Chapter 43 - Just a Vacation (3)

The top floor of a hotel in New York, USA.

In a room with blackout curtains drawn, a handsome blond white man with blue eyes and an aristocratic air poured cola into a glass of ice. The vampire Ioannis took a drink and spoke wistfully.

“This tastes good in its own way, but... things really were better during World War II. Cola had cocaine in it back then. I liked that.”

Mia, a pretty, feminine-looking young man with black hair, did not humor him. Instead, he spoke while checking his tablet.

“Master, information is circulating in the magician community that Edward Coffin may have died in Korea.”

“Apparently, after causing a strange incident in Korea, he lost contact with the broker he was dealing with.”

“Edward Coffin?”

“But it’s still only a rumor, so it isn’t reliable. What do you think?”

Ioannis set down his glass, showing a little interest.

“Edward has a lot of pride. Maybe he needlessly went out in his real body and took a bullet to the head. Then again, that pride is part of what brought him to that level...”

Ioannis tapped his chin with a finger, thinking.

Or perhaps he had been forced to bring out his real body. He might have encountered a powerful enemy, stepped in personally, and gotten beaten instead.

“...”

Edward Coffin. They were not close, but Ioannis knew him to some extent. A necromancer from the British Council of Magicians, he was a fairly powerful and highly skilled magician.

Of course, his obsession with the grimoire <Lemegeton> had led him to massacre an entire village and become a wanted man.

An old memory brought a smile to Ioannis’s lips.

Back when Chairman Kim was his young apprentice, Kim had sneered at Edward and charged him, declaring:

["Your familiars are zombies made from corpses! My slaves are ghouls that eat corpses! That makes me your superior!"]

The zombie knights Edward controlled directly had then thoroughly thrashed Kim.

Chairman Kim often bared his teeth at opponents without properly gauging their abilities. That was part of what made Kim entertaining, though.

Mia sighed and switched off his tablet at the absurd rumors.

“All the information about Korea lately is strange. That the grimoire <Mysteries of the Worm> has appeared, for example. Or that <Lemegeton> might be there, since Edward went all the way to Korea. ... At this rate, they might as well say <The Book of the Angel Raziel> has appeared too.”

Just then, Mia’s tablet lit up again with an incoming email.

“... One moment. There’s an email for you, Master. What would you like me to do?”

The email was from Chairman Kim. In essence, it said that <Mysteries of the Worm> had appeared in Korea, and all sorts of people might gather there now, so a visit would be entertaining. It was effectively a request for cooperation.

With an odd expression, Ioannis approached the bed where Mia sat.

“Hmm... Korea, eh?”

“Master?”

Mia widened his eyes and tilted his head, then frowned.

“... You’re not thinking of going to Korea, are you?”

“I’ve been bored anyway. If the rumors are true, I thought a visit wouldn’t hurt.”

Ioannis shrugged and climbed onto the bed like a predator.

“Besides, a novel I enjoyed some time ago was set in Seoul. Vampires, drugs, gunfights—it was fun.”

“N-no! Master, you’re the head of our bloodline! You need to be more mindful of the risks...!”

Ioannis kissed his cute, grumbling attendant on the mouth and pushed him down. Their lips parted on the bed, their breaths mingling.

At Ioannis’s piercing gaze, Mia blushed and drew in his shoulders.

“Who said you could keep running your mouth?”

“Ah... Master... I-I’m sorry.”

“Good. Then prove it.”

“What?”

Ioannis’s eyes gleamed mischievously as he licked Mia’s slender neck and bit it.

“Cry and prove your innocence, you bitch.”

“Ah... aah...”

Mia wondered whether he really ought to cry. Ioannis eased the tension with a gentle laugh.

“Haha... Sorry. You’re just too cute. I’m teasing. That was a line from the novel.”

“...”

“Don’t overthink the Korea business. Let’s just call it a vacation.”

“...”

Mia pressed his lips together and looked up at Ioannis. To soothe his attendant, Ioannis loosened his collar and exposed his neck.

“Want a drink too?”

“!”

Mia’s fangs reacted to the blood of the higher vampire. Tempted by the person he loved, he blushed as though frustrated and murmured softly:

“... I do.”

A little later, Ioannis stroked Mia’s hair, rose from the bed, and sipped his cola, now watered down by the melted ice.

This wasn’t bad in its own way either.

Those who knew Ioannis called him a “gay Nazi vampire,” but that wasn’t quite accurate.

Perhaps it was because “Nazi vampire” had such an impact, but the Nazis were merely one of his many former employers. He had no particular attachment to them.

For starters, wasn’t his name Ioannis? Naturally, he wasn’t German. He was Greek.

And liking pretty young men wasn’t gay in Greece. It was part of the traditional culture of Greece, the land of philosophy.

Socrates and Plato had both done their share of “Giddyup! Heave-ho!” too.

Well, perhaps theirs had been purely teacher-student relationships.

In any case, everyone his age (currently in their graves) liked pretty young men.

Of course, he knew perfectly well that this was sophistry—a joke.

At any rate, Ioannis leaned back in his chair.

“... Korea, eh?”

Even if only half the rumors about <Mysteries of the Worm> and <The Lesser Key of Solomon> appearing were true, it would be a major development. He needed to investigate in person to some extent.

Expanding his influence in Korea while he was at it would be worthwhile too.

Of course, it could be dangerous, so he intended to take every vampire under his command.

No magician who remembered the First and Second World Wars would ever underestimate <Mysteries of the Worm>, the grimoire once possessed by She Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken.

Nor would they dismiss its new master—even if that magician had only just picked up the grimoire.

He had turned off the lights so Mia could sleep comfortably. In the dark room, Ioannis’s blue eyes gleamed like a beast’s.

* * *

The Special Response Section’s Team Three office.

While the other operatives took a brief breather, Team Leader Sion sat at her desk, writing something by hand.

Lee Hyeeun, one of the female operatives, handed her a coffee.

“Team Leader Sion, here’s your coffee. What are you writing now? A report?”

Sion lowered her eyes and answered quietly.

“No... it’s a written apology...”

It concerned the civilian collaborator firearm-loan paperwork she had promised Yohan.

She could have quietly slipped it in and pretended it had already been processed, but that did not sit well with her. Instead, she had reported that she had forgotten and submitted the paperwork late.

Removing a firearm without authorization... Naturally, that warranted disciplinary action.

Team Leader Park, standing beside her, tapped her head with a stack of papers.

“You get off with a written apology for taking out a firearm. A real princess, aren’t you? A princess.”

Her father was the director, and he openly refused to separate personal matters from official business.

["Unauthorized removal? Did anyone die? No? Then let it slide, you bastards."]

Thanks to Shin Doryong’s favoritism, she had gotten off with a handwritten apology. Given the nature of the Bureau of Anomalous Phenomena Countermeasures, its director wielded considerable power.

Sion kept her eyes lowered and wrote her apology as the papers tapped against her head.

“... I really have no excuse for this.”

Hyeeun laughed awkwardly and offered encouragement.

“Haha... Still! You pulled off something big this time, Team Leader Sion! Bringing in the master of The Lesser Key of Solomon as a collaborator—that’s amazing! It’s an incredibly impressive grimoire!”

For the time being, to ensure smooth cooperation, only Sion’s Team Three, the director, and a few relevant people knew that Yohan was a grimoire’s master.

Team Leader Park casually dropped the papers she had been tapping Sion’s head with onto the desk.

“The problem is that its master is this Kim Yohan fellow you suspected. What do you think of him?”

Sion stopped writing.

“There’s nothing particularly suspicious about him. ... Nothing, and yet I still find him strangely suspicious.”

“Hmm... Don’t you just dislike this Yohan guy?”

“What?”

The unexpected remark briefly left Sion blank-faced, her expression relaxing. Team Leader Park continued.

“It’s not that you ignore other cases, but you seem especially preoccupied with him.”

That was—that was—

Sion’s mouth fell slightly open.

“... You’re right.”

Her eyes narrowed as her thoughts rearranged themselves.

But contrary to Team Leader Park’s suggestion, she did not dislike Yohan. That was not what she felt.

She could not quite explain it... Yes, Yohan was on her mind.

Her suspicion of him. Naturally, she had thought she was suspicious of him and preoccupied with him because he was a suspect in a case.

The premise was wrong. He wasn’t on her mind because she suspected him. He had already been on her mind, and his connection to the case had turned that feeling into suspicion.

Sion had begun pursuing her suspicions about Yohan after seeing his photograph while examining the university roster.

... It wasn’t that she had fallen for him or that he was her type. She had never experienced that sort of feeling in her life. There was just... something about him that stayed on her mind.

As Sion thought with narrowed eyes, Team Leader Park suddenly looked at her face and spoke casually.

“Looking at you now... maybe it’s the resemblance around the eyes. The way you narrow them when you’re thinking or annoyed looks just like the director.”

“Ah... yes. We are family.”

Sion relaxed her eyes and sighed.

She did not know why Yohan was on her mind. But for now—

She looked down at her written apology.

“...”

—she needed to finish it.

SCRITCH, SCRITCH.

The sound of a moving pen filled the Special Response Section office.

* * *

The hotel lobby.

After finishing her meal, Sua looked at Yohan.

“Are you going back to your room now, mister?”

“No, I’m going to let my food settle a little first.”

“I see... then, um...”

Sua paused, fidgeting awkwardly for a moment.

“... Thanks for everything. Good night.”

She turned around and headed back to her room.

I watched her go and stood in the lobby for a while. Then, with a sigh, I went outside and entered a nearby convenience store.

I narrowed my eyes at the food on the shelves. It was all much the same, but I picked out a few things that would be easy to eat.

They were for Ellie, who had obviously skipped dinner.

... What a nuisance.

It wasn’t as though I wanted to impress that woman or anything.

Half a red-bean bun.

A piece of bread in a desperate situation wasn’t the same as a piece of bread under ordinary circumstances, was it?

Yes, I felt indebted to Ellie. I felt there was unfinished business.

I could count saving her life as repayment, but Ellie had saved my life too.

So this was simply payment for the bread.

If I didn’t settle things cleanly, the next time we met... that lingering discomfort might make me hesitate for a split second when it mattered.

In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Guan Yu spared Cao Cao at Huarong Trail so he could kill him without reservations the next time they met.

... Well, that was from the novel, so it was fictional. And he never managed to kill him anyway.

Anyway, I took the convenience-store bag to Ellie’s room.

I could have had hotel room service deliver food instead, but this wasn’t a bar. Having someone say, “That gentleman sent you this food you didn’t order,” would be a bit much, wouldn’t it?

I knocked. Ellie answered with her hair still damp, as though she had just washed.

Her blue eyes lit up happily at the sight of Yohan.

“Oh! Yohan! Um...!”

As she searched for something to say, the words she had not managed to say before spilled out.

“Your singing was really good! N-no, that’s not what I meant. Thank you so much!”

Watching Ellie blush and speak in a rush, I handed her the convenience-store bag.

“It’s nothing much... but I thought you probably hadn’t had dinner. I bought a few things for you and the kids.”

“Oh! Thank you.”

Ellie took the bag with both hands. Our fingertips brushed.

Anyway, that settled my business here.

“Good night, then.”

As I turned to leave, Ellie called out.

“Wait! U-um, I mean—this wouldn’t repay everything you’ve done for us, but I’m grateful, so...”

She spoke with her face still flushed from her bath.

“I’ll buy you a meal next time. H-how does that sound?”

Let’s have a meal sometime. Well, that was a perfectly ordinary way for adults to say goodbye.

I smiled politely and gave a suitably casual answer.

“Haha... I’d appreciate that. I’ll look forward to it.”

I turned and headed back to my room.

An attack by zombies, followed by a night in a luxury hotel.

... Well, not a bad weekend vacation.

But tomorrow, vacation was over. It was time to get back to work.