So You've Come, You Trash
A tiger was coming.
Not a tiger that walked on four legs, but a terrifying one that walked on two and still kept its reason.
"I've got plenty of questions. I won't ask them."
Hwang Seokgu shrugged off the coat hanging from his shoulders, and the knotted muscle it had hidden came bare. Not the sculpted muscle of a statue—muscle running over with wildness. The sight of it alone was enough to press a man down.
"You wouldn't be the first bastards to come at us with a proposal like that."
"By us, you mean the Temporary Hero Association?"
He drained the last of his beer and got to his feet.
"Right. Don't know where they caught the scent, but there were things that crawled in here without knowing their place."
"From the way you put it, I don't need the rest."
They became corpses, or something you couldn't tell from a corpse. One of the two.
"I didn't go as far as you're thinking. Sent them off with all four limbs still on."
I stepped in front of Hwang Seokgu. His enormous frame filled my sight; from the side, it would have looked like a child standing before a grown man.
"We didn't come with impure aims, the way those people did."
"Should've said it pretty. Say it ugly, and folks get the wrong idea. Like now."
One spark from the edge. With strength like Hwang Seokgu's, turning me into jerky would have been easy. A phantom thief, though, was not something you caught with strength.
"The joke fell flat, I see."
"Wasn't funny, so the laugh just came out."
I measured the distance. How did I turn this to my advantage?
"W-wait! We didn't come here to fight!"
Dan Miryu tried to step between us. As if that stood a chance.
"I know. Dan, sit."
"......!"
At the words Hwang Seokgu tossed out so carelessly, Dan Miryu went still.
"Thought I wouldn't know you?"
Hwang Seokgu's face was bored.
"Mr. Dan Miryu. Of course Mr. Hwang Seokgu knows. Rough as he looks, he's a legend among Korea's heroes."
"Legend, my foot......"
Hwang Seokgu cleared his throat.
Dan Miryu did not waver at being revealed as one of the Dan clan.
"As you saw, Elder, I am of the Dan clan. So please stop this fight. I'll apologize in his place."
Dan Miryu moved to bow his head, and Hwang Seokgu stopped him.
"Bow, and this becomes a real fight, so don't. A Dan lowering his head for nothing is an ugly thing to see."
His eyes were earnest. He was angry at what Dan Miryu had done.
"Wrong the house that's guarded Korea, and I couldn't show my face to my seniors."
Dan Miryu lifted his head, unwilling.
"Mr. Dan Miryu, you only need to watch. I was thinking of talking with Mr. Hwang Seokgu."
"......And what part of this is a conversation?"
If the meaning got across, wasn't that a conversation? By that measure, Hwang Seokgu and I were understanding each other just fine.
"A talk's a talk. Fine. Go on, then. Let's hear you."
Hwang Seokgu folded his arms.
"But if what comes out of your mouth is empty, I won't let it pass."
The air shuddered. The space around us seemed to sink.
The peak of Korea's heroes. Of course.
Hwang Seokgu. A first-generation hero, the strongest in Korea, the point the country's heroes gathered around. Set Dan Miryu aside, and he was the strongest man in Korea. Set Captain Earth aside, and no one had served longer as a hero.
I'd better say this right.
"Mr. Hwang Seokgu. When I said you should join us, I meant exactly that."
"Then talk so a man can understand."
A crack raced through the wall. The ceiling sounded ready to come down.
"Ghk!"
"Gaaahk!"
Customer and server alike writhed under the pressure. It did not, of course, apply to me or to Dan Miryu.
"Mr. Hwang Seokgu. Mr. Dan Miryu and I mean to plant a proper hero system in Korea."
"Hrrm?!"
Hwang Seokgu's eyes flew wide.
"Nnngh!"
"Cough! Cough!"
The pressure vanished, and only then could the customers and staff draw breath.
"What?! Mr. Phantom?!"
Why the shock? He had agreed. Hadn't he said the money was there?
"What kind of talk is that?"
"It means we turn the Temporary Hero Association into an official Hero Association, and build a hero system in Korea."
Hwang Seokgu went silent. His brow knit, and trouble settled into his eyes.
"......It's not as if no one's ever said that to me."
"I doubt any of them were as credible as we are."
He had recognized the Dan name. It would have been hard for a man like him not to know what the Dan clan was worth.
"......Still. Didn't expect this."
Hwang Seokgu flicked a glance at Dan Miryu, worked his mouth, and turned his eyes on the staff.
"Yeongsik! Close up shop!"
"Yes?! Yes, sir! Right away!"
The bar grew hectic.
"You two. Out."
"B-boss?! It's dangerous. Please let us stay!"
"An official Hero Association—what is that supposed to mean?!"
The two customers protested. Hwang Seokgu fixed them with a hard stare.
"Not a joke. Get out, and tell the kids not to come here."
"But—!"
"Enough!"
The tiger roared.
"When I say listen, you listen!"
"Y-yes, sir."
"Ghk!"
Reeling from Hwang Seokgu's roar, the two spilled out of the bar.
"Yeongsik. If you're done, let the kids off!"
"Yes, sir! Boss! We'll be going, then!"
Yeongsik took the other staff and vanished.
"They could have stayed and listened, you know."
"Tell them later. We haven't even talked it through."
The corner of my mouth lifted.
"So you do mean to discuss it."
"Hear a thing like that and don't discuss it, and you're a fool."
I brought a chair over and set it beside him.
"Then shall we discuss?"
"Tch! Top class at needling a man!"
Hwang Seokgu sat in the seat I'd set out, grudging every inch of it.
"All right. You'd better make it good."
His eyes burned yellow.
"I'm in no mood to play along."
"Then I'll explain."
We came out of the bar into a sky gone dim.
"Please think it over carefully."
"Hah. I heard you. Get on home."
"Yes. Until next time, Mr. Hwang Seokgu."
I took my leave of him and brought Dan Miryu out with me. The man still looked as if none of it felt real.
"Mr. Phantom. Don't you think you've gone too far this time?"
So he was angry.
"Yes. I apologize for acting on my own without a word to you."
"Hah. If you'd given me even one word, it wouldn't have come to this."
Dan Miryu swept a hand back over his brow.
"A Hero Association. What on earth are you thinking?"
"Volunteer work, in service of the country?"
"Volunteer work? This is hardly a scale you can call that."
Well. Set against what was coming, a thing this size was practically cute. In the original, how much blood had Korea's heroes spilled just to win their rights? They worked for nothing under a rain of curses, and not one person helped them. Wipe out Unjinhoe, save people from villains—the treatment never changed.
And later, it came back on them hard.
More and more of them quit, sunk in disillusionment. Once Unjinhoe was gone, the foreign powers that had been clawing to take its place boiled over through Korea, and the last boss of that scramble was Sword's invasion of Seoul. Only when the dead climbed past the hundreds of thousands and neared the millions did the government finally recognize the unofficial heroes as official. Then it spent them as cannon fodder.
After the invasion ended, their treatment was guaranteed only because Captain Earth set out to smash the Korean government's skull. It was locking the barn after the horse was gone. Would heroes who had watched the whole of it ever want to become Korea's heroes?
When the mastermind began in earnest to burn the world, Korea had to defend itself with the few heroes it had left.
I wasn't going to watch that again.
I held the Dan clan, and I held Hwang Seokgu. With a hand like that, I could make Korea safe.
"Mr. Dan Miryu. Korea needs heroes."
"Something serious is coming, then?"
"Yes. Without heroes, Korea cannot survive that current."
"What happens in the future?"
"A great many things."
Enough that counting the living would start to mean something.
"Does it have to do with the one who sent Sword?"
Sharp of him.
"Yes. It does."
"I've been curious. Who is that person, exactly?"
"That person is......"
I shaped my mask into a question mark.
"I can't tell you."
"Nnngh......"
Dan Miryu looked disappointed.
"If you know, you'll be hurt."
I was sorry to him, but he was still far too weak to know that man.
"Grow stronger. Strong enough that you lose to no one."
Dan Miryu and the mastermind were going to meet regardless. They would come for his necklace. Meet them as he was now, and he would die. No other ending.
"I've been training, of late...... I'll do everything I can."
"Even now, there are very few who could stand against you......"
There were no people. Not people.
"Few. But turn the quirks of a power to account, and there are those even you can do nothing about, Mr. Dan Miryu."
"Well, the world is a wide place."
And that world reached past the Earth besides.
We were climbing into the car when Dan Miryu's phone rang.
"Yes. Speaking."
His face was grave, so I waited without a word. For a while, all that came through was yes, yes.
When the call ended, Dan Miryu drew a breath.
"They say a cruise ship is coming from China."
"Out of nowhere?"
"Yes. They say it wasn't on any schedule."
Faster than I'd expected.
"Where is it bound?"
"Jeju."
So you've come, you trash.