The Cost
A throbbing ache pulsed behind her temples, sharp and vicious.
Her vision spun in sickening tilts, threatening to pitch her into unconsciousness at any moment.
"Ah...?"
Slumped on the shattered floor, trapped in the dizzying loop of those sensations, Kang Maru—known to the world by her hero moniker 'Great Order'—finally regained her wits. A full ten minutes had elapsed since the curtains fell on the execution chamber.
"...Dear God."
Scrambling to her feet the second awareness returned, she swept a frantic glance over her surroundings. Her expression curdled into instant horror.
What met her gaze was an execution ground reduced to smoldering rubble. Prison guards and tactical operatives lay strewn across the floor like discarded dolls, their unconscious forms a mute, chilling testament to the scale of the slaughter that had unfolded.
"Casualties?"
"No fatalities confirmed yet, ma'am... but we have a severe number of wounded."
Great Order stared at the wreckage in dumbfounded shock, turning her head toward the voice beside her.
"Every single critical casualty belongs to the auxiliary force collaborating with student Lumia. Could that be purely coincidental?"
"Hardly. Launch a formal inquiry at once."
"Still, to think our reinforcements couldn't breach the perimeter until Dominating Hands had completely withdrawn... It's an utter humiliation for any hero."
"Our vanguard was spread thin from the start. We should consider ourselves lucky there are no corpses..."
The late-arriving heroes and the dedicated investigative squad were already picking through the disaster, documenting every crater and scorch mark.
"Ah, Great. You're on your feet."
She watched them for a fleeting second before breaking into a hurried stride. Several heroes recognized her and offered respectful greetings, but her focus was locked elsewhere.
"Lumia!!"
Standing motionless amidst the rubble of a collapsed perimeter wall was Lumia.
"A-Are you all right? You aren't hurt, are—"
Worry etched deep into her face, Great Order rushed toward him, only to skid to a halt as a prickle of icy dread crawled up the back of her neck.
"My fave... My absolute favorite..."
Lumia stood muttering under his breath, wearing a grim, hollow expression she had never seen on his face before.
"He vanished."
"Lumi—"
"Why? How? Everything was supposed to be perfect, so why?"
Assuming the boy was drowning in post-traumatic shock, Great Order softened her gaze with maternal pity and took another tentative step closer.
"Why did the plot derail from the original work? No, this is bad... At this rate, Sunbae will be in danger. I have to fix this, I have to..."
"Good heavens, Lumia!"
Her eyes snapped wide as she noticed his fingertips—bitten bloody, the nails chewed ragged in raw agitation. Gasping, she reached out with both hands.
"What on earth is happening to—"
"—Get off me!"
Then, an impossibility occurred—something Great Order could never have fathomed in her wildest nightmares.
"Stop touching me... seriously."
"...What?"
Slapping her outstretched hands aside with violent disgust, Lumia glared at her, his eyes brimming with skin-crawling revulsion.
A suffocating silence descended between them.
"...G-Great-ssi."
In the span of a single breath, the chilling sneer dissolved, replaced by Lumia's familiar, innocent warmth. He began stammering incoherently, eyes darting about in wide-eyed distress.
"I-I'm so sorry. I... I've never lived through something this terrifying, so my emotions just... broke out of control..."
"..."
"I-I never dreamed things would turn out like this. It's almost entirely my fault that everyone was hurt... Wh-What am I supposed to do now? I'm so scared, Great-ssi..."
There he was again—the modest, vulnerable Lumia she knew and loved.
"...Don't worry."
A wave of tender relief washed through her, and she opened her arms to draw him into a gentle embrace.
"...I will make everything right."
Enfolded in her arms, Lumia's body began to tremble violently once more.
It's only natural, she thought, stroking his hair. For a child so gentle and pure-hearted, the terror of being cornered like that must have shattered his composure. Watching him shudder with raw, helpless emotion, she could readily forgive his momentary harshness.
"Kim Ira, where are you hiding?"
After rubbing his back until his breathing slowed, she turned on her heel and marched toward the investigators, her jaw clamped tight.
"I know you're still in this facility."
Her target was the prime suspect believed to have engineered this disaster—the mastermind who had dragged Lumia's spotless reputation through the mud.
"Show yourself! I already know what your Concept does!!"
Kang Haneul's sidekick and staunchest conspirator: Kim Ira.
"...Kim Ira? Where have I heard that name before?"
"Isn't she that girl who handed out flyers outside the agency a while back?"
"Ah, those crazy flyers claiming Kang Haneul was framed? Why's Great Order hunting for her all of a sudden?"
The assembled heroes exchanged puzzled murmurs, scratching their heads at Great Order's sudden aggression.
Meanwhile, her eyes ignited with incandescent blue light as she fixed her gaze upon the fallen guards.
"By my command: 'Kim Ira' shall immediately suffer an excruciating, burning agony across her entire body and—"
To flush out the sidekick who had undoubtedly disguised herself among the survivors, she moved to invoke her Concept of Command as she had done a thousand times before.
"...Kuh-agh?!"
A blinding shock struck her spine, followed instantly by a torrent of unendurable agony.
"Wh-What happened?!"
"Great, are you hit?!"
"W-Were you wounded?!"
Choking on her own breath before the decree could finish, she collapsed violently onto the concrete, writhing in sheer torment. The surrounding heroes rushed to her side in a panicked swarm.
"H-Hey! Call a field medic, hurry...!"
What... What is this...?
After thrashing in blind pain across the floor, Great Order finally managed to push herself up with the trembling assistance of two senior heroes.
Did I suffer internal trauma without noticing?
Bewildered and pale, she swept trembling hands over her chest and ribs, but found neither blood nor broken bone.
...I need to pace myself.
She chalked it up to severe mental recoil, assuming her nervous system had simply buckled under cumulative fatigue. Shaking off the supporting hands, Great Order drew a steadying breath, resolved to deliver her mandate slowly and deliberately this time.
"By my command. Kim Ira shall..."
The sentence never reached its conclusion.
A shudder seized her vocal cords.
Without fail, that identical, monstrous agony exploded through her marrow, paralyzing her flesh down to the last tendon.
"Great!"
"What's coming over you?!"
Only then did the chilling truth dawn upon her fractured mind.
"Wh-What... What did you do to me...?"
It was him.
The architect of this curse was none other than Kang Haneul.
At the cost of burning his own sanity to the edge of blacking out, Kang Haneul had branded her subconscious with a single, irreversible Common Sense Alteration.
"What did you do...?!"
The 'Cost of Ability'.
From this moment forth, whenever she issued a command compelling another human being, her own mind would unconsciously subject herself to the exact same retribution.
"Kang Haneul!!!"
A penalty brutally simple, yet devastatingly absolute.
For a woman who viewed ruling over others through absolute decree as her inherent birthright, it was a crippling, unbearable chain around her neck.
"Who do you think you are... What right do you have to do this to me...!"
Unable to process the reality of her ruined power, Great Order stood frozen in the dust like a petrified statue.
Rustle...
"......!"
A faint rustling in her uniform pocket drew her numb fingers downward. She reached inside and pulled out a small scrap of paper coated in fine masonry dust.
As pathetic as it sounds, you're my only flesh and blood, so I couldn't bring myself to do anything worse.
Make sure you eat proper meals.
— Farewell forever.
Reading the curt lines penned in an achingly familiar script, Great Order began to shudder violently from head to foot.
For a fleeting second, her younger brother's sorrowful, disillusioned face and quiet, exhausted voice seemed to hover right beside her ear.
"By my... command."
How much time drifted by, she could not tell.
"...Kim Ira, reveal your true identity to everyone."
Crushing the slip into a tight ball, her head hanging low, Great Order forced out a new decree in a ragged whisper.
A second later, her spine snapped rigidly straight. Turning on stiff legs, she marched toward the crowd of anxious heroes.
"H-Hello, everyone. I am South Korea's Rank 3 Hero, World Rank 11. And currently..."
"G-Great-ssi?"
"A l-loyal servant who serves Lumia-ssi as my master... Kang Maru."
The confession tore from her throat in a ringing, involuntary shout that echoed off the broken walls.
"...Mmph!"
Without smoking out Kim Ira, she had spontaneously outed her humiliating personal subservience right in front of every colleague on the scene.
"Um, are you really sure you're all right?"
"I think you seriously need to be admitted to a hospital..."
He expects me to live like this... for the rest of my life? Me?!
Her face burning crimson with mortification, she bowed her head, trembling in sheer humiliation.
I can never look Lumia in the eye again...
Shrinking into herself, she cast a furtive, desperate glance back toward the wall where Lumia had been waiting.
".......?"
The shattered alcove was barren. Lumia was nowhere to be found.
"Wh-Where is Lumia?!"
"He left on his own a minute ago."
"Yeah, he was mumbling something about a blonde girl or something."
"Oh, that reminds me—he told us to pass along his regards and said you probably won't be seeing him for a while."
Scratching their heads as they answered the flustered Great Order, the heroes turned their attention back to sorting through the rubble.
Leaving Great Order standing entirely alone amidst the devastation.
"...What on earth is this?"
The back of her hand, where Lumia had slapped her away in disgust, throbbed with an inexplicable, lingering sting.
Several days later.
The covert headquarters of Dominating Hands.
"How is Haneul's condition?"
"Not bad at all. He should regain consciousness sometime before the day is out."
"Really? Then I'd better be waiting by his side. Thanks as always, Doctor."
Brightening at the optimistic prognosis from the woman in the crisp medical coat, Paradise broke into a fond smile and walked down the corridor toward Kang Haneul's private quarters.
"Don't worry, Haneul," she whispered softly to herself.
"That self-proclaimed protagonist won't ever lay a finger on you again."
Paradise's violet eyes gleamed with quiet intensity under the morning sunlight pouring through the corridor windows.
"Because this time, I'm going to protect you."
Her resolve hardened behind an affectionate smile, she pushed open the door to his room—and froze dead in her tracks.
"What did you do to Dice? Spit it out before I slaughter you."
"I didn't do anything."
"Excuse me, Haneul-ssi, do you happen to believe in God?"
"No."
"Would you mind sharing your current height and weight? Ah, don't worry, it's nothing weird..."
"........."
Kang Haneul, having just opened his eyes, sat propped up against his pillows, completely besieged by executives who were simultaneously issuing death threats, attempting religious conversion, and pitching personal fitness training programs.
Mister, do u watch anime by any chance??
Can u code??
What games do u play??
To top it off, Pandora was crouched beside the bed with shining, hopeful eyes, actively flooding his hacked smartphone screen with instant messages.
Shhhhk—!
"What do you think you're doing, all of you?"
The warm smile on Paradise's face fractured into icy malice as an endless cascade of razor-sharp playing cards burst from beneath her coat, whistling straight toward the unruly crowd.