Advice

“You’re asking if I can… fire my spines?”
“Yes. The spines are threatening in themselves, but there’s the problem of having to close the distance, isn’t there? If you could attack at range, you’d be far more threatening. And safer, too.”
“Ah…”

Hedgehoggirl hung on every word, her eyes wide open. Advice to fire off the long spines growing out of her head. That wasn’t advice I’d guessed at just from looking at her.

If I saw it through Future Observation, it’s definitely going to become the future before long.

A future seen through Future Observation becomes reality one hundred percent of the time. The only thing you can’t know is when. So if I’d seen it in the future, she could definitely do it.

“B-but I’ve never tried firing my spines, so…”
“Is it impossible for you?”
“…I don’t know.”
“If you can find the time, try testing it at the Combat Training Office later — I’m sure you’ll get a good result out of it. If you could fire the spines, or even steer them…”

— Pap-pap!

Mid-sentence, somebody beside me jabbed me in the thigh. Assistant Manager Ko Hyeonsik, with that bear-like look about him. He was staring at me, eyes wide, and there was pressure in that look, as though telling me to say no more.

“I-I’ll give it a try, then.”

Hedgehoggirl hadn’t noticed a thing. She balled up her fists, burning with enthusiasm.

“…Yes, do your best. Is there anything else you’d like to ask?”
“No, nothing. Th-thank you.”
“Then we’ll close the consultation here. I wish you the best of luck.”

Hedgehoggirl bobbed her head shyly in farewell, and I left the meeting room with Ko Hyeonsik.

The moment the door shut, Ko Hyeonsik’s face crumpled into a scowl.

“Hahh… No, Assistant Manager Im, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Sorry? Doing what?”
“Never mind ‘doing what’… Don’t go filling their heads with strange ideas for no reason. She isn’t even your assignment yet — how can you pull this on one of mine?”

Ko Hyeonsik raked a hand back through his hair, frustrated. He was bigger than me, and honestly, it was a little frightening. But I had seen the future, so I stood my ground. Seen her fire her spines and turn a losing fight around.

“She requested a combat consultation, so I gave her a few pieces of advice. I don’t see what the problem is.”
“Hoo… Fine. Assistant Manager Im, you’re a bright one, so a little explaining should do it. Listen carefully.”

He rifled through the folder and opened it to the ‘Post-Combat Report’ field on the very last page. A blank report, nothing written in it yet. Exasperated, he shoved the document under my nose.

“You don’t get why I tell you not to give advice? You hand out some strange advice, and then the Villain writes in here that she lost because of me, that the advice was off — I’m the only one who takes the hit.”
“…”
“That’s why you just fudge it and move on. Even if you do advise them, there’s no right answer, all right? How are you supposed to advise blind when you don’t know which Hero they’ll be up against? They write me a bad review for nothing and it’s my rating that drops. This counts as performance too, same as Hero Gamble.”

What Ko Hyeonsik said was much the same as what Kwon Hyeri had said. Combat advice is high risk, low return. No need to pile more liability onto yourself over a fight with that many variables. That held in the ordinary case, but for me, with Future Observation, it didn’t apply.

“I apologize for acting on my own back there. Hedgehoggirl is your assignment, Assistant Manager Ko. But if I do get Villains of my own, I intend to advise them where it’s appropriate.”
“…Tch.”

Ko Hyeonsik gave me a sour sidelong look, then shook his head.

“Well, do as you like. Just not with mine… Ah, while we’re at it, I’ll switch Hedgehoggirl over to you as well, Assistant Manager Im.”
“To me?”
“I was going to hand them over in about a week, but one of them now won’t hurt. That’s settled, so from now on Hedgehoggirl is Assistant Manager Im’s. And don’t go slinging shit on my career for nothing.”
“…”
“Today’s work is all done, so kill some time at the office or wherever and clock out. I’ll be at a café nearby.”

— Pap-pap.

Ko Hyeonsik patted my shoulder a couple of times and was gone.

The work had ended at three, which left a full three hours until clocking out at six. Handle your assigned work slapdash and you wind up with time on your hands like this.

I do wonder whether this is all right… but I suppose I’m the one who has to adapt.

Only a week ago I’d been running around out of my mind every rush hour and every lunch break. Now, between keeping Villains sweet and running consultations, I had time to spare. The work had gotten easier and the salary had gone up instead. So this, I thought, was why the people in the Strategic Analysis Office gritted their teeth and worked so hard.

— Knock-knock.

“Come in.”

The door of the Strategic Analysis Office Team 5 team leader’s office opened. Assistant Manager Ko Hyeonsik stepped into a room lined with drained energy drinks, fiddled awkwardly with his tie, and spoke.

“I’ve been down to the Villain Planning and Management Office.”
“Is the handover going well?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been treating him well, I take it? Assuming you haven’t forgotten what I told you last time.”
“…Yes.”

Ko Hyeonsik nodded, even as his face twisted.

“But parachute hire or not¹, a two-rank promotion one week into the job is going a bit far, isn’t it?”
“We simply went by the standard.”
“Is somebody upstairs fixing the match for him, or what…”

Ko Hyeonsik aired his discontent without bothering to disguise it. Before he took on Im Taeseung’s handover, Kwon Hyeri herself had told him the man was a parachute hire from ‘upstairs’. To his face he forced a smile and treated him well, but underneath it Ko Hyeonsik was not happy at all.

“That I wouldn’t know. So… how has Assistant Manager Im Taeseung been?”
“He doesn’t know how the world works.”
“He doesn’t know how the world works?”

— Tap.

Kwon Hyeri’s hand had kept moving all the while she listened to the report. Now it stopped.

“What do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what I said. As if there’s time to spend on the likes of Villains — there he is handing out advice for no reason… Well, I had a phase like that myself, but this is a bit much.”
“…”
“Maybe a bounty on his neck has him thinking he’s a Villain too… Do I really have to drag him around for a whole week?”

Ko Hyeonsik had made Assistant Manager on Team 5 in his fifth year. Five years in and still only an Assistant Manager on Team 5 was hardly a lofty position… but surviving five whole years wedged in among that much talent meant he had cut his teeth in his own way. Which was why he knew a new Assistant Manager’s mistakes inside out.

“The moment you start feeling sorry for a Villain, your numbers start slipping away. You know that yourself, ma’am.”
“That’s… true.”

Emotion and performance are inversely proportional. The more time, emotion and affection you pour into a Villain… the lower your performance drops instead.

He had grasped that truth early. That aside, he was bad at Hero Gamble, and that was what had made him a perpetual Assistant Manager.

“Explain it concretely. What actually happened?”
“You know the one. Short on aggression, so her Villain rank came out low… ah, I’ll just show you the document.”

— Rustle.

He took Hedgehoggirl’s folder out of his jacket and held it out, showing her the combat report along with the ‘Combat Consultation’ field Im Taeseung had filled in himself.

In a space that would normally hold nothing but window dressing, this was what stood written.

Well, would you look at that?

The corner of Kwon Hyeri’s mouth twitched.

All consultation material, the combat consultation field included, is stored in Beyond Villain’s records. And if Hedgehoggirl were to turn in a below-expectation performance in a deployment down the line? The liability would grow for Im Taeseung, not just for Hedgehoggirl. A situation where his performance could go on record as poor, on the grounds that he had given useless advice.

Visible Hero Gamble numbers might matter most, but consultations were one of Im Taeseung’s duties too. Just as Ko Hyeonsik, with his poor Hero Gamble record, was a perpetual Assistant Manager… so Im Taeseung’s own performance on combat consultations could end up dragging him down.

Kwon Hyeri, though, was the team leader, and she knew Im Taeseung’s Hero Gamble record. She thought differently.

…And if the advice lands exactly right.

The Hero Gamble record, he had already proven. Im Taeseung, who had grown a million won into thirteen million in a single week. He might well go and rewrite the company record. And if on top of that he wrapped up combat consultation, one of an Assistant Manager’s duties, successfully as well.

“…Staff, Senior Staff, Assistant Manager, Deputy Manager, Manager, General Manager.”
“Sorry?”
“Starting from Staff, that’s five rungs of rank, isn’t it?”
“Th-that’s right. But why would that…”
“No, no reason.”

Kwon Hyeri looked out the team leader’s office window, its blinds half drawn. Assistant Manager Im Taeseung’s desk, bigger now than it had been a week ago. She stared at that desk and murmured.

“…I was just wondering whether there’s ever been a three-rank promotion since the Strategic Analysis Office was founded.”
“Sorry?”
“It’s nothing. Do a good job with the handover this week.”
“Yes, yes.”

Ko Hyeonsik left the team leader’s office with a baffled look on his face.

“You’ll manage on your own from here, won’t you?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Anything you don’t know, ask me or the Villain Planning and Management Office. Hahaha. Right, I’m off.”

Ko Hyeonsik quickened his step, his face lightened.

A week gone already.

The days had gone quickly while I learned the work at his side. The short handover period was over, and from here on I had to move entirely on my own. Nothing about it was especially difficult, so if anything I felt relieved to have Ko Hyeonsik gone.

I’d been walking on eggshells around him, besides.

Ko Hyeonsik was a peculiar man. In front of the Villains he wore his sales smile and treated them kindly; the moment he stepped out he swore up a storm and clicked his tongue, saying Villains were a breed you couldn’t deal with. He’d been kind enough to me, maybe because he’d heard about my numbers… well, who knows.

After the Hedgehoggirl business he had somehow kept his distance, and his opinion of me had probably nosedived from that day on. For my part, with him off my back, things were easier, and that suited me fine.

“Let’s just get to work.”

I picked up the heavy folder and made my way to the meeting room, knocked on the door marked ‘Meeting Room 9’ and opened it. There was the hedgehog girl, watching me shyly.

“Hello.”
“H-hello…!”
“Your deployment’s already tomorrow.”
“It is. I-I’m still nervous, though…”

Tomorrow was the day of Hedgehoggirl’s first deployment. As luck would have it, she had been selected as the Wake-Up Call Villain, a highly competitive slot. Because it turns up on the morning commute, people who want to avoid the Villain watch the news, and the viewing figures run high. With that many eyes on it, a botched job could chip away at the brand image.

“Wh-what do I do… If I can’t do it properly…”
“You can do it. I hear you come in for training every day.”
“I do… But that ranged attack you mentioned last time… no matter how much I try, it just w-won’t work…”

The spines growing in place of her hair drooped limply. Today, the day before her first deployment, might well be her last consultation. Of all the Villains in my charge, hers came earliest, which made me all the more anxious.

The ranged attack still isn’t working, she said?

Unlike what I’d seen in the Future Observation, she hadn’t mastered the ranged attack. She could raise the spines and let them fall at will, but… firing them off was something she had never once managed.

“I’m sorry… After you went to the trouble of advising me…”
“No, sometimes it doesn’t work. But I believe you’re going to win, Hedgehoggirl.”
“R-really?”
“Yes. Without question.”

Hedgehoggirl’s eyes went round.

“I-I’m not aggressive like the other Villains, and I’m no good at fighting either… h-how can you think I’ll win?”

Hedgehoggirl, looking up at me with eyes like saucers. When even she couldn’t believe in herself… absolute trust from someone like me might well feel strange to her. It wasn’t as though I could honestly say I’d seen the future, so how was I supposed to put this.

“…This is something I heard somewhere, but.”
“Yes?”
“If you can’t believe in yourself, believe in someone who believes in you. That’s what I’d like to say to you.”
“!”
“How about trying to believe in me, who believes you’ll win?”

A line whose source I didn’t even know, picked up who knows where. But it was the only thing I had to give her.

If you can’t believe in yourself, believe in the person who believes in you.

“…Th-th-th-thank you.”
“I’ll be looking forward to your first deployment tomorrow.”
“Yes, yes!”

Only then did a faint smile spread across Hedgehoggirl’s face. She seemed to have gained at least a little confidence, which was a relief. And so the last consultation wrapped up in a warm mood.

The day of the long-awaited first deployment.

“…”

Hedgehoggirl’s fight had begun.