Yang Hayun

“Let’s go for a second round! Second round! Hehe…”
“It’s already late. Stop saying weird things and go home. What’s your address?”
“Ughh… Address… Flip ‘address’ around and you get soju!¹ Soju! Soju!”
“Haah…”

Yang Hayun swayed where she stood, and still she wouldn’t let go of the soju bottle. I had to get her home at the very least, but she wouldn’t even tell me her address. Enough to drive a man out of his mind.

Honestly, part of me wanted to just dump her there and go…

If I did that, there’s no telling what would happen.

I let my eyes drift over our surroundings. Quite a few people were watching Yang Hayun, every one of them pretending not to be. It looked peaceful enough, but this was Villain Special City, where the law didn’t reach. Without the employee badges hanging at my neck and hers, there was no telling what state the two of us would be in. The thought alone was horrifying.

“Fine. Let’s go for a second round.”
“Really?! I’m so happy…!”
“Hold on. I’ll call a taxi.”

Keeping one eye on Yang Hayun so she wouldn’t wander off, I made the call.

“It’s Taeseung, not Taehun.”

A brusque but energetic voice. It was Scorpion, my roommate at the walk-up. He wasn’t the most dependable soul alive, but at this one moment he was the only shoulder I had to lean on.

“Yes… I got swept along with things, so it ended quickly. I’ll take a taxi and be right over. Could you send me the address?”

“…Sorry?”

“…”

Scorpion’s bluster raised gooseflesh on me for no good reason. What would have happened if I’d flagged down a taxi instead of calling him? In Villain Special City, you really did have to keep your wits about you.

“Thank you. I’ll head over to the company.”

— Click.

He’d said his piece and hung up, but some of the tension went out of me anyway. I was grateful that the battered phone Scorpion had handed me came with a contact saved in it.

Now all I had to do was get Yang Hayun as far as the front of the company and it would be over. Whether she slept in our room or in one of the walk-up’s empty rooms, I’d have to ask Scorpion.

…Come to think of it, I never mentioned I was bringing her along. Better to show him first and explain after.

“Hayun, let’s head to the company for now.”
“Hmm…? Don’ wanna! Don’ wanna go to work!”
“We’re not going to work. We’re going there so we can go for a second round.”
“Really? For real? You’re not lying?”
“Mm… Of course not.”
“Woo-hoo!”

I walked with Yang Hayun staggering along propped against my shoulder. I’d imagined physical contact with a woman would be a little more romantic than this. The faint smell of alcohol on her breath was pure misery.

“You mustn’t lie…”

“…”

“Dad said for sure that after a hundred sleeps Mom would come… liar…”

Yang Hayun mumbled it with her eyes unfocused. Did she carry some childhood wound tied up with her mother?

Thankfully, unsteady as she was, she followed after me obediently enough. And when we reached the front of the company, I spotted a familiar car.

“What’s this, you seduced a woman on your first day?”
“It’s nothing like that. …She works at the same company. Would it be all right if she slept a night at the walk-up?”
“Hm, sure, why not! If it comes to it I’ll sleep in the empty room and the two of you can have ours, eh?”
“That’s a bit… Let’s just head back.”
“Gwahaha! Good!”

I loaded Yang Hayun, reeking of liquor, into the back seat and took the passenger seat myself.

“To the walk-up, then?”
“Yes. I’m in your debt.”
“It’s fine. Lady Belia paid me for it anyway! Gwahaha!”

— Vroom!

Scorpion stamped on the accelerator like a man in a drag race. I’d assumed the speeding on the morning commute had been about not being late; apparently he simply drove like this. I clung to the handle above the door with everything I had and rode it out.

“Urk…”
“Hey, hey! Don’t you throw up in my baby!”
“Hold on…”

At one point Yang Hayun got flung around the back seat like laundry in a washing machine until she nearly vomited. But we made it to the walk-up in one piece.

I helped her throw up against a utility pole, and then we headed inside. Scorpion handed me the key with a wink.

“I’ll bunk down in the empty room somewhere, so do as you please.”
“Sorry?”
“Call it consideration from your big bro here… Well, save the thanks! I’ll be up early tomorrow, so don’t stay awake too late!”

The sound of his gwahaha laughter gradually faded off into the distance. Scorpion, gone before he gave me the chance to argue.

Beside me, Yang Hayun kept mumbling, ‘Second round… what about the second round…?’ I was fairly sure some serious misunderstanding was going on here…

Let’s just get inside.

— Bang.

I unlocked the door with the key and went in. Still a big room, still made small by all the junk. After some deliberation I laid Yang Hayun down on the bed I’d been sleeping in.

“Eeep… Is this… the place for the second round?”
“That’s right. The second round is sleep.”
“Sleep?! Nobody told me anything about that!”

Yang Hayun flapped feebly, and I pulled the blanket over her. I had no idea why she was so fixated on a second round. Thankfully, once she was lying down, drowsiness seemed to catch up with her and her breathing gradually evened out.

…She’s finally asleep.

Dim moonlight fell through the gap in the window onto her face. Yang Hayun, sleeping like a small child. Lying still like this, she really was a beauty. That was the thought that came to me.

What am I even thinking… Just go to sleep.

Whatever strange misunderstanding Scorpion had gotten himself into, I had no desire to cause an incident on my very first day at work. Doing something to a person while she was asleep would be villainous even by Villain standards.

…Though seeing as I belonged to a Villain organization, it wouldn’t be strange to call me a Villain either.

“I’d better get some sleep too.”

Propping Yang Hayun up and hauling her around had used up everything I had. On top of that, adjusting to the bleak atmosphere at the company had worn me down…

I turned toward the junk-filled bed Scorpion had been sleeping in. Or rather, I tried to.

“Don’t goooo…”

“!”

— Snatch.

Yang Hayun had caught hold of my hand. Body heat running high, maybe from the drink, and a soft, yielding touch. I checked her face in case she was awake, but her eyes were shut.

“Mom…”

“…”

“Don’t goooo…”

I peeled her hand off and laid it on top of the blanket. Whatever she was dreaming about, her eyebrows were screwed up tight. I put my hand on her forehead.

“I’m not going anywhere, so don’t worry.”

I stroked her forehead, and the tightness in her face slowly loosened. When I eased my hand away, her breathing turned even again. She curled herself into a ball like a baby and settled into sleep.

Maybe Yang Hayun was still waiting for a mother who was never coming.

“…Let’s just sleep.”

I’d drunk too much and my head wasn’t turning over properly. Now that the tension had drained out of me, my eyelids were getting heavy. And digging that deep into somebody else’s family business was hardly good manners anyway.

I climbed into the bed Scorpion used and wedged myself in among the junk to sleep.

“Taeseung, I’m so, so sorry about last night…”
“It’s fine. Anyone can slip up.”

Even in the elevator inside the company, Yang Hayun still couldn’t straighten up, bent double with embarrassment. The moment she woke that morning she’d looked at me with suspicious eyes that said, ‘Don’t tell me…?’ But once she had the whole picture straight, she poured out apologies the entire way in.

“Aughhh… I really am not like that normally, you know.”
“Not like that?”
“No! Normally I don’t drink that much! Please don’t get the wrong idea…”
“So what happens normally, then?”
“When I drink with my friends, it feels like they sort of block me…? Now that I think about it, that is strange.”

She tilted her head. So when she drank with her friends, they were deliberately keeping her from getting drunk.

…Those friends almost certainly knew what she was like with a drink in her. She couldn’t hold it, and her drunken antics were dangerous in more ways than one.

“From now on, no more drinking.”
“But drinking makes you happy!”
“You can’t control it, can you.”
“Next time I’ll definitely control it! So…”

— Ding!

The elevator opened, and that battlefield of a workplace spread out in front of us again. Ten minutes left until the Wake-Up Call Villain of the morning commute turned up. Neither of us moved first; Yang Hayun and I simply met each other’s eyes.

“…See you at lunch. Alive.”
“Of course!”

We rallied each other and scattered to our own teams. Yang Hayun to Team 4, me to Team 5.

The moment I walked in, a coffee errand was there to greet me. I must have adapted a little; I had room to glance around me now.

Teams 4 and 5 do look relatively busy…

The Strategic Analysis Office of the Villain organization Beyond Villain runs from Team 1 through Team 5. The whole floor is given over to it, and while Teams 4 and 5 were rushed off their feet, Teams 2 and 3 didn’t look all that busy. Team 1 had even partitioned its section off entirely, so you couldn’t see what they were doing at all.

Why had this so-called department head carved the place up like this?

An announcer delivered the news in an urgent voice. I broke off from the copying to sneak a look at the TV, and there on the screen was a shaggy-furred male tiger beastman. Notably, he wore nothing but a single pair of tiger-print briefs, and both his muscles and his claws were considerable.

A voice that put the hairs up on my arms the instant I heard it. One look at him and I knew where he belonged. Those guys are Superior, 100%.

The Villain organization Superior. It holds ‘beastmen’ to be superior to the existing human race, and it means to remake every human being into one. Newly founded, and yet it had swollen so fast that it was already counted one of the three great Villain organizations.

“…!”

Just as Tiger Pants was slashing the cars in the street to ribbons with those sharp claws, a female Hero arrived in front of him in the blink of an eye.

The instant I made out her face, I sucked in a breath.

The announcer cried out in a voice full of emotion.

A woman in a motorcycle helmet and a suit that clung to her body. She struck her signature running pose.

B-rank Hero Speedgirl. I knew that name far too well.

Cha Huigyeong…

The only Hero I had ever believed in, and the Hero who had betrayed me.

The moment she appeared, the mood of my own Team 5 shifted too. Hands got busy placing bets.

“Bet on the B-rank Hero!”
“There’s barely any time left until the month-end evaluation. I’m saved…”
“If it’s Speedgirl, you can trust her.”

B-rank Hero Speedgirl. Her other nickname was ‘Semi-A-rank’. A B-rank Hero, yes, but with a Gift of enormous potential called ‘Super-Acceleration’, the skill to match it, and looks no worse than a celebrity’s on top of that. Right now she was a rising star even within the Hero Association.

Even through a TV screen, the sight of her face brought bile up my throat.

The Hero Association really is rotten.

Cha Huigyeong, hiding behind the mask of a Hero, is a rising star? To me, knowing what she was underneath, the whole thing was absurd.

And around her, the citizens were raising their voices to cheer her on.

— Bzzzt!

“…!”

My vision blurred, and a new image rose in front of my eyes. Along with a sensation I was used to by now, the Future Observation Gift activated.