After the Retirement
A shabby rooftop room in Hongdae, perched on an old shopping building already marked for demolition.
Villain Murder Smoker had been watching a cheap black-and-white TV with bored indifference. His eyes dropped to the news, and he blew out a long stream of cigarette smoke.
"Hoo. Every last one of them's throwing a fit. Those Association bastards casting a line out in the open now?"
They'd fired Ahn Taeyoung?
Say that, and the moment he actually went out and worked, they'd hook the whole lot and reel them in one after another. Who did they think was too stupid to see it?
He snorted and ground the cigarette out on the TV.
"You think I'm biting on that bullshit? Until that bastard's in a coffin, I'm not taking one step out of here."
At the same hour, in the Sangsu-dong Underground Fight Club.
A-rank villain Crusher had been driving his fist down hard enough to burst a sandbag. A subordinate held out a smartphone, and he went still.
"...What? What the hell kind of bullshit is this?"
Boom!
The sandbag exploded under the fist he brought down, but the rage on his face hadn't eased in the slightest. He was shaking with it.
"You screwing with me? Fuck! You smash my ribs to pieces and then retire whenever the hell you feel like it!?"
He'd shut himself in this basement for three whole months just to get revenge on that bastard.
And now, retirement?
"Ahn Taeyoung, you piece of shit... You ran off without my permission before I even got my revenge!"
"B-but, boss. If that Ahn Taeyoung retires, isn't that a good thing for us?"
The man beside him had worked up the nerve to say it, careful and quiet. It only fed the anger.
"What'd you just say?"
"No, I mean... what I'm saying is, if he's gone, we can run the business like we used to, and also..."
"So. That cheap stimulant hustle matters more to you than my honor. That it?"
"Ah, b-boss, th-that's not what I meant...!"
Something creaked. Crusher seized him by the throat and hauled him straight up off the floor.
"K-khhk!"
"Get the boys out there and find where Ahn Taeyoung is. And find out what the hell happened!"
"Y-yes, sir!!"
He let go. The man dropped with a thud, and the subordinates bolted in a panic.
Crusher didn't care. He couldn't take his eyes off the phone, still lit with the news of Ahn Taeyoung's retirement.
"No way... those Association bastards didn't pull some stunt on him, did they?"
If they had...
With a crunch, the smartphone in his grip folded in on itself until nothing of its shape remained.
Meanwhile, in a back alley behind a club in Yeonnam-dong.
One of a knot of villains, toying with a bloodstained dagger, glanced down at a smartphone and snickered.
"Pfft. Hey. You guys see this? That Hardline bastard quit being a hero."
"Bullshit. That guy, quit? He'll ride it till he drops."
"Heh. That's what I said. Another trash rag, same as last time."
"No. It's real this time. Look."
Only then did the villains check the phone. Eyes that had been skimming his retirement news went sharp.
"Whoa. Shit, it's actually real?"
"So that bastard's gone from Hongdae now... you're saying we can do whatever we want?"
Heads came up, one after another, and those gazes began to turn toward the citizens out on the street beyond the alley.
By then, at Hongdae Intersection as well, the news of his retirement was already rolling across a massive electronic billboard.
A few citizens who had stopped to watch the board began to murmur among themselves.
"Whoa. Hardline. He really retired this time?"
"Yeah. And he was S-rank once. He retires and there isn't even anyone sad about it. Everybody's just shrugging it off."
"Well. Honestly, he was kind of frustrating, wasn't he? Other heroes were breaking their backs putting villains down, and all he ever did was arrest them."
The citizens nodded. That was why he had been demoted to A-rank, and why the public looked at him so coldly. Almost no one was sorry to see Hardline go.
Save for a few.
Blue eyes looked up at the billboard from beneath a hood pulled low. While everyone else was pleased by his retirement, or simply didn't care, she alone stood there, stock-still. The news had ended, and still she showed no sign of leaving.
"Hardline... retired?"
She repeated what she had heard, voice blank. She turned her phone on just in case, but it was the same. She had wanted it to be a misreport, or just another empty rumor like the last one. She stared at the screen for a long while, and then her head turned, slowly.
Her gaze found an ordinary residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Hongdae. She bored a hole in that direction, and only for a moment.
Boom!
The sidewalk split with a roar.
"Kyaah!?"
"Wh-what was that just now?"
By the time people were screaming and buzzing, she was already gone. A sharp kick carried her across the gaps between the shopping-building roofs and launched her into the air. A few leaps later she came down at the villa where Ahn Taeyoung had lived, set a foot on the balcony rail, and jumped inside without the owner's leave.
Someone else had gotten there first.
"...Blackjack?"
She found him already inside and called his name, thrown. No wonder. Dark circles had sunk under hollow eyes, and the rest of him looked shabby in a way no A-rank should. He was even crouched alone in a corner of the emptied living room. He noticed her soon enough and spoke, low.
"Undertail. You saw the news and came too? You're already late."
"What?"
"Look. That bastard really quit. Left however he pleased, without a word to us."
At that, she finally looked around. Sure enough, the furniture that had been here until last time was gone. Not a piece of it remained.
"Haha. Hardline, that rotten bastard. If you're going to leave, you could at least say where you're going. Damn it. From now on, who am I supposed to..."
She left Blackjack muttering to himself and drifted through every room, dazed. Furniture worn smooth by hands, even the old clothes—all of it gone, the rooms bare. The only thing left was an old towel he must have dropped on his way out. Seeing it, she couldn't hide how hollow she felt.
"Why... why did you go without saying a word to me?"
Like Blackjack said, couldn't he have left at least that much? She gathered the towel into a sealable plastic bag and tucked it into her bag. She was just coming out of the room when shouts, raw with rage, burst up from below the villa.
"Hey! Hardline! Get out here, you bastard! What the hell is this supposed to mean!?"
At the sudden yelling, Undertail tilted her head. She leaned out over the balcony and saw a man pointing at the phone in his hand, shouting as if his heart were breaking. He was an A-rank villain with a vicious reputation even in Hongdae.
"Did you really retire!? Who the hell said you could quit, you son of a bitch!!"
"It's all a lie, right? Another fake rumor, same as last time! Right? I'm right, aren't I?"
"So just stop already and please, come out! I'll wait right here. Let's see each other's faces and talk—please!!"
And beside him stood several other villains of considerable notoriety.
"And who are they supposed to be..."
She muttered it, dumbfounded, watching them. Just then, beyond the window, shrill sirens began to wail all across the streets of Hongdae. Listening to them, she had no choice but to feel it for real.
Maybe Hardline really was gone from this city now.
An alarm clock shrilled beside my head.
"Mmm..."
I'd already brushed it off three times and stayed buried under the blanket. By the time I finally sat up, the sun had been high for a long while. For the first time in ten years my head was clear, without that leaden stiffness in it, and through the window I'd thrown wide open a pleasant breeze and birdsong came drifting in.
Was a retired morning always this beautiful?
"Wow. I feel fucking incredible."
I came out into the living room and stretched long while the coffee came together, then carried the warm cup out onto the balcony at my ease and took a sip. Under the sunlight, just the sound of kids tearing around and the sight of office workers going about their day was enough to lift my mood on its own.
The afternoon the retirement went through, I left Hongdae without a backward glance and moved straight here to Osan. I'd bought the place as a second house back when I was S-rank, meaning to live quietly once I retired. It was a city that still had rice paddies and fields, which was why I'd liked it, and I hadn't had much to bring, so I could move in the same day. I wasn't a hero anymore anyway. For the time being I meant to sprawl out like this, think about nothing, and just enjoy the peace.
"Well. Retirement came a little sooner than I thought, but hey. This isn't bad, in its own way."
Humming under my breath, I dropped onto the living-room sofa and turned on the TV in a fine mood. All right. What was I going to watch to get through today? I'd fallen behind on more than a few dramas and anime during my years as a hero, and I was already looking forward to it. The screen, as it happened, was running the news under a red breaking banner.
"Aigoo. Oh, that's just awful. Dear me. Whatever are they going to do."
I sipped my coffee the way you'd watch someone else's trouble. Well, I'd handed the notebook over on my way out. The heroes who were left could handle it.
"...Huh?"
What did they just say?
I didn't say a word. I clicked the screen over to a streaming app and, as one ordinary citizen of Korea, let it pass for nothing worth my time.
"Ehh. It'll be fine."
It had nothing to do with me anymore.
Ding-dong—
And so, the next day, the bell rang at my house. A house whose location I had never told a soul.