Prologue: An Angel's Smile
Night had settled over the city, and on the outskirts — those stretches no hero's eyes ever reached — the streets lay utterly still. Hurried footsteps split that hush, growing faster with every ragged breath, and the cold sweat beading on his brow said everything about the terror in his chest.
Run. Don't let it catch you. That thing is a terror you must never face — a presence you must never meet.
"Hah... hah...!"
How long had it been since he'd run until his lungs burned like this? He didn't care whether his overtaxed heart would give out first or the pursuer would catch him. Either way, the result was the same. So he ran without rest — past flickering streetlamps, cutting between buildings raised long ago, trying to put that thing behind him. And then he reached a construction site.
"How far are you going to chase me?!"
Here, there was a villain and an ordinary citizen. The ordinary citizen had wandered into this darkened district by chance; the villain had followed that citizen here.
The first thing that came into view were red eyes, so lifeless they made the skin crawl. A woman in a black mask, her appearance the stuff of urban legend, came walking with the moonlight at her back.
There was nowhere left to run. His overworked heart had already told him as much. All that remained was to meet it head-on. That was the only thing left he could do.
A grinding scrape — something like an iron club dragging across the ground. The woman held a long steel pipe, its tip already dark with blood.
"You know running won't do you any good, right?"
What expression was the woman wearing as she said that? What, exactly, lay beneath the mask?
She drew closer, slow and unhurried, and peeled the mask away. What had been hidden underneath was a smile. Faint moonlight laid it bare.
"G-gah— aaaaaah!!!"
At the same instant, he made his last desperate stand. Those red eyes and that angelic smile plunged a person into sheer terror. He lunged with a small knife, but she slipped aside with ease, her expression only growing brighter with delight.
A dull, brutal crack — and he went down. A heavy blow to the skull, most likely. Red blood bloomed across the ground like paint on a blank canvas. He was still breathing, but consciousness was already gone.
"Hah..."
The woman let out a breath and looked down at what had fallen.
"For a two-bit villain, you sure wasted a lot of energy running."
She had been an ordinary citizen. She had simply lost her way in the dead of night, drifted into a place like this, and — having been attacked — taken the opportunity to hunt the villain who had come at her.
"Let's see... C-Rank villain, Stalker... C-Rank's a decent payday."
Villains carried bounties. Catch one, and the money was nothing to sneeze at.
"Maybe I'll grab some fried chicken on the way home."
The place she lived was Hero City — in a world of superhumans known as Awakeners, the city where the most powerful heroes resided.