Chapter 1: Prologue

It was late at night when I emerged from a drinking session with my friend.

My friend, completely plastered, slumped to the ground and began to retch. I feigned ignorance, quickening my pace to make a swift escape.

“Ugh… Kim Geun-hong, you bastard, where are you going, ugh, bleh!”

He was already blacked out anyway; he wouldn’t remember a thing. I could simply tell him in a couple of days that I’d hailed him a taxi.

“Heh.”

The night air was so criminally cold it felt as though something sinister was about to unfold.

Despite my brisk pace up the steep incline, my cheeks stung from the biting cold.

Feeling such an intense chill, I couldn’t help but wonder if I truly was a cold-hearted person myself.

Rubbing my hands together, I descended the hill. This damned neighborhood, built by carving into the mountains, was perpetually riddled with inclines.

“Hoo.”

The alcohol made me feel pleasantly tipsy. With the buses no longer running, I still had a thirty-minute walk ahead of me. Would my body even hold up?

As these thoughts drifted through my mind.

“…”

Strangely, the street was utterly silent.

The sight of a twelve-lane boulevard utterly devoid of cars felt profoundly unsettling. It was late, certainly, but had this neighborhood ever been so eerily quiet?

Not a soul was in sight.

Wasn’t this the very street usually overflowing with illegally parked cars, overturned shared kickboards, and throngs of tattooed thugs?

While such stillness might occur on rare occasions, walking alone down this utterly deserted street, I couldn’t shake off a burgeoning sense of foreboding.

The profound quiet and emptiness made it feel, paradoxically, as though something was on the verge of emerging.

Of course, nothing of the sort would happen. I simply walked, my only thought fixed on reaching home and showering as quickly as possible.

A crosswalk lay beside the bus stop.

The traffic light was off. With no cars passing, I briefly considered simply crossing, but something about it felt off, so I opted to use the subway underpass instead.

—Thump-thump.

I descended the subway stairs.

As I looked, a steel shutter was lowered over the stairs leading down into the station. At late hours, they typically lower these shutters to block entry.

“Oh.”

Beyond that shutter.

A woman stood.

Her blonde hair cascaded down, and she was clad in crimson.

She was a woman of preposterous beauty.

“Hello?”

The woman offered a faint smile, beckoning with a hand in greeting.

The sheer unreality of the scene made me falter.

“Hey, could you come over here for a moment?”

“Come over?”

“Yes.”

“Uh… alright.”

For the moment, I simply approached her as she’d asked.

She was a beauty so stunning it sent shivers down my spine. Was she a foreigner? Yet, for a foreigner, her Korean seemed remarkably fluent.

No.

Why, for that matter, was this woman even ‘inside’ the shutter?

I wondered if my drunken state was making me hallucinate, but no matter how I scrutinized the scene, it was undeniably real.

“Excuse me, why are you in there?”

“Hmm, how shall I put it?”

Her finger lightly grazed her plump, crimson lips.

“I dozed off for a moment and found myself trapped, wouldn’t you know.”

“Ah, so you’re trapped.”

“Could you open this for me?”

“Open it?”

‘How am I supposed to open this?’

‘The staff would all have gone home by now. Who should I even contact?’

“Open it.”

“Just a moment. I’d need to contact someone for this.”

The instant I reached for my phone.

“Here.”

The woman extended a hand towards me.

“It’s a key. You can open it with this.”

A key rested upon her palm.

“Look, do you see the padlock on the floor? Please open that for me.”

“Ah, that.”

Following her gesture, I saw a padlock on the floor. I immediately took the key, approached the padlock, and squatted down.

“…”

‘But… isn’t this rather suspicious?’

‘This shutter wasn’t some intricate iron grating fit for a prison. It wasn’t designed to imprison anyone; it was merely a crude barrier meant to prevent people from descending.’

‘If she simply extended those slender hands, she could have unlocked the padlock and emerged at any moment. Furthermore, she could have easily called the police instead of waiting for someone.’

‘It was…’

‘…illogical.’

“Excuse me.”

“…”

“Can’t you just open this yourself and come out?”

Squatting as I was, I couldn’t see the woman’s face.

A distinct sense of unease began to creep over me.

“I tried, but my hand wouldn’t fit.”

“It looks like it would, though.”

“Just open it for now, will you?”

“Y-yeah… sure.”

Suspicious as it was, it was only a door I was opening. Besides, it would look ridiculous to just walk away after having conversed this much.

‘But this woman…’

‘Why is she speaking so informally to me?’

—Click.

—Clang.

I unlocked the padlock and lifted the shutter.

The shutter proved astonishingly light.

It was, after all, that kind of makeshift barrier.

Not designed to imprison, but merely to block passage. The gaps between the bars were certainly wide enough for the woman’s wrist to slip through.

—Step.

The woman, now standing before me, took a single step forward, her gaze locking with mine.

“Thank you.”

“It was nothing. Just be careful next time. I’ll be going now.”

It was the very instant I turned to leave after uttering those words.

“Huh.”

My body refused to move.

Immediately afterward, the woman extended her hand towards me.

“Thank you so much for opening it for me. But… I’m hungry.”

No words escaped my lips.

And what on earth was this woman talking about? As echoing questions swirled through my mind, the woman’s face, now horribly distorted with a mouth stretched to her ears, drew terrifyingly close.

It pressed its lips to my neck.

No.

It wasn’t a kiss at all.

It was plunging sharp fangs into my neck.

“Ugh.”

The sensation of my blood being drained was intensely vivid, yet I felt utterly detached from reality. In my hazy, dream-like vision, a message window shimmered into view.

—Ding.

[You have become a Vampire.]

[You die in the most horrific way.]

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[Ending – Non-Human]

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[Proceeding to the next round.]