The Space Battleship Dream
The driver Yu Hana assigned me was kinder than I expected. He looked like a thug straight out of a mountain bandit movie, but he turned out to be surprisingly gentle. Still, his professionalism matched his kindness—he dodged every subtle question I slipped in about Yu Hana with practiced ease. Of course, I never expected to uncover her true identity that easily, but it was a little disappointing.
Ji Seoeun decided to move into the dorm right away. My original plan was to send her home for the night and ask about the incident tomorrow once she settled in, but when she said she’d come straight here, I didn’t argue. Her only family was an older sister who was already in the States, so the house would be empty anyway. There was no reason to stop someone who wanted to move in early.
It was strange that young Ji Seoeun hadn’t followed her sister abroad, but it’s basic manners not to pry into someone else’s family business. Everyone has their own circumstances.
Once we reached the dorm, the first thing I did was wash up. I hadn’t gotten a single drop of blood on me, but I still felt gross and wanted to clean off. Ji Seoeun, on the other hand, had unnecessarily covered herself in the stuff, so hygiene came first.
“How the hell are you so clean?”
“It’s basic.”
“...Amazing.”
If you couldn’t manage at least that much, you had no business carrying a Special Task Force badge. When you fight those bastards, cleanliness becomes an obsession. Everything that sprays out of them is toxic, so getting their blood on you means taking unnecessary damage.
In the early days, before we learned that lesson, we suffered meaningless casualties. Agents would return looking perfectly fine, only to writhe in agony and drop dead a few days later. It was like an occupational disease. After getting tormented by them long enough, your body instinctively learned to deflect any foreign substances coming your way. In my case, I simply repelled them with force.
Thanks to that, I hadn’t let a single drop touch me during today’s brawl. Ji Seoeun seemed genuinely impressed by it. Well, it isn’t easy to worry about staying clean while fighting that dirty. The whole thing was hard to explain, so I just laughed it off.
After we both cleaned up properly, I made some warm cocoa. The frantic night had killed my appetite, leaving me craving only sweets. Ji Seoeun seemed to feel the same—she didn’t ask for anything. We could rest for now and grab dinner together once our heads cleared. Since she was living here now, I’d have to feed her eventually anyway.
“Let’s talk. I have questions.”
“Ask away.”
With my mind and body steadied by the warm cocoa, I eased into it. I really was curious. Why had she been held captive there like that?
The answer that followed was absurd. How should I put it? It was a reason I genuinely could not have imagined.
“So… guns? You made guns and sold them?”
“...Correct.”
“Wait, what the—”
“I didn’t make the bullets, though.”
“Oh, how incredibly conscientious of you. Then those things the guys were carrying earlier…”
“The ones I sold.”
“...I see.”
My head was already throbbing. Selling guns to villains. She’d been captured because she tried to make a direct deal with them. I had no idea what to say in a situation like this.
“Where did you even get the guns? Don’t tell me you made them yourself?”
“...Correct.”
“You’re not running a gun factory, so… is it your superpower? Materialization?”
“Bingo.”
“...This is insane.”
Materialization is a superpower similar to crafting abilities. However, creating anything requires an incredibly complex process, so I’d heard that very few people ever truly master it. The first step is perfectly understanding the target object’s operating principles and structure—and most people fail right there.
Frankly, even grasping the structure of a common pebble isn’t easy. On top of that, it isn’t free; the materials are consumed exactly as they would be in normal manufacturing. The actual creation happens instantly, like printing from a machine, but that doesn’t mean you can just spit things out endlessly.
Psychic energy has its limits, so mass production in one go is impossible. That’s why, for anything that already exists, it’s far more efficient to let factories handle it. This isn’t some post-apocalyptic wasteland—existing items are already mass-produced efficiently. There’s no point in using superpowers for them.
Making one or two items is feasible, but perfectly analyzing an object’s structure and principles just for that is a complete waste of time. In that sense, the real value of Materialization lies in researching and creating things that don’t yet exist.
Instantly manifesting whatever you imagine without any special manufacturing process is incredible. Once you succeed, you can build a mass-production system around it. That’s why research labs around the world are full of superhumans with this ability, all desperately trying to create something—anything.
But that’s not easy either. It’s literally creation from nothing. How do you understand the structure and principles of something that doesn’t exist yet? This is where what people call “inspiration” comes in, and that’s a fickle thing.
If inspiration came easily, all those artists wouldn’t have driven themselves mad with alcohol and drugs. In that regard, firearms are an incredibly attractive subject for people with Materialization. The structure, principles, and even materials are relatively simple, yet the value is high.
Even in small quantities, guns could bring in decent money. Gun smuggling is something every materialization user considers at least once. But knowing about it and actually doing it are two different things. A normal person wouldn’t find it easy to manufacture firearms and sell them to villains.
Yet this girl had simply gone and done it.
“The problem is that it’s illegal. A serious felony. The reason they’re so expensive is precisely because they’re illegal.”
“Low-quality thermal weapons that anyone and everyone peddles. If it wasn’t me, someone else would have sold them anyway.”
“That may be true, but…”
She wasn’t wrong. If villains decided they wanted guns, they’d get them one way or another. Ever since superhumans appeared, even organized crime groups made sure to acquire firearms. It was a matter of survival.
That’s why guns were easier to obtain in our country these days than most people realized. But that was their business. If it ever came out that a freshly debuted idol had been running a gun-smuggling operation, the fallout would be catastrophic. The very fact that this had happened at all was bizarre. This wasn’t Gotham City, for crying out loud.
And watching Ji Seoeun talk about selling guns to villains without the slightest hint of remorse made me wonder what the hell was wrong with her. Ha. Was everyone in the crafting world like this? Now that I thought about it, Professor G had always been the same—ethics and human casualties be damned, as long as the goal was achieved.
That final suicide mission had been his idea too. It was a mental landscape normal people like me could never understand.
“So if you were selling guns, the goal was money?”
“Correct. I needed war funds to achieve my grand dream.”
“What kind of dream requires selling guns to fund it?”
People like this always have a clear objective when they do insane things. Professor G, the poster child for this type, never acted without purpose. So I asked what kind of thinking led to selling guns, and she answered that it was for her dream.
A dream. Such a nice word. But what kind of dream would make someone sell guns?
I usually avoided prying into personal matters, but since we’d come this far, I wanted to hear it. When I asked what the dream was, instead of answering, she suddenly stood up with an utterly serious expression and began to sing.
“Bum bum bum~ bum ba bum~ bum ba bum~”
“...What are you doing?”
I knew the song. It was so famous it would be harder not to recognize it. The theme from the blockbuster Star Wars—the Imperial March, famously known as Darth Vader’s theme.
But in the middle of a serious conversation, I had no idea what this was supposed to mean. And it wasn’t a joke. Ji Seoeun’s face as she played the melody with her mouth was deadly serious, almost reverent.
By the time her hummed rendition of the Imperial March finished, I had reached a conclusion.
This girl was definitely not normal either. No, she might actually be worse than Yu Hana. At least Yu Hana was suspicious but still comprehensible. With Ji Seoeun, I couldn’t tell what the hell she was thinking at all.
“My dream is to materialize a space battleship.”
“Ah, a space battleship. So that’s why Star Wars…”
Selling guns to raise war funds so she could eventually build a space battleship. If she actually succeeded, it would be a miraculous return on investment. The problem was that it was absolutely impossible.
Never mind whether she had the ability to build one—the capital required alone was insane. Even if the entire nation bought guns from her, she still wouldn’t have nearly enough.
This kid was completely broken.
At this point, I lost all desire to ask anything else. What was the point of questioning someone who was clearly out of her mind?
The real problem was that this girl would be my teammate for the next several years. She was already tangled up with me because of Dr. Oh, so I couldn’t exactly get rid of her. That meant I had to figure out how to handle her and keep her from causing disasters.
“So becoming an idol was also for the war funds?”
“Idols are the best for making one big score and getting out fast, it is.”
“Who told you that?”
“The casting manager.”
“Ah, I see.”
So she was still planning to debut as an idol. Her motives were impure, but honestly, mine weren’t exactly pure either.
“If you’re going to make a big score as an idol, you need to be careful. Especially, you absolutely cannot sell guns or anything like that. You know it’s illegal, right?”
“I know. I won’t do it anymore.”
“Good. And if you’re thinking about making anything else to sell, please tell me in advance.”
“Understood.”
For some reason, she was more cooperative than I expected. Maybe there was hope after all?
She was clearly mentally unusual, but the entertainment industry was already packed with abnormal people. When dealing with humans who caused chaos in every possible way, someone like Ji Seoeun—with her firmly established personal world—might actually be easier to manage. As long as she could be controlled at all.
She had honestly confessed her situation and, for some bizarre reason, seemed to follow my lead. It was probably because my rescue today had left a strong impression. Otherwise, there was no explaining why she was suddenly listening so obediently to someone she had treated as nonexistent just yesterday.
Well, being kidnapped would be traumatic.
I had no idea what the achievement meant, but it was clear Ji Seoeun felt favorably toward me. After all, she was the only person who would call me “older sister.”
Well, good is good. From the looks of it, no one else seemed capable of controlling that girl anyway.
“I really hope this is the end…”
Yu Hana and Ji Seoeun. After getting hit in the back of the head twice in a row, I was starting to get suspicious of the other members too.
“Nah, no way.”
Unless there was a vein of pure misfortune running under the company building, there couldn’t possibly be more people like them. I decided to stop thinking useless thoughts and just rest. Between the Dr. Oh incident and everything else, I was mentally exhausted.