Chapter 17 :

<17>

As dusk settled in, the city finally stretched itself awake. Streetlights and neon signs lit up here and there, as if the city itself were opening its eyes.

“Ahhh. I’m bored to death. Isn’t there something fun going to happen?” 

A few young men and women who had parked their motorcycles by the roadside muttered as they gazed at the awakening city. People freed from their daily routines flowed past busily, a sight that felt strangely fascinating to those living in frozen time. Where were they all headed, moving so earnestly like that?

Jin Yu-mi, who had dropped out of school and never gotten a job, living each day meaninglessly, was watching those people. Of course, they were probably heading home after work. Or maybe going out for drinks, to meet friends or lovers. Either way, it wasn’t particularly important to Yumi.

To her, this entire street had no sense of reality at all.

It was like being locked in a room, endlessly watching only TV commercials.

Zapping, zapping, zapping……

Amid the endless zapping, the only reality that existed for her was Kurt Cobain.

She could be called a pilgrim toward that single reality. These streets of Seoul were the wilderness where she wandered in search of god, the road leading to sacred ground.

Like a believer praising god through song, she spent her days humming English lyrics she didn’t even understand, worshipping Kurt Cobain who had died with boyish innocence. That was her entire daily life. But today, for some reason, it felt like something good was going to happen.

“Huh?”

At that moment, a young man passing through the crowd suddenly caught her eye. With eyes worn down by fatigue, an expression like a wounded beast, and a gaze that clawed across this vast city as he passed by, the young man looked to be about her age.

It wasn’t cold enough to complain, but he had buried himself in an aviator jacket, and his green-bleached hair made him stand out.

“Oh my. He looks like him.”

Did she mean that he looked like Kurt Cobain? She muttered something she herself didn’t quite understand. She kept staring at the young man as he pushed his way through the crowd.

“Hey. Yu-mi! Jin Yu-mi!”

Then she heard someone calling her. She turned her body from atop a small no-parking barricade placed on the sidewalk. There stood her girl friends, people she practically lived with.

“Huh?”

“Hey, you know we’re short on money these days. Seongmin said it’s fine if we come over to his place, if you’re okay with it.” 

Her friend Kim Jeong-suk, despite her name, was anything but quiet, and acted as the leader of this barely-even-a-circle group.

“He’s feeding us, right?”

She said that while still following the young man with her eyes. He was gathering free lifestyle magazines stuck in front of the station.

Was he looking for work? With the entire society in a recession, that was understandable, but to her, seeing someone so worn down by life was one of those rare fragments of “reality” that she couldn’t quite accept. So, almost unconsciously, she stood up and approached him.

“Huh?”

The young man, in the middle of collecting the magazines, turned his head. Slightly shy, he hid the magazines with his body, and that somehow struck a chord with Yu-mi. Was it because her brain, riddled with holes from butane gas and thinner, couldn’t think normally anymore?

Stammering, she muttered,

“Y-you know… people ever tell you that you look like Kurt Cobain….?”

“Huh?”

Caught off guard, the young man’s eyes widened in surprise. The woman standing before him looked like she partied hard, plastered in clothes from various brands and wearing heavy makeup. She seemed to have spent a decent amount of money, yet neglected her upkeep—an archetypal runaway girl.

‘I’ve heard people ask if I’m interested in enlightenment before, but this is a first.’ 

Thinking that, the young man stood there dumbly. Then, from behind them, a man approached. He was someone who had unilaterally decided he was Yu-mi’s lover, though Yu-mi didn’t even know his name yet.

He was just one of the countless men who would grope her body like kneading dough whenever they got high on glue and drifted into a daze.

“Yumi. I’m calling you, can’t you hear me? Huh? Answer me properly! Who the hell is this punk?”

“…….”

The young man silently turned his head away. It wasn’t the look of someone fleeing in fear, but rather an attitude of utter contempt. That was when the man suddenly swung his fist.

“This fucking bastard is talking back—.....”

Crack!

But what followed was like a flash of light. The young man twisted his body and, at the same time, raised his elbow, smashing the man’s jaw with a back spin elbow. It landed so cleanly that no one standing nearby could properly see the motion.

This lightning-fast reaction showed that his act of turning his body itself had been a kind of trap meant to provoke the opponent’s response.

Otherwise, there was no way he could react so quickly to someone attacking from behind.

“Kuaaaagh!”

The man struck in the jaw collapsed in the middle of the street, screaming. The young man shrugged his shoulders.

“Sorry. It might be cracked.”

“You son of a bitch! You wanna die?”

But the men didn’t lose their nerve. The girls, accustomed to scenes like this, watched with resigned expressions. And the green-bleached young man…

“Follow me, you bastard. I’ll kill you!”

Afraid the young man might run, the men surrounded him and moved off to the side of the main road. The young man calmly looked around. In front of the subway station, at a time when there should be plenty of people, yet not a single person paid them any attention. Well, no one would willingly jump into open flames.

“It’ll be a pain if the cops show up.”

Saying that, the young man reached into his jacket. Fortunately, he had left his gun behind, but he still had a small amount of drugs on him.

They weren’t legally classified as psychotropic substances, but if things escalated, it would be impossible to contain the trouble.

Meanwhile, the men headed into a back alley. Garbage bags discarded by shops formed small mountains, and unknown liquids leaking out of them rotted away, giving off a foul stench. The young man glanced at the ground and frowned.

“You bastard. You wanna die? I’ll kill you!”

At that moment, one of the men charged and kicked the young man. But the young man twisted his body, lightly grabbed the man’s foot with both hands, and bent it outward.

Crunch!

Along with an indescribably grotesque sound, the knee ligaments tore and the leg snapped. With an injury that severe, he would probably limp for the rest of his life. Seeing that, the men stared at the young man in shock. Until just moments ago, the young man had been dragged along silently like livestock to be slaughtered. Somewhere along the way, he had become the butcher himself.

“You think the likes of you can kill someone?”

In his low voice slept a volcano on the verge of eruption. Or perhaps it had already erupted.

His eyes gleamed with murderous intent, veins bulging along his arms. Madness…..like a geyser erupting intermittently, raw rage suddenly burst forth and wrapped around him.

Was it anger toward these pathetic men, or anger toward himself? In all likelihood, the latter. But the young man was mad with rage.

“Fuck! Beat them to hell!”

Sensing things had gone wrong, the men still rushed in. There were still four of them, and only one opponent. On top of that, they all had knives. They had a chance—if their opponent were even remotely human.

Crunch!

But the young man was a monster. A straight thrust with his middle knuckle raised struck an eye, burying it deep into the socket, and the man who reached into his pocket to draw a knife had his thigh smashed through the pocket by a heavy hiking boot.

As the fingers jammed into the pocket snapped, the man collapsed awkwardly forward, burying his head into the pile of trash.

“You sons of bitches!”

The young man roared. Unable to contain his exploding emotions, another man went flying as bones cracked. He brutally kicked the face of someone writhing on the ground. Front teeth shattered, and blood spread across the garbage sludge, forming a dark red film.

“F… fuck!”

One man, terrified, slashed his knife into the young man’s back. It was deflected by the thick aviator jacket, and because the young man was moving, it didn’t deal a fatal blow, but the blade tip clearly carried the sensation of cutting human flesh.

But in the next instant, the young man shattered the man’s arm, snatched the knife, and stabbed it into his cheek. The cheap butterfly knife tore through the cheek, passed through the mouth, and pierced out the other side.

Rip!

Still not satisfied, the young man grabbed the man’s head, leapt upward, and delivered a beautiful knee strike.

A flying knee strike, also known as khao loi—a dangerous technique that often knocks out even heavyweight boxers with a single hit.

Using that on someone whose mouth had already been pierced by a knife was practically a death sentence.

“You… you bastards. Try killing me! You said you’d kill me, right? Go on! Kill me! Try killing someone, you sons of bitches!”

The young man shouted as he trampled the fallen bodies. Anyone who tried to get up was mercilessly kicked in the abdomen, and those already down were stomped on. It was such a brutal beating that it wouldn’t have been strange if someone died.

“Ah!”

The girls who had cautiously entered the back alley to stop the men stared at the suffocating scene of violence.

Blood formed a sea, and all the men lay collapsed on the ground. And the one delivering the blows, hair flying, was radiating a bizarre passion like a rock singer belting out a song.

The suffocating scent of destruction mixed with the stench of garbage and the metallic smell of blood, becoming an incomparably sinister perfume.

“Ahh…..”

Then the young man staggered and fell forward. Like someone standing before a bed after a long journey, he collapsed while clutching the pile of trash, blood flowing from him.

“Ah!”

Even with a brain riddled with holes from thinner, glue, and butane gas, this moment came with an overwhelmingly vivid sense of reality. Yu-mi was astonished by this raw sensation she was experiencing for the first time in her life. Reality suddenly bursting forth from her endlessly drifting daily life.

Ah! The pilgrim of Seoul had finally met God.

The end of an endless Exile.

Even if that God’s true form was a young man collapsed atop a pile of trash, it was still true reality.

* * *

Yoon Mi-hye had been an ordinary student at H High School just a year ago. But a year earlier, she had been caught up in a widely publicized assault-for-hire case and had ended up hospitalized.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her body.”

Yonsei Medical Center. Head nurse Kim Suk-ja looked at the foreign man standing before her, his chin lifted stiffly as he asserted his own opinion.

The foreign man was the very person who had rescued the girl, Yoon Mi-hye, and to call him merely her lifesaver would be an understatement given how excessively concerned he was about her health.

“This is something we’ll handle ourselves. Visiting hours are over, and the patients need rest. If you don’t leave, I’ll call the police!”

She responded firmly. In response, he raised both hands.

“How frustrating. I’m doing this out of goodwill. Row Gibson has taken an interest in her.”

Even after he said that, the head nurse did not budge. Ironically speaking, even someone like Row Gibson—ranked among the world’s top 100 wealthiest individuals—found it difficult to exert influence over South Korea’s medical services.

“If you want some kind of compensation from her family, leave your contact information.”

“Huh?!”

So dumbfounded that he couldn’t say a word, Row stood there as the head nurse turned away, her body moving sharply enough to make a cold draft sound.

“Hm. Is she the president’s daughter or something? In that case, perhaps the millionaire master could give a proper ‘reward’.”

The boy named Wilhelm mocked the head nurse’s words that way. Hearing this, Row shrugged.

“It’s not like I did it expecting compensation.”

“Then shall we just leave that yellow-skinned girl alone, whether she lives or dies? There’s no reason for the Master to concern himself, right?”

“Didn’t I tell you I’m a romantic?”

Row said that, but instead of answering, Bill lifted his laptop bag.

“If you run away from work, there’s no such thing as being a romantic. If you really want romance, you finish all your work first, then show up with a bouquet of flowers.”

“That’s a good idea too.”

Row said that while breaking out in a cold sweat. Wilhelm stuck out his tongue, as if sulking.

“I didn’t know you had a thing for yellow-skinned girls. Master needs to choose women who are more noble and dignified.”

“What do you take me for, huh?” 

Row said as he climbed into the Viper.

A millionaire has one great social obligation. It’s far more important than welfare projects or environmental causes—namely, ‘pretending to be busy’.

Countless people want to believe that millionaires are busy in their own way, have complicated family problems, and are incapable of feeling true happiness. Catering to that belief is the duty of the rich who monopolize the wealth of all humanity.

“Marx must be weeping in his grave.”

Having finished all his reviews, Row said that and lifted an empty crystal glass. Wilhelm refilled it with champagne.

Row had already spent around ten million dollars on corporate acquisitions. He bought shares in public enterprises and blue-chip companies, securing positions as a major shareholder. They called it aggressive M&A, but if you had enough capital, it was absurdly simple.

Using an excess of ammunition to beat companies into submission was something Row had done countless times before. Even if ten million dollars swung back and forth in a single day, it required neither time nor effort.

Wilhelm spoke softly to his master.

“Master. There’s a bit of recorded footage of Sylvester. Would you like to watch it?”

“It’s just low-quality surveillance footage anyway.”

Row Gibson said that as he brought the champagne to his lips. Wilhelm, holding the videotape, shrugged. He stood in the royal suite of the Lotte Hotel, drinking champagne while looking down at the night view.

“Then you won’t watch it?”

“No….I will. I should watch it.”

He said it like a mischievous child facing overdue vacation homework and held out his hand to the boy.

When the boy placed the tape in his hand, he tossed it straight into the video player. It was a brutal throw (3+), enough to make one worry the machine might break, but the tape slid in flawlessly.

Soon, footage began playing on the wall-mounted PDP in the living room.

Jjjjjzzzt.

Since it was silent surveillance footage, noise replaced sound. In the video, a black-clad priest was seen walking toward a warehouse, filmed from a distance. Row Gibson leaned back on the sofa and muttered,

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…..”

Row recited a requiem verse. At the same time, the priest slowly lifted a claymore.

The vampire collapsed before the priest had already lost both arms, forfeiting most of its combat ability. What remained was a brutal massacre—slaughter approaching art, performed by a beautiful silver-haired man.

Time flows and the world changes, but if there is one thing that never changes, it is this situation. Too monotonous to turn into a sitcom, yet overflowing with tragic beauty nonetheless.

“Are you begging for your life? You who fill your veins with the blood of others—do you dare claim to be a living being?” 

As if dubbing a voice actor’s lines, Row shouted what the priest on screen would say. He wasn’t actually looking at the screen, and the priest’s mouth wasn’t visible either.

Yet if this blue-lit video filling the living room were a silent film, Row would have been a narrator. An exceptional narrator, and a voice actor to boot.

“Then cry. Cry and prove your purity, you slut!” 

Of course, vampires do not cry. Whether because their tear ducts have degenerated, or because they have no emotions left capable of producing tears, vampires cannot shed them.

It is like a woman’s beard from an old folktale.

To bind the ferocious wolf Fenrir, the dwarves forged a thread that could never be broken. Made from the sound of a cat’s footsteps, a woman’s beard, the roots of a mountain, a bear’s sinew, a fish’s sigh, and a bird’s spit—Gleipnir.

Of course, those six materials were chosen to signify things impossible to obtain in the world as known to the ancients.

Myth is myth, after all. But a vampire’s tears were likewise a mythically nonexistent thing.

“That is your limit, slut.”

Slut, or Vamp. The nuance differs, but the meaning is the same. That is why Sylvester calls vampires sluts.

On the screen, the hacking slaughter unfolded. Perhaps due to the limitations of surveillance footage, the sea of blood Sylvester unleashed failed to rise above the crude special effects of old films. Sword light dragged on, and refined swordsmanship writhed like a World War II documentary.

Yet the blood staining the screen was his destiny.

It was the destiny of Priest Sylvester, and soon, it would be his destiny as well.

One of the twenty-four true vampires, Row Gibson, watched the footage end with the destruction of the camera and lifted his empty glass.

Sylvester’s Desert Eagle A.E. shattered the camera with sniper-like precision.

“Still the same. Never changing your repertoire—disqualified as a poet, Sylvester.”

Row Gibson muttered that. Wilhelm stood beside him like a shadow and quietly refilled the champagne. In the soundproofed suite, only the sound of champagne being poured filled the air.