Not Everyone Is Like You
Just as the massive rally was winding down, the villain Kid G made his appearance.
What followed was the bomb-terror scare he set in motion, and the stampede of people screaming as they fled in pure panic.
It was the kind of spectacle the press lived for. By the next morning, every newspaper and news broadcast had seized on the incident and plastered it across their headlines.
In truth, for all the talk of a "bomb terror," there had been no bomb at all — nothing more than a trivial little spectacle that ended almost as soon as it began. The reason the whole affair exploded into fame was something else entirely.
Hundreds of people had witnessed Valkyrie's heroic act with their own eyes, and the cameras had captured every second of it.
In the middle of what everyone believed was a live bomb falling toward them, Valkyrie had spread her wings, wrapped her entire body around the crate, and soared upward — and that image went viral overnight.
She had already been rising as a star within the Hero Union: kind to everyone she met, and thoroughly capable of putting villains down. Now she was being held up as the very model of what a hero should be — a young woman who had risked catastrophic injury to herself for the sake of civilians, clutching a bomb crate as she flew into the sunset sky.
From the previous evening onward, Twitter trends had been completely overrun by anything related to her — Valkyrie, Valkyrie's identity, and more. Testimony from people she had helped only poured fuel on the fire, and overnight she became a bona fide celebrity.
And there was one more name riding the wave right behind her.
After Valkyrie, the name on everyone's lips was mine.
Being the ringleader of the so-called bomb scare made that inevitable, of course — but what really kept people talking was the contents of the crates they had mistaken for bombs.
The news kept replaying footage of rally participants receiving the gifts I had left them, weeping with gratitude and singing my praises, along with interviews from the scene.
The papers and networks, careful of their own positions, all took a hard line against me. The people at the rally, though, backed me without reservation. Online, public opinion split cleanly down the middle.
Just another villain no different from the rest, a thief who dealt in vigilante justice… or a righteous outlaw.
With the world's attention fixed squarely on the hero Valkyrie and the villain Kid G, the day turned to afternoon. I walked through a university campus so peaceful it might as well have belonged to another planet, heading for the building that held my lecture hall.
As I drew near, I spotted a striking beauty with long black hair cascading down her back, slumped on an outdoor bench in obvious exhaustion, waiting for time to pass.
"Wow. You look wiped out. Almost like someone who went through something that would exhaust body and soul yesterday."
"...!"
The moment she heard my voice, Eun Seol shot to her feet, snatched my wrist, and marched off somewhere at a brisk stride.
"Ow! Ow! My wrist — it's going to snap! Ow!"
"......"
She hauled me behind a deserted building like a sack of luggage and shoved me hard against the wall.
Wham—!
Then she drove her fist into the stone right beside my face.
She hadn't even fully opened her power, and still the masonry dented in the shape of her knuckles.
"What the hell are you?"
"As you can see, Lee Yechan — lively first-year freshman at Seoul Hero Academy."
"Don't give me that crap!"
Her voice dropped into a register I had never heard from her before — raw, genuinely furious, and ice-cold.
But those passionate red eyes weren't full of anger. They trembled with confusion and unease.
"What the hell are you? What are you thinking? Why do you keep pulling stunts like that? What's your goal? What do you even want?"
As much of a justice-obsessed hardliner as Eun Seol was, even she must have felt, after yesterday, that I was not the same as every other villain. For someone who had always measured the world with a single ruler — Hero Union and government equal good, villains equal evil — watching the rally crowd praise me and curse the government must have felt deeply, unnervingly wrong.
And objectively speaking, my actions didn't make much sense from a third-party perspective either.
What kind of villain in the entire world hands out nearly twenty million won per person to three hundred rally-goers? Even heroes don't do that.
"What I want? Nothing particular. As long as things stay peaceful the way they are, I'm fine."
"Then every last scumbag like you should just rot in a cell."
"Oh dear. Still clinging to that closed-minded way of thinking? You saw it yesterday, didn't you? How many people are out there suffering — abandoned, completely ignored by the government, by the corporations it protects, even by the Union and its heroes."
"Th-that's… just something that happens when manpower is limited! Give us a little more time and the Union or the heroes will find a way to take care of those peop—"
"Do you know how much money was in those crates I sent yesterday? Over five billion won. Is the Union going to cover that? Or are the heroes going to chip in out of their own pockets? Plenty of them would refuse to even show up."
"That still doesn't change the fact that what you did was just a crime! That money came from stealing other people's property and fencing it! If we'd only been given more time, we could have worked through the proper channels and supported those people step by step! But no — trash like you uses stolen cash to dazzle people and buy their goodwill, then struts around like some kind of champion of justi—"
"For people who lost their jobs overnight and watched their income vanish, every single day is a war against a bank balance that keeps shrinking. Every moment is stress and pain.
And it isn't just them, is it? People framed for someone else's crimes. People who had their research stolen. And… people who were caught up in an accident through no fault of their own — or whose families were — and can't even get proper treatment."
"......!"
For a split second, Valkyrie's eyes shook violently.
I didn't push any further. No point pretending I knew more than I should.
"When every day is a crisis for people like that, and the government and the Union just stand there with their arms folded and watch… what happens to those people's lives? To them, I'm the hero. Not the government and Union that sit on their hands."
"Don't make me laugh. A villain is a villain. Especially the ones like you who convince themselves they're justice."
"Then tell me, Champion of Justice Valkyrie — if you were in desperate trouble and a villain offered you a hand, would you cut it off without a second thought?"
"Yes. I don't need help from a villain. As if those people would ever help out of genuine goodwill."
"I see. I'll remember that. But not everyone can be like you."
I left it at that and checked the time on my phone.
"Ah. Lecture's about to start. I'll head into the classroom first."
"Hey! Where do you think you're going?! We're not done talking!"
"You should hurry too, Seol. Unless you want a repeat of last time — late to the first class of a required major."
Eun Seol shouted after Lee Yechan as he walked away, but he never turned back. He simply kept going toward the lecture hall.
Left alone for a moment, she replayed his words in her mind.
To those people, he's the hero instead? We're the ones turning our backs on their suffering? Don't make me laugh! We're just following procedure… Those people would understand our position if they—
No matter how hard she tried to convince herself, she couldn't shake the image of the rally-goers weeping with joy the day before.
People embracing each other, tears streaming down their faces, saying they could finally breathe again.
That should have been a gift delivered by heroes like her — not by a villain like Kid G.
And yet the one who had put smiles back on those faces had been Kid G.
Am I… am I really the one who's wrong? Is that bastard Kid G not just some ordinary villain, but something else entirely?
The thought flickered through her mind. She shook her head hard.
No. No way. That guy is still a villain, end of story! He must have greased his tongue pretty well if he thinks he can sweet-talk me into buying that garbage.
Eun Seol never noticed the tiny seed that had already taken root in her heart.