Chapter 13. Counterattack (6)
Whenever I floated in the sky and looked down, I always felt a strange sensation.
No tools, nothing to stand on—just my body suspended in midair. Even a bird has to beat its wings to rise into the sky, and I didn't even have that.
If the situation had been anything other than what it was, I probably would have enjoyed it. At the very least, if I'd had this ability back when I was an ordinary combatant...
"..."
No, wait. It was precisely because an ordinary combatant like me gained this power that everything had turned out this way. Honestly.
I never should have become a combatant in the first place.
As I thought that, the circuit hummed.
It was absurd, really—that I had to dwell on depressing thoughts in order to fight. The moment I got drunk on victory and let my guard down, the Despair Circuit stopped running properly.
Growing weaker the more advantage I gained. I hated every bit of it. Suddenly I understood why the combatants had always been so weak. There can't be many people in the world who despair hard enough to dig themselves into the ground like this.
After staring down below for a moment, mulling over how to handle things, I dove, hammer in hand.
Right—just do what I always do. Smash whatever's in front of me as the mood strikes, and pull out when the time is right.
Look for anywhere the Chairman might be hiding, too. The current Chairman probably wasn't here, but if there was a shelter or anything of the sort, smashing it would be for the best. That was what would count as a warning.
A warning that would make the current Chairman wary of me.
At first, I worried about fire. If the house made heavy use of wood, even my hammer's booster flames could set it alight, and if that happened, the neighbors' homes would be in danger too—a problem. Thankfully the two magical girls were following behind me, so they could put out any fire under the pretext of stopping me, but dangerous was still dangerous.
Fortunately, a mansion built in the heart of Seoul, a modern nation, didn't have much of that sort of thing.
The furniture was wood, but the walls behind it were solid marble.
As if eager to advertise its price tag, even the floors were expensive-looking stone rather than hardwood, and not a single piece of furniture was of Earth make. Honestly, it was an avant-garde look that seemed to sacrifice all practicality, but I supposed that was just what rich people's taste looked like.
Or maybe it was like that because the owner wasn't an Earthling at all.
I broke in through a window from beyond the garden. The window—surely reinforced glass—couldn't withstand a massive hunk of metal accelerated at full force.
Since I hadn't bothered worrying about alarms, a wailing filled the house from that moment on. The first thing I smashed was the speaker, purely because it was loud.
The interior... aside from the fact that most of the finishing materials appeared to be natural marble, and apart from the avant-garde furniture, it looked more or less like an ordinary house.
A spacious living room beyond the entryway, and stairs climbing upward beside the kitchen.
No one came bursting out from inside, but—
Bang.
The front door swung open and combatants poured in. Four in all. Probably two from the gate, and two from in front of the building's entrance.
No—they looked a cut more professional than mere combatants. Submachine guns in their hands, wristwatches on their wrists. At a glance they resembled the rugged digital watches soldiers wear, but the faint humming vibration told me these weren't just watches. They were circuits.
Real circuits? Or resonance devices?
Every combatant feared magical girls at least a little, so by the time a battle actually started, their circuits ran well. Few among them kept their composure to the very end.
Because the end of despair was usually surrender.
Aliens confident in their own strength at least tried to hold out until the end, but among the Earthlings, the only ones who never lost their nerve and bolted midway were, in my squad at least, me and the Squad Leader.
The combatants at the building housing the tracking device's main unit, or the ones stationed at headquarters, had looked reasonably professional, but in the end, once I threatened to kill them, they ran all the same.
I didn't know whether the Despair Circuit actually influenced a person's emotions. The Company did hand them out, mind you—packaged as "courage" rather than despair.
But at least going by what I saw now, if the enemy wasn't frightened and thought of this as just another job, then "resonance devices" suited them better than "Despair Circuits."
They'd have known I was coming, after all. Even if they couldn't be sure from where.
"How about you all just step aside?"
I tried that first.
I thought my voice came out reasonably calm. But it hardly mattered. Even someone with a calm voice generally can't be called 'calm' by the point they've smashed their way into someone's house through a window.
Watching those Special Combatants train submachine guns on me—guns that were, even at a glance, a heavier caliber than 5.56mm rounds—left a distinctly bad taste in my mouth.
It was work they were doing for money, sure, but was I supposed to like people pointing guns at me?
I'd spent my entire career as a combatant thinking poorly of magical girls, so there wasn't much point in saying otherwise now.
"No intention of clearing out?"
If they had families, they couldn't. If they really were ex-military, the Company must have paid a hefty price to bring them on.
Though if they were on their own, maybe they wouldn't care about being cut loose.
"Fine, then—"
Just as I hefted the hammer in both hands and the combatants tensed, tightening their grips on their weapons—
Crash!
The sound came from beyond the shattered window.
I turned to find the two magical girls looking at me.
Hayun was running toward me, and Iris—
Huh?
I twisted aside in a hurry. A beam struck the spot where I'd been standing moments before. It caught my feet, more or less, but had it actually connected, I could have turned an ankle.
For a split second my temper flared to the top of my skull—then cooled just as fast.
Right. The combatants were watching me right now.
We'd agreed to put on a show of the magical girls and me at odds, so this was correct. In truth, Iris's attack was no fiercer than it had been when we'd genuinely fought.
Aim at me, fire. But only after I'd dodged did the beam land where I'd been. It didn't strike me directly, didn't so much as graze me.
It wouldn't look that way to anyone else, though. My dynamic vision, when sheathed in mana, is far sharper than an ordinary person's. Naturally, the equipment I carried now was a step above what those unit members had back in my combatant days, too.
"Run, now!"
Hayun shouted, her face taut.
"She came here for revenge...!"
I swung my hammer at her.
Well—not with any real force behind it.
Hayun deflected my hammer with her wand without much trouble. For a moment we stayed locked together like that, then I sprang backward. So that, at a glance, it looked like a retreat.
Magic bullets came flying one after another along my retreating path.
Thwack, thwack-thwack.
Since none of them touched my body, the bullets naturally went on to smash and punch through various corners of the house.
One caught the refrigerator door and sent it flying. There was hardly anything inside. Proof that no one actually lived here?
The lights shattered and went out. With a gloomy evening outside, my vision plunged into shadow in an instant. Not that it became impossible to see.
I swung my hammer at Hayun again and again.
She dodged each blow by a hair's breadth, and the misses cracked the floor, demolished the dining table, and sent chunks of furniture flying.
"Run... hurry...!"
Only after Hayun shouted that did the combatants flinch and stumble backward.
"Jieun, calm down!"
That nearly wrung a laugh out of me before I could stop it, so I clamped my mouth shut. I steadied my breathing for a moment, then forced the words out.
"Calm down?"
At my words, Hayun's face stiffened slightly. She's good at this.
"You're telling me to calm down after coming all this way? Who was it that drove me here in the first place?"
If it weren't for the Chairman, I'd be getting by more or less all right. James would still be blackmailing me, and I'd still be scheming away for that Entropy thing of his or whatever it was, working toward some absurd plan—but the orphanage would be safe, and so would Jihye.
The magical girls probably would have driven Noir Corporation out before we graduated. ...I can't say that with certainty.
In the end, I'd have grown into a perfectly unremarkable adult, scrambling here and there to make ends meet, but who knows—maybe I'd have gotten along fine. Friends with Hayun, quietly jealous the whole time, but more or less happy.
But that dream was over now. I was a terrorist, and until I shook off that false accusation completely, I would have to keep running.
"What's wrong with taking revenge on the people who made me this way? The lying trash are still eating well and living large as we speak!"
"..."
Hayun's lips parted slightly.
"I have no intention of forgiving."
I said it quietly, with a sliver of genuine feeling in it.
"No intention of forgiving. Ever. The trash who lied straight to my face and drove me into this corner—I'm going to hunt down every last one of them and kill them. I won't forgive anyone who gets in my way, either. And I won't forgive the bastards who knew everything and just left me out to dry. This one, that one—they're all trash, every last one of them."
The Company, trying to discard me by any means necessary. The Federation, quietly cooperating with that Company behind the scenes. The government, watching all of it happen and lifting not a finger.
Nothing but trash, the lot of them.
Not that I was claiming to be in the right. All of this, in the end, traced back to my own mistakes. If I'd never gone along with Noir Corporation, maybe none of it would have happened in the first place.
But even so.
If they wanted to throw me out, they should have just cut me loose from the start. Or at the very least asked me to cooperate. Or stepped in to mediate when they went off committing crimes and left me holding the bag.
Instead they just chased me around like a lab rat that had escaped its cage, watching from somewhere high above.
Even villains get cursed out by the public when you write them that flat and one-dimensional. The Company, the Federation, the government—I honestly couldn't tell what any of them thought they were doing.
"Jieun—"
I lunged at Hayun.
This time she barely managed to block my hammer.
Maybe I'd put too much strength into my grip.
I fell backward as though knocked away, and the momentum carried me to almost exactly in front of the combatants. Impeccable distance control.
"...!"
Only then did Hayun put on an expression of belated realization, spinning around with urgent haste and shouting.
"I told you! I said run!"
At 'Blossom's' loud cry, the combatants finally seemed to grasp the situation and fled in a hurry.
The way they kept glancing back at me as they ran—they were properly terrified.
Well, fair enough. Their lives were worth more, after all.
When I charged after them, Hayun scrambled to cut me off.
"Stop right there!"
"Jieun, calm down...!"
Bang.
The door burst open and the combatants tumbled out of the house, nearly tripping over themselves. How many times would they stumble before they made it to the front gate?
I felt a little guilty about it, but it had still ended far better for them than it had for the people I'd personally hammered on before.
I pounded the floor several times with my hammer.
The noise was for the combatants' benefit. That way they'd believe I had truly lost my mind.
From here on, I'd have to keep up the same racket while I searched the place. And not just noise—I ought to tear the interior apart as thoroughly as I could manage.
I briefly considered making a black hole, then decided to put that off.
To summon a black hole that would chew up everything around me, my emotions had to sink low enough to match. Like when I'd been shot by the police after saving Jihye—I had to be well and truly 'shoved' down into the pit of despair.
You build up a tolerance to gloomy thoughts, too. Plenty of people ultimately can't take it and break, but if you're still standing, that's how it goes.
For me lately, with my mind and body so settled, it was a bit of a struggle.
"Jieun..."
"Hm?"
Only when Hayun called my name did I stop.
When I came back to myself, the floor in front of me was already beyond recognition. Pulverized past mangled—practically ground to powder.
"..."
I blinked at it for a moment, then turned around.
Iris was staring blankly at me, the muzzle of her gun dipped low.
I felt a little awkward.
I lifted my head. Anything to see around here?
Something that looked like a CCTV camera caught my eye, and I hurled my hammer at it.
The massive hammer spun under its booster's power and buried itself in the ceiling. The camera came crashing down along with a chunk of the ceiling.
Should I just cut the wiring entirely?
Until I'd found and destroyed every last one of these things, I couldn't relax and talk freely. Who knew what the current Chairman might have installed to keep tabs on the former one?
The former Chairman was missing at the moment, but he might sneak in here to poke around for anything and everything.
How long until the police came crashing in? Probably less than five minutes.
Perhaps my smashing the camera had served as some kind of signal, because Iris and Hayun both seemed to collect themselves a little.
"J-Jieun, calm—"
Hayun's voice this time had a faintly theatrical ring to it, but it was passable. Acting, after all, hinges largely on whether the other party knows it's an act or not.
Overacted crying in a drama or a movie is laughable, but overacted crying in real life just looks a little awkward. Of course, some people really are impossibly bad liars.
Ignoring Hayun, I walked over and picked my hammer up off the floor.
The hammer, its rear having sealed shut the moment it left my hand, opened up again.
Hot flames roared to life.
I flipped my grip and held the hammer upside down entirely.
Good.
Whether there were devices hidden in here or not, let's scorch every last thing until nothing can listen in.
And if conversations still leaked out after that... I honestly didn't know what I'd do about that.
Hayun stared blankly at Jieun's back as she demolished everything around her.
The words from a moment ago.
Jieun's face as she'd said them.
It couldn't have been just acting—she felt that in her bones, and so she couldn't bring herself to stop her.
It wasn't as though she'd come here to stop her, but right now, even those words wouldn't come.
Trash.
It was the first time that word had come directly out of Jieun's mouth.
Of course, she'd seen her angry before. Hating the people who shot at her was understandable. So was the bitterness toward the Federation, the Company, the government.
If Jieun resented Hayun, that, too, was only natural. If Hayun had actively protected her from the very beginning, none of this would have happened.
But could those words have not been aimed at her?
Could Hayun be absent from that resented 'trash'?
Jieun always acted a little awkward whenever Hayun got close. Especially so since they'd met again after parting ways that once.
She felt as though she'd just glimpsed the root of that guardedness.
Before coming here, Jieun had handled James without a hint of reserve, petting and playing with him freely.
Granted, to Earthling eyes he looked like nothing more than a talking hamster... but what reason would she have to treat a being that spoke with an adult man's voice so familiarly?
Perhaps because this James was someone who had truly helped Jieun, all this time.
Maybe not affection, exactly—but theirs was a bond that let them drop their guards around each other.
"..."
Dust and tiny fragments swirled in every direction. The large wall-mounted TV cracked from its center and dropped to the floor, split in two. A piece of porcelain in some avant-garde design, as though imported from another planet, shattered along with the table beneath it.
The ceiling lights broke one after another, and darkness crept in. All that remained visible was the moonlight spilling in from outside and the glow of the propulsion unit in Jieun's weapon.
As if she wanted to burn away everything inside these walls, Jieun moved with fury.
The once-white walls blackened with soot. Here and there they burst open with a pop, as though something had been hidden in the seams, while other patches simply melted or glowed a furious scarlet.
"...Hah."
Jieun turned around, her expression looking faintly unburdened, and their eyes met.
Bathed in moonlight in the dim room, Jieun was covered in dust yet somehow looked lighter.
But the moment those eyes met Hayun's, they darkened all over again.
...What kind of delusion had she been nursing?
Getting carried away just because Jieun had made a place for her at her side.
When, perhaps, Jieun had simply stopped trying to drive her away because she'd given up on everything.
Jieun's gaze slid aside. She drew another long breath, then said:
"That's enough now."
Why was this so embarrassing?
Ah, right—probably because I'd realized exactly what I must have looked like. A toddler throwing a fit for a toy in the middle of a big-box store.
No logic, no methodical search—just a good long stretch of smashing things in a blind rage.
Part of it had been to destroy any listening devices hidden inside, but that didn't mean the performance hadn't looked forced.
"...Aren't you two going to lend a hand?"
There might still be bugs lurking about, so I had to choose my words carefully.
"Look for the Chairman or something."
"...If anyone had been inside, they would have shown themselves by now. Or perhaps they slipped away while you were busy rampaging."
Iris spoke up, her voice carefully measured.
"R-right, exactly, Jieun."
Hayun picked up the thread, a little steadier now.
We all understood the situation. We'd traded ideas about the possibilities before coming here.
Was it because they were keeping their true intentions hidden? Somehow we seemed out of sync... well, no matter.
The whole point was to put the fear into the Chairman, after all.
Come to think of it, maybe it was better if this conversation were overheard.
I brought the hammer down on the floor again.
Hayun's and Iris's shoulders flinched in unison.
"Weren't you two the ones saying you'd cooperate?"
I kept my tone flat.
"Then search. For traces, at least."
If they turned up even a trace inside, it might actually help.
The hamster standing by outside on his drone even now had said that any trace of the former Chairman would help.
He'd told me to smash the place up, too.
"..."
Hayun and Iris exchanged a look.
If this was acting, I'd have to call it decent. Their flustered expressions were plain to see.
On the other hand, if it wasn't acting—
Hmm. Maybe I'd laid it on a little thick.
...Should I rein it in a notch?