Deepening Doubts
Deepening Doubts
It had actually started earlier.
Shin Ha-ru had already begun to suspect Egostic.
More precisely, it had started after the plane attack.
The call he had made to her was the decisive trigger.
He had said that he believed in her.
That she could do it. That she should stop the plane.
What kind of villain said something like that to a hero?
Could someone like that really be called a villain?
That was when it had begun.
Stardus began investigating Egostic on her own.
He had carried out three attacks in total.
A ship, a train, and a plane.
Not a single casualty among them.
Perhaps that, too, could be dismissed as coincidence.
Her supporters, the so-called Stardus Fandom, argued that Egostic had intended to kill people but that Stardus had stopped him every time. That was why no one had died.
But she knew something the others did not.
Egostic had steered the final plane attack so that no one would die.
When the plane was about to crash and break apart, he had called her personally and told her to stop it.
From that, she could form a hypothesis.
What if Egostic had also installed safeguards in his earlier attacks?
What if every attack had actually been designed to prevent deaths?
That raised a question.
Suppose he had intended neither to cause casualties nor to demand money.
Then why?
Why plan the attacks at all?
The most obvious answer was simple.
Because he was an attention seeker. Because he was insane. Because he had lost his mind.
Yes. That was the easiest answer to accept.
But she still had doubts.
Was that truly the only reason?
Of course, she didn't deny that he was a little... unhinged.
But her intuition.
It kept whispering to her.
There was something more.
That alone did not feel like the whole reason.
So she investigated.
She looked into what had changed after each of his attacks.
She read newspapers, checked government statistics, and combed through reports...
This was what she found.
Explosives screening across public transportation had been tightened. Government agencies, broadcasters, and other companies had strengthened their cybersecurity.
Villain crime had also declined. Egostic himself had already dealt with three villains, and villains tended to lie low while another villain was active, so the number of attacks had fallen during the periods when Egostic was operating.
But claiming Egostic had intended all of that would be too much of a stretch. It invited the criticism that she was simply arranging the facts in his favor because that explanation was more comforting.
In fact, Egostic's fan club, the Mangostic Fandom, used much the same reasoning to justify his attacks.
Still, there was one change Egostic had caused that she felt more keenly than any of the rest.
Her own power had become far, far stronger.
"..."
Clench.
She clenched her fist.
Stopping the train. Stopping the plane.
After those two experiences, her power had grown beyond recognition. The Hero Association had even reviewed her for promotion to S-rank.
Of course, promotion was an extremely rigorous process. Evaluations were conducted not by the Korean Hero Association but by the International Hero Association Union, which rarely approved them. Very few heroes had ever advanced from A-rank to S-rank in the first place.
The fact that her promotion had even been discussed was remarkable.
Her power had grown at an unprecedented rate.
Faster than anyone else's.
And who should she credit for that?
That bastard Egostic?
"...Honestly, what am I even saying?"
No. That could not be it.
She had simply gotten lucky. Circumstances had happened to work out in her favor.
As if that bastard Egostic could have known that Stardus's ability grew stronger in a crisis and staged attacks just to strengthen her.
‘Honestly... what a ridiculous delusion.’
She chuckled at the absurdity of her own thought and tried to dismiss it. And yet...
[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.]
[So step forward. Clench your fists, brace your legs, and fly into the sky to save those people. You can do it. Because that's who you are.]
"..."
It made no sense.
How could he know anything about her, much less that her ability would grow?
And yet, whenever she remembered what he had said before, a strange restlessness stirred inside her.
‘They were clearly the words of a villain... about a terrorist attack he himself had committed...’
Why couldn't she get his words out of her head?
She shook her head hard, trying to drive away the distracting thoughts.
It was just delusions of grandeur. Delusions of grandeur.
Besides, terrorist attacks weren't the only thing Egostic had done.
He had killed three villains. Counting the followers who had carried out his attacks, he had killed quite a few people.
He eliminated villains without hesitation and on his own authority. Vigilantism. “Antihero” was merely a flattering name for it; killing others as he pleased without any lawful authority was simply murder.
And yet...
She turned her eyes away from her laptop screen.
What she had been reading was material the Association President had authorized her to view.
It was classified intelligence supposedly viewable only by the Association's top security officers and the Association President, but she had practically wrested the files from him. By emphasizing her status as an A-rank hero and insisting on her right to know, she had barely secured approval.
When she demanded to know why the Association kept this information internal instead of sharing it with heroes, she received only the absurd excuse that security concerns left them no choice.
‘Tch... Do they think we're hunting dogs?’
In any case, she had successfully pried the files out of him.
It contained dossiers on villains from S-rank down to B-rank.
The site displayed [Class 1 Secret] in enormous letters across the header.
There, she searched for the villains Egostic had dealt with so far.
***
[Enzodiac] Real name: Jeon Jae-hyeok.
S-rank villain.
Sorcerer.
Discovered after killing eight people and attempting to use them as sacrifices for a ritual.
Primary danger: the limits of his sorcery are unknown.
Class 2 Secret: The earthquake on 20.03.24 was caused by him, but after [Record Erasure], it was publicly reported as a natural disaster.
*Designated S-rank because he could cause any disaster with enough sacrifices. Heroes affiliated with the International Hero Association are also searching for him. Do not inform domestic heroes of anything beyond the /Immediate Kill Order/.
Neutralized by A-rank villain Egostic.
***
After also investigating Rhino, Teleporter, and the other villains Egostic had killed, she learned one thing.
Every villain he had deliberately killed—even those who had caused no major trouble yet—possessed an ability that could one day cause a “large-scale disaster.”
She had also tried to see how Egostic was recorded in the files, but his dossier was protected as [Class O Secret], accessible only to the Association President and the highest-ranking officials of the International Hero Association Union. When she confronted the President, he merely said the international body above him had assigned the classification and that even he didn't know.
It felt unsettling, but she let it go for now.
What mattered was Egostic. Looking at his actions...
‘Calling him simply a villain feels...’
He was unquestionably a villain, given the large-scale terrorist attacks he carried out.
Yet his conduct was full of ambiguities. Beyond the suspicious attacks that never produced casualties, there was his killing of his own followers and his intervention against Alligator Man.
And the Apple Mango Incident had turned her suspicion into something close to certainty.
"..."
Apple Mango.
In truth, she had recognized him as Egostic the moment she saw him.
His voice, height, and mannerisms were identical. How could she not?
Of course, she was the only one of the three who had seen Egostic in person, so the other two did not seem to realize it at the time.
Besides, choosing the name Apple Mango in the first place... did not make it seem as though he was trying very hard to hide his identity.
But what mattered was...
why he had been there.
The previous incident had been a planned operation from the start.
After receiving intelligence that a large-scale attack was planned in Busan, the Association had deliberately leaked false reports that Shadow Walker had collapsed, planning to wipe the attackers out at night.
Because there would likely be many hostages, the plan was for Shadow Walker—who excelled in close-quarters combat—to suppress the attack safely.
But Apple Mango... or rather, Egostic, had already dealt with the small fry, leaving them no opportunity to act.
Egostic had spouted nonsense until the end and then left.
Should she have attacked him and captured him on the spot?
"..."
Yes.
She had no choice but to admit it.
Her suspicion of Egostic had become a kind of conviction.
Why would a villain save people there?
He looked every bit like a lunatic, but if she traced each of his actions one by one... just as the netizens said, he even looked like a hero pretending to be a villain.
But if that were true, why not work as a hero—or at least as an antihero? Why commit terrorist attacks?
Was he planning something on a larger scale that she and everyone else knew nothing about?
Or perhaps he simply did whatever he felt like, and she was reading too much into it.
Even so.
Highly developed intuition was itself a form of rational inference.
She had continued to doubt him.
The Apple Mango Incident had brought that doubt close to certainty.
Egostic was not a simple villain.
He could never be called a hero, either. And yet...
He was too ambiguous to call an enemy and could not be considered an ally, but his actions ultimately helped her side.
The suspicion that he was orchestrating something enormous—
Stardus couldn't help but harbor it.
She could not fall asleep easily that night.
‘What the hell is Egostic planning? Could he actually be on our side? No, absolutely not. What if he really is a veteran hero pretending to be a villain? What are you saying, Ha-ru? You've finally lost your mind.’
She lay awake, tangled in those thoughts, making only one vow: during his next attack, she would uncover his identity...
‘But why did he call himself Apple Mango? Is there some hidden meaning in that too?’
***
"This fucking sucks..."
"Why did you call yourself Apple Mango? Tell me, big bro. You always acted like you hated the name Mango. Did you actually like the nickname?"
"Be quiet... please!"
I was so embarrassed I wanted to throw myself off a cliff...