The Chance You Refused
“Thank you. It was delicious.”
“Good. It’s getting late—get home safe.”
Cheon Seo-ah gave Jin Yu-ri a neat little bow, then turned without a moment’s hesitation and walked away.
The restaurant Jin Yu-ri had recommended really had been decent. A steak of respectable quality, pasta and salad on the side—nothing to sneer at. Of course, it couldn’t compare to the food those nine villains—those poor kids—had once offered her. Still, it carried Jin Yu-ri’s sincere intent well enough: an apology for trying to make Seo-ah into a hero without so much as consulting her first.
More important than that, though—
“How much longer do you intend to simply watch?”
Step by step, Cheon Seo-ah walked the nearly empty alley. Then she stopped.
Even so, not so much as an ant appeared in answer to her question. Seo-ah did not stop talking.
“Did you know? Something similar happened before. Of course, that time one of those poor kids sent people to fetch me. You, on the other hand…”
Her eyes drifted slowly across the shadows pooled along the alley walls.
“I don’t get the impression you followed me with anything resembling good intentions. Am I wrong?”
She smiled as she said it. But the smile was nothing like any she had shown before—chilling, uncanny, the kind of expression that reached past instinct and touched some more primitive fear.
“Did you know? I already gave you a chance. And you refused it.”
She lifted a hand. A warped, keening sound answered, and the space around her began to tremble—so fragile it looked ready to collapse at the lightest touch.
Only then did a group of figures step out of the shadows she had been watching. Every face was hidden behind a black mask, and a murderous aura rolled off them in waves.
“Come quietly and nothing has to happen.”
The masked man forced the words out, crushing down the anxiety and terror boiling up from his gut. The smile on Seo-ah’s lips only deepened.
“And why should I?”
“Because…”
Even you don’t want to die, do you?
The masked man drew the sword at his hip and lofted the tired threat. Behind him, the others produced weapons of their own—one after another. Swords. Sabers. Spears. Chain-scythes. Talismans. Gauntlets. Weapons so thoroughly mismatched that any notion of consistency was a joke; each one was pure personal style.
Seo-ah looked them over and let out a long sigh.
“Did that ‘child’ really think the lot of you would be enough to take me?”
She murmured it with genuine incomprehension. The masked figures stirred with a thin, flaring anger—because her muttering made it painfully clear she was looking down on them.
“We know you have a spatial ability. But that ability of yours can’t ‘move,’ can it?”
This time the masked man smiled, thin and ugly.
He knew she possessed a space-type power. He also knew that power could not be used for relocation. Seo-ah had not yet operated as a hero, so the fact was not public. The only people who would know were a handful inside the Hero Association—which meant the masked man was telling her, in so many words, that whoever had ordered her abduction was someone from the Association.
But—
“Mm. That ‘child’ is affiliated with the Hero Association, yes. That doesn’t make them one of the Association’s people, though, does it?”
“…You keep saying ‘child,’ ‘child.’ We must not be thinking of the same person.”
The masked man muttered it half in disbelief. Even being generous, Seo-ah’s appearance put her in her late teens at best—a minor. There weren’t many people a girl like that would call a “child,” so his assumption was hardly unreasonable. Seo-ah had no intention of correcting the misunderstanding.
Besides—
“Did you know? I once tried refining a spirit pill using a Class 2 as material.”
…?
What was she even talking about? Confusion clouded the masked men’s eyes.
“It was better material than an ordinary civilian, sure—but compared to cultivators, there wasn’t much of an advantage.”
“What the hell are you babbling about?”
“Nothing much. Only that people like you—Class 6 to Class 8 at best—aren’t even worth using as ingredients.”
A shiver ran up every spine. The instant their eyes met hers, a cold, crawling terror seized the masked men; a few of them staggered back several steps before they could stop themselves. Seo-ah took a single step toward them instead.
“Ah, you foolish insects. But I won’t call you pitiful. This outcome is the result of your own choice.”
Demonic qi spilled from every inch of her body. A crushing pressure slammed down on every side as if gravity had multiplied by dozens of times. The masked man shouted.
“S-subdue her!”
At the order, his subordinates charged as one, flaring a wild assortment of abilities as they closed on Seo-ah. She regarded them and spoke.
A single word. Nothing more—and the reality it wrote was merciless.
The masked men mid-charge, abilities still blooming, folded the instant that single word dissolved into the air. Folded at the waist, upper bodies pressed flush against lower, crumpled into the literal meaning of the word. The sole survivor was their leader, who had given the order and watched from the rear—and that sole survivor was shaking with a terror that had no room left for belief.
“Did you know? I already know everything. Who tried to have me abducted through you. What purpose the abduction was meant to serve. And what that kidnapper truly is—among other things.”
“…Damn it—!”
Spitting a curse at the incomprehensible words and the girl walking calmly toward him, the masked man turned and fled.
He was a Class 6 ability user, a villain whose power was Refraction. The reason his now-folded subordinates had been able to hide in the shadows at all was that same power—bending light to deceive one of the human senses, sight. He pushed that ability to its absolute limit and vanished.
“Your ability is useful, I’ll give you that. If you can refract light, you can also gather it to a single point—and if you can do that, you could make a laser all by yourself, without anyone’s help, couldn’t you?”
But—
“No matter how good an ability is, if the person using it is incompetent, it’s worthless. There’s a saying in Korea for that, you know? Pearls on a pig’s neck.”
Her voice, bright and innocent, floated from right behind him. The masked man was losing his mind. He had pushed his power to its limit and erased every trace of himself. He had already put kilometers between himself and the alley where he’d faced her—and still the distance to that chattering girl never grew.
Or perhaps that was only natural. A mere Class 7 ability user—a minor who’d only just become a hero—had slaughtered his entire squad with a single word, in the most grotesque fashion imaginable.
That’s a monster! A monster!
A girl who still looked like a late teenager? Class 7? An ability that only distorted space to block or redirect attacks—that was supposed to be all she had?
“Don’t give me that crap!”
He screamed it. If he survived this—if he escaped that monster’s hands—he would kill the client who had hired them for this job. Or maybe the whole thing had been a trap aimed at them from the start, a borrowed-knife scheme by a rival organization to wipe them out cleanly. But uncovering the truth of the commission, and taking revenge for it, were both things he could only do if he lived. Right now he had to focus on running from the monster.
And yet—
“Why! Why is this happening!”
He howled it. No matter how hard he ran—ran and ran and ran again—before he knew it he was back in the same alley where he had first met the monster. He couldn’t understand it. It made no sense. How was this even possible? It was as if the space itself had twisted, and no matter how he moved he could never leave the place where he’d started—
“C-could it be…?”
“You’re a little slow on the uptake.”
A chill shot through him. Her voice came from directly behind his back. He spun and slashed in a panic.
The blade cut the empty air with a sharp whistle.
But—
“What are you doing?”
Her voice drifted in from far away. At the same time, he realized no one had ever been standing behind him at all.
And with that—
“Spatial distortion. Yes… that would explain it.”
Why he could never leave this space no matter how he ran. Why the monster’s voice, from so far away, sounded as if it were right at his ear. Sound was vibration traveling through the air—through space. Distort that space, and making a voice seem to come from directly behind someone was trivial. The fact that he could never escape no matter how hard he ran was explained the same way: the space had already been warped.
“Ha… haha. Shit. I never should’ve taken this job.”
He laughed, hollow. It had felt wrong from the start. Paying that kind of money to kidnap a mere Class 7—a late-teen minor? A rival faction’s borrowed-knife scheme? No. This wasn’t that. The organizations that had scores with him were all small-time trash; none of them could have fielded a monster like this.
While he was thinking it, Seo-ah appeared in front of him as if she had always been there.
“One correction. That ‘child’ didn’t know either. The large sum was simply proof of how important kidnapping me was to them this time.”
What, mind reading now too? Was there anything this monster couldn’t do? At this rate she was practically on the level of the Nine Villains.
“Not quite. Those poor kids may look like absolute beings by your standards, but comparing them to me is a bit much.”
However fondly Seo-ah thought of her nine poor kids, equating herself with children who were only Golden Core and Nascent Soul was, frankly, unfair.
The masked man answered her.
“You little monster. Just kill me.”
“I was going to anyway. If I take any longer, the kids will start to worry.”
She smiled brightly at his words.
And at the same time—
Space compressed. In an instant the masked man’s body became a sphere of meat.
Seo-ah took a bite of that meatball and murmured,
“I suppose I’ll have to put off the visit until tomorrow.”
And with that, she was gone.