Chapter 11 :

<11>

“Kheok!”

Se-geon leaned his body outward like that and slid back down the slope, climbing up onto a large Korando sedan parked beside the parking lot entrance. The vampire twisted its body and lunged at Se-geon when it saw him, but at that moment Se-geon lifted the front wheel and blocked the vampire’s charge.

Thud!

The vampire fell disgracefully between the cars. The moment Se-geon confirmed the vampire was falling, he stepped on the accelerator and drove forward. Soon, together with a squishy sensation, Se-geon’s motorcycle dropped down onto the vampire.

“Kkweeeeeeeek!”

The vampire’s scream and the sound of the car alarm shook the parking lot noisily. If Se-geon had not put the parking lot staff to sleep and set up a no-entry sign at the perimeter, people would already have come running down and caused a huge commotion.

“Good. I poured five million won into your organization, so I should be compensated with your blood.”

Saying that, Se-geon stepped on the accelerator. As the vampire’s entrails spilled out, the wheels began to spin in place.

“Kraaaak!”

But at that moment, the vampire grabbed Se-geon’s ankle and raked it. Even half dead, a vampire was still a vampire. The thick boots that looked like they would not tear easily ripped apart like bread, and his leg muscles were torn clean through.

Although Se-geon had been trained through anti-vampire combat training, the pain of living flesh being torn was truly no ordinary pain.

“Kraaaak!”

Blood flowing from his leg stained the floor in an instant. Since it was torn so badly that bone was visible, it was only natural—but that did not mean he could afford to die.

“Damn it!”

Thud!

At that moment, Se-geon was blown backward together with the motorcycle. The motorcycle got caught on a car and could not come free, but Se-geon himself was flung away. It was fortunate that only that much happened—if the motorcycle had flown off with him, he could have been crushed and even had his waist broken.

“Kraaaak!”

Se-geon rolled across the hard parking lot floor, screaming. The problem was his leg, torn so badly that the bone was visible.

“Kgh!”

Se-geon opened a small belt pouch and pulled out something like a glove, putting it on his left hand. But in that time, the vampire got back up.

“You bastard! You really did a fine job! Damn it! Your guts are all hanging out!”

“Kgh… and you’re showing off something that isn’t even nice to look at!”

Muttering like that, Se-geon held a shotshell in his mouth. It was to load the shotshell into the glove. But the vampire did not leave Se-geon alone.

“You bastard!”

At that moment, Se-geon’s RX-125 came flying in. Se-geon hurriedly twisted his body to the side, but his right arm was crushed under the motorcycle wheel.

Crunch!

The motorcycle spun forward and rolled off Se-geon’s arm, but his arm had already been broken—broken viciously enough that the bone had burst through the skin.

“Kraaaaaak!”

Se-geon screamed and dropped the shotshell. The vampire took pleasure in Se-geon’s suffering.

“Ahahahaha! You bastard! You crawled around and mouthed off so well! I’ll kill you!”

Shouting like that, the vampire mounted Se-geon and opened its mouth.

“Kghok!”

Se-geon raised his left arm and grabbed the vampire’s neck, trying to push it away. But the vampire’s overwhelming strength pressed down on Se-geon’s arm and drew closer to his neck.

“Hehehe, your blood smells incredible! Are you type AB?”

“I don’t have a hobby of kissing men.”

Saying that, Se-geon placed his left hand against the vampire’s neck and clenched his fist.

Bang!

With a sound closer to a firecracker than a gunshot, the vampire’s neck burst. At the instant the vampire’s neck was torn apart, Se-geon kicked up the vampire’s torso with his knee.

Splatter.

As the vampire’s entrails tore open, blood poured down like rain.

“You son of a bitch!”

Lying on the ground, Se-geon threw a hook with his left arm, which was almost like a lump of steel. It was a hook swung upward from below, so it could not fully display its power—but it was more than enough to completely finish off a vampire whose neck was already half severed.

The vampire’s neck was cleanly cut off and rolled to the side, and its body soon went limp as well.

Se-geon’s glove was made entirely of steel and was designed so that two shotshells could be mounted in the knuckle section. When the rear hammer was cocked, the moment he clenched his fist and struck, the firing pin would ignite the shell and deliver a point-blank blast straight ahead.

Even though firearms were strictly restricted in Korea, hunting shotshells were relatively easy to obtain, which was why this weapon had been made. Because of the vampire’s attack, only one round had been loaded, yet it still showed that level of power.

In fact, since this glove was effectively the same as having no barrel at all, it had almost no power beyond a distance of three meters. It only produced that level of force because it was fired at point-blank range. As a modern weapon, it could be said to be an excessively primitive piece of armament.

“Talk about catching a rat by sheer dumb luck.”

Grumbling like that, Se-geon got up. Because the vampire had bled heavily while lying on top of him, Se-geon’s wounds were already starting to close even though he had not yet injected any blood.

But even so, it was not enough. Se-geon stuck a syringe into the torso of the beheaded vampire. Then he drew out the blood and injected it into his own body.

“Uuuugh!”

It was not his first time, but injecting vampire blood into his body was never a pleasant experience. It was said that becoming a vampire through blood injection was not very common—but even so, there were still people who did turn into vampires.

The anxiety that he himself might become a vampire, and the foreign substance in his veins that provoked an instinctive revulsion.

Still, that revulsion was something he could endure compared to the pain of his injuries. In the end, the human mind might be inferior to the instinct for survival… Se-geon clenched his teeth and forced himself to stand.

“Damn it! It’s this hard just to deal with one of them! This is driving me crazy!”

Se-geon attached a blood-collection device to the vampire and lifted the motorcycle. Perhaps because the vampire had picked it up and thrown it, the handlebars were bent, the axle was unstable, and the entire frame was a mess.

“Should I just switch to a Yamaha while I’m at it?”

Muttering like that, Se-geon examined the motorcycle. It was still lucky that it was only damaged enough for him to make it to a repair shop under its own power.

If the frame itself had been bent, the repair cost would be terrifying—but this RX-125 was a keepsake left behind by Se-geon’s older brother. Even though he talked about replacing it, unless something truly serious happened, Se-geon would never be able to bring himself to change motorcycles.

“Damn it.”

Se-geon searched the bodies of the gangsters and looked for their guns. As expected, two of them had pistols—one was a Tokarev, and the other was a Chinese Type 54 pistol, a licensed version of the Tokarev. Both used 7.62-millimeter pistol rounds, and each had only one round left.

“Damn it. What are you, expert marksmen? Legendary killers? How are you supposed to survive with just one round in a Tokarev with the safety off?”

Grumbling like that, Se-geon still pocketed the guns. In the meantime, the vampire had completely turned to ash, its blood fully drained. The blood collected from this vampire amounted to two 400-cc vinyl bags. Since it was probably a low-grade vampire, even if he sold both bags, it did not look like he would get six million won.

Considering the five million won he had invested to draw out Sang-dong, the cost of various equipment, and the motorcycle repair expenses, this was absolutely not a profitable job.

Originally, far more blood could be extracted from a single vampire, but going into a direct slugging match had been a mistake. If you fight a vampire for a long time after injuring it, the vampire’s main body consumes its own blood, leaving very little behind.

“It can’t be helped.”

Se-geon muttered like that as he dragged the motorcycle along. If he left it at a repair shop, the repair bill would be enormous, but since the engine was fine, he would still be able to ride it.

But he did not think he could fool Deok-yeon’s eyes after causing this kind of mess. His clothes were torn and his posture was broken—unless Deok-yeon was blind.

“Now you’re coming out?”

Deok-yeon spoke to Se-geon as he was pushing the motorcycle up along the Hanshin Securities parking lot. Startled, Se-geon lifted his head and looked to the side. Deok-yeon’s white Pride sedan was parked by the roadside like a frog.

“Damn it!”

Se-geon took off his helmet and swept back his hair. Sweat poured out of the helmet like water, as if he had just come out of a pool. Deok-yeon looked at Se-geon with an indifferent expression.

“Did letting off some steam make you feel better, you little punk?”

“How did you track me?”

“There’s something called GPS in this world. I know you treat that motorcycle like a sacred treasure, but you’ve been a bit careless lately.”

Deok-yeon shrugged, hinting at the existence of a tracker. Se-geon let out a sigh as he looked at him. Gripping the bent handlebars, he pushed the motorcycle forward for now.

Even if vampires left no corpses behind, the other gangsters had been seriously injured, and having completely wrecked a car was not something that could simply be ignored.

If someone showed up and things became noisy, it would be troublesome for both Se-geon and Deok-yeon. As if Deok-yeon knew that as well, he started the Pride without a word and followed after Se-geon.

The two stopped their vehicles in front of a convenience store by the roadside. Se-geon parked the motorcycle with its bent frame by the curb and sat down on a flower bed made of red bricks.

“You already knew that the Sang-dong gang was connected to vampires, didn’t you? Then why leave them alone? Because they’re organized criminals? Because it’s not worth fighting them?”

“That’s right.”

Deok-yeon answered like that and walked over to the vending machine in front of the convenience store, inserting coins. Before Se-geon could say anything, Deok-yeon tossed him a cold can. Se-geon caught it with one arm and opened it.

“They’re bastards who deserve to die. Whether it makes money or not, aren’t vampires like an infectious disease that spreads more and more the longer you leave them alive? Cutting them down while they’re still small is easier than chopping down a giant tree.”

“So you’re saying you’ll be the one to decide who deserves to die and who doesn’t? Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t kill a vampire or even a mosquito for ideology. I only kill for money and profit.”

After saying that, Deok-yeon snorted and blew his nose. Of course, there was no way Se-geon would listen to his advice. Adults had always given advice to the young, and that advice had always been ignored. It was something humanity had repeated throughout its history.

“Damn it. I shouldn’t have accepted Sylvester’s deal. I shouldn’t have taken you in.”

Deok-yeon said that as he looked Se-geon over. His clothes were torn and blood was still flowing from his wounds, but considering that he had taken down a vampire without even using Psychedelic Moon, he could be said to have more than done his share.

“Pack your things and get out. I don’t want to fight the Sang-dong gang because of you.”

“………”

Se-geon sighed as he looked at Deok-yeon. He had known that a day like this would come eventually, but it had come far sooner than he expected.

“I’ll do that.”

Se-geon said so, finished his canned drink, and casually tossed it into the trash. Then he began walking forward, dragging the motorcycle.

“Thank you for everything.”

“Yeah……”

Se-geon dragged the motorcycle and disappeared into the darkness. Deok-yeon laughed out loud, then turned around and hurled a can at the vending machine.

Bang!

“That stupid bastard!”

* * *

Se-geon returned to his dark room. In truth, even calling it a room was a stretch—it had little meaning beyond being a place to sleep. Thinking that, Se-geon looked inside the wardrobe. There were not many clothes in it.

“Hm.”

He packed his clothes into a large backpack, along with a few tools and his bankbook. Thinking that he had lived for a year in this dark room while giving up all the pleasures a Korean youth his age should have enjoyed—nice clothes, stylish accessories, music CDs—made him feel pathetic.

Se-geon picked up the family photograph that was sitting alone on top of the wardrobe. It had not been that long, yet he felt as if the photo had already faded. Was it because he had kept it by the only window that let sunlight in? Se-geon sighed.

“Don’t make such a stupid face, brother. I’m not doing this because of some old-fashioned idea like family revenge.”

He tapped the frame lightly with his fingernail and put the photo into his backpack. Se-geon gave a crooked grin and stood up.

“I just got unlucky, that’s all!”

Saying that, he opened the door and went outside. Looking at the empty house with no Deok-yeon in it, Se-geon let out a sigh. Of course he felt nothing but gratitude toward Deok-yeon, but… in the end, their paths could only be different.

“Then I can take a few of these swords, right?”

Se-geon said so and selected several swords that had been hanging on the wall. At that moment, the front door suddenly burst open.

“You’re really doing a fine job, seriously.”

“………”

When Se-geon turned around, Deok-yeon was standing there holding an ammunition box. Se-geon shrugged at him.

“It’s a waste to just let them decorate the wall. Letting a few of them taste vampire blood should be fine, right?”

“Yeah. Take them if you’re going to, you bastard. And this too.”

He said that and opened the ammunition box. Inside were 7.62-millimeter pistol rounds.

“It’s only about five hundred rounds, but you’ll die before you use them all.”

“Ah… sir……”

“Hurry up and take it, you little shit. Oh, and it’s Hungarian-made, and it’s past its storage date, so be careful. If you’re unlucky, the gun will blow up.”

Saying that, Deok-yeon forcibly handed the ammunition box to Se-geon. Holding the box, Se-geon walked past him toward the front door without saying a word. They had already said their goodbyes—there was no need to do it again. But…

“Don’t become a vampire. If that day comes, I’ll hunt you down without hesitation.”

For a brief moment, Se-geon’s steps stopped. But soon, he moved again. More than anyone, Se-geon himself knew that Deok-yeon meant those words.

He climbed the stairs. The future… a road ahead where no future could be seen, a road that felt as though it led to blood, death, and hatred.

“Ah!”

But suddenly, Se-geon let out an exclamation. When he stepped out of the old building’s entrance, there was clear, transparent moonlight waiting there. This place, once called a moon village—its true owner, the one most fitting for its name, was floating in the open sky.

Moonlight so blue it made his eyes ache…today was a day when the moon was beautiful enough to bring tears to his eyes.