Reunion With Hedgehoggirl

Wi Seona sat in the meeting-room chair with her knees pressed primly together, staring blankly at me.

Hedgehoggirl, then… let’s have a look at the file.

I picked up the thick folder she’d handed me; I’d asked her to bring her own paperwork along to the interview. The instant I saw the rank stamped boldly in red across the top of the file, ‘B-rank’, my eyes wavered, just slightly.

…B-rank? When did she climb all the way up here?

As I remembered it, her potential rank had been F. Only the destructive power of her spines had rated high. Her aggression was rock-bottom and she scared far too easily, so there had been no way to put her into a real fight. Yet the combat record in the file showed a flawless result: five matches against Heroes, five wins.

“You’ve done a fair amount of fighting since then.”

At the compliment, Wi Seona fidgeted shyly with her fingers and broke into a bashful grin.

“Yes! I trained really hard at the Combat Analysis and Evaluation Office all that time. And I polished up my Gift every single day.”
“Ah…”
“So I could work hard against Heroes too, without losing my nerve.”

She studied my expression, then carefully spoke up.

“But, Assistant Manager Im Taeseung… no, what should I be calling you now?”
“Just call me Staff Member.”

Wi Seona’s eyes wavered violently, as though an earthquake had struck.

“Uhh… d-did you get demoted?”
“…”

Instead of answering, I turned to the file’s detail pages. Explaining the Strategic Analysis Office’s pecking order would take far too long, so I’d just have to put up with the pitying look.

Her abilities have really piled up. No wonder she’s classified as a B-rank Villain.

The file went beyond her control over spine length, detailing a wide-area attack method that used headbanging. Of everything in it, what caught my eye was an item called ‘Reversible Spine Conversion’.

“Can you turn the spines back into ordinary hair?”
“Yes! Shall I show you?”
“Please do.”
“Just a moment, please… Hup!”

Wi Seona drew a short breath and tensed her whole body. Her face flushed red as a ripe apple, and soon the spines jutting from her head visibly began to soften. They turned into loose locks of hair that spilled down over her shoulders, swaying.

“Yes, I can change it like this now! It’s made everyday life so much easier, too.”

She played with her hair and gave me a bright, guileless smile.

With camouflage this good, infiltrating the hotel won’t be a problem.

I nodded, satisfied, and closed the file.

“…Understood. Thank you for coming all the way here in person.”
“Of course! The moment I heard Staff Member Im had put up a notice, I came running. I’ll pay back the kindness you did me then, I promise!”

Wi Seona clenched her fist and smiled. Back in my Assistant Manager days, I’d advised her to ‘fire her spines from a distance’. To think she’d grown on the strength of that and come back to repay the favor.

“Thank you. You’ve saved me.”
“R-really? Then I’m glad!”
“We’ll be heading outside Villain Special City sometime tomorrow. I’ll be counting on you then.”
“Yes! Thank you!”

Wi Seona bowed deeply at the waist and left the meeting room.

Silence settled once the door shut. Hong Jangwoo, who hadn’t said a word through the whole interview, snuck a look at my face.

“You’re not in an office romance, are you?”
“Office romance?”
“I know a thing or two about women. That Villain woman is completely head over heels for you, Staff Member.”

I answered him with a snort, a cold little laugh.

“Quit talking nonsense and get ready. We don’t have much time.”
“…Yessir!”

Hong Jangwoo’s shoulders jerked at my chilly reaction. If one word was all it took to scare him, why act up like this in the first place?

I looked out the window at the glittering forest of city buildings and straightened my tie.

We go straight to the hotel tomorrow.

The Tower of Babel project’s first destination was… a top-class hotel, where the scene of the Association’s ugly entertaining lay waiting.

“The Daemak Group’s third son?”
“That’s right. Word is he gets entertained at the Daemak Hotel.”

— Vroom.

From the back seat, I pored over the documents again and again. The Daemak Group, inside the top ten of South Korea’s corporate rankings. Its third son was a rich idler who was reportedly pouring enormous donations into the Association.

“The fourth Saturday of every month… which happens to be today.”
“Put another way, miss today and it gets difficult. Well… we could always find another target.”
“I-I’ll do my best!”

— Clench!

In the passenger seat, Hedgehoggirl balled up a fist. With her hair tucked away she looked like any ordinary woman, dressed in a well-fitted suit and even wearing a pair of intellectual-looking glasses.

“That suit looks good on you.”
“Huh…?! R-really? Hehe, I wore it back when I was job hunting, and luckily it still fits…”

Wi Seona squirmed with delight. There was a simple reason for the suit. Today’s plan was to slip her into the hotel as a member of staff and have her install a miniature camera.

Hong Jangwoo stands out because of the octopus leg, and I’m a wanted man myself, so that’s awkward. Wi Seona at least can transform her hair, so she won’t draw the eye.

She was a wanted Villain too, but when she operated as one she wore a mascot suit, which absorbed outside impacts and protected her from her own spines as well. In a business suit, with ordinary hair, nobody would ever spot her.

I did think about putting Hong Jangwoo in, but this guy’s leg…

My eyes went to Hong Jangwoo’s leg. Still lugging that octopus leg around, this one. By now he seemed comfortable enough with it that he barely gave it a thought.

“It’s a wonder you can drive with that leg.”
“Well, I commute by car every day.”
“Is that so… Just don’t cause an accident.”
“I’ll get you there safely.”

Hong Jangwoo chattered on breezily as he drove, and before I knew it we’d pulled up at the Daemak Hotel.

“Before we start, let me run through the plan one more time.”

Once we’d parked in the hotel’s underground lot, I turned to the two of them to explain.

“First. Wi Seona, take the RFID key for the room the Daemak Group’s third son is using, go up, pretend to be delivering room service, and install the camera.”

I held the square card key out to her. According to what the Media PR Office’s intelligence network had dug up in advance, the Daemak Group’s third son was using VIP Room 4104 on the top floor, and we’d succeeded in cloning its card key exactly.

“Um, the Daemak Hotel only has… forty floors, doesn’t it…?”
“When you get in the elevator, hold the RFID key up to it and it’ll take you to the forty-first automatically.”
“Aha… VIP rooms are different.”

Wi Seona trembled as she took the card key.

“Next, the camera. Place the camera in a ceiling corner where it has a good view of the bed, please. It looks small, but just leave it there and it connects to the Media PR Office on its own, transmitting video and data in real time.”
“Aha…”
“So there’s no need to go back and recover it.”

The miniature camera was no bigger than a fingernail. It had an adhesive sticker on the back, so you just pressed it into a corner and that was that. I’d asked the Media PR Office to monitor it, so even if the angle came out wrong, they could simply correct it.

“Install the camera like that and slip out, and we’re done. If anything goes wrong, come straight back down. We’ll get in the car and run before any Hero arrives.”

I’d chosen the Daemak Group’s third son as our target deliberately. Part of it was the group’s high name recognition, but the hotel’s short distance from Villain Special City mattered too. Even if things went sideways and her identity came out, even if she were exposed as a Villain, Hong Jangwoo could simply floor the accelerator and take us straight into Villain Special City. Escape was twenty minutes away by car, so there shouldn’t be much of a problem.

“I’m trusting you to do well.”
“A-all right… I’ll do my best!”
“I’m counting on you.”

Wi Seona opened the car door boldly and stepped out. She tottered a little, as though she wasn’t used to the heels. Still, she was only going into the hotel to stick a camera up and come back, so I couldn’t see what would go wrong.

I switched the laptop screen over and pulled up a certain feed.

“Can you hear my voice?”
“Yes, I can hear you.”

The feed showed a view across the parking lot; to be exact, it came from the camera fitted into the glasses she wore. Through that camera we could see what was happening around her, and through the earpiece in her ear the two of us could talk back and forth.

“Once you’re inside the hotel, speak as little as possible. A nod or a shake of the head gets a message across well enough.”

At my words the picture pitched up and down; she must have nodded. That was proof the glasses and the earpiece were working properly. With a breath of relief, I settled in to watch her feed on the laptop alongside Hong Jangwoo for the time being.

We had the mic switched off for a moment and were watching when Hong Jangwoo suddenly spoke up.

“There’s no chance the other staff spot her, though, right?”
“What is it.”
“I mean… you need a separate RFID card key to get into the VIP rooms, right? But honestly, RFID keys are pretty easy to copy, the same way we copied ours.”

He had a point: copying an RFID card is easy. Card copiers exist, but these days they say you can do it with nothing but a smartphone app. So why was he bringing that up all of a sudden?

“It’s just, if I were the one in charge of the hotel, I think I’d have beefed up security on the RFID side quite a bit.”
“Why are you making me nervous all of a sudden? After sitting quiet this whole time.”
“It’s just, everything’s going so smoothly that it’s got me uneasy…”
“Good thing I had the mic off. If Wi Seona had heard that she’d have been terrified. Keep quiet.”
“…Yessir.”

Not that Hong Jangwoo was wrong, either. But the die was already cast. Director Narci had given us very little time, so holes in the plan were unavoidable, and all I could do was hope nothing went wrong for her.

“I’ve boarded the elevator.”

Just as my thoughts were getting tangled, Wi Seona’s whisper came through. The laptop screen now showed the inside of the elevator. She tapped the RFID card without a second thought, and with a brisk beep, the elevator started moving on its own.

“See? It’s going up to the forty-first floor without a hitch.”
“I… guess so.”
“Being cautious is fine, but don’t go jinxing it out of nowhere.”

I fired that one off at Hong Jangwoo and switched the mic on.

“Yes, you’re doing well. As soon as you’re up on the forty-first, the room right at the end is 4104. Same as before, tap the RFID card, go in, install the camera, and come straight out.”
“Yes, no problem!”

Wi Seona’s bright voice eased my worries a little. Hong Jangwoo had gotten me tense right along with him. I’d be glad if she just finished installing the camera and got out.

The moment I thought that.

— Bzzzt—!!

“…!?”

My vision blurred as Future Observation activated. In the observation it had triggered, I was looking at the laptop screen inside the car, and something about that screen was wrong.

…Don’t tell me Wi Seona’s been caught?

On the screen, Wi Seona was hidden somewhere, watching the living room of Room 4104. Two or three hotel staff were looking around the room, searching for something.

There was no doubt they’d figured out that Wi Seona had slipped in.