Squeezing the Rabbit
If we wanted to clean up the drugs without linking up with Cheongpung, we'd have no choice but to squeeze Yu Hana. She was the only source we had that could actually get us the information we needed. When every eye in the room turned to her, Yu Hana let out a long sigh and accepted our request with a resigned shrug.
“Haa~ This is way too much. You want all of this done today, right?”
The clever rabbit had already grasped the situation better than anyone. We needed every scrap of intel by the end of the day so we could move straight on to wiping out the Chinese crew. My deadline with the Cheongpung boss was set for around 2 a.m. tomorrow. I’d deliberately made the timeline tight because I had no intention of working with them from the start—I just didn’t want to give them any room to get clever ideas. If I’d given them several days, they might have decided to act before we even answered, and that would’ve been a disaster. It was obvious they were already on the verge of striking the Chinese themselves. In my judgment, the time limit before they stopped waiting and moved on their own was maybe a single day at most. Since they genuinely wanted us to take down the Chinese with minimal collateral damage, they’d probably hold off for at least that long. Our job was simple: solve everything in that one day and disappear cleanly. For that to happen, Yu Hana had to gather every piece of information before tonight. At the very least, we needed the locations of the drugs and the villains’ hideouts. Knowing Cheongpung’s movements too would be ideal, but I wasn’t counting on it. If things went smoothly, we could probably wrap this up without any major clash with Cheongpung. Still, if their greed matched my expectations, we had to be ready for some level of conflict. But if we struck first and erased the drugs entirely, they’d have no reason to risk their lives stopping us. Sure, they’d be annoyed, but would they really be angry enough to throw their subordinates into a fight with zero profit? The Cheongpung boss hadn’t struck me as that stupid.
“If we’re finishing this today, we’re definitely pulling an all-nighter. That means skipping practice~ Think our leader can cover for us~?”
“Yeah… I’ll figure something out.”
“Good~ And you know the working conditions here are pretty harsh, right?”
“I… suppose so?”
“Then you’ll have to do me a favor later~”
That sly, squinty-eyed villain. She was already attaching conditions. But I couldn’t exactly refuse. In our group, information was Yu Hana’s exclusive domain. This was the downside of a monopoly, wasn’t it? No wonder the U.S. government cracked down so hard on monopolies.
“Fine. What’s the favor?”
“I’ll tell you later~ Let’s skip the boring stuff for now.”
“Aww~ Too bad?”
“Too bad, my ass. If it’s something weird, I’m not doing it.”
“Hmm… It’s nothing big. Just appear on my YouTube channel with me and do a duet.”
Yu Hana was smart enough to know exactly where the line was. She’d poke just enough to annoy you, then back off before you actually got angry. That was why people ended up going along with her even when they felt something was off. This time, she’d asked for something annoyingly subtle. Still, refusing something this minor would’ve been stranger. Today was already shaping up to be a day where she’d be working nonstop anyway.
“Why ask for something like that in the first place?”
“Hmm~ I just don’t like feeling left out?”
“What do you mean, left out?”
“Jjing-jjing got to film a CF with Yeri-yeri.”
“My face wasn’t even in it.”
“And Sasha worked on rap lyrics with Yeri-yeri.”
“That was a solo project for Tasha too. I was just sitting there.”
“So I figured the least we could do is shoot some broadcast footage together to keep things fair~”
“I… don’t really get it, but I understand what you’re saying.”
The pre-debut practice footage these days felt more like my personal vlog. Clips of me cheering Seong Jiyeong on, or sitting with Tasha while she agonized over rap lyrics. Of course, Tasha’s story about her past had only come out after the cameras were gone. What the footage actually captured was Tasha’s ridiculous singing-rap and our shocked reactions. After that came the part where I learned songwriting from Oh Seoa, right? Either way, the fact that Tasha and I had seriously worked on lyrics together meant that segment would probably take up decent screen time. Was our squinty-eyed member really trying to build chemistry with the leader? Typical of her—always thinking ahead about group dynamics. I would’ve been willing to do it even without the favor. A duet with the rabbit would definitely be exhausting, but if I wanted to keep eating, I might as well do what I could.
“Great. Since Yeri-yeri agreed, I’ll get started right away~ Handle the company side however you want~”
“…Yeah.”
Come to think of it, that was going to be the hardest part. How was I supposed to explain this? Practice today was going to be a lot more tiring than usual.
***
We told the company Yu Hana was skipping practice because she had a cold. It took some effort to stop the CEO and Team Leader Cha from immediately dragging her to the hospital. Our desperate plea—that we’d watch her for just one day and take her if she didn’t improve—had barely worked. The fact that we didn’t have a finished song yet and the schedule was relatively light had helped a lot too. Once Yu Hana used the cold excuse to skip practice, the other members’ schedules loosened up as well. Most of our recent training had been team-based, so we switched to running through famous idol choreographies a few times before moving on to individual training. Right now, under the pretext of looking after our sick member, I was back at the dorm. The company had ordered us to stay close if possible when someone was ill. And our squinty-eyed villain, supposedly down with a cold, was currently…
“No, start from 37-1. Yes, next.”
“Ah, you don’t have it? Too bad~”
“If not that, then 332-2 or 3JE1-1K. Oh, really? Then I’ll pass.”
“Great. Start with that one.”
She was sitting in front of a monitor displaying several strange messenger windows, casually giving orders through her mic while occasionally snacking on drinks and cookies.
“I have no idea what that even is.”
The usual image of a hacker involved a dark room full of monitors with endless lines of code, some nerdy guy in glasses furiously hammering away at a keyboard. I’d assumed Yu Hana would be the same since she was supposedly a hacker, but right now she felt more like… a raid leader who’d already cleared the dungeon and was just directing everyone else. She smiled brightly while giving instructions through the mic, and the people on the other end handled all the actual investigation. She’d made it sound like she was doing something incredibly difficult, but apparently she was just doing everything by talking.
“Ah, short break. Everyone go have a smoke.”
She was even generous enough to give her coworkers cigarette breaks. Was this really hacking and information gathering? I wasn’t an expert, but even the Special Task Force hackers I’d worked with hadn’t operated like this. They’d been frantic, treating every second like it mattered. Was that guy an idiot, or was she just weird? It was a little frustrating, but ultimately it didn’t matter. As long as the information reached us, the process didn’t matter. Since she’d boldly attached conditions, I’d trust her to handle her end and just focus on what I needed to do.
***
After stopping by the dorm under the excuse of checking on Yu Hana, I headed straight back to the company. There were things I needed to prepare on my end. As soon as I arrived, I quietly gathered Seong Jiyeong and Tasha and moved to the training room.
“Have you ever worked with villains from other countries? Especially Chinese ones.”
“I haven’t.”
“Me neither. From what I know, China’s been too busy competing internally to expand overseas lately.”
“Really? Then we’ll need to prepare ourselves a bit.”
“How different are they?”
“They’re not that different from Korean villains. It’s just… they’re physically stronger? That kind of feeling. They’re also weirdly good at grappling.”
“I’m not really getting it.”
“Yeah? How do I explain this…”
When you worked in the Special Task Force long enough, you occasionally ran joint operations with foreign special forces. Those guys tended to be macho types who wouldn’t listen to anyone weaker than them. Basically, picture a room full of people like Tasha. They’d follow orders from above, but they weren’t exactly cooperative. That kind of atmosphere often led to annoying complications during missions. So when operatives from different units gathered, the first thing they did was establish the hierarchy. As the former ace of the Special Task Force, I’d always been right at the front of those ranking battles. The villain side was no different. Especially with China—even in the first timeline, they’d caused all kinds of trouble even when split into three factions. Because they were our closest neighbor, we’d often been dispatched there ourselves. I was saying all this because I had plenty of experience fighting foreign superhumans. Each country’s superhumans had slightly different tendencies. China in particular was especially eccentric, so going in blind could lead to disaster.
“First off, Chinese villains have much higher physical abilities than Korean ones.”
“Hmm, really?”
“Yeah. Korean villains don’t train much, right? But these guys actually put in a ridiculous amount of pointless effort.”
“Really? Villains training? That feels weird.”
“The reason’s pretty simple…”
The reason Chinese villains were so obsessed with physical training was because most of them were wuxia maniacs. After all, China was the birthplace of wuxia. They trained like crazy to master every martial art and become a murim master. The secret manuals circulating in China were all knockoffs, but they shared one common trait: most of them recommended training methods that basically amounted to self-torture. It was a kind of ascetic practice, and when combined with the superhuman trait of growing stronger the more you abused your body, it made Chinese superhumans increasingly powerful. On top of that, they were strangely skilled at grappling, and some masters could even emit faint amounts of psychic energy. You could call it a byproduct of their research into creating sword aura or sword energy. It wasn’t that hard to deal with once you knew about it. They called it sword energy or internal force, but most of it felt like cheap knockoffs of Fa Jin. Still, if you had no idea it existed, even Tasha or Seong Jiyeong could get caught off guard. So today, I planned to start by covering that exact point.