VIP Ward

I had a dream.

The day I first met Scorpion. Belia had shoved me along until I ended up imposing on him in his room, and he had gone out and gotten me a phone, clothes, whatever I needed. At first he had probably thought of me as nothing more than a nuisance of a tenant.

Ah…

Then the dream changed scenes. The day I said what I said to Scorpion at the bar. For the first time, he had gone as far as telling me about his own son just to give me advice. Maybe he had been looking at me and seeing that dead boy of his.

I shouldn’t have said that to him back then…

He had dragged out sensitive private business he had no wish to expose, and he had done it because he was genuinely worried about me. And to a Scorpion like that, I had given no answer. I had only thrown my own excuses back at him, saying I’d had to change if I wanted to survive.

“…Ngh.”

My consciousness surged up through the surface of reality. A heavy, warm weight somewhere around my stomach. And when I opened my eyes, there was a pure-white ceiling.

I’m… alive.

I blinked a couple of times and lowered my gaze. There was Amos, perched half-crouched on the caregiver’s chair, her head resting on my stomach, fast asleep.

“Amos…? Why is Amos here?”
“Mmnh…”

My voice must have been what woke her. She rubbed her eyes blearily and lifted her head, and the moment she got a look at my face her eyes went wide.

“No. 1! You’re finally awake! You wouldn’t wake up an’ wouldn’t wake up — ya know how worried I was?”
“Uh, yeah…”
“I’m so glad you opened your eyes! Hehehe.”

Amos bounced up and down in delight like a puppy.

Somewhere safe, at least… but where on earth was this? I swallowed dryly and looked around. Luckily there was a window right beside the bed.

…The Beyond Villain building?

A forest of towers outside the window, seen from a dizzying height. The Strategic Analysis Office sat on a high floor, so it was a view I saw often at work. Had there been a space like this in the building?

Amos must have caught the question on my face, because she volunteered it.

“This is the Beyond Villain building! It’s a VIP ward! Only executive-level people an’ top-priority Villains get to come here, y’know!”
“A VIP ward…? Me?”

Amos fiddled with the sleeve of my hospital gown as she answered. Wasn’t this place far too good for a mere Manager on Team 5 of the Strategic Analysis Office? Before I could wonder any further about why I was somewhere like this, the click of someone’s shoes came closer.

“Why, you are a person I have marked out for myself. Treatment of this order is only natural, would you not say?”
“Belia…”

Belia walked in with a file folder in one hand, her shoes ringing out elegantly. I started to push myself upright to thank her, and stopped short. Every bone in my body should surely have been shattered by Cha Huigyeong.

Huh…?

But the pain I had braced for never came. I raised an arm and looked it over, and it was perfectly fine. If anything, my body felt lighter and more full of life than before.

“My body… why is it fine?”
“Amos repeated a process dozens of times over — transforming your body into an animal’s, then returning it to what it was. In the course of that, your broken bones and ruptured organs were forcibly reassembled.”
“Director Amos… did?”
“Uh-huh! Me!”

Amos answered with a bright, guileless smile. Her ability was astonishing. She could convert a person’s body into an animal’s and then change it back again.

But she uses that to treat people…?

The unexpected usefulness of it left me stunned. A Director-class Gift really was a different thing altogether. While I was busy being impressed, Belia poked my arm with a finger.

“Amos’s power has taken root in your body. You will have passed a little way beyond the limits of a human being.”
“The limits of a human being…”
“It would be more accurate to say you have been half Villainized.”

At her words I tried clenching my fist tight. The density of the muscle writhing under my skin. It was nothing like before. If I was this strong now, couldn’t I fight Cha Huigyeong again?

“Whaddaya think? Did I do good?”
“Sorry?”
“I don’t heal anybody else! I healed No. 1 special, jus’ you!!”

Amos was gazing up at me from beside the bed like a child waiting to be praised, her pale green hair swaying softly right where my eyes fell. I bowed my head to her in thanks.

“…Thank you, Director. I’m alive because of you.”
“Hehe, if you’re grateful then pat my head! No. 1’s hands are the best! The very best!”
“…Sorry?”
“Hurry up!”
“Ah, yes, r-right away…”

I patted Amos’s head, carefully and slowly, and she seemed pleased, rubbing her head against my palm. Then, all at once, she caught my arm in both hands.

“Director?”
“This time was real dangerous. It’s ‘cause I wasn’t next to you.”
“You, next to me…?”
“So while you got the chance, quit the Strategic Analysis Office an’ come to the Villain Research Office with me for good! Then No. 1 an’ me can make Villains like crazy an’ be happy!”

Her offer was tempting, I’ll admit. At the Villain Research Office the work amounted to nothing but cleaning up after Amos. It wouldn’t pay like the Strategic Analysis Office, where you pocketed side income off Hero Gamble, but wouldn’t the job itself be far easier?

“I have told you he is talent I have laid claim to. What scheme do you suppose you are hatching?”
“Owwww! That hurts!”

— Streeetch.

Belia had hold of Amos’s cheek and was pulling. Amos swung her short arms about, crying, “Lemme go! Lemme gooo!” Belia, expressionless, put down the rebellion without effort.

What is this…

Come to think of it, this was the first time I’d had the two of them in the same place at once. Surely it wasn’t like this every time they met. Watching two Directors locked in a childish power struggle took some of the edge off the tension of having them both in front of me. But the raw taste of blood lingering in my mouth, and the bitterness under it, had not gone anywhere.

“What happened to old man Scorpion…? And to Cha Huigyeong?”

At my question, Belia took her hand off Amos’s cheek.

“Cha Huigyeong fled. Had it been possible I should have killed that rat while the chance was there… but with my power it was difficult to stop her running. I am sorry.”
“No. There’s nothing for you to apologize for.”

I shook my head at her apology. If not for her, I would have been dragged off to the Hero Association on the spot; if anything, I was the one who owed her thanks.

Belia studied my reaction, then jerked her chin toward the far side of the wall.

“Scorpion, too, I have had moved here, to the VIP ward. I have been much in that one’s debt for a long time now.”
“Is the old man allowed to be here? He’s only a caretaker, isn’t he?”
“Serving as the company building’s caretaker for decades is an asset to the organization in its own right. He may as well enjoy benefits of this order.”

Belia closed the file and looked me straight in the eye.

“Will you go and see him? He will likely have come round by now.”
“…Yes.”

I threw back the bed sheet and set my feet on the floor.

The corridor to the next room was far too silent. When the heavy door of the VIP ward opened, an overpowering smell of disinfectant rolled over me. On the bed lay old man Scorpion, wound head to foot in bandages. He had an oxygen mask on, his breathing coming in ragged gasps, and at the sight of him something rose up in my throat for no reason I could name.

If I just asked Amos… no. No, that isn’t right.

The thought of asking Amos to treat him crossed my mind for a moment. But this was a woman who had used her Gift dozens of times over to save one single person: me. Firing off Future Observation even a dozen-odd times in a row brought on pain that felt like my eyeballs were about to fall out… I couldn’t begin to imagine the pain Amos must have gone through, using her own Gift dozens of times over.

I’ll have to get Director Amos a proper present later — snacks, at the very least.

That gratitude toward her welled up in me again as I stepped closer to the old man. Seeing the state he was in, I felt guilt press down on my chest. Just then his eyelids gave a faint flutter and slowly opened.

“…Are you coming round?”
“Kheh… Squirt. Glad there’s some color in your face.”

Scorpion let out a snort of a laugh through the oxygen mask, a scornful edge to it. A voice so calm you’d never believe it belonged to a man who had been to death’s door and back. I had thought I would never hear that voice again. My eyes burned hot, and I ducked my head to hide the tears gathering at their corners.

“How’s your body… how are you feeling? Does anything hurt?”
“‘Course I’m fine. This much, I could shake off and be on my feet by tomorrow.”

Putting on a front, the old man managed, with effort, to waggle his index finger. The look of a man who, to anyone’s eye, was not remotely fine. And still he was playing tough like this… so as not to burden me with worry, no doubt.

Looking at him, I brought out the question I had been desperate to ask.

“Why did you do it? Why, even after Cha Huigyeong tortured you… did you not give me up?”

“…”

“You could have just told her all of it — where I live, what company I work at. You and me, old man, we’re strangers who’ve known each other a few months, that’s all.”

The more the words came out of me, the hotter my throat burned. We were nothing more than roommates who also shared a ride to and from work. In the merciless world of Villains, to endure the pain of your own bones being broken for someone else’s sake… It was an irrational choice. Nothing in Villain Special City could explain it, and neither could the common sense of modern society.

“When I look at you… I keep thinking of that boy of mine.”

“…”

“If my boy had grown up, he’d be about your age now… and once that got into my head, my mouth just wouldn’t open. That’s why. There’s no grand reason to it.”

His answer was irrational, sentimental to a devastating degree. But that rough, unpolished sincerity seemed to awaken the humanity that had been worn down inside me. The warmth called ‘humanity,’ which I had buried in the name of performance and efficiency. It shook my heart.

What… have I been doing all this time?

Performance is all well and good. Aiming higher is not a bad goal either. But there is no law saying that to get there you have to throw away everyone around you and act selfishly, like a snob. If anything, the more you do that, the fewer people you have left on your side. That obvious fact was something I had only worked out far too late.

“Old man.”

With a trembling hand, I took his bandaged hand in mine.

“All this time… I’m sorry.”

“…”

“I’ll be careful not to turn into a Villain — not to turn into a monster that’s lost even a human heart. I’ll keep it in mind, I swear.”

The higher you climb in the Strategic Analysis Office, the more of your humanity you have to throw away. Just as I had processed the work faster and more efficiently than Kwon Hyeri in the Advancement Match. But I had realized that that was not the ‘right answer.’

“Even if it’s a hard road, I’ll keep going forward as a human being.”

To be inside a Villain organization and still not lose my humanity. Someone might point at that and call it an irrational, empty goal. Even so, I made the vow, to myself and in front of Scorpion.

“Gwahaha! That’s right. Good thinking, Squirt. I trust you’ll keep doing well from here on.”
“Trust me and watch.”

His laughter filled the ward, and I looked back at him and laughed along.