The First Superhuman

The place was crawling with vermin of the legal world—judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and the rest. But in my eyes only one of them occupied that space.

Lee Haedong.

I walked.

And then I ended the long silence.

“Do you remember?”

In the blood-soaked corridor of the villa, Lee Haedong’s brow twitched, just slightly, at the words I set down after all that quiet. He was alone now. No law. No army. Every authority he had boasted of had collapsed, and the fish-stink sealed inside it had begun to seep out.

“What?”

“Ten years ago. A ten-year-old boy crouched in the back of a courtroom, shaking.”

“…”

“You saw it with your own eyes. And still you said nothing.”

“…”

His mouth twitched. The longer the silence stretched, the colder the anger inside me became. At last he opened his mouth.

“I… I only did as I was told.”

“Told by whom.”

“From above. From all around me. It was established procedure. I only followed it.”

“Procedure?”

“Yes. Procedure. Everyone does it. I wasn’t the only one. Judges, prosecutors, police—that’s how the whole machine turns. Don’t talk like some innocent who doesn’t know.”

“When that child lost his family and howled, what verdict did you hand down?”

“The circumstances were insufficient.”

“Not because the offender’s father was a chaebol?”

“Chaebol families are always a problem. Do you have any idea how many calls came in from behind the curtain? You think I could simply ignore them?”

“You should have.”

“That’s why I call you naive. The world doesn’t work that way.”

He spat it out as if he were chewing the words.

“Try to understand. You think I wasn’t tormented? But if you judge every single thing on emotion, the organization collapses.”

“So you collapsed a child instead? That pitiful child who had lost his family?”

“I’ve saved plenty of cases. I’ve helped people who were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wronged. Why doesn’t anyone remember those? Why is it always only what I did wrong…”

“Because that one wrong ended a person’s life. Because of that fine power of law you held.”

“So you came to kill me? Over that one thing?”

“No.”

“…”

“Because that one thing was hundreds. And thousands.”

He was trying to deceive me with those cunning words, but he could not cover the Eye of Judgment.

How many victims his verdicts had made. How thickly that sin was stained with blood. I saw it with perfect clarity.

“You don’t know what it takes to climb to a seat like this. How many relationships. How many people you have to persuade to change a single law, which side you have to line up with if you mean to survive. Clean hands? Integrity? Everyone who believed in that garbage was trampled. In the end they were isolated. They vanished.”

Lee Haedong shouted it, his face twisted out of shape. What lived on that face was not fear. It was grievance.

“You’ll call me evil. But in this world, if you only live kindly, you can’t accomplish anything! Live like that and you can’t protect a thing! There were things I wanted to protect too!”

“What?”

“My seat. My people. My position.”

That, I could say without hesitation, was no longer the language of a human being. It was the last thrashing of a creature pickled through with the poison called power.

“I was the one responsible. The one responsible must not be cast aside. If an organization is to run in a stable way, someone has to do the dirty work. A country doesn’t turn just because people scream about justice!”

“And so, with your own hands, you killed justice.”

At those words he gave no answer. No—he had nothing left to say.

A man wearing the mask of law. A man who had betrayed justice. A man who had trampled countless lives and piled up an empire that belonged to him alone.

He had become nothing.

The last thing to leave his mouth was neither a howl nor regret. It was an excuse that stank on the tongue.

I looked slowly around me. Until moments ago this place had been full of laughter and perfume. Men who styled themselves nobility once the robes came off, lifting their glasses, drunk on pleasure, mocking one another’s power—now they were frozen in the silence.

Judges. Prosecutors. Lawyers. Managing partners of law firms. Faces anyone would know by name alone, faces that had persuaded the public from television screens while wearing the look of justice. Before my eyes they trembled like a herd of pigs awaiting slaughter.

I raised the kitchen knife and cut the empty air.

A sharp hiss.

At the sound, several of them jerked as if in spasm. And with it, I declared:

“What?!”

Silence. A stillness in which no one dared even swallow.

“You get one chance.”

But no one moved. Of course they didn’t. Until moments ago he had been a king, boasting absolute power and strength. Harming him was not so simple a thing.

Frightened eyes. Pupils that would not hold still. That filthy nature, each of them watching the others, waiting to see who would react first.

In the end I nodded.

“Right. You really are that kind.”

If they meant to watch one another, I only had to make a place where watching was no longer possible.

A wet slice.

The first. The head of a High Court presiding judge parted from his body.

The second. A deputy chief prosecutor of a district prosecutors’ office.

He missed his footing as he tried to flee, but the kitchen knife that opened him from behind severed the spine and passed through the heart.

“Aaagh—aaagh!”

Someone screamed. And that was the moment.

“I want to live! Me! I’ll kill him! I’ll do it!”

In the pandemonium where curses and shrieks tangled together, the first hand rose. That hand went for Lee Haedong. A kitchen knife snagged his sleeve, and a fist hammered down into his face. Then the judge beside him screamed, seized Lee Haedong’s leg, and dragged him down.

“Move! I’m the one who’s going to kill him! Me!”

“He can’t die yet! Save me! Me!”

They clawed one another’s faces until fingernails peeled away, and screams loud enough to split eardrums rang through the hall. With nails, with the wine bottles they had been drinking, with a broken kitchen knife, they tore one another’s flesh and began to open a path toward Lee Haedong.

“Th-this… what is this…”

Lee Haedong stared at the madness of his vassals with a face that could not believe what it saw.

“You—! Do you even know who I—”

But the words never finished leaving his mouth. A third hand dragged him in. A fourth fist stabbed into his eye. A fifth mouth bit down on his throat.

He was not a king. He was not a god, not a judge, not a man of power. Here, in the kingdom he had raised, upon the altar of the law he himself had built, he was being torn, broken, and ripped to shreds by his own vassals.

“Stop! Spare me! I didn’t—I didn’t order it! From above—aaaaagh!”

His cry could no longer become a sentence inside a ruined mouth. Men who had once claimed to be the heart of justice, tearing out one another’s hearts as they thrashed to stay alive—that sight was the last hell made by a society without justice, by those who had worshipped the law.

Darkness had fallen over the grounds outside the villa. Unlike the blood-red slaughter within, the exterior was filled with a cold silence.

In the dark, a body of men was quietly forming ranks among the shadows.

A glittering roster. The strength of great powers—the special forces that were that strength itself. Men who should almost never have stood in the same place had gathered, and they were running a joint operation.

As they carefully established their positions and called the operation to mind, their purpose was one.

Han Seungwoo. The superhuman now inside the villa, putting down the high ranks of the legal world with a power without precedent.

From the intelligence gathered until now, they understood it clearly. The target, Han Seungwoo, was no longer human, but superhuman. More than that—he was a subject of the world’s analysis, a living weapon from whom secrets were to be extracted.

A crackle of static.

An order cold as ice, from the highest reaches of the CIA, flowed into the commander’s ear.

The commander drew a deep breath.

“When we take him, how much damage to the subject is acceptable?”

The answer came without hesitation.

At the same time, a similar directive came down from China’s Ministry of State Security. The Chinese commander reported upward by radio.

“The subject is powerful. If live capture fails, shall we eliminate him?”

Command answered with cold ruthlessness.

And as if on cue, Russia was in the middle of its own report.

“Coordination among the three nations is underway. If another country secures the subject first, how do we proceed?”

The voice of a senior FSB official came through.

“Understood.”

The Russian commander sent the execution order down the line.

“All personnel. Every sacrifice other than securing the subject is justified. Not one of you hesitates.”

An operation that seemed to foreshadow Han Seungwoo’s fate was already underway.

The three nations had cast aside the dignity of life and now treated the subject as nothing but a specimen—something from which to learn the source of power.

And through the radio, the last operational ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠order was delivered.

“Commence the operation.”

A burst of static.

In an instant every light went out. And in the black, accompanied by a noise kept extremely low, presences entered the interior.

Shadows moving through perfect darkness, reading the room through thermal night vision. A coalition of three countries that should never have been able to stand as one, bound together by a single order.

A thin whine.

From an American operator’s hand, a miniature MAV—a micro air vehicle—rose in silence. Movement as small and fine as an insect’s. The drone locked Seungwoo’s position exactly, and the vital signs inside the combat AR helmet were converted into digital signal and passed along.

“Heart rate seventy. Body temperature 98.2. Stable state confirmed.”

The order dropped into every ear.

“Commence the operation.”

The Chinese team moved first. From the floor, with a soft slide, a thin, long tube was thrown.

A hiss.

Smoke spread in an instant. Military ultrafine anesthetic gas. A single breath was enough to bring on powerful nerve paralysis. But in that moment—

A boom.

The subject kicked off the wall and burst clear, swiftly leaving the smoke behind. He had already stopped breathing.

The CIA team raised FN303 compressed-air launchers, special rounds already chambered. What they fired were high-velocity anesthetic needles.

A rapid patter.

Rounds loosed from three directions at once cut the air. But at the same time, an unbelievable sight unfolded.

That speed, impossible to distinguish with the naked eye—he struck the needles down with the kitchen knife. Like blocking rain. Not a single drop found a gap.

They did not panic. They had already received a clear report that the opponent was a being beyond the human domain.

“Deploy the shock drones.”

From the ceiling, silenced electric-shock drones—the Mir-II—descended without a sound and seized the air.

“Shock output. Maximum setting complete.”

A snarling crackle.

Two hundred thousand volts of high current, released from the drones in an instant, fell toward the target like lightning.

That was not all. China’s purpose-built EMP paralysis rounds followed the motion. America’s high-frequency sonic emitter, the SONIC-300, dealt a pain that tore at the ears. Russia’s ultra-adhesive foam launcher, the SPU-32, bound his movement.

As every attack poured in one after another, the target’s movement wavered for the first time.

“Now! Press him!”

The three nations moved exactly as the agreed operation demanded.

A stuttering roar of fire.

From the ceiling, from the walls, from every side, nonlethal weapons aimed at him detonated all at once. But the target’s movement was not a speed humanity’s arms could catch.

A swift cut of air.

He leapt into the sky. Twice, against gravity.

A crack.

He smashed a drone and hurled the sparking circuit board back into the enemy.

“Ghk!”

“Khak!”

The soldiers who had fired the adhesive foam died in an instant. Every piece of advanced weaponry the three nations’ special forces had brought to bear was cut down, helpless, beneath nothing more than two blades.

“Control isn’t easy.”

“We abandon an intact capture.”

“Lethal weapons authorized!”

They had meant, if at all possible, to take him alive and whole. A specimen was worth more that way. But the combat power in front of them was not something about which an intact capture could even be discussed.

A boom.

Beyond the villa wall, the kitchen knife’s shape shot out like lightning.

A flash.

An electromagnetically guided plasma round tore the air. The round, flying as it bent the light, aimed dead at the chest. But—

A clean ring of steel.

He glanced it aside lightly on the edge of the kitchen knife. The deflected round buried itself in the wall, then melted what surrounded it and vented steam.

Electric-tracking drones, Thunderbolt Type-3, formed a triangle in the air. If the Mir was meant to suppress, the Thunderbolt explosively vented high-voltage current meant to kill.

A snarling crackle of current.

High voltage fell like a thunderbolt. On reflex he angled the kitchen knife aside. The shock of the wave rebounded and split the floor.

A crunch.

While the light flared, one of the drones that had discharged the current was half-destroyed. The remaining two retreated rearward at full speed and reacquired the target. But even that gap was not allowed.

A hiss.

He drove in. As if he had been there from the beginning.

A tearing crackle.

The second drone was cut. Han Seungwoo’s body grew ever more agile. The line the kitchen knife drew left only a silhouette as it cleaved the air and detonated the last of them.

A soft burst.

Sensing that movement, Russia’s Alpha team fired ultra-precise poison needles.

A rapid patter.

Microneedle nerve toxin scattered through the air like rain.

A string of impacts.

Han Seungwoo twisted in an instant and brushed the incoming needles aside with the flat of the kitchen knife, as if only grazing them. A few clipped him. But as if behind an unseen barrier, the foreign matter was forced back out.

A boom.

Another round. Now the aim was suppression more than a hit. The surrounding walls burst, and part of the villa melted away.

An all-out barrage that could only be called a savage bombardment. But Han Seungwoo’s movement brought all of it to nothing, and in a span brief enough to be called an instant, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he slipped between them.

A hiss.

A ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠single streak of light. The operator who had been firing the plasma rounds collapsed.

A thud.

His neck already separated, he simply folded onto the ground. A quiet death.

A thin rising whine.

A new weapon. Guided micro laser cutters flew in from every side. Vibrating lines the naked eye could not see.

A slide of feet.

He planted himself, surged into the air, stepped on the wall, kicked off the ceiling, and drove straight back down. The body of one soldier touched by that trajectory split from top to bottom.

A crunch.

The floor collapsed. Debris shot upward. A defensive barrage meant nothing. Every response was lagging.

A rush of launches.

The advanced weapons each nation prided itself on became eyes of death and took aim at a single target.

Personal sonic cutters. Rotary acid-capsule cannons. Rigid-cutting nano-blades.

Death poured down.

But—

Silence.

Within it, the kitchen knife drove straight down.

A sharp split.

The forward fire-control unit was cleaved in two, and the laser cutters, having lost their tracks, slashed empty air.

A flash.

He turned in the air and, dropping vertically, pierced the heart of one unit in the rear.

Thuds. Crashes.

The encirclement broke, and the three nations’ lethal weapons could no longer see the target.

Every communications net was soaked in screams. The command structure collapsed. Contact was cut.

It was different from the special forces of the Republic of Korea. There was not a hair of hesitation in aiming at their lives—as if he had read their malice, the sin of abandoning human dignity, beginning with live experimentation.

Cutting-edge tactics. Weapons the world boasted of. Trained, elite special forces. Yet before this man they collapsed with a futility that felt empty. No. They were destroyed.

Mere minutes from the start of the operation. The precisely woven cordon, the indiscriminate suppression meant to take him alive—both fell apart, helpless, before a single person.

What remained were only the corpses of three nations’ special forces, losing their warmth, and weapons shattered and scattered to pieces.

A step.

A man walked slowly out from among them.

The surviving soldiers of the Republic of Korea’s special forces trembled, as if a thrill had run through them at the sight.

One step. Then another. He had pierced the advanced weapons three great powers had prepared together, and he walked as if nothing at all had happened.

Only—he came to stand before the figures of the legal world, clotted together in blood and terror, collapsed from biting and tearing at one another.

A slice.

He began to erase the names of sin.

A soft draw of the blade.

Each time a streak of light passed, a life went out. No—not a life. A trace of filthy power. A flame of sin, quietly going out.

No one in that hall could stop a mere single person. On the stage he had made, what remained was only despair and silence.

“Aaaah, don’t come, don’t come!”

At last he slowly shifted his gaze toward the last lawyer still alive.

In those eyes there was neither anger nor pity. Only a cold promise.

The lawyer. He had driven a fountain pen into Lee Haedong’s throat. By tearing open that blood-bruised center of evil with his own hand, he had proven his right to survive.

A trickle.

And then the relief that took hold of his body. As the tension left him, a liquid in which terror, relief, and salvation were mingled spilled down beneath him.

Even if he had lived, the sin of killing the Minister of Justice would make a normal life difficult. He would wear, for the rest of his years, the shackles of the very law they boasted of—or he would be killed.

Step. Step.

Having achieved his purpose and judged the sin, the man began to leave the hall in quiet, as if he had known everything from the start.

Human beings are weak. Flesh parts under a single blade. A life goes out from a single bullet. They fall to one small fragment.

And so humanity hungered for technology. To hide their frailty they wrapped their bodies in steel, armed themselves with weapons, and pressed one another down.

But now one who had surpassed all of that had appeared. Faster than technology. Stronger than weapons. One who had broken the limit and realized a human justice in a way that was his alone.

He was made of flesh and blood, and yet he was firmer than anyone, more threatening than anything.

This moment was not a simple victory. It was history. One person who, with his bare body, had smashed the weapons the world had forged out of fear and greed.

The word that no nation, no army, and no power had ever, in the end, managed to give a name.

Now the world had no choice but to call him this.

He was the first being to leave the domain of humanity far behind.