Revenge

This is… a news screen?

Cha Huigyeong was on the news screen Future Observation showed me. Cha Huigyeong, overwhelming Tiger Pants. Then, out of nowhere, she pulled out her phone, looked at it, and froze solid. Tiger Pants seized the opening and sent her flying with a fist he threw with everything he had.

And there the Future Observation ended. A vague, ambiguous observation that gave no clear answer as to who had won.

Nothing strange about that. Future Observation… isn’t something I can control.

What triggers Future Observation is unknown, and I don’t even get to decide which future it shows me. Back when I was working Hero Gamble as ‘user_107107’, this sort of thing happened all the time. If I could have controlled it, I’d probably have piled up my billion-won target inside a week.

The problem is I can’t bet on that alone…

Cha Huigyeong might have taken that hit and beaten Tiger Pants anyway. And why had she pulled out her phone in the first place, only to take a shock like that? Checking your phone with an enemy right in front of you is strange in itself.

Just then an idea flashed through my head like lightning.

…What if it was something she had no choice but to check?

A message she would have to open even in a dangerous situation, with an enemy standing in front of her. And if what it said was shocking enough to freeze her the instant she read it…

Cha Huigyeong’s ‘defeat’ might just become a certainty.

“Rookie! How long ago did I tell you to make those copies!”
“Ah, sorry!”

I had let my thinking run on too long. I grabbed the documents and hurried off at a run.

There was time to spare. Time enough to send Cha Huigyeong a ‘message’.

“Gwahahaha! A B-rank Hero?! I told you to bring me an A-rank, at least!”

— Shrrk-krak!

Tiger Pants’s sharp claws scythed across each other. Claws terrifying enough to shear through cars, and the road’s asphalt along with them. Even against that onslaught, the Hero facing him dodged without so much as blinking.

Her name was Cha Huigyeong. To the public, she was the B-rank Hero ‘Speedgirl’.

— Fwoosh!

In that instant her figure vanished. Tiger Pants slashed his claws all around himself, a beat too late. Punching through that hair-thin opening, Cha Huigyeong drove a kick down like a thunderbolt.

“Hurgk!!”

— Krrack!

A blow powerful enough to crack asphalt. Cha Huigyeong put her Gift to work and piled on the damage, steadily. Quick as he was, nothing he did could block her; the eye could not even follow her speed.

“Speedgirl! Win it for us!!”
“She’s our hope!”
“She’s still B-rank? No way…”
“Get promoted to A-rank soon and protect our city!”

The cheers of the citizens standing well back carried over to her. Inside her helmet the corners of Cha Huigyeong’s mouth twitched upward almost against her will. Catharsis and superiority, and a chill running up her spine with them. She shivered once, all over, and gathered her fighting spirit again.

She had not fully subdued her opponent yet. Superior’s lot were built especially tough, so she could not afford to drop her guard. Even if it took a little more time, better to kill him properly and steadily…

— Vrrr—!!

“…!?”

Just then the phone she had tucked into the pocket of her suit buzzed. Ordinarily, a Hero’s phone does not go off while she is on duty. With one single exception.

Im Taeseung, the ‘surveillance target’ Cha Huigyeong had been assigned to for years.

He still isn’t moving. I can take a quick look now.

She made sure Tiger Pants still hadn’t gotten up, then pulled out her phone. He had run off on her, so why the sudden contact? She had a guess.

He’s probably trying to come back to me… All that keeping has paid off.

She had kept Im Taeseung well, paying out hundreds of thousands of won every week. So that he couldn’t take a part-time job, couldn’t get hired anywhere, couldn’t go on pestering the Hero Association. She had made sure the feed went in reliably, so that money came to him as long as he simply kept breathing.

And so she had thought: Im Taeseung would cling to her in desperation to get back to her. He would bawl and beg her to please take him back, saying it was all his fault.

But the moment she checked the messages, Cha Huigyeong’s head went cold.

“What…?”

A draining weakness, as though every drop of blood in her body had run out at once. Cha Huigyeong doubted her own two eyes.

A recording? Threatening her? Put out on the internet? The news? What she was reading sat so far beyond anything she had imagined that her vision blurred.

“How dare you look away with the great Tiger Pants standing in front of you!”
“!!!”
“This fight isn’t over yet!”

— Kaboom—!!

Tiger Pants’s blow sent her body up into the air with a whoomph. Cha Huigyeong, driven straight into the rubble of a building.

Even with her vision spinning, she could feel the eyes on her. The gazes that had been fixed on her in concern were twisted now, as though they were looking at something strange.

Whether it was her imagination, or because she had been hit while messing with her phone in the middle of a fight, or else because of the ‘recording’ her surveillance target Im Taeseung claimed to have spread… Cha Huigyeong could not tell.

At the announcer’s shout, heads all across the Strategic Analysis Office whipped around. A Speedgirl everyone had written down as a sure win, floundering. They must have put money on her winning; the reaction around me was not good at all.

“What are you doing? Finish it properly!”
“She wasn’t looking at Hero Gamble on that phone, was she?”
“Is there actually match-fixing going on inside the Hero Association?”
“Agh! If she loses this my month-end evaluation’s in trouble! Fuck!”

Not cheers for a Hero, but raw, unvarnished abuse. Watching it, I thought: a Villain organization, all right. Because money sometimes sits above justice.

And in that, I was no different.

She’s rattled, just as I thought.

The moment she checked her phone, Cha Huigyeong was visibly shaken. A voice recording and a leak onto the internet, neither of them anything she could verify in the middle of a fight.

Naturally, all of it was a lie. Nothing but a ploy of mine to break her concentration.

That’s the phone’s job done, then.

The phone with the half-shattered screen, the one I had used to contact Cha Huigyeong. I had never once switched it on before; its only use was to send that message. The moment I sent it I turned the power off, snapped it in half, and dropped it in a bin. I had the phone Scorpion gave me, so I’d been meaning to throw the old one out eventually, and in the end it came in pretty handy.

“Taeseung! Did you see the news? Speedgirl’s…”
“Yeah, looks like she lost.”

I sneaked a look at the news; another Hero had already arrived behind the fallen Speedgirl. The request for backup that goes out when a Hero loses. This is the moment Hero Gamble recognizes that a Hero has been defeated.

└ and this still isn’t match-fixing? and this still isn’t match-fixing? and this still isn’t match-fixing?

└ ah fk and i actually believed in speedgirl big sis

└ this is your A-rank candidate lolololol even a passing dog would laugh

└ honestly she isn’t really A-rank material. B is exactly her level

└ speedB-tier, speedB-tier, what a catchy little song

└ lose once and everyone’s on her case lol

└ this fkr 100% put money on tiger undies

└ yeah ok lol but what are you gonna do about it what can you even do

└ prick lmao

Public opinion’s not good.

Even the lot who bet on whether a Hero or a Villain wins rarely abuse a Hero in those raw terms. Not unless the Hero’s blunder is unmistakable, the way Cha Huigyeong’s was today.

Honestly? It served her right. Cha Huigyeong taking abuse felt good enough on its own, and on top of that I got to make money thanks to her.

I opened my tablet and checked the money in my staff account.

Even betting only what was left over, I’m already somewhere around six million won…

I couldn’t be certain of the win, so instead of going all in I held back one and a half million won and invested only the 2,320,000 won that had been my performance bonus. Odds of over 2.5 were what let me make this much.

“T-Taeseung! That’s an incredible amount of money?!”
“Uwagh!”

The voice that came out of nowhere behind me made me jump. I turned around to find Yang Hayun with her eyes sparkling. …Don’t tell me she’d seen my account balance on the tablet screen?

“That’s amazing! How did you make that much money? It’s only your second day at work! I haven’t even filled my target amount yet, and you’ve already more than doubled yours!”
“Hold on. Just be quiet for a second, Hayun.”
“Yes…?”

I took Yang Hayun by the wrist, questions still spilling out of her, and headed for the break room. Coffee was the rookie’s job, so nobody else came and went in there. I shut the break-room door and calmed my racing heart.

“…Could you start by asking me one at a time, slowly?”
“How did you make that much money?”
“By gambling, obviously.”
“I mean, how…! Ah.”

Yang Hayun, about to raise her voice, clapped a hand over her own mouth.

“I’m sorry. Obviously this is the sort of thing you can’t tell someone…”
“…”
“Everyone must have their own gambling method, their own rules. Asking about that would have been… rude of me.”

Before I could say anything, Yang Hayun was nodding to herself. She had it in her head that I had some gambling strategy I couldn’t talk about… Not that I could tell her the truth and say ‘I saw the result in the future’.

“…Thanks for understanding.”
“Of course! We’re the same intake, aren’t we?”
“So that clears up everything you were curious about?”
“Ah, there’s one last thing I want to ask!”
“What is it?”

Yang Hayun pointed a finger at the tablet in my hand.

“I can’t ask about the strategy, but could I see when and where and how you bet…?”
“You want to see my betting history?”
“Yes! I want to study up by looking at your picks, Taeseung!”
“Well… no reason why not.”
“Yaay!”

I showed her the tablet readily enough. Looking at the history wasn’t going to tell her I could see the future anyway, and I had no grounds to stop someone who said she wanted to study.

And so Yang Hayun, peering into the tablet…

“T-Taeseung? The history’s a little strange, isn’t it?”
“Hm? What is?”
“For one thing there are only two entries in the betting history…”

— Shff.

Yang Hayun turned the tablet screen toward me with a bewildered look.

“…You went a-all in on Flameman on your first day?”
“Ah.”

Yang Hayun had been looking at me with respect; now the light in her eyes wavered.