They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat.
For the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them,
and He will lead them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

— Revelation 7:16–17, Vulgate / Korean Revised Version

 

1. Jay Taylor

Two hundred years ago, New York was a filthy, impoverished city riddled with crime.

Jay had come to New York in the early 1800s, around the time when illegal Chinese immigrants were starting to trickle into the city. He slipped into a town where these people were beginning to gather and settle, hiding among others who looked like him, concealing his language and identity.

More than 150 years have passed since then—add another 30 or so on top—and even now, it still doesn’t feel like this place is his home.

“Next ID.”

The man snatched the card from the woman’s hand and clucked his tongue after checking it.

“So your last name this time is Taylor? Jay Taylor doesn’t have a great ring to it. Kinda sounds white.”

“Nobody cares. I turn eighteen tomorrow. Are you taking the SAT¹?”

“No thanks. I’m sick of school.”

“You could get a scholarship without even trying. Jay’s done all sorts of volunteer work and extracurriculars too.”

“I don’t need it, Elaine.”

Jay kept staring at the awkward photo of himself on the ID. He couldn’t understand why ID photos always came out looking like mugshots.

“Jonathan’s changing his identity this time too. Let’s say you two grew up as foster brothers.”

“I don’t like Jonathan.”

“Jonathan doesn’t like you either. But you need some kind of relationship, don’t you?”

“…”

“Oh, and two years ago, Patricia got a new identity too. She lived next door and Jonathan supposedly had a crush on her.”

“Who needs that kind of backstory?”

“You almost drowned at the beach when you were a kid, so now you have aquaphobia.”

Jay frowned at Elaine’s words. It was true he didn’t like water—though, more accurately, he hated boats.

“Get the passport done yourself,” Elaine added.

Jay nodded and replied, “Put a body in my house.”

She nodded back but paused, then asked, “How old are you again?”

Right, how old was he? He couldn’t really remember anymore. Jay pulled out the ID that was now officially obsolete and inspected it.

“Roughly… forties.”

“All Asians look about the same, so we can fudge it. What should be the cause of death?”

“Robbery. Smash the face.”

“Don’t worry about that. There are plenty of people who’d love to smash your face in.”

Elaine smiled as she said it.

Jay didn’t actually like Elaine.

But if you wanted to live as an immortal in today’s world, you needed someone like her.

Elaine Dunn. Presumed to be Scottish.

Up until the 1950s, she ran an orphanage, but after legal reforms, she shut it down and now serves as a board director for a child welfare foundation. These days, her main work involves placing children taken in under the foster care system into different homes. More precisely, the children Elaine takes in may look like children on the outside, but inside, they’re centuries-old beings—so “raising” them isn’t quite the right word.

However, when it came to functioning in society, their youthful appearance by human standards made it impossible for them to live independently. So they had no choice but to move from one foster family to another, living under new identities each time.

Whenever the time came for someone to switch identities, they would simply enter another foster home under a different name.

Living as an immortal in the 21st century is no easy feat.

They are vampires.

* * *

Jay Taylor.

Birth name: Shin Jae-yi. Born in the 9th year of King Seonjo²’s reign, Year of the Byeongja—1576 in the Gregorian calendar.

He was the legitimate son of a noble family, but with two older brothers above him, he wasn’t pressured to pursue scholarly achievements or government office. Still, being born into a noble household of Joseon, he had read all the Confucian classics. Yet by the age of fifteen, he had fallen into a life of indulgence—women, drink, and leisure. Not that he had much time to enjoy it. Just months later, the Imjin War broke out.

At the time, his father had been dismissed from court after getting entangled in factional disputes. His eldest brother barely survived after being stationed in Pyongyang³, while his second brother was killed in battle. Though the family hadn’t raised Shin Jae-yi with great expectations of bringing honor or status, they had raised him with enough care that he lived well by anyone’s standards. But while idling at a gisaeng house⁴, he was captured by the invading Japanese forces and taken as a prisoner to Japan.

Looking back, he felt he had been worse than a beast.

Countless Joseon people were taken captive during the war. It’s impossible to estimate just how many. Many slave traders favored the low-priced Joseon slaves. Most of the captives were sold at the slave market in Nagasaki⁵, and from there, were shipped off to Macau⁶(澳門), India (印度), and even Portugal (葡萄牙).

Shin Jae-yi was one of them. He was bought by a foreigner—a man of mixed descent, a Portuguese living in Macau who had been granted permanent residency by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty⁷. It was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the majority ethnic group in China’]Ming dynasty[/fcnt] Jae-yi had to travel from the port of Nagasaki to Macau with him. The sea journey was harsh, and the seasickness unbearable—worse even than the trip from Dongnae⁸to Nagasaki.

Macau, the first foreign land he ever stepped into, was exotic. Though technically Ming territory, its architecture was heavily influenced by the Portuguese, and Catholic churches built for missionary work lined the streets. That was where Jae-yi first encountered Catholicism, a religion he had only heard of before—because the man who bought him was a devout believer.

A pervert, yet he claimed to believe in God.

The Portuguese man who bought him was a monstrous pervert and a sodomite⁹.

Fat-bellied, with yellow hair and a stomach like Mount Inwang, the man preferred to be on the receiving end—with delicate, fair-faced East Asian boys. He bought Jae-yi and used him as a sex slave. Jae-yi had to learn how to inflict pain in many ways to satisfy him, since the man despised anything routine.

He learned how to wield leather whips to leave clean, visible marks without causing too much pain. He learned how to use jade-carved phallic objects to stimulate the man’s rectum. He had to master other degrading acts too, including those involving rope and bondage. Whether by fate or irony, Jae-yi—already skilled in the pleasures of flesh—adapted quickly. The Portuguese man liked his audacity.

So, out of all his many slaves, the man liked Jae-yi the most.

But Jae-yi knew that wouldn’t last long. Boys grow up. No slave could stay in the man’s preferred delicate form forever. Jae-yi himself was already approaching six cheok in height.

The man sold off any of them who passed the age of twenty-five. What happened to them afterward, Jae-yi never knew. He was never sold— Not because he was the favorite,

But because, with two years left before his twenty-fifth birthday, the Portuguese man was murdered.

And, of course, it happened during one of their sexual sessions.

As a Joseon man, Jae-yi naturally had pierced earlobes. His earrings had been taken and sold during the process of enslavement, but the holes remained. The Portuguese man often adorned him with earrings—sometimes giving them to him as “gifts.” But the slave quarters were full of pickpockets, so they never lasted.

The man struck Jae-yi once for losing a gifted earring and never gave him another. Still, whenever they played out those sick games, he’d dress Jae-yi up to his liking. Sometimes he made him wear skirts like a woman. Other times, he styled his hair in a feminine fashion but left him completely naked. Occasionally, he dressed him in men’s clothes.

That day, for whatever reason, the man arrived with a courtesan’s outfit— A Joseon hanbok he must’ve gotten from somewhere.

‘This is women’s clothing…’

But when the man said to wear it, Jae-yi had no choice. He cast aside his pride as a man, tied the chest wrap, wore the skirt, and pinned up his hair. Even then, the man wouldn’t let him wear undergarments or a jeogori, leaving him in a disgracefully exposed state.

Something about that look delighted the Portuguese man. After placing a hairpin in Jae-yi’s styled hair, he said they should find earrings to match, then went to fetch a jewelry box.

Jae-yi pulled the hairpin from his head.

“Stupid bastard of a foreigner. This is a hairpin from Wae.”

Jay had once thought that if he jammed this damned hairpin into the foreigner’s manhole, maybe the man would never try to stick something like it into him again. But when quite a bit of time passed and the man still hadn’t returned, Jay, growing suspicious, walked over to where he had gone.

If only he hadn’t gone there.

Lifting his skirt carefully, Jay moved to the spot, only to find the man standing completely still. Or rather, he appeared to be standing alone. The moon was dark that night, and he couldn’t see clearly. There wasn’t even an oil lamp to guide him.

Jay approached the man, wondering why he was standing there by himself, and reached out his hand.

That was when he realized—the man wasn’t alone.

Someone wearing black clothing, the kind assassins might wear, was holding the man. Blood was gushing from his neck.

The stranger had blood smeared around his mouth and was gulping it down desperately as it spurted out.

“Ah, damn. Bit wrong,” he muttered in Portuguese.

The unstoppable flow of blood made Jay’s face go pale, as if his own blood had been drained.

“Did you see?”

The man asked, this time speaking in Ming Chinese¹⁰. Jay didn’t answer. He simply collapsed to the ground.

“Small chest. Your clothes don’t look local.”

As he said this, the man came closer, seemingly thinking Jay was a woman.

“Tough luck. If you hadn’t seen anything, I would’ve let you live.”

With that, the man lunged.

A sharp sting pierced Jay’s neck, and he flinched.

All strength drained from his body, replaced by a heavy sense of drowsiness, and heat began to pool somewhere inside him. His face flushed red. Even the thing between his legs stirred to life.

Feeling it press against his thigh, the man pulled back and looked at Jay.

Jay felt shame and humiliation swell in him as the stranger’s eerie eyes stared at him like he was some kind of pervert. I didn’t want to wear this, he thought bitterly.

But in that moment of hesitation—there was his chance.

As the man paused to study him, caught off guard, Jay thought he could break free.

He reached out and shoved him. The man tried to grab Jay’s hands in surprise, but missed.

Jay used the opening to punch the man hard in the face. No matter how delicate he looked, a grown man’s punch wasn’t something you could walk off.

Jay had been strong, even back in Joseon—he had enjoyed archery almost as much as he enjoyed women and drink. The man’s nose crumpled, possibly broken, and blood spilled down in a stream.

Some of it splashed onto Jay’s face and ran down the back of his neck.

When that blood seeped into the puncture wounds in his neck, the man gave a startled chuckle… which twisted into a dark, amused grin.

Then he laughed aloud, a deep, rattling laugh that made Jay think, What is this demon? Has he lost his mind?

“Lucky, aren’t you,” the man said.

“If you survive, that must be God’s will too.”

There are no such things as monsters or spirits in this world, you fool.

What would a halfwit foreigner who doesn’t even understand Neo-Confucianism¹¹ know of such things? Then again, maybe that’s why they worship someone who came back from the dead and call him a god.

With that twisted laugh, the man leapt out the window and disappeared.

Jay, staring at the dead foreigner, eventually just returned to bed and lay down.

In the morning, people would talk about the dead foreigner and ask what happened, but Jay figured he could just pretend to know nothing.

Luckily, no one asked him a thing.

For the next week, Jay was violently ill. The people—thinking he’d caught some kind of plague—dumped him out onto the street.

He never found out what became of the corpse of the man who had once been their master.

What Jay did know was that on the winter solstice¹²of 1599, the Year of the Gihae¹³, he regained his health.

And that the name of the perverted Portuguese man who had bought him was João.

It took another month before Jay realized he had become a vampire.

* * *

Winter in New York is, in a word, fucking awful. It’s disgustingly cold. A radiator that barely heats the air isn’t nearly enough to survive this kind of weather.

Vampires, in particular, are weak to the cold. Jay often wondered how vampires who crossed over to the New World back when it was still New Amsterdam ever managed to survive the winters here. Some say winters in Korea are just as cold, but honestly, Jay doesn’t really remember what those winters felt like anymore.

Still, at least Joseon had ondol¹⁴.

Thankfully, the world has progressed. If there’s no ondol, you use something that works like it. The electric heating pad Jay bought off Amazon was a miracle. Everyone he brought over would melt into sleep on it like butter. Which made feeding much easier.

The only problem was that the heating pad broke yesterday. And Amazon never delivers same-day. A minor inconvenience, really.

Jay works part-time during the day at a bookstore or a café, and at a bar at night. He’s been nocturnal from birth, usually falling asleep just before sunrise. That’s how he ended up captured as a war prisoner—partying late into the night at a gisaeng house. Naturally, all those obscene nights with the Portuguese man had happened at night too.

Even after becoming a vampire and blending back into human society, Jay continued working night shifts. There weren’t many decent gigs during the day. He had traveled across many countries, but no matter where he went, there were always limits to what an Asian man could do. In the New World, he worked construction, waited tables, even helped lay down the cross-continental railroad.

But over time, even blue-collar work grew scarce for people like him. Eventually, he got involved in… less respectable jobs he wouldn’t talk about. These days, he was lucky enough to be working at an ordinary bookstore and bar.

You meet all kinds of people in a place like this—especially at bars.

“Ugh, it’s freezing today.”

Jay muttered as he walked into the café. He’d quit this job about two years ago, but he still filled in when they needed someone. He’d considered turning it down when they asked him to cover for a week, but you never know how life turns out. Better to say yes, just in case he got fired from the bookstore or the bar and needed to ask for this job back.

Still, for the past five years, Jay had lived quite well under this identity. Yes—five years already.

He was twenty-three under this name now.

He had been twenty-three, too, when he became a vampire.

“Hey, Jay.”

“Hey, Benji.”

The café on West 34th wasn’t overly busy, but it wasn’t empty either. Mostly focused on takeout, the small shop stayed afloat thanks to its regulars. Benjamin, an old coworker of Jay’s, had settled here three years ago, saying it was slower than his last place.

Compared to the morning rush, things had quieted down.

Jay hung his coat, grabbed an apron, and came out, washing his hands before asking.

“How was today?”

“Same as always.”

Benjamin replied, brushing a hand along Jay’s cheek and placing the other on his shoulder—a strangely clingy gesture. Benjamin Monroe had always been physically close with people. After a certain amount of time, he was just like this with everyone.

Jay gently removed Benjamin’s hand from his shoulder and turned to greet a customer who had just entered.

That’s how café work was—pulling espresso, brewing drip coffee, steaming milk for lattes, checking what kind of milk they wanted, which syrup, whether it was decaf—repeating simple motions with care. It made Jay feel almost human.

No—more like it made him feel like he had returned to being human.

Of course, he couldn’t actually become one again. But compared to the aimless existence of a vampire where wasting time was practically a virtue, this was a stark contrast.

After a few more coffees, the café slowed down. It was probably because the lunch crowd was thinning out. Benjamin looked at Jay and asked, “Want to take a break?”

It was one of the few chances to rest before the after-work rush hit. When Jay replied, “Sure,” the sound of sirens came from nearby. The noise drew closer, then passed right in front of the café.

An ambulance.

“Whoever it is, they’re about to rack up a hell of a bill.”

Benjamin said,

“Maybe they’re rich.”

“I wrote in my wallet, ‘Don’t call an ambulance no matter what happens.’ I’d rather die.”

Not that dying is easy, Jay thought.

In the early days after becoming a vampire, he had tried all sorts of ways to die, but it was hopeless.

They said vampires die from silver, from sunlight, from fire—but even when he touched silver, he didn’t die. He didn’t die under the sun either. It just hurt a bit. That’s why Jay always wears sunscreen. Dying might be fine, but he hated pain for no reason.

There was also the rumor that a stake through the heart would kill a vampire—but to be precise, it doesn’t kill you. It just immobilizes you while it’s stuck in. Remove it, and you can move again. Whether people call that “coming back to life” or what, who knows.

At that moment, another siren rang out. Not an ambulance this time.

A car sped past the front of the café. A police car.

“NYPD¹⁵? Something happened?”

“Looks like it.”

If both the ambulance and the police showed up, it was probably an assault or a murder. The age-old method of problem-solving, unchanged since long before human civilization.

Benjamin seemed to lose interest quickly and shifted the topic.

“You working tonight too?”

“Can’t cover rent otherwise.”

“I told you to get a roommate.”

“I can’t live with other people.”

“I figured that when you turned me down. You have any idea how hard it is to find a roommate as great as me?”

Getting a roommate meant he wouldn’t be able to bring different people home each time. Who knows what they might hear. Bringing them over was fine, but if they kept leaving with blank expressions and no memory, it would raise suspicion. And erasing a roommate’s memory every time—he didn’t have enough blood for that.

“If I ever think of living with someone, you’ll be the first I ask.”

Not that it’ll ever happen.

Benjamin took that as a promise and tapped his upper chest with a fist, then placed a hand back on Jay’s shoulder. The weight settled heavily.

Jay thought there probably wouldn’t be any more customers, but then the doorbell rang and the door opened.

Cops.

Benjamin instinctively tensed, then quickly forced a smile, pulling his lips apart and greeting the officers at the counter with a grin.

“Hello, officers.”

Jay smirked slightly as he watched Benjamin’s overly polite greeting, then casually glanced at the two police officers.

A male-female pair—they were whispering so no one else could hear.

“What was the name again?”

“Father John. He was only in his early 40s.”

“So young. But killing a priest in a church? That’s completely insane.”

“Maybe too many people drove them mad. You know that experiment, right? The one with rats—where they’re crammed into one place and start killing each other once the density gets too high? Anyway, upper brass said something seemed off.”

Of course, Jay could hear them. Vampires have sharp senses. This wasn’t the kind of whisper he’d miss.

“Two black coffees, please.”

Benjamin said, “Two coffees,” and passed the order to Jay. Drip coffee was Jay’s task. He replied with no words, simply moving to brew the coffee.

Benjamin glanced at Jay once before turning to the two officers.

“So, did something happen?” he asked.

People in New York don’t usually go in for small talk, but with bartenders and baristas, they often strike up conversations without hesitation. That made this place ideal for casual chatter. Of course, it would be a different story in a busy café—but this was a small shop that relied on regulars, so there was a bit of room for it.

“Just one of those usual incidents,” said one of the officers.

Not that killing a priest in a church was anything close to “usual.”

“Though we don’t know if it’s gonna fall under our jurisdiction. It’s a bit… strange,” the officer added.

“Are you even allowed to say stuff like that?” Benjamin asked with a cheeky smile.

The officers chuckled and replied, “Of course it’s confidential.”

“Did it happen nearby?”

“Yeah, that church over there,” said one of them, pointing toward the corner on the right.

He added, “It’s currently off-limits, so if you have any business there, you’ll need to turn around.”

“Oh, that one… St. Michael’s? A real damnation, huh. Did someone rob the church or something?”

A priest was murdered, Jay thought, but kept it to himself as he handed the finished coffee to Benjamin. The officers smiled without further comment.

Right. For regular people, robbing a church was probably as far as their imagination would go.

Benjamin passed the two cups of coffee to the officers.

“Here you go, two black coffees.”

“Thanks.”

“Have a good day.”

Benjamin even added a polite “sir” at the end of his farewell, and the moment the officers left, he exhaled sharply.
“God, that was scary,” he said. Jay nodded in agreement, even though he hadn’t thought much of it.

“Come to think of it, wasn’t there a priest who used to stop by here often?”

“There was.”

“What was his name again?”

“John.”

“Right. Father John. I’ll have to ask him what happened when he comes in next time.”

Though from what I just overheard… it sounded like Father John was the one who died.

“Yeah… If it was a robbery or burglary, they’re probably busy filing reports or something.”

As Jay spoke, he pulled out his phone. There were no customers at the moment, so he had a little breathing room.

He scrolled through the short list of contacts saved on his phone: Elaine, Jonathan, Patricia, Kyle, Benjamin, Alec.

That was about everyone Jay knew.

He sent a message to Jonathan Taylor.

Jonathan Taylor
Come to the pub where I work tonight.

Whether Jonathan would actually show up or not—Jay didn’t know.

* * *

The bar near the Empire State Building was open to everyone.

Unlike those old-fashioned bars that looked like they’d reject outsiders from the doorway, this one had a more welcoming entrance—maybe that’s why it always drew a steady stream of first-time visitors. That was the first reason Jay had chosen it as his workplace.

The second reason was that it was a good spot for finding a one-night partner. With so many new faces coming in, it was easy to slip someone your number if they caught your interest.

But unfortunately, tonight wasn’t one of those nights.

Jonathan didn’t show up until after midnight.

“Why’d you call me?”

His voice was drowsy and slow.

Tall and broad, with red hair—Jonathan was masculinity itself, born in human form. He was popular with both men and women, which made hunting for blood especially easy.

Jonathan was from the Kingdom of Prussia¹⁶ (보로사, 普魯斯). Born in the early 1700s by Gregorian reckoning, he was, in Jay’s view, just a kid.

He had moved to the Netherlands and joined the later waves of New World exploration. That’s how he ended up in New York. But relations between the Dutch and New York weren’t great at the time, so Jonathan betrayed the Dutch and sided with the British. Not long after, he joined the revolutionaries. Supposedly, he died and came back to life several times during that period.

He had stayed in New York ever since. Jay heard he changed his name to Jonathan during World War II—his original name sounded too German. He once said that back then, ordinary people were scarier than vampire hunters.

“A priest was murdered near the café on West 34th today,” Jay said.

“Damn. Got some guts, killing a priest?”

Elaine had fabricated a backstory where Jonathan and Jay were raised like brothers, so they had to stay in touch regularly.

In the past, there was no need for personal contact, but in this era, if you died, your identity would be checked and next of kin contacted. Jonathan said he didn’t like his current identity and would ditch it after ten years. Elaine, who had to redo his documents, found this extremely annoying.

Jay, on the other hand, welcomed the idea. If it meant not having to see that face again, he’d be more than willing to go report a dead redhead as Jonathan.

“Yeah, but the priest’s name was John,” Jay said.

Jonathan raised an eyebrow.

“John? Father John?”

“Yep. Anything come to mind?”

“You don’t think… John Stalker came to America, do you? He mostly operates in Europe.”

“John Stalker shows up anywhere there are white people,” Jay said.

Jonathan gave a short laugh.

“Right, you’d know best.”

John Stalker was the vampire who had turned Shin Jae-yi into a vampire.

No one knew John Stalker’s real name.

He had existed since long ago. Rumor had it he was from Alexandria¹⁷… or maybe he lived in Troy. Some said he was from ancient Greece. But they were just rumors—nothing was certain.

The only things Jay knew for sure were that John spoke Portuguese, English, German, French, and Chinese. His French was closer to Quebecois¹⁸than to mainland French, and his English had an East Coast American accent, like someone who’d lived in the New World for a long time.

Among vampires, John Stalker was famous.

Not just because of his supposed immortality or pureblood status, but also because of his stunning beauty.

With wavy, golden-brown hair, he was said to resemble Ganymede—the most beautiful mortal, according to Homer.

Curious, Jay had once looked up who Ganymede was: a beautiful boy whom Zeus cherished. They said Zeus was always stealing kisses from him—especially while he poured wine.

Whenever John Stalker kissed someone, blood flowed as red as wine. So in that sense, the nickname “Ganymede¹⁹” suited him. He was, after all, breathtakingly handsome.

But John’s bizarre behavior made people forget Ganymede altogether—hence the nickname “Stalker.”

The reason for that name was simple: his choice of prey.

Jay became a vampire because of a hunt. Because John Stalker had come to Macau. Because of who was there.

João.

The perverted Portuguese man who had bought Shin Jae-yi.

John Stalker only drank the blood of people named “John.”

More precisely, he fed only on those whose names originated from Johannes—the Apostle²⁰John.