Non-Aggression Pact

The third day of my stay in the VIP ward of the Beyond Villain building.

I threw off the hospital gown and put on the suit that had been laid out for me. A suit arranged through Belia, since the walk-up had been half wrecked and my clothes and every last thing I owned had gone down with it. Not that my things had ever amounted to much, so it made no difference either way.

Feels like I’ve become a new hire all over again.

I looked quietly into my own eyes in the mirror. It was thanks to old man Scorpion that I’d come back to my senses. To think I’d been doing much the same kind of thing as Yoyoboy and Cha Huigyeong, the very Heroes I loathed.

Get a grip, Im Taeseung.

— Slap-slap!

I patted both my cheeks and pulled myself together. Coming to Beyond Villain had been half against my will. But in the end, the reason I throw myself into the work is to uncover the secret tangled up in my father’s death. I work for that, and I take promotions for that. I must not chase promotion for promotion’s sake.

— Clack, clack.

Just then the ward door opened, and a steady click of shoes came with it.

“Belia.”

Belia appeared. She watched me packing my things, and one eyebrow twitched, a fraction. Something here was clearly not to her liking.

“Are you making ready to leave already, without so much as my leave? You may rest a few days more.”
“I’ve rested plenty. About time I got back out in the field.”
“…That stubbornness of yours is unchanged.”

She let out a sigh, then drew a small object from inside her gown and held it out.

“Take this with you, at least, before you go.”
“This is…?”

Without thinking, I took it. An old silver key, and a cute character keyring. A crude plastic button was set into the middle of the keyring, and it felt strangely out of place, like something somebody had added on later.

“Press the button on that keyring. Then, wherever you may be, I shall come to you at once.”
“…You’ll come yourself if I press this?”
“Press it only when you are in danger. I have no wish to see another scratch on my property.”

The rough grain of the keyring pressed into my palm, and a small laugh escaped me. All that posturing, and underneath it she was worried. I tucked it into my pocket.

“It’s about time to clock in. I have to go.”
“…You have come to have a rather fine look in your eyes.”
“This whole business made me realize something. That I can’t cast off morality and turn into a Villain through and through.”

If the other side comes at me without morals and I simply copy them… When I die one day, wouldn’t I be too ashamed to face my father?

I straightened my tie and finished getting ready to leave. Belia stepped into my path.

“Belia?”
“I ask only in case, but you do not intend to go to the Villain Research Office, do you?”
“…The Villain Research Office?”

The question caught me off guard enough that I tilted my head. The TF team should have been dissolved with this month-end evaluation. Naturally I’d be reporting to the Strategic Analysis Office, wouldn’t I?

When I gave no answer, she hurried to add more.

“If you mean to go, I shall not stop you. Only, considering your ability, the Strategic Analysis Office would be far the more efficient.”

“…”

“That Amos in particular is willful, and cantankerous besides, so I can see plainly the trouble you would have. The Strategic Analysis Office is my own charge, but I do not pester you to join it.”

A laugh burst out of me at Belia’s cute little bit of backbiting.

“Haha… The Villain Research Office has its appeal, but I still think the Strategic Analysis Office is where I belong. And there’s business I have to finish there.”
“…Hm. Needless worry after all. There was never any chance you would make so foolish a choice.”

She nodded as though satisfied and rose to her feet.

“Word reached me that Amos is scheming at something odd, so I merely asked, just in case.”
“Something odd?”
“It will be nothing but a rumor going around; it is not a thing for you to mind. So… off you go.”

Belia stepped aside, and I passed her and took hold of the door handle. I was about to pull it open when the key in my pocket came back to me. I turned back to her and gave the key a shake.

“By the way, what’s this key for? It’s got 813 written on it…”
“Ah. Now that I think of it, I had forgotten.”

She gave a small exclamation, as though the memory of it had only just come back to her.

“I have secured an apartment near the Beyond Villain building. Unit 813 — the key to where you will be staying from today.”
“…You are giving me an apartment? To me?”
“Consider that a gift as well. The walk-up has come down, so you must have somewhere to sleep, must you not?”

I turned the key over in a daze. I’d taken it for just a key, and it turned out to be a house key. …Once you reached Director class, could you hand out gifts on this scale without a second thought?

My startled reaction seemed to amuse her, and she chuckled.

“Having been looked after at this expense, you will not go tumbling over to that Amos woman, will you?”
“That… goes without saying.”
“I gave it to you to press in a dangerous situation, but should Amos make a nuisance of herself, do not endure it — press the button on the keyring. Then I shall go myself and shut that one’s mouth for you.”

Still listening to her, I stepped out of the ward. Fiddling with the key inside my pocket, I felt the emptiness inside me filling up again.

Let’s give it everything again.

The road toward revenge and success was still dark and winding. Only, there is no need to walk that road alone. When I first came, I’d thought there was nobody, but weren’t there plenty of people around me now who worried about me and looked out for me?

“Time to get to work.”

The Songnang sky out the window looked a little clearer than usual.

“Uuugh…”

Cha Huigyeong clutched at her severed shoulder and staggered down the Association corridor.

Drops of blood falling steadily along the floor.

Holding on to a mind that kept going hazy, she shoved open the door of the Medical Office, where she had always been welcome.

“Healia… please… save me…”
“Huigyeong! You…”
“Hurry!”

Cha Huigyeong pushed the words out on a ragged breath. One look at the face of the A-rank Hero Mother Healia, and the tension seemed to drop clean out of her. Normally, the moment Healia saw a wound on her, she would come running and lay her hands on it.

“And what exactly have you done right, to be raising your voice at me?”
“…H-Healia?”
“You should have just died out there. Hm? Coming back here of all places…”

But Healia only glared at her with a look that said she was pathetic. Cha Huigyeong could not understand it. She was dripping blood even now, so why would the woman not see to her?

“Healia? What’s the matter… my arm… my arm is gone.”
“You went too far this time, Huigyeong.”
“What are you… Agh!”

— Chunk!

Healia drove a hemostatic device roughly into her shoulder.

“That’s as far as the treatment goes. The Director is waiting for you, so go. Now.”
“T-The Director? Don’t tell me—”
“I thought you’d be here. Cha Huigyeong.”

A middle-aged man with a blunt, unsmiling look came into the Medical Office. The same figure who had turned up back when the controversy over Cha Huigyeong’s phone broke. The Hero Association’s Operations Bureau Director. Iron bars slid open, and security robots appeared in front of her.

At the heavy sound of his shoes, she backed away.

“A formal protest has come in from Beyond Villain. They say you went stirring up Villain Special City as you pleased.”
“N-No! Director, sir, it’s a misunderstanding! I’d found Im Taeseung, the one who ran. I was going to bring him in quietly, that’s all…”

— Smack—!

A blow hard enough to snap her head around sent her body slamming into the floor. With one arm gone, she had no way to catch her balance.

The Operations Bureau Director’s hand trembled with rage.

“Quietly? Tearing a building down and running riot in a fight, and you call that quietly?”
“That was… I was trying to catch Im Taeseung and the fight couldn’t be helped…”
“I told you again and again never to set foot in Villain Special City. Was what I said a joke to you?”
“That’s… Hrk!”

— Thwack!

The Director’s shoe went hard into her side where she lay. Twice, three times, the kicks kept coming, into her stomach. She did not dare even to resist; she rolled on the floor and swallowed her screams.

“Hurgk! Ngh…”
“Villain Special City, Villain Special City! Have you forgotten what kind of place that is? Because of that pride of yours, the whole Association nearly turned into a battlefield!”

He had been raining blows down on her for a good while, and now he let out a rough breath and swept his hair back.

Cha Huigyeong, reduced to a rag, crawling along the floor.

He looked down at her as though she disgusted him, and let out a sigh.

“Enough of the whimpering. Get up. The higher-ups are calling for you.”
“The… the higher-ups…?”

She spat out bloody saliva and asked in a shaking voice.

“That’s right. The Masters of the Round Table, who rule the Association, have asked to see you in person.”

Cha Huigyeong’s eyes wavered wildly with terror.

The Masters of the Round Table, the absolute powers who moved the Association. And now they were calling her in person.

“Why would they want me…”
“You forced your way into Villain Special City without authorization and wrecked the place. It’s the natural result.”
“Director! Please, spare me!”

— Snatch!

With her one remaining arm she caught the hem of his trousers.

“If I’m hauled before the Masters of the Round Table, I won’t come out of it in one piece either. I-If you’ll just heal my arm, I’ll work hard again. Please?”
“…Stupid bitch.”
“Hrk…!”

— Thwack!

She, looking up at the Director and wailing in desperation.

He kicked her in the face and shook her off, as though it made no difference to him. There was not a shred of pity in the way he brushed off his trouser cuff.

“The non-aggression pact between Villain Special City and the Hero Association.”

“…”

“You broke it, so don’t imagine this gets waved through. Putting on a pitiful act won’t work either.”

— Tromp-tromp.

He looked coldly down at her, then walked straight out of the Medical Office.

Cha Huigyeong spat out the blood pooling in her mouth and moaned in pain.

It was the karma she had brought down on herself, charging blindly into Villain Special City to catch Im Taeseung.