Hidden Boss Kill #004
A girl with glasses and blurry, indistinct features approached me. “Um… are you by any chance Kang Sian?”
I nodded, giving her a look that asked what she wanted.
“Here, this…”
The girl pulled a crumpled note from her pocket and held it out. I was about to ask what it was, but she bolted from the classroom before I could even open my mouth.
What a strange kid.
Thinking that, I unfolded the note and read it.
Meet me under the big pine tree behind the school.
Strange content. As I mulled it over, I found myself scratching my head.
What the hell did this mean? Why had she given it to me? What was the intention behind it?
“No way…?”
Two possibilities surfaced while I was lost in thought.
First, someone actually had business with me.
Second, Cheon Mari had business with me.
They sounded identical, but there was a subtle difference. The first was probably genuine business or simple interest. The second meant Cheon Mari wanted to meet me for some specific “reason.” And naturally, that reason might not be anything good.
She’s not trying to kill me, is she?
I had taken the grand prize in the math competition. But had the “me” from Cheon Mari’s previous round also won it? Maybe the person who usually claimed the top spot wasn’t me, but her. To a regressor who had lived through similar moments countless times, that would feel like a massive discrepancy.
As a regressor, her studies were decent enough. So every loop, she steadily took the prizes. But suddenly she drops to the excellence award while some random guy steals the grand prize? If I were in her shoes, I’d have felt an inexplicable sense of wrongness. I’d want to know who the hell this guy was, what he’d been doing, and what exactly he had done.
Of course, she wouldn’t have charged in the moment she noticed the change. She would gather information thoroughly and only act once she was certain. Charging in immediately because “it’s different from last time” would be insane—it might force her to repeat the entire long regression again. Essentially something only a time-version Bill Gates or a complete lunatic would do.
And from the game’s description, Cheon Mari was a crazy bitch, but not quite at the level of being called a full-blown mental case. Therefore, the odds that she had sent this note were fairly low. It was probably someone else who genuinely wanted to see me. Maybe even the girl who had handed it over.
Let’s just go and find out.
Without worrying too much, I headed to the spot written on the note.
As expected, the back of the school was littered with cigarette butts. Naturally the ground under the pine tree was covered in them too. These damn kids, sneaking off to smoke. Tsk tsk. Thinking that it really was the end times, I realized it genuinely was the end times—just one filled with gates, monsters, and every kind of evil.
“Sigh… but why isn’t anyone here?”
I’d been called out, yet no one was around. The thought that it might be a prank occurred to me a little late, but there were enough reasons not to leave right away. It felt right to wait a bit longer.
I picked up a discarded envelope from the ground and started collecting the cigarette butts. It was something to do while I waited. By the time the envelope was about half full—
Tap.
Footsteps.
When I turned around, a familiar figure came into view. At the same time, the scene took on the composition of a classic dating sim: a boy and girl meeting beneath a tree, cliché yet full of romance.
The only difference was that this scene brimmed with hostility rather than fresh, budding emotions.
“Hey, grand prize winner.”
The regressor, Cheon Mari, had appeared. And she was holding a children’s baseball bat with an eagle painted on it.
She spat on the ground with a displeased expression.
“Where the hell did you crawl out from?”
This psychotic bitch. I was screwed.
Caught off guard and staying silent, I watched as she made a show of swinging the bat.
“You. What are you? I’m asking right now.”
At the same time, blue particles began swirling along the side of the bat. It looked like she had infused the weapon with magic power, similar to an aura skill from the game.
Does that increase its power? Or just durability? Or both?
I wasn’t sure. What I did know was that getting hit would guarantee at least one or two broken bones.
With a pale face and a rapidly deteriorating sense of time, I took a step back. Cheon Mari advanced one step for every one I retreated, all while verbally pressuring me.
Cold sweat poured down endlessly. Fear spread through me, and the thought that I might actually die at the hands of this mentally ill regressor flashed through my mind.
Then, at some point, I realized something.
Even if she was a regressor, there was no need to act like this.
…Do I have anything to hide? Have I done anything wrong? Is there any reason I can’t answer her questions? There isn’t a single one. I’ve done nothing wrong, so there’s no reason for me to be this passive and defensive.
I changed my expression and stepped forward the same distance I had retreated.
Cheon Mari tilted her head.
“Kang Sian, from Haeseo!”
“What?”
“You asked earlier! Who I was!”
“……”
She fell silent, seemingly at a loss for words. But her burning eyes remained unchanged.
“Hmph! Then this time I’ll ask. Did you write this note?”
“If I did?”
“Why did you call me here?”
The sentence came out confident, energetic, and calm. But Cheon Mari simply scoffed. You could feel the villainy in her bones from her every action.
“You speak pretty well for an elementary first-grader.”
“You’re an elementary first-grader too.”
Another silence. She seemed to have nothing to say, and at the same time looked like she was holding back irritation at being countered.
“I’ll ask again. Why did you call me here?”
“……”
“If there’s no reason, can I just leave?”
What the hell was she even doing? If you’re going to call someone out, at least gather some information first instead of doing it so impulsively.
Her continued silence finally pushed my patience to its limit. I tried to slip away.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“No, seriously. A friend is waiting for me.”
Cheon Mari blocked my path with the baseball bat. I swatted it aside and kept walking. Eventually I left the back of the school and reached the crowded athletic field.
Whew. That had been natural enough. Now that I was in a relatively safe area with lots of people, even a crazy person like her wouldn’t attack me.
But then I heard the sound of rough running behind me. She was definitely following.
The moment I turned around to tell her to speak up if she had something to say—
Whoosh—
“!!!”
The baseball bat came flying. I dodged quickly, but because it was flying horizontally, it struck my left arm dead on.
A sharp burst of pain made me curse as I looked forward.
“No matter how I look at it, you’re suspicious! You fucking bastard, where the hell did you pop out from?! Speak right now!”
An incomprehensible, insane mental patient was charging toward me, fist clenched tight.
With no escape route and plenty of witnesses, I threw the envelope full of cigarette butts.
Sadly, the result was not good.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Just once, for our granddaughter…”
“Hmph.”
“Yes, Mari, you need to apologize to your friend right away. If you did something bad—”
“Hmph.”
“Ah, no. This child…! I’m truly sorry. She hasn’t been listening lately.”
“Hmph.”
In a private room at a major hospital, several people had gathered in an increasingly heated atmosphere.
“This is driving me insane. How can this possibly end with a simple apology? Look at his condition! He’s clearly still suffering mentally!”
My aunt’s family had faces twisted with more than mere displeasure. Their expressions suggested they could throw punches at any moment and no one would be able to complain.
“I apologize once again. This is entirely my oversight…”
Judging by the platinum-blond hair and pointed ears, he was an elf who had crossed over to this world after the gates appeared. He looked quite young and handsome, yet he was apparently Cheon Mari’s grandfather. The man kept his head bowed, repeating his apologies.
“I promise sufficient compensation. And I will make sure to educate her thoroughly so this never happens again.”
He was supposedly the chairman of a fairly respectable corporation… It was surprising that he didn’t deny his granddaughter’s actions and immediately came forward to resolve the situation. It was completely different from those drama tropes where people insist “my child would never do that” and retaliate instead.
“So… your name was Kang Sian, correct? Is your arm all right now?”
He asked cautiously. The mages he had brought were the ones who had restored my left arm, which had been brutally broken. His words and behavior were the complete opposite of his granddaughter’s personality. So, following his request, I carefully moved my left arm.
“Ugh.”
It still hurt. It clearly hadn’t fully healed yet. In the end, I had no choice but to relax the muscles.
“Oh dear… I’m truly sorry. This child, Cheon Mari, lost her parents early, so she’s a little different from other children—”
“Hmph!”
What a contrary little frog. She was screaming her head off to block with a plow what could have been stopped with a hoe. I knew she’d be somewhat strange since she was a regressor and a villain, but I never imagined she would be this idiotic and batshit crazy.
It was said that elves had slower mental development than humans, which affected their judgment, but this was on another level.
No wonder she leaks critical information and gets her pendant stolen after the protagonist follows her.
The game’s plot, which had always felt slightly lacking in probability, finally made sense. I inwardly clicked my tongue at how someone like her could possibly be a regressor.
“Child, for this grandfather’s sake, please…”
“I don’t want to!”
“See! The child isn’t reflecting at all—”
In the end, because of one puffed-cheeked idiot, the guardians ended up arguing outside the hospital room. I stared at the door with a worried expression for my aunt, but looked away in less than a minute.
“Ha! You’re finished now! Do you know who our grandfather is?”
Was this a school lunch bug or a regressor? I couldn’t understand why she was acting this way, why she hated me so much, or why she was saying these things. Her behavior was so foolish and unplanned that I even doubted whether she was actually a regressor.
Cheon Mari, who hadn’t followed the adults outside, continued picking fights with me.
“Huh? He’s a hunter! A hunter! And the owner of a massive guild and corporation! Our family’s lawyers—”
Kill the hidden boss. Let’s kill her before she becomes the hidden boss.
But considering the aftermath, it was something I couldn’t say or act on. In the end, after enduring as much as I could, I responded by raising my middle finger.
“…You son of a bitch!”
“You fucking bitch!”
Somehow, it felt like my perfectly ordinary life had begun to go horribly wrong.