The Plot Thickens, and It Stinks
While I was busy filming that commercial with Seong Jiyeong, Yu Hana had been running her own separate investigation into Seou Industries. And today, right after the shoot wrapped up, she called the whole team together, saying her research was finally complete.
The moment we were all gathered, Yu Hana’s face was practically blooming with smiles. This… feels a little ominous.
To me, someone who at least roughly understood her personality, that smile of hers looked way too suspicious. It gave off the distinct vibe that something ridiculously exhausting was about to happen. Somehow, I doubted this would be a simple “punish the evil company” kind of affair.
Unlike Yu Hana’s bright expression, Seong Jiyeong looked strangely downcast. Why is she acting like that all of a sudden? She had seemed a bit tired even during the commercial shoot, so I’d assumed it was just the brutal filming schedule. Apparently it wasn’t that simple.
The briefing began in an already heavy atmosphere.
“First of all, Seou Industries. On the surface they’re listed as a logistics and distribution company, but in reality they’re closer to a private military contractor. They do handle some distribution work, but they make most of their money through all sorts of illegal activities~”
“Illegal services, you mean…”
“You know the type. Showing up at protest sites and causing chaos, or forcibly evicting residents from redevelopment zones. Sometimes they even strong-arm people into selling their land.”
“What a bunch of lowlife trash that don’t even qualify as proper villains.”
Even in a world where superhumans and villains existed, scum like that still thrived. They’d probably stick around as long as society itself did. Still, it was a little strange that people like them were connected to Seong Jiyeong’s father. If he’d truly needed dirty work done, he would have hired real professionals, not these bottom-feeders.
The whole thing didn’t add up, so I found myself glancing at Seong Jiyeong. She subtly avoided my eyes. It seemed she had already known what kind of company Seou Industries really was. That must be why she was so certain they had set the research lab on fire. When Yu Hana had offered to investigate them, she’d even used the words “cross-verification,” so there was no doubt about it.
Even so, my questions weren’t fully answered. Why on earth would Seong Jiyeong’s father have entrusted a company like that to such lowlifes? That part still didn’t make sense.
Thankfully, Yu Hana’s next explanation cleared things up nicely.
“Of course, Seou Industries wasn’t always like this. Back when they invested in the research lab together with Jiyeong’s father, it was a legitimate company. The name was even Seojin Industries back then.”
“But about twelve years ago, the president sold the company to someone else. After that happened twice, Seojin Industries became Seou Industries, and it eventually reached the current owner.”
“Actually, the current president only recently expanded into the private contractor business after taking over.”
“Twelve years ago… that would be about five years after Father passed away.”
“This is just my guess, but after keeping an eye on things for five years and seeing no reaction, they probably sold the company and ran. Maybe a lot of Jiyeong’s family money went into founding Seou Industries?”
“That’s… correct. Seou Industries was originally a company my father established.”
“I see.”
The moment it was confirmed that Seou Industries (then called Seojin) had started as a legitimate company, Seong Jiyeong’s expression brightened dramatically. To me, the sudden mood swing was completely out of left field.
“So… my father wasn’t working with thug contractors after all?”
“That’s right.”
“I knew it. There’s no way my father would do something like that.”
What the hell? So that’s why she looked so depressed earlier—she thought her father had been colluding with shady characters and doing dirty deeds? And now she’s all sunshine because it turned out he wasn’t in league with thug contractors?
She was the victim of fraud and betrayal, yet she was fixated on something this trivial. It was honestly ridiculous.
“But Jiyeong, you didn’t know the ownership of Seou Industries had changed hands?”
“No, I didn’t have time to dig that deep. And anyway, they’re people we’re going to crush, right? There was no need to investigate them in detail.”
“Is that so?”
It was a shame that Seong Jiyeong, who had supposedly been looking into this longer than Yu Hana, knew so little. The excuse that there was no point investigating people they were just going to smash anyway sounded pretty weak. At the very least, shouldn’t she know more about her own father’s affairs than Yu Hana did? Or was this girl seriously a one-trick pony when it came to anti-villain crimes?
I’d assumed that as someone from the Cheonji Group, she’d at least have her own information network. Looked like I should just leave all future intel work to Yu Hana.
“And now for the important part. First, it does appear that Seou Industries is responsible for setting the research lab on fire.”
“Really?”
“I told you, didn’t I? That we needed to bring the hammer of retribution down on Seou Industries.”
“Buuut~ this is where the really fun stuff starts to pop out.”
“Really fun stuff?”
“Yep, yep. It looks like some very interesting things are about to happen to this company.”
Just as Seong Jiyeong had predicted, the lab fire had indeed been their doing. The rights to the new technology that Seong Jiyeong’s father had invested in had been quietly acquired by the new owner when they took over the company—without the buyer even realizing it. In other words, the president who recently acquired Seou Industries had no idea those rights even existed.
Seou Industries only learned about it when the lab, whose theory was now perfectly established and only needed final testing, requested additional funding for the experiments. Seong Jiyeong’s father and the first president of the company had provided such generous initial capital that no extra costs had been necessary until then.
Once the current president discovered the lab’s true nature, he smelled serious money in the project. He decided it would be more profitable to sell the rights than to keep pouring in funds. After all, the success bonus the lab was supposed to receive upon completion was enormous.
But the lab’s position was completely different. The contract stated that they would receive both the success bonus and the patent rights. After investing over a decade into the research, they couldn’t possibly give it up. That’s how the conflict began, and as everyone knows, it ended in a catastrophic fire. It was a tragedy caused by the fact that Seou Industries was a bunch of exceptionally sleazy scumbags.
“I get the general flow. But isn’t this all pretty much common knowledge?”
“Yep, yep. So the really fun part starts now.”
There were currently three parties interested in the data held by Seou Industries: American company A, Chinese company C, and Japanese company J. Seou Industries was negotiating with all three and subtly driving up the price. Up to this point, it was just ordinary corporate wheeling and dealing.
But then another Chinese faction got involved, and things started to get weird.
“You know the current situation in China, right? Company C is backed by the Northern Wei faction. But the Seochok faction found out about it.”
“So another company joined the bidding?”
“No. The Seochok faction skipped the negotiations and went straight for force. They’re planning to terrorize Seou Industries and steal the data.”
“…Ah. So China’s doing what China does again?”
Back when we were talking about Russia, I’d described the countries surrounding us as complete disasters. China was no exception. After the end of one-party communist rule, the country had split into three rival factions that competed internally. After the dimensional rifts appeared, the nation had practically fractured. What were they called again? Northern Wei faction, Seochok faction, Southern Wu faction? Just from the names, you could guess what was going on. It was basically the Romance of the Three Kingdoms all over again.
China had been on the verge of filming a modern-day version of that epic. Personally, I thought it wasn’t a bad thing. The more divided China was, the more it contributed to world peace in its own strange way. The problem was that even while keeping each other in check, they still caused trouble for other countries. They really were an annoying bunch.
“But China isn’t what it used to be, right? They have zero internal unity right now. Can they really afford to go this wild?”
“Good question~ Do you remember? Last year, I think? The boss of Scorpion was arrested by the Special Task Force.”
“There was… something like that, yeah. That was the incident that made ‘Heracles’ retire, wasn’t it?”
“Yep, yep. And the remnants of Scorpion fled to China. We asked for their cooperation, but China ignored us like it was the most natural thing in the world.”
“And?”
“And it turns out the Seochok faction has been sheltering those Scorpion remnants.”
“Ah, you don’t mean…”
“Yep, yep. The Seochok faction plans to use Scorpion for this terror operation.”
The situation was getting more complicated by the minute. Not all villain organizations were as well-behaved as local neighborhood gangs. Some were extremely violent, and Scorpion was exactly that kind of group. That’s why the Special Task Force had been deployed to clean them up. Starting with their boss, “Poison Scorpion,” most of the members had been arrested, with only a few escaping to China. That was how the infamous Scorpion had been dismantled. Was that last year?
I remembered the incident because it was the reason the Special Task Force’s key member, “Heracles,” had retired. Code name Heracles. He was the protagonist of that novel, The Retired Superhero Raises an Idol—the very “retired superhero” himself.
“This feels like it’s getting really, really dirty.”
Why the hell had Seong Jiyeong dragged us into something like this from the very beginning? Beating up some thug contractors wasn’t really our style. Setting a lab on fire was definitely a serious crime, but it wasn’t a superhuman crime, so it fell under the police’s jurisdiction. If that had been the end of it, I would have handed the data over to the authorities and let the law handle it. That was the happy ending I had in mind: criminals to the police, and us staying out of it.
But now that Scorpion had shown up, we suddenly had a legitimate reason to get involved. That was clearly villain activity. Plus, it had some connection to the original protagonist. I’d wanted to stay as far away from that side of things as possible for my mental health, but here we were.
“How can you already be complaining when we haven’t even started~?”
“Huh? There’s more?”
“Yep, yep. If it was only this much, I wouldn’t have called it fun~”
And apparently there was still more to come. This really was a total mess.