Eccentric
Eccentric
Rapidly changing conditions. A storm closing in.
That summed up the world outside South Korea.
Korea was still relatively safe compared to the rest of the world, but only because I'd been running interference behind the scenes. The moment I let go, it would go to hell again. Although Stardus was stronger than she had been in the Original Work, so maybe not quite that bad. Still.
Anyway, the point was that military power would matter going forward.
Ego Stream was already powerful, obviously. But if I thought about it, only a few members had genuine combat power: Electra, the Moon Priestess, and Death Knight. Three. And Desik didn't count as human, so really, two.
So we needed stronger people.
That meant we had to keep recruiting new villains.
Especially because more and more ability users would continue emerging, as if the world itself were demonstrating how quickly it was collapsing. I had plans to gather and manage them under different identities, but that wasn't the issue then.
Right now, it's time to recruit a new villain.
Out of the many villains, I narrowed the candidates down to two.
A brown-haired man and a purple-haired woman.
When I asked Ha-yul’s little brother which one he preferred, he chose the woman beside the man, so the decision was made.
"Black Spirit..."
In the Original Work she was called Black Spirit. Clean, neat name.
Purple hair, purple eyes, and the black hood she always wore—she was one of the more famous villains.
She openly walked around with her face exposed, Perception Inhibition be damned, and even inspired “villain beauty” memes. Her half-lidded eyes and dreamy air made her popular with readers too; in the grim Original Work, her eccentric cheerfulness lightened the mood, and even her attacks caused no casualties.
She debuted at night by scattering purple will-o’-the-wisps through the air. After Han-eun Group and the Moonlight Church, she was the third to ignore Shadow Walker’s ability, breaking his reputation as the ruler of the night.
That made her one of my highest-priority recruits. Her will-o’-the-wisp ability let her summon purple flames with an absurd range of applications—it was ridiculously overpowered.
"...Now the question is what kind of pitch we use."
Yeah. That is the biggest problem.
The question was how to lure her into joining us.
'Big bro, are you hitting on another woman again?'
The word “lure” reminded me of what Seo-eun had said that morning, and I flinched before pulling myself together.
That's not what's important. First, I carefully went over how I recruited each of our current Ego Stream members.
Seo-eun. I'd brought her on board with the promise of destroying Han-eun Group. That had taken the longest, by the way. I'd practically begged three times to convince her. Breaking through her walls hadn't been easy, though by then we were the closest.
Ha-yul. As for Ha-yul... things went off script from the original recruitment plan and I practically kidnapped her, but honestly it was luck. How was I supposed to know Ha-yul's brother would like me that much? Watching that brother and sister study so hard still makes me proud.
I had recruited Se-hee simply by letting her unleash her electricity. Even now, she had the time of her life blasting trees on the hill behind the mansion. She must have felt terribly stifled before.
Desik I just bought at an auction, and Eun-wol joined after I freed her from the Moonlight Cult Leader's curse.
And now this purple-haired woman, the flame ability user Ja-yeong. In the Original Work she went by Black Spirit.
Her personality, in a word: fourth-dimensional.
Just from the fact that she loves staying home so much that she goes out to stage attacks out of boredom, you can tell she's not normal.
So what was my conclusion after researching how to reel her in?
'...Couldn't I just ask if she wants to join Ego Stream?'
Yeah. That was it.
Look, in the Original Work, she'd been someone who literally carried out attacks because she was bored. So couldn't I simply propose that she stage attacks with us to cure her boredom?
She's probably sufficiently bored by now.
So it was about time to reap what I'd sown.
"...Let’s give it a shot."
With that short thought, I teleported.
What could go wrong?
***
"Bored."
That was Ja-yeong's verdict.
On the warm floor of her room, she lay sprawled out with just a blanket pulled over her, wearing only a black hoodie.
Her back was so toasty it got a little hot, so she was pulling off the eccentricity of having the air conditioner running.
Bottom warm, top cool.
In that peculiar state, her distinctively purple, dazed eyes stared at the ceiling. She mumbled,
"Bored..."
That's right.
She was bored. Very.
Of course lying around at home is fun at first, but the days pile up and boredom comes naturally.
And she didn't even use the internet or play games on a smartphone. So her idea of fun was turning on the TV and staring blankly at the ceiling.
Not just the ceiling, though.
"...Hm."
Right in the middle of the living room.
There, she summoned a purple flame into the air.
A heatless flame drifted in the air like a will-o'-the-wisp.
She made several, spun them into a circle, then yawned and muttered,
"Should I clean... oh, I already did all of it."
Staying home with no hobbies left her with cleaning. Cleaning was fun.
Already the marble floor in her home shone like it had been polished to a gleam. Must be from wiping it so much.
She also skipped meals here and there, so she didn't eat a large amount in a day, but when she did cook she practically turned it into an art form.
"Bored."
Once again she muttered that she was bored without even realizing.
Then, fishing her arms out of the oversized hoodie sleeves—probably a size too large, which made them baggy—she used the remote to open YouTube on the TV.
She entered the site planning to play whatever appeared in her recommendations as background noise.
The video that caught her eye was titled “Ego Stream Second-Half Attack Highlights.”
"Hm???"
Terror.
Interest piqued, she worked the remote and played the video.
Soon it showed Ego Stream villains flying through the sky, confronting heroes.
"...Looks fun."
For once she turned her head and watched the video with her dazed eyes, then gave that brief review.
Terror. Terror, huh.
"Hm..."
That was something she had been thinking about lately.
What if she tried staging an attack?
She had an extreme aversion to going outside and moving her body, so she had a conviction: if she forced herself out the door, the fun had better justify the effort.
An attack seemed exciting enough to make going out and moving around worthwhile.
"...But going out is a pain."
That would matter only once she actually went outside.
For now, leaving the house was too troublesome, so she had no intention of doing it.
If she became so unbearably bored that she could not stand it, perhaps she would go out. For the moment, home was best. Even her cooking ingredients were delivered, so why leave?
The only problem was that her boredom had recently grown intense enough to make her want to go outside and move.
"Right. Maybe I’ll stage an attack..."
That was the dilemma she'd been mulling over lately.
How the logic in her head jumped from “I’m bored” to “I’ll stage an attack” was unclear, but she had always lived according to whatever impulse struck her.
Her little purple flames would make it easy.
"But I'm bored right now though..."
Even if she planned something for later—
what was she supposed to do about being bored right now?
She stared blankly, letting the noise from the TV wash over her as she thought about it.
Couldn't something fun happen?
And then, as she spent her days with those thoughts, something really did happen to her.
"Hello. I'm Egostic."
"...Didn't see this coming."
She looked at the man standing in front of her and murmured with dazed eyes.
Black hat, black clothes, black cape, gray mask.
When you thought about it, this was pretty entertaining.
She'd been pouring milk into a cup and mixing in Jetti powder when a suspicious man suddenly broke into her home. She stared at him for a moment, dazed.
"You want some?"
Abruptly, she held out the cup and made the offer.
Just because. She suddenly got curious whether villains drink Jetti too.
***
Ja-yeong.
She had shown all kinds of bizarre eccentricities in the Original Work, so I'd steeled myself before meeting her.
And now I was actually meeting her.
Purple hair, purple eyes, half-lidded dazed eyes, exactly as described.
The moment I rang the bell without warning and barged in, the woman before me had a strangely mysterious air.
And she looked at me and held out a cup.
"Drink."
So I ended up accepting the chocolate milk before I knew it.
...I was already dizzy, and we'd only just begun.
But she was watching me with such fascinated, half-lidded eyes that I drank it. Mm. Sweet.
"How is it?"
"It's sweet."
...What kind of conversation was I having?
I'd expected something strange, but this still went beyond anything I had imagined. Slightly flustered, I pulled myself together and remembered why I was here.
Right. Recruitment. I had to recruit her.
"Ja-yeong, have you been bored lately?"
"Hmm? Yeah, I’m bored."
"If that's the case..."
So I spent the next ten minutes eagerly making my pitch for Ego Stream.
She listened, put a finger to her lips, and thought for a short moment.
"Nope."
She answered simply.
...This wasn’t going to be easy.