Another Standoff
Valkyrie looked back and forth between me—bound tight in rope—and the radio, her expression one of pure bewilderment.
"W-What are you saying? Kid G is right here. I just—"
"So what you're saying is the one waltzing around the mansion right now is a damn phantom?! You got paid, so do your job! Get after him and catch him!"
The transmission cut off amid the shouting.
Still so young that she was especially vulnerable to adults berating her, Valkyrie flinched in surprise, blinked a few times, and turned her eyes on her bound captive.
"You… had an accomplice."
"I never once claimed I was working alone."
"Tch…"
When I grinned back at her, Valkyrie's face twisted with rising irritation. She lashed my legs as well so I couldn't run, then bolted straight out into the hallway.
While the clone I'd sent to the second-floor secret room was being captured, the real me headed not for the fifth-floor vault where the safe had originally been, nor for the second-floor secret room, but up to the sixth floor—the private chambers of Cheonok Logistics' CEO.
I turned a stretch of wall into a door, slipped inside with ease, and tapped every locked drawer and cabinet open until I found what I was looking for.
"Bingo."
There were two items. From the drawer of the CEO's fine hardwood desk I carefully lifted out a black pearl necklace, then pulled down the large painting hanging in plain view on the wall behind it—a landscape of mountains, rivers, and open fields, the work of a clearly skilled hand.
In the meantime, the guards who had spotted me heading this way burst through the door and trained their guns on me.
"Don't move! Hands up, right where you are!"
Still holding the oversized landscape painting, I turned to face them. Right behind the men aiming at me, Lee Jeongseok, CEO of Cheonok Logistics, finally stumbled into the sixth-floor room.
The moment he saw what I was holding, he went white with horror, screamed, and roared at the security he'd hired himself.
"No! Don't shoot! Whatever you do, don't shoot that painting!"
"…?"
Valkyrie arrived on the sixth floor right after him.
"No way… Kid G? That's impossible! I just finished tying you up from head to toe—"
With no way of knowing that the me she'd caught on the second floor had been a clone, Valkyrie cried out in pure disbelief.
From here on, I had to choose my words carefully.
I was pulling this stunt for one reason only: to save the future of the Valkyrie I cared about and adored. To punish the people who would one day smear her name and crush her spirit. They weren't exactly clean characters right now, either.
But if I stood in front of men like that and said something like, Oh dear, Valkyrie's handling was so sloppy I got free to run wild like this!, they would pin every last bit of it on her. That would only hurry along the day her heart finally broke.
It was just as important to make sure everyone here understood that Valkyrie had already earned a clear achievement.
I sorted the lines I needed in my head and put on an exaggerated laugh.
"Hahaha, right you are! Honestly, I really thought I was done for this time—caught cold and headed straight for prison! I only made it because that gentleman there radioed you to drop everything and race up to the sixth floor. Do I owe him a thank-you?"
I pointed a finger straight at CEO Lee Jeongseok.
The message was clear: Valkyrie had me properly captured—everything went sideways because of you. Lee Jeongseok's face flushed a furious, near-bursting red.
"Lee Jeongseok, CEO of Cheonok Logistics. This landscape painting and black pearl necklace from your room will be coming with me—Kid G, the thief of justice."
"N-No! Do you have any idea what those are?! That painting is the only remaining work my wife painted while she was alive, and that necklace was the piece she treasured most!"
"The employees of the rival company your industrial spies drove into ruin, the hundreds of people who lost their jobs overnight on a single word from you—they all had families too. If you know how precious your own family is, you should have known everyone else's mattered just as much."
"Money! Is it money you need? I'll give you money!"
"The fact that you think this is about money just proves how far you still have to go. Do you take me for some common thief? All I want is to give you the same sense of loss you tore out of so many other people's eyes."
"I—I was wrong! I'll reverse the decision! Just leave those two things—"
"You should have reversed it sooner."
"Damn it… Valkyrie! Do something!"
"Ah, I'm afraid not. I'd rather not get caught again. You have no idea how terrified I was the last time. I've got what I came for, so I'll be taking my leave."
"Where do you think you're going!"
"Th-That painting—don't you dare!!!"
Valkyrie lunged after me as I tried to flee, but Lee Jeongseok's frantic screaming from behind about not damaging the painting kept her from putting any real force into it. In that opening I touched the floor, made a door, and dropped down to the level below. The moment I landed in an empty room, I teleported to another clone I'd stashed a safe distance away.
KRA-BOOM!
But right before my body finished shifting, the ceiling tore open and Valkyrie came crashing down, having smashed through the floor bare-handed.
"You thought I'd just let you walk?!"
THUD!
Her fist missed me by a hair's breadth and obliterated the fifth-floor floorboards. In the same instant, flying debris slammed into my left arm. The impact hit me at the exact moment the teleport completed, and—
"Uweeegh…"
—I threw up violently the second I arrived.
At my current level, two was the maximum number of clones I could run at once. I could project my will into them perfectly, they looked indistinguishable from the real me, and I could even teleport to their location—an incredible ability. It just came with one massive drawback.
I felt every bit of the energy they burned.
Even leaving a single clone standing still made me get hungry twice as fast, thirsty twice as fast, and tire twice as hard as a normal person. I'd had two of them out, and one of those had been holding a full standoff just to keep Valkyrie fooled…
"Ugh… I'm dying."
Rubbing my left arm, which was already starting to swell an ugly blue-black from the floor debris Valkyrie had smashed, I wrapped the stolen painting, slipped the black pearl necklace into my pocket, and headed home.
Valkyrie, for her part, was in a towering rage of her own.
Lee Jeongseok had thrown a full-blown hysterics over the fact that the goods had still been stolen, throwing a fit about billing her for the sixth- and fifth-floor floors she'd wrecked. At least he hadn't gone so far as to invent some nonsense about her owing a penalty fee because Kid G himself had confirmed she'd caught him and therefore the job was a failure.
But the knowledge that she had clearly captured Kid G, only to lose him because of Lee Jeongseok's radio browbeating, had left Valkyrie wound impossibly tight. Eventually, she snapped.
"So you're saying losing Kid G is somehow my fault?! Kid G himself said it—I already had him! If it hadn't been for that radio call…!"
Hero or not, she hadn't been awakened for long, and she was still young enough to be at that age when every nerve ran raw. She couldn't hold it in. She yelled at her own client, Lee Jeongseok, and stormed out.
Flying home through the sky, fuming, she piled every last scrap of the blame onto Kid G and let the anger stack higher and higher.
Then, once her head had cooled a little, the worry hit her late.
Juyeon unnie is going to kill me…
It wasn't just anyone—she had straight-up shouted at a client who had hired the Union and then walked out on him. By tomorrow, she was guaranteed to get absolutely torn apart by Han Juyeon on the office side.
Valkyrie—Eun Seol—returned to her studio apartment in the foulest mood of her life and tried to sleep, but she only actually drifted off after a long, restless stretch of tossing and turning on the bed.
And the next day.
As Eun Seol was just passing through the main gate of Seoul Hero Academy on her way to class, one particular person caught her eye.
The male classmate from orientation day—the one she had cornered thinking he was Kid G, only for him to turn the whole thing around on her instead.
Eun Seol took a long, careful second look at the boy whose name she still didn't even know.
No matter how many times I look, it's just too perfect…
Face shape, the overall look that had shown under that white mask styled like glasses, height—there wasn't a single detail that didn't match Kid G exactly.
And the boy heading to class with a cast on his left arm was—
Wait. Left arm?!
The second she registered it, Eun Seol sprinted full-tilt and planted herself square in his path.
"Whoa—what is it this time?"
He looked at her like she was a pure nuisance, but Eun Seol had no attention to spare for that.
Last night, right before Kid G vanished, she had seen the debris from the fifth-floor floor she'd smashed hit him in the left arm. And this boy had a cast on the exact same spot where Kid G had been struck.
"You… you bastard, you really are Kid G!!!"
Certain she finally had her lead, Eun Seol shouted it out.
"That settles it! You're Kid G! You're not getting away this time!"
She had seen the debris from the floor she'd smashed hit my arm last night. Playing dumb wasn't going to get me out of this one.
She was always going to find out eventually, sooner or later. The real question had never been whether I got exposed—it was whether that exposure landed me in prison. So I decided to drop the pointless denials.
Besides, even if I admitted it here, she had no way of turning it into actual evidence.
I put on a nasty little smirk, like the protagonist of some thriller detective manga, and leaned my face in close to Eun Seol's.
"Yes. I am Kid G."