Her Daily Life
Her Daily Life
Shin Ha-ru.
A student at Yeonhee University.
Other than her blonde hair and beauty that made anyone look twice, she seemed ordinary. Though being that beautiful was hardly ordinary...
Anyway, very few people knew she was a hero.
It was a secret known only to a handful of Hero Association agents and her fellow heroes.
That allowed her to enjoy a relatively ordinary college life.
...Of course, she did miss class suspiciously more often than other students.
And that wasn't all.
She skipped the opening assembly, orientation, the department retreat, after-parties, festivals...
Since she had never attended a single campus event, very few people were close to her.
Of course, that was partly because she deliberately kept people at a distance. Still, she did have a few close classmates and upperclassmen, so it wasn't a problem.
In that way, she managed her double life as a college student and a hero reasonably well.
Terrorist attacks were not particularly frequent in Seoul.
Maybe once every two weeks?
Even that was frequent, honestly, but this world was so chaotic that it still felt manageable.
Korea had not produced many truly powerful villains yet.
America, the world's foremost superpower, was said to suffer attacks every day in proportion to its population.
Then again, it also had enough S- and A-rank heroes to maintain a rough balance.
People said A-rank heroes were everywhere in American cities.
Considering that South Korea had only a handful of A-ranks in the entire country, that simply showed how exceptional America was.
That was why, despite being A-rank, she did not consider her own abilities especially impressive.
What did her powers amount to, really? She was extremely strong and could fly. That was all.
With only those abilities, she had been forced to stand by and watch helplessly when Egostic pulled that stunt.
"..."
Tap. Tap.
She tapped the glass containing her smoothie with one finger.
Egostic.
At first, seeing him go around killing villains had filled her with rage.
Back then, this was how she had thought of him.
A clueless brat who had gained power and started running wild.
Her theory went like this.
Some attention seeker had gotten powers and thought,
'Oh, can't I just use this to take out all the bad guys?' Then, thrilled by the idea, he started going around killing other villains.
Rather than formally registering as a hero and placing himself under the justice system,
he was an overgrown child who wielded more power than he deserved however he pleased and acted as though he alone embodied justice.
Some people gained power, became obsessed with vigilante punishment, and reveled in the public attention it brought them.
They imagined themselves to be true 'heroes,' unlike the so-called 'stuffy heroes.'
They were the sort of people she despised most.
Attention seekers.
That suspicion became certainty when she saw that the bastard had written her own name, Shin Ha-ru, in blood at a murder scene.
Disgusting bastard.
What kind of barbarian wrote things in blood? Haah...
Up to that point, she had wanted nothing more than to throw him in prison.
...Though even then, she had no idea how he'd found the home of an A-rank villain whose identity was hidden.
Yes, back then, no one had known.
No one had known just how insane this bastard really was.
[Yes! Passengers, if you look at the center of your ship, you should see a detonator with a large red button. The devices I've installed on those three ships... each one triggers the explosives on the other ships. That's right! Not your own ship, but the others.]
[The time limit is 30 minutes. As long as no one presses their detonator during that time, everyone lives.]
He was not merely a brat drunk on power.
He was a genuine villain who planned large-scale terrorist attacks.
Worse, he was a kind of psychopath who toyed with people's hearts.
She did not show it, but inwardly she was appalled.
How could a human being conceive of something so inhumane?
If Egostic heard that, he would protest that it wasn't his idea but an homage to a movie from his previous life. Of course, she had no way of knowing that.
He had introduced himself as Egostic.
People online theorized that he had derived his name from egoistic, the English word meaning 'selfish.'
The connection between his name and his claim that humans were selfish.
That alone was enough to show he was not normal.
Then came last week's main event.
When she first heard that Egostic's supporters were carrying out a bombing, she could only sigh.
One lunatic appeared, and other villains came pouring out after him like some twisted trickle-down effect.
Somehow, they had even launched their operation the very day after Egostic's attack.
The attack was so meticulously executed that it could only have been planned in advance.
Yet its methods directly imitated Egostic's actions, forcing her to accept the truth.
In barely a day, fanatics who genuinely worshipped Egostic had appeared—and they were zealous enough to launch an attack the very next day.
The Association had not even begun discussing how to prevent copycat attacks after Egostic's bombing.
It happened so quickly that she was caught completely unprepared.
For a while, she could only blame herself and watch anxiously, unable to do anything.
Then Egostic himself appeared.
To be honest,
she became extremely tense.
The unpredictable lunatic had come there himself? To a building containing hundreds of hostages?
It would have been strange not to worry.
Everyone at the Association and the heroes on standby—including her—held their breath and watched.
...Of course, they could only watch through his broadcast. His face was covered, but the close-up still made him look so shameless that she had to suppress the urge to rush over and punch him. She kept watching.
And, sure enough, he proved he was a lunatic.
He saw his followers, told them to cut the shit, and gunned them all down.
Then he released the hostages, even promising to give them money. Apparently, funds had actually been deposited into the victims' accounts through mule accounts or something, making them impossible to trace.
And he did not stop at money. He even apologized for the trouble his followers had caused—right there on the broadcast he had started himself.
By that point, she was genuinely confused.
What the hell was he? A villain should at least act like one.
Frankly, judging only by what he had done that day, he had acted like a hero.
...Of course, she absolutely did not condone vigilante justice. The Association had already authorized lethal force to rescue the hostages, however, so the terrorists were doomed either way.
That was precisely what she found so strange.
Of all the villains she had encountered, none had ever been like Egostic.
Indiscriminate murder, bombing, arson, kidnapping, terrorism.
Villains who committed such acts were extremely common.
But a villain like Egostic, who seemed to possess some kind of 'conviction'?
She had never encountered one before.
Similar cases might exist somewhere else in the world, but at least in South Korea, he was the first.
Ding.
Having finished her assignment, she stepped out of the café.
Warm sunlight enveloped her. It was a beautiful day.
As usual, she stretched her arms out wide.
"Mmm."
Men passing by glanced at her as she stretched, though she never noticed.
"Egostic..."
'...He knows where villains are, can hijack broadcasts, knows the bank accounts of hostages he's never met, and has a lot of money.'
Just what kind of man was he?
Egostic had already become the number-one person on her watch list.
Which meant...
For better or worse, the man named Egostic had come to occupy a large place in her thoughts.
'...I'll uncover your identity.'
***
"Hmm. Is someone talking about me?"
"Bro, maybe it's because you haven't washed lately?"
"Seo-eun, I know perfectly well you're a girl, so why do you keep calling me bro..."
"Bro. Be. Quiet."
"Right..."
"...Should I run you a bath?"
"No, Soo-bin, why are you joining in? You don't have to do anything. Just stay put. And I wash thoroughly every day. This is a smear. A smear."
"...Okay."
"Why do you look like you don't believe me? I'm telling you, it's a smear!"
In the heart of Seoul.
Dozens of floors beneath an ordinary-looking house lay a secret base.
Egostic's base, to be precise. Ego-Base for short.
"Bro, why are you naming someone else's house without permission?"
"Tsk. Seo-eun, between you and me, what's yours and what's mine? Your house is my house, and my house is your house."
"You sold your house, so you don't even have one anymore."
"..."
Yes, I had moved.
Into Seo-eun's underground secret base.
I had a lot to do from now on, so I decided it would be best to live here, where all the equipment was gathered. And there was also the matter of Soo-bin.
Seo-eun readily agreed.
I had no idea how deep underground it was, but the place was bright and pleasant thanks to all the LEDs. It was also enormous and had plenty of rooms, so space was not an issue.
Thanks, Seo-eun.
As I lay in bed and gazed at Seo-eun with gratitude, she frowned as if asking what I was looking at. What a rude little brat. I wanted to say more, but the teleportation backlash had left me in too much pain to do anything but lie there.
My closest aide and genius hacker, Han Seo-eun.
She was a tiny girl with a short silver bob. She was only in her third year of middle school, after all. At first, I had thought she was a first-year.
She kept calling me bro and insisting she was a boy...
Seo-eun, I read the Original Work. I know you're a girl...
I never thought I'd live to hear a middle-school girl call me bro...
Seo-eun and I were not the only ones living there.
There was also the woman who had called herself my follower—the one I had sort of kidnapped.
"...?"
Soo-bin, who looked up at me in fright, was living with us too.
...Explaining how I ended up taking her in would take a while.
"Haah..."
It felt like more and more people kept moving in. Probably just my imagination.