A Hero's Name
I'd been planning to take Batori out for a meal, so somehow ending up at the table with our middle-aged magical-lady auntie of a Team Leader was a stranger turn of events than I'd expected. Not that it really mattered.
Company dinners where someone from another team wandered over and parked themselves at ours. Sitting alone in the cafeteria only for a bunch of other people to suddenly drop into the seats around me. Trying to grab lunch with my own team, only to find ourselves in the same restaurant as another department, close enough to start talking. Perfectly ordinary stuff. Nothing about this felt particularly weird.
If anything, having the Team Leader along was a plus as far as I was concerned.
I couldn't speak for anyone else, but I was fairly outgoing. I didn't pick and choose who I spent time with, so more people was just better. I wanted the people I liked to get along. I wanted them comfortable with each other. That was all there was to it.
"Whoa... this place looks really expensive."
"It is, isn't it? I used to come here all the time back when I was still active. These days it's more like twice a month? Wait... no, I've already been four times this month. Hmm."
"You're a team leader. You make plenty. Blowing over a hundred bucks a plate isn't exactly going to ruin you, is it?"
"That's true, but living alone doesn't mean I get to stop managing my money entirely."
"Fair enough."
The restaurant we arrived at was even fancier than I'd expected, which caught me off guard. The Team Leader was hardly hurting for cash — she had more money than I did, that was for sure. It wasn't a strange choice, exactly. But she'd offered to treat us, so I'd figured she'd pick somewhere ordinary.
"O-ohhh... woooow..."
It was so much more luxurious, and so much more expensive, than anything I'd pictured. Our Baby Horns looked thoroughly stunned. She'd been fretting before we even walked in, asking whether a restaurant inside a building like this could possibly be okay, and then she'd spent the entire walk through the lobby gasping at every last detail of the interior. Watching her was fun. And then she saw the prices on the menu, and...
"Uh... oh... wow..."
She lost the ability to speak. Yeah. The way she just sat there, completely wordless, was a little cute and a little dumb, and I was enjoying it immensely.
"I think a course meal would be best... ah, is there anything anyone can't eat? Charlotte, you... if I remember right, you don't do raw food. What about you, Miss Batori?"
"Ah, I-I can eat anything...!"
"Heh. Then we'll go with the B course. There's nothing in it Charlotte can't eat, and it's a nice balanced spread for everyone."
"Yes, ma'am...!"
And so a course meal it was. I didn't usually eat that kind of thing — I wasn't used to a single meal being carved up into that many tiny, elaborate pieces. But a course at a place this high-end was worth it for the experience alone. The feeling of broadening one's horizons, I suppose. Something like that.
"It's been quite a while since I've met one of the heroes Charlotte is assigned to. The ones she's handling now — I've never actually sat down face-to-face with any of them."
"Ah, i-is that so...?"
"Yes. I may be the team leader, but I don't get involved in the actual work of helping the heroes themselves. I handle assignments and all sorts of supporting tasks, but it's better not to interfere too much with what the counselors are doing. Advice, I can offer. Beyond that..."
"Ahh...!"
While we waited for the food, the conversation flowed easily enough. The Team Leader was a thoroughly seasoned social creature — a woman who lived and breathed ordinary office life. She could talk to Batori without making it weird, pick topics that put her at ease, and keep things moving. All of that came naturally to her.
"I don't know the details, but Charlotte talks about you at the office quite a bit, Miss Batori. She says you're doing wonderfully. That you're a genuinely kind person."
"R-really...?"
"Heh. I don't have any reason to lie about something like that."
"Ah, r-right...?"
"You don't need to be so tense. I may have a slightly — just slightly — imposing title at the moment, but I was a hero myself until a few years ago."
"...A hero?"
"Yes. A former one. It's been about three years since I retired."
Having a former hero at the table might actually be a bigger help than I'd thought. She didn't usually meet heroes in person or take them on as cases, but that firsthand experience meant she understood how they thought far better than most. Especially the rookies. Especially someone like Batori.
"Our Team Leader might look like just another pretty, put-together office unni right now, but she's a lot more impressive than she lets on."
"...What's with you calling me unni all of a sudden?"
"Well, if I called you auntie in front of Miss Batori, you'd lose it for sure."
"......"
"Um, ah... what was your hero name...?"
I'd only said it to lighten the mood — to make the Team Leader feel a little less like some untouchable magical-lady authority figure and a little more like someone Batori could actually talk to. But Batori, it seemed, had latched onto an entirely different part of the conversation. The fact that the Team Leader used to be a hero.
Which, to be fair, made sense. The Team Leader of those days and the Team Leader of now were slightly different people. Back then she hadn't worn glasses. Her hair had been shorter. She hadn't transformed into a magical girl costume, either — just ordinary formal wear. And even if she had been active as a hero, three years had passed since her retirement. The world was overflowing with heroes who'd debuted and built careers since then.
"Ah, the Team Leader's name when she was active was..."
"...Wait."
"...Huh?"
"...Could you please not say that one thing? I think I might actually die of embarrassment...?"
"Ah."
I'd been about to tell her. She'd been a reasonably successful hero, popular enough that I figured she could own it without any trouble. But the Team Leader shut it down, which I hadn't expected at all. Even when I teased her and gave her a hard time on a regular day, she never reacted quite like this. That was a surprise.
"...I-I'll tell you my active-duty name someday. It's just... the comparison between then and now is a little much, and it's a little... a lot embarrassing."
"Uh... I-I'm sorry.... I asked a w-weird question..."
"Ah, no. It's not your fault at all, Miss Batori. I'm just embarrassed about my active years."
So that's how ashamed she is of her magical girl days?
She'd still been active until three years ago. Her activity had tapered off toward the end, sure, but even counting that, we were talking about five years. I hadn't expected her to be this mortified over something from a mere five years back. The difference between the Team Leader in those old videos and the Team Leader sitting across from me now was... glasses, and a haircut. That was it. Anyone who looked her up could tell it was the same person. Information on heroes was absurdly easy to find in this world.
Was this because I'd given her too much grief about her age?
"Let's leave the Team Leader's stories there for now. Actually, there's something I've been curious about for a while. Miss Batori, would it be all right if I asked you a question?"
"Huh? Uh, y-yes, that's fine...?"
And so I decided, for the moment, to put a pin in anything involving the Team Leader — especially anything involving her magical girl days. There were plenty of other things to talk about. Including a topic that followed rather neatly from the question that had just come up.
"Miss Batori, why haven't you chosen a hero name yet?"
A hero name. Not a real name, not a legal one — a nickname that carried a hero's identity, their image, everything they wanted to be. Batori had never picked one, not once since her debut. The news had been stuck calling her things like "the dokkaebi girl" and "the little hero," slapping whatever phrase they could find onto her because they had nothing else to use.
I'd been curious about it before, but there'd never been a real reason to ask, and never a moment that called for it. Now the conversation between the Team Leader and Batori had already drifted onto hero names, so I figured I might as well.
"It struck me as odd from the start, honestly. Every other hero I work with has one."
Saran was Black Viper. Baek Eun-hwa was Baekyeou. Names that told you exactly who they were at a glance. The Team Leader had had one too, back when she was active. I wasn't a hero myself, but of course I was curious.
"That's true. Every time a report came across my desk it just said 'Batori,' and I always wondered about that."
The Team Leader was curious too, apparently. This world was a mix of every kind of name imaginable — Eastern, Western, everything in between — and hero names were just as varied. But people generally didn't use their real ones.
"Was I... was I supposed to pick one no matter what......?"
"Ah."
The answer to that particular mystery turned out to be far less dramatic than I'd imagined. I'd run through a few theories of my own — that she'd submit something official once her popularity picked up, that sort of thing. It had never occurred to me that she simply hadn't known she was supposed to file one.
It was such a silly, adorable reason that I couldn't help smiling.
"Uh, um... when I first registered as a hero, I-I was so overwhelmed... I couldn't even, even hear what the person explaining the paperwork was saying......"
"Ahaha..."
Yeah. That was about as Batori a reason as it was possible to get.
There would be a little work to do about this later, related to everything that had happened recently — but nothing difficult. And besides, the first course was just starting to arrive. This wasn't just a free meal. This was an outrageously expensive free meal. There was every reason in the world to stop overthinking and simply enjoy what was in front of us.