Chapter 38 :

<38>

"Damn it!"

The young man who had boldly thrown away his helmet picked it back up again. A motorcycle helmet cost enough to make one’s eyes roll, so even while bleeding out and on the verge of death, he couldn’t help thinking it would be a waste.

"Pu-hahaha. What the hell am I doing?"

The young man, Se-gun, started laughing at himself.

He had stormed into the Sang-dong faction’s office and been stabbed, now edging closer to death. A vampire hunter dying at the hands of humans—how ridiculous. But when you thought about it, no matter how supernatural the enemy, a hunter was still human. And wasn’t Se-gun still a rookie who couldn’t even claim to fully carry his own weight as a vampire hunter?

Se-gun looked at his arm again. The blood from his upper arm, where a sharp knife had pierced him, showed no sign of stopping. He had tied it off with a tourniquet, but the blood kept pouring out like water spilling from a broken dam.

If a human body was like this, how absurd must those old tales be about stopping a collapsing dam with just one arm? Even as his mind wavered from blood loss, Se-gun chuckled at the thought. Of course, if he went to the hospital right now, he wouldn’t die. The wound was in his arm, not life-threatening, and no bones were shattered. But if he went to a hospital with a stab wound, he’d surely be interrogated by the police. If he did nothing, his life was in danger.

"Now then… I heard there’s a back-alley medic around here somewhere."

Se-gun walked down the street, forcing his fading mind to focus. Because he had used up or sold all the vampire blood he had… he had no way to treat his wound. Should he go to Deok-yeon and try to get some blood? Or buy some from Old Ju? The thoughts crossed his mind, but there was no time.

If he rode his motorcycle, maybe that would work—but could he even drive when walking itself was precarious? His last hope was the rumored unlicensed doctor practicing illegal medicine, but he didn’t know where to find him. He had definitely heard about it from Deok-yeon, but all he knew was that it was somewhere nearby.

"Tch."

Betting his life on such vague information. To steady his fading consciousness, Se-gun cracked open Psychedelic Moon and shoved it into his mouth. An unbearable nausea surged up his throat and churned his stomach, but after a moment, vitality returned strongly enough to make him forget the anemia.

"Khhhhh."

A groan escaped him. Psychedelic Moon didn’t bring intense pleasure like heroin itself. But… true to its name, it produced truly psychedelic visions, and those visions became spearheads that pierced into one’s heart. The hallucinations exposed the ugliness within, and the pleasure was as full and satisfying as a sense of achievement.

"Hahahahaha."

Se-gun laughed. Colors melting and dripping down pooled below, forming blood. His brother’s corpse, his family’s corpses—lumps of flesh barely recognizable as human—floated up to the surface of that pool of color. Without the awareness that they were corpses, the image was so unreal it resembled tofu floating in soybean paste stew. And so he laughed. Like a wounded wild dog or wolf, taking on the form of a demon that could never exist in a city of men, Se-gun walked through the blackened city.

"Ah!"

At that moment, an exclamation came from behind him. It was the same “ah,” yet subtly different in intonation from an ordinary person’s. Startled, Se-gun turned around.

There stood a blonde woman. A typical Slavic woman with blonde hair and pale white skin, and even in silhouette against the darkness, she gave the impression of extraordinary beauty. But when she stepped into the circle of light cast by a mercury lamp, her face bore grotesque burn scars.

"Kh…"

Had she caught him taking drugs? Se-gun tightened his grip on the motorcycle helmet in his hand. But then he distinctly smelled disinfectant.

"Patient?"

The accent was awkward, but the Korean was understandable. Se-gun lifted his head. Amid the light and perceptual confusion produced by the drug, the Russian White émigré woman appeared like something from a Picasso cubist painting.

"Are you a doctor?"

"Oh my, what an impressive guest."

Muttering that, she approached Se-gun and supported him. Se-gun, reassured, closed his eyes.

"I'm AB type… so keep that in mind."

"So bossy. Such a young boy."

She frowned even more deeply, her face twisted by burn scars.

* * *

An Accent sedan stood parked on the street. Though it was a quiet residential road with little traffic, there was clearly a No Parking sign. Still, it was parked boldly there—well, with the driver inside, there would be excuses enough.

"Damn it. What the hell is this!"

The middle-aged man sitting inside the car held up a plastic bag, examining it under the streetlight, feeling it from the outside… It looked like nothing but a waste of time.

It could be coincidence. If it happened only once, coincidence might truly be coincidence. But when coincidences overlap, they become inevitability.

Detective Sim Gu-jin was now inside that inevitability. Wherever he went, he felt eyes on him—sometimes a bird, sometimes a cat, sometimes a dog, and sometimes a human. The omnipresent gaze pushed him to the brink. They did not kill him.

Though they possessed enough power to kill him, they never did. But the pressure alone was enough to drive a man insane. The kind of fear that would cause someone with a history of mental illness to have a seizure—if Detective Sim Gu-jin had not been so sly and thick-skinned, he would not have endured it.

"Just how the hell is something like this even possible?"

Detective Sim muttered in despair. Even at this very moment, he felt eyes watching him. Whether it was real or just his imagination no longer mattered. If this continued, it would be natural to suffer a nervous breakdown within two days.

"Damn it. Trying to use a brain I never used before is driving me crazy."

He let out a deep sigh as he looked at the metal fragment that had burst from the pigeon’s body. If he threw it away, the watchers would be satisfied. Whether they would spare him was questionable, but at least it was certain that this was the direction they wanted. Those who had controlled the pigeon to erase evidence were surely using that same ability to monitor him. If he threw it away… he could simply pretend he never noticed this supernatural phenomenon. The metal fragment he held now could not serve as evidence anyway.

Shiver.

The plastic bag trembled as if struck by wind. It was because the hand holding it was shaking—but how could a human arm tremble like this? Detective Sim Gu-jin looked at his quivering arm and sighed.

"You bastards! Don’t look down on me just because I’m a low-ranking detective!"

He muttered stubbornly despite the shaking. The Accent sedan started up and sped toward the police station.

Chief Superintendent Lee Jeong-gi was an elite police officer serving as head of forensics. As the end of the year approached, he was overwhelmed with wrapping up annual matters, and on top of that, he served as secretary of his police academy alumni association, burdening him with multiple layers of work. Yet ever meticulous about himself, he drove toward headquarters with an impeccably composed expression. And then… he noticed a middle-aged man standing at the entrance of headquarters.

Though dressed in plain clothes, long years in the force made it easy to tell he was a plainclothes detective. And there was no need to invoke long years of service… they were acquainted.

"What brings you here?"

Lee Jeong-gi, who worked at headquarters, stopped his car and looked at his old academy classmate, Detective Sim Gu-jin. Though they had graduated together from the police academy, Sim Gu-jin was still a lieutenant, while Lee Jeong-gi was a chief superintendent—a difference of three ranks. It wasn’t that Lee had received promotion after promotion… academy graduates were commissioned directly as lieutenants. It was simply that Sim Gu-jin had fallen out of favor with his superiors.

"Ah, you son of a bitch. Look at those eyes…"

Detective Sim Gu-jin muttered while staring at the Podori sign in front of headquarters.

‘How could someone like this be called an elite who graduated from the police academy?’

Chief Superintendent Lee Jeong-gi thought so, but harboring such feelings toward a classmate felt cruel.

"Oh-ho. So I had an elite like this as a classmate? How delightful. Seeing a classmate succeed, I mean."

Sim Gu-jin sneered. Lee Jeong-gi showed a flustered expression. On the verge of promotion, Lee sat inside a Magnus sedan. The rank of chief superintendent wasn’t low, but it wasn’t a job that paid well enough to casually drive a luxury sedan. So there was more than a hint of mockery in Sim’s tone.

"Let’s go inside. Unless this isn’t something to discuss out here."

"No, it’s nothing that grand…"

Detective Sim muttered and looked around. With Christmas and year’s end approaching, the downtown area was still crowded with revelers.

"I was hoping to ask for some cooperation regarding the mass shooting incident in downtown Seoul."

"If that’s the case, then follow the proper procedures. Now then…"

Chief Superintendent Lee Jeong-gi said that as he pressed the accelerator. Sim Gu-jin immediately ran up and shouted.

"If this were something to handle through proper procedures, I wouldn’t have come begging my so-successful classmate for help!"

The moment he heard that, Chief Superintendent Lee Jeong-gi felt deeply offended. A low-ranking detective had come to ask a chief superintendent for a personal favor? Just because Christmas was approaching didn’t mean he had to play Santa. Being academy classmates didn’t mean he could accept an informal request for investigative cooperation.

"I’m not as accomplished as you seem to think, so I can’t just block the entrance of headquarters."

With a cold tone, Lee Jeong-gi snapped at Detective Sim Gu-jin and drove inside. Sim, who had inwardly placed his hopes on him, stood there in stunned despair.

"Damn it. I’m screwed."

He crushed the plastic bag in his hand. The bullet inside was crucial evidence that would allow him to continue the investigation, but judging from how evidence and data had been leaking from within the station, he couldn’t expect much. That was why he had come, like a drowning man clutching at straw, to seek out his now high-ranking classmate—only to be told to follow official procedures.

"Damn it!"

He kicked the ground irritably.

Flap-flap-flap.

The loud sound of something taking flight echoed.

* * *

The stinging sunlight pierced his eyes. His body still felt heavy, like cotton soaked in water, but Se-gun forced himself upright. Outside the window, the sun rose between unfamiliar apartment buildings. At a glance, it was hard to tell whether it was dawn or dusk.

"What is this place?"

Se-gun muttered, then felt an intense headache as he tried to move his hand. But soon, a pain even worse than the headache shot up his right forearm. Only then did he remember his clash with the Sang-dong faction—the way he had stormed into their office, fought well at first, then been struck by a blade. Bleeding profusely, he had crossed the city to reach here.

"Seriously."

He looked at his arm. It was wrapped in bandages, and judging by the discomfort whenever he moved, it seemed perfectly sutured. For a back-alley doctor, the work was excessively clean.

"Is this really okay?"

Se-gun voiced his unease about the injury. But considering he had raided the Sang-dong faction’s base and ambushed them, it was a minor wound. He should consider himself lucky it ended at that.

"But where’s the doctor? It’s not like I can skip paying the medical bill."

Se-gun sat up. An IV line was inserted into his forearm, making movement awkward. Holding the IV bottle, he got up and looked around with curious eyes like a child visiting someone else’s home for the first time while holding his mother’s hand. A simple surgeon didn’t require a great deal of equipment.

Perhaps because of that, although there were medical tools around the house, there were even more items that made it feel like an ordinary home. Underwear hanging on the veranda… an imitation of Gauguin’s Tahitian Women on the wall… little personal touches like that. Then again, a Russian female surgeon practicing illegal medicine probably didn’t have the financial means to separate her clinic from her residence.

"Hmm."

Hungry, Se-gun went into the kitchen. On the gas stove sat a large pot made of special glass, inside of which were scalpels and syringes. Anyone, even a fool, could guess its purpose—it resembled a baby bottle sterilizer. Se-gun frowned.

"No matter how back-alley this is, how much could those cost? Why be stingy about something like that?"

Muttering that, he walked to the refrigerator. As expected, inside were glucose solutions, blood packs, and various medicines. But fortunately, there were also convenience store sandwiches, milk, and a few eggs.

Se-gun pulled out a sandwich—impossible to tell how long it had been past its expiration date—and took a bite.

"Come to think of it, this reminds me of how Jean in Nadia looked at a refrigerator and called it the triumph of civilization."

At least the sandwich clearly hadn’t spoiled, so Se-gun chuckled as he recalled NHK’s classic anime Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. But a refrigerator couldn’t make bad food taste good. He found a frying pan and prepared to fry an egg. Just then—

Click.

The heavy lock of the front door disengaged, and a woman entered. Long blonde hair—likely grown to conceal her face—pale white skin, a slender figure: a typical Ruskaya. Yet the horrific burn scar on her cheek meant she could never be called beautiful.

"To be up only two days after that injury. Impressive."

She muttered that and set down the plastic bag she was carrying near the entrance. A carrot protruding through a tear in the black plastic caught his eye.

"How much do I owe for the treatment?"

"The bill was attached to the headboard. And you—you still look like a minor. Where did you get that injury?"

She asked as she entered her room. Twilight streamed in through the window, burning the room red. Compared to the living area, this room lacked warmth—it existed only for sleep. The smell of disinfectant filled the air. Though there was little furniture, the lingering scent of antiseptic calmed her.

“…Isn’t it your principle not to ask how someone got injured?”