Noona Will Be There Soon

With the month-end evaluation behind me, I got back to my desk and found an email from Kwon Hyeri waiting. She wanted me to come by the team leader’s office after hours for a short talk. Nothing personal about it, of course; she meant to walk me through how the Advancement Match was going to run.

I don’t know why she has to call me in after hours…

Whether this counted as overtime was anybody’s guess, but I headed for the Strategic Analysis Office anyway. The place almost never works late, and tonight the Team 5 leader’s office was the only room with a light still on. I had never stayed here past clocking-out time before. There is nothing for the department to do at night, when no Villains are out.

“I’m here.”
“Deputy Manager Im… no, it’s Manager now, isn’t it. Come in.”

Well past the end of the working day, and Team Leader Kwon Hyeri was still wrestling with her documents. I had been buried in the TF team lately, so it had been a while since I set foot in the team leader’s office. Inside, the energy drink cans were still strewn about the floor, and the dark circles over her pale cheeks looked deeper than the last time I had seen them.

“That’s quite a dissatisfied face, for someone called in after hours.”
“No, it isn’t that…”
“I think it’s fair enough. The Strategic Analysis Office almost never works late.”

— Fwap.

She closed the file and rubbed at her eyes with one hand.

“Except for the Team 5 leader, that is.”
“!”
“If you should happen to lose the Advancement Match… you’ll become the Team 5 leader yourself, and take on all the late nights.”

I thought back to a conversation from not long after I joined the company.

“But if everyone clocks out now, what happens with the Villains who show up after seven…?”
“No need to worry about that! Most Villains don’t really operate at night. And even if one does, I hear the Team 5 leader usually handles the analysis and the data collection.”

At night, the Team 5 leader takes charge of the analysis and the data collection. In practice it is no different from night duty. Working weekdays and then staying up through the night on top of it. How was that even possible?

“You’re thinking it’s no life for a human being, aren’t you?”
“…That’s right.”
“That’s the punishment handed to whoever loses the Advancement Match. …Well, it isn’t so hard. I trade the duty off with the Team 4 leader. And if no Villain turns up in between, you can snatch a bit of sleep.”

Maybe it was the energy drinks stacked up beside her, but it didn’t sound especially convincing.

“Keep it to the point, please.”
“You don’t seem terribly interested in a team leader’s work.”
“Well, that’s because I’m the one who’s going to advance.”
“…Hoo-hoo. How interesting.”

— Creak.

Kwon Hyeri leaned back against the chair and closed her eyes.

“Seventy-two hours, starting next Monday. That is the time allotted to you and to me for the Advancement Match.”
“Seventy-two hours?”
“There is only one objective. Within that time, which of us more decisively closes out and manages the fifty ‘disposal assets’ on the list.”

— Flick.

I took the thick sheaf of documents she held out, half without meaning to.

…What is this?

The pages were crammed with a roster of Villains left crippled by failed operations, and of people marked down for termination for one reason or another. At the very bottom of the page, astonishingly, sat a field for deciding their disposition and a field for a signature. Kwon Hyeri had been settling those dispositions one by one, her own name written in beside each. Whether to erase them from the company, or to put them back to work somehow as a company resource.

“Why is it our Strategic Analysis Office that does work like this?”
“‘Strategy’ carries a great many meanings. A plan toward an objective. And… the management and allocation of the resources that serve it.”

She ran her fingers across the documents.

“And the personnel who have left our team, the Villains our team manages… someone has to put the full stop on their dispositions. That is the role of each ‘team leader’.”
“…”
“There is no clear standard for the disposition of Strategic Analysis Office staff or of Villains. Poor numbers and anyone can be let go. Only, if every one of those unsuitable personnel were pushed out the company would stop running… so an appropriate disposition is required.”

My eyes ran over the documents and would not hold steady. There were several kinds of disposition: simple dismissal, rehiring, forced enrollment in a training program. Use as experimental material was on the list too.

…So this is a Villain organization.

Going by the Strategic Analysis Office alone, the place hardly felt like a Villain organization at all, aside from the month-end evaluation, the peculiar benefits system, and that unmistakable regime of reward and punishment. The people are simply office workers who play Hero Gamble and do their jobs. The work that was genuinely worthy of the name Villain was being done under the surface, by every team leader.

“Don’t breathe a word of this part to the other staff. This is information only the team-leader tier… and the Manager tier who’ve been granted an Advancement Match are permitted to know.”
“…What happens if I fail to advance?”
“Whoever fails to advance becomes a General Manager. And whoever succeeds transfers into Team 2, or Team 3, as a staff member.”

Whoever fails to advance has to stay behind and take on the ‘dirty work’. A kind of sacrifice, so that a Villain organization can keep running as a Villain organization. That was the heavy post every team leader had shouldered.

“When I first saw you, Taeseung, I thought you might reach an Advancement Match before long.”
“…When you first saw me?”
“When you went all in on the Flameman bet, to be exact.”

I remembered that day vividly myself. Flameman, turning up to take on a Villain who looked like a fire alarm. Water against fire, and even a child watching could have called it for water easily enough. I overturned that call and went all in on Flameman with everything I had.

“I prefer people who climb on ability rather than by playing politics.”
“…”
“Because a person like that, I feel I could trust with the Team 5 leader’s seat.”

She stroked the stack of documents piled on the desk, high enough to topple.

“When you first came here, seeing that dazed look in your eyes, I was relieved inside.”

A bitter smile lingered at the corner of her mouth a moment, then vanished.

Instead of answering, I drew a large X with my fountain pen across the name of the Villain written on the first page. A Villain who had never once beaten a Hero, five fights and five losses. Plain grounds for removal.

“A shield? That’s far too generous an assessment. I only want to sweep this filth out of the way and climb higher.”
“…Why did you change like that? What was it that changed you, Taeseung?”
“Well…”

I said it with my hand on the handle of the team leader’s office door.

“Because if you don’t change, you can’t survive in this place.”

“…”

“If there’s nothing further, I’ll be going.”

I walked out of the team leader’s office without looking back. Kwon Hyeri did not call after me. An unpleasant aftertaste hung at the tip of my tongue the whole way down the corridor, and I made a point of ignoring it.

Damn it, every last one of them pointing a finger and telling me I’ve changed…

My head stayed a mess the whole ride down in the elevator. For the sake of revenge and success, the first thing to throw into the incinerator was a human heart. The Songnang night beyond the window was as dark as ever, and I was ready and willing to throw myself into that darkness.

And yet, why was it? This feeling that once I started throwing myself into the dark, there would be no turning back.

My father’s smiling face in the family photograph surfaced out of nowhere, and I shook my head hard to be rid of it.

…Focus on the Advancement Match for now.

Next Monday, at the Advancement Match, I would beat Kwon Hyeri and climb to a higher place.

Cha Huigyeong stared blankly at her own face in the cracked mirror. The Speedgirl once praised as ‘Semi-A-rank’, exalted as a beauty among Heroes, was gone. All that testified to her downfall now was tangled hair, unfocused eyes, and the smear of blood where she had bitten her lip open. To think that she, the one they had called the face of the Association, had crashed to the bottom like this in a matter of months.

— Rustle.

She fiddled with the assorted papers set out beneath the mirror. A notice of activity suspension sent down from the Association, fan letters laced with abuse, electricity bills and the rest were all lined up there. For now her savings kept her afloat, but at this rate her standing could only grow more precarious. She might even be struck off the Hero Association’s rolls and made into one of its puppets, like the ‘other Heroes’.

“Don’t make me laugh… don’t you make me laugh!”

She tore the assorted papers apart in a fit of temper. Malicious lines hidden among the handwritten letters that passed themselves off as fan mail caught her eye. ‘Tax thief’, ‘fake hero’, ‘washed-up loser who lost to a monkey’, and more of the same. Every last one of those words drove into her like a dagger.

“Goddamn it! Those Association bastards!”

— Clank!

She snatched up a spare piece of Yoyoboy’s equipment rolling around on the floor and hurled it at the wall. She had tried telling them about the resemblance between Yoyoboy and the Villain ‘Yoyomonkey’, but the Association hadn’t stirred at all. All that came back was a stiff reply: a shared use of yo-yos alone was no grounds for treating them as the same person.

“Im Taeseung… if it weren’t for that bastard.”

She clenched her fists hard enough for the nails to bite into flesh, and let out a low groan. Fine, say Yoyoboy turning into a monkey was one of those things. What drove her further out of her mind was that she had panicked there and lost, plunging her own honor into the abyss. Because to a Hero like her, a Yoyoboy was a sidekick she could swap out as many times over as she pleased.

Cha Huigyeong dug the black special communicator out of the corner she had shoved it into and switched it on. A burst of crackling static, and then a blue hologram rose beyond the screen. The sigil of ‘Tracker’ came up, the Hero Association’s specialist Hero for information retrieval.

“Tracker. Answer me.”
“…Speedgirl? Aren’t you on your suspension right now? It’s awkward for me if you make contact.”
“I’ll pay whatever you want. Im Taeseung… tell me where that bastard is hiding, right now. You know, don’t you?”
“Im Taeseung? …Ah! That guy off the TV, the B-rank Villain or whatever he’s supposed to be?”

Tracker, an A-rank Hero. In truth they were a Hero few people knew of. Back before they were A-rank they had done Hero work now and then, showing their face to the public, but these days they carried out their work somewhere safe inside the Hero Association. Their power, ‘Clairvoyance’, had turned out to be an unexpectedly potent one, letting them see distant things as clearly as if they stood right in front of them. Thanks to a cheat of a power like that, the Hero Association prized them highly. Only, Tracker was not content with the Association alone, and would approach promising Heroes like this to ‘sell’ that power.

“I’ll give you as much money as you want. Tens of millions of won, I don’t care.”
“Oh, come on, tens of millions? Villain Special City carries a risk even for me. Two hundred million, minimum.”
“Two hundred million for a single job? Are you insane?”
“Well, I’d say you’re the insane one here. Otherwise, forget it. Assuming there’s someone besides me who’ll find him for you.”

Cha Huigyeong ground her teeth, but there was nothing she could do. Because there was no rule saying a B-rank Hero couldn’t end up like Yoyoboy either. In the end she let out a sigh and spoke.

“…Two hundred million, and it’s certain?”
“That’s right, it’s dangerous work. Combing through the inside of Songnang, Villain Special City, is a breach of Association regulations. If I’m caught, I get struck off too.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit! The Association knows perfectly well and turns a blind eye anyway, doesn’t it?”
“Enjoyed the theory. How about giving up the Hero business and trying your hand at detective work?”
“…I’ll transfer the two hundred million.”
“Now that’s decisive. Give me a few days. It’s going to take a little time.”
“I’ll send you what I have. Beyond Villain — that’s where he works.”
“Good. Put it together and send it over. It’ll come out faster with something to go on.”

— Click.

The call cut off, and Cha Huigyeong sent Tracker two hundred million won through her phone. Close to half of everything she had saved from her Hero career evaporated in an instant.

A grotesque smile settled itself onto her face.

“Wait for me, Im Taeseung… Noona will be there soon.”