Holding Hands
Holding Hands
A woman with long sky-blue hair and the cold, catlike impression of an ice queen stood before me. Lee Seol-ah.
She went by many titles.
First, she was one of South Korea's only three A-rank heroes, alongside Stardus. She operated under the alias Icicle and was based in Busan, where she spent her time suppressing villains.
But she had another identity just as famous as her hero persona—the name Lee Seol-ah itself.
She was the third-generation heiress to Yuseong Group, the second-largest conglomerate in South Korea.
She'd already drawn attention with her exceptional looks and chaebol lineage, but after her ability awakened and she announced that she intended to work as a hero too, the public ate it up.
Maybe people found it endearing that a chaebol heiress would do hero work for the sake of ordinary citizens—her image in Busan, where Yuseong Group had its headquarters, was remarkably positive.
With her striking face and her habit of smiling brightly wherever she went, she'd cultivated the public image of a sweet, benevolent rich girl. Which made sense, really—she was doing hero work when she didn't even have to.
And every bit of it was a mask.
Behind the act of the naive young woman who didn't know how the world worked, she concealed an ambition to swallow the whole of South Korea. Her hero activities were just a way to hide those ulterior motives, manage her public image, and build connections inside the Hero Association.
She'd been the real power directing Yuseong Group from behind the scenes, and after her competitor, Han-eun Group, destroyed itself, she became the de facto head of the country's preeminent corporation.
Later in the Original Work, after the president stepped down over the Seoul Collapse Incident and left a political vacuum, she steadily swallowed the political world piece by piece, expanding her influence.
By the late part of the Original Work, she held the business world, the political world, and public sentiment in her grasp. She could replace the president on a whim and rewrite the law as she saw fit—the effective ruler of South Korea.
And that same woman was standing right in front of me.
"A cooperative relationship..."
She murmured the words quietly, then set her teacup down with care.
Behind her, sunlight caught her sky-blue hair and scattered into glints.
"Interesting."
She smiled faintly, then looked at me with cold eyes and continued.
"A villain approaching me, a hero, and proposing an alliance. Do you actually expect me to accept?"
Her tone was icy.
At the same time, the room itself seemed to drop a degree.
Actually, given her ability, it might really have dropped.
I grinned at the response.
"Come now, what's all that about? We both know exactly what's going on."
Here's the thing. This is the crucial part.
The Lee Seol-ah from the Original Work was terrifying—a woman with an almost preternatural gift for reading people and a razor-sharp command of any situation.
But that's the version with years of experience and seasoning behind her.
Right now, she's still just a girl with ambition. Compared to the late-story version, she's clumsy. Her judgment is probably a little fuzzy at this stage too.
To put it bluntly: she's still a kid.
Which means this is the only window to handle her. Before she ripens. Right now.
I kept the easy smile on my face and went on.
"I know perfectly well who's behind Yuseong Group's expansionist moves, so there's no need for all this posturing. I'm not here to hinder you—I'd just like to maintain an amicable relationship where we walk the same path together. Call me a comrade, if you like."
I stopped there, flicked a finger, and used telekinesis to lift the empty cup and the pot beside me, pouring myself some coffee. I took a sip. Nice.
Lee Seol-ah's eyebrow twitched involuntarily at the sight of me making myself this comfortable, as if I were in my own home, but she quickly recovered her composure and addressed me coldly.
"I have no idea what you think you know about me. But more to the point—what possible help could you offer me? This is absurd."
Translation: Explain what you could possibly do for me.
I gave her another small smirk.
"I can do a great many things for you. Well, the list is practically endless."
But if I stood in front of her yapping about it, it wouldn't look nearly as cool, would it?
I calmly pulled a USB from my pocket and tossed it to Lee Seol-ah.
When the black object suddenly flew toward her, she flinched but caught it cleanly in midair.
Once the USB was in her hand, she looked at me as if to ask what it was. I shrugged.
"Lately you've seemed busy, what with acquiring one company after another and meddling in politics on the side... I thought I'd bring you something that might help. Consider it a small token of my sincerity."
I said my piece, then simply stood up. Her eyes followed me as I rose abruptly, clearly wondering what I was doing.
"I'll be back in a week. I hope you'll have accepted my proposal by then."
"Excuse me? What is this—"
"Until next time."
Then I wrapped my cloak around myself.
Villain rule: say your piece and vanish.
Before I teleported away, I took one last look at her.
Sky-blue hair, the slightly sharp, catlike eyes fixed on me.
Looking at that face, so much younger than the one from the late original, I thought to myself:
Yeah. I really did hope she would accept. The alliance.
I had chosen her only after considering whether I should deal with her or not, so the least she could do was be useful.
Taking one last look at her green eyes, I teleported away.
Ah, and then I had to haul myself all the way back up to Seoul.
Pain in the ass.
***
"......."
The space Egostic had left behind.
There, Lee Seol-ah exhaled.
"Hah. Seriously, what is this...?"
Only after he was gone did she finally release the breath she'd been holding.
She hadn't let it show, but she'd honestly felt like her heart was about to drop out of her chest. Her back was drenched in cold sweat.
Egostic—of all villains, she'd never imagined he would appear right in front of her. Especially since he'd only ever gone after Stardus.
And when he revealed that he knew about her plans, it had genuinely made her skin crawl. How? She'd buried that information so thoroughly. Completely and utterly buried it.
When she'd looked into those eyes of his, eyes that seemed to see through everything, she'd tensed up without realizing it—but she'd managed to keep up an air of composure.
Egostic. She'd already formed some theories about him.
Lee Seol-ah had been born with a gift for reading what other people were thinking—almost to the point of guessing outright. Combined with her intelligence and instincts, it could seem like mind reading.
By her estimation, Egostic called himself a villain but held no real hostility toward the world. The same applied to the hero Stardus. If anything, he seemed to play the villain while acting more like an anti-hero.
Through the series of incidents that had occurred and the trajectory of his actions, she'd become half-certain: Egostic was a kind of anti-hero. An exceptionally capable one.
Still, she had considered the chance that someone like him would appear before her very low. No matter how capable he was, there was no way he could know that much... right?
Today, Lee Seol-ah had no choice but to admit it.
She had underestimated him.
He knew everything about her. He even knew that she had seen through him. And on top of that, he'd come to propose an alliance.
When she'd asked what he could possibly do for her, he'd tossed her a USB and disappeared. He'd said exactly what he came to say and then just left.
"Hah... Seriously, what..."
What did he want from her? Why had he approached her?
Because when it came to Egostic—if he turned into an enemy, he'd be a very, very bad opponent to have.
She'd seen through him from the start, with that insight of hers. He pretended to be a villain, but in reality, paradoxically, he was more like a hero. And based on what her natural perceptiveness told her, his actions seemed connected to Stardus in some way. She didn't know the more specific reasons yet.
There were plenty of reasons to be wary of someone like him.
He possessed overwhelming intelligence-gathering abilities from an unknown source, overwhelming financial resources of equally unknown origin, and influence that could not be ignored. Somehow, he had even built a fandom whose size was considerable and whose loyalty was unsettling—they believed almost anything he said. Even among the wider public, opinion of Egostic was generally favorable.
In other words, on an individual level, Egostic wielded almost the most influence of anyone in South Korea. You might not notice it because he was always laughing and joking behind his mask, but if you thought about it, he was an incredibly dangerous, terrifying figure.
Still, from her assessment, he didn't seem to bear her any particular hostility, and their paths didn't look like they'd cross much—so she hadn't been especially on guard. She'd kept an eye on him, but that was all.
And then that same man had suddenly appeared before her.
Carrying a totally out-of-the-blue proposal for an alliance, no less...
"Haaaah..."
Lee Seol-ah's head was spinning.
How did he know about her ambitions, and what was this talk of an alliance? A trap?
Especially that last look he'd given her, right before he vanished.
She shivered faintly, remembering the cold gaze he'd leveled at her—as if all that cheerful smiling had been a lie.
...Is this really a trap?
Actually, if he wasn't hostile to her, she had no particular reason to refuse him. An alliance with him would only ever be a net positive, not a negative.
...Whether he truly wanted to cooperate with her or not, she'd find out once she opened this.
She looked down at the small USB in her hand.
...This would not hack me if I plugged it in, would it?
"...."
Oh, come on. As if.
She dismissed the thought as pointless worry, but just in case, she plugged it into a secondary computer.
What on earth was on it?
Nervous, she opened the USB.
Inside...
"...Huh?"
It was stuffed with files documenting the corruption and vulnerabilities of her competitors.
Internal intelligence, confidential documents, personal scandals.
Documents that could be weaponized in any number of ways.
As she looked them over one by one, her eyes took on a faint gleam.
With these, the acquisition and merger work that had been giving her such a headache lately could be accelerated dramatically.
Her mind was already spinning with countless schemes for how to use this information to devour other companies.
"...Turns out he was a very nice person."
Egostic.
Now that she had seen it, he truly seemed to want to help her rather than threaten her. Someone who gave her material like this could hardly be her enemy.
The unexpected gift sent her optimism racing.
By her own sharp and intelligent judgment, Egostic seemed like a useful person who genuinely wanted an alliance with her.
In that case, naturally—
was there any reason to refuse him?
***
A week later.
"So, have you thought about my proposal?"
"Yes. Well, there's no reason we can't work together."
And just like that, we shook hands.
I, Egostic, had recruited the future hidden mastermind who would run South Korea's largest company by market capitalization.
'Lucky me.'
Won her over in one shot.