Bars, Beats, and Back-Alley Justice
The rap lesson with Roadkill was more fun than I expected. Matching lyrics to beats and rhythms, then spitting actual bars over them—it all clicked in a way I hadn’t anticipated. Of course, the real starting point was covering famous existing tracks. The idea was to grow familiar with rap by listening to and recreating other songs, internalizing how to ride a beat and layer words on top of it. Discovering your own style came later. Training methods differ from person to person, but since Roadkill claimed this was the most efficient approach, I decided to trust him and follow along.
“Miss Yeri, your tone is genuinely excellent. It pairs especially well with drill beats. If you weren’t already an idol trainee, I would have seriously urged you to pursue rap.”
“Thank you. That means a lot.”
Roadkill’s praise was sincere. He said my low, provocative voice meshed perfectly with dark, weighty drill instrumentals. Honestly, I agreed. I covered his signature song Sxxk That once, and the words just… stuck. Like they belonged in my mouth. Maybe a rapper’s talent had been hiding inside me all along, unnoticed even by myself.
“As for Miss Tasha… her tone is thinner, but her diction is so clean it’s pleasant to listen to. Clean diction naturally improves delivery, and her rhythm sense is solid too…”
“Doesn’t it seem strange for someone with yellow hair and blue eyes to rap in Korean?”
“Haha, fair point. That might be the only real drawback. Then again, it could work in her favor. With a character that unique, I honestly can’t predict how people will react.”
The positive feedback extended to Tasha as well. Her singing ability was somewhat crooked, but her rhythm was bizarrely good. Her punchy, hit-and-run style of rapping suited her surprisingly well. The fact that her pronunciation was clearer than most native Koreans—despite not being Korean—was just a bonus. That crisp articulation was almost certainly the product of forced correction under the Special Task Force mindset that refuses to tolerate even the slightest slurring. Almost no one in the Special Task Force has unstable pronunciation; everything is drilled through intense training. Unclear speech makes rapid reporting difficult during emergency engagements. And the Special Task Force does not take kindly to poor reports. A single mistake can get people killed, so even small details cannot be overlooked. Since Tasha learned Korean from a mother like that, it made sense that her pronunciation didn’t sound foreign at all.
From the overall atmosphere, it seemed both Tasha and I could develop fairly respectable rap skills if we put in the effort. I wondered if the company had calculated even this. Probably not. They had likely begun the rap lessons with zero real expectations. After all, the rapper position in idol groups usually falls to the members who can’t sing. It’s even more pronounced in girl groups. These days more trainees deliberately aim for the rap slot from the start, so it’s slightly less common, but it’s still rare for a genuinely skilled rapper to thrive as an idol.
Which meant we had simply gotten lucky…
“Lucky. Now there’s a word that feels completely out of place with our company.”
When you think about it, the fact that the next debut team—on which the company’s entire future hinges—includes a legendary narrow-eyed character and a space battleship villain is already absurd. And now even Tasha was revealing slightly suspicious traits. At this point there had to be a spiritual water vein running beneath the company building. Luck? In a place like this? No matter how I looked at it, the word simply didn’t fit. Better to consider this a fortunate twist within an otherwise unfortunate situation.
The first day of rap lessons ran surprisingly late. The class itself was so enjoyable that I lost track of time, but once it ended I realized how many hours had passed. As a result, I ended up skipping dinner entirely. Doing this for a living and then missing mealtime was simply unacceptable. After the lesson I complained to Roadkill, asking if we shouldn’t have eaten something earlier. He replied that in this industry it was normal to starve while working once the feel hit. At first I thought he was joking, but when I saw his fellow rapper Danger sighing and nodding beside him, it seemed to be the truth. I had taken him for a decent person, but he was actually a vicious boss who forced people to work on empty stomachs. Still, he promised to be generous once the work was finished, so I avoided total disappointment. Even so, I decided I should avoid future collaborations with Roadkill. I absolutely cannot work while hungry.
“It’s late. You’re really going to walk home? Please, just take the car.”
“No need. It’s late, so I’ll head out on my own. Nothing will happen.”
“Still…”
“We are superhumans. We’ve received considerable training as well.”
“That is true. I overstepped. Still, please be careful. This area isn’t particularly safe.”
As expected, CEO Cha had already asked Roadkill to escort us home. But there was no reason to follow those instructions. Especially on a night like this, when my head felt cluttered, I needed to clear my thoughts.
I had forgotten for a while during the rap lesson, but my situation was far from comfortable.
“It looks even more sinister at night.”
“Indeed. Certainly…”
“Still, it is much better than Russia. There are not many humans brandishing guns on the streets.”
“Is that so? In any case, firearms are illegal in our country.”
“Illegal in name only, is it not?”
“That may be true, but it is still better than if they were legal.”
“Fair enough…”
Once night fell, the neighborhood grew even gloomier. This wasn’t some New York slum, so why did the atmosphere feel like this? Tasha claimed it was far better than Russia, but from the perspective of someone who had lived in modern times, it was simply shocking. To begin with, the existence of a street like this in the middle of Seoul made no sense. Consider Seoul’s land prices. How could this possibly be allowed? The fact that such ominous alleys existed throughout the city was almost certainly the author’s meddling. Although the base genre was entertainment industry, if the story leaned too heavily in one direction it would quickly grow boring. So the author had prepared these stages in advance to utilize the protagonist’s specialty. The protagonist’s most striking trait was, without question, overwhelming combat ability. The ability to gauge the level of idols or trainees through the status window was important, but the element that truly defined the protagonist was combat power. Although retirement due to injury had been part of the backstory, everything had recovered now. The long experience and connections gained from rolling around in the Special Task Force remained intact, making the protagonist the world’s strongest in setting. Therefore, inserting occasional battle scenes through events could refresh the mood.
“I understand the reasoning, but that doesn’t make it any less absurd.”
Yet because of these author-convenient settings, the local residents had to live in fear. Even now. It felt like something was about to—
“H-Help me!”
“Did you hear that?”
“I did.”
Before I could even finish the thought, a scream echoed from that direction. We ran over to find three men who looked like delinquents forcibly dragging a woman away. What terrible timing—chaos on the very first day.
“This bitch is—”
“Ugh!”
“Argh!”
The moment she assessed the situation, Tasha shot forward like a bullet. She began stomping the men with overwhelming force. The ordinary humans, who were not superhumans, couldn’t even regain their senses under her monstrous violence and simply took the beating. It was a truly ridiculous scene. The media made a daily fuss about superhuman crime, but in reality the number of victims from ordinary crimes was overwhelmingly higher. The ratio itself was overwhelming. No matter how you looked at it, the total number of superhumans was limited. Becoming a superhuman did not suddenly increase violent tendencies. Most adapted to society. The crime that had nearly occurred before my eyes was just another common crime by ordinary people. As areas like this increased, the crime rate had grown somewhat higher than in my previous life. That was why I had clicked my tongue and cursed the author.
That aside, Tasha really knew how to throw down. At that level, beating people must have become almost routine for her. Moreover, no matter if you witnessed a crime in progress, instantly rushing in and responding was not easy. Even for a superhuman with outstanding physical ability, without real combat experience it was natural to panic and freeze. Yet from the flow of things, it looked like the situation would resolve without any need for me to step in.
So what was I doing? Observing the victim’s movements. Women who become victims of these crimes usually…
“Ah!”
They abandon the prince on a white horse who saved them and flee, complicating everything. I had similar experiences in my previous life, so I knew how this went. I also knew that if the victim ran away, the person left behind would be treated like an idiot. It seemed the pattern was the same here or there. Of course I understood the panic and fear, but still—what good would that do?
“First, make the police report.”
“…Yes.”
I tripped the woman who was trying to slip away, then urged her to call the authorities. The flustered woman picked up her phone in confusion. After confirming that the men Tasha had beaten were unconscious, I gave her a look. It was time for us to disappear. Following them to the station would only create more annoying complications.
“Did that woman earlier… really try to run away?”
“Yeah. When people panic and get scared, it happens. Not that it’s the right thing to do.”
“Hah. That is something that could never occur in Russia.”
“Really? What’s it like there?”
“Is it not natural to join in and beat those bastards together?”
“Ah… I see. That’s pretty hardcore.”
After running quite a distance from the scene, Tasha asked me about the victim’s behavior, as if she genuinely could not understand it. When I confirmed the woman had tried to flee, she looked shocked. She said it was absolutely impossible in Russia. As expected from Mother Russia. The sturdy women who inherited the spirit of the brown bear.
“Ugh, my stomach is killing me. What kind of day was this?”
Skipping dinner for the rap lesson, then sprinting around right after it ended—my stomach was throwing a full tantrum. It was only natural for it to complain when its owner refused to feed it. Learning unnecessary details about Tasha’s personal history on top of everything else, today felt like nothing but losses. Though the rap lesson itself had been genuinely enjoyable.