Chapter 40. Who Are You?
Chapter 40. Who Are You?
Bang bang bang!
The cheerful mood inside the hospital room flipped the instant gunfire echoed down the hallway.
“Cheolmin—this! I brought it!”
Somehow, Bella produced Cheolmin’s wooden sword from Room 105 and held it out.
“Thank you, Ms. Bella!”
Cheolmin pulled out the IV line in his arm, then drew a real blade from the wooden sword Bella had handed him.
“They’re Chinese enhanced soldiers!”
Ayoung, Hyeonyoung, and Yuri cracked the door open and peeked outside.
Down the corridor, a group of hulking men with guns were advancing while slaughtering everyone they saw.
The three of them raised their phones and started texting someone, and Lauren was urgently texting as well.
The Chinese soldiers were kicking open room after room as if searching for someone, and whenever they found hiding patients or medical staff, they fired without hesitation.
Seeing that, Cheolmin’s eyes blazed. With the real blade in hand, he shouted and charged out into the hallway.
“You motherfucking bastards!”
The bastards opened up with rifles on him.
But Cheolmin sprinted forward while dodging the bullets.
With his Imdok Yangmaek opened, it was hard to do anything to him with mere firearms now.
Bullets on trajectories too hard to dodge, he even knocked aside with his sword.
There were seven Chinese soldiers total. Armor formed by itself over three of them in the lead—plates unfolding from big backpack-like modules mounted on their backs, shoulders, and abdomens.
The four enhanced soldiers fell back and kept firing at Cheolmin. Bullets ricocheted and punched holes all along the corridor, but none hit.
Inside the hospital room, Bella calmly peeled an apple, munching neatly. Then she handed a slice to the Room 103 guest who was watching.
“Want some?”
The woman from Room 103 gave a small nod, carefully took the slice, and chewed.
Her entire body was still wrapped in the UV-blocking telekinetic membrane I’d put on her, and now that she was eating, I had to extend the membrane to her digestive tract too.
Her whole body—inside and out—was packed full of my telekinesis.
She took one bite of apple and made a happy face. She was a high-maintenance guest.
Honestly, she took more work than cleaning rooms.
“Give me one too.”
When I said that, Bella fed me a slice and started peeling another apple.
Out in the hallway, the roaring noise continued. Cheolmin was fighting the three armored Chinese. The Chinese soldiers had given up on guns and were swinging plasma blades that burst from machines on their wrists—mantis-like in shape.
Lauren and the three women from the cleaning team were peeking out from the door, watching the fight while furiously texting someone. But they looked terrified for Cheolmin’s safety—every time he narrowly avoided an attack, they gasped and tensed up.
Then I saw the regular soldiers who’d backed off pulling grenades from their belts.
Yesterday, those grenade fragments were exactly why Cheolmin ended up hospitalized.
Their armored comrades weren’t affected by grenades, so the plan was obvious: throw them into the middle of the fight.
Could Cheolmin dodge that?
He probably could if things went well, but it was still dangerous. I should help.
One grenade already made life and death a coin toss. Four grenades going off would be rough.
I applied pressure to the hearts of the four soldiers standing in the back and ruptured them.
Heart rupture mid-combat.
The four Chinese enhanced soldiers who were just about to pull the pins collapsed without even making a sound.
At that moment, the corridor window shattered, and the U.S. reinforced suit troops from the mountain incident burst in.
Seeing them, it clicked: the Chinese armored troops were knockoffs made to imitate these suit troops.
The original really did have a different kind of presence.
Compared to the made-in-China types that looked like they’d been wrapped in scrap plates, the U.S. suits oozed style.
They stood about three meters tall, clearly in a “piloting a machine” form.
Flying in from outside and smashing through the window, the U.S. suit troops fired the weapons in their hands.
Not normal firearms—more like futuristic guns, maybe railguns.
They fired precisely, avoiding Cheolmin and hitting only the armored troops. Each hit dented the metal hard, and the impact made them stagger.
Cheolmin seized the opening and split one of them open with his sword like a watermelon.
The blade, infused with internal energy, cleaved the helmet in half and stopped around chest level.
Ah… that’s brutal.
I frowned at the spray of blood bursting like a fountain.
The fact I still felt disgust at scenes like this meant I definitely wasn’t a psychopath.
Meanwhile, our cleaning team was ecstatic—clutching each other’s hands, bouncing in place like they were celebrating.
Enjoying watching someone die…
They were pretty vicious.
I put another apple slice in my mouth.
The woman from Room 103 also put another slice in hers and chewed.
When one of them fell, the “Temusan” suit troops lowered the plasma blades that had been crackling with blue electricity from their arms, and raised both hands in a gesture of surrender.
“You slaughter innocent people and now you want to live?”
Cheolmin, flooded with adrenaline, looked like he had no intention of forgiving them even after the surrender gesture.
He was wearing a patient gown that tied in the back, but during the fight the ties had come undone—his back and ass were exposed, making the whole thing obscene.
But Cheolmin didn’t care at all. He swung his sword and took another one’s head off.
That’s fucking brutal.
The U.S. suit troops who had rushed in—like they were trying to stop him—charged forward.
“Mr. Cheolmin! They’re allies!”
Lauren shouted at Cheolmin as he was about to swing at the U.S. suit troop coming from behind.
Cheolmin—reborn as a handsome man—swung his sword with a grim, heroic expression, like a movie lead.
The patient gown with his ass showing was the only flaw.
“I surrender! Treat me as a prisoner!”
When two comrades were beheaded in an instant, the remaining Chinese soldier stumbled back, shouting in panic.
“How dare you… after massacring people like this…”
Cheolmin trembled, staring at the civilians collapsed all around, rage boiling out of him.
He seemed calmer now—like he didn’t intend to attack anymore—but he still looked like he could barely hold the anger in.
If I’d known he’d get this furious, should I have saved those people?
Patients die in hospitals every day. What was the difference between them and the people who died in this hallway?
It was a hard question for me.
Food she’d assumed had dried up forever—after four hundred years—stirred something awake inside Seorin.
Vampire.
Bloodsucker.
Bloodkin.
Different names, same essence: a monster that craved blood.
Seorin despised herself.
After becoming the same kind of monster that had devoured her parents and siblings, she felt nausea rise every time she fed.
But she had to swallow it and drink blood to survive.
She couldn’t close her eyes until she avenged her family.
The rules of the Bloodkin Discipline Unit Seorin belonged to were simple:
Don’t form packs.
Don’t reveal your identity to humans.
As long as those two rules weren’t broken, Bloodkin could do anything.
Last night, she had broken the rule.
She had revealed her identity to the motel employee.
But it didn’t matter.
The motel employee—the tracksuit man—was her mission target. Someone who would die anyway, so revealing herself didn’t count as violating the rules.
But what happened next was truly shocking.
She ate food—for the first time in four hundred years.
Sweet and bitter fragrance.
The sensation of coffee filling her mouth and sliding down her throat was almost intoxicating.
Drunk on that feeling, she stayed awake all night.
In the morning, she came to the counter and heard they were going to see Choi Cheolmin, so she followed along.
The primary target on the Bloodkin list was Choi Cheolmin anyway.
She needed to meet him too.
Then the woman next door told her to lower her mask.
Normally, Seorin would never do it—but softened by what happened last night, she wanted to see the woman’s shocked reaction when her skin burned in sunlight.
But her expectation failed.
Her skin, which should have ignited under the sun, showed no damage at all.
For the first time in four hundred years, she stood in sunlight.
The warm rays felt like they were melting away four centuries of bitterness lodged inside her.
After that, she didn’t even remember how she made it to the hospital.
She snapped back to herself when an apple entered her mouth.
A familiar taste.
A taste she’d known back when she was still human.
From last night to this moment, it felt like she’d been wandering in a dream.
But Bloodkin couldn’t dream.
So it wasn’t a dream.
After about two slices of apple, her sense of reality returned. The thick scent of blood and the stench of gunpowder drifting in from the corridor yanked her fully awake.
At the door, the three women who’d come from the motel and the woman already in the room were huddled together, craning their heads out to check the hallway.
And on the bed, the woman from Room 102 and the tracksuit man were peacefully peeling apples together.
Seorin’s daily life was mostly numb and indifferent, but even she knew this—eating apples leisurely while a battle raged outside—was not normal.
Either these two had no sense of reality, or the fight in the hall meant absolutely nothing to them.
Were they… lacking something?
The fighting sounds stopped. Maybe the battle was over.
Instead, she heard something heavy and mechanical moving—each step making the corridor thump.
Seorin was seriously worried about whether she could really cut off Choi Cheolmin’s life…
…and the tracksuit man’s breathing.
Choi Cheolmin seemed possible.
But even thinking about the tracksuit man made her feel hopeless.
The strange phenomena that had happened to her since last night—
eating food, and being safe under sunlight—
the thought wouldn’t leave her: it was this man’s doing.
She had no confidence she could kill him.
But the Discipline Unit’s missions had to be completed no matter what. Unless the Council of Elders withdrew it, she couldn’t abandon the mission even if it meant dying.
Ding.
A message alert popped up on Seorin’s phone.
[Elimination order for Korea’s Choi Cheolmin and surrounding individuals canceled. Target is a key figure to the U.S. government; executing the mission risks leaking information about the Bloodkin.]
Canceled.
The heavy, suffocating weight in her chest sank and eased.
She’d never been strongly attached to life or death, but since last night, her heart had been pounding like it used to when she was human.
Seorin put another apple slice in her mouth and chewed.
The door opened, and a man in a patient gown entered, holding a sword, breathing hard.
The four women touched him all over, asking if he was hurt anywhere.
“I’m fine. If I’d been a little faster, innocent lives wouldn’t have been harmed.”
Choi Cheolmin sheathed his sword with a dark expression and looked at Cha Seorin.
“And who is this person?”
Cha Seorin ate another slice of apple, stared straight at Cheolmin, and answered.
“The person from the room across the hall.”