was human nature, and he was no freer of it than anyone else. But if he started thinking of a vampire as a thing, he was no different from Sarhyuk, whom he despised more than anyone. Then again, for a vampire hunter to start arguing moral high ground was like sticking a gun barrel in your own mouth and pulling the trigger.
"Right. Morally, I'm already trash."
Se-geon gathered his weapons and moved quietly.
Chang-hyun laid Jeong-ah down in the room and looked around. The center of the room gave him a blind angle against any direct-fire weapon, but there was no guarantee they wouldn't be hit by something arcing in. What if someone threw a Molotov or a grenade?
"Dammit."
Still low, he shoved the wardrobe against the window to block it, then pulled kitchen knives and the like from the cupboard and laid them out on the floor. He was a taekwon-do expert, but he was not a man who romanticized martial arts. No matter how skilled you were, dropping a wary opponent in a single blow was never easy. So he chose weapons.
"Ah—um…"
Jeong-ah watched him prepare to fight and felt flustered. This had nothing to do with him—so why was he throwing himself into it?
"Ah, don't worry about it. I may not look it, but I'm ex-security detail."
Chang-hyun said it lightly and pressed himself to the wardrobe. He pulled Jeong-ah in beside him, signed for silence with a hand, and yanked free the knife stuck in the wall. The knife Se-geon had thrown was buried in the wooden interior with terrifying force. That was probably what had broken the glass—so the enemy was one person, or more. Even if not, whoever it was was clearly very good at fighting.
"Listen—he's after me. You don't have to get involved…"
"They already wrecked my place, so I'm involved whether I like it or not!"
Chang-hyun said it with confidence and pulled a pair of taekwon-do arm guards from the closet. Not the most useful things in the world, but they could stop a knife slash once or twice. Jeong-ah, listening to the police sirens, looked uneasy. Sensing that she didn't want anything to do with the police, Chang-hyun carefully stepped out of the room.
"This way."
After a cautious look around, he slipped out of the alley at speed. On the front door a cheerful Podori sticker helpfully announced, The police box is only three minutes from you.
Yeah, right.
That was all he could think. Three minutes, my ass. What was this, Ultraman? But this was no time to complain about that. If anything, it worked in their favor.
"Why attack you like this in the first place?"
Chang-hyun glanced at her as they ran. The woman called Jeong-ah was coming after him so fast it put him, a man, to shame.
"Because I'm a vampire…"
Jeong-ah said it without thinking, then clapped a hand over her mouth. When Chang-woon had said something like that to her, how had she answered? She'd treated him like he was half-mad, hadn't she? And now, two years later, she was saying the exact same thing.
"…Right. Asking in all seriousness here."
His reaction was exactly what she had expected. Even so, she followed where Chang-hyun led without a word. He didn't believe what she was saying, yet he was running from the police and from the hunter—how was he enduring a situation this absurd without even understanding it himself? The more she looked at this human, the more interesting he became.
"Are you all right, though? Your body?"
"Probably."
Was he better now? Chang-hyun walked carefully, breathing the dawn air. There were still about two hours until sunrise, and not a single patrol officer in sight. Still, parks always got patrolled—maybe they should duck into a building somewhere.
"Anyway, I thought you were joking, but there really is a pursuer."
"Y-yeah."
Jeong-ah could only manage a vague answer. Then Chang-hyun suddenly laid a hand on her shoulder. No blood—not even a mark of a wound. At most, a hole through her clothes.
"Is the place you got hit okay?"
"…"