Disposition

My father had died here in Villain Special City, the place where I worked, where I breathed, where I lived my life.

How is that even possible?

This is a world where Cha Huigyeong needs only to show her face in Villain Special City for it to make the front pages. And in the middle of all that, if a Hero had died here… Why had no record of it been left behind, and why had the Association been so desperate to bury the fact?

Belia watched me flounder in my confusion, then calmly went on.

“In my time as a Director here at Beyond Villain, I too have seen a great many things. And there are matters one cannot help but learn, however little one wishes to.”
“…I’d imagine so.”
“Among them were Heroes who had infiltrated Villain Special City.”
“!”

She said it as lightly as if she were talking about the lunch menu.

“So Heroes coming into Villain Special City… you’re saying that’s an ordinary thing?”
“I should rather like to ask you the same. The Hero Association wishes to stop Villains. In that case, would they not dig out whatever intelligence they could on a Villain Special City swarming with them?”
“…That’s — true, but still.”

Thinking about it, it was obvious enough. Back in the modern age before Gifts, and further back still in the age of the world wars, nations had always sent spies into one another’s countries to gather information and run espionage operations. Would there really be no spies between Villains and Heroes?

There’s no way.

Korea had herded every Villain into a prison without bars called Villain Special City. There was no telling when or where they might cause trouble, or start plotting another Civil War. To stop that, the surest thing was to put someone on the inside and watch them.

“…But a Hero coming in here is itself a breach of the non-aggression pact. Handled badly, it could even become a pretext for war.”

Belia smiled at my objection.

“Their reasons vary. Arresting a Villain, watching from the inside, or gathering intelligence… They have come nosing around here more often than you would think.”
“…”
“Speculative conspiracy theories do circulate here and there, but this is plain fact. A filthy little secret known only to those at Director level in Beyond Villain.”
“Then why are you only telling me now?”

She laid her index finger lightly against her red lips.

“In letting this much pass my lips at all, I am already extending you a considerable mercy.”
“That’s…”
“And even that is possible only because you produced results.”

The sheer weight of her presence pressed down on me, and I had no choice but to shut my mouth. If anyone other than Belia had told me Heroes were infiltrating this place… I would probably have snorted and refused to believe a word of it.

“Fine. I won’t ask any more. But let’s get back to the main point. If my father infiltrated the city, what was the reason?”
“That would be rather too generous a favor, I think. We shall leave it here for today.”
“…That’s it? You’re stopping here?”

Something in me snapped at her refusal, just like that.

“Why do you keep hiding things from me?! I produced results in the Strategic Analysis Office, on the TF team, in the Media PR Office! What is the problem?!”
“…”
“Is there anyone in Beyond Villain right now putting up numbers as overwhelming as mine? Is there even one?!”

Belia listened to me shout, then let out a deep sigh.

“Your results, I acknowledge. But this is a different matter from performance figures.”
“How is it different?! At the very least, I’ve got the right to know the truth! What is it you keep hiding from—”

— Thud.

My heart dropped away inside me, and my breath would not come.

“Uh… ghk…”

I wondered if it was an attack by a Gift, but it wasn’t. A pressure like the soul itself being shaken. My vision blurred and collapsed like a screen filling with noise.

What is this…

Without even knowing what had hit me, I slowly crumpled.

“I am sorry to do this to you.”

Before I blacked out, Belia murmured one last thing.

“For the man you are now… this truth is far too much to bear.”
“…”
“By the time I call you again, see that you have built up a little more strength. Enough to protect yourself from any threat at all. …I shall assign someone to you.”

I lost consciousness without so much as a chance to answer. And when I opened my eyes again, the white ceiling of a hospital room was there to greet me.

…Belia and Kokines had vanished, as though they had never been there at all.

The top floor of the Hero Association.

The air in the windowless round-table conference room had settled heavy. Each seat was walled off behind an opaque screen, a strange arrangement in which no one at the table could so much as make out another’s face.

The councilors who made the final decision on every item of business in the Hero Association. Within the Association they were called the Masters of the Round Table, and they wielded absolute power. Thanks to that peculiar arrangement, in which none of them could know any of the others, their political relations stayed level.

“Wasn’t the Hyperman business tied off perfectly ten years ago?”

Just then an unidentifiable voice flew out of the dark like a shard.

“I fail to see why it has gotten noisy again at this late date.”
“That’s the public for you. Fixating on something odd and then all of them cheerfully hurling stones at it…”
“Good grief.”

Like ripples spreading across a calm river, one voice multiplied into many, and murmurs of agreement rose here and there.

This meeting, too, had been called to settle a matter connected to Hyperman… and the discontent of those gathered at the round table ran high.

What a nuisance. Why call us in over a thing like this.
I have plenty of other business to see to.
They call it an emergency session, and I come in for this…

For them the Hyperman affair was finished, buried in the past. Nobody at the round table could see the slightest point in taking the case up now. And since they had been called in on a weekend with no warning at all, their irritation went through the roof.

— Thoom—!

“!”

The dull sound of the blow rang through the auditorium-sized conference room, and the chatter drained away like an outgoing tide.

One figure alone at the round table, seated a little higher than the rest. That chair was decorated in dazzling splendor, as though it were a throne.

“Order, all of you.”

Among the Masters of the Round Table, level with one another to a man, the single absolute authority. Nobody could raise an objection to anything the figure said.

The figure on the throne straightened the crooked tie and spoke in a dry voice.

“I am aware that there is a great deal of discontent regarding the Hyperman matter.”
“…”
“Accordingly, on the matter of Hyperman, I move for ‘Silence.’”

Silence.

It meant a ban on any reference to the matter, direct or indirect: official statements of position, interviews with those involved, anything of the kind. With the entire public in a rage, why on earth hold to silence? The reason was simpler than one might think.

“Hyperman’s death is a matter fully ten years past. However the public may bark about it now, they can have no effect whatsoever.”

The figure set the gavel down and sank back deep into the chair.

“The statute of limitations has expired, and all they can put forward is conjecture with no legal force.”

When it disposed of Hyperman and Im Taeseung all those years ago, the Association had worked the edges of the legal net for all they were worth. Every pressure had been applied through lawful procedure, and withholding the compensation payout, too, had come out of a flawless review of the law.

“Is there any councilor who does not agree with this opinion?”

The figures beyond the partitions nodded quietly. They had no wish to argue back and forth over the Hyperman matter any longer, because if they kept worrying at this item of business, the discussion might reach all the way to ‘the reason he had to be killed,’ useful as he had been.

“Then all are agreed upon Silence.”

— Rap! Rap! Rap!

The figure in the head seat struck the gavel three times, and with that the Hyperman item was closed. But the meeting was not over yet. One more item of importance remained.

“We shall now discuss the item concerning Speedgirl.”
“Tch!”
“That useless bitch…”
“If it weren’t for Speedgirl!”

The figure at the head seat had barely spoken before curses were flying among the Masters of the Round Table. The recent incursion into Villain Special City had been Speedgirl’s own doing, not theirs, and naturally that put it beyond forgiveness.

“A tool is a tool only when it is used for its purpose. How can you call a thing that bolts off on its own and causes trouble a tool at all?”
“We did get a long run out of that one.”
“We meant to raise her to A-rank and put her to public use… tsk, tsk.”
“Kicked away her own good fortune, she did.”

Their reaction was ice-cold. All the loyalty and devotion she had offered up to the Association counted for nothing. However well a blade may cut at first, what is to be done when the edge goes dull later on? You sharpen it, and if that does not work, you replace it with a new one.

“What you all say is entirely right. She has dragged the Association’s honor down, so she will need to be dealt with accordingly.”
“…”
“Strip her of Hero status and put her to use as a test subject at the Gift Research Institute. Any objection?”

Nothing but a viciously cold silence hung in the conference room. Not one of them spoke up for a B-rank Hero who had already outlived her usefulness and fallen into the abyss.

The hand gripping the gavel tightened.

“There being no votes against, it is confirmed as it stands.”

— Rap! Rap! Rap!

Three strikes of the gavel rang out. A red seal reading ‘Accidental Death’ came down on the document bearing Cha Huigyeong’s name. She had not died in an accident, not yet, but now that they had decided it, it was a fate that had to come to pass.

The cause of death of a woman once called a hero was settled, just like that, in a matter of minutes.

“Then Speedgirl is to be dealt with within the month… We shall proceed to the next item.”

Naturally, there was nobody at that table who pitied her, or felt any sympathy at all.

Beyond Villain’s Media PR Office.

In my seat, watching the monitor, I let out a low groan. The opinion metrics were tracing a downward curve in real time, and the sight left my mouth bone dry. The explosive firepower of the early days had passed its peak at some point and was settling into a sluggish lull.

“What are you peering at so hard?”
“…Director Narci.”
“The numbers nosediving — it’s only natural, you know.”

I turned to look behind me, and there he was, smiling wide enough to bare those cheekbones. I couldn’t work out how he could smile with the Media PR Office in this state.

“Put that clever brain of yours to work on it. Why the opinion metrics are walking downhill.”
“…”
“You need a good grasp of the public’s nature.”

Narci explained gently, the way you would teach a small child.

“There’s only one reason opinion metrics fall. Because there’s no new bait worth setting alight.”

The public was forever starving for new bait. Bait they could tear into, point fingers at, weep and laugh over. And what was the Hero Association doing right now?

“…The fire’s going out because the Hero Association is staying silent.”
“Yes! That’s exactly it.”

Right now the Association was keeping a viciously heavy silence and refusing to budge from it. Not one word of explanation had gone out to the enraged public. They were holding out like a rock waiting for a storm to pass. Against men hiding behind the shield of silence, any further media offensive was powerless.

“…So you’re saying there’s nothing to be done? That we sit here and wait for those bastards to be forgotten?”

After everything it had taken for this chance to come, I couldn’t let it go to waste like this. Was there really no other way?

Narci tapped at the frame of his glasses and smiled.

“I asked the legal team in the Beyond Villain building for their view, and on Hyperman’s case and on yours there’s no legal problem at all.”
“…No legal problem?”
“Don’t be too shocked. They’re clever, that bunch.”

He patted my stiffened shoulder and whispered in a low, subdued voice.

“It means that for fear of being caught out later, they committed every last act inside the bounds of ‘legal.’”
“!”

Rage made my head run hot, but no rebuttal came to me.

…It was the same back when I was in the thick of protesting.

Come to think of it, they had always been like that. To my face they played the noble hero and ignored me; behind my back they shoved law and regulation at me and squeezed my windpipe shut. Without clear evidence, the public’s rage in the end cannot reach the Association. Put them in a courtroom and, absent hard evidence, they would slip out of it easily enough.

So there’s no evidence of anything illegal on paper, and you’re going to dig your heels in?

I read their intent and chewed at my lip. Their cunning set my teeth on edge, and at the same time I felt powerless. If the legal team had reviewed it, there really was nothing illegal to find.

Narci kneaded my shoulder and said it couldn’t be helped.

“Then… there really is no way?”
“Well now. Not by normal methods, no.”
“Normal… methods?”
“Tell me, are you much interested in war?”
“…War?”

At the out-of-nowhere remark I whipped my head around to look at his face. A grotesque madness surfacing in his eyes. He swept a finger through the air, making a show of drawing something.

“That’s right. War. In war terms, this is nothing other than a siege.”

A siege.

The word refers to a battle in which a castle or a fortress is attacked. Conversely, defending one from the inside is called a siege defense. But why was that coming up now?

“Right now we are conducting a siege to bring down the enormous castle that is the Hero Association. But our opponent has barred the gates and won’t come out, so of course it’s frustrating.”
“…It is.”
“Why are they keeping the gates barred?”
“Because legally there’s no problem… I mean, because they think that if they hold out, they win. Is that it?”

— Snap!

He snapped his fingers.

“That’s right. They hold out because they think holding out wins.”
“…?”
“So here’s a question for you. To bring down a castle that has turned entirely to defense — what must you do?”

I chewed over his words and stared at the monitor with bloodshot eyes. There was only one way to draw out an enemy who would not open the gates.

“…You make it so they have no choice but to open the gates? So they can’t so much as think that holding out wins?”

— Clap!

Narci clapped his hands brightly and cheered like a child.

“Yes, that’s exactly it! You stab at the thing they’re counting on.”
“But how…”
“You cut the Hero Association’s money line. And at the same time, you drag every illegal act the Association is committing up to the surface.”
“!”

My eyes wavered violently, as though an earthquake had struck them.

Two methods, put forward by Director Narci. Cutting the Association’s money line, and dragging its illegal acts into the light. If those two things were really possible…

“…The Association would be shitting itself.”
“That’s right. In siege terms it amounts to cutting off the castle’s food supply line. Starving rats will have no choice but to throw the gates open and come bolting out.”

I looked Narci straight in the eye and spoke.

“Director. What do you need me to do?”

At my answer he broke into a smile bright enough to hollow those cheekbones out.