Staff Member, Again

— Ding!

The moment I stepped off the elevator, every eye in the Strategic Analysis Office turned on me. Stolen glances at me over the tops of monitors. Had something blown up while I was off recuperating?

“Taeseung! I mean… Manager Im Taeseung!”

While I stood there puzzling over it, Yang Hayun came running from across the room.

“Are you all right? You’re not hurt anywhere? I couldn’t even reach you — do you have any idea how worried I was?”
“Th-That so?”
“Of course I was!”

One look at her and a laugh escaped me for no reason at all. The feeling of one cold corner of my chest slowly melting in her warmth. I remembered how I’d neglected her lately, and the guilt came rushing in.

“Thanks for worrying about me. I’m fine, as you can see.”
“Huh…?”

Yang Hayun’s eyes went wide at my answer.

“Taeseung, something’s changed about you, hasn’t it? Before, if I’d said something like that, you’d have snapped at me first and asked what there was to worry about.”
“I did that?”
“You absolutely did!”
“Getting hurt a little just made things clear, I guess. How precious the people around me are. …You included.”

At that, her face went red as a beet in an instant.

“Hehehe, thank you kindly for noticing!”
“Your face is going seriously red, you know?”
“B-Because it’s embarrassing! Saying something that cheesy right to my face… Still, it’s nice. The clueless you I saw on the very first day is back.”

She fanned her face with one hand and chattered on. Her guileless reaction left me a good deal lighter. To think I’d been so harsh with a girl this kind, this innocent. Guilty, I scratched at the back of my head and asked what I’d been wondering about.

“But how did you know I’d been in an accident? I couldn’t even get in touch.”
“Because it was all over the news, obviously. Take a look over there.”
“The news…?”
“Yes! It’s a bit blurry, but the clothes, the hair, the build — that’s you exactly!”

She pointed at the big TV hanging in the middle of the office.

On the news screen, a female announcer traded greetings with a middle-aged man seated across from her. Right after, the screen switched to a single piece of very low-quality footage. In the footage: a collapsed walk-up, Cha Huigyeong in her racing suit, and a man holding a laser.

That’s me, isn’t it?

Someone had filmed my fight with Cha Huigyeong on a phone without my ever knowing. Shaky, as though it had been shot in a hurry from a long way off. In it I went at her fiercely, but in the end she caught hold of me. The picture cut out at the moment she looked up at the sky and the phone swung upward with her.

That would have been the moment Belia appeared… It occurred to me that she might have pulled something on that phone.

Back on the studio feed, the announcer summed the situation up in a calm tone.

Online reactions streamed along the bottom of the screen as fast-moving subtitles.

└ poking villain special city for nothing, isnt that gonna set off civil war 2?
└ why is speedgirl showing off so hard lately. just sit still for once
└ fr total turnoff
└ if the villains get pissed and start another war over this;; you think we could handle a civil war?

Every comment pointed at the same thing: the Civil War.

The Civil War… I did hear it happened back when I was a kid.

The Civil War was a great war fought between Seoul and Songnang more than ten years ago. That one war killed dozens of Heroes at the least, and several hundred Villains. The conflict between Heroes and Villains had been drawn to a razor’s edge, and the war was what came of it. Buildings came down, of course, and countless citizens lost their lives along with them.

Afterward the Hero Association and the Villains concluded a public ceasefire. In the ten-plus years since, Villains still turn up in Seoul now and then, but it never goes further than making the commute a misery. To borrow the community’s phrasing, it’s less UFC than WWE, with Heroes and Villains fighting along what amounts to a well-written script. …That was as far as my knowledge went.

Come to think of it, Belia ran the moment she’d saved me, too.

The place where I’d learned Cha Huigyeong’s true face was a hotel right next to the Hero Association. Which is why Belia had fled straight for Villain Special City the moment she’d put Speedgirl down. If a Director-level figure in one of the three great Villain organizations was that careful, what was a mere B-rank Hero doing pulling a stunt like this? Speedgirl’s standing had nowhere left to fall.

The Hero Association’s Press Bureau Director swallowed a sigh before he answered.

Public opinion on Speedgirl had been bad enough already. And she’d gone and pulled this anyway, so wasn’t the Association responsible? That was the roundabout way of putting it. The Press Bureau Director’s face creased a little at the announcer’s pointed observation.

The Hero Association couldn’t withstand the public beating either, by the look of it. They were giving notice of a heavy disciplinary measure against Speedgirl. Watching it, I let out a hollow laugh.

Cha Huigyeong. This is the price of all that fake justice you built up.

Honestly, it would be a lie to say it wasn’t satisfying. I’d nearly died because of her, and my whole life had been twisted out of shape because of her. Of course it was.

I sincerely hoped Cha Huigyeong would never get back on her feet as a Hero after this. Because I didn’t want to watch her swanning around calling herself a Hero any longer.

Just then, an announcement rang out from the speakers in the office ceiling.

“…Mm.”

Kwon Hyeri was calling me in. I had a rough guess as to why. The Advancement Match results must have come in.

“The team leader’s calling. I’ll be back.”
“Right, Taeseung! Take care in there!”

Leaving Yang Hayun’s send-off behind me, I headed for the Team 5 leader’s office, where Kwon Hyeri would be waiting.

“Coming in.”

I opened the door of the team leader’s office and found Kwon Hyeri on the far side of the desk. She still had an energy drink can in her grip, but the dark circles that had been pressing down under her eyes had noticeably faded. The three days of rest she’d been given after the Advancement Match must have done her good.

She spoke without lifting her eyes from her documents.

“I heard from the Personnel Administration Office. That you’d been in an accident.”
“I’m perfectly fine, ma’am. Your color looks better than mine, if anything. You must have gotten some solid rest over the three days.”

I sat down in the chair across from her and tossed out some light banter. Kwon Hyeri set her pen down with an audible click, then studied my face while she fiddled with the crumpled can.

“…Something about the air around you has changed.”

I scratched the back of my head and gave a wry smile.

Yang Hayun, Kwon Hyeri, Scorpion…

The people around me spotted the change in me with uncanny speed, quicker than I would have expected. It could be read as proof of how far I had changed. Or as proof of how much interest they took in me.

I wiped the playful look off my face and stood up from the chair.

“I apologize for how rudely I behaved before.”

— Bow.

I bent at the waist to ninety degrees and showed her my respect. Kwon Hyeri’s eyebrows twitched and shot up. She must have been thrown; as recently as the Advancement Match we’d been squaring off with our blades out.

Thinking it over again… Kwon Hyeri really is a remarkable person.

Her way was inefficient and slow, and none of that came from a lack of ability. She worked that way because letting anything slide meant somebody could come to harm. A kind of stubbornness built to stop that harm.

There was an easier road available, and she walked the thorny one alone, without a word.

If you want to secure even a little time for yourself, the method is simple. You process people as numbers, the way the company likes them, exactly as I did. But she sat up every night on energy drinks, gladly shaving away at her own life force. If I had been in her seat, could I really have done the same?

“…You didn’t hurt your brain in that accident, did you?”

She asked it with a dry cough, as though hiding how flustered she was. Still that look of not quite understanding. I answered with a gentle smile.

“Something like that. Coming back from the dead woke me up a bit.”
“…Hah.”
“How badly I’d been getting things wrong, and how remarkable the work you’re doing is, ma’am… things like that just suddenly came into view.”

Kwon Hyeri stared at me blankly, then burst into a hollow laugh. It started with that laugh, and the corners of her mouth crept up. In all my time at this company, it was the first time I had seen her really smile.

“It’s a first. Meeting someone who affirms the way I work.”
“Is that so?”
“In this Strategic Analysis Office especially, it’s rare.”

With that, Kwon Hyeri picked up a single sheet of paper.

“I’m glad. If it’s you, Taeseung… I think I can trust you with it.”
“Sorry?”
“Take it.”

She didn’t carelessly drop the document to the floor the way she usually did. She reached out and handed it to me herself instead. The information on it was almost absurdly simple.

“Congratulations. On getting out of Team 5 and moving up to a higher team.”
“This is…”
“Of everyone who has beaten me in an Advancement Match, you’re the only one I’m genuinely congratulating.”

There was a trace of laughter in her voice. I looked down at the document with my name written on it. Advancing was unmistakably a good thing, but the countless people I’d treated inhumanly along the way went flashing through my mind.

“Whether I really deserve to advance…”
“Taeseung. Don’t lose those eyes of yours when you get there.”
“Sorry?”
“Because Teams 2 and 3 are far more vicious places than this one.”

Kwon Hyeri raised no objection to my advancement. If anything, it felt as though she were entrusting me with something. As though she believed that I, at least, would do well even up there.

“…I’ll keep it in mind. Thank you for everything, ma’am.”

I rose from my seat, gave her another small bow, and left the team leader’s office.

Teams 2 and 3, the upper departments of Beyond Villain’s Strategic Analysis Office. I found myself curious how different they would be from Teams 4 and 5.