Keeper

“The ten million won that went into your account today. Where did it come from?”
“How… did you get my account…?”
“I told you, didn’t I. Big Sis can tell everything.”

— Jab.

Cha Huigyeong’s finger drove into my chest.

“You really didn’t know a thing, did you? Why I bothered keeping company with a jobless nobody like you. Why I spent my blood-and-sweat money and my time on the likes of you.”

“…”

“I’m a kind of keeper.”

A keeper. My gaze wavered at the word.

“I was posted here to stop you from smearing the Hero Association’s name and waging a public-opinion war. To keep you — the animal you are.”
“Keep…?”
“Guess you don’t remember. Every week you pulled a face like you’d chewed something rotten, and you still took the money every single time, didn’t you? That right there is what keeping is.”

“…”

My lips moved without sound. I couldn’t deny a word of it. Because the one who gave up, saying an orphan with nothing but a middle-school diploma would never find work anyway, was me.

“And there was an interesting research finding, you see.”
“…A research… finding?”
“A person who possesses a Gift of high potential is very likely to have a child who awakens a Gift too.”

“…!”

“So let me ask you.”

Cha Huigyeong dragged the corners of her mouth up into a grin.

“You’ve awakened a Gift, haven’t you?”

Goosebumps crawled over my whole body. All those weeks of her looking after me had never been cheap pity, and they’d never been a Hero’s sense of justice. She’d only been keeping watch on me. A dangerous element, or a potential awakened.

“Uurgh…!”

— Splatter.

Everything I’d eaten with Cha Huigyeong came back up out of me. I hadn’t even used my Gift, and still the world in front of me spun and spun.

She watched me throw up, screwed her face into a knot, and stepped back.

“What are you doing? That’s disgusting.”
“Cough— just, what…”
“Hm?”
“Since when… have you been deceiving me?”
“From the very beginning, obviously.”

Cha Huigyeong, answering as though I’d asked something strange.

I remembered our first meeting. Because we’d met at my father’s funeral hall.

“Are you Taeseung? Your father told me a lot about you. …He asked that if he ever stopped being of this world, I look after you well.”

That hand on my shoulder, stroking it as if she ached for me. That sorrowful face on that day, coming to me with my father’s name on her lips.

All of it… had been a lie?

“I answered your question, so you answer mine, don’t you think? Well? So — did you awaken a Gift?”

“Ngh, ah…”

“Hm?”

— Tik. Ti-tik.

My hands shook and shook as I fumbled at my phone. I was breathless and sick to my stomach, as if I’d just sprinted flat out.

But in the instant I blinked.

— Crash!

A stinging pain shot through my hand, and my phone was simply gone. A sound came from my left, and when I turned to look, the window was shattered and the phone was nowhere in sight.

“No point calling the police. This restaurant is crawling with Hero Association people anyway.”

Cha Huigyeong brushed off the hem of her dress.

B-rank Hero Cha Huigyeong’s Gift: ‘Super-Acceleration.’ She’d sent my phone flying with a kick too fast for the eye to catch.

“Do you understand now why I went to the trouble of calling you all the way out here? It’s because there’s nothing left to hide and nothing left to act out.”

“Game over.”

She said it as though whispering into my ear, the corners of her mouth pulling up as far as they would go, as if she couldn’t hold it in.

I sank to the floor where I stood.

“…”

“I was going to ask you again whether you’d awakened a Gift… no, never mind. A psychic-type awakened is due to arrive soon anyway.”

“…”

“No need to look so crushed. You did irritate me every time you grumbled, but… you’ll be an obedient dog soon enough.”

Cha Huigyeong forced my chin up. The madness in the eyes that swept over me raised the hair on the back of my neck.

She was telling me to become her dog.

“You can’t do a thing without me anyway. So I’ll put you to good use. Your body, your mind, your Gift — all of it.”

“…”

“Aah, what a rush. I’ve waited for this moment and nothing else!”

Her whole body shivered, and her smile brimmed over with delight. There wasn’t a trace of guilt anywhere in her face.

The question came out of me on impulse.

“Why are you doing this…? B-Big Sis Huigyeong, you’re a Hero!”

I couldn’t understand it, however I turned it over. Speedgirl, the B-rank Hero everyone looked up to. That was who she was. So why was a woman like that doing something so unbecoming of a Hero?

She stroked her chin, thought it over a moment, and spoke.

“Taeseung. In this world, the one who holds power is justice. You know why this world is safe? That, too, is because Heroes are stronger than Villains.”

“…”

“So… you, weak as you are — I’ll put you to good use. Justly.”

Cha Huigyeong licked her lips and reached her hand out to me. I was already on the floor; there was no time to dodge it.

And just before her grip closed on my collar.

“How amusing. To think I would meet, in a place such as this, a Hero who thinks exactly as I do.”

“…?”

A voice, from my left. Cha Huigyeong’s head and mine turned slowly. I’d heard that voice before.

“Bel… ia?”

A woman, floating in the air in front of the shattered window. Belia, Director of the Villain organization ‘Beyond Villain.’ She held up a phone with its screen half-shattered and smiled playfully.

“It will not do for a person calling herself a Hero to throw her trash out of a window.”

The ‘Hero Gamble’ site was up on the phone screen.

…That’s right. The one who called her was me. Because I’d pressed the ‘Yes’ button on the Hero Gamble message and summoned her.

“How is a Villain here…”
“A bad Hero who throws out her trash—”

— KABOOOM—!!!

Before Belia had even finished speaking, the corridor where Cha Huigyeong stood crumpled.

“—ought to be punished, ought she not?”

Belia gave a bewitching smile.

The corridor had been scooped hollow, exactly as though ‘something invisible’ had slammed into the building from outside. From a point just in front of me onward, it was crushed flat.

It never even occurred to me to stand. I only stared blankly at the sight. What in the world was that absurd attack? So the thing that had carried me off to that strange mental space hadn’t been Belia’s Gift?

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time to think.

“W-was that an explosion?”
“It could be a Villain!”
“Everyone, on your guard!”

Police sirens, faint in the distance, and the sound of footsteps behind me. So there’d been Heroes inside the restaurant as well.

Belia clicked her tongue, as though disappointed.

“Their response is quick — because we are near the Hero Association, I suppose.”

“…!”

“Savoring the afterglow has its charms, but it is time now to bid the loathsome Hero farewell.”

— Snatch.

Belia took my hand. While I was still going uh, uh, my body lifted off the floor, and by the time I had my wits about me I was hanging in midair.

“That’s…”
“A hostage?”
“You there, Villain! Identify yourself!”

Heroes came swarming into the corridor and glared across at us. Even with that crowd of Heroes in front of her, Belia moved a hand at her leisure, and out of that elegant gesture a single jet-black ‘sphere’ took shape, with the two of us at its center.

And when the sphere was half closed.

— Kaboom!

“Im Taeseung!!!”

Cha Huigyeong kicked her way clear of the building’s rubble and showed herself. Her dress, filthy with dust and blood. Her face was twisted like a monster’s, and even the Heroes took a step back.

“H-how dare you do this to me… how dare you betray the Hero Association?”

“…”

“Is that any way for a man whose father was an A-rank Hero to act? What do you think your father is thinking, watching you from up there?!”

“…Ha.”

Her eyes darted here and there, minding the people around us. Was she acting even now, even at a moment like this?

Something hot seemed to rise inside my chest at her words. Caged all this time in the burden on my heart called ‘father,’ maybe I’d been living with my own feelings killed off.

Belia’s sphere had almost closed. Watching Cha Huigyeong come rushing at us, I opened my mouth.

“Shut up.”

“…!”

“Don’t you dirty my father’s name. You… something like you isn’t a Hero at all.”

Cha Huigyeong’s face twisted viciously. She wanted to say something, but with all those eyes on her, her lips only moved without sound.

And so the sphere Belia had formed closed completely.

“Hoo-hoo… you have a rather bold side to you.”

“…”

At Belia’s words, I opened my eyes. When had I closed them? My memory was hazy. I looked around to gather myself… and it was that place again.

Isn’t this where I first met Belia…?

The bizarre study with neither windows nor doors. Belia had taken a chair without my noticing, and a soft smile spread across her face. The sight of her sent everything from moments ago flashing before my eyes.

Cha Huigyeong… to think she was that kind of person.

The strange way she’d behaved today had put a chill in me, but never in my dreams had I imagined she’d been hiding her fangs all this time. Had she been wearing the mask the whole time, on TV and alone with me alike?

I soothed my hammering heart and barely managed to open my mouth.

“Did you… know?”
“Of what do you speak?”
“I’m asking whether you knew it would turn out like this.”
“That goes without saying. From before the Hero Association ever watched you… I had been watching you all along.”

She’d said as much before. That she’d known me from before I ever played Hero Gamble. What the reason could be, though…

“You were watching me? Why on earth…?”
“The child of a dead A-rank Hero, digging up the secret the Association most wants buried.”

“…”

“The Association would dearly love to drag you off somewhere and finish you… and I found it amusing that they cannot. I shall say only that much for now.”

— Poke.

She prodded playfully at the spot over my heart with the phone. It didn’t hurt, but my breath caught. Seen from up close, her eyes… unlike her smiling mouth, were far too cold.

“There is a research finding that the children of Heroes have a high probability of awakening a Gift.”

“!”

“That is why the Association watched you instead of killing you. By using a game piece named Cha Huigyeong.”

I’d heard about that research from Cha Huigyeong’s mouth as well. …Then for the Hero Association and for Belia alike, the goal had been my awakening? The confusion still hadn’t cleared.

“Cha Huigyeong was a game piece…”
“Surely you are not about to tell me, after what was done to you, that it was not an act?”

“…”

“Well, I can understand your confusion. You have been well and truly stabbed in the back by someone you trusted.”

Honestly speaking, I still couldn’t believe it.

Even so — she hid it for years? And I swallowed it whole?

Setting a date every week, handing me money as if she felt sorry about it, smiling awkwardly. All of it… all of it an act, to deceive me and one day stab me in the back.

And then, belatedly, I realized one thing.

“Her eyebrow…”
“Hmm?”
“…It’s nothing.”
“Is there something on my eyebrows?”

Belia asked, kneading her eyebrows, but it hadn’t been meant for her.

Over all those long meals with Cha Huigyeong I’d come to know one ‘habit’ of hers. Her eyebrow twitched whenever she lied.

But today it hasn’t happened once.

From the moment I overheard her call outside the bathroom until now, her eyebrow hadn’t so much as flickered. Did that mean she hadn’t told a single lie today? Or that even the eyebrow twitch had been part of the act?

…However far I turned it over, there was only one thing I could know. Only that I’d been taken in by Cha Huigyeong’s acting.

“There is no need to be so downcast. From here on you have only to live a new life.”
“…So where am I going now?”
“Mm… we have arrived, in fact. Showing you will be quicker than explaining.”

“!?”

In that instant my vision blurred. A sensation I’d felt somewhere before. It matched the very first time I met Belia, exactly.

The world spun around me, and when I shut my eyes and opened them again, it was no longer the study but a dim night street. Not any night street I knew, either. Because even at a glance, a dank and dangerous air came rolling off it.

“Hoo-hoo. We have arrived.”
“…Don’t tell me this is—”
“Welcome to Songnang, Gyeonggi Province — the finest city in the Republic of Korea for Villains to live in!”

Belia spread both arms wide and laughed.

The grim city standing behind her. Windows broken here and there, homeless people and graffiti along the walls of the buildings. And most telling of all, not one of the people moving through it looked remotely ordinary.

The name of this place, which called to mind a crime-ridden district in America… Songnang, Gyeonggi Province.

On the forums it was famous under the nickname ‘Villain Special City.’¹