Presentation

“Ugh, my whole body aches.”

Patting lightly at my shoulder, I stepped into the Beyond Villain building. That feeling of every last joint creaking as it moved.

The hellish training with Director Panthera hadn’t ended until three in the morning. But past the stiff muscle ache, my senses had been honed to a far finer edge than before.

The training method… does work, at least.

There’s a move most people call the splits. You spread your legs wide, side to side or front to back, until they open to nearly a hundred and eighty degrees. To get there you have to push a little further every single day, driving the limit steadily outward. Panthera’s training method, it struck me, had much the same feel to it.

My body feels different.

When I clenched my fist, thick veins bulged over the back of my hand. Even without the WD-401 engaged, strength to match my old reinforced state. Amos’s remodeling of my body had already pushed it up once, and this was another ten percent on top of that.

I shouldn’t have brought up the WD-401.

Around two in the morning, certain I was going to die at this rate, I’d switched the WD-401 on. Panthera hit me harder for it, demanding to know where I got off sneaking some strange Artifact into things. Then he went off spouting insanity about measuring my limit with the device left switched on.

Damn it. The training works, the medicine works, so I can’t even turn it down…

I’d wanted to refuse when he said we’d meet again tomorrow, but there was no denying the effect of the recovery agent he’d given me. A miracle drug that mended vicious bruising and torn muscle in a matter of hours. I’d always thought it strange, seeing Villains take a fatal wound and then turn up on TV a week later perfectly fine. Only now did I feel like I knew the secret. Not that I’d wanted to find out this way, of course.

Shaking my head, I pressed the elevator button in the lobby. While I was waiting, somebody gave my shoulder a couple of taps.

“Huh? Hayun?”
“Oppa! It really has been ages. …But are you all right?”

When I turned my head, Yang Hayun was looking at me with worried eyes.

“Oppa, are you sick or something? Why do you look like that?”
“Ah, n-no. I’m fine. Just a bit tired, that’s all.”

I stroked my chin and avoided her eyes. I could hardly tell her I’d been training with Panthera until deep into last night.

Yang Hayun said that was a relief and smiled brightly.

“Ever since you went to Team 2 it’s been even harder to catch sight of you. Let’s go for a drink like we used to!”
“Fine by me. As soon as this project’s wrapped up, let’s do it.”
“What project? Ah — don’t tell me, that news…”

Yang Hayun watched my face and let the rest of it trail off. She was doing what she could to be considerate, with my past spread across the whole country. I gave her shoulder a light pat and answered flatly.

“It’s fine, Hayun. I’m the one behind it. I got it onto the news.”
“Really? You did, yourself, Oppa? Why on earth…”
“Yeah. Because it was the most effective way to bring the Association down.”

Peddling my own past to attack the Hero Association. Someone else might have found that hard to do, but I didn’t care. If I’d hated being on the news to begin with, I wouldn’t have staged a one-man protest back in middle school.

“If it gets hard, promise you’ll tell me! I’m an Assistant Manager now too, you know — I can at least listen to your troubles, Oppa!”
“Aren’t you overdoing it, Assistant Manager Yang?”
“Hehehe, it’s nothing like that!”

Yang Hayun clenched her fist and gave me a spirited grin. Promoted to Assistant Manager on Team 4 before I’d even noticed, and handling Villain management now. Seeing her like that made my heart a good deal lighter.

“I’ll get in touch next time. Let’s have that drink.”
“Yes, sounds good! Have a good one today, too!”
“Yeah, you too.”

I saw her off and stepped into the Media PR Office on the fifteenth floor. Running into Yang Hayun by sheer luck like that. Today was shaping up to be a good day.

My good mood didn’t last long, though. The moment Director Narci laid eyes on me, he came straight over at a run.

“Ah, Staff Member Im! Have you come up with any good ideas?”
“Ideas?”
“That’s right. I gave you all the information, didn’t I. We have to drag those Association bastards out from behind their castle walls before public interest burns out, don’t we?”

That threw me. He’d told me to come up with an idea only yesterday, and now I was to have it ready by the next morning? Naturally, I had nothing prepared at all.

“…Director, please give me a little more time. I need to put together a solid framework for this.”
“Hmm… well, fine. Then let us talk again this afternoon.”
“…”
“Bear this in mind. We do not have a great deal of time. The public hates talking about bait that has already gone stale. They feel it puts them behind the trend.”

Narci said his piece and went on his way just like that. It was absurd, but he wasn’t wrong. With the rise of social media and short-form content, trends were passing by far too fast.

“Squeeze out an idea in a single day? Is that supposed to make sense, or is it just hot air?”

Hong Jangwoo, listening beside me, sneered in a small voice. It was a galling way to put it, but this once I agreed with him. I sat down at my desk and took my throbbing head in my hands.

Haah… what am I supposed to do with this.

It would be easiest by far if Future Observation went off for me, but why was it so relentlessly calm at exactly these moments? The frustration tipped over into self-disgust, as though without a precognitive ability I were incompetent, good for nothing at all. By now it was about time for it to fire…

— Bzzzt—!

It’s here!

A shiver running up the back of my neck. Along with a pain that tore at my retinas, my vision was stained red. Inside the triggered Future Observation, I was watching some video.

What is this?

The bedroom of some high-end hotel. The chairman of a famous major corporation and a C-rank Hero renowned for her looks were tangled together.

This was it. The masterstroke that would cut off the Association’s windpipe.

“Jangwoo. Let’s get the presentation ready.”
“Sorry? All of a sudden?”
“Yeah, an idea came to me. A good one, at that.”

I wore a smile of quiet triumph and seized the mouse. All that was left for me to do: bring about an event that was already going to happen. With the answer sheet in hand, solving the problem was far too easy.

“…Are you really going to present this just as it is?”

That afternoon, Hong Jangwoo and I finished preparing the presentation.

“What’s this all of a sudden? After we’ve got the whole thing ready.”
“Even so, it’s just too radical… I’m worried about whether Director Narci will like it.”

Hong Jangwoo wore a pitiful expression, like a puppy squirming to be let outside. His face had been souring from the moment we started building the presentation materials, and by the time we finally got to the last slide he was very nearly in tears. Well, the further we got into the material, the more of a spectacle it became.

“Jangwoo, what are you so scared of? I told you I’d take responsibility for all of it.”
“It’s… all very well saying that. In practical terms I’m the one showing you the ropes, aren’t I.”
“Tsss. Jangwoo.”

I grabbed Hong Jangwoo by the shoulder.

“The Tower of Babel project, the TF team project — have you forgotten I’m the one who made every one of them work?”
“…”
“Quit shaking, man. Just watch me present, all right?”

I brushed past Hong Jangwoo, who gave no answer. It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand his worry. What I was about to present was… a somewhat shocking plan, and one with little chance of ever actually happening.

“Director, the presentation is ready.”
“Ah, good. Staff Member Im, start the presentation right away.”
“Understood.”

With Director Narci’s leave, I stood once more on the Content Production Team’s platform. Dozens of pairs of eyes were fixed on me, filled with expectation and curiosity, plainly different from last time. Seeing that, I felt afresh that my position had changed.

This definitely feels different from the last presentation.

Just how much the success of the ‘Tower of Babel’ project had changed my standing inside the company. The Content Production Team staff, who until now had listened to presentations with half an ear at best, had every scrap of their attention on me.

I cleared my throat lightly and began the presentation.

“The small ball our Media PR Office threw succeeded in shaking public opinion across the whole of the Republic of Korea, but the Tower of Babel still stands firm.”

The opening ran on from what Director Narci had already explained. With nothing legally to catch them on, the Association was holding to its silence, and that meant someone would have to force them into opening their mouths.

“Fortunately, we have weapons enough to make them open their mouths.”

— Flash!

The display switched over, and the Association’s bare face was laid out in every detail. Item after item came up on screen: the entertaining of high-ranking figures under the pretext of donations, the Association’s labor exploitation in merchandise, the manual for the discriminatory placement of Heroes by region.

I looked Director Narci straight in the eye and went on. There must have been staff who hadn’t known either, because a small commotion went up.

“All of these sources are problems believed to exist within the Hero Association. The greatest obstacle is that while the conjecture is firm, there is no material proof. In a sense, you could even call them conspiracy theories.”

Naturally, none of these problems had ever surfaced. They had gone around the community boards as ‘I heard that…’ hearsay, never disclosed on any scale, never made into an issue, never used to attack the Hero Association. Which no doubt meant the Association was that good at massaging public opinion.

“To pull the public entirely onto our side, we need solid evidence — not merely a rumor going around.”

The moment the word evidence came out, Director Narci’s expression changed. He had been sitting slouched at an angle; now he leaned in, his face gone serious. He had caught on that this was where my real presentation started.

“Even by methods that are somewhat illegal and dangerous, we must secure hard, empirical evidence that they would not dare deny.”
“…”
“For example… what would we have to do to obtain proof that they entertain society’s high-ranking figures in the name of donations?”

Having drawn their attention with the question, I smiled softly.

“My plan is to send Beyond Villain personnel in undercover, disguised as hotel staff, and film the scene of them entertaining high-ranking figures ourselves.”
“What?”
“Is that even possible?”
“No way…”

— Murmur-murmur—

The somewhat radical proposal sent a ripple of unease through the staff. To find evidence of an illegal act, we would use illegal methods of our own. Nothing about it would ever pass a common-sense test.

“Quiet, please, everyone. The presentation is still in progress.”

I quieted the murmuring staff and moved on to the next slide.

“For the sites of labor exploitation, we will infiltrate disguised as a press crew. And to prove the discriminatory placement of Heroes, we will deploy Villains into each neighborhood and pull the response times out as data.”
“…”
“A conspiracy theory cools off quickly, but video and documentary evidence shoved right in front of people’s eyes will be archived forever and stay a talking point. Only then can we finally win people’s sympathy and bring the Association down. That concludes my presentation.”

The instant I finished and set the pointer down, Director Narci, in the very front row, shot his hand up. I pointed to him and gave him the floor.

“That was a good presentation. The idea is very fresh, and it has destructive power.”
“Thank you for the praise.”
“There are a few points that give me pause, though.”

Director Narci scratched at his chin as he asked.

“Evidence gathered by illegal means carries no force whatsoever in a courtroom, does it. What is your thinking on that?”
“A good point, Director. What matters is suspicion built on a base of hard evidence. Suppose, for example, the result comes back that the response time to Villain deployments gets shorter the wealthier the neighborhood. Even if that were to be pure coincidence… the Association would have no choice but to speak.”

With Hyperman and my own affair, it was all already in the past, so silence had been enough to let it slide. It wasn’t a matter that inconvenienced any citizen living their life right now. But what if we made an issue of the differential treatment between wealthy districts and slums?

“Even if it were not true, and not something intended, the Association would never be able to keep silent.”
“…That is certainly so. There is one more thing I want to ask.”
“I’m listening.”
“Truth be told, this item is the biggest of them.”

— Pap-pap.

He tapped at the frame of his glasses again and again, choosing his words with care.

“A plan to mobilize personnel and collect the evidence directly… have I understood that correctly?”
“Exactly right, Director.”
“Then you would have to go outside Villain Special City, would you not? Just who do you intend to send? Surely you are not planning to fob it off on some other department, or on the Villains.”

At Narci’s sharp question, the staff in the office watched to see which way it would go.

A keen point.

To obtain evidence of an illegal act, we commit an illegal act ourselves. Say the plan itself passes; whether there is anyone to actually carry it out is another matter.

First: Beyond Villain staff.

The Content Production Team people listening to my presentation right now already keep one foot on the wrong side of the law. They manipulate photographs and video to mass-produce fake content for a living, after all. If I ordered them to slip into a hotel and secretly film footage of the entertaining, would they pull it off? Nine in ten would probably resist fiercely, even prepared to quit over it. And if they were caught doing it, who would take responsibility for their lives? For that matter, whether they even have the ability to carry it out is a problem in itself.

Which left only the second option.

“I intend to send Villains.”
“The Villains will be in danger the moment they step outside Villain Special City. Most of them have wanted notices out on them.”
“…”

For a Villain, stepping outside Villain Special City meant putting their life on the line. The outstanding ones were already on the wanted lists, which made showing their faces difficult, and Villains with no deployment experience, or a low grade, were nowhere near equal to a responsibility this heavy.

A keen point, worthy of a Director of the Media PR Office. I took his doubting gaze head-on and answered flatly. That question, too, I had already factored in.

“First, I plan to take volunteers from among our own Villains and select the optimal personnel.”
“And if there are no applicants?”
“…Then I intend to go out there myself.”
“What?”

At my radical declaration, Director Narci’s face went blank. It wasn’t something I’d blurted out in a fit of temper. In all seriousness, there was nobody but me who fit the job.

The conditions it demands are many. Capability, appearance, social savvy, and on top of that problem-solving and quick thinking.

To begin with, most Villains have had their very appearance altered. People who drifted into Villain Special City because looking nothing like a non-awakened kept them from living a normal life. Disguising people like that as hotel staff is difficult at best. So only an awakened with a Gift and next to no change in appearance, someone like me, fits the bill.

On top of that, I can use my Gift to solve problems too. …Even if I can’t handle it at will.

Future Observation fires of its own accord when trouble comes up, which cuts the risk down. And even if things go wrong, the WD-401 and my reinforced physical ability leave me a way out. …With it all laid out like that, simply going myself was the best fit of all.

“If there is friction in the cooperation with the other departments, or a setback pushes the schedule back, then I will simply go out myself.”
“Heh… heh-heh-heh! You are a madman. A properly, thoroughly certified madman!”

Narci sprang up from his seat with a beaming grin.

“Hahaha! You never do let my expectations down!”
“You flatter me.”
“Cooperation with the departments — I’ll ask Amos and Panthera and that bunch, so don’t you worry about it! Right then, this time too we proceed exactly as Staff Member Im’s presentation says!”

To Narci, who did not know I had eyes that could see the future… my proposal must have looked like nothing but a mad devotion to the organization. I laughed along with him as he exulted.

Looks like I’ll be getting out and about for the first time in a while.

It was time to set foot, in person, into the Heroes’ fake paradise.