Yoyoboy

About a week after meeting Team Leader Kwon Hyeri.

“Taeseung, it’s been a while.”
“It has.”
“I’m glad you seem to be doing well.”

I met Yang Hayun at our usual barbecue place near the office. These days I practically lived at the TF team, so it really had been a long time since I’d seen her. She must have settled into the Senior Staff work by now; happiness was spilling right off her face.

“Is our Senior Staff Yang really all right paying for this? I can get it.”
“Hehehe, I got a pretty big performance bonus this time. And my salary went up with the Senior Staff title, too.”
“And is the Senior Staff work manageable?”
“Of course! Anything’s better than running errands, isn’t it? And thanks to you I’ve already filled this month’s quota!”

She made a V with her fingers and grinned.

She had taken my advice, apparently, and made a decent amount on Hero Gamble herself. All I ever did was pass her something I’d seen through Future Observation, now and then. Even that much had her ready to swear absolute loyalty.

“So on that note, have a glass! It’s my treat tonight, hehe.”
“Thanks. You handling the Senior Staff work so well has saved me, too.”
“It’s nothing, really.”

Just as I had worked with the Villain Planning and Management Office back in my Assistant Manager days, a Senior Staff works with the Combat Analysis and Evaluation Office. Reading the materials that office prepares, analyzing combat styles, then drawing up strategy. That was the work Yang Hayun handled now. When the TF team’s workload got too heavy, I had even passed a case or two along to her.

“Anyway, you really saved me.”
“Aw, and I filled my quota thanks to you.”
“Did you? Anyway, I’m glad you seem to be doing well.”
“You’re doing amazingly yourself right now, aren’t you? I saw the Unicorn Villain that came out this time, too.”

At Yang Hayun’s words I pictured the enormous white beast.

That one really was something.

The TF team’s second masterwork, the ‘Unicorn Villain’. We had all watched his fight together in the meeting room, and it was still lodged in my head. A muscular man’s body, with the head turned into a unicorn’s. He was a unicorn I had produced by persuading Director Amos, and persuading her again.

A liger, a unicorn… there’s a flavor only creatures out of a fantasy give you.

The sheer number of striking unicorn photographs and illustrations and animations I dug up to persuade her. That effort seemed to have paid off. The Unicorn Villain led with his sharp single horn and laid waste to the buildings around him. He could even transform, just like the Liger Villain. He took the win against a B-rank Hero who had arrived full of swagger, and word of our second victory went out.

The Hero Association was probably on quite an emergency footing over it. Getting cleaned out twice running, and by one of the three great Villain organizations at that, said it all.

“Taeseung, it’s seriously a huge deal, I’m telling you? Nobody in the company talks about anything but the TF team right now.”
“Is that so?”
“At this rate, aren’t you going to advance out of Team 5 and go to Team 2, or Team 3?”

I smiled at that and sipped my drink.

Team Leader Kwon Hyeri had said plainly that incentives and promotion would be decided by the TF team’s results. If I climbed from Deputy Manager to Manager this time, and then all the way to General Manager, I could aim for advancement through an Advancement Match against her. That would leave me very few chances to see Yang Hayun, but there was nothing to be done about it. We could still sit down for a drink like this.

…But is this right?

I poked at the food with my chopsticks. It had already been several months since I joined Beyond Villain. A new staff member, now past Assistant Manager to Deputy Manager and eyeing what lay beyond it. I ought to have felt good, but an aftertaste I couldn’t name lingered on the tip of my tongue.

What even is this feeling? Everything’s going well… so why.

The memory of the day I met Belia again came back to me out of nowhere.

“Rather than asking after my past, would it not be more efficient to ask about your father’s death? Time is not infinite.”

When I had asked about her, Belia had answered coldly. Uncovering my father’s death was what drove everything I did. That was certainly how it had been…

So why was I doing nothing now but looking up the ladder inside Beyond Villain? Had my father’s death, somewhere along the way, become something I treated as no great matter? I knew Cha Huigyeong had been there on the day my father died, and still I had not made a single plan to do anything about her. Only the thought of doing my best on the TF team, going higher, building up power.

Was that really the best I could do? Or… had I simply settled into the comfortable life here?

“Taeseung, is something wrong? Why do you look so awful?”
“…”
“Taeseung?”
“Who knows. Things are going so well it’s actually giving me a chill down my spine.”

Yang Hayun filled my glass to the brim and clinked hers against it. I couldn’t unload everything troubling me on her, and the business with Belia was of course out of the question. I swallowed soju for no good reason and soothed the burn in my stomach. Whether it was right for me to just keep clocking in here… no matter how I turned it over, the question had no answer.

“Aw, you’re just a born worrier. You proved it with your own ability, didn’t you. Just enjoy the moment.”
“…”
“Come on, let’s toast. Cheers!”
“Sure. Cheers.”

We clinked glasses awkwardly, and I looked at her blankly. Her face, turned a little to the side as she tipped the glass back. That profile gave me a strange sense of déjà vu.

A month ago, on the black market auction floor: ‘Number 49, the wolf mask’. Could this nagging feeling be because I had never told Yang Hayun about it?

“Hayun.”
“Yes?”
“The thing is… about a month ago, I saw a woman who looked a lot like you.”

I set my glass down, looked at her, and came out with the truth. A secret I had kept because I couldn’t bring myself to admit I’d been to the black market.

At that, Yang Hayun stopped dead.

“…Hayun?”

— Clunk.

The chopsticks slipped free of Yang Hayun’s fingers and dropped to the floor. The next instant she shoved back from her seat, stood, and leaned in until her face was right up against mine. Close enough that her breath tickled the bridge of my nose.

“That… is that true?”
“H-Hayun?”
“Where did you see her? What exactly was she wearing? What about the mask? Do you remember what kind of mask it was? Well?”

At that distance I could see her pupils twitching. A faint smell of alcohol on her feverish breath. Faced with that crazed look on a woman who had only ever been bright, I eased my head back and answered.

“It was at the black market… I don’t remember anything else, but she had a wolf mask on. And the profile I happened to catch looked like yours…”
“It’s my mom.”

Yang Hayun’s voice went thick with tears.

“My mom… she was alive…”

She cupped her own face in trembling hands.

“She was alive… My mom, she really was alive…”
“…”

I dragged a hand down my face and turned my eyes to the darkness outside the window. Seeing her like that made me sorry I had kept it a secret all this time. The nagging aftertaste circling my tongue felt as though it had eased a little.

…I waited until the shaking in Yang Hayun’s shoulders died down.

“I’m sorry. For telling you so late.”
“No, I understand. Going in and out of the black market… that isn’t something you can tell just anyone.”
“Still…”
“If anything I’m the one who should be sorry. To the person who told me my mom is alive… I went and pushed at you like that.”
“…”
“Thank you for telling me, Taeseung. Really.”

She wiped the tears away with her sleeve.

“…My mother always wears a wolf mask. She didn’t want her face known.”

Yang Hayun began to talk about her mother. The woman had left home back when Yang Hayun was small and taken up Villain work, sending the money she earned from it back to the house. Even that had cut off dead, apparently, around the time Yang Hayun graduated from university and joined Beyond Villain.

“So I was worried something had gone wrong… I’m so glad I know, thanks to you. It’s a weight off my mind.”
“Well, I’m glad if it is.”
“…I’m going to find my mom one day. She’s in Superior, you see. I actually wanted to go to Superior, but for some reason I got cut at the document screening…”

Yang Hayun said she had put in applications to all three of the great Villain organizations. At Villain Corporation and Beyond Villain she had made it as far as the interview. Superior alone, strangely, had cut her at the document screening.

“Maybe my mom’s the one who screened me out.”
“I doubt it. HR probably has some… internal rule against family working at the same place.”
“Would there be a rule like that?”
“This is Villain Special City. Nothing would be strange here.”
“That’s… true, but still.”
“…”

I gulped down plain water for no reason and settled my stomach. Getting the secret off my chest had cleared my head, which was good, but I felt awkward all the same. And the easy mood that had been going around the table had already cooled.

“…Shall we go?”
“Shall we? We’ve got work again tomorrow…”
“R-Right, let’s.”

In the middle of that awkward exchange we finished off what was left and hurried out of the place.

The streetlights were out in patches, leaving the alley darker still. The barbecue place was close to Beyond Villain, but the price of that was having to cut through the back alley. Not that it mattered much. In Villain Special City there weren’t many lunatics who’d attack two people with employee badges around their necks.

“Get home safe. See you at the office tomorrow.”
“Sure. …If I see her again, I’ll tell you right away next time.”
“Thank you, hehe. I’ll be off, then! I called a taxi!”
“Sure.”

Yang Hayun said her goodbye and stepped off toward the main road to catch it.

And in that instant.

— Bzzzt—!

…Huh?

Along with a pain like my retinas burning through. My field of view stained red, and Future Observation fired. Just a moment later, something like a sharp whip came rushing at the spot where Yang Hayun and I stood. The vision showed the two of us taking it square across the waist and being slammed off into the distance.

“Oh, fuck…!”
“T-Taeseung? Kyaaah!”

With no time to think I hooked an arm around Yang Hayun’s waist and threw us both to the ground.

— Thuuud!

The building wall behind where we had been standing caved into a crater. Rubble burst outward and fragments scattered in every direction. Even in the swirling dust I turned to check on Yang Hayun.

“Hayun, are you okay?”
“I-I’m fine, but what… what is this?”
“I’m here, so it’s all right. Calm down first, and if there’s a security robot, call it. Got it?”
“Y-Yes…”

Yang Hayun’s body was shaking hard. I made her calm down and looked around. What kind of crazed Villain had turned up this time. As I lifted my head, someone walked out of the darkness.

— Whirrr— Whirrr—

The man’s hand moved without a moment’s rest, throwing something and catching it again. Far off as he was, the vicious metallic sound of it carried clearly to my ears. Having been close to Cha Huigyeong, I couldn’t fail to recognize him.

“…Yoyoboy?”

A man in baggy street fashion. He chewed his gum and glared at me with delinquent eyes, checking back and forth between the wanted poster and my face.

“Guess a fifty-million-won bounty dodges pretty well, huh?”
“…”
“A B-rank Villain really is a B-rank Villain, is that it?”

Cha Huigyeong’s sidekick, Yoyoboy, gave a nasty smile in the darkness.