The Righteous Villain's Identity Is Exposed
The hero comic I'd been isekai'd into, Heroic Valkyria, had been wildly popular thanks to its gorgeous art and its charming, beautiful heroine, Valkyrie—but it had also been just as thoroughly hated.
For all that the protagonist Valkyrie ran herself ragged, sweat pouring from the soles of her feet, she was never really rewarded for any of it. Instead she was used, again and again, by the very people and things she was trying to protect, and slowly ground down. That kind of arc happened far too often.
In the end, her heart completely broken, Valkyrie fell and became a villain—an enemy—and she was killed by the next generation of heroes she herself had trained.
And those next-generation heroes were then worked to the bone by the same people who had used Valkyrie.
Whether it was for a generational handoff or something else entirely, turning a massively popular protagonist like Valkyrie into a full-blown villain and then killing her off had earned the series an absolute avalanche of hate. I dropped it right at the point where my beloved character died.
And after dropping it… I ended up like this.
I'd been dropped into the absolute earliest stretch of Heroic Valkyria—a little before Valkyrie became a famous star hero, back when she was still just a rising new star.
Once I'd gotten a grip on myself and carefully checked, I found that I had abilities of my own, too.
Cloning—and the Gate-Opening power that could unlock anything.
There were various restrictions, sure, but after thinking through how to put my two given abilities to use, I came to a conclusion.
These powers exist for theft!
I had zero intention of living for the sake of the powers the heroes were trying to protect—corporations, the government, that sort of thing.
Those people had already been pretty thoroughly rotten back in my original world, but in the world of Heroic Valkyria, the corporations and the Korean government were rotten to the core—worse than any villain.
So I decided to punish those pieces of trash before they could destroy my precious Valkyrie.
Using my Gate-Opening ability, I slipped through even the tightest security with ease and reached their vaults. With my clones I escaped or manufactured alibis while I cleaned out their assets.
The wealth I took, I redistributed to the victims who'd been hurt by the corporations' and government's dirty tricks… and whatever was left, I kept as a little living money.
That was the life of a righteous thief!
A just and proper robber!
Just stealing alone wasn't stylish enough, so I even gave myself a codename.
There was that famous phantom thief from a certain detective manga, Kaito Kid… but lifting him wholesale felt a bit much, so I flipped the word order and abbreviated it into something more codename-like: Kid G.
A thief of justice who looted the fortune of the kind of bastard who squeezed 100 out of the weak and turned it into 200—returned 100 to the victims, and put the remaining 100 to good use however he saw fit.
That was who I was, living in the Republic of Korea of Heroic Valkyria.
And the most decisive reason I came to live as Kid G—
The hero Valkyrie. Real name: Eun Seol.
"I can't believe it. You, who were once so just and pure, choosing to turn against the government, the corporations—even our Hero Union itself… Valkyrie. No. Dark Valkyrie, now. Can't you come to your senses, even at this late hour?"
"The ones who need to come to their senses are you! Those bastards only ever used my devotion! Do you even know what those pieces of trash did to my little sister?!"
"No matter who the other party is, if you're going to punish them, you do it fairly, under the law. Trying to settle things by illegal means only makes you another criminal… That's what you always taught us. Are you rejecting even your own words now?"
"Pfft… Ahahahaha! Yeah. There was a time when I was that naive. Just like all of you now. No! I was wrong! I didn't know there were trash who sit above the law and play with it! But I know now! Those things… never change unless you put a blade right against their throats!"
"You've fallen as far as a person can fall, Dark Valkyrie. As heroes who grew up admiring you and learning under you, we will at least deal with you ourselves—before you become any uglier."
"Fine. So you'll stay as the damn government's dogs, is that it? Then I'll kill you all with a clear conscience!"
And in that battle, after a desperate fight, Valkyrie was defeated by the next generation of heroes she had raised, and she died still cursing and hating the government and the Union to the very end.
I never wanted to see my precious Valkyrie go through that again. I wanted to save her.
In this era, she was still the Hero Union's rising, green young star hero—the justice-filled Valkyrie the Korean government hoped to make its future face.
After that, I operated as Kid G, scattering crime notices before I stole.
Every time, Valkyrie came to stop me, but she still hadn't figured out my powers, so she failed again and again.
She ground her teeth, swearing she'd catch me somehow—but like every detective-and-thief manga or novel, she hadn't even begun to guess my identity.
And yet…
"Wha—?! You… you bastard, Kid G! I've got you!"
On March 2nd, the day of the entrance ceremony at Seoul Hero Academy—where ability users went—some woman said that and grabbed me.
I spun around in shock, and a black-haired woman so beautiful it stole the breath from my lungs had hold of my wrist, eyes blazing.
Long hair falling all the way down her back. Passionate red eyes.
Those eyes, which would normally have been soft, had gone razor-sharp as they fixed on me. She watched me like a predator that had just seized its prey and refused to look away.
Eun Seol. Hero name: Valkyrie.
The protagonist of this Heroic Valkyria world I was living in.
Certain I was Kid G, she pressed me hard.
"You damn bastard, I've finally got you! You're not getting away! I'm turning you over to the Union for punishment—"
For an ability user of Eun Seol's level, the effects of a Recognition Deterrent Chip dropped off sharply as a matter of course. The moment she saw me, she'd seen straight through my identity.
"Who are you, and why are you doing this all of a sudden? Kid what? What even is that?!"
My heart had dropped through the floor, but I forced myself calm again and soothed myself down inside.
I knew everything about Valkyrie and Eun Seol. She knew nothing about me.
A villain named Kid G hadn't even existed in the original work.
"You're going to play dumb?! Build, face shape, voice, even the features that stuck out past the mask—it's all exactly Kid G! Who do you think you're fooling?!"
No… in worlds like this, when you've got a detective and a thief, the basic rule is supposed to be face blindness—they can walk right in front of each other and never notice. Right?
Even the Kaito Kid from the manga I'd watched could get by with nothing but a pair of glasses and a mask that barely looked like he was trying to hide, and nobody ever recognized him!
I kept denying it anyway.
"What even is this Kid G thing in the first place?! Who are you, that you'd pin something like this on someone you've never met before today?!"
"You're the one who cleaned out the Chilseong Construction chairman's collection two days ago!"
Perfect. She'd just handed me an escape hatch herself.
I shook her arm off and shouted.
"Two days ago I was home all day playing games! If you keep spouting nonsense like this, I'm filing a police report for defamation and submitting a formal complaint!"
The second I pushed hard that I'd been home at the time of the crime and even brought up pressing charges, Eun Seol's momentum wavered just a little.
"D-don't lie. That day, on the roof of the Chilseong Construction building, I saw you with my own two eyes—"
"I have game play records still sitting there, so what lie are you talking about?! And who are you, for that matter? Who are you to just grab a person's arm, shake them around, and try to pin them as some weirdo, huh?!"
Eun Seol had no clear proof that I was Kid G, so she was starting to look away.
Of course she couldn't answer.
Publicly, she was still hiding the fact that she was Valkyrie.
"I—I'm… on a Hero Union internship, so I was at the scene! I'm sure you—"
"The Hero Union? The Heeerooo Uniion? So what you're saying is, a Hero Union intern is, on the very first day of the university entrance ceremony, pointing at a freshman and treating them like a criminal—straight-up threatening them?
Power really does make people thugs, doesn't it? No, wait—not even power. You're just an intern, and you're already acting like the Union President. Abuse of authority, already muscle memory for you?
I cannot stand for this. Incoming students! Incoming students, get over here and look at this! A so-called Hero Union intern is framing an innocent person and turning them into a criminal—oh no, oh no!"
"A-a-are you crazy?! Be quiet!"
"People of the world, I'm so wronged I can't even live! The whole world is calling me a villain—a villain! What even is this Kid-whatever thing? I'm filing a formal complaint for defamation.
Someone film this! Call every news outlet! Post it all over the internet that a Hero Union intern is framing people and pinning crimes on them!"
"Urgh… W-won't you be quiet?! Get over here!"
Once I started making a scene, Eun Seol's face went bright red, and before more people could pile in she hurriedly hauled me out of the entrance-ceremony auditorium for a moment.
Once we'd rounded a corner into a place with no one around, Eun Seol glanced left and right to make sure we were alone, then quietly asked me,
"You… you're really not Kid G?"
"I keep asking you who Kid G even is. Why do you keep talking like only you know what that means? Are you some kind of otaku?"
"What… ugh… Y-you're really not…?"
"How many times are you going to make me say the same thing?"
"Uuugh… F-fine. Okay."
Without hard evidence, Eun Seol still couldn't drop her suspicions—but she accepted my words with extreme, extreme reluctance and started to leave.
I called after her from behind.
"Hey."
"…?"
"You framed an innocent person as a villain and you're just going to walk off without even apologizing?"
"Huh…?"
"That was unpleasant, so apologize. Now."
"But seriously, no matter how I look at you—"
"Oh? You're not going to apologize? I really will dump this all over the internet, you know?"
"Kh… I—I—I'm sorry…"
"Sorry for what?"
Eun Seol's expression twisted into such a masterpiece that it was a crime I couldn't take a photo of it.
This is all for your sake, so just bear with it a little.
"Urgh… For… f-for pinning you as a v-villain and… th-threatening you…"
"As long as you understand, don't do it again. I'll let it slide this once."
With a face on the verge of a volcanic eruption, Eun Seol hurriedly left.
After that lightning-bolt encounter with her, I rubbed my arm—still red where she'd gripped it—and clicked my tongue.
"Tsk. Grabbing an innocent person out of nowhere and pinning stuff on them…"
Eun Seol knowing my identity in itself wasn't a problem. Her dragging me off to prison, on the other hand, was.
If I'd confessed to being Kid G right there, she would have hauled me straight down to the underground cells at Union headquarters.
From the looks of it, I'd be seeing her face almost every day from now on—and since she'd already recognized me, it seemed I'd have no choice but to reveal my identity to her sooner than planned.
As long as it didn't land me in prison.
Once Eun Seol was gone, I scrolled through the social news on my phone, scouting my next target.
"Cheonok Logistics, those trash… They broke their promise to convert people to full-time and forced every last one of them into recommended resignations? Tomorrow I'm cleaning those bastards out."
I took out my spare burner phone and sent a crime notice to Cheonok Logistics.