Smile Will Somehow Take Care of It
Well, Smile will somehow take care of it!
In the wake of the shocking revelation from Eternox—once ranked among the most dangerous villains in Korea—the world still reeled.
From Incheon, the first place to see the footage that day, the madman’s absurd claims had raced across the internet and blanketed the globe in an instant.
Ever since superpowers had first appeared some forty years earlier, every nation except a handful of already-collapsed backwaters had been clawing its way back toward order. Now, a full week after that broadcast, almost none of them had managed to climb free of the chaos he had unleashed.
Barely a day after the video went viral, villains began crawling out of every shadow, eager to murder ability users and devour their flesh in pursuit of the so-called “blooming” of power. And—for heroes sworn to uphold justice and law, for the police and soldiers who bled alongside them, and for the ordinary people living under their protection—the truly damning fact was this: it took less than forty-eight hours to prove Eternox had been telling the truth.
Just as he had croaked with his dying breath, the ugliness of human greed was foul enough to drive people to acts no human should ever commit. Reports kept pouring in from every corner of the planet: the mutilated corpses of ability users who had been turned into “feed.”
Within days of Eternox’s death, a new breed of villains appeared—suddenly far stronger than before. One after another, celebrated heroes from the United States, China, Japan, India, and every other major power outside Korea fell in the line of duty. Only a single week had passed since the secret went public, yet the first cracks were already showing in the security of those superpowers.
Even America—home of Justice, the legendary hero who still stood at the peak of the first generation and kept the United States the world’s hegemon—was no exception. Justice, the Pillar of Light that annihilated evil, the Guardian of the American continent, the man once universally regarded as the strongest ability user alive before Smile appeared. He had been the only one who could keep pace with Smile during that joint operation in Panama, when top heroes from every nation had gathered to free hundreds of remodeled otherworldly ability users from a mad scientist’s laboratory. And still the storm had begun.
Eternox’s revelation was that kind of disaster—a catastrophe large enough to overturn every carefully rebuilt equilibrium the world had painstakingly achieved after the emergence of powers.
And yet…
“Huh? What do I think about the whole thing? Well… I live in Seoul with my parents, so honestly I’m not that worried.”
Despite the global uproar, Korea—especially Seoul, the very epicenter of the storm—showed almost no visible panic. No matter how many reporters prowled the streets with microphones, citizens remained unnervingly calm.
“The reason? Even Eternox, who’d spent decades getting stronger with that disgusting method, still got casually stomped by Smile—twice. So why should I be shaking in my boots?”
“Come on, reporter. So what if those creeps get stronger by eating people? Smile’s invincible. Villains don’t stand a chance. Just avoid the dark alleys like always and stick to crowded places, yeah?”
“Yeah, the news is pretty scary lately… but Smile’ll figure something out. I believe that.”
Amazingly, every last citizen rested easy on the existence of one man: the Invincible Hero who never fell to evil, the one who always appeared the moment countless lives hung in the balance and saved them all.
The entire world might be in chaos because of Eternox’s words, but this was Korea. Smile was here. Live your ordinary life the way you always had, and any threat too horrible to imagine would simply be handled by him. That quiet certainty had become as natural as breathing.
Of course a minority fretted that even Smile had only one body, that the citizens were being far too complacent about the fallout, that relying so completely on a single hero would one day explode into disaster. But they were exactly that—a minority.
The vast majority of the public, and even Korea’s young third-generation heroes who had never truly tasted the nightmare of the Chaos Era and therefore could not grasp how merciless the life of a hero had once been, clung to the same unshakable conviction: no matter how absurd the villain, Smile would take care of it somehow.
Meanwhile the man himself…
Whether villains got stronger or not was honestly none of his concern right now. He remained blissfully unaware of both the public’s ironclad faith and the quiet worries of a few, just as he remained unaware that an S-class hero had, only yesterday, bought the entire goshiwon building he lived in.
It was still early morning; the communal kitchen was empty. Even so he wore oversized sunglasses that covered half his face while he seriously debated whether to put half a slice of cheese into his ramen or go all-in with a whole one—
Plop—!
“Gah…! Damn it, I dumped the whole packet by accident! My, my precious cheese…!!”
He stared forlornly at the solid clump of cheese that had torn free of its plastic and sunk whole into the pot, thanks to his still-clumsy control of strength. The ramen broth had turned a sickly neon yellow. Despair settled over him.
“Hahaha! Are you both all right?”
“Y-yes! Wow…! Thank you so much! Some villain suddenly appeared saying he was going to eat me—I really thought I was done for!”
“…Whew. We work at the construction site nearby. This guy’s telekinesis is insanely strong for a civilian. The villain was probably after that.”
“Haha, I see. Even with me around, you’d better stay out of back alleys like this from now on. Well then, I’ll be off!”
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.
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“Man, that was so cool…! That’s Smile for you! Flying all the way into a dead-end alley and taking the villain down in seconds!”
“…Yeah, but did he seem a little… weaker than usual? Normally he knocks guys out with one hit. Why’d he have to punch that one so many times?”
“What the hell are you talking about?! The villain who jumped us was just ridiculously strong! My telekinesis didn’t even scratch him!”
“Mm, yeah… you’re right. No way Smile’s gotten weaker…”
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.
.
Ugh. Still greasy. I ate the whole thing because I couldn’t throw it away, but it didn’t taste like ramen—more like a failed cheese stew with the salt completely wrecked…
I replayed the pathetic memory of this morning’s cheese-ramen disaster—the one that had left nothing but an unpleasant film on my tongue—while I gently flexed the hand that had just finished tapping a villain into unconsciousness.
Whew. At least now I don’t have to freeze up every time I fight, terrified I’ll squash them like cake.
Of course, instead of the light knuckle-raps I used to give, I now had to swing my fists with the delicacy of dabbing a cotton swab into paint. That meant a few extra punches, which was mildly annoying. Still, reaching this level of control in only a week was excellent progress.
Only days ago I had worried that a single careless swing might collapse nearby buildings like melted whipped cream along with the villain.
…And luckily only weak villains have shown up this past week. If someone mid-tier had appeared and I slipped while trying to hit a little harder, who knows what kind of catastrophe we’d be cleaning up.
Even flying was still a hassle. Every time I kicked off the air I half-expected to carve a meteor crater into the ground below. No matter how gifted my body was, it felt exactly like trying to walk across fresh powder without leaving a single footprint. Two days ago I’d misjudged and drained too much strength; I’d simply dropped out of the sky.
Thank god no one saw that. If the system had caught me, I don’t even want to imagine how hard it would’ve squeezed my heart.
But I’d more or less gotten the hang of tapping the air with feather-light kicks. I wouldn’t be crashing face-first into the pavement again anytime soon.
“…All right. I’ll just choke down some dry ramen for lunch and use the spare time to head over to the Ability Management Department. Might as well get a firmer grip on this power control.”
Sooner or later another monster like Eternox would show up. When that day came, cotton-swab punches with the power dialed all the way down simply wouldn’t cut it.
So, carefully chewing on the uncooked ramen noodles and soup powder I’d brought along, I made for the Ability Management Department building in Yongsan District—right next to the Ministry of National Defense. Every professional hero was free to use its rock-solid training rooms, the kind that could keep the surrounding landscape from turning into tofu even if I made a small mistake.
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Hmm. Last time I came here was last year to renew my hero license… and the building’s gotten even bigger since then…