The Executives
The day after I barely escaped that violent hazing the moment I opened my eyes—saved in the nick of time by Dice—my body had recovered enough to let me walk around. I made up my mind to pay a visit to the other executives, who had each retreated to their private quarters, and properly introduce myself.
"If anything happens, shout at the top of your lungs. I'll come running."
"...If anything happens?"
"Just kidding, just kidding. I gave them a stern talking-to yesterday, so nothing bad should happen. Probably."
Sitting on the lobby sofa, Dice wore a rather suggestive smirk that made me slightly uneasy, but I couldn't very well avoid making acquaintances with the people I would be living with from now on.
"You know the executives of Dominating Hands are assigned playing card suits as their titles, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then start with Heart's room. It's the closest. Just make sure you don't get eaten alive, okay?"
"......?"
Following Dice's recommendation, the first executive I went to see was Heart, the third-ranked member.
"Oh my, hello there."
"Hello..."
Villain alias: Twin Sister.
Possessing an exceedingly mature aura, she was, according to my intelligence, a 'fallen nun' who had once instigated a massive riot in the Vatican.
"Please, come inside."
And that intelligence, as expected, did not seem to be mistaken in the slightest.
As she smiled and ushered me in, the space behind her was packed with rather scandalous, indecent paraphernalia.
"Oh dear, just one moment."
Catching my stunned, hollow stare, she glanced behind herself, her eyes going round in surprise, and quickly shut the door.
"...Fufu, please pretend you didn't see that just now."
When the door reopened moments later, not a single trace of what I had seen remained. The only things left in the room were a Bible and a single computer.
"Do you... stream?"
"Yes, I host religious broadcasts. I happen to be the leader of a religious order, you see."
Resting quietly atop her desk as she spoke was a gently gleaming Neotube Silver Creator Award.
"Pandora suggested I try internet streaming, and my, so many people have embraced my doctrine since! Though quite a few strange individuals have also appeared, tossing mysterious words and... numbers? at me..."
...A streamer?
For some reason, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that she was laboring under a massive misunderstanding, but digging any deeper was bound to give me a migraine, so I buried the thought.
"Well, in any case... it's nice to meet you. I am—"
"Excuse me."
Just as I sat down on the chair she pulled out to introduce myself, she suddenly leaned in close, thrusting her face right toward mine.
She was close enough that I could feel her breath against my skin. Between Paradise and this woman, did the villains around here lack any sense of vigilance?
"You're quite cute, aren't you?"
"Pardon?"
I scratched the back of my head, averting my gaze. Staring intently at me, she suddenly began to lick her lips.
"Do you have much dating experience?"
"......?"
"None at all, I see. Your naive reaction gives it away."
With that, she reached out and began stroking my hair.
"Why is your right eye covered by your hair?"
"...Ever since I was young, my right eye has been vulnerable to external stimulation, so I keep it covered normally."
"Oh my, poor thing."
For some reason, her voice began to sound remarkably soft and melodic.
"I'm quite sensitive to stimulation myself, you know."
Come to think of it, an unusual fragrance had been wafting through the room for a while now. Was it just my imagination?
"Hmm... how strange..."
After stroking my hair for quite some time, her smile wavered, and she muttered with a look of faint bewilderment, "The effects should have kicked in by now."
"Um... never mind."
I started to explain, then thought better of it. I had almost told her that mental-type abilities didn't work on me. Given the nature of my own ability, I had never once struggled against psychic interference. Still, what on earth was she trying to do to me right now?
"Say, do you feel any different than before?"
"Well, it did get slightly warm in here...?"
"Heh... is that so?"
I couldn't fathom her intentions, but since she wasn't doing me any actual harm, I remained still. Heart gazed down at me intently, then leaned in to whisper in a low voice.
"Um, I have a favor to ask."
"A favor?"
"Could you please hypnotize me?"
Hypnotize her? What kind of sudden request was this?
"I've been suffering from severe insomnia lately." Heart gently took hold of my hand and whispered, "So I think I need a little bit of common sense alteration..."
Ah, so that was it. If that was all, it happened to be my specialty.
"All right. Keep your eyes fixed right here."
"...Yes."
I pulled my smartphone from my pocket and presented it to her. Her face lit up with eager anticipation as she focused entirely on the screen.
"Slowly... slowly... let yourself drift away."
"........."
And just like that, the hypnosis took hold in an instant.
...What?
To be honest, I was taken aback. In truth, my hypnosis was far from omnipotent. To hypnotize someone, you needed to know a certain amount of information about the target. It was only natural; contrary to how media often depicted it, hypnosis wasn't something you simply forced onto someone—it required rapport and resonance. During the previous incident, had I not used 'Insight' beforehand to gather data on the guards, such large-scale hypnosis would have been impossible.
"Excuse me."
"........."
"Miss Heart?"
"............"
Therefore, if you knew nothing about the subject, there was only one way to hypnotize them: they had to genuinely desire to be hypnotized of their own free will.
"...What a bizarre person."
Naturally, such individuals were exceptionally rare. You were surrendering your consciousness entirely; shouldn't there normally be at least a shred of resistance? Yet this woman showed zero rejection whatsoever. Truly fascinating.
Well, works out for me.
Looking at Miss Heart with a faintly bewildered gaze, I scratched my head and began configuring my smartphone.
"Fatigue reset, deep sleep, muscle relaxation... and if I tune the sensitivity to about this much..."
Because Paradise and Pandora had used terrible reference materials when coding it, the Hypnosis App was filled with nothing but utterly bizarre and grotesque options.
"Good. With this, she'll be in peak physical condition within a few days."
Through trial and error, I managed to combine multiple options to craft a suggestion specialized purely in 'fatigue recovery.'
Snap!
"Miss Heart, all done."
Snapping my fingers to end the hypnosis, I prepared to explain the results with utter confidence.
"...Ah, are you fucking kidding me?"
Heart's eyes went completely dead as she started muttering under her breath.
"You hypnotized someone, and all you did was... fatigue recovery? Are you a lunatic?"
"...Pardon?"
"I even pumped aphrodisiac gas into the room just in case... and you still won't pounce on me? Why? Just why...?"
What on earth was I hearing right now?
She's completely different from yesterday.
Yesterday, when she had visited me alongside the other executives, she had looked so reverent that 'nun' fit her far better than 'fallen nun.' Calmly preaching scripture with a serene expression and gentle tone, she had looked every bit the devoted church sister.
"Could you be... an eunuch?"
So why had she done a complete hundred-and-eighty-degree turn?
"Hey, by any chance, do you..."
Overwhelmed by the staggering gap between her personas, I stared at Heart as she spewed lewd remarks—
"Lack anything down there—"
"Miss Heart?"
Mid-sentence, her head suddenly slumped forward as she lost consciousness. Startled, I sprang to my feet.
"Um, are you all right?"
I had implanted a suggestion for 'deep sleep' so that minor disturbances wouldn't wake her, not a trigger to make her abruptly pass out like this. Could it be a side effect of the hypnosis? If so, this was bad.
"...Ugh."
Just as I stepped forward in worry to support her, Heart's eyes snapped wide open, and she scrambled to her feet as well.
"I-I am so sorry!"
"Huh?"
"I have no excuse. I am truly, deeply sorry..."
Suddenly, she began bowing profusely before me.
"As one who serves the Lord, how could I dare attempt to seduce a man...?"
"Uh, well."
"Please, find it in your heart to forgive my transgression..."
"What on earth is going on here?"
Completely unable to grasp the situation, I blinked in sheer confusion and pressed her for an answer.
"Ah, the thing is..."
Only after hearing her dejected explanation did everything finally make sense.
"...I suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder."
"Ah."
She had a dual personality.
So that's why her villain alias is Twin Sister...
"Eek!"
Just as I nodded, finally understanding the meaning behind her code name, Heart noticed something and bolted across the room like a shot.
"W-Well then... see you next time..."
She swiftly shoved the Silver Creator Award off her desk into a drawer, then peeked up at me nervously, gauging my reaction.
"........"
I decided it was best to simply pretend I hadn't seen the scandalous contraptions earlier.
The next executive I visited was Pandora, the fourth-ranked member who held the seat of 'Clover.'
The moment I stepped into her room, messages predictably popped up on my phone. Her room was crammed with a dizzying number of computers and monitors.
To be honest, I had thought introducing myself to her would be the hardest of all. Because she communicated exclusively through text, I had never once heard her voice. She looked even younger than the academy students. Always sleepy-eyed, her face half-buried in her oversized clothes, her hair perpetually frizzy. Yet, if her face were ever revealed, she was stunning enough that she would garner an entire fanbase despite being a villain. All these traits combined to give off a cold, aloof, and utterly unapproachable aura.
"Huh?"
Turns out, that had been a complete misconception on my part.
"Hell?"
Pandora, the greatest hacker of the era who bore the title 'Ruler of the Network,' was—
"Do you not get along with the others?"
"...What about Dice?"
She was a hardcore shut-in introvert, tossed alone into a den of extroverts.
"Uh, well..."
Desperation practically dripped from her texts. I cautiously shifted my gaze toward her. There she sat, fidgeting with her fingers, her body language radiating a mix of anxious dread and fragile hope.
"Um, well..."
Looking at her, I simply couldn't bring myself to crush her hopes.
"I know... a little bit of programming."
".......!"
Hearing that, Pandora's eyes widened slightly.
"I play some games, too."
Her eyes grew even wider.
"Anime... well... I don't really watch it..."
Including the morning cartoons I had watched as a kid felt like a stretch, so I answered honestly.
".........!"
Pandora's gaze wavered with slight disappointment.
"...The, the Hero Minor Gallery? I browse that."
Her text pleading not to be toyed with flashed across my mind, but looking into those pleading eyes, I ultimately had to tell a white lie.
"Yeah?"
Having finished the interrogation, she was shaking so badly from sheer nerves that she even made a typo before firing off her next message.
And just like that, I managed to make my very first friend since turning into a villain.
"Ah, boy! You've arrived?"
"Hello. Um, Mr. Diamond?"
"Hahaha! Just call me Grandpa!"
After being held captive in Pandora's room listening to her vent for quite a while, I was finally released and headed to the room of the second-ranked executive, Diamond.
"Right, let's start by getting your weight checked."
Characterized by a monstrously muscular physique and a completely bald head, this elderly man was already famous enough that even I knew his background well. His former villain alias was Mangtae Grandpa. Once a revered top hero, he was now a serial kidnapper who preyed exclusively on 'children.'
"Uuugh..."
"P-Please spare me... I won't do it again..."
"H-Help me..."
In one corner of the room, which was plastered wall-to-wall with gym equipment, a pile of bloody, battered figures lay heaped together. The rumors, it seemed, were true.
"Hoho, have I not explained my ability to you yet?"
Seeing me stare at the bruised, bloody pile, the old man hoisted me up effortlessly onto a scale and chuckled heartily as he began to speak.
"My ability is the power to turn garbage into trees."
Glancing at my height and weight, he jotted the numbers down on a chart, cracked his knuckles, and began walking toward the bloody heap.
"That's... quite different from the ability I heard about."
"Hmm, is that so?"
How could this be? As far as I knew, the Concept dwelling within him was 'Muscle.' Having been a former top hero, his public record was so prominent that his information was the most well-documented among the secretive Dominating Hands. Could it be that he, like me, had concealed his true ability?
"Well, take a look for yourself."
As I pondered in silence, Grandpa hauled up one of the bloodied punks by the scruff of his neck and spoke in a low rumble.
"This little bastard misused his unregistered Concept to go around thieving. Mainly targeting defenseless orphans and elderly folks living alone."
"P-Please, forgive m—"
"Those runts over there ganged up to torment an ability-less kid until they drove them to suicide."
"Guh-ack!"
"And the one buried at the very bottom used his ability to sexually assault three schoolgirls."
Grandpa drove a vicious straight punch directly into the gut of the boy he was holding.
"There's still an endless supply of juvenile delinquents exploiting the law waiting to be turned into trees!"
"Ugh..."
"With modern science advancing so rapidly, even people in a vegetative state can be resuscitated in no time these days! Bwahaha!"
It appeared his ability truly was the power to turn 'garbage' into 'vegetables'—literal trees.
"Pant, pant."
Around the time Kang Haneul was making his rounds through the airship...
[Test Complete: 10.52 seconds]
"...Tsk."
Having completely obliterated over a hundred training dummies with her yoyos in the training hall, Spade—the first-ranked executive—frowned quietly as she looked at the recorded time on the monitor.
"Your time is quite slow today, isn't it?"
"......?"
"Something on your mind?"
Dice appeared behind her without a sound, posing the question with an amused smile.
"...I'm pretty sure I told you to stop popping up behind me like that."
"Sorry, sorry. But I really wanted to see you jump just once."
Gripping her yoyos tightly in a defensive stance, Spade sighed at the response and strode forward.
"Kang Haneul will be coming by to introduce himself soon. Are you sure you want him to see you like that?"
"What does it matter?"
"You're drenched in sweat from head to toe."
Hearing that, she let out another sigh and began peeling off her sweat-soaked vest.
"...I still don't acknowledge that guy."
Exposing a body covered in scars that contrasted starkly with her pale skin, Spade muttered with a lethal glint in her eyes, "He didn't even take an induction test, yet he gets handed an executive seat? His qualifications haven't even been verified."
"........."
"On top of that, for some reason, he didn't even suffer the berserk rampage that always accompanies Villainization."
"Well, that's..."
"And most suspicious of all is you, Paradise."
Hearing her name called, Dice scratched her head in silence.
"Don't tell me you fell under his hypnosis."
"Come on now, I told you that's not it." Dice's eyes took on a distant, wistful look as she murmured, "...We just happen to have a connection from a long, long time ago."
Spade continued to glare at her, her expression unyielding.
"Are you planning on telling him all the organization's secrets, too?"
"Once his first mission tomorrow is over." Erasing her smile, Dice answered in a steady, serious voice. "That will serve as his induction test and an evaluation of his qualifications."
".........."
Left with no room to argue, Spade simply stared at Dice.
"Unbelievable..."
Rattle...!
"Excuse me."
Just as she sighed and turned toward the shower room—
"I came to introduce—"
The training room door slid open, and Kang Haneul walked right in.
"...Ah?"
A brief, suffocating silence descended over the room.
"...Fuck."
belatedly shielding her body, Spade pulled out her wire yoyos, her face freezing into a murderous mask.
"I'm going to kill you."
"...What's the big deal? It's just between guys."
Scanning Spade from head to toe, Kang Haneul merely muttered under his breath, looking genuinely and thoroughly bewildered.