Chapter 5
Chapter 5
***
"So. You're saying you want to become an exorcist?"
Silvester asked, sinking his body into the sofa and tilting his chin up. As for Seo-geon, he couldn't give a definite answer yet.
But if he didn't have such a reason or purpose, he wouldn't have wanted to hear an explanation of this incident while getting beaten up by Silvester for no reason. So, Seo-geon nodded his head.
"Yes."
"How pathetic."
Silvester immediately started with a criticism. At that, the woman, who had identified herself as Kim Seong-hui, cleared away the teacups and smiled.
"You have to explain the situation first, Silvi."
"Silvi?"
As Seo-geon muttered the name after her, she smiled and patted Seo-geon's shoulder.
"The name Silvester is too long and I don't like it. Besides, that's a baptismal name."
"So you were a real Catholic priest?"
Seo-geon said that and was surprised at himself. Was it because that had grated on his nerves? Silvester swept his hair up and answered with a cold expression.
"Don't worry about that point. It's been quite a while since I was excommunicated. Anyway, if I explain the situation, I'll need to erase your memory afterward. Will you consent?"
"Pardon?"
Seo-geon, surprised at the words about erasing his memory, asked back like that. But as if that was taken as a sign of consent, Silvester looked at the middle-aged man next to him and grabbed his arm.
"In that case, look carefully, you bastard. At what a human who fights against the forces of darkness must give up."
"But!"
The middle-aged man glanced at Seo-geon and became flustered. It was obvious he was trying to hide something, but Silvester dismissed his worries and peeled back the clothes covering his arm. At that, a forearm, thick and toned with muscle, but covered in countless needle marks, was revealed.
Seo-geon was startled and stared at the forearm. Although Seo-geon didn't know anything, he knew what those bruises meant through movies and the like. They were the marks of a syringe.
"Do you think you know why he got so many injections?"
"N-no, I don't."
"Drugs."
Silvester said that and shrugged his shoulders.
"Fighting monsters is not something humans should do. You've experienced it too, haven't you? In an instant, a vampire can break a person's bones and tear their muscles. How are you going to fight a bastard like that?"
"…"
"Pain makes humans shrink back. And in close-quarters combat, pain is death. The anesthetics commonly used to eliminate pain relax the muscles, making you unable to use your strength. In that case, the only method left is drugs. Right?"
Silvester looked back at the middle-aged man in the black beret and asked. For the man, a former Special Forces soldier, it must have been an extremely shameful thing, but it was an undeniable fact.
"Yes. That's certainly right."
"It's a crazy act, fighting monsters while shooting up drugs. If you make a small mistake, you become the same as them. Does that look so good to you? Once you enter this world, you can never go back to that side. Once you step into the darkness of the night, you can never return to reality. Is there any need for a young kid like you to do something like that?"
He said that and rose from his seat. Seo-geon couldn't say a word and hung his head. Fighting monsters while on drugs was something that was hard to accept with the common sense of Seo-geon, who had grown up in Korea where drugs were strictly controlled.
His hostility toward the monsters was still boiling, but Silvester's persuasion was powerful enough to pour cold water on that hostility.
"C-could you give me some time to think, for now?"
"As much as you want. But if you carelessly blabber about this to others, know that you'll be seeing your family. The only things you can gain by running your mouth about what you've found out from us are the title of a deranged person and a bullet lodged in your head."
<><><>
Vrooooom!
In the end, Seo-geon decided to think it over and disappeared on his motorcycle. The middle-aged man was watching Seo-geon's retreating figure through the show window.
"It's about time for customers to start coming, so won't the two of you please, move aside or something?"
Kim Seong-hui looked at Silvester and the retired soldier and requested their departure. As the owner of this shop, she needed to be concerned about sales. As if he decided to comply with her request, Silvester, still wearing the shirt with Snoopy drawn on it, walked toward the entrance.
"I'll do that."
"Hey, Silvester."
Just then, the middle-aged man called out and stopped Silvester. Perhaps because he had shown his drug-using forearm to Seo-geon, he was trembling with great anxiety.
Even if Seo-geon was treated like a mental patient for talking about vampires and monsters, it was a separate story from being a habitual drug user. Yet Silvester had left the boy alone without even erasing his memory.
"Why did you let that kid go just like that? Even if you're fine, it's quite a headache for me, a habitual user."
"Well. You're also doing this 'vampire business,' so there's no rule saying that kid can't. That's all there is to it. If you're really that anxious, then you can take care of it yourself. Of course, the bastard still has a place to settle down in reality."
"What if that disappears? So if the bastard comes looking, what will you do?"
The middle-aged retired soldier asked the silver-haired foreigner, who looked to be in his early 20s. The silver-haired foreigner, Silvester, was lost in thought for a moment, then spoke cheerfully.
"That's something to think about when the time comes."
<><><>
Seo-geon wandered through a nightmare.
In the darkness of the night, blood fell in glistening drops, and the vampire walking the streets was suffering from a tremendous thirst.
The rest of the truth that Seo-geon had not seen was rising up as a dream. He wandered through the darkness and entered an alleyway.
It was an uphill road that Seo-geon knew well; the luxurious single-family residential area located at the top was Seo-geon's home. The pain of his lungs being torn and his torso being pierced was parching his throat with a thirst that corresponded to the pain. He felt like he would collapse at any moment, but the powerful life force brought on by the curse was prolonging the pain.
A somewhat abstract thought, that perhaps this pain and thirst were the essence of the curse, flashed through the vampire's mind.
"Heok… heok…"
He let out a ragged breath and looked around.
All that was reflected in his glistening eyes as he searched for a sacrifice were firmly shut buildings; there were almost no living creatures. Luckily, many of the houses were empty, and he didn't know if it was perhaps because of the economic recession.
<><><>
But at that moment, a person's body heat was caught in his eyes that were searching for a victim. The glowing red body heat, the warm blood flowing within it, he could feel it all as if he could grasp it in his hand, right down to the throbbing of the heart.
That resurrected the monster's heart. Squeezing out all of its remaining strength, the monster jumped over the wall. The iron bars installed to stop thieves were of no use in the face of its monstrous strength.
The vampire jumped over the wall just like that and bit the dog that was growling at it. As the blood flowed in, vitality began to revive inside its body.
The dog's blood, the blood of a beast, was not enough. As soon as the vampire had quenched its burning thirst, it quickly grew tired of the beast's blood. He blew his own toxin into the dog's corpse and soon entered the house.
The door was open, and from inside, there was a smell of something being fried. Were they making fried food? The vampire opened the door nonchalantly and headed for the kitchen. In the place the smell was leading, there was indeed a middle-aged woman.
Blood-sucking. A horrific act of blood-sucking and cannibalism, something a civilized person could hardly even imagine, took place.
It was so grotesque that it looked more like a 'ritual' than a simple 'meal'. The more blood the vampire drank, the more its wounds recovered.
"Fucking True Demon Hunter. Son of a bitch!"
The vampire cursed like that. True Demon Hunter? Seo-geon knew that it was another name for Silvester.
"Krrrrrrrgh."
What came next was as Seo-geon knew well. The vampire murdered his father, Han Seung-il, in his father's room, and killed his hyung, Han Se-hyeon, who had seen the tragedy, run to the study, and taken out the gun. His wounds had healed considerably, but the flesh into which fragments of silver had entered was rotting like poisoned meat.
While the vampire was wandering around looking for a tool to remove the silver, Seo-geon returned to the house that had become the scene of a tragedy, fought the vampire, and fell to the lower floor, knocked out.
Shwack!
And just then, Silvester burst in. He overwhelmed the vampire by swinging a large ceremonial claymore and finally killed it.
The terror of that 'True Demon Hunter', who surpassed even the vampire in physical ability, was so intense that it was clearly transmitted even to the dreaming Seo-geon.
The heavy greatsword that pierced its throat did not even allow a death rattle, and a fierce kick shattered its skull.
However, the dream did not end there.
"What's this?"
Silvester looked down at Seo-geon with his characteristic indifferent tone.
Seeing the blood-soaked and gasping Seo-geon, he lifted his claymore, looked down at Seo-geon, and spoke.
"It is said, there is no one righteous, not even one, and on earth, you are all sinners."
He shouted thus and was about to bring the sword down. It seemed his intention was to relieve Seo-geon's pain, but at that moment, his blade stopped in front of Seo-geon's neck. He looked at the shotgun held in Seo-geon's hand.
"Ah."
Silvester stopped his hand and was lost in thought for a moment.
"He's too good a bastard to kill."
Then, he took out a small syringe from his coat.
<><><>
Though it was a syringe, it wasn't a common plunger-type syringe but a special syringe called a steam pack. With it, he drew blood from the corpse of the vampire that had just been killed by him. And he injected that into Seo-geon's body.
<><><>
It was truly a wondrous thing. The blood-soaked body began to heal, and even the severed arm, when Silvester picked it up and attached it, healed quickly and eventually reattached. Of course, as if one shot was a bit insufficient, Silvester drew the vampire's blood a couple more times and injected it into Seo-geon.
"Uwaaaaaaack!"
Seo-geon struggled to avoid the injection. But… his forearm was already bruised, and from the injection marks, a sprout was beginning to grow. The sprout of the monster that had massacred Seo-geon's family spread throughout his body, following his blood vessels through his arm.
Seo-geon couldn't bear it, due to the fear that he could become a vampire if things went wrong and his revulsion for this blood itself. But after injecting the vampire's blood into Seo-geon, Silvester showed not the slightest interest and left the spot.
"Uwaaaaaaack!"
Seo-geon woke up with a scream. His whole body was drenched in sweat as if he had just come out of a sauna, but his surroundings were dark and cold.
Seo-geon looked around his room. His eyes fell on the PC, VCR, and mini component system that he had used often when his family was around. Seo-geon turned on the power of the mini component system and began to clean up the cup ramen containers and other things scattered messily on the floor.
Seo-geon finished cleaning just his own room and walked to the bathroom to take a shower with cold water. The weather was still chilly, so pouring cold water on his body was painful, but for Seo-geon, even such pain was a luxury.
His hyung and parents had been murdered, so for him, the survivor, to be unable to endure something like cold water, could only be thought of as the complaint of someone who was well-off.
Beep.
While Seo-geon was showering, the answering machine turned on and played a recorded message.
"Ah, Seo-geon-ie-nya. It's me. Ya little uncle. It's nothin' else, but have ya thought about what I asked ya to think about? It must be pretty empty for ya to live there alone. Make a decision quickly and just come on over. Well then, I'm hangin' up."
Seo-geon listened to his uncle's voice and leaned his head against the tiled wall. For him, there was really no reason to catch vampires to the point of becoming a drug addict.
Although he had lost his family, neither his parents nor his hyung would want Seo-geon to live a meaningless life while becoming a wreck. Thinking that, his heart felt much more at ease.
Seo-geon finished his shower and came out to the living room. Considering his usual daily routine, he should have eaten breakfast after finishing his shower, but his feet did not easily turn toward the kitchen. The bloodstains still remained in the kitchen where his mother had been brutally killed. His nutritional state was still too good to take food out of the refrigerator while looking at those bloodstains.
"It's already 10 o'clock? Looks like going to school today is out of the question too."
Seo-geon sighed as he threw his clothes into the laundry basket. A huge amount of laundry had already piled up in the laundry basket. For Seo-geon, who had never once operated a washing machine, that too became a factor that made him reminisce about his mother.
The fact that he was reminiscing about his mother because of such mundane matters tormented him again. But he couldn't stay like this forever.
Seo-geon changed his clothes and went out to the garage.
<><><>
The cell phone of a female student sitting in the very front row of M University's audiovisual room rang loudly. Moreover, the melody was Arirang Mokdong. If the owner of the cell phone hadn't made a flustered expression, it would have greatly damaged the atmosphere of the class to the point where it wouldn't have been strange to see it as a protest against the professor.
"Oh my. What do I do? What do I do."
The girl, whose name was Han Se-jin, was flustered and just pulled out her cell phone battery. She was so used to the action that it took less than a second to turn it off and pull it out. In the end, the class bell rang five minutes later and the class ended, but for her, it was no exaggeration to say it was truly the worst day.
"I ate spoiled food for breakfast, I lost my contact lens! My transportation card exploded! And now this at school, I'm going crazy!"
She said that after the class ended, while helping the teaching assistant take down the screen. Originally, there was a device that rolled up the projector screen, but as is often the case with school facilities, it broke easily, so they had to roll it up and take it down by hand like this.
The professor of M University's sociology department was famous for being strict, so much so that even the teaching assistant said he was wasting away, and she had been caught red-handed.
"Um, well then, I'll be going."
After finishing the cleanup, Se-jin said goodbye to the teaching assistant and bolted out of the audiovisual room as if fleeing. Then she put her cell phone battery back in.
"There's no one who would call me in the morning, who could it be?"
But just then, she saw a motorcycle entering the main gate of the university. On top of the motorcycle sat a man wearing a flight jacket and jeans.
"Oh my. It's Seo-geon-ah?"
She recognized her cousin, Seo-geon, and muttered to herself. Come to think of it, a few days ago, she had also attended the funeral because a mad dog had a seizure and massacred the whole family.
But the chief mourner himself, Seo-geon, couldn't attend the funeral because the shock was too great and he was under suspicion of firing the shotgun.
So why had Seo-geon come to find her now?
"Ah, noona!"
Seo-geon, as if by a miracle, recognized Se-jin among so many people, approached her while still on his motorcycle, and then did a smooth turn in front of her. It was a type of smooth accelerator turn where he supported his body by planting his foot on the ground and then stepped on the accelerator to turn only the motorcycle.