Noodles, Complaints, and Phantom Probes
After we all finished lunch with noodles, the team atmosphere had shifted slightly. It was hard to put into words—nothing had changed dramatically, but the mood felt a little softer than before. Maybe dorm life really did help build teamwork. During breaks in practice, we actually started having real conversations, which was a huge improvement compared to before.
“Today’s recycling is...”
“Who’s doing laundry at dawn?”
“Make sure to check for hair in the bathroom after you use it. If it piles up...”
Even if most of those conversations were just venting about the annoyances that had built up while living together, it was still far better than total silence. Forcing five people who had grown up in completely different environments into one house was bound to create some friction, so this level of conflict felt natural.
“So, our Yeri-yeri, any complaints~?”
“Plenty.”
“Oh, like what?”
“For example, you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. Please stop wandering around naked in the middle of the night. It’s distracting.”
I had complaints too. My roommate had some kind of exhibitionist streak—she refused to wear clothes the moment it was time to sleep.
“Wearing clothes to bed feels stuffy~”
I’d heard the rumors. Some people genuinely found it uncomfortable to sleep in clothes. The reasons varied, but most of them just minimized what they wore at night because it felt restrictive. Still, ditching even underwear and strutting around wasn’t exactly common.
Yu Hana was a stunning beauty, so her sleeping naked would’ve been a heart-pounding event for any guy still equipped with the original parts. But my mental fortitude was far too deep to get worked up over something like that. I’d already been living as a woman for several years now.
Of course, I was still human. When I saw a beautiful female body, I could appreciate it with a gasp or two—not in a sexual way, but more like admiring an elegant work of art. To really move me, though, you’d at least need to bring out Seong Jiyeong or Tasha. Frankly, even Na Yeri wasn’t lacking compared to Yu Hana.
That didn’t mean I’d suddenly developed an interest in men either. Just the thought made my skin crawl, proving my mind was still the same as before. In the end, I was neither here nor there. Maybe I was actually blessed with the perfect idol temperament—there was zero chance of dating scandals breaking out during our activities.
Still, having someone running around naked in the dorm was annoying regardless. It grated on my nerves. It was obviously bad manners too. So I’d voiced my complaint lightly today, but as expected, it didn’t work.
“Aww~ Come on, it’s not a big deal. Don’t get worked up over something so minor and look at this instead.”
On top of that, she smoothly changed the subject. That was Yu Hana for you. Given her habit of turning one conversation into two or more advantages, whatever new topic she’d brought up was probably a rehash of “that thing” from a few days ago.
“What is it this time?”
“This. Looks like a phantom has been appearing regularly in the back alleys of Yeongdeungpo.”
“A phantom... Yeah, those kinds of people exist too.”
“What do you think?”
“What do you mean, what do I think? They’ll get caught eventually.”
What Yu Hana shoved in front of me was a YouTube video. It was from the superhuman-focused channel Psyker Mad. The uploader was passionately claiming that the phantom known as Black Yaksha, who had been active around the back alleys of Yeongdeungpo recently, was no ordinary vigilante.
Phantoms. With the world in chaos, all sorts of weirdos were running around. The Superhuman Bureau defined villains as superpowered criminals and their accomplices, but reality was more varied. From livelihood-type villains who controlled a district and profited like old-school gangs, to psychopath villains who committed murder and violent crimes for no reason at all—every criminal was lumped under the villain label.
In that sense, phantoms were a special kind of criminal. The villains people called phantoms only targeted other villains, not ordinary citizens. There was something cool about it. Hunting or eliminating villains gave off the same vibe as Unseen Hero or Dark Knight. That was why they were called “phantoms” instead of villains.
But a villain was still a villain. This country didn’t allow private sanctions. Even though self-defense and justifiable acts were interpreted more broadly when the target was a villain, that didn’t mean you could just go around killing them. So when phantoms got caught, they usually faced one of two outcomes. If their crimes were serious, they went to prison or faced execution like any other villain. If the crimes were minor, they were forcibly conscripted by the Superhuman Bureau to serve their sentence that way.
My forced conscription in the first timeline was similar to the second case. In my opinion, those phantom guys were complete idiots. If they really wanted to hunt villains, they should just join the Special Task Force or the security forces. I couldn’t understand why they insisted on hiding their identities to do this.
Of course, the public overwhelmingly supported phantoms over the Special Task Force or security forces. The latter were still public servants, and public servants had to be cautious with their actions. But phantoms openly went after villains, so ordinary citizens couldn’t help but get excited. It was a strange phenomenon where the security forces got criticized for being too slow even when they caught criminals, while phantoms got cheered as real-life heroes.
In that sense, being a phantom seemed somewhat worthwhile—except for one critical problem. It didn’t pay. The Special Task Force at least gave you a salary. What the hell were these guys doing?
No matter how I looked at it, the phantom gig had no future. Plus, it was a seasonal business. What kind of era were we living in? Even if you wanted to hide your identity, it wasn’t easy. Especially in a country like ours, where cameras were everywhere and resident registration was strictly enforced. Look at this video—someone managed to film them openly fighting villains. No matter how much they covered their face with a mask, how long could they really stay hidden?
That was why most phantoms quietly disappeared within a few months. This Black Yaksha would probably follow the same path.
“But I heard they’ve already been active for several months. Look at this. Doesn’t it seem like they won’t get caught easily?”
“They’re definitely not ordinary. But still, that kind of thing can’t last forever.”
The Black Yaksha in the video was certainly skilled. You could say they actually knew how to fight. If that person got caught and forcibly conscripted, the seniors in the Special Task Force would probably like them a lot. That department was always hungry for talent. But whether a phantom could continue their activities had nothing to do with combat ability. None of the phantoms who had been caught so far had been taken down because they lacked fighting skills. Just getting filmed on camera already meant they were finished.
Psyker Mad had around two million subscribers. Because of the nature of public servants, the more an issue blew up, the stronger the security forces became. If things had escalated this much, the security forces were probably already in emergency mode. They’d soon announce the arrest of Black Yaksha and receive a flood of criticism from their fans.
When I honestly shared my thoughts, that damn squinty-eyed girl hit me with an irrefutable counterexample.
“Then what about Golden Roll and Gray J?”
“Those two are different.”
She was talking about Golden Roll and Gray J, who had been repeating the phantom gig for several years now. In an industry where the average activity period didn’t even reach three months, these two outstanding phantoms had managed to continue for years. But they had to be treated as complete exceptions—their abilities were just that broken. Golden Roll’s superpower was teleportation. Gray J’s was complete invisibility. Honestly, with abilities like that, getting caught by the security forces would be the real joke.
“You seem to have a pretty strong aversion to phantoms. Maybe this isn’t the way~”
“You really...”
I’d wondered why she suddenly showed me a phantom video, and sure enough, she’d been testing me. She was really something else. Honestly, Yu Hana walking around naked at night wasn’t even the real problem. The real issue was this. This cunning Yu Hana kept poking at me like this, trying to figure out my true identity. She was probably curious about where my incredible combat skills from before had come from.
I could understand it to some extent. From Yu Hana’s perspective, it must have been completely baffling. Plus, considering her eerily excellent information-gathering abilities, I must have been a complete unknown to her. No matter how much she investigated, nothing would turn up. That was why she’d first tried to confirm whether I was a former “legendary boy soldier.”
The legendary boy soldiers referred to superhumans who had awakened at an abnormally young age and received training. Most of them were assigned to assassination or destruction work. The younger they were, the higher their value, since children drew less suspicion. Of course, no such unethical organization existed in our country. That was something only truly messed-up nations ran—like certain countries in the Middle East, some third-world countries, or those strange kids up north who barely qualified as a country.
So Yu Hana had suspected that before I joined Cha Entertainment—before I turned thirteen—I might have been active somewhere as a boy soldier. My movements after joining Cha Entertainment were relatively clear, so it made sense to suspect the period before that. But even so, bringing up boy soldiers was way over the line. Did Yu Hana really think our country was so broken that it operated boy soldiers? Honestly, it wasn’t that bad.
Anyway, her imagination was unnecessarily impressive. After getting an earful from me for going on about boy soldiers, she’d now pulled out the phantom card. She was suspecting that I was actually a phantom whose identity hadn’t been discovered yet, and that I’d gained real combat experience through phantom activities. Boy soldier, then phantom. She really knew how to pick the things I hated most. Anyone who had even dipped a toe into the Special Task Force couldn’t possibly like those phantom bastards who forced extra work on others. Dealing with those X bastards was already exhausting enough—why the hell would we want to hunt down phantoms too? Just thinking about it made my blood pressure rise.
“Anyway, let’s drop the phantom talk. It’s annoying.”
Looking at it this way, Yu Hana was really two-faced. She paid her friend tax faithfully on the surface, but behind the scenes she kept poking at me like this to uncover my identity. Even the dirty North Korean bastards’ outdated two-faced tactics probably weren’t this sly. Even now, after I’d attached the phantom label I hated so much to myself, she was just sighing instead of getting angry. Not having anything on me was a sin, and in the end, it was all because of that friend tax.
“You’re the one who shouldn’t be saying unnecessary things. Isn’t there something else we actually need to worry about?”
“Ah, that. Hmm, you’re right. Definitely...”
Yu Hana wasn’t the only one who could change the subject. I could do it too. If she kept doubting my identity, I’d only get more tired, so I needed to steer the conversation away quickly. Besides, this was a more serious incident than it seemed. After all, someone had secretly escaped from the dorm.