The Masked Villain (2)
I kept walking down the street, shoes scuffing against the pavement, when a sudden snatch of conversation yanked my attention sideways.
Two young men were snickering and bickering over a photobook they probably shouldn’t have been waving around in public. I caught a glimpse of the cover from the corner of my eye, let out a long sigh, and kept walking.
She’s doing photo shoots now…
The absurdity of it made me mutter under my breath.
Twenty years ago, heroes and villains first appeared in this world. It hadn’t even been two full decades, and there was still fierce backlash against the whole concept of heroes. So the Hero Association’s big policy was simple: turn heroes into celebrities. Focus on the good-looking ones, push them into the spotlight, and let them blend into everyday life as quickly as possible.
Reminds me of Flan back then.
Right when she first became a hero—at eighteen—she shot to insane levels of fame. An S-class hero with that ice-cold beauty look. Of course, where there’s light, there’s shadow. People like me, with average faces, never got popular. And these days the arrogance had only gotten worse. The treatment of heroes like me kept shrinking every year.
This is bullshit. Maybe I should just quit.
A twenty-eight-year-old hero uncle. Who the hell would cheer for that? Even though I was technically high for a B-class, the rank still felt painfully mediocre.
That’s why I’d been so shocked when Flan asked me out. Back when I was twenty-three.
“…Me? Why me?”
“Just because. You caught my eye.”
I’d stammered in confusion, but Flan kept that emotionless face and said it so plainly. When she took my hand and looked at me with those pure silver eyes, I ended up nodding before I knew what I was doing.
We drove out to a quiet rural area where no one would see us.
“As you know, my face is pretty well-known. If people find out I’m dating, it’ll be a problem. If we were seen together at a café, it’d make the news instantly.”
“Then maybe you should’ve asked someone else…”
I’d been fidgeting in the passenger seat, mumbling my reply. Objectively speaking, Flan was stunning. Her long blue hair swayed at her waist, and those silver eyes gave her an almost dreamlike quality.
Good grief…
Flan must have found my reaction strange, because she tilted her head and stared at me with a puzzled look.
“Do you dislike me?”
“No… absolutely not. And dislike? Why would I dislike you?”
“People always say I’m too cold… Everyone who confessed to me eventually got tired and left. Though I was the one who rejected most of them. I talk a lot, you know.”
Her face stayed completely flat as she said it, like it was the most natural thing in the world. I, on the other hand, nearly had a heart attack.
Setting aside whether they knew what kind of person she really was, that was still a pretty hurtful thing to say out loud. I let out a heavy sigh and shook my head.
“Yeah, I can see why they’d get tired. Still, saying it straight to someone’s face? Tsk. Don’t take it to heart.”
“Take it to heart?” She blinked. “I don’t get hurt. They were all drawn to my looks, my status, my fame. It was the natural outcome. Weren’t you the same? You only said yes because of my appearance, right?”
“Half right, I guess.”
She really knew how to hit where it hurt. Still, I felt like I had to say something.
“Even so, you could still get hurt. Just because you look cold on the outside doesn’t mean you are on the inside. You’re Flan. Not some ice queen—Flan.”
“…”
She went quiet and kept driving. I caught the slight tremble in her silver eyes when she glanced at me. I noticed something was off, but I let it slide.
It’s not like Flan acting weird is anything new.
Back when I first got possessed, she’d looked at my flustered reaction and said “What an idiot” without a shred of mercy. That was Flan.
The place we arrived at that day was the sea.
The sound of crashing waves rolled in, carried by a sudden gust of wind. Flan brushed her fluttering hair aside with an indifferent expression and stared straight at me. I tried to ignore that intense gaze at first, but eventually I let out another sigh.
“What?”
“Why are you like that?”
“Like what?”
She tilted her head, but I had no idea what she was asking and ended up frowning. Flan tucked her hair behind her ear and asked again in that same flat tone.
“I don’t understand why you keep seeing me as just Flan. Or rather… why you see me as a decent person.”
“If you’re Flan, you’re Flan. What else would I call you? You’re not exactly a decent person. More like… an incomprehensible one. What kind of question is that anyway?”
I gave her a cold stare. She nodded once.
“You wouldn’t understand. Not ever.”
“Yeah, well. How could I understand someone like you? My power’s mental-type, but I can’t exactly crack your skull open and read your mind. And even if I could, I probably still wouldn’t get it.”
“…True.”
She shrugged, then turned to look at the sea. Leaning her arms on the railing, she stared silently at the horizon. The sparkling emerald water matched the blue of her hair, making the whole scene feel strangely ethereal.
“I want you to remember this. We can’t actually date, but… I do like you, in my own way.”
“Is that supposed to be good news?”
“It is. I’m going to be the next president of the Hero Association. It’s good to be noticed by someone like me.”
“I’m not sure being noticed by you is actually a benefit,” I said, shuddering.
Flan as president? The association might run smoothly, but she was a monster of pure logic and efficiency. Anyone under her would get ground to dust. And that’s exactly what ended up happening.
She made a small sound, closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at me and nodded.
“You know me well. I am a monster. One consumed by rationality and reason.”
“…Tsk.”
“That’s how it is. Anyway, just talking like this today is enough. I needed the break.”
“Sure. Whatever you want.”
Even now, Flan was exactly the same as she was back then.
“Haaaa…”
Lost in memories, I finally reached my small studio apartment. I kicked off my shoes without bothering to put them away, shuffled over to the sofa, and collapsed onto it. I stared blankly at the ceiling. Out of habit I turned on the TV, but the voices didn’t even register.
…
Flan’s words had been perfectly logical. If that girl Ar really was a True Ancestor with the kind of power I suspected, and if she truly was a villain, then it made sense to use her. Her blood could be turned into medicine. One girl’s sacrifice could solve countless problems.
But was that really right?
I wasn’t talking about justice. I’d already made too many mistakes with these hands to have any right to preach about it. It was just that I didn’t know what kind of person she really was, and the way she kept begging to be killed had sounded so heartbreaking.
“Guess I really have gone soft…”
I rubbed my face with dry hands and muttered to myself. Since I hadn’t turned the lights on, the room felt even lonelier and gloomier than usual.
I want to talk to her more.
It was ridiculous, but something really had sparked in me during that short encounter. I wanted to know more about the girl called Ar. If possible, I wanted to free her. I wanted to give her the gift of a real life.
Even though I had no idea who Ar truly was. Even though she might actually be a monstrous villain.
My heart was a mess, yet it pointed toward her like a compass needle. My sense of justice had burned out long ago. I’d grown numb to so many things. But I still wanted to know what else the Association was hiding. I wanted to see whether Flan was really doing the right thing.
“Because being rational doesn’t solve everything.”
The Association was enormous. Back in the early days the ratio of heroes to villains had been about two to one, with plenty of villains around. But once heroes became popular and integrated into daily life, villains had almost completely vanished after the Villain War.
Yes, in that sense, Flan’s rational approach deserved praise. The fact that she personally posed for photo shoots showed how aggressively she was pushing the policy. It was probably the best move.
But wasn’t the essence of what it meant to be a hero slowly rotting away?
“…Can it still be changed?”
I sighed and muttered to myself.
Had things gotten better than before? Probably. The status of heroes kept rising. These days the world was full of people desperate to become one.
But that’s not necessarily a good thing.
The gap in treatment had grown extreme, and the people who truly cried out for justice had disappeared. Flan had once said to me:
“You know me well. I am a monster. One consumed by rationality and reason.”
Someone had to recognize the danger of that massive rationality. Someone had to expose what the Hero Association was really doing. Not as a hero, but as the person named Lee Kang-woo. That was what I wanted.
“Yeah. Even if it means becoming their enemy. Even if I end up in prison with nothing to show for it. I should at least try once.”
As I muttered those words, something on the TV caught my eye. It was an advertisement for an anime about a hero who wore a mask while fighting.
Who even hid their face these days?
Of course, I kept mine hidden too. But that was only because my popularity was zero. No one recognized me anyway.
“…A mask, huh.”
I closed my eyes and pictured it. A villain wearing a suit and a white mask. The way he spoke would have to be different from mine. Always smirking, always composed, radiating effortless confidence.
“Yeah… I could pull that off.”
That’s right. It was time for me to become a villain for once. If a hero couldn’t do it, then a villain would have to.