Prologue: What the Hell Is an Idol Trainee Doing?
Before throwing myself into the operation, I gave my outfit one last check. Black tights, a dark brown field jacket, and specially customized gray work boots. Yeah, this should be plain enough. In my right hand I held a titanium arming sword. Easy to carry, tough as hell—my favorite piece of gear by far. And finally, the mask. Every time I put on this ridiculous thing it filled me with pure self-loathing. Anyone with a functioning brain would probably feel the same. If they had even an ounce of sense, they wouldn’t be caught dead walking around in a mask this insane. But hiding my identity meant this kind of camouflage was non-negotiable. I had to cover my face with something, and nothing beat this one for comfort, so I didn’t exactly have options. On top of that, the absurd design hid ridiculously high performance, a cursed object that inspired equal parts admiration and despair. Whenever I caught myself genuinely impressed by a mask like this, it felt like I’d lost something precious as a human being. Still, I had to admit there was no viable replacement.
“Damn it, can they at least change the damn design?”
I shoved that impossible wish aside and scanned the operation zone. My assigned sector was the second floor of the five-story building straight ahead—the exact spot where all the hostages were being held. One slip-up and people would die. Not exactly ideal.
“Sector 3, acknowledged.”
The instant the infiltration order dropped I crouched low and closed in on the building. I sprinted to the pre-planned spot and launched myself forward without hesitation.
—BOOM!!!
Small as it was, this cutting-edge building had been wrapped entirely in superpower-resistant reinforced glass. Superpowers couldn’t punch through the windows to gain entry. That meant physical force was required, so I used an extremely primitive method—firing metal balls—to shred the reinforced pane.
I slipped between the brutally shattered shards of the massive window and landed lightly. My eyes swept the interior in a rapid scan. Hostages huddled together in a tight cluster. Villains surrounding them like bodyguards, guns trained and ready. The sudden roar had clearly startled them; every single gaze snapped toward me.
“Fuck!!”
There was zero chance the villains would simply watch a brazen intruder who had just smashed through their window in plain sight. Incomprehensible curses exploded from every direction as their gun muzzles began spewing fire.
But they were already too late. If they wanted to stop me, they should have opened fire the exact moment those metal balls ripped the glass apart.
“...Insane.”
I cleanly sliced the bullets spinning uselessly in midair—as if something had crushed their momentum—with the flat of my blade, then charged forward instantly. The villain whose eyes had gone wide as saucers had his waist split open in one smooth cut.
“Aargh!”
After dropping the first, I sprang off the floor again, driving my sword straight into the chest of another idiot who had resumed pointless shooting.
“Guh!!”
This time I launched myself in an L-shaped trajectory and carved through yet another. By now the place had descended into total pandemonium. Some villains ditched their guns for knives. Others grabbed hostages and started screaming demands. Looked like they planned to use the hostages as bargaining chips.
“Fuck! Don’t move!!”
I don’t negotiate with villains. In the worst-case scenario, abandoning the hostages temporarily to wipe out every last villain would save more lives in the end. I understood that better than anyone. So no matter what they tried, I acted like I didn’t care and simply cut them down one by one, methodically.
“Damn it!!”
One hot-headed villain started shooting at the hostages. Apparently he’d decided stopping me was worth a few dead civilians. But that decision only shortened his own lifespan. I had already run every calculation and was simply waiting for exactly this kind of impulsive stupidity.
The agitated villain aimed at a hostage and pulled the trigger, but the muzzle suddenly twisted—courtesy of me—and put a bullet straight into another villain’s body. The scene descended into even greater chaos thanks to that unexpected team-kill.
“Ha...”
How much time had passed? The only person still standing properly in this bloodbath was me. Every villain who had been guarding the floor now lay sprawled as corpses in gruesome heaps. Yet somehow all the hostages remained unharmed. I could honestly call that luck. I’d been assigned here because I was the best at handling sudden variables, but even I couldn’t have stopped it if they had all opened fire on the hostages at once. After that first team-kill, though, the hostages became an afterthought, letting me protect them with surprising ease.
“Is this really the right thing...?”
Everything had gone according to plan. I’d rescued the civilians safely—luck included—and eliminated every villain. Yet as I stood in an office painted red with blood, staring at the villains’ bodies rolling in puddles of gore, I couldn’t help wondering if this was truly correct.
Sector 1. Cleared.
Sector 2. Clear clear~
Sector 4. Taken care of.
Reports from the other sectors were flooding in. Looked like they had wrapped up cleanly too.
Sector 3. Please respond. Sector 3. Yeri, what are you doing right now?
My colleagues were pressing me for a report while I stood there hesitating, thoughts dragging on longer than they should. A sigh was all I could manage.
“Ha, life really...”
Honestly, that’s what I wanted to ask. What the hell am I doing right now? It only made sense. After all... I was an idol trainee.