The Villain Does Her Best Work Behind the Scenes -4-
A black screen. Then Chae Yuha’s voice played through it, urgent and shaky.
“C-can you hear me!?”
“S-sorry!! This is my first time doing a live broadcast, so I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do!!”
Her voice rang through the mic, sounding incredibly desperate. “Just a second, if I do it like this… can you see now…?”
There was a rustling noise, then suddenly—bright light flooded the screen.
The whiteout faded. What the viewers saw was a shaky, makeshift angle—like someone hiding behind a train seat and sticking their phone out into the aisle.
“Can you see it now…!?”
A speeding train. Terrorists armed head to toe with heavy weapons. A hail of bullets. Passengers cowering in fear. The image was chaotic, but the horror came through clearly.
“I really didn’t want to turn on a live broadcast or anything like this…!!”
Boom. Boomboom! The bombs the terrorists threw exploded one after another. A violent shockwave ripped through the car. A girl in a white robe, caught in the blast, flew dramatically through the air and slammed her head against something.
“This is inside the train heading for the Seventh Orbit Elevator!! Please, anyone—someone come save us!!”
“You want me to pretend to get hurt?”
Nadja tilted her head, clearly wondering why she had to do something like that. At her feet, a staggering number of terrorists lay dead or twitching on the verge of death. The sight sent a chill down Chae Yuha’s spine. She had the distinct feeling that if she said the wrong thing here, she might one day end up beneath those same feet.
“It’s hard to explain right now.”
“Does it have something to do with seeing the future again?”
It was for an extremely personal reason, but Chae Yuha could never say that out loud. She smiled awkwardly and looked away. Nadja, having roughly guessed as much, let out a sigh that said she couldn’t stop her now.
“Fine. If I’m going to help, I’ll help all the way.”
And so began Chae Yuha’s one-sided apology operation.
The goal was to turn the thirty-three-year-old siscon enhanced human Kim Seokho into someone the public would later remember as a citizen hero. In this case, “heroic action” meant having him protect the passengers from the terrorists’ attacks in place of Nadja, who would pretend to be temporarily incapacitated.
“Of course, purely as a meat shield.”
“What?” Kim Seokho asked, blunt as ever.
Wouldn’t it be fine if he just fought normally? No. With nanomachines in his brain, Kim Seokho could not attack humans. And most of the terrorists in Minos were human—they had simply put on illegally modified military walking suits.
After hearing the full explanation, Kim Seokho felt like he’d been had. They said they’d make him a hero, but in the end they just wanted him to get gang-beaten by troops armed with heavy weapons from head to toe.
“Are you ready, Mr. Kim Seokho?”
Chae Yuha neatly ignored his inner turmoil and asked the question anyway.
“I’ll warn you ahead of time—don’t even think about trying anything. You know how many eyes are on us right now, don’t you? Plenty of people already saw you throw a knife at me.”
“I know.”
“Good. I’m planning to bury that little incident too, so do your best. Wouldn’t it be nicer to go see your little sister as a hero instead of a villain?”
Kim Seokho glared at her, utterly dumbfounded. Chae Yuha, feeling a little awkward, gave his back a light smack.
“Then shall we begin?”
Clearing her throat, Chae Yuha installed the electronic terminal for the live broadcast.
And the scene returned to the present.
“S-sis… are you okay?”
“My vision’s blurry… I don’t think I can move for a while…”
Blood trickled down the side of Nadja’s head. The viewers assumed it was from slamming her skull against the floor after getting caught in the explosion.
The chat flew upward at explosive speed. The current viewer count was roughly fifty thousand… then sixty thousand. Back to fifty, then seventy. It was as if someone had dropped the coordinates somewhere; the numbers surged like crashing waves. Chae Yuha nearly lost her mind for a second.
“That monstrous bitch…!!”
“Now!! Attack!!”
The terrorists, who had been keeping their distance from the supposedly weakened Nadja, shouted and charged. The one at the front rushed forward, his hammer spewing flames.
Chae Yuha gave Kim Seokho the signal. He sprang out from behind the seats at the perfect moment and stopped right in the most dramatic camera angle.
Thud!
The flaming hammer slammed into Kim Seokho’s back.
“Keuk…!!”
The impact was far stronger than he’d expected. His eyes rolled back for a moment. The vibration traveled through his outer shell all the way to the core module. Even with the shock-absorbing layer Nadja had applied beforehand, it still hurt like hell.
“You’re…!?”
Chae Yuha let out a high-pitched shriek when she saw the face of the man who had protected her. She knew that face. He was the culprit behind the department store kidnapping—the rampaging enhanced human who had tried to use her as a hostage to escape. Instinctive terror surged through her. He was the criminal who had nearly taken her life. It would have been strange if she weren’t afraid.
Yet at the same time, she felt a flicker of doubt. If not for him, both she and Nadja would have been crushed to death by the terrorists’ hammer.
Why did you save us?
Exactly that feeling. Chae Yuha poured fake emotion into her voice.
“Why…?”
As they had rehearsed, Kim Seokho answered while breathing hard, as if he were seeing her for the first time.
“Are… are you all ri—”
Thud! The hammer struck again.
“Keuk…”
It wasn’t an accelerated blow, so the force was weaker than before, but the lingering shock from the first hit made Kim Seokho fight desperately to stay conscious.
Every time the hammer landed, Kim Seokho’s eyes rolled back.
“Rest… rest assured… I will… I will protect you… fuck… my life…”
Even so, he refused to lose consciousness. The sight of him shielding Nadja and Chae Yuha lit a spark in the viewers’ hearts.
“Ptui! Damn it!”
The terrorist swinging the hammer jumped back, apparently exhausted.
“Guns out!”
With the sound of countless rounds being chambered, an uncountable number of gun barrels all aimed at Kim Seokho.
“Wipe him out!”
The simultaneous gunfire was so loud it blew out the microphone mixer. The screen went pure white. The viewers watching were so stunned they couldn’t even type.
But when the whiteout finally faded, the scene that appeared was full of hope.
Kim Seokho, collapsed and torn to shreds. Chae Yuha holding him in her arms. And Nadja, who had recovered enough stamina, her barrier successfully blocking the bullet storm.
“Whew… This body has achieved complete revival.”
Nadja wiped the blood from her cheek with the back of her hand and smiled with overflowing confidence. The terrorists flinched, feeling pure cosmic horror at the sight.
Nadja glanced once at Chae Yuha. The look asked whether they had gathered enough footage yet. Chae Yuha checked the explosively rising chat window, then gave her an OK sign with her hand.
“Careful, something’s coming!” the terrorists shouted, sounding pathetic.
It was understandable. The woman who had been beating them like dogs had pretended to weaken after taking one bomb, collapsed pathetically, then stood back up like nothing had happened and started posing. Of course they were terrified.
“Armd Chase.”
Nadja murmured the words under her breath. The millions of nanomachines sleeping inside her core module bloomed like flowers and began assembling into the form of armor.
“What the hell is that!”
“Is it Unhwa’s walking suit?”
“No! It looks completely different from ours!!”
It was both the prototype and the final form of the walking suit that Unhwa treated as their own.
The chat, which had somehow forgotten the gravity of the situation, grew white-hot and threatened to explode.
And just as the armored Nadja and the terrorists were about to clash—
BROADCAST TERMINATED
The live stream has been forcibly ended by an unknown force.