Under the Eyes of the Cameras
Chang-hyun scanned the area around the subway turnstile, then vaulted nimbly over it and glanced back. Jeong-ah wore a thoroughly mortified expression, yet she too leapt the gate and emerged.
“Ah… I don’t usually do this kind of thing.”
“Neither did I. Let’s move.”
Chang-hyun checked their surroundings once more before breaking into a swift run. Even after sundown the streets around Samsung Station still thronged with people. He headed down into the underground levels of COEX Mall. They seemed to have shaken their pursuers for the moment, yet it was far too soon to relax.
COEX Mall was a vast, immaculately polished underground arcade—complex enough that a first-time visitor could easily lose their way. It was also a thoroughfare of the latest trends, which made the two of them, who had been sleeping rough only hours earlier, look decidedly shabby. Fortunately they had bought a few changes of clothes and stuffed them into their packs. The only problem was finding somewhere to change…
“Hmm. What about over there?”
Chang-hyun pointed toward the section adjoining the hotel. A hotel sauna would let them bathe and change. The moment the words left his mouth, Jeong-ah’s face flushed scarlet.
“W-what exactly are you suggesting?”
“……?”
Only then did Chang-hyun realize he was standing in the middle of a public thoroughfare, brazenly pointing at a hotel entrance and inviting a young woman inside. Magnificent. Truly the pride of Korean manhood. For a second his circuits shorted out completely.
“Ah—no, that isn’t what I meant at all. Uh…”
Given that vampires were not ruled by carnal desire, their reactions were purely the product of social convention.
“What I meant was, we could wash up and change clothes—”
He got that far before the sheer embarrassment overloaded him and he simply exploded. The volume of his voice must have been considerable, because several passers-by turned to stare and mutter. Most people in a place like this, of course, simply walked on without caring.
“W-well… that does make sense.”
Jeong-ah agreed, still red to the ears. Yet with hunters on their trail, did they really have the luxury of lingering in a hotel sauna to bathe and change? Then again, no one was likely to attack them inside a sauna. Between the hotel itself and COEX Mall, security cameras covered every angle; vampire hunters could not simply run wild.
“All right.”
Looking for all the world like a pair of guilty lovers, Jeong-ah and Chang-hyun made their slow way toward the hotel sauna—in other words, the public bathhouse.
The word “red-light district” carried a cheap connotation, yet this place was unmistakably one. Phantom left his car with the valet and strolled out into the open. The artificial brilliance of the night lights struck him as sharply as stepping from darkness into day; he squinted against the glare and watched the cars still rolling into the garage.
“Persistent, aren’t they. What exactly do they think they’re doing?”
Seeing the vehicles that had been tailing him pull into the same garage, Phantom headed for the elevators. He saw no need to wait for a car that would take him into COEX Mall. Instead he simply forced the doors open with his hands and flung himself into the darkness beyond.
Screeech!
People waiting for the elevator jumped at the sudden, unnatural sound of the doors parting. A few impatient souls tried to shove their way in at once, only to be stopped cold by the white man who strode out and caught them all by the shoulders.
“Hey, no pushing! Understood?”
“Huh?”
They stared at the doors that had opened and closed of their own accord, then at Phantom. He simply slipped past them and vanished with elegant ease.
“Night’s getting on. Hope this doesn’t become a problem.”
Public transport would soon shut down for the evening, and aside from a few nightclubs and similar establishments COEX Mall itself would close. Once that happened, the only eyes watching the place would be the CCTV cameras scattered throughout.
Come to think of it, the cameras here are hard-disk systems, aren’t they?
Hard-disk recording was more expensive than tape, but far more precise and easier to manage—the current fashion. And with a hard-disk system, Phantom could wipe the footage whenever he pleased. Not that any security arrangement would have given him much trouble; he was thoroughly proficient in magic.
“Still, brawling with ordinary humans isn’t exactly my idea of fun. Why did those people follow me? They didn’t seem genuinely hostile.”
He muttered the words, then suddenly sensed something odd in the air.
“A vampire?”
There was no other explanation. The presence of a vampire hung among the crowds. Even a True Ancestor as skilled as Phantom could not instantly pick out which face it belonged to.
“Well, being a vampire doesn’t mean one is forbidden from enjoying a little culture.”
Besides, the place was blanketed in cameras—hardly ideal for snatching a meal. The world of the midnight moon, or the realm of the mad moon, existed only by remaining invisible to ordinary eyes. In that sense COEX Mall was pure, unfiltered reality. Phantom found the thought reassuring and settled onto a bench.
A moment later a young man with a hiking pack and still-damp hair emerged from the basement lobby of the InterContinental Hotel.
“Hm?”
Phantom could not help focusing on him. The youth had just left a luxury hotel—yet he was carrying laundry. Fresh laundry, still damp.
It was, of course, Chang-hyun, freshly scrubbed and gleaming after his first proper wash in ages. He had committed the truly bizarre act of doing laundry inside a hotel sauna. Now that he knew how easily money could be made, he could simply have thrown the clothes away and bought new ones—but a man born with a commoner’s heart could never bring himself to discard perfectly serviceable garments.
“Damn it. Where am I supposed to hang these? This is awkward.”
It’s awkward for the people watching, too, Phantom thought, yet he continued to observe. Chang-hyun checked for security guards and hotel staff, then carefully spread the clothes across a bench.
“Hah…”
Magnificent. A splendid specimen of humanity! Phantom found himself genuinely admiring the fellow. Doing laundry in a hotel sauna and then hanging it out to dry in public—and most of it already nearly dry, which meant he had wrung it thoroughly and probably finished the job with a hair dryer. Hotel saunas, after all, never posted signs forbidding laundry; the sort of people who entered them simply never thought of such things.
“Taking her time, isn’t she?”
Chang-hyun paced in front of the entrance, glancing at the watch on his wrist. Then the hotel doors opened and a young woman stepped out.
“Ah?”
Phantom recognized her at once and felt a jolt of dismay. Jinma Jeong-ya. Securing her location was important, yet he had never wanted to run into her so abruptly.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Not at all…”
Chang-hyun gathered up the laundry while watching her worried face. It could hardly have dried much in those few minutes, but he clearly disliked leaving it draped there. They sat down and surveyed the area. Their eyes flicked briefly toward Phantom with a hint of unease, yet foreigners were common enough in a place like COEX Mall.
“So… what do we do now?”
“I think staying right here is best.”
“Why?”
“Because of those cameras. See them? They’ll protect us. No one’s going to walk in here carrying firearms.”
Phantom pretended not to listen while eavesdropping. From the way they spoke, Jinma Jeong-ya had already created a thrall—and had done so by sharing her own blood. How much she had given remained unclear, but Tetra Anax and the others who fretted over the overall strength of the vampire race would find the situation deeply regrettable.
Tetra Anax thinks in terms of the survival of the entire species… Creatures like her and her thrall, who disrupt vampire society, are regarded as liabilities that reduce overall survivability. They will try to reclaim them. Though… is he really a thrall? No, I’m overthinking it.
“So we just sit here and kill time?”
“It’s the most sensible option for now. But we can’t live like this forever.”
“Yeah.”
As if on cue, both of them let out long sighs. They had become vampires not by choice but by force. If a sense of mission, duty, or desire was what drove people forward, these two possessed none of those motives. Living as vampires was nothing more than raw survival instinct.
Listening to them, Phantom felt a genuine pang of pity. The demand that those who lacked the proper dignity of a vampire should be killed and their power seized was nothing but the logic of the strong. Simply by virtue of possessing personalities, these two deserved to be treated as human beings. Vampire hunters claimed that tears proved one’s humanity—yet did tears truly guarantee character? Monsters and madmen who wept while they killed were far more common than most people liked to admit.
“Ah, damn it… Excuse me, I have a question.”
In the end Phantom rose from his seat.
These two defenseless people had no will to live as vampires. To covet the VT of those who had become vampires against their will and drain them of blood was no different from highway robbery.
Phantom had long believed that a vampire’s true power had little to do with VT. VT certainly indicated how long one had lived and the quality of the material one was made of, but beyond that it meant nothing. What mattered more was the spirit—the heart. An idealistic notion, perhaps, yet without at least that much conviction one could hardly call oneself a romanticist.
“I’ve been listening to the two of you for a while now.”
Chang-hyun and Jeong-ah froze in shock at the sight of the foreigner who had been sitting quietly only moments earlier now speaking fluent Korean.
Hey, hey—if you just sit there frozen solid you’re as good as dead!
Phantom offered the advice only in his mind; saying it aloud would only heighten their wariness.
“Wh-who are you?”
Chang-hyun asked the question while already preparing to strike if necessary. Anyone who could overhear their conversation from that distance was almost certainly a vampire—and another vampire was dangerous to them. Hunters on one side, vampires on the other… The hard truth was that the entire world was their enemy right now.
“As you can see, the hunters have blanketed the area. You’d best be careful, Jinma Jeong-ya.”
They stared at True Ancestor Phantom in astonishment. How on earth did this foreigner know who they were? Chang-hyun slowly widened his stance, settling into a combat posture.
“And how are we supposed to believe you aren’t one of those hunters?”
“Well now? Let’s just say I’m a romanticist. I don’t lay hands on a lady or the knight who protects her.”
“Ugh…”
Chang-hyun found the words hard to swallow. Phantom had not meant them that way, yet both Jeong-ya and Chang-hyun felt as though they were being treated like children. Sensing it instinctively, Chang-hyun stepped between Jeong-ya and Phantom.
“Hunters are swarming the place. Do you have weapons?”
“Weapons…”
“Even a Jinma needs weapons if he’s going to face people carrying firearms.”
Phantom asked the question with a faintly reproachful air. Jeong-ah stepped forward.
“We don’t want to hurt them.”
“Neither do I. But they will not leave you alone. What exactly is the problem? Gandhi’s non-violence may have won India’s independence from Britain, but the cost in lives was enormous. The only lives you two can afford to sacrifice are your own—two of them.”
“Ah!”
The persuasion came a fraction too late. Jeong-ah’s cry rang out as a man in black—Sarhyuk—stepped onto the Ocean Walk of COEX Mall. From there to their position the path was a straight line; the only escape was the hotel lobby.
“Hmm…”
Even so, the hunters could not open fire here. They dared not unleash firearms under the eyes of ordinary humans. Without guns the advantage swung back to the vampires. Choosing COEX Mall as a refuge had been the correct decision after all.
“Hmm…”
“Stay out of the camera blind spots. If you and that man enter one at the same time… he will shoot.”
True Ancestor Phantom delivered the warning to the two still-bewildered vampires and then walked forward first. An alchemist—one of those vile hunters who used vampires to practice genuine alchemy. The man stood a full head taller than Phantom, his body like a massive boulder. He, too, possessed physical abilities beyond human limits; judging by sheer bulk, he was stronger than most vampires.
No matter how high one’s VT, the vampiric factor only drew power from the body; it did not create strength that transcended the flesh. The larger the body, the greater the physical force it could generate.