Reasonable Doubt
Reasonable Doubt
[Good evening. This is the nine o’clock news. Earlier today, a villain attacked a passenger plane. A Korean hero caught the falling aircraft and saved everyone aboard. Reporter Jeon Jae-seung has the details.]
[At 1 p.m. today, the screens of all three major broadcast networks suddenly changed.]
The screens of televisions showing variety programs went black. Then footage from inside an airplane suddenly began broadcasting. The passengers trembled in fear, and Egostic’s voice rang out.
[Welcome to the greatest quiz show in the skies—The Ego Show Live!]
Earlier footage of Egostic appeared on the screen. He wore a strangely sinister smile.
[This was Egostic’s third attack, following two previous incidents in which he broadcast the scenes of his crimes over terrestrial television.]
Then Egostic’s voice rang out again.
[The rules are simple! I’ll give you ten nonsense quiz questions, and all you have to do is answer them! If even one person gets every question right, I’ll let the plane go peacefully. And safely! But if everyone gets one wrong? Boom. The bomb explodes!]
The bewildered passengers tried to answer the questions.
[Egostic told them that correct answers would save them, while failure meant he would detonate the bomb attached to the plane. Despite their confusion, the passengers calmly worked through the questions. However...]
Egostic's playful voice rang out.
[...was not the answer!!! Too bad. Well then, tsk. Goodbye!]
At the same moment, a bang shook the cabin.
The passengers screamed as the plane began descending faster and faster.
The camera switched.
The news showed footage from a ground camera aimed at the distant sea.
It was difficult to see at first glance, but a closer look clearly showed the plane descending at an angle.
As the plane continued its rapid descent,
a tiny dot began flying toward it.
Then the dot collided with the plane.
Thud.
The impact sent a tremendous tremor through the footage itself.
The report continued.
[A lone figure flew toward the falling plane. She was the A-rank hero Stardus. She had been waiting near the projected crash site, and when the plane began to fall, she flew up alone to stop it.]
[Many experts predicted that her known abilities would not be enough, but as if mocking them, the plane began to slow.]
In the footage, the plane’s descent was visibly slowing.
[The plane was ultimately brought to a stop, and every passenger was rescued safely. Stardus later collapsed and was taken to a hospital, but the Hero Association announced that she had merely fainted from exhaustion and was not in any life-threatening danger. This was Jeon Jae-seung reporting.]
The reporter's segment ended.
The broadcast cut back to the female anchor standing in the studio.
She spoke.
[A hero. What is a hero? Justice, salvation, sacrifice, faith... What Stardus showed us today was truly heroic. On behalf of this network, I would like to thank Stardus for protecting the people of South Korea.]
The anchor bowed her head.
***
[I’m telling you, after doing all that, you can take a day off. Come down, look at the ocean, and clear your head. Let’s go for a run together for the first time in a while.]
"Fine. I'll come this time."
[Really? Promise! You promise?]
"Yeah, yeah."
The call ended.
She set down her phone, sat in the chair at her desk, and sighed deeply.
"..."
Several days had already passed since she had stopped the plane by herself.
Even she found it astonishing that she had somehow stopped it and was still alive.
What mattered was that she had stopped the plane, saved everyone aboard, and remained perfectly healthy.
She clenched and unclenched her right hand.
Her strength had increased again.
This time, the increase was far greater than before.
After witnessing her extraordinary growth, the Association concluded that it must have underestimated her power all along.
They assumed she had already possessed that much strength and that no one had realized it.
In fact, her growth was not limited to physical strength.
As she flew toward the plane, gritting her teeth and pushing herself desperately forward,
she broke through another wall.
For some reason, her flight speed became much faster than before.
The Association explained that she must have underestimated her own abilities until now.
But because they were her abilities, she knew better than anyone.
They had not always been this powerful. They had grown.
It was no longer a question of whether such a thing was possible.
Her abilities had genuinely become stronger.
Why?
She had encountered a situation her abilities could not handle, and they had simply grown on their own until they could?
Did that make any sense? What kind of conveniently contrived story was that?
Yet her abilities had undeniably grown, so she could not reject what had already happened.
But in truth,
she was not particularly concerned with her newfound growth at the moment.
What continued to occupy her thoughts instead was
Egostic.
After the airplane attack, many people stopped blindly following Egostic as an anti-hero. The incident reminded them that he was officially classified by the Association as a villain.
There had once again been no civilian casualties, but this time many people criticized him because countless passengers truly would have died if Stardus had failed to stop the plane.
However,
Stardus—the person at the center of the incident—was the only one thinking differently from the public.
The call had come while she stood there helplessly.
And he had told her
to stop the falling plane.
‘You should fly up there and save the plane.’
When she asked how she was supposed to stop it,
he had answered with absolute conviction.
‘You can do it. Stop the plane from falling.’
When she accused him of trying to kill her, he had replied,
‘What meaning could I possibly have without you? Without you, I’m merely another dime-a-dozen villain.’
‘You complete me.’
While she stood there stunned by his sudden declaration,
he continued in a voice filled with sincerity, almost pleading with her.
‘So step forward.’
‘Clench your fists, brace your legs, and fly into the sky to save those people.’
‘You can do it.’
‘Because that is who you're.’
Throughout her entire career as a hero, she had never heard anyone speak with such faith in her—as though he trusted her more than she trusted herself.
Had even one person ever believed in her that completely?
When she first began working as an A-rank hero, all she heard was criticism: that she was too young, that she did not resolve incidents quickly enough, and more.
She had simply carried on in silence beneath the gaze of a public that did not place much faith in heroes.
She had quietly persevered to uphold her own sense of justice.
It was deeply ironic that the first person to express such complete trust in her had been her archenemy—a villain.
And events had unfolded exactly as he said they would.
She had no idea what he had believed in when he said those things, but she had succeeded just as he predicted.
Throwing an egg at a rock.
A suicidal act.
Something that could reasonably be called either of those things had actually succeeded.
Just as he had predicted from the start.
"Egostic..."
In the empty house, she quietly murmured his name.
He had said that he believed in her.
He had told her to lift the plane.
But the point that deserved attention was not his claim that he believed in her.
It was the fact that he had told her to lift the plane.
Why?
He had dropped a plane from the sky, then told her to save it?
Then why drop it in the first place?
There were too many suspicious details to dismiss him as nothing more than a psychopath who used his powers to kill people indiscriminately.
The plane would have fallen if she had simply stood there.
Yet because he had told her to save it, she had been able to do so.
So why had he told her to save it?
Did he want to stage an insane death game in which failing a nonsense quiz sent a plane crashing, yet still have no desire to see civilians die?
Yes, that was possible. But...
for some reason, her instincts insisted that was not the answer.
‘Without you, I’m merely another dime-a-dozen villain. You complete me.’
His words continued to echo in her ears.
He had said that without her, he would be an ordinary villain, and that he therefore needed her.
Why would losing her make him an ordinary villain?
Would it not be the same if some other hero became his adversary? Was it simply because she was the only A-rank hero nearby?
That did not feel right.
Her instincts kept insisting that it was not.
There seemed to be some other reason.
It was a baseless guess built on an enormous logical leap. Frankly, it bordered on delusion.
This time, however, she decided to trust what her instincts were telling her.
"...I need to investigate everything he’s done so far."
What had he done until now?
What had each of those actions ultimately led to?
If she gathered every incident he had caused, might a pattern emerge?
She rose from her seat and started preparing to leave.
She suspected that Egostic had planned something—that every incident had been carried out with a specific intention.
She couldn't call it reasonable doubt. Still,
she decided to try piecing it together.
Shin Ha-ru got dressed and stepped outside.
Egostic. Whatever you’re hiding. Whatever you’re planning.
I’ll uncover it.
***
"Hmm, why is my ear itching?"
"Big bro, maybe it’s because you never clean your ears?"
"Nah, I don't think that's it."
What the hell? Was someone talking shit about me?