Reunion

“It seems only yesterday that you were weeping and wailing about whether this meant betraying the Heroes… and yet you appear to have settled into Beyond Villain rather well.”

“…”

Belia’s face, the first I’d seen of it in about two months, hadn’t changed at all. In my earliest days at the company I couldn’t find my footing, and there were times I resented her for it. But somewhere along the way I had gone from new hire to Senior Staff, to Assistant Manager, to Deputy Manager. Without the chance she gave me, the man I am now wouldn’t exist either.

Come to think of it, I had never actually said it.

“Thank you. For scouting me into this company.”
“Hoh? I never imagined I would hear a word of thanks from you.”

“You did save me from being kept like an animal by Cha Huigyeong, after all.”

Sooner or later, being slaughtered by Cha Huigyeong had been a foregone conclusion. The one who pulled me out of that trap was Belia herself, and she had even set up a whole new opportunity for me on top of it, this thing called the Strategic Analysis Office.

“The Director of Greed… For someone with a title like that, you’ve been awfully generous with me.”
“I am merely repaying the favor your father did me.”
“…The favor my father did you?”
“Rather than asking after my past, would it not be more efficient to ask about your father’s death? Time is not infinite.”

“!”

That’s right. My promise with Belia was still in force. I produce meaningful results at Beyond Villain’s Strategic Analysis Office. In return, she had agreed to tell me the secret tangled up in my father’s death. That was the kind of contract it was.

“Then are you prepared to hear it?”
“…All right. Let’s leave the pleasantries there and get to the point.”

“You have posted rather better results than I anticipated, so I shall throw in a little extra myself.”

— Slide.

She passed me the black document folder that had been lying on the desk.

“This is…?”
“Open it.”

A folder plastered all over with stickers reading ‘Top Secret’. For a moment I wondered whether I was really allowed to open it. I glanced at Belia once, then opened the file.

…A death record?

Astonishingly, it was the record of my father’s death, a thing I had never once laid eyes on. Top Secret stickers were plastered all over that too, and between them the contents were hard to make out. All I could get out of it was the date my father died, and, roughly, the record of who had gone with him that day.

“…I have no idea what any of this says.”
“Look at me all you like; I am in precisely the same position.”
“Can’t you peel these stickers off for me?”
“They are held on by a Gift, so the instant they are peeled away the document vanishes. If that suits you, by all means try.”

“…”

There was an edge to Belia’s words, and I set the folder back down untouched. Between the stickers plastered over it I hadn’t managed to read a thing properly.

But one thing I knew for certain.

“B-rank Hero Speedgirl… Cha Huigyeong was mixed up in this?”
“Hoo-hoo. Yes. That woman Cha Huigyeong was there at the scene where your father died.”

— Grit.

The Hero name written on the document, the one beginning with ‘Spee’. There is no other B-rank Hero with a name like that but Speedgirl. Whether she killed my father with her own hands, or tried to save him, or something else entirely, it was certain that Cha Huigyeong was connected to his death.

“You are not entertaining the idiotic notion of going to Cha Huigyeong, I trust?”
“Obviously not. Throw myself at Cha Huigyeong the way I am now and I’d plainly just die like a dog.”
“Impressive indeed. I rather thought getting hold of a WD-401 and putting down a few drunken thugs would have gone straight to your head.”

“…?”

Her words gave me a start. How did she know I’d bought the WD-401 on the black market, or that I’d come out on top against those thugs?

Belia gave one of her bewitching smiles and waved a hand.

“You are a man I brought into this company with my own directorship on the line. Should I not know at least this much?”
“You staked your directorship? What’s that supposed to…”

“Questions end here. Your time is at an end.”

— Snaaap!

Belia snapped her fingers and the space around me rippled. That suspicious space, still impossible to tell whether it was a Gift or something else entirely. Through the tingling sensation of waking from a dream, her last words brushed past my ear.

“You need not fret so. Even if you do not go to her, Cha Huigyeong will come to you.”

Before I could answer a word, my eyes opened again.

…The TF team’s lab?

The corridor outside the TF team’s lab, where I’d been posted only days before. It was also the exact spot I’d been standing in before Belia pulled me away. Three times she had done that now, and her Gift was still a complete unknown. All I knew about her was that she was a Director of Beyond Villain.

And that she owes my father a debt… and that she takes a great deal of interest in me. About that much.

How she knew I’d bought the WD-401 was beyond me. She even knew about the black market auction. Then again, for a Director of one of the three great Villain organizations, that kind of reach was nothing to be surprised at.

What mattered was that Cha Huigyeong was connected to my father’s death.

For now, give the TF team everything I have. And build up my strength.

The more I work, the more money there is and the more time of my own I gain. With money I buy gear; with time I build my body up and get ready to take Cha Huigyeong down.

That was the first goal.

Even if I marched off to her without a plan, I couldn’t beat her by force anyway. On top of that, she was a talent the Association prized enough to call her ‘Semi-A-rank’. To bring down someone like that, I needed a sure opening.

Just then the lab door banged open and something small came shooting out.

“No. 1! I been lookin’ for ya forever! Did ya get to see Greed okay?”
“Ah…”

Amos, with the build of a small child, went circling round and round me. As though she were looking for something. Just as I started wondering what she was up to, her face crumpled like she was about to cry.

“Where’s the snacks? You said you’d buy some.”
“Sorry? Snacks? What do you… ah.”

Now that I thought about it, she had told me to buy snacks before I came. I’d only just stepped out of that room; there had been no time to go and buy any. And in truth the information Belia had handed me had been too great a shock to leave room for it. Looking at that face, ready to burst into tears any second, for now…

“It’s just that I didn’t know which snacks you liked, so I’ve been agonizing over it.”
“…Really? Ya didn’t jus’ forget?”
“Yes, of course. Tell me which and I’ll go and buy them right away.”
“Then I want choc’lit!”
“I’ll be right back.”

— Scamper!

Terrified that Amos might turn me into an octopus or a cockroach, I hurried on my way.

Life at Beyond Villain is a tightrope walk, one day at a time. And not only for me; every member of staff in the company must feel exactly the same. In exchange for the lavish benefits and the high salary, it runs a savage personnel system. In a sense you could call that only natural.

But a day on the TF team was, if I had to put an image to it, a tightrope walk inside a pit of fire.

How many times has Future Observation fired today alone…?

Cross Amos’s mood even slightly, and some part of your body turns into an insect or an animal. One week on from the TF team’s formation, roughly a quarter of the staff had taken damage.

The fate of a staff member who took it came in two kinds. Either they raged and screamed and quit the company outright. Or… like Hong Jangwoo beside me, they just gritted their teeth and endured.

“What are you looking at?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Tch. Plays secretary to a squirt for five minutes and it goes straight to his head…”

“…”

Hong Jangwoo must have caught my gaze; he clicked his tongue. One of his legs was still an octopus’s. After the way he’d brought up industrial-accident insurance I’d assumed he would quit before long, but unexpectedly he was working hard. Though he’d have to, really. My being pulled away as Amos’s secretary had dumped the extra work on him.

“No. 1! Where’d ya go!”
“I’m right here.”
“Hee-hee-hee, No. 1! Let’s hurry up an’ go to the lab!”

I headed off, the snacks I was to feed Amos in hand. She demands chocolate snacks at all hours, so if I want to live there’s nothing else for it. Hong Jangwoo’s stare stung, but secretary work was part of the job too.

When I came into the lab there were a good many people I’d never seen before. One look told you they weren’t Beyond Villain staff; thuggish, every one of them. And yet they looked frightened all the same, their eyes darting around the room without pause. Anyone could see they were test subjects, plain and simple.

“Look how many guinea pigs came in!”
“So they’re all test subjects.”
“Yep! Now we finally get to do ’speriments!”

The first stage for the Villainization Research TF team is recruiting Villain hopefuls, and a week’s worth of that stood in front of me now. A good dozen-odd of them, by the look of it. These people are scheduled to be Villainized by Amos.

“Shall we begin, then.”
“Yay! I’m gonna try reeeal hard!”

Amos went hopping about, her long sleeves flapping. She looked like a small child, but her Gift was nothing less than ‘Animalization’: the power to turn the body of whatever she touched into an animal’s. A mantis, a cockroach, an octopus. When you got down to it, all of them were animals.

An animal like a cockroach is a hard sell, but a powerful animal—
“There! An octopus!”
“…Uwaaaaaaaagh!!!!!”

In the moment I had looked away, one of the test subjects had turned into an octopus. The face still a man’s, the body nothing but octopus. He looked down at himself a beat too late and screamed at the top of his lungs.

“In-, insane!”
“What is this…?”
“You said you’d make us Villains! Fuck!”
“Urgh… you crazy psychopath bastards!”

The test subjects’ reactions were vicious. In a sense it was only natural. A man’s body had just turned into an octopus, and it was a very long way indeed from Villainization.

The TF team staff barely managed to pull the Villain hopefuls off.

“…I worked super hard makin’ you an’ you don’ like it?”
“Y-, you crazy little squirt! Don’t touch me! Change me back the way I was!”
“You sayin’ that to me?”
“Hu-, hurk…”

— Snatch.

Amos hoisted the octopusified test subject clean into the air. He’d only just become an octopus; there was no chance he could move well. Able to do nothing but roll his eyes about, he looked at me piteously, as if begging me to save him.

What in the world am I supposed to do about this?

The researchers can’t control Amos. The instant they crossed her mood, they’d be Villainized themselves. But leave it like this and every test subject would bolt, and the TF team would come apart entirely…

— Bzzzt—!!

Right then my vision blurred and a headache came on.

…This is the TF team’s lab?

The footage showed the TF team’s lab. Amos still wrestling with the octopus in her hands, the test subjects still terrified. Then I turned on my phone and showed her something.

It was an animated clip of powerful animals I’d looked up on the internet: rhinos, gorillas, tigers, lions. Amos, drawn right in the moment those strong, impressive-looking creatures filled the screen. And when I talked them up a few times from beside her, her eyes lit up.

Ah…! Is it telling me to set a direction for the Villainization?

Amos is like a small child, exactly as she looks, all sudden impulses with no telling which way she’ll bounce. Which means persuasion pitched at a small child’s eye level works on her.

If only I could steer her the way the TF team wanted—
“Director Amos, would you take a look at this?”
“Hm?”

The TF team’s success might just rest on me.