Chapter 2 :

<2>

"Yeah?"

The priest smiled when he heard the vampire’s words. He moved the muzzle of the gun to the vampire’s head. The vampire tried to move in shock, but having lost one arm and one leg, all he could do was flail helplessly.

"Why! Why! I told you everything I know."

"You’re really a useless bastard. What you know is of absolutely no help to me."

He said that and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

Bang!

With the gunshot, the head was blown to pieces. Even though vampires have regenerative abilities, there was no way to survive a .50-caliber magnum round packed with silver fired straight into the head.

"Damn it! I ended up working for nothing."

The silver-haired priest, apparently quite well-versed in idioms, said so and irritably shoved his Desert Eagle into his waistband. The middle-aged man, intimidated by the momentum, shrugged his shoulders.

"Anyway, since you fired a gun, the police will be coming. Shouldn’t we leave?"

"I don’t care. If there’s a problem, it’s your Colt."

Saying that, he picked up the case. And then it happened.

Crash!

The sound of glass breaking came from across the way.

"It looks like we’ll inevitably have to get into a chase. You can handle the cleanup, right?"

The priest glared at the middle-aged man as if blaming him and slipped out the back. As expected, the club’s kitchen window was shattered, and someone could be seen running away through it. The priest drew his handgun and immediately pulled the trigger.

Bang!

The street was not exactly quiet, but the gunshot stood out above all the other noise. The vampire who had been running hard staggered at the sound. The bullet that tore through his back, ripping through his lungs and liver, left a wound so severe that an ordinary person would have died ten times over.

And the silver-tip hollow round the priest used (silver-tip hollow, usually aluminum-tipped) was more than threatening enough even to a vampire. But the vampire gritted his teeth and kept moving.

Even with both lungs shredded and his liver, pancreas, and stomach completely destroyed, vampires could still move.

"Damn it. This is getting complicated."

The priest clicked his tongue as he put the gun away.

* * *

Deep in the night, several biker gang members were racing excitedly along the road. Their cowls were crammed with cheap lamps, and most of them had fist-sized lamps commonly called “poop lights” mounted on the back. The sound of them opening their throttles together was truly like a thousand troops charging.

Of course, their mufflers had holes drilled into them, or the caps removed, or the mufflers themselves replaced, so the noise was loud, but in reality the engines were all only about 125cc, and none of them were properly tuned.

However, the leader was riding a fairly heavy Vulcan, and he looked no older than his early twenties at most.

"Yahoo!"

At that moment, one of the bikers at the front let go of the handlebars and waved his arms. The others all followed suit. Cheap horns blared out, chaotically disturbing the surroundings.

"Hahahahaha! This is awesome! Hey, Se-geon! Do a wheelie!"

The leader called the rider beside him Se-geon. Because of the wind noise, he had to shout at the top of his lungs. But somehow Se-geon understood and answered.

"No way! This is my brother’s bike, and he’d kill me if it even got a scratch!"

As he said that, he blinked his headlight. He was riding a domestic RX-125, so clean it looked as if it had just rolled out of the shop, showing how much care its owner had put into it.

From the outside, there was nothing that looked like illegal modification, but in terms of actual performance, it had been fully tuned, from the suspension to the tires, cylinder, filter, and plugs.

‘What am I even doing?’

Thinking that, Se-geon gripped the throttle. Then he twisted it hard and lifted the front wheel in an instant. Wheelies were a common trick, but doing one at over 100 kilometers per hour, on a road still wet from the rain that had just fallen, was dangerous.

But when Se-geon did the wheelie first, everyone else started doing wheelies as well. Those who were too afraid of the rainwater and speed to do it were quickly ostracized within the group.

It wasn’t as if they were gathering to die together, yet they had to perform such reckless stunts for such a trivial reason. That was why groups were frightening. And then it happened.

Police who had been waiting in hiding at the corner appeared. Since it was a crackdown period for biker gangs, the fully tuned patrol cars and the heavily armed police riding modified vehicles or Harley-Davidson FX/STs were on an entirely different level, starting with their equipment.

"Stop them all! Do you want to die!"

A police officer holding a loudspeaker in a patrol car shouted with a voice dripping with irritation. It was hard to tell whether he was worried that the kids would die while racing, or whether he was saying he would personally kill them.

"It’s the cops!"

"Ah, shit! We’re screwed!"

Desperate cries erupted among the bikers. The leader turned around with a grim expression. Of course, it didn’t look like anyone intended to stop. Watching them, Se-geon clicked his tongue.

Se-geon was still a high-school student, unlicensed, and riding his brother’s bike, so getting caught would be no small problem for him, making an escape attempt seem better. But one of the biggest causes of biker deaths was fleeing from the police.

"Screw it! It’s better than getting caught!"

Shouting that, Se-geon veered off the road. It was a loop road going under an interchange, and cutting off to the side meant jumping down below, something not achievable with ordinary skill.

It went from on-road to off-road and back to on-road, and it was basically a jump, not something you could do without serious control.

But like a stuntman, Se-geon leapt off the road onto a dirt slope thick with weeds, sped down it, and brazenly climbed up onto the road below.

Crash-crash-crash thump!

The RX-125 slid down, practically carving out the slope, and bounced as it landed on the asphalt. A terrifying kickback traveled through the handlebars, but Se-geon absorbed it by lifting the front wheel and twisting the throttle.

The ominous creaking from the suspension worried him, but thinking that escaping this place was the top priority, Se-geon raced forward without looking back.

Above, the police and bikers were in chaos, chasing and grabbing one another, but Se-geon, having skipped the interchange, had escaped the police dragnet.

"But what is that! Whoa!"

Se-geon screamed when he saw a dump truck barreling toward him like a maniac.

Screeeech!

The truck brushed past him by a hair’s breadth, letting out its distinctive shriek. And judging by the driver’s shout he barely caught—"Hey, you crazy bastard! You wanna die!"—this seemed to be a one-way road.

Getting down here was good, but of all things, it was the wrong direction! And at night, trucks were far more terrifying than biker gangs.

"Up we go!"

Se-geon cut across the road again, lifted his front wheel toward the sidewalk, and used a pop-up with the rear wheel to climb up onto the high curb.

The sound of his ride stretched long into the night city.

Under flickering sodium lights in a residential area, a high-school student in a uniform was pushing a motorcycle along. It was Se-geon, who had shaken off the police and made it this far. Passing through an alley lined with detached houses, he opened a garage door attached to a wall.

Though it was more like a storage room than a real garage, it was enough to store one motorcycle. He set the bike down and immediately straightened his clothes and appearance.

Even though his academic performance wasn’t good, at home he was known as a student who studied hard. He couldn’t let a little physical exhaustion ruin the image he had built up.

"I’m home."

Saying that, Se-geon opened the door. But it was quiet. He looked around. Even the dog they kept in the yard was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t understand why the dog, which used to bark loudly the moment anyone came near the alley, was so silent.

"What is it? Did everyone go on a trip or something? That doesn’t seem likely."

Muttering to himself, Se-geon opened the front door. It was late, but his mother had never once gone to sleep before her child came home.

"I’m home!"

Se-geon stepped into the entryway again as he said it. The foyer was dark, with no lights on, and there was an oddly unsettling atmosphere in the air. It smelled like rotting mackerel.

"What… is this smell?"

Muttering to himself, Se-geon reached for the switch beside the entrance. An oddly sticky sensation made him look at his hand—and sticky blood was smeared on his fingertips.

Although it was already quite cold, the blood had not dried. It was clearly blood with a different nature from that of a human, but Se-geon had no way of knowing that.

"W-What is this? Brother! Mom! Dad! Is anyone here?"

Shouting like that, Se-geon looked around inside. At that moment, the fluorescent light flickered and turned on. The house was quiet, as if nothing had happened, but he could see blood dripping on the floor. No matter how brave someone was, coming home to find blood on the floor would be horrifying.

Se-geon immediately pulled out his phone and dialed 112. He was afraid of the trouble that would follow if it turned out to be nothing, but with blood splattered on the walls and floor, there was no way this could be nothing.

After reporting it to the police, Se-geon opened the shoe cabinet and took out an old wooden practice sword that was standing inside. Still wearing his shoes, he stepped into the house. The bloodstains led toward the kitchen.

“.......”

Holding his breath, Se-geon walked toward the kitchen. His heart pounded with every step. The closer he got, the stronger the smell of blood became, and it felt ominous beyond words.

And then—

Crash!

A dog came crashing in through a shattered window. Since it wasn’t movie prop sugar glass, the dog that broke through the window was instantly covered in blood. But there was no longer any need to worry about it bleeding a little.

Its torso was split open, its intestines spilling out.

Se-geon instinctively turned and swung the wooden sword, but it was nowhere near enough to stop the dog’s attack.

With a sensation like striking a leather sack, the wooden sword flew out of his grip. The heavily varnished and finished practice sword simply couldn’t withstand the impact.

"Ah!"

Before Se-geon could even scream, the dog bit into his shoulder. It was a very gentle golden retriever named Jandark—called Maeng-seon by the family—that had leapt up to a first-floor window from a drop of more than two meters.

Pain tore through his mind before he could even think that it was impossible. Se-geon fell backward, choking without even being able to scream. His shoulder bone had been badly fractured in a single blow.

"Kraaagh!"

Reflexively, Se-geon kicked the dog that was tearing into him in the abdomen. The exposed organs squelched against his foot and slid straight out of the dog’s belly.

The sensation of sticky blood and intestines spilling out like a tangled ball of yarn unraveling was horrifying even secondhand. But with his shoulder already shattered, he had no room to be shaken by that feeling.

Se-geon forced himself up and flipped the large dog over. Once some of its insides had been pulled out, even a monster of a dog could no longer move properly, and it rolled over easily. Se-geon began striking it mercilessly.

He punched it, smashed it with his elbow, and hammered it with his wrist, not caring even if his wrist got sprained. He felt no emotion about beating to death the dog he had raised himself.

"Graah!"

At last, the dog let go and collapsed. A large chunk of flesh had been torn from Se-geon’s shoulder—an injury far from minor.

‘Then… had Jandark gone mad and attacked the family?’

Grinding his teeth, Se-geon thought about it.

If the dog were the culprit, it should have already been inside the house. There would have been no need to smash through a window and charge in. It made no sense that it would go outside first and only now come crashing back in.

"Damn it!"

Picking up the fallen wooden sword, Se-geon struck Jandark again, which was still twitching. The mad dog endured his blows for a long time before its skull finally shattered and it collapsed. After swinging it that much, blisters had already formed on Se-geon’s hands.

He got up and walked toward the kitchen.

"As I thought…"

Just as Se-geon had feared, his mother had been turned into a lifeless corpse in the kitchen. Her neck had been torn open about halfway, and not a single drop of blood remained inside—her body looked unnaturally light. Perhaps because the fluids had been drained from the corpse, parts of her skin had already begun to sink in.

Se-geon grabbed the longest kitchen knife he could find and held it in his right hand. His left arm was useless anyway after his shoulder was shattered, so he could only use one arm.

He could wait for the police to arrive in a little while—but in that brief moment, the fate of his family might be decided.

His mother was dead.

But the others might still be alive.

And even if the rest were already dead, there had to be a true culprit behind all of this.

"Right… that’s right. Otherwise, how could Jandark—who comes back beaten even by a cat smaller than himself—do something like this…!"

Half out of his mind, Se-geon muttered to himself as he climbed the stairs. Then it suddenly occurred to him—his father’s hunting gun. It was definitely in his father’s study.

Of course, it was possible that his mother had simply been killed by a rabid dog. But for some reason, Se-geon felt certain that there was still something more.

That was why he headed toward his father’s study.

"Ah!"

He didn’t even need to take another step. The moment he opened the door, he saw his brother’s corpse.

It seemed his brother had thought the same thing as Se-geon. He was collapsed against the bookshelf, still holding the hunting shotgun. There was so much bleeding from his abdomen that his blood had completely soaked the shelves.

"Ugh… uuuugh…!"

Se-geon covered his mouth and forced down the emotions surging up inside him. He felt like he was going to go mad from grief—but his body was telling him how dangerous the situation still was.

He bit down hard on his injured hand and, forcing himself to endure, took the shotgun from his brother’s body.

The six-shot hunting shotgun, commonly used for game, had no shells loaded. It wasn’t hunting season, so his father hadn’t kept any ammunition at home.

‘But then why?’

Closing his eyes tightly, Se-geon reached into his brother’s pocket.

As expected, there were two shotgun shells inside.

He loaded them and stepped back out into the hallway.

Tears blurred his vision, but Se-geon moved carefully down the corridor.

As he walked, he turned on every light he could find.

The desperate hope that the police would arrive soon clashed with the urge to find that thing himself.

Forcing those feelings down, Se-geon opened the door to his own room on the second floor.

"Krrr…!"

It happened in an instant.

Just as he put his hand on the door and began to turn the handle, the door suddenly exploded inward and someone burst out.

Se-geon was shoved back by the breaking door and rolled along the hallway floor. With one arm broken, he had been forcing his finger onto the trigger, and as he was knocked aside, the gun went off by accident.

Bang!