NOVEL WEB Chapter 22: Following
The ride was oddly calm.
The van glided through the corrupted landscape with an unsettling tranquility, the type of stillness that didn't belong in a world that was decaying at the seams.
It wasn't fast. It wasn't slow. It was just steady—unnaturally steady—like a lull before some inevitable calamity.
The steering wheel was firm in Vonjo's hands, but he looked far too relaxed for a man who just assassinated someone with a bow and laughed while doing it.
"Vagavoooooonjooe!" He sings loudly as if he doesn't care about hell and the world.
His one hand rested lazily on the wheel, the other occasionally tapping a rhythm only he understood on the dashboard.
Eugene sat in the passenger seat, silent, eyes flicking toward the windows every few seconds, then back at Vonjo, and then again to the shadows outside.
The scenery was shifting now, slowly revealing things that didn't belong.
A ruined gas station slumped on the roadside, but it wasn't rusted or overgrown. No—it was burned. Its charred bones clung to a crimson terrain, and a skeletal claw of a dead tree stretched from behind it like some ancient beast frozen mid-crawl.
Further ahead, what might have once been a fast food joint now resembled a crumbling shrine.
Its signs had long since melted, and black vines, slick and pulsing faintly with glowing veins, coiled around the concrete like serpents drinking from the rot of the earth.
Hell wasn't invading the world. Hell was already here. It had seeped in silently, like mold behind wallpaper, and with cracks of illusion slowly crumbled, now it was peeling to human reality piece by piece.
But Vonjo? He just hummed to himself as if driving through a scenic countryside.
Eugene swallowed.
The air inside the van felt heavy despite the functioning AC.
He opened his mouth, hesitated, closed it again. He rubbed his hands together, palms clammy, knuckles pale.
The tension had crawled into his bones, and now it refused to leave. His lips parted a second time, forming words in his throat that never dared to rise.
He glanced at Vonjo again—unmoving, relaxed, fingers drumming against the wheel.
His eyes were on the road, but Eugene felt like the man wasn't really seeing it, as if he were guided by something else.
And then—without warning—the van jolted forward.
It wasn't a bump or a pothole.
Vonjo had accelerated.
The vehicle's hum turned into a growl. Eugene's body pressed slightly into the seat from the surge. He jerked his head toward Vonjo.
"U-Uhm…!"
Still, he said nothing. His voice broke halfway. His hands fidgeted uselessly in his lap. He tried to count to three, then ten, then twenty, as if his growing anxiety could be measured and smoothed by numbers. But his heart was faster.
Faster than the road, faster than the wheels, faster than anything his logic could contain.
Finally, swallowing the stone in his throat, he found the courage—fragile and brittle—to speak.
"H-Hey, sir Vonjo... why did you… um, speed up?" He laughed nervously, a soft, high-pitched thing that trembled. "I-Is something wrong? Are there beasts? Or… something following us?"
Vonjo gave him a small side-glance—barely more than a flicker of movement—and spoke with the same casual tone as someone remarking about the weather.
"Nah," he said. "Just following the blood of the round-faced guy. The subordinate of that tall bastard I shot earlier."
Eugene blinked. His breath caught.
All the words that had gathered in his throat scattered like birds from gunfire.
He nodded quietly, eyes wide, and turned to the window to avoid the sharp smile that began to curl on Vonjo's lips.
Outside, in the corner of his vision, something was moving—a shape hunched and desperate. A hell hound.
It was large, all bone and muscle, foam trailing from its maw, but it wasn't sprinting. It was limping, staggering forward, muscles twitching violently. And clinging to its back, barely staying upright, was a man.
The round-faced man. His body slumped against the beast's fur, an arrow buried deep in his back, shaft broken but unmistakably Vonjo's work.
He wasn't dead, but he was close—his head lolled, face pressed against the filthy mane of the hound. His grip was loose, his whole frame shuddering with each step of the creature beneath him.
"Hey, kid," Vonjo said suddenly, voice sharp.
Eugene jumped.
"You drive."
"W-What?" Eugene barely processed the words when Vonjo had already kicked the door open.
Before he could argue, Vonjo was gone—he vaulted out of the moving van like a soldier leaping from a tank, boots landing atop the roof with a metallic thud that shook the entire vehicle.
Eugene stared, mouth agape, and then the van swerved slightly.
The ride jerked.
Steering wheel unattended.
"Shit!" Eugene yelped and leapt into the driver's seat. He barely had time to buckle in as he yanked the wheel to correct their course.
The van straightened, but not before a loud chorus of bullet comments—in Vonjo's eyes.
"What a maniac! Just jumps out???"
"LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOO VONJO MOMENT"
"Bro is allergic to seatbelts 💀"
"THE KID, I MEAN OUR BELOVED MAIN CHARACTER IS DRIVING NOW???"
"Hell invasion? More like GTA speedrun"
Above him, Vonjo crouched like a prowling cat on the roof, watching the comments with a grin, his hair whipping behind him in the wind, eyes gleaming with unnatural glee as the van slowly closed the distance between him and the injured hell hound.
They were side by side now, Eugene matching their pace.
The hell hound barely kept up, its legs stuttering, foam spraying from its mouth. The rider, the round-faced man, was starting to slide off its back.
"Drive slow!" Vonjo barked down.
Eugene tapped the brakes slightly. The van dipped, slowing.
"Not that slow!!"
Eugene's foot flinched, and he adjusted again, careful not to lose balance.
The vehicle coasted just parallel to the hound.
Vonjo was satisfied, suddenly, he leaned over the side now, face twisted in a sick grin near the running hell Hound and the round faced guy.
"Hey!!" he shouted.
Nothing.
"Hey! Hey!!!" he screamed again, voice slicing through the air.
The round-faced man twitched. His eyelids fluttered. His face slowly peeled away from the hound's fur, a patch of it stuck to his cheek from dried blood and foam. He blinked once, twice—confused.
And then he saw Vonjo.
His scream wasn't loud, but it was raw. Panic clawed into his eyes like talons. "Y-You! Why are you—?!"
Vonjo only laughed.
The man's breath came ragged. "Y-You—no! I… I survived! I s-survived your arrow! You—you said we could go if we lived—!"
"I did," Vonjo said between chuckles, "and look at you! You're still breathing! Good job!"
"P-Please…" The man's voice broke as he trembled, his wounds clearly searing. "Please… l-let me go! We—we had a deal! You said… you said no revenge…"
Vonjo was silent for a beat, then let out a long, exaggerated gasp. "Ohhh, right, the deal."
He cackled.
The round-faced man whimpered, "W-Why are you following me then?! Why?! We have a deal—!"
Vonjo leaned forward slightly, hanging precariously off the roof edge, just enough to make the man feel smaller.
"Curiosity," Vonjo said with a smirk. "I'm just curious where you're going."
The man's breath hitched. "W-What?"
"I thought maybe, just maybe, you're running home. To my half-brother." Vonjo's grin widened. "Wouldn't that be fun? What a lovely surprise that would be. Maybe I'll say hi. Maybe I'll beat the ever-living crap out of him."
"You promised! We agreed—no revenge on the House of Sutterfouse!"
Vonjo raised both hands in mock surrender, laughter bubbling again.
"Of course, of course! I said I wouldn't take revenge on your house."
The man narrowed his eyes in terror. "Then—then why—why are you still—?!"
"I didn't say anything about not beating up my half-brother," Vonjo said.
He laughed so hard, his body curled against the roof of the van, his voice echoing in the hell-tainted wind.
"Sometimes a guy's just gotta say hi to family, right?"