****
As dusk settled, the city finally began to stretch its limbs. The streetlights and neon signs being lit here and there made it seem as if the city was opening its eyes.
“Ahhh. I’m bored to death. I wonder if there’s anything interesting going on?”
Several young men and women who had parked their motorcycles by the roadside were muttering as they watched the awakening city. People who had been liberated from their daily routines were flowing by busily, and to those living in suspended time, that sight was incredibly fascinating. Where were those people heading, moving so diligently?
Jin Yu-mi, who had dropped out of school and was living each day pointlessly without even getting a job, was watching those people. Of course, they were likely returning home after being freed from their work. Or perhaps they were heading out to drink or to meet friends or lovers. Either way, it was not a particularly important matter to Yu-mi. To her, this entire street possessed no sense of reality whatsoever.
It was as if she were locked in a room, forced to watch nothing but television commercials over and over again.
Zapping, zapping, zapping…
Amidst the continuous zapping, the only reality that existed for her was Kurt Cobain.
It could be said that she was a pilgrim seeking the only reality. These streets of Seoul were the wilderness where she wandered in search of God, and the path leading toward the holy land.
In a daily life where she spent the entire day humming songs with English lyrics whose meanings she did not even know, just as a believer would praise God with hymns, and where worshipping the deceased Kurt Cobain—who had possessed a boyish innocence—was everything. However, for some reason, she felt like something good was going to happen today.
“Huh?”
At that moment, a certain young man passing through the crowd suddenly caught her eye. With eyes steeped in fatigue and an expression like that of a wounded beast, the young man who scratched through this vast city with his gaze looked to be no older than her own age.
Although the autumn weather could not be called cold, he was an unusual figure who had buried his body in a flight jacket and had green bleach in his hair.
“Oh my. He looks just like him.”
Was she saying he resembled Kurt Cobain? She muttered words that carried an incomprehensible meaning. She continued to stare at the young man as he walked, carving his way through the crowd.
“Hey. Yu-mi! Jin Yu-mi!”
Just then, she heard a voice calling her. She turned her body away from the small ‘No Parking’ barricade placed upon the sidewalk blocks. Standing there were her female friends, of whom it would not be an exaggeration to say she lived her life almost entirely alongside them.
“Yeah?”
“No, I mean, we’re a bit short on cash lately, aren’t we? Sung-min said it would be okay if we came over to his house if it’s alright with you.”
Her friend, Kim Jeong-suk, was a woman who, contrary to her name (which implied being ‘ladylike’ or ‘virtuous’), was far from virtuous; she was the leader-type of this circle that could hardly even be called a circle.
“Did he say he’d feed us?”
While she spoke those words, she continued to chase the young man with her eyes. With a tired expression, he was gathering free local information magazines that were tucked into a rack in front of the station.
Was he looking for a job? It was understandable since the entire society was in a recession, but she did not like the way he looked so exhausted by life—a sight that represented one of those ‘realities’ that rarely managed to reach her. Therefore, she unconsciously stood up and approached the young man.
“Excuse me…”
“Yeah?”
The young man turned his head while gathering the magazines. The young man, who had covered the magazines with his body as if feeling a bit shy, touched Yu-mi’s heart. Perhaps it was because normal thinking was impossible for her due to a brain riddled with holes from butane gas and thinner. She muttered while stammering her words.
“Ku, Kurt Cobain… don’t you hear that you look… like him?”
“Huh?”
As if that were unexpected, the young man also opened his eyes in surprise. The woman standing before his eyes seemed to be quite a party girl, plastered in clothes from various brands and wearing heavy makeup. She had the appearance of a typical runaway girl who seemed to have spent a fair amount of money on herself but was neglectful of maintenance.
‘I’ve heard plenty of people asking if I’m interested in "The Way," but this is a first.’
The young man stood there blankly, thinking such thoughts. At that moment, a man approached from behind. He was a man who had arbitrarily become Yu-mi’s lover, yet Yu-mi did not even know the man’s name yet.
He was merely one among countless men who would knead her body like dough whenever she entered a hazy state after sniffing glue.
“Yu-mi. I’m calling you, can’t you hear me? Huh? Answer me properly! Who the hell is this brat?”
“…”
The young man turned his head without a word. It was not an impression of someone running away because they were scared; it was, through and through, an attitude of looking down on the other person. At that, the man swung his fist without warning.
“This piece of shit is talking to you right…”
Tzukeok!
However, what happened next was truly like a flash of lightning. At the same moment the young man turned his body, he raised his elbow and crushed the man’s jaw with a backspin elbow. It was executed so cleanly that no one positioned nearby could properly see the movement.
This rapid reaction informed that the act of him turning his body was itself a kind of trap designed to induce a reaction from the opponent.
If it were not so, one could not possibly react this quickly to someone attacking suddenly from behind.
“Kuaaaaakh!”
The man who was struck in the jaw collapsed in the middle of the main street and screamed. At that, the young man shrugged his shoulders.
“Sorry. It might have cracked.”
“You son of a bitch! Have you decided you want to die?”
However, the men’s momentum did not die down. The girls looked at the men with a somewhat resigned expression, as this was something that happened all the time. And the young man with the green bleach also…
“Follow us, you brat. I’m gonna kill you!”
The men surrounded the young man for fear that he might run away and moved from the main street to the side. The young man looked around with a cold expression. It was in front of a subway station at a time of evening when there were many people, yet not a single person spared a glance toward this side. Indeed, no one would knowingly jump into a fire.
“It’ll be a headache if the police come.”
The young man said that and felt inside his clothes. Fortunately, he had left his gun behind, but he still had a small amount of drugs on him. Although they were items that had not been legally designated as psychotropic substances, once it became an issue, there would be no way to stop it.
In the meantime, the men headed toward a back alley. Trash bags discharged by shops were piled up like mountains, and an unidentified liquid leaking from them was rotting while emitting a foul stench. The young man looked at the ground once and frowned.
“This brat. You want to die! I’m gonna kill you!”
At that moment, one of the men ran forward and kicked the young man. However, the young man twisted his body, lightly caught the man’s foot with both hands, and snapped it outward.
Eudeudeuk!
Along with a bizarre sound that was difficult to describe, the knee ligaments tore and the leg broke. If he were injured that severely, he would likely limp for the rest of his life. Seeing that, the men looked at the young man in shock. The young man, who until a moment ago had been led away silently like a cow to be slaughtered, had transformed into the slaughterer himself in the blink of an eye.
“Scum like you think you can kill people?”
In his low voice, a volcano that seemed about to erupt at any moment lay dormant. No, perhaps it had already erupted. The young man’s eyes glistened with venom, and veins stood up along his forearms. Madness… the emotion of anger that suddenly burst forth like a geyser enveloped him.
Whether it was anger toward these pathetic men or anger toward himself—it was ten to one the latter—the young man was crazed with rage.
“Fuck! Get him!”
The men charged even as they instinctively felt that things were going wrong. There were still four of them and only one enemy; furthermore, they all had knives, so they believed they had a chance of winning. At least, if the opponent had been someone who could be classified as human.
Kwajik!
However, the young man was a literal monster. A straight punch thrown with the knuckle of the middle finger extended struck an eye, causing it to be buried into the eye socket, and the guy who stuck his hand into his pocket to pull out a knife was struck on the thigh above the pocket by a heavy hiking boot.
As the fingers stuffed into the pocket broke, the man collapsed forward in an awkward posture and slammed his head into a pile of trash.
“You bastards!”
The young man was roaring. Was he unable to control his exploding emotions? Along with the sound of bones shattering, another person was knocked down. He brutally kicked the face of the one writhing on the ground. Front teeth broke, and blood began to form a dark red oil film over the trash juice.
“Fu… Fuck!”
One man, seized by fear, swung a knife and stabbed the young man in the back. Because it was pushed back by the thick flight jacket and happened while he was moving, it did not deal a great blow, but the sensation of the blade tip piercing human flesh was clear.
However, in the next moment, the young man broke the man’s arm, snatched the knife away, and stabbed it into his cheek. The cheap butterfly knife tore through the cheek, passed through the inside of the mouth, and pierced through the opposite cheek.
Jjeok!
As if that were not enough, the young man grabbed the man’s head, leaped up, and delivered a magnificent knee strike.
It was a jumping knee strike called a vacuum knee strike, or Khao Loi, a dangerous technique where even heavyweight boxers were frequently knocked out in a single blow.
Using such a move against an opponent whose mouth had been pierced by a knife was practically the same as telling them to die.
“You… you bastards. Try and kill me! You said you’d kill me, right? Try and kill me! Try and kill me! Try to actually kill a person, you bastards!”
The young man shouted that as he trampled the fallen men. Toward those trying to get up, he kicked their abdomens without mercy, and he trampled those who had collapsed. It was a beating so cruel that it would not have been strange if someone died.
“Ah!”
The girls, who had slowly entered the back alley to stop the men, watched that suffocating scene of violent madness. Blood formed a sea, and the men were all collapsed on the ground. And the perpetrator who was striking them down was emitting a bizarre passion, like a rock singer performing with hair fluttering.
The suffocating scent of destruction mixed with the stench of trash and the fragrance of blood, becoming a peerlessly sinister perfume.
“Ah…”
At that moment, the young man staggered and fell forward. Like a person standing before a bed after a long journey, the young man, who collapsed while embracing the pile of trash, was bleeding.
“Ah!”
Even if she possessed a brain riddled with holes by thinner, glue, and butane gas, this moment came to her with a sense of reality that was all too vivid. Yu-mi was amazed by this raw sensation, the first she had experienced in her life. A reality that had suddenly popped out from within the daily life that had been flowing aimlessly.
Ah! The pilgrim of Seoul had finally met God.
The full stop to an endless exile.
Even if the identity of that God was a young man collapsed upon a pile of trash, it was truly ‘reality.’
<><><>
Just a year ago, Yoon Mi-hye had been an ordinary student at H Girls' High School. However, a year ago, she became involved in a high-profile assault-for-hire case that stirred the world and had to be hospitalized.
“There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the body.”
At Yonsei Medical Center, Head Nurse Kim Suk-ja looked at the foreign man standing before her, holding his head high and stating his opinion.
This foreign man was the very person who had rescued that girl, Yoon Mi-hye; he was worrying about her health to an excessive degree for someone who was her life-saver.
“That is for us to handle. Visiting hours are over, and the patients need rest. If you don’t leave, I will call the police!”
She responded firmly like that. At that, he raised both hands.
“This is truly frustrating. I am doing this out of goodwill. I’m saying that Row Gibson has an interest in her.”
Even when he spoke like that, the head nurse remained unmoved. To put it paradoxically, could it be said that even Row Gibson, who ranked among the top 100 wealthiest people in the world, lacked the power to improve the medical services of the Republic of Korea?
“If you wish to receive a reward from her family… leave your contact information.”
“Eh?!”
While Row was unable to say anything because it was so absurd, the head nurse turned around so sharply that a cold wind seemed to blow.
“Hmm. Is she the President’s daughter or something? If so, it seems she might be able to ‘properly’ reward the Master, who is a millionaire.”
A boy named Wilhelm mocked the head nurse’s words in that way. Hearing that, Row shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s not like I did it hoping for a reward.”
“Why don’t we just leave that yellow-skinned girl alone whether she dies or not? There’s no need for the Master to worry about her.”
“Didn’t I say I was a romanticist?”
Row spoke like that, but Bill (Wilhelm) held up his laptop bag instead of answering.
“If you escape from work, there’s no such thing as being a romanticist. If you’re really going to seek romance, you should come back with a bouquet of flowers after finishing all the work first.”
“That is also a good idea.”
Row said that while breaking into a cold sweat. Then, Wilhelm stuck out his tongue as if he were pouting.
“I didn’t know you had a taste for yellow-skinned girls. The Master needs to choose women who are more noble and refined.”
“What do you take me for? Hmm?”
Row said that and climbed into the Viper.
<><><>
A multimillionaire has one great social obligation. This is something far more important than welfare work or environmental projects: namely, ‘pretending to be busy.’
Countless people want to believe that multimillionaires are busy in their own way, have complicated family problems, and do not feel true happiness. It is the duty of the wealthy who monopolize the assets of all mankind to live up to that belief.
“This is something that would make Marx wail in his grave.”
Row, who had finished all his reviews, said that and picked up an empty crystal glass. Wilhelm refilled that glass with champagne.
Row had already spent approximately ten million dollars on corporate acquisitions. He secured positions as a major shareholder by buying up stocks of public enterprises and blue-chip companies. It was called an aggressive M&A, but it was an incredibly simple matter if one had sufficient capital.
The task of thrashing companies with overflowing live ammunition was something Row had repeated countless times until now. Even if a huge sum like ten million dollars moved back and forth in a day, there was no need to spend much time or effort.
Wilhelm spoke quietly to such a Master.
“Master. There is a bit of recorded footage of Silvester, would you like to see it?”
“It’s just surveillance footage with bad picture quality anyway.”
Row Gibson said that as he brought the champagne to his mouth. At that, Wilhelm shrugged his shoulders while holding the videotape in his hand. He drank champagne while looking down at the night view from the Royal Suite of the Lotte Hotel.
“Then will you not watch it?”
“No… I should. I have to see it.”
He spoke like a mischievous boy facing overdue vacation homework and reached his hand out to the boy. When the boy placed the tape in that hand, he threw the tape exactly as it was into the VCR. It was a fierce throw that made one worry if the machine might break, but the way the tape slid in was perfectly clean.
Soon, the video began to play on the wall-mounted PDP installed in the living room.
Zzzzzzt.
Since it was surveillance footage where the sound could not be heard, noise replaced the voices. In the video, a priest in black clothes was filmed from a distance walking toward a warehouse. Row Gibson leaned back against the sofa and muttered.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”
Row recited a requiem poem. At the same time he muttered, the priest slowly lifted a Claymore. The vampire slumped in front of the priest had already had both arms severed and had lost most of its combat capability. What remained was a miserable slaughter, a carnage close to art performed by a beautiful silver-haired demon-human.
Time flows and the world changes, but if there is one thing that does not change, it is this situation. It was too monotonous to be made into a sitcom, but it was a situation overflowing with tragic beauty nonetheless.
“Are you begging for your life? Are you claiming to be a living creature, you who fills your own veins with the blood of others?”
As if a voice actor were dubbing, Row shouted the words the priest in the screen would say. He was actually not even looking at the screen, and the priest’s mouth was not visible on the screen either.
However, if that video screen currently dyeing the living room blue was a silent movie, Row was the narrator. He was a peerlessly excellent narrator and voice actor.
“If so, then cry. Prove your purity by crying, you slut!”
Of course, vampires do not cry. Whether it is due to the degeneration of the tear ducts or because no emotions remain to shed tears, it is unknown, but vampires cannot shed tears.
It is like the beard of a woman in old tales.
To stop the ferocious wolf Fenrir, the dwarves created a thread that would never break. Gleipnir, made from the sound of a cat’s footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird.
Of course, those six ingredients were chosen by the ancients to mean things that are difficult to find in the world. Since myths are, through and through, just myths. However, the tears of a vampire were also a mythical, negated existence.
“That is your limit, slut.”
Slut, or Vamp… the nuance is different, but the meaning of either is the same. That is why Silvester calls vampires sluts.
On the screen, a hacking and slashing unfolded. Perhaps due to the limitations of surveillance footage, the sea of blood created by Silvester did not escape the level of crude special effects in old movies. The sword-light stretched out, and the refined swordsmanship writhed like a World War II documentary film.
However, the blood dyeing the screen was his fate.
It was the fate of Father Silvester, but it was soon his fate as well.
One of the 24 True Ancestors (Jinma), Row Gibson, watched the video that ended with the destruction of the camera and held up his empty glass. Silvester’s Desert Eagle A.E. had smashed the camera as accurately as a sniper rifle.
“Still the same. To think the repertoire doesn’t change, you’re a failure as a poet, Silvester.”
Row Gibson muttered in that way. Wilhelm stood by his side like a shadow and quietly refilled the champagne. Only the sound of pouring champagne filled the well-soundproofed suite.