Narci

The Media PR Office’s Content Production Team, dozens of monitors giving off their blue glow. There, Director Narci had sunk deep into his chair. He tapped a hand against the monitor set beside it.

“First things first, I suppose — explaining to you just how important this work is.”

Every time his finger tapped the monitor, Cha Huigyeong’s twisted face on the screen moved grotesquely. As though the real Cha Huigyeong were shut up inside the monitor.

“As you can see, my ability is data manipulation.”

Each time he tapped, the angle of Cha Huigyeong’s face changed. This ran on a wholly different track from video editing, or from AI content generation. The Cha Huigyeong inside the monitor, her look shifting bit by bit exactly as he wanted it.

A Gift like this exists?

Inside the digital world, at least, his ability had to be beyond anyone’s reach.

“My Gift is a simple one. Any digital photograph or video, I can change into whatever I imagine.”
“That’s… a genuinely incredible ability.”
“Haha. It isn’t as all-powerful as that.”

— Pap-pap.

The display changed, and the first original photograph came up. He set it alongside the version he had altered any number of times over. With the two side by side, the alterations in the doctored image were fairly obvious.

“Stray too far from the original and it shows, every time. And editing a photo or a video too heavily gives me a headache besides.”

A broken Gift always comes with a price. My own Gift brought on a headache as well when I fired it too much. I suspected his case was much the same.

“So what this Content Production Team does is take the content the underlings turn out, combine it with the content yours truly makes personally, and scatter the lot across social media.”
“I see…”
“For your information, we edit it maliciously and push it out to Hero-hate accounts, or else we flat-out make panchira¹ and push that to the sort of accounts you’d expect. That end brings in decent money too.”
“Panchi…?”
“Ah — bit of a desk-bound scholar, this one. Suppose you wouldn’t know.”

Snickering, he brought something up on the monitor to show me. They were photographs that enlarged and exaggerated parts of Heroes’ bodies. A male Hero’s collarbone, a female Hero’s waistline, and so on.

“This sort of thing is what we call panchira.”
“Ah. Understood.”
“Don’t look so disgusted. About ten percent of the money in that Hero Gamble you lot run is money we bring in.”
“…”

I nodded along vaguely and played the agreeable listener.

A Hero: a dependable shield protecting the citizens, and somebody’s idol. Put simply, they hold much the same position celebrities did back in the days before Villains. It made sense that a Villain organization would trade somewhat embarrassing photographs of people like that under the table…

“Anyway. That’s as far as the background goes.”

He brought Cha Huigyeong’s photographs back up on the monitor. All of them from when she came to Villain Special City. I waited in silence for Narci’s next words.

“Do you know why these photographs aren’t just another bit of gossip?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Because this is the trigger we’ve been waiting ten years for.”
“A trigger…?”
“That’s right. A trigger. Take a look at these photographs.”

— Swish-swish.

This time Narci showed me a different set of photographs. Poor resolution, their colors oddly garish. Nothing good was happening in them. Buildings burning and collapsed, and people running and screaming. In the middle of it, Heroes in distinctive suits were locked in battle with someone, and their opponents were vicious-looking Villains.

These were photographs of the war that had broken out between Heroes and Villains. The Civil War.

“Since the Civil War, the peace has dragged on far too long. Thanks to which every Villain, our own organization included, has had to live hiding like a rat, forever watching for the Association’s reaction.”

What he said was true. After the Civil War, Villain activity fell off sharply, and what remained of it was confined within Villain Special City. The Hero Association took the credit for the achievement, and its standing in Korea rose higher still. In the end, the Villains had lost a great deal in that fight.

“The money lines choked off, the restrictions on our activity piling higher and higher… We have starved beneath the fake paradise the Heroes built.”

A smile full of madness spread across Narci’s lips. Judging by the way he talked, he had to have been a Villain even before the Civil War. The years since must have been very like hell for him.

“And now the Hero Association has thrown us an appetizing piece of bait all on its own. A very tasty piece of bait by the name of ‘Speedgirl,’ who broke the official treaty and invaded Villain Special City.”

He gazed off into empty air, a happy smile on his face.

“I’m going to grow this issue to its limit. Stoke the public’s rage, drive the Association’s authority into the dirt, and make this country a kingdom of Villains once again.”

The moment Narci’s declaration landed, he looked at Hong Jangwoo and me. Something like a low scream, a small eep, leaked out of Hong Jangwoo’s mouth.

“That’s why I put in a request for help to you people in the Strategic Analysis Office.”

The fine hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and my mouth went bone dry. One look was enough to see how much he was expecting from this job. If Hong Jangwoo or I fell short of those expectations…

Losing the job might be the least of it. It could be my life on the line.

I might have to press the button on the keyring Belia gave me sooner than I’d expected.

“Might I have a moment to put my thoughts in order?”
“Do as you like. The support period for this collaboration is one month. Produce results inside that. Mornings I’m busy with work, so we’ll talk in the afternoon… I’ll have a desk found for you somewhere, so go there and get on with it.”
“Then we’ll see you this afternoon.”

He waved a hand to shoo us out, then put his glasses back on and sat down. The instant he settled into the chair, the monitors filling the wall began to change all at once.

…Is he controlling every one of those monitors?

Editing the video and photographs inside dozens of monitors, all at the same time. Even granting that his Gift was ‘altering photographs by imagination’, the sheer volume bordered on impossible. His control over it was better than that of anyone else who had awakened a Gift.

“Jangwoo. Stop standing there in a daze — let’s head back for now.”
“Yes? Yes, yes…”

I took Jangwoo, whose face had gone dead pale, and left the Content Production Team. Narci’s bluster seemed to have frightened him.

A staff member showed us to some desks in a corner of the Content Production Team.

“You can work here.”
“Are these empty desks?”
“Yes. To be precise, they’re the desks of the people who failed to fill the Content Production Team’s quota this week and were let go.”
“…”

For now I sat down and shut my eyes. I could hear Hong Jangwoo rustling about beside me, but I concentrated and shut the sound out. A great deal of information had come into my head, and I needed to analyze the situation.

First: the Media PR Office is a department that rigs public opinion, or puts up fake content, in order to make money.

Second: Director Narci has a Gift that lets him change digital images and video into whatever he imagines.

Third: using Speedgirl’s invasion of Villain Special City as his pretext, he wants a second Civil War, and he has called us in to get it.

I have to start a Civil War… is that it?

Any Villain would cheer for an ambition like that. And my own situation left me no choice but to ride that enormous current.

Was this really right? To start a Civil War just to bring Cha Huigyeong down?

…If a second Civil War breaks out, plenty of people are going to die and be hurt.

The countless documents that had passed through my hands during the Advancement Match flashed before my eyes. The people listed on their certificates of family relations. Civilians, and the families of Villains and Heroes alike, would certainly go through a terrible time; that much was plain fact. I had lost my father early myself, and I had been through a hard time of my own.

…But it has to be done.

The terrible time I went through was partly my father’s absence, but it was also the Hero Association’s doing. Cha Huigyeong setting out to keep me like an animal. Her own will was in it too, no doubt, but behind it stood an order from the Association.

That Association is already rotten and festering from the root, nothing but an enormous con trick going by the name of justice. After my father died, I carried a picket sign in and out of the courthouse and howled. Those people sneered, shut me up, and controlled public opinion. Cha Huigyeong, Yoyoboy, and the Association that shields them and built itself a fake kingdom… all of them are nothing but garbage that ought to be incinerated.

If it meant bringing down the kingdom those rotten bastards built, I was gladly prepared to be the hammer that broke its walls. Even if what I did brought misfortune down on somebody else. Because somebody has to do it.

“…Let’s start by finding the photographs.”

I sat at the desk and got to work on the computer, gathering Cha Huigyeong’s photographs into one place. Fortunately the database had them stored exactly as they were.

Cha Huigyeong, who had tortured Scorpion and beaten me so completely. Looking at her face was an ordeal, but the thought that I could bring her down made it bearable.

To start a Civil War, I need a frame.

War, by its nature, is what happens when hatred and rage toward one another pile up until they can pile no higher and burst. For that, Heroes and Villains needed to loathe each other with real violence. So how was I to build a frame for it?

— Bzzzzt!

“…!”

Right as I was agonizing over the frame, my vision blurred and the world was stained red. The herald of Future Observation, the Gift I had awakened.

The scene in front of me wavered like a television screen full of noise. A ringing in my ears, a bzzzt—!, and a pain stabbing into my retinas. Proof that Future Observation had fired.

…Here it comes.

Inside Future Observation’s field of vision, I was scrolling a smartphone without pause.

Most of them were posts attacking Speedgirl. What they fixed on above all: ‘Speedgirl’s personality’. The focus was on how she looked down on citizens and behaved like a hypocrite.

So this is the frame I’m going to build.

The smartphone’s screen switched, and this time it moved to a news site. In the news, too, the headlines were full of voices attacking the Hero Speedgirl, but… unlike on the forums, the Hero Association had surfaced here as well.

…That’s me, isn’t it?

I frowned slightly. My name and my father’s stood side by side in the news. I had wished for that scene and wished for it again. But now, of all times?

Hold on… don’t tell me.

Future Observation ended. I rubbed my gritty eyes and began fitting the fragments of the future together. Two ‘frames’ that could push this situation beyond anyone’s control, drawn out clearly thanks to the Gift.

The first: the frame that a Hero who played at being the noblest of all was in fact hiding a nature uglier than any Villain’s.

The method is simple.

I clicked the mouse and brought up the original footage of Cha Huigyeong rescuing a child from a burning building. A few years back, as I recalled, the video had blown up on social media and done more than anything else to raise Speedgirl’s standing. It was far too famous by now, so a crude composite would be spotted at once. But suppose I brought in footage that had drawn almost no public attention, footage nobody even knew was posted anywhere…

And suppose I altered, very slightly, the face of the Cha Huigyeong in it? Suppose I blended a faint contempt into the mouth of the woman who had just saved a citizen, and laid over her eyes a disgust like someone looking at filth? Then I could pin on her the frame that Speedgirl in fact loathes ordinary citizens.

With Director Narci’s power and the Content Production Team’s manpower, it’s more than possible.

There is a term: confirmation bias. It refers to the psychological phenomenon whereby people selectively take in only the information that agrees with what they already believe.

All it would take was for the ‘fake truth’ to spread. That the benevolent smile was in fact an act put on while she held back nausea. From that moment, every heroic step she had ever taken, and every one of those photographs, would be read as contemptible hypocrisy.

The second frame… is putting myself forward.

This one is less a frame than the truth the Hero Association turned a blind eye to. The traces of despair I had left in every corner of the internet after my father died. Unanswered petitions on the e-People portal, appeals with zero views, a shabby photograph of a one-man protest taken in front of the courthouse, and so on.

These fragments connect to the Hero Association putting me on its wanted list as a Villain.

An Association that drove a grieving family member into Villainy to silence him for trying to get at the truth. That’s the frame I go with.

In actual fact I never took a compensation payout from them. If anything, what I got was an offer of the money on condition I stop stirring things up. But suppose I turned that around and mixed it in cleverly. Suppose that to avoid paying, they had gone so far as to try to kill the son of a Hero who protected the citizens?

When lies and truth are mixed at a ratio of seven to three, the lie only grows more solid.