The Reason Those Gangsters Are Beautiful Girls
“I’m sorry. I got carried away.” Siz quickly wiped her tears and apologized. She had every reason to. Fantasia was on the verge of collapse, she’d pushed her body to its limits, even considered prostitution, and nearly fallen into serious danger. Then, out of nowhere, a stranger appeared, saved her, and revealed he was Fantasia’s third member. It was like the saying goes—when the sky falls, there’s always a hole to crawl through. The situation fit perfectly. No wonder her chest swelled and she couldn’t hold back the tears. Especially with those dark circles under her eyes; the fatigue was piled on thick. When the body weakens, the mind follows. Anyone who stays strong in both is truly remarkable.
“Come on, let’s head back. Boss Lady is waiting.”
“Boss Lady…? You mean Eris-nim?”
“Yeah. She told me to call her ‘hyungnim,’ so I went with ‘Boss Lady.’”
“Heh, she sounds like an interesting person.” Siz gave a faint smile. Even her expressions seemed to conserve energy. She probably tried to save it for anything unnecessary. With three jobs a day, that made sense. I couldn’t argue with the logic. That said, Eris, who overflowed with energy, clearly had no idea how to conserve it. That was very much like her, too.
“We’re back, Boss Lady.”
On the way back with Siz, I gave Eris a quick rundown of what had happened. Siz looked like she wasn’t listening at all, but she’d actually caught every word. In contrast to the calm, energy-saving Siz, Eris was stomping in place and spinning around until she heard my voice, then came running over. Typical energy-wasting boss.
“Siz! Siz, you’re safe?!”
“Yes, Eris-nim. I’m unharmed.”
When Siz smiled faintly, Eris burst into tears and threw herself at her.
“Siz! Do you know how worried I was?”
She didn’t need to say it; it was obvious. Energy-wasting incarnate.
“Thank you for worrying. Thanks to Woo Hyun-woo-nim, I was able to return safely.”
“Really? Really really? What happened?”
“Some men tried to kidnap me, but Woo Hyun-woo-nim appeared and saved me in spectacular fashion.”
“Really? Really really? Hyun-woo really is strong!”
Eris, having apparently sold off any trace of a boss’s dignity, threw her arms up three times in victory, then stretched them forward and shouted, “Yes! Our Hyun-woo is the best! Long live our Fighting Dog!” She made a ridiculous fuss. She never had much dignity to begin with, but this level of hyperactivity was enough to make anyone lose respect. If she was going to be the boss, she could at least act like one.
“If she just stood still, those sharp eyes would make her look like she had some personality.”
“Huh? What?”
“Nothing. More importantly, now that I’m officially a member, I should probably learn how the underworld works, right?”
“Yeah yeah! What do you want to know first?”
Eris looked up at me with sparkling eyes, clearly excited. How was this person twenty years old? She looked like a little girl bragging about something she learned in kindergarten.
“I can pick up the rest as we go, but there’s one thing that’s been bugging me.”
“What what?”
“Why are all the bosses of these organizations beautiful girls?”
Back in the world I came from, gangsters were a man’s world. Even if this world was supposed to be a noir story, noir was still centered on men. Stories with women at the center were rare.
“I don’t see many women with truly nasty personalities. Yet all the bosses are women. Even the subsidiary organizations under the three major syndicates.”
Of course, there could be the occasional organization with a female boss. Saying it was exclusively a man’s world would be discriminatory. But a world where every single boss was a woman? That was strange. Unless some gender-reversal event had happened and women were the dominant force, but this wasn’t that kind of world.
“Ooh! Good question. Makes sense you’d be curious!” Eris nodded repeatedly and raised her index finger. Why did she have to be so theatrical with every gesture?
“To explain this, you need to know what happened when ability-user organizations first took root in the world.”
Good grief. Was she really about to explain everything like a kid proudly reciting kindergarten lessons? I had zero interest in boring history. Just give me the key points.
“I don’t care about that. Summarize it.”
“Uh, huh? Summarize?”
The moment she heard the word “summarize,” Eris started sweating.
“Summarizing is the one thing I’m worst at in the whole world…”
Figures. This pathetic excuse for a boss.
“Uh, uh… What do I do… If this keeps up, my authority as boss…”
She never had any authority as a boss to begin with. She could stop poking her index fingers together. It only made her look more pitiful.
“I’ll provide the summary.”
Maybe because Eris kept staring at her with desperate eyes while fidgeting with her fingers, Siz spoke up and offered to summarize.
“The reason beautiful-girl organization bosses first appeared is simple. They wanted to project a friendly image and make it seem like gangsters weren’t dangerous. This was hundreds of years ago.”
It still worked to some extent. Plenty of people liked the idea of an organization boss being a beautiful girl.
“But questions would arise. How exactly did a girl end up in the boss’s seat? Maybe the bosses were just figureheads.”
That was the core issue. Using girls to soften the dangerous image of gangsters made sense. But were the girls actually the real bosses? That doubt was inevitable.
“To put it bluntly, they really are the bosses. They possess tremendous combat power.”
“How can strong girls keep appearing?”
“Strong girls have never appeared.”
“What?”
She just said they had tremendous combat power, yet now claimed strong girls had never appeared. That didn’t add up.
“Because the organization bosses weren’t women from the start.”
“D-Does that mean they underwent sex changes?”
Good lord. Men who had sex-change surgery were that stunningly beautiful? Was the medical technology for sex changes in this world ridiculously advanced?
“You could call it a sex change, but they didn’t undergo surgery. It’s something far more unscientific. And extremely filthy and cruel.”
“What exactly did they do that’s so filthy and cruel?”
“There’s an organization called the Shamans. They stay neutral and don’t side with any other group. Every member of that organization knows how to use ‘possession sorcery.’”
“Possession sorcery? Don’t tell me…”
“I don’t know what you’re imagining, but you’re probably right.”
“They kill girls and steal their bodies with possession sorcery?”
“Correct. Haven’t you heard the stories? Famous idols or underground idols found dead. Then, not long after, an organization boss who looks exactly like that idol appears.”
Come to think of it, most organization bosses had lookalike idols. And those lookalikes were all, creepily enough, deceased. People might feel something was off, but there was a clear difference that made everyone brush it aside. That difference was—
“Media control helps bury conspiracy theories, but the biggest factor is that the characteristics of the soul can change the body.”
Han Se-hee, president of the Esper Association, had light-blue hair and eyes. Hwa Seol-hwa, master of the North Sea Ice Palace, had hair, eyes, and even skin as white as snow. Namgung Cho-pung, leader of the Murim Alliance, had a deep cross-shaped scar on his cheek.
“The color of the soul shows in the hair or eyes, or sometimes a defining trait of the soul manifests. So people just assume they’re being overly sensitive. Media control and these physical changes hide something that should be impossible.”
“I see. Just to be sure, Siz, you didn’t kill a girl and steal her body, right?”
“No. That’s something only the organization bosses do.”
“Something only the bosses do… Then what about Boss Lady? Did Boss Lady kill a girl and steal her body?”
Eris flinched at my question and frowned.
“I-I didn’t do anything like that!”
Yeah, this clueless, dumb, innocent girl killing an idol and stealing her body? That was ridiculous. Let’s just say I was an idiot for even suspecting it for a second.
“For reference, in this era, possessing a woman’s body is like getting a tattoo—it’s for showing off. The higher your position in an organization, the prettier the girl’s body you possess.”
“So they change bodies every time they get promoted?”
Hwa Seol-hwa, master of the North Sea Ice Palace, looked the same whether she was in the outer murim or one of the Five Great Clans. But surely some gangsters changed their appearance when they got promoted.
“Correct. After all, ordinary people who have nothing to do with gangsters aren’t interested in internal affairs. There’s nothing strange about changing like that.”
“You heard her, Boss Lady. Be careful.”
“Careful of what?”
“You’re pretty, so some gangster might try to steal your body.”
“Hmph, those kinds of gangsters don’t scare me at all!”
“Yeah? Where’s that confidence coming from?”
“Because I have Hyun-woo!”
So that’s how the conversation ended. Suddenly saying that made me a little embarrassed. Time to change the subject.
“You said a woman’s body is like a tattoo. So do they get tattoos too?”
“Yes, they do. But unlike before beautiful-girl bosses became common, they don’t put much meaning into the tattoos. They just get whatever tattoo they think suits them best.”
“That’s right! That’s why I have a tattoo too.”
“Yeah? What’s your tattoo?”
“I’ll show you my special tattoo!”
With that, Eris stripped off her clothes until she was in nothing but panties. Her body was completely childlike, so there was zero erotic feeling, but I still had to question whether this was appropriate behavior for a twenty-year-old woman. Especially the state she was in after taking her clothes off. Even if her body was young, her mind was twenty, yet she wasn’t wearing a bra and had covered her nipples with round band stickers—the kind men wore under white T-shirts to keep their nipples from showing. On her left chest, right below the collarbone, was a small dragon tattoo. Not a full dragon, just a tiny one with its mouth wide open. As a bonus, its front legs were short like a T. rex. And that wasn’t all. Her lower body was a parade of shock and horror. Her panties had a Mohanya character printed on them, and on her right thigh she’d also gotten a Mohanya tattoo. What was she thinking?
“Why the hell are your panties and tattoo like that…?”
I muttered in disbelief, but Eris straightened her shoulders and declared proudly, “Dragons and Mohanya are symbols of strength! I got these tattoos because I want to become as strong as Mohanya someday!”
“If they’re symbols of strength, you should’ve drawn them bigger. Making them small just makes them look even more pathetic.”
“T-That can’t be helped! If the boss of a ruined organization walks around with huge tattoos, people will say I’m all talk and come after me…”
Eris grumbled that she’d wanted to make them bigger. No, even if she drew tattoos like that huge, nobody would think she was all talk and come after her. What kind of misunderstanding was she under?
“And if you’re a twenty-year-old woman, stop stripping in front of a guy.”
“Ahaha, it’s not like there’s any guy who’d get excited looking at a body like this anyway.”
“There might be. Just not me.”
“Then it doesn’t matter! In front of Hyun-woo, I’ll just walk around in my panties~”
Was she insane? I was at a loss for words when Siz sighed and opened the closet. What came out was a pure-white pajama set covered in Mohanya prints.
“Eris-nim, you’ll catch a cold sleeping in just your panties. I understand it’s hot because it’s summer, but please think of Athena-nim in heaven and wear the pajamas.”
“Hngh… It’s hot. But since it’s Mohanya, I guess I have to wear it.”
Eris peeled off the stickers covering her nipples and put on the pajamas. Did she really like Mohanya that much? She was the spitting image of a kindergarten kid. At best, she looked like an elementary school lower-grader.
“By the way. That Athena person was the previous boss of Fantasia, right? You called her a living grimoire.”
“Yeah! My mom’s name was Athena.”
“She left you a lot of inheritance too?”
“That’s right! Even though I lost it all…”
I asked the sulking Eris, “What kind of business did you run that made you lose all the money?”
“I lent money.”
“You lent money? How did that make you go bankrupt?”
How could someone go bankrupt while lending money when they had plenty of capital to begin with? It made no sense to me.
“W-Well…”
And then Eris’s next words left me speechless.
“They said they had circumstances and asked me to wait, so I just kept waiting forever?”
Was she actually an idiot? My preconceived notions about what an organization boss should be like were cracking.
“Hand over the IOUs. Right now.”