Chapter 3
Chapter 3
***
Though it had luckily hit the monster that burst out of the door, the monster looked down at its own body, then charged at Seo-geon without a care.
It had a human form, but its limbs were abnormally long and its eyes bulged out as if it were a frog. Seo-geon reflexively rolled his body. But there were stairs leading down in that spot.
"Uwaaaaaaack!"
Seo-geon tumbled down, his shattered shoulder landing on the ground. The monster didn't come down right away, but instead descended slowly as if savoring Seo-geon's terror, then placed both its arms on the walls of the narrow staircase.
Crack-crack-crack!
With a sound like popping joints, holes were punctured in the wall and the monster's arms went in. The thing was hanging there, having smashed the walls with both its arms and legs, like a child clinging to a threshold.
Whether it was because of the shotgun Seo-geon had misfired or because of an injury sustained elsewhere before, the blood was still not stopping from its torso.
"Uuuuugh!"
Seo-geon moved his body with difficulty and raised the shotgun. However, a shotgun was originally an item meant to be held and used with both hands. With his left arm broken now, there was no way he could do that.
"Krrrrrrgh!"
Seo-geon raised the shotgun and aimed at the monster. There was only one shot left, and as he had seen just before, it was clear it wouldn't be very effective. So how could he possibly take that thing down?
The thought of just waiting for the police to arrive also crossed his mind, but he felt that if he let that thing get away now, he would regret it forever. It was the enemy of his entire family.
"You…!"
His emotions were so intense that no words would come out. Seo-geon barely managed to pull himself together. His hatred for that monster was difficult to express in words. But when he opened his mouth, these were the only words that came out.
"You son of a bii~tch!"
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Spitting out a curse that boiled up from the very bottom of his being, Seo-geon lifted his good foot to support the bottom of the shotgun and pulled the trigger. To hope for a hit even in this state would be asking for too much, but since the gun was loaded with buckshot, it battered the monster.
"K-wor!"
The monster momentarily lost its grip with its arms and legs and fell backward, then tumbled down the stairs. Without even a moment for Seo-geon to get out of the way, he ended up entangled with the monster, but Seo-geon immediately pushed himself up and raised the shotgun with one arm.
"Yaaaaah!"
Seo-geon swung the shotgun like an axe and struck the monster's head.
Thwack!
Blood splattered as the monster's head cracked. Seo-geon swung the shotgun like a madman and battered the monster.
"Krrrrrrgh!"
However, when the monster reflexively swung its arm, Seo-geon's left arm was severed. It had been broken anyway, but for the arm to be cut off and blood to gush out like a fountain was no ordinary matter.
"Aaaack!"
Seo-geon screamed and struggled. For a person's living flesh to be sliced off so easily. This monster's strength was not ordinary. It was a power like an industrial press, so there was no way for Seo-geon to block it. It was at that moment.
Bang!
With a single gunshot, a gaping hole was blown through the monster's side. Seo-geon could have been hit by mistake, but someone had boldly fired a gun.
The monster turned its head in surprise, but in that instant, a flash of light passed across the monster's neck. The neck separated from the torso, and blood poured down like a fountain.
"Uuuuugh…"
Seo-geon raised his head and looked at the strange scene that had unfolded before his eyes. A silver-haired priest in black clothes had swung a large Claymore (a greatsword popular in places like Scotland), the kind you'd only see in movies, and cut off the monster's neck.
As if cutting off the neck wasn't enough, the priest turned his body and struck the monster in a cross shape. With a gruesome sound, the monster was completely split in two and its body tore apart.
"Uuuuuuuugh!"
That scene was the last thing Seo-geon saw before he fainted. Hoping that all of this was a dream.
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Cup ramen bowls were scattered about messily. In the middle of the room, Seo-geon, as gaunt as a corpse, was sitting.
Inside the dark room, in a place where not even a light was on, the only illumination was the light leaking from a telephone.
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Tiririririt.
The telephone was ringing like crazy. The only light and sound in the silent room, but Seo-geon did not answer the phone.
By the time the police had been dispatched, the monster's corpse had already disappeared. The silver-haired priest in black clothes was also gone; no, it was as if he had never existed in the first place. The only thing that felt concretely real was that his arm had been cut off, but when he came to his senses, that too was reattached.
Seo-geon truly felt as if he had been possessed by a ghost. But his parents and his hyung were all dead, and it was also a fact that this was a bizarre murder case, the likes of which were rarely seen.
The police closed the case by concluding that the dog had gone mad and run amok. In truth, there were many questionable points to say a dog had done it, but it wasn't as if they could acknowledge a monster with no corpse, as per Seo-geon's testimony, was it?
When Seo-geon testified about the monster, the police's reaction was, in a word, this:
"Were you sniffing paint thinner?"
That day, it seemed the captured bikers had said something about Seo-geon, so the police regarded Seo-geon as nothing more than a hopeless biker gang member. Because of that, Seo-geon also had to undergo a detailed examination at the hospital.
Verbally, they said that since he was a survivor of that tragedy, he needed a detailed examination, but even if Seo-geon was ignorant of the ways of the world, there was no way he wouldn't know that the main purpose was to test for the use of psychotropic substances.
And for the week that followed, it was no exaggeration to call it a harsh ordeal by the media. The broadcasting stations filmed the blood-splattered interior of the house, chattering away enthusiastically as if it were so fascinating, and brazenly shoved microphones at the half-crazed Seo-geon.
Of course, Seo-geon overtly pushed the cameras away and avoided the people, and the broadcasting companies, provoked by his actions, began their coverage in a manner that was almost retaliatory.
Soon, neighbors and school friends appeared on broadcasts, speaking carelessly as if they were talking about a dead person, and he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown from the continuous requests for interviews and visits.
Some weekly magazines shamelessly wrote articles as if Seo-geon had killed his family in a shotgun misfire. Faced with that act of carelessly writing speculative articles in a "so-and-so said, but who cares if it's not true" manner, a feeling of emptiness preceded his anger.
In the end, Seo-geon was released as he was cleared of suspicion, and Seo-geon returned to the house that had all but become a ruin. The bodies had been removed, but the inside of the house was left messy and neglected here and there, and the bloodstains had not yet been erased.
Seo-geon soothed his hunger with cup ramen and then collapsed in his room. The funeral was held at the hospital morgue, but Seo-geon remained a recluse and didn't even go outside. Was it about ten days after that had passed?
A voice calling Seo-geon's name was heard from the front door.
"Seo-geon-ah! Why aren't you answering the phone! Han Seo-geon!"
From outside the door, a familiar voice was heard.
It was the man who was Seo-geon's paternal uncle, Han Gyu-il, that is, the younger brother of Seo-geon's father, Han Seung-il. Hearing his uncle's voice, Seo-geon was startled and came to his senses. He should be able to trust his uncle, who had become the chief mourner in his stead. No, he would believe him.
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Seo-geon thought so and ran outside to open the gate. Seo-geon felt a sense of welcome that was truly driving him mad.
Clank!
When he opened the main gate, which felt heavy—probably because Seo-geon had grown so thin—a middle-aged man who hadn't even shaved his beard was standing there.
His uncle, who had been running around busily for several days taking care of the funeral, contacting the family clan, and various other things, was also haggard, but seeing Seo-geon, whose condition was even worse, he shed tears.
"Aigoo, you rascal! How'd ya get so worn down! All skin and bones, ya punk!"
"Ah, Un-Uncle."
"Follow me! No more words are needed!"
Gyu-il forcibly put Seo-geon, who was reluctant to move, into his car and then drove to a nearby restaurant.
"Eat! What a tragedy this is. But what can ya do. The living have to live. Ya hyung-nim didn't pass away for you to follow him. And in this day and age, that ain't filial piety. Who d'ya think will be happy if ya act like this now!"
Faced with the bowl of seolleongtang from which hot steam was rising billow after billow, Seo-geon couldn't hold back the tears that gushed out. Seo-geon finished his meal in a frenzy, along with his tears. Perhaps because he had starved for so long, the way he devoured the food greedily was no different from a common beggar.
"Hey, are ya gonna keep stayin' in that house? Come down to our place. There's an empty room, and though I'm not as well off as ya hyung-nim, I'm not that poorly off either. If you say you'll come, I'll even send ya all the way through college."
As Han Gyu-il made such a confident declaration, Seo-geon closed his mouth. With Seo-geon's grades, a four-year university was a bit of a stretch.
This was because he had originally wanted to become a motocross rider and wasn't very close with his studies. He had hung out with biker gangs, so it would be stranger if he did well in his studies.
"Thank you for the thought. But I…"
Seo-geon said that and then shut his mouth. Come to think of it, he hadn't been a very good son. Perhaps it was because of the fear that even if he went to his uncle's house, he would still fail to be a good son?
The regret—of the kind that everyone ends up having—that if he had known he would lose his parents so soon, he would have listened to them just a little bit more, was piercing his heart.
"Well, I'm not askin' ya to decide right now. There's still plenty of time, so think it over slowly. It's not like I'm gonna disappear anytime soon."
"Yes."
Seo-geon answered and rose from his seat. Just a moment ago, he had been overflowing with the desire to die, but to have his energy restored right away with a bowl of warm seolleongtang… he felt pathetic for some reason.
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Seo-geon parted with his uncle and returned home. His uncle had adamantly insisted on driving Seo-geon home, but Seo-geon politely refused and walked home himself.
The moon was hidden by clouds, and the darkness made it seem like it would pour rain at any moment. Seo-geon looked up at the sky. When he lifted his head for the first time in a long while, fresh air rushed into his lungs.
"Ah…"
Complex emotions welled up. To lose his family to such a monster—it still didn't feel real. If he himself couldn't feel the reality of it, there was no way other people would believe him. Seo-geon thought so and let out a sigh.
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On a slightly sloping hill road, a jet-black Corvette coupe was parked under a utility pole with a flickering sodium lamp. In normal times, he would have looked at it with great interest, but the current Seo-geon didn't have the capacity to care about cars.
But at that moment, the door of the coupe opened and a man in black clothes got out. The silver-haired foreigner wearing priest's vestments was also familiar to Seo-geon.
"Ah! You're?"
The man's appearance overlapped with that of the silver-haired priest who had burst in at the moment he was in danger of being killed by the monster on that night he didn't even want to remember.
Seeing him, Seo-geon felt as if he had been struck on the head. He himself had suspected it might have been a hallucination, but for him to actually appear before his eyes.
"Who in the world are you?"
"Be quiet."
The silver-haired priest said that and raised a finger to his lips. Perhaps because of Seo-geon's voice, the dogs in the neighborhood began to bark.
This priest's speech, for someone who looked like a foreigner, was an overly neat Korean. But more than that, his cold and frosty tone was far more impressive.
"You really are a bastard who lives by causing trouble to those around you. Don't shout in the middle of the night. Is your physical condition alright?"
He said that and looked at Seo-geon's arm. Of course, it was the arm that had been severed. Seeing him look at his arm, Seo-geon was startled and asked back.
"Did you reattach it? But how?"
"First of all, it's not right to talk here, is it? How about it, will you get in?"
The priest spoke thus and pointed to his Corvette. Seo-geon got into the Corvette without a word of complaint.
The jet-black Corvette slid smoothly over the road, so much so that it would be no exaggeration to say it melted into the night. The priest in black clothes skillfully drove the Corvette and glanced at Seo-geon.
"You look like a refugee."
He made that assessment after seeing Seo-geon, who hadn't even been able to bathe properly. At that, Seo-geon felt angry for some reason and looked at him.
"You, what's your identity? And what was that monster?"
"What do you think? Use your imagination."
Seo-geon hesitated, then answered.
"Don't tell me. An Exorcist?"
"You've come close."
"In that case, was that monster something like a vampire?"
"Correct."
Seo-geon couldn't be happy at the word "correct." Of course, he himself was the victim, but the story being discussed now was so detached from reality that it was absurd. He was afraid that if he continued talking like this, he might be sent straight to a mental hospital.
The Corvette entered the urban expressway. It was a bit late, so there weren't many cars, but the streetlights illuminated the city like densely packed tombstones. The priest looked at Seo-geon while holding the wheel with one arm.
"I'll ask you straight to the point. Did you drink the vampire's blood?"
"Pardon?"
Seo-geon thought for a moment. He remembered frantically beating the vampire with the shotgun during the struggle. Blood had splattered, and he might have had his mouth open at that time, but why did that matter?
"No way. Am I becoming a vampire too?"
"If you drank the blood, you could."
"In that case, this arm is indeed…"
Seo-geon looked at his own left arm that had been severed. His arm had definitely been broken, and then severed by the vampire, but when he came to his senses, not only was the arm reattached, but the fracture had also been healed.
Only about ten days had passed since that incident, yet there was nothing wrong with his severed arm.
But if Seo-geon had become a vampire, the answer was simple.
"No. I'm the one who reattached your arm."
However, the priest denied it.
"I don't know. I was in such a state of panic, I don't know if I drank the blood or not. Why. If I did drink the blood and become a vampire, are you going to kill me then?"
"You yourself should know that answer best."
The priest did not deny it. No, that tone, in which not a shred of warmth could be found, was a stronger affirmation than anything else. Hearing his words, Seo-geon buried his head forward.
"Damn it! Krrrgh!"
After losing his family, to think that he himself might become one of those monsters? Seo-geon couldn't control the tears that were flowing out.
He didn't want to show tears in front of a foreigner whose name he didn't even know, but being unable to control it meant it couldn't be restrained by his own will.
Watching Seo-geon shed tears, the priest shook his head at that moment.
"Hm. It was a needless worry."
He turned the car's direction and went back the way they came.