Chapter 16 :

<16>

Cheon Yeong-hu and the biker gang arrived at the entrance of the Gyeongin Expressway, but…..no one was left.

Se-gun, Yong-jin, no one was there.

“Damn it! They made us run around for nothing! Those bastards!”

Cheon Yeong-hu shouted as he glared at the bikers, but he wasn’t stupid enough to throw punches right in front of the police who were clearly watching.

He stopped his hand and instead approached a police officer to ask.

“Excuse me, may I ask you something?”

“Yes?”

“Well… did any motorcycles come through here a few minutes or a few hours ago?”

“Motorcycles?”

“I mean, uh… what were they?”

“Vulcan and MX. One looked like a racing bike, and the other looked similar to a police motorcycle.”

One of the bikers explained it like that.

The police officer shrugged his shoulders.

With thugs and biker gangs swarming in, and yet politely using honorifics as they asked, it wasn’t exactly something he could just ignore.

The officer spoke while failing to hide his discomfort.

“I just changed shifts, so I’m not really sure. Ah, but if it was a Vulcan, I heard one blew up in the apartment complex up ahead. It might be that one.”

“What?”

At that moment, gasps of shock burst out among the bikers.

If an accident happened during a chicken race, you didn’t usually die.

But if an accident occurred during a cannonball run, it led straight to death.

Obvious dangers like walls or rivers made people cautious, but on roads where danger factors changed every second, the moment you recognized the danger was the moment you died.

Worried about Yong-jin’s safety, the bikers mounted their motorcycles.

But Cheon Yeong-hu stood still with an expression like he had bitten into a bug.

Without even going to check, the owner of that motorcycle was probably already dead.

He vaguely realized that Se-gun had personally taken care of him.

A vampire hunter, a murderer who could kill even civilians if necessary, and yet a guy who himself was protected by the law as a minor.

Cheon Yeong-hu and the Sang-dong faction might have made an enemy of someone truly dangerous.

“Damn. It sends chills down my spine.”

Cheon Yeong-hu honestly admitted his fear.

He returned to his Grandeur sedan and spoke to the junior who was holding the steering wheel.

“Let’s go back!”

“Yes. But what about that guy? Aren’t we going to catch him? The big boss is furious, isn’t he? We took a beating too. If we don’t catch him, it feels like we’ll get beaten half to death again.”

The driver spoke while rubbing the bandages wrapped around his wounds.

Seeing that, Cheon Yeong-hu shook his head.

Even though Jeong Sang-dong’s outbursts were hard to endure, Jeong Sang-dong wouldn’t kill people.

“That guy isn’t someone you punks can catch with your street games. For now, pull back and tell the big boss.”

Cheon Yeong-hu said that and got into the car.

At any rate, the biker gang seemed to know who their opponent was, so that alone was a gain.

* * *

Se-gun returned the motorcycle to the factory and slowly headed home.

Calling it home was generous—it was nothing more than a single tiny room in a run-down Yeonjeong Gosiwon.

As soon as Se-gun entered the room, he took out the Tokarev and began disassembling it.

Even while disassembling the gun, tears flowed for no reason.

Se-gun wiped his tears away.

If even a drop of tears fell inside the gun, the already worn-out firearm—long past its prime—would only have its lifespan shortened further.

And yet, to be considering something like that while crying. It made him want to doubt even the sincerity of his own tears.

“Khk… uuuugh!”

Se-gun cried as he wiped down the gun.

Then he crouched in the corner and buried his face between his knees.

He had killed a person.

Not a vampire or a monster, but a human being—even if he was a stupid, violent, and sinful biker.

Becoming vampirized had only been an excuse in the end.

The truth was, he was simply afraid that people who knew about him would get on his trail.

To silence them, he had fired bullets and killed someone!

“Ugh… khhhhk!”

Se-gun clawed at his own arm.

The thick flight jacket protected his body from his fingernails.

Se-gun sobbed quietly.

Even at this hour, many people in the gosiwon were studying. He couldn’t make loud noises.

Clatter!

At that moment, a pill bottle rolled out of his pocket.

Inside the transparent plastic bottle were capsules of various colors.

Without thinking, Se-gun reached out, opened the bottle, and took out a capsule.

Psychedelic Moon with a mere VT of 13. Se-gun examined the capsule closely and then opened it.

Inside was a finely refined powder.

Se-gun placed it on the back of his hand and carefully inhaled it through his nose.

The moon outside the window watched Se-gun as he inhaled the drug.

“Ah…..”

Se-gun raised his hand and looked at it.

As Psychedelic Moon circulated through his veins, a bizarre sensation washed over him.

Senses beyond the five tightened around his body, and the surrounding sounds were sucked away.

But even more shocking were the visual changes…..

Even in this night, objects were clearly visible, and he could even distinguish their colors.

However, the outlines of objects appeared to waver, and colors were leaking out from between them.

Like ink bleeding on a brush painting, colors flowed out of objects and tangled chaotically.

At the contours—the points where objects met—colors mixed together, turning into dull oil paint.

Se-gun stared at the outline of his own hand in shock, then suddenly stretched that hand out the window.

Outside, there was a deep blue moon.

“Is this… a mad moon?”

Se-gun muttered as he watched the moonlight melting into his hand.

Bluish moonlight flowed down along the outline of his hand, and his vision transformed into a world of oil paint.

‘Welcome to the world of the mad moon.’

That voice echoed in Se-gun’s head.

The voice he had heard once before was welcoming Se-gun.

To this world that was as good as death.

* * *

Row Gibson was one of the big players well known even on Will Street.

The only son of the Gibson family, who had amassed enormous wealth, he was a stock market and financial figure with investment instincts rivaling his father’s.

That such a man had come all the way to Korea—a small country tucked away in the East—and not even to a luxury establishment but to a simple beer hall was surprising.

“Hm.”

Sitting alone at a table, he looked around.

Was it because a foreigner had arrived?

It was obvious at a glance that the staff were tense, and others occasionally glanced at Row Gibson as well.

“Wow. Sparkling!”

He exclaimed in admiration at the draft beer with dry ice that the waitress was carrying.

The idea of putting dry ice inside a beer vest to keep the beer cold wasn’t all that novel, but for a man who had likely lived his entire life in hotel suites, how could it not be fascinating?

At that moment, the waitress approached him.

“Uh….Excuse me····· What order?”

The clerk looked terrified, as if Row Gibson might suddenly devour him.

Was it because people in this country were ethnically homogeneous that dealing with foreigners was such a struggle?

Row Gibson thought so, but right now, calming the clerk in front of him was more important than indulging his own curiosity.

“It’s fine. Speak Korean. I understand everything.”

When he spoke with such fluent skill, a look of relief flickered across the clerk’s face.

“Uh, what would you like to order?”

“Hm. Do you have champagne?”

“Yes.”

The clerk answered like that, but soon regretted his careless reply.

The car this foreigner had brought was drawing the attention of everyone passing by the shop….. a 2000 Dodge Viper GTS.

In Korea, it was a sports car far more expensive than most luxury houses, rare even on the streets of Sinchon where imported cars were not uncommon—no, a car so rare that one might doubt there were even two of them in the entire country.

How could a simple beer hall possibly have high-end champagne that would suit the taste of such a VIP?

However, perhaps the one placing the order didn’t expect much either, as he gracefully flipped through the menu and carefully read it.

Row Gibson was a man so attractive he made Hollywood movie stars pale in comparison.

So much so that whenever he appeared on the cover of Economy, despite it being a financial magazine, the editor-in-chief would self-mockingly sigh, “Economy has fallen into a premiere magazine!”

Yet, compared to his dazzling appearance, his private life was clean enough to be called puritanical, which only added to his air of mystery.

“Even if it’s champagne, there’s only one kind. Let’s go with this for now.”

“Ah, yes.”

Was it because Row Gibson was too fluent in Korean?

The clerk seemed flustered instead.

But Row paid no mind to the waiter’s confusion and continued satisfying his own curiosity.

“Oh, and….that billiards table—may I play a bit?”

“O-of course.”

The billiards table placed in the center of the beer hall hadn’t been touched by anyone yet.

Row walked over to it, grabbed a cue, and smiled broadly.

“In movies, people often gamble with billiards in places like this. I guess Koreans don’t really do that much, huh?”

With such an exaggerated demeanor, it would be hard to believe this man was one of the world’s top 100 asset holders—nothing more than a bad joke.

And then it happened.

“Kyaaaaaaah!”

A scream rang out from outside.

Row, who had just grabbed the cue, immediately headed toward the entrance.

Beside the Dodge Viper he had parked by the roadside, a young girl was collapsed on the ground.

A frail-looking girl wearing clothes marked with a hospital logo, and a blond boy examining her condition.

“Master!”

“Bill! What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. A girl suddenly came over and collapsed…...”

Hearing that, Row opened his wallet and tossed a ten-thousand-won bill onto the counter.

A billionaire who moved hundreds of billions with a single finger carrying around a ten-thousand-won note…..

And what he said next was truly something else.

“I’ll come back for the drinks later. We’re leaving.”

With that, he ran out of the beer hall.

The blond boy holding the girl had shining blue eyes that made him look almost like a doll, and he wore a deeply troubled expression as people around them stared.

“Yonsei Medical Center. It’s not very far.”

Row said that and started the Dodge Viper.

A truly terrifying engine roar burst forth. The boy lifted the girl and got into the car.

“Master, is this really all right? Wouldn’t it be better to just leave this Oriental girl to the police…...”

“Everything in this world is bound by fate. And I value that greatly. Wilhelm, you of all people should know that best, don’t you—the one who met me?”

Row said that and smiled softly.

“And I am a romantic!”

* * *

Se-gun quietly opened his eyes.

Inside the gosiwon, where barely any light could enter, it was dark even though the sun hadn’t yet set.

Se-gun sat up and checked his phone.

As if to spite him, the phone shut off the moment it turned on, due to low battery.

Still, Se-gun sighed after glimpsing the date displayed for a brief instant.

“Has it been two days?”

He got to his feet.

After going without food for two days, his vision spun, but he didn’t feel hungry.

Was it the effect of Psychedelic Moon?

Before taking it, he had been crying endlessly in hysterics, but now his emotions felt mostly settled.

To have his feelings calm down without reaching any conclusion at all.

Se-gun smacked his lips.

Right now, more than the pain of hunger, he was worried about the stress lingering in his head.

He had killed someone he despised more than considered a friend, and yet the murder stress hit him this hard—could he really keep killing vampires and humans alike going forward?

Se-gun asked himself that question, then shook his head.

“Ah…… I skipped training for two whole days.”

Looking at his gaunt hands, he scooped water from the sink.

His stamina wasn’t enough to fight vampires, and money was tight, so it looked like he’d have to do some ordinary part-time work for a few days.

After finishing washing his face, he picked up the flight jacket hanging on the wall.

“This really doesn’t pay at all.”

Se-gun grumbled to himself.