Chapter 43 :

<43>

It was astonishing that he hadn’t gotten into an accident while driving holding the phone instead of using hands-free. But just then, the call disconnected.

“Huh? Did the call drop?”

Detective Sim Gu-jin considered calling back… but instead of opening his phone, he decided to look for the present first. Of all things, it had to be a computer camcorder? That’s something you use for video chat—why would a thirteen-year-old girl need something like that?

“Damn it. The little brat takes after her damn mother, already acting all grown up!”

Detective Sim muttered curses like that. Just moments ago he had been proudly bragging about his daughter to someone, and now he was saying this. Even a man who constantly boasts about his daughter can’t escape the generation gap. In this case, though, it was less a gap with his daughter and more resentment toward his ex-wife.

* * *

Arjuna, reborn as an occult café, was fairly quiet even though it was Christmas. The coffee and food made by the owner, Kim Seong-hee, weren’t bad at all—yet there were hardly any customers…

“Figures. On Christmas, everyone’s probably off to hotels or motels, huh?”

Se-gun grumbled and glanced at his arm. The grotesquely swollen wound from the spider bite caught his eye. Just then, a waitress set down a cup of hot chocolate in front of him.

“What are you muttering about? If you say things like that, people will think you’re a pervert. No, at that level, it’s sexual harassment.”

“Calling it sexual harassment is a bit much.”

Se-gun shrugged as he said it. He was in an extremely good mood right now. Not because it was Christmas, but because he had defeated three vampires on his own and was still in one piece. Of course, he couldn’t deny that the festive atmosphere contributed a little—but that alone wouldn’t have been enough to make him happy.

“……”

Deok-yeon, Sylvester, even Kim Seong-hee, the owner of Arjuna—none of them were more than business acquaintances to Se-gun. In the end, he was alone in the world. Saying that being alone is sad is laughable. Unless one is soaked in children’s fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and media designed to promote social bonding among kids, humans are alone by nature anyway.

For a vampire hunter standing on the blade-edge of death, that was only natural. But to feel such joy—not because of the world’s holiday, but because he had gained the upper hand in blood and slaughter…

Throb…

Se-gun shut his eyes as a sharp ache pulsed beneath them and in his throat. Was it from frequently drawing through the mucous membranes? His throat stung.

“Hey, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Arjuna’s waitress, Lee Jin-hye, approached after noticing something odd about Se-gun’s condition. He lifted the cup and muttered,

“It’s too sweet…”

“When I was your age, I couldn’t get enough of sweet things.”

“That’s why you’re alone on Christmas.”

No sooner had Se-gun said that than he got smacked with her tray.

“You little—! I’m only—”

Bzzzzzz!

The vibration of Se-gun’s phone on the table cut off her protest. He pushed the tray aside and picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“…..”

On the other end came the sound of strong wind. Se-gun immediately rose from his seat.

“Where are you right now?!”

“Well… heading to Bucheon…”

“Call me again when you get to Bucheon!”

Shouting that, Se-gun ran toward the café entrance.

“Hey! What about the hot chocolate?!”

“I’ll pay when I get back!”

He shouted back and leapt onto the XR-250 parked in front of the café.

Vroooom!

“Damn it! I’ve got a really bad feeling about this!”

He roared as he sped forward. The heavy snow that had been falling in large flakes was now turning into a full-blown blizzard.

Se-gun raced toward Bucheon at high speed, cutting across sidewalks and roads alike. Many vehicles were crawling along like slugs, but Se-gun weaved between them at astonishing speed.

Whiiiiiiiiing.

Even with his helmet pressed tight, his ears felt muffled and filled with the roar of wind. He had been stabbed by the Sang-dong faction and drained by a vampiric spider—he was in no condition to push his body like this. But the ominous premonition drove him faster.

As he entered Bucheon, even wrapped in his racer suit, he began to shiver from the drop in body temperature. Riding at terrifying speed through a snowstorm would naturally lower one’s body heat rapidly. And he had lost a lot of blood recently as well…

“Tch.”

Se-gun pulled the backpack strapped behind his motorcycle closer, taking out a compact inner bag and a U.S.-made samurai sword forged from 420 stainless steel. Although his AUG-STYER had broken, he still had plenty of rifles left. But using NATO rounds in the middle of Bucheon would be reckless. Sylvester might use a Barrett even in urban areas, but Se-gun didn’t have Sylvester’s special abilities.

“Alright then, that’s as far as we go for now. Maybe I’ll try calling again.”

He picked up his phone and called Detective Sim. But for some reason, the detective didn’t answer.

“……”

He had already provoked the temper of Tetra Anax, and now the detective wasn’t picking up. Se-gun felt his ominous premonition solidifying into reality and ground his teeth. He should have gotten the address earlier. Though, to be fair, he wasn’t very familiar with Bucheon’s layout…

“Huh?”

Just then, his phone rang again. Se-gun answered it.

“Hello?”

“Han Se-gun!”

“Where are you?! I’m already in Bucheon!”

“Come into Wonmi-gu Office and it’s LG Village.”

“What a fantastical apartment name…”

Muttering that, Se-gun twisted the XR-250’s throttle. Snow caught in the wheels split left and right like waves.

They say that visiting your ex-wife on a holiday like Christmas Eve isn’t something a good man does. But that saying applies mostly in the West, where remarriage rates among divorced women are high. In South Korea, it isn’t considered that bad—especially if she hasn’t remarried and has a child.

Detective Sim Gu-jin had long since lost the dignity expected of a police officer, but he had never lost his pride as one. Yet in dealing with vampires, he had finally thrown that pride away as well. Of course, under normal circumstances, if someone had said vampires existed, he himself wouldn’t have believed it. Perhaps that made it easier to abandon his pride.

Or maybe he hadn’t even been aware his pride was being hurt. But when the vampires directly manipulated higher authorities and he personally received a transfer order, he finally realized he had done something a police officer should never do. No matter the necessity, he had turned a blind eye to someone plastered with illegal weapons and narcotics—and had failed to report what he discovered… It felt as if all the pride he had guarded, even refusing promotions for it, had vanished in an instant.

“Damn it.”

Still, what remained was family. Though his marriage had been far from smooth and he had lost custody of his child to his wife, he loved his family. So even if he didn’t like it, he bought the computer camera his thirteen-year-old daughter wanted, wrapped it nicely as a Christmas present, and brought it with him. With so many troubling events piling up lately, he had grown exhausted. He just hoped that at least one day could feel like a proper holiday.

“You know, like that song—‘Silent Night, Holy Night’.”

He muttered to himself while waiting for the elevator. Since it was a 25-story apartment building, it took quite a while for the lift to come down.

“Look at this pathetic mess.”

He stared at himself in the elevator mirror and cursed while fixing his appearance. Hiding like a rat to avoid vampires had left him looking terrible. Of course, anyone who could maintain dignity after going through something like that probably wouldn’t be human—but still, to come see his daughter for the first time in nearly a year looking like this…

“Damn it!”

He clawed at his chest inside the elevator. Against monsters like those vampires, was he really supposed to just shut his mouth and stay quiet if he didn’t want to die? If that was the case, what was the point of being a cop? If he had just focused on making money and lived lavishly, at least he wouldn’t feel this wronged. He knew better than anyone that life never went the way one wanted—so why did it hurt this much?

In cases of political corruption or other major scandals, if you pushed too hard, they would just transfer you somewhere else or dump you in the Juvenile Division to argue with kids and collect obviously fake written pledges from schoolteachers. But this vampire-related case—if he pushed too hard here, his neck would snap instead… That was what wounded his pride the most.

To think that a detective would fear the threat of death. Yet that only meant he had enjoyed far too much of the safety that came with the profession of detective in ordinary times.

“Damn it!”

He stepped out of the elevator and rang the doorbell. There was no response from inside.

“What the hell. What’s going on?”

He opened the door with the spare key he had prepared and stepped inside.

“……!”

The moment he entered, a powerful stench of blood pierced his nose. It was so vivid it felt as though someone were digging into his nostrils with a rusty nail.

“Ugh!”

He immediately drew his pistol. Detectives in the Juvenile Division usually didn’t carry guns—there was a risk of theft, and they rarely needed them—but after everything he had experienced with vampires, he had brought it along.

“Ae-jin!”

He rushed to open his daughter’s room first. But, as expected, no one was there. Detective Sim Gu-jin slowly turned toward the living room. The window stood wide open, and the wind lashing against the high-rise apartment howled fiercely inside. If the scent of blood still lingered in such wind, then whoever had bled here was beyond saving.

Under normal circumstances, he would have called for backup. But now, he doubted they would be of any help. He knew about the vampires—and that they would strike soon. If the enemy was a vampire, calling police reinforcements would only increase casualties… or make him look like some lunatic obsessed with a grotesque massacre. In a situation like this…

Unconsciously, Sim Gu-jin raised his phone and called Se-gun.

“Hey, Han Se-gun! Han Se-gun!”

Even though there was a relay tower nearby, the call took an agonizingly long time to connect. He clamped the phone between his shoulder and cheek, gripping his pistol nervously. Sweat pooled in his palm; his shoulder cramped from the strain—but the damn phone still wouldn’t connect.

At last, the call went through.

“Hello! Where are you?”

“I’m… heading to Bucheon…”

But at that very moment, a young girl stepped out from the kitchen. Sim dropped the phone in shock.

“Ae-jin!”

Startled, he called his daughter’s name. The girl slowly lifted her head.

Drip.

A lump of blood-soaked flesh fell from the hand of the girl named Sim Ae-jin.

“God damn it!”

A vast darkness seemed to swallow him whole. Through years in the police force, he could understand the situation—he knew what was happening. But how was he supposed to accept it? Accept that his daughter had become the vampire who killed her own mother?

“Dad… where’s my present?”

“……”

Without a word, Sim Gu-jin lifted the bag. Inside was the gift she had wanted. And another gift, meant for her mother… But she must be dead. Only the mother and daughter had lived here. So whose blood filled this house?

“Ha…”

Sim Gu-jin hurled the gift aside, picked up the phone from the floor, and stepped backward. He ran toward the elevator and pressed the button.

Whiiiiing.

It looked like the elevator would take quite some time to arrive. Meanwhile… Sim Ae-jin approached.

“Dad… if you throw it, it’ll break. By the way, do you know where Mom went?”

“That…”

He muttered, gripping his pistol.

Ding.

At last, the elevator arrived. He leapt inside and immediately turned around.

“Dad!”

Ae-jin was walking toward him. The elevator wouldn’t descend just by pressing the button. So he…

Bang!

He fired. The bullet tore through the back of Ae-jin’s neck. She stared at her father in disbelief.

“Ah!”

Bang! Bang!

Two more shots. Ae-jin was thrown backward. They weren’t silver bullets, but they carried enough energy to destroy flesh. He stared at his daughter collapsed beyond the elevator doors and closed them.

“So this disqualifies me as a father too.”

What kind of father drives bullets into his own daughter? He thought that bitterly as he opened the revolver’s cylinder. Normally, the first round should be a blank… but he had loaded the bullets however he pleased. He would certainly be punished for this.

As he reloaded, he picked up the phone. When it came to vampires, Han Se-gun was the professional—better to hear his advice. In any case, after firing a gun inside an apartment building, the police would soon be swarming here.