****
Although he luckily managed to hit the monster that had burst out of the door, the monster looked at its own body and then, paying it no mind, charged at Se-gun.
It had a human form, but its limbs were abnormally long and its eyes bulged out as if it were a frog. Se-gun reflexively rolled his body. But there were stairs leading down.
“Uwaaaaak!”
With his broken shoulder as the point of contact with the ground, Se-gun tumbled down. The monster did not come down immediately, but as if enjoying Se-gun's fear, it came down slowly and then placed both arms on the narrow stairwell walls.
Crack!
With a sound like joints popping, holes were drilled into the wall and the monster's arms went in. The creature was hanging there, having broken the wall with both its arms and legs, like a child hanging from a threshold.
Whether it was because of the shotgun Se-gun had misfired or because of a wound sustained elsewhere before, the blood from its torso was still not stopping.
“Ughhh!”
Se-gun moved his body with difficulty and picked up the shotgun. However, a shotgun was originally an item meant to be held and used with both hands. With his left arm broken now, there was no way to do that.
“Krrrrgh!”
Se-gun raised the shotgun and aimed at the monster. There was only one shot left, and as he had seen before, it was clear that it wouldn't be very effective. So how could he possibly catch that thing?
The thought of just waiting for the police to arrive also crossed his mind, but he felt that if he let that thing go now, he would regret it forever. It was the enemy of his entire family.
“You…!”
His emotions were so intense that no words would come out. Se-gun barely managed to collect himself. The hatred for that monster was difficult to express in words. But when he opened his mouth, this was the only thing that came out.
“You son of a bi~tch!”
<><><>
Spitting out a curse that boiled up from the bottom of his being, Se-gun lifted his one good foot to support the bottom of the shotgun and pulled the trigger. To hope for a hit even after doing this would be deserving of being called a thief, but since the gun was a shotgun, it struck the monster.
“Kwor!”
The monster momentarily lost its grip with its arms and legs, fell backward, and then tumbled down the stairs. Before Se-gun had a chance to get out of the way, he became entangled with the monster, but Se-gun immediately got up and lifted the shotgun with one arm.
“Yaaaaah!”
Se-gun swung the shotgun as if it were an axe and struck the monster's head.
Thwack!
Blood splattered as the monster's head cracked. Se-gun, like a madman, swung the shotgun and beat the monster.
“Krrrrgh!”
However, when the monster reflexively swung its arm, Se-gun's left arm was severed. It had been broken anyway, but for the arm to be cut off and blood to gush out like a fountain was no small matter.
“Aaaak!”
Se-gun screamed and struggled. For a person's living flesh to be cut off so simply. This monster's strength was no ordinary thing. It was a power like an industrial press, so there was no way for Se-gun to block it. It was just then.
Bang!
With a single gunshot, a hole was blown open in the monster's side. Se-gun could have been hit by mistake, but someone had boldly fired a gun.
The monster was startled and turned its head, but in that moment, a flash of light passed through the monster's neck. The neck separated from the torso, and blood gushed out like a fountain.
“Ughhh….”
Se-gun lifted his head and looked at this strange sight that had unfolded before his eyes. A silver-haired priest in black clothes had swung a large Claymore (Claymore: a greatsword popular in places like Scotland), which seemed to belong in a movie, and cut off the monster's neck.
As if cutting off the neck wasn't enough, the priest turned his body and struck the monster in a cross shape. With a gruesome sound, the monster was completely split in two and its body tore apart.
“Ughhhhhh!”
That sight was the last thing Se-gun saw before he fainted. Hoping that all of this was a dream.
<><><>
Cup ramen bowls were scattered about messily. In the middle of the room, Se-gun, who was as thin as a corpse, sat.
In the dark room, where not even a light was turned on, the only illumination was the light leaking from a telephone.
<><><>
Drrrrrring.
The telephone was ringing like crazy. The only light and sound in the quiet room, but Se-gun did not answer the phone.
By the time the police were dispatched, the monster's corpse had already disappeared. The silver-haired priest in black clothes had also disappeared, no, it was as if he had never existed in the first place. The only thing that he thought was definitely real was that his arm had been cut off, but when he came to his senses, that too was attached.
Se-gun truly felt as if he had been possessed by a ghost. But his parents and hyung were all dead, and it was also a fact that this was an uncommonly bizarre murder case.
The police processed the case as a dog having gone mad and running amok. In truth, there were many questionable points to say a dog had done it, but on the other hand, they couldn't just acknowledge a monster with no corpse as stated in Se-gun's testimony, could they?
When Se-gun testified about the monster, the police's reaction was, in a word, this.
“Did you sniff some thinner?”
That day, it seemed the bikers who had been caught had said something about Se-gun, so the police regarded Se-gun as nothing more than a hopeless biker gang member. Because of that, Se-gun also had to undergo a detailed examination at the hospital.
Verbally, they said that since he was a survivor of that tragedy, he needed a detailed examination, but no matter how ignorant of the world Se-gun was, he was not so unaware that he didn't know the main purpose was to test for the use of psychoactive substances.
And for the week after that, it would not have been an exaggeration to call it harsh treatment by the media. The broadcasting stations filmed the inside of the blood-spattered house and chattered away enthusiastically as if it were so fascinating, and they recklessly shoved microphones at the half-crazed Se-gun.
Of course, Se-gun blatantly pushed away the cameras and avoided the people, and the broadcasting companies, provoked by his actions, began their coverage in a manner that was close to retaliation.
Soon, neighbors and school friends appeared on broadcasts and spoke carelessly as if talking about a dead person, and he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown from the continuous requests for interviews and visits.
Some weekly magazines brazenly wrote articles as if Se-gun had killed his family by misfiring the shotgun. Faced with their act of recklessly writing speculative articles in a ‘~so they say, or maybe not’ manner, a feeling of emptiness rather than anger took precedence.
In the end. Se-gun was released as he had no charges against him, and Se-gun returned to the house that had all but become a ruin. The corpses had been removed, but the inside of the house was left messy here and there, and the bloodstains had not yet been erased.
Se-gun soothed his hunger with cup ramen and then collapsed in his room. There was a funeral at the hospital morgue, but Se-gun stayed secluded and did not go outside. Was it about ten days after that had passed?
A voice calling Se-gun's name was heard from the front door.
“Se-gun! Why aren't you answering the phone! Han Se-gun!”
From outside the door, a familiar voice was heard.
It was the man who was Se-gun's uncle, Han Gyu-il, that is, the younger brother of Se-gun's father, Han Seung-il. Hearing his uncle's voice, Se-gun was startled and came to his senses. He should be able to trust his uncle, who had become the chief mourner in his place. No, he would believe him.
<><><>
Se-gun thought so and ran out to open the door. Se-gun felt indescribably glad.
Clunk!
When he opened the gate, which felt heavy—perhaps because Se-gun had gotten that thin—a middle-aged man who hadn't even shaved his beard was standing there.
His uncle, who had been running around busily for several days seeing to the funeral as the chief mourner and contacting the family clan association, was also shabby, but he shed tears upon seeing Se-gun, whose condition was even worse.
“Aigoo, you brat! How did you wither away like this! You’re bone-thin, you punk!”
“Ah, Un-uncle.”
“Follow me! There’s no need for words!”
Gyu-il forcibly put Se-gun, who was reluctant to move, into his car and then drove to a nearby restaurant.
“Eat! What a tragedy this is. But what can you do. The living have to live. Your hyung-nim didn't pass away for you to follow him and die. And in this world now, that ain't filial piety. Who do you think will be happy if you act like that now!”
Facing the bowl of seolleongtang from which hot steam was rising, Se-gun couldn't hold back the tears that gushed out. Se-gun finished his meal frantically along with his tears. Perhaps because he had starved all that time, the way he devoured the food was no different from a common beggar.
“Hey, are you going to keep staying in that house? Come down to our house. There's an empty room, and though I'm not as well-off as your hyung-nim, I'm not living that poorly. If you say you'll come, I'll send you all the way through college.”
As Han Gyu-il made such a bold promise, Se-gun kept his mouth shut. With Se-gun's grades, a four-year university was a bit of a stretch.
This was because he had originally wanted to become a motocross rider and was not very close with his studies. He had hung out with a biker gang, so it would have been stranger if he was good at studying.
“I appreciate the thought, but I….”
Se-gun said that and closed his mouth. Thinking about it, he hadn't been a very good son. Was it because of the fear that even if he went to his uncle's house, he would likewise fail to be a good son?
The regret—of the kind that everyone eventually feels—that if he had known he would lose his parents this quickly, he would have listened to them just a little more, was stabbing his heart.
“Well, I'm not telling you to decide right now. There's still a lot of time left, so think about it slowly. It's not like I'm going to disappear anytime soon.”
“Yes.”
Se-gun answered thus and got up from his seat. Just a moment ago, he had been overflowing with the thought of wanting to die, but to have his energy restored right away by a bowl of warm seolleongtang… it somehow felt pathetic.
<><><>
Se-gun parted with his uncle and returned home. His uncle had insisted on giving Se-gun a ride, but Se-gun politely refused and walked home himself.
The moon was hidden by clouds, and it was dark, the kind of weather where it seemed like it would rain at any moment. Se-gun looked up at the sky. When he lifted his head for the first time in a long while, fresh air rushed into his lungs.
“Ah……”
Complex emotions welled up. To have lost his family to such a monster, it still didn't feel real. If he himself didn't feel it was real, there was no way other people would believe him. Se-gun thought so and let out a sigh.
<><><>
On a slightly sloped hill road, under a utility pole with a flickering sodium lamp, a jet-black Corvette coupe was parked. In normal times, he would have looked at it with great interest, but right now, Se-gun had no energy to spare for a car.
But just then, the coupe's door opened and a man in black clothes got out. The silver-haired foreigner wearing a priest's habit was also familiar to Se-gun.
“Ah! You are?”
The man's appearance overlapped with that of the silver-haired priest who had burst in on that night he didn't even want to remember, at the moment he was in danger of being killed by the monster.
Looking at him, Se-gun felt as if he had been struck on the head. He himself had suspected that it might have been a hallucination, but for him to actually appear before his eyes.
“Just who are you?”
“Be quiet.”
The silver-haired priest said that and raised a finger to his lips. Perhaps because of Se-gun's voice, the dogs in the neighborhood started to bark.
This priest's speech, for someone who looked like a foreigner, was an overly neat Korean. But more than that, his cold and chilly tone was far more impressive.
“You really are a guy who lives by causing trouble to those around you. Don't shout in the middle of the night. Is your body okay?”
He said that and looked at Se-gun's arm. Of course, it was the arm that had been severed. Se-gun, seeing him look at his arm, was startled and asked back.
“Did you reattach it? But how?”
“First, it's not the place to talk here, is it? What do you say, will you get in?”
The priest said that and pointed to his Corvette. Se-gun got into the Corvette without a word of complaint.
The jet-black Corvette slid over the road so smoothly that it would not have been an exaggeration to say it melted into the night. The priest in black clothes skillfully drove the Corvette and glanced at Se-gun.
“You look like a refugee.”
He evaluated Se-gun, who hadn't been able to bathe properly, in that way. At that, Se-gun somehow got angry and looked at him.
“You, what is your identity? And what was that monster?”
“What do you think? Use your imagination.”
Se-gun hesitated and then answered.
“Don’t tell me. An exorcist?”
“You've come close.”
“In that case, was that monster something like a vampire?”
“Correct.”
Se-gun couldn't be happy at the word ‘correct.’ Of course, he himself was the victim, but the story being discussed now was so far removed from reality that it was absurd. He was afraid that if he continued talking like this, he would be sent straight to a mental hospital.
The Corvette entered the urban expressway. It was a bit late, so there weren't many cars, but the streetlights illuminated the city like densely packed tombstones. The priest looked at Se-gun while holding the wheel with one arm.
“I'll ask you straight to the point. Did you drink the vampire's blood?”
“Yes?”
Se-gun thought for a moment. He remembered frantically beating the vampire with the shotgun during the brawl. Blood had splattered, and he might have had his mouth open at that time, but why was that?
“No way. Am I becoming a vampire too?”
“If you drank the blood, you could.”
“In that case, this arm is indeed….”
Se-gun looked at his own left arm that had been severed. His arm had definitely been broken and then severed by the vampire, but when he came to his senses, not only was the arm attached, but the fracture was also healed.
Only about ten days had passed since that incident, yet there was nothing wrong with his severed arm.
But if Se-gun had become a vampire, the answer was simple.
“No. I reattached your arm.”
However, the priest denied it like that.
“I'm not sure. I was in such a state of panic that I don't know if I drank the blood or not. Why? If I drank the blood and became a vampire, are you going to kill me then?”
“You should know that answer best yourself.”
The priest did not deny it. No, that tone, in which not a shred of warmth could be found, was a stronger affirmation than anything else. Hearing those words, Se-gun buried his head forward.
“Damn it! Krrgh!”
After losing his family, to think that he himself might become one of those monsters? Se-gun couldn't control the tears that flowed out.
He didn't want to show tears in front of a foreigner whose name he didn't even know, but the fact that he couldn't control it meant it couldn't be restrained by his own will.
Watching Se-gun shed tears, the priest shook his head at that moment.
“Hmm. It was a needless worry.”
He turned the car and went back the way he came.