Two Frames

“Jangwoo. Go dig up a few things for me.”
“Yes? Me?”
“Well, who else. You do it, or should I?”

I’d finished thinking it through, so I called over to Hong Jangwoo at the next desk. His reaction, though, was oddly lukewarm.

“What’s with that face like you’ve been chewing shit?”
“…I can help you, sure. It’s just that if this one goes wrong, I’m the senior on paper, so I’m the one who takes the fall.”
“Ha.”

He was speaking politely because I’d half-threatened him into it, but his rank, when it came down to it: Senior Staff. He’d come here as the senior showing the ropes to me, a Team 2 staff member. Meaning that even if I fouled it up, more of the responsibility would land on him than on me.

“I’ve already got the whole idea worked out, so just do as I say.”
“No, but still…”
“I said I’ll take all the responsibility.”
“!”

Only then did something in Hong Jangwoo’s eyes shift.

I’ve seen it through Future Observation, so success is a foregone conclusion either way.

The news stories and forum posts I’d seen inside Future Observation. Follow those frames exactly as I’d seen them and the outcome could hardly be anything but good. While everyone else agonized over an impossible problem, I was the only one who already had the answer.

“Anyway, that’s how it is, so do what I tell you. You’re scared either way, aren’t you? Of getting fired here, and of having the blame dumped on you.”
“…I mean, obviously. Wouldn’t anybody be?”
“I’m not. So follow my lead.”

I laid down the threat and told him which material to go and find.

“But this… the material looks personal. Am I right?”
“That’s right. I’m going to use my own material. …Look, I’ll just tell you what I’m going to do.”

I explained the two frames to him. One that would tarnish Speedgirl’s image, and one built on the relationship between me and the Hero Association. Hong Jangwoo heard me out and looked astonished.

“I knew you were an A-rank Hero’s son, but there was a compensation payout problem on top of it…”
“You’ve heard it all, so get to work. We’re presenting to the Director this afternoon.”
“Ah. Understood.”

I left the material to Hong Jangwoo and started building the presentation. The news stories about my father from back then, up on the screen. Forced to look at the very things I’d sworn I would never look at again, I couldn’t help clamping my teeth shut.

— Grrrrk.

This time will be different.

The conversation from when I first met Belia came back to me out of nowhere.

“Do you truly believe you made every effort?”
“Yes!”
“I do not think so. One method yet remains.”
“…One method?”
“It is a simple method. To use not a Hero’s way, but a Villain’s. That is the last method left to you.”

That was what Belia had said to me, after all my struggling to drag my father’s death into the light. Uncover it a Villain’s way, she’d told me, the way that runs outside the law. And if I wanted it, she would help me do it.

Borrow the Media PR Office’s power and it’s possible.

The work I’d sunk something like half my life into was finally beginning to pay off. I gathered and sorted the material, forgetting even to blink. Cold sweat off my palm slicked the surface of the mouse, but my fingers never stopped.

Cha Huigyeong. And the Hero Association. That fake kingdom you built — I’ll bring it down with my own hands.

I uploaded the records of despair I’d left behind ten years ago to the Opinion Manipulation Team’s server. Shabby cries nobody had ever bothered to look at. Now they would become a tidal wave big enough to sink the Association.

Around the time the material was ninety percent finished, Director Narci came over to me.

“Strategic Analysis Office. I can expect results to match the big talk, I take it?”
“Director. The material is ready.”
“…Already?”
“Yes. I’ve prepared two frames that will bring down the Hero Association and set public opinion alight. Shall I go ahead with the presentation?”

At that, Director Narci’s hollow cheeks drew in tighter as a smile surfaced.

“Good. Very good. The rest of those Strategic Analysis Office bastards are so damn slow they were about to drive me out of my mind… The one Director Amos dotes on really is something else.”
“You’re too kind.”
“Then I’ll set up a nice big stage for you. Go at it and don’t hold back.”
“When you say the stage…?”

Director Narci pulled a remote out of his pocket and aimed it at the wall of monitors. Dozens of them abruptly snapped off. A moment later, a beam projector screen started down from the top of the wall with a whirr.

“The Content Production Team ought to hear it too. They’re the colleagues you’ll be working with. Or am I wrong?”
“…I’ll get set up for the presentation right away.”
“Good. Very good.”

The deck was all but finished anyway. I walked straight to the spot in front of the chair Director Narci had been sitting in. Dozens of Content Production Team staff at work came into view all at once.

— Clap!

Director Narci clapped his hands and gathered their attention.

“Right, everyone, eyes up here. Our distinguished guest here today from the Strategic Analysis Office will be handling the presentation for this big project of ours.”

His words finally turned their eyes on me. I signaled Hong Jangwoo and put the deck up on the screen.

“From here I’ll be presenting the frames by which we can bring down Speedgirl, and the Association with her. I should also say that this presentation includes some of my own private family history, so I ask for your understanding on that point.”

And the presentation that carried my plan began to ring out across the whole Content Production Team.

A strange rumor had been going around Beyond Villain of late.

A rumor that a monster of a rookie had joined the Strategic Analysis Office. Narci, the Director who ran the Media PR Office, remembered hearing it himself.

At first I took it for an exaggerated bit of nonsense.

Narci had snorted the first time the news reached him. Strategic Analysis Office types were gambling addicts in the end, thrashing about to keep from being let go and doing nothing but placing bets, weren’t they? However well they did, they were cogs in the company called Beyond Villain… no more and no less. That was what he had thought.

But as time went on the rumor took on shape and burrowed into Narci’s ear. The man had posted an overwhelming score at his first month-end evaluation and jumped straight to Assistant Manager. That was only the beginning.

What settled it was the TF team Director Amos presided over. The Opinion Manipulation Team, sitting under the Media PR Office, had taken a subcontract on that work, and joining it put them close enough to see what the ‘rookie’ actually was.

A rumor that he had that madcap, utterly mood-driven Director Amos completely in hand. A rumor that he was effectively running the TF team from behind. And even a rumor that he had controlled Amos’s Gift and pushed the Villains up several weight classes.

And in fact, watching the TF team’s output become a hot topic on its own without the Opinion Manipulation Team having to fan the flames, Narci had had no choice but to admit it.

This is no baseless rumor. The man is the real thing.

Handling Amos, who would wreck a job that was ninety percent finished the moment her mood soured… that was not something luck or overwhelming competence alone could manage. That pointed to a perfect talent, outstanding not only at the work but at managing people and reading a room. And it meant that every result the TF team produced was coming out of the head of a man called Im Taeseung.

Narci looked down at Im Taeseung, standing on the Content Production Team’s platform, and fiddled with his bizarre glasses while he waited for him to speak. He wanted to see whether the man really was worth what the rumors said.

“Then, straight to the point. The first frame.”

Im Taeseung worked the remote and the beam projector’s display changed.

The first item laid out a plan for rigging public opinion against Speedgirl, Cha Huigyeong. A strategy of subtly doctoring the images of her face as she rescued a citizen, to provoke the public’s disgust.

Narci leaned back against the chair and narrowed his eyes.

Not a bad idea. Only, an idea at this level is one anybody could come up with.

Maybe he had simply expected too much. The presentation was ordinary. Tamper with Speedgirl’s face and whip the crowd into a rage? Anyone in a Content Production Team meeting would float that at least once. Disappointed, Narci swallowed a yawn and started to look away.

That was when it happened.

“The second frame is about myself.”
“?”

Im Taeseung moved to the next slide and spoke in a flat, dry voice.

“My name is Im Taeseung. And I am the son of the A-rank Hero Hyperman.”

The whole Content Production Team office fell dead silent. Narci’s own eyes went wide, and he leaned sharply forward. It had been a long time since he’d heard the name Hyperman, and the fact that the man’s son worked at a Villain organization was startling on top of it.

“The Hero Association kept my father’s death thoroughly under wraps, and we never received the body either. Nor any proper compensation payout.”

On the screen, the record of Im Taeseung’s past activity unfolded like a panorama. A shabby photograph of a one-man protest, appeals on community forums with view counts in the dozens, interview pieces buried in the corners of small local papers. Not even Narci, a Director of the Media PR Office, had ever come across any of it.

Im Taeseung laid his own shame bare and went on speaking evenly all the same. How he had fought to get at the truth after his father’s death. How the Association’s wall had blocked him until nothing at all was left. And, at the end of it, the confession that to take revenge on the Hero Association he had crawled into a Villain den himself.

…Interesting. Very interesting.

Narci swallowed hard and stared at Im Taeseung’s expressionless face. None of this was a speech aimed at winning sympathy. Merely background, so the project could be understood.

“To avoid paying out the compensation, the Hero Association branded the bereaved family of a Hero who died protecting citizens a Villain.”

Im Taeseung blew up his own wanted poster and a photograph of himself being beaten by Cha Huigyeong, side by side.

“They sent Speedgirl and made me a Villain, and when that still didn’t bury the truth, they sent her to assassinate me.”
“…”
“Use this narrative and we can bring down not only Speedgirl but the very foundations of the Hero Association.”

The Hero Association had used a Hero to brand an innocent ordinary citizen a Villain. And when that ordinary citizen didn’t die, it had gone so far as to send a Hero to carry out a contract killing?

A twitch of a smile began to spread across Narci’s face.

There is no narrative more perfect than this. The supporting material is perfect to the point of beauty.

The cruelty of laying his entire life on the chopping block and selling it off. The company loyalty of machining his own tragedy into an efficient weapon for the organization’s ends. And, making all that heartlessness possible, a vengefulness deeper than the abyss.

A monster in perfect possession of every quality a Villain ought to have. And that monster was trying to complete his own revenge with the enormous tool called Beyond Villain.

Some might revile him as a degenerate with no feeling for his own father, but Narci’s heart hammered fit to burst with joy.

To meet a comrade in a place like this.

There was a reason Narci’s workload was heavy for a Director. He wanted the Hero Association brought down himself, and seeing a colleague moving toward the same goal made his chest run hot.

The hell those damned Association bastards put us through.

He had been with Beyond Villain since its earliest days, and he knew. These days the company was revered as one of the three great Villain organizations and all the rest of it. But around the Civil War it had reeled badly, and there had been a stretch when its survival itself hung in the balance. To this day, memories of that time set anger surging through him even in his sleep.

And this man had brought him a perfect plan for screwing that Association over. Unable to hold the swelling emotion in, Narci shot to his feet.

— Clap! Clap! Clap!

“Bravo! Bravo!!”

Narci’s shout, thick with madness, rang through the whole auditorium, and the frozen staff, as though spellbound, began to applaud as well. Even inside the swelling ovation Im Taeseung only bowed his head calmly in acknowledgment.

Face flushed and twitching with excitement, Narci gave one more clap and handed down his orders.

“You all heard that! Check the data that’s gone up on the server!”

He waved a hand at the wall of monitors and roared.

“Content Production Team A, edit everything around Speedgirl; Team B, around the Im Taeseung data — then scatter it across the whole world!”
“Understood, Director!”

— Tap-tap-tap-tap!

The sound of dozens of staff hammering keyboards in unison came back at him.

Narci watched Im Taeseung come down off the platform. A face astonishingly calm, for a man who had just presented in front of a crowd and poured out his own bitter past.

…Perhaps the rumors were an underestimate.

Narci stroked his own hollowed cheek and let a satisfied smile slip out.