First Meeting
It would have been nice if we could have flown straight into Incheon Airport, but unfortunately the local situation meant all flights into Incheon were grounded.
Over there—in the original world—people used to joke about “Mage-Incheon,” “Mage-Incheon.” Apparently the author found the gag so memorable that in this world’s setting, Incheon really was a demon realm.
Yeah. The actual demon realm where demons and monsters lived. To be more precise, the region itself wasn’t the demon realm; it simply had a whole bunch of portals leading into one.
Same difference, really, but you ought to call things by their proper names.
It hadn’t always been like that. One day a freak with some kind of power showed up downtown and the city went to hell overnight. That was more than twenty years before the story’s present, though, so who knows the details.
Anyway, Incheon could genuinely be called a demon realm. Physically speaking, it was no place for humans to live. Less than a year after that freak opened the portals, the city lost every last urban function and the whole region collapsed.
Even so, people still lived in the Incheon area—several distinct breeds of them.
First: the military types who garrisoned the outskirts and made sure the monsters inside didn’t crawl out.
Second: ordinary humans who’d been driven so far into a corner that nowhere else was left. Maybe they owed impossible debts, maybe they’d been chased until this was the only hole left, maybe they’d earned a grudge they couldn’t possibly handle and had to run.
Third: the inevitable criminals.
And fourth… well, calling them residents felt like a stretch.
The fourth type were the ones strong enough to survive just fine in demon-realm Incheon, yet so addicted to the thrill of combat that they came looking for fights—people whose brains had basically melted into pure adrenaline.
Were all of them magical girls? No. Roughly thirty percent were, but the rest weren’t.
So what about the other seventy percent?
What else? People who’d won the ancestor lottery and been born with powers.
You might wonder why a magical-girl story even has ability users, but then what about the vampires? This world was already a ridiculous hodgepodge, just like my own identity.
In China, the First Emperor who’d been alive since the Qin dynasty still ruled the continent with divine beasts at his side. In Europe, Dullahan were regularly spotted tearing down the highways on ghost-bikes. In a world like that, a few ability users weren’t exactly shocking.
Not just anyone got chosen, of course. The power only manifested in a fraction of those who had some special blood mixed into their lineage, so the numbers stayed small.
…Thinking about it made my head spin. For a special being’s blood to end up in a human line, that special being had either been the one doing the screwing or the one getting screwed. One of the two.
It was a different flavor of headache from the one I’d gotten meeting Radiant White.
“Does your head hurt?”
Na-rae seemed to think I’d put a hand to my temple because my vampire factor was violently rejecting something.
“What, hoping I’ve weakened enough for you to hit me from behind? Dream on. It’s not that. I’m just trying to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to do if White ever finds out about the lies I told her.”
The lie rolled off my tongue so naturally that Na-rae smacked her lips in disappointment.
That look was so irritating I decided right then that our operating funds in Korea would come straight out of her bank account.
She pulled a face and whined about how much I planned to bleed her dry, but when I casually pointed out that it was still cheaper than her life, she had no choice but to go withdraw the money.
While Na-rae was off getting cash, I took a short walk and tried to sort out what I was going to do—or at least where things stood right now.
Starting with the present.
Surprising or not, this body felt perfectly fine even with the air thick with garlic and neon crosses everywhere. My factor might be suppressed, but sunlight still hurt, so suppression clearly didn’t erase every weakness. I just had to accept that garlic and crosses had never been problems for me to begin with.
Honestly, I’d been fretting about how I was supposed to live if I turned out allergic to either one. Huge relief.
Now for the future… Distant future could wait; thinking that far ahead was exhausting. I focused on the problems right in front of me.
Housing, and meeting the protagonist.
I wasn’t planning to stay long, and when I was in human form I wanted to hang around near the main cast, so a cheap place somewhere near Incheon would do.
The protagonist, though—that was the real headache. The guy had a serious paranoia problem.
I could understand developing trust issues after being betrayed by the one person you’d devoted yourself to, but this was excessive.
…Being both the second and third types of resident I’d listed earlier probably didn’t help. Still, it was bad.
So I needed a story that would even work on him. The problem was I had no idea how to make a guy that suspicious lower his guard.
Radiant White was famous for her pure-heartedness, and the protagonist had decided she might be useful, so he’d started interacting with her. Me? I had nothing. No social standing, no particular utility. The only thing I had was some original-series knowledge I could use to bluff with…
In that case, wasn’t pure aggro the only option left?
Yeah. What kind of grand plan did I think I had? Just pick a concept and start drawing attention. When I was in human form, lying and fishing for interest was basically all I was good for anyway.
Calling it a plan was generous; it was paper-thin. Still, I trusted my ability to improvise on the fly.
I’d already talked my way past Radiant White, right? I’d figure something out!
…Or so I thought.
Right up until the moment a shotgun muzzle was jammed against my head.
Finding the protagonist once we reached Incheon was easy.
I confidently announced that we’d come to head into Incheon, so the guards assumed Na-rae and I were the fourth type—complete lunatics—and waved us through.
They didn’t escort us all the way into the city proper. Declaring he had no intention of dying, the guard said he’d wait right here, in the “safer” spot.
It wasn’t particularly safe either.
Still, I’d tied my hair back so it wouldn’t get in the way when I ran, so I didn’t bother pointing that out. If I had, he probably would’ve clutched his chest and fainted on the spot.
Anyway, back to the story.
I found his workplace just as quickly. Having read the original, I already knew exactly where he lived and what he did for a living.
Maeng-kong’s Errand Center.
For a contractor’s office that barely anyone in this den of monsters had even heard of, the name was ridiculous. Then again, anyone who would hang a sign like that in a place like this was already not right in the head.
And he really wasn’t right in the head. He wasn’t an ordinary being either.
The reason I’d made Na-rae withdraw so much cash was so I could approach him in the form of a job request.
I figured he’d never form an ordinary human relationship with anyone, so a formal commission was the only way in.
…Up to that point, everything went fine.
The protagonist did give a half-hearted, “A woman client? That’s rare,” kind of reaction, but that was all.
Plunking the money bag on the table and trying to act like someone important produced zero interest.
At this rate the whole thing was going to end as a single ordinary job, so I decided to fish for a little aggro by calling him by a name no ordinary person should know…
“Exactly the look I heard about, Kang Su-hyeok.”
Apparently that was his berserk button.
The moment I said his name, our protagonist Su-hyeok’s entire demeanor flipped. He kicked the table, slamming me into the wall, then pulled a shotgun far too large to fit inside a coat from inside his coat and leveled it at my head—right where I was pinned between the table and the wall.
“Who do you work for? Who sent you, and who the hell are you? Answer!”
It hurt bad enough that I wondered if a rib had cracked, but Su-hyeok clearly didn’t give a damn. He kept pressing me with that borderline-frantic intensity.
After the initial “I’m fucked,” my next thought was: Was this guy always this extreme?
I hadn’t expected it to be this bad. In the original he definitely wasn’t…
……
He’d just gone easy because she was an ignorant magical girl. So this was his real attitude.
Ah. I could’ve figured that out with half a second of thought. Why the hell didn’t I use that half-second, damn it.
I clung to the faint hope that it might be a toy gun, but toy guns have orange tips. This one was black. Shit. It was real.
The thought that I might actually die right here made my whole body start shaking on its own. Why did this kind of crap only ever happen to me?
Okay, fine, I’d brought every bit of it on myself. Still. I was going to die of sheer injustice!
I just stood there trembling, staring at the muzzle without a word. Su-hyeok fired a round into the ceiling.
It was less of a “bang” and more of a “BOOM.” My ears felt like they were going to rupture.
“Next one’s live. You’ve got ten seconds.”
Ah. So that had been a blank. No wonder no dust fell. But wouldn’t a blank still kill you at that range?
This guy was completely insane.
Should I take the choker off? He was another one who flipped between monster and human; I could probably seduce him with that. No—too boring. Rejected.
Telling the truth wouldn’t make him believe me. He already seemed convinced I was some government rat, or close enough.
“Five.”
God, I genuinely couldn’t think of anything. What was I supposed to say? Screw it. Come what may.
“Two…”
“Nightkin, Arad Familia! Elder Mirchei sent me!”
I squeezed my eyes shut and spat out a random mash-up of words I’d heard from Ilie.
I had no idea if it would work, but the fact that my head hadn’t exploded yet meant at least I’d managed to catch his interest.
“…Nightkin. You mean vampires?”
The muzzle was still aimed at me, but his voice had softened a notch. He was giving me at least some benefit of the doubt.
“That’s right. Children of the Dark!”
“Why would vampires be looking for me? And they only operate in Romania. How do they even know who I am?”
I’d expected things to get pretty serious once we met face-to-face, but this was beyond ridiculous. Worse than anything I’d imagined.
“Did you really think you could keep hiding forever with skills like yours? Don’t tell me… no way?”
“…So it was you watching me that time.”
“H-how did you…”
I had no idea. The guy had been tailed more times than I could count.
But pretending to be flustered here would probably sell the lie better.
“Like you said, there are ways of knowing everything. So why are you looking for me?”
Still keeping the gun trained on me, Su-hyeok asked for the purpose of my visit.
…One more slip and I was going to get a brand-new ventilation hole in my skull.
But after coming this far, simply turning around and leaving wasn’t an option. I decided to go for broke.
“The Elder… told me to go see whether you were worthy of becoming part of the new family. So I came. And, well, I happened to be interested in you myself.”
I scraped together every last scrap of bluster I had and laid it on thick. Only then did Su-hyeok lower the muzzle and click his tongue.
“…Vampires, huh. Heh. So now even those things are starting to circle.”
I wasn’t actually a vampire, but letting him keep the misunderstanding seemed more entertaining, so I left it alone.
…Still, I should at least correct the part where he thought I was a regular vampire. Or add another lie—something about being a mutant that could walk under the sun just fine, maybe.
“…I didn’t expect a little name-dropping to get me a shotgun for a welcome either. Anyway, you should probably know my name too. Seong Min-a. That’s me.”
For a first meeting it had been a bit extreme, but…
All things considered, hadn’t it gone pretty well…?