What Is the World Coming To?
What Is the World Coming To?
Five people were tied to the track ahead of a train. If it continued, it would hit them; if you pulled a lever, it would switch to another track and kill the one person tied there instead. Would you pull it?
The dilemma I had posed.
It was already a famous philosophical problem.
The trolley dilemma.
If the trolley keeps going, it hits five people. Pull the lever, and it hits one. From a utilitarian standpoint, pulling the lever is right because it saves five lives.
But could you actually pull it?
If the trolley hits the five people, that is a tragic accident. Here, it would be a tragic terrorist attack rather than an accident, but still. Once you pull the lever, though, it is no longer an accident. The five would have died because of an accident, but the one person dies because you chose to pull the lever. You killed someone who could otherwise have lived.
...That was the dilemma.
And I had recreated it in the real world.
Stardus solved a situation that could not be resolved in a verbal thought experiment by acting, and she did it brilliantly.
Rather than agonizing over which track to send the train down,
she stepped in and stopped it herself.
Stardus is a superpowered individual.
Like me, she is a dual-ability user. She possesses immense strength and the ability to fly—the official classifications are super-strength and flight.
And because she's a dual-ability user, her powers also have some shortcomings, just like mine. Not nearly as severe as mine, though.
Single-ability users with super-strength can topple buildings by themselves. Single-ability flight users can fly at Mach speeds. Granted, both examples are heroes in America.
Stardus is nowhere near that level. She's strong, but not strong enough to destroy a building with one punch. She can fly, but not at supersonic speeds.
...Of course, she is still far better off than me, a fellow dual-ability user whose two powers both have serious defects. Even so, she is undeniably a little lacking.
Dual-ability users are exceptionally rare, and super-strength and flight work well together, which earns her an A-rank. Still, she feels just a little short of perfect.
But she's the protagonist of this manhwa.
What sets her apart from other ability users is that her powers evolve.
The more hardship and adversity she faces, the stronger she becomes.
That was why I had arranged this strength-enhancement event.
Make Stardus Great Again. Make Stardus great again.
Normally, her strength is not enough to stop an oncoming train. But when confronted with the real thing, her desperate need to save people made her explosively stronger. She is the protagonist of this world, someone who becomes stronger in a crisis.
And thanks to the terrorist attack I had staged, public opinion of her improved dramatically.
In other words, the popularity she had lost while opposing me rebounded. The sight of her throwing herself in front of the train without a thought for her own safety deeply moved people watching on televisions across the country.
Yes. It was good that Stardus had become popular again.
But why had that suddenly turned into dating rumors?
***
The living room.
I sat on the sofa, watching television with a hollow sense of despair.
After the operation, I had barely managed to teleport home, collapsed into the fatigue recovery device, and slept deeply.
When I woke up, Seo-eun grabbed my hand, dragged me into the living room, and sat me down on the sofa to watch television.
A huge title filled the screen.
[Egostic-Stardus Dating Rumors]
"What the hell is this now...?"
I shouted the moment I saw it.
But no matter what I said, the people on television carried on with their segment.
"Yes, you're watching Entertainment Relay! These two are the hottest topic right now: Egostic, the most popular villain in South Korea, and Stardus, the rising supernova hero! Dating rumors about the pair are sweeping the Korean entertainment world. Reporter Park, what caused these rumors?"
It was an entertainment-news program on a national network.
A female anchor posed the question to a professional-looking male reporter.
"First, you only need to look at Egostic’s actions."
The reporter suddenly lifted a display board into view and set it in front of himself.
The board was covered with white stickers.
At the top, the words “Egostic♡Stardus” were written in striking pink lettering.
"The first reason is Egostic’s public courtship."
He peeled away one of the white stickers, revealing folded text and a photograph underneath.
[1. Egostic’s Love Letter.]
The man continued with a perfectly serious expression. Dressed in a suit, with slicked-back hair and horn-rimmed glasses, he looked like a CEO reporting company performance at a shareholders’ meeting.
Of course, what came out of his mouth was not a business report but absurd tabloid gossip.
"Egostic’s first move was killing S-rank villain Enzodiac and A-rank villain Rhino. But that’s not the important part. This is."
He pointed to a photograph on the board.
The photograph showed words that looked as though they had been written in blood:
To you, Stardus.
"Do you see that message? Egostic left it at the scene after committing the crime. The key is the final line, ‘To you, Stardus.’ From the very beginning, Egostic consistently courted Stardus. He eliminated villains and presented them to her as gifts. It was effectively a public marriage proposal."
He explained so fervently that spit flew from his mouth.
Watching him talk nonsense by himself, I quietly thought:
Uh... I wasn't giving them to her as gifts. I was just trying to draw aggro...
What if I committed a crime and some random hero other than Stardus got assigned to me? That was why I had specifically called out Stardus to get her attention. She absolutely hated vigilante justice. What was he talking about...?
Naturally, my thoughts could not reach the studio, and the reporter continued with the same grave expression.
"The second reason is his terrorist attacks. Strictly speaking, it is difficult even to call them terrorist attacks, since both ended with zero casualties. The key, however, is that he summoned Stardus in both incidents, and Stardus resolved both spectacularly."
Footage from my attacks appeared as he spoke: Stardus addressing the people on the cruise ship, then stopping the train with her bare hands. Hmm. She did look impressive. Stardus really was the best.
"Egostic’s words afterward were also extremely suggestive. Listen for yourselves."
Then my voice came through the speakers.
It was what I had said to her in bafflement after the cruise-ship attack failed.
[It was all because of you.]
[Everyone suddenly united after hearing your speech.]
[Yes. It seems I underestimated you after all. Something no one else could have done. I suppose enlightening the public with a few words is nothing to you.]
Ah. Did I really say that?
Before my confusion had faded, another recording of my voice played.
This time, it was what I had said during the recent train attack.
[Yes, Stardus. You did well. In a way I never could have imagined. I honestly never expected you to save everyone like that. This is your victory.]
The reporter, who had been listening quietly to the recording he'd prepared, suddenly sprang to his feet.
Ignoring the startled anchor, he began shouting at the top of his lungs.
"LOOK AT THIS!!! If this isn't love, then what is?! After Mangostic said those final words and closed Stardus’s eyes, look at how she finally drifted peacefully off to sleep! If these two aren't dating, then what on earth counts as dating?!!"
He clutched his head and screamed.
That lunatic! Was I seriously watching a national television broadcast?!
"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!!"
I screamed and hurled the remote at the television.
Seo-eun had been laughing so hard beside me that she could barely breathe.
The program ended on a shot of the anchor staring at the reporter in utter confusion, then abruptly cut to a commercial.
The caption [Broadcast Under Maintenance] appeared, so I guessed we had just witnessed an on-air incident.
Seriously... who calls me Mangostic on national television?
All I could do was lower my head in despair.
No matter how I looked at it, South Korea had lost its mind.
I later learned that the reporter was a die-hard member of my fan club—part of what they called the Mangostic Fandom.
He nearly got demoted for causing the on-air incident, but the broadcast earned record-breaking ratings, so instead of being disciplined, he reportedly received a bonus.
The world really had gone mad...