Eliminating the Villain
When I opened my eyes, darkness had already settled in completely.
When did it get this late?
I quickly pushed myself upright.
Fortunately, the culprit didn’t seem to have shown up yet.
I needed to pull myself together.
Maybe it was because I’d gone through so many things all at once, but this beautiful girl’s body had apparently hit its limit and collapsed from exhaustion.
Still, thanks to that, I feel a lot better.
My head was clear.
At this rate, I almost felt like I could beat even Cheong-a in her fallen-angel mode.
No basis for that, but still.
Tap.
Right on cue, I heard footsteps approaching.
A black shape, as if it had melted into the night itself.
Slung over one shoulder was a person wrapped in a blanket.
With a rough thud, the figure was dumped onto the ground.
After that, the culprit seemed ready to leave without even glancing back.
I casually stood up and picked up the book lying beside the bloodied victim.
“Night-Traveling Soul-Seizing Art. Wow, that’s some serious middle-school-dark-hero energy.”
At the sound of my voice, the culprit froze in place.
Black clothes and a face covering.
So he did at least understand that he was committing a crime.
“What now? I picked up the bigeup. Is he going to kidnap me too?”
Smiling, I looked at him.
He slowly turned his head, and the look in his eyes was sharp and cold.
“…Are you not afraid?”
A chill ran down my spine at his words.
He was the real deal when it came to cringey edgelord behavior.
Ignoring his question entirely, I flipped the book open and skimmed through it quickly.
“The shadow of darkness devours terrified citizens one by one. The victims lose their souls and collapse, reduced to empty shells.”
The contents of the book were eerily similar to the crimes this guy was committing.
Had he, like Cheong-a, read the book, been moved by it, and then carried it out as written?
While I was rattling off the contents, the culprit urgently hurled something at me.
The flying object reached my face, and once again everything seemed to slow, as if time itself had stopped.
I snatched the object out of the air, and time resumed its normal flow.
A bead?
I’d seen one before, back when I lived in the market streets.
This was a smoke bomb.
“Smoke bombs are for throwing at the ground, not at people. You’ve never actually fought anyone, have you?”
Facing the culprit, I felt something strangely absent.
I’d met plenty of people until now whose presence had made my body ring alarm bells, but for some reason, not this guy.
The culprit seemed flustered by my attitude.
“Why are you not afraid?”
“Because I have no reason to be?”
Well, that made sense. Even I was surprised.
The crime itself—kidnapping someone and turning them into a bloodied mess—was terrifying enough.
But now that I was actually facing the culprit, all I could think was that he looked amateurish.
Copycat criminals had been scary back when I was in Korea.
Here in the murim world, he just looked ridiculous.
And the fact that all he’d read was some middle-school edgy novel made it even worse.
I tossed the bead in my hand and caught it again as I spoke to him.
“What’s your reason? Reading a book and copying it is, well, something people do, I guess, but that doesn’t mean you have to go out and commit crimes.”
It did annoy me a little that I was now living in a world where reading someone else’s cringe-filled black history and copying it seemed normal, but I’d done the same thing myself, so I couldn’t exactly point fingers.
After skimming it earlier, it seemed this novel was basically about humans defeating monsters—a sort of human triumph story.
If someone like Cheong-a had read it, she’d probably have focused more on that than on the crime scenes.
Otherwise, instead of awkwardly tossing smoke bombs and running away, she might have focused on the Soul-Seizing part and actually cast the monster’s ritual.
The culprit trembled as he answered my question.
“People like you murim brats wouldn’t understand.”
“Ah, so you’re not a martial artist?”
The moment I caught him on the wording, he flinched.
He’s spilling information all over the place.
“So what now? The bigeup is in my hands.”
I asked, sounding ready to fight at any moment.
But before I’d even finished speaking, the culprit turned and started running.
I’d at least expected him to make a show of attacking.
He was even more pathetic than I’d thought.
I hurried after him.
His route was exactly the one we’d predicted.
When he rounded the corner of the alley, our reliable accomplice was waiting exactly where she was supposed to be.
“Stop right there! Evil doer. The justice of darkness will not forgive you!”
Cheong-a blocked his way.
As expected, the culprit tried to force his way through her, but when Cheong-a drew her sword, he stopped short.
“…What are you people?”
“That’s what I want to ask. What kind of guy are you?”
I caught up and snapped at him.
A man caught red-handed at the scene of a crime, and he still had the nerve to act like this.
The culprit glanced back and forth between us, trapped from both sides.
We slowly closed the distance.
I was wary that, cornered as he was, he might lash out, but instead he just stood there as if he’d given up on everything, making no move to fight back.
Cheong-a pointed her sword at him.
“Despicable villain! How dare you torment innocent civilians? I won’t forgive you.”
“…And then what?”
“Well, of course….”
“You won’t forgive me, so you’re going to stab me with that sword?”
Cutting her off, the culprit shouted in a rough voice.
“You murim people are all the same! You go on about justice and righteousness and all that empty nonsense, then tear through innocent civilians like they’re toys! Is there any legitimacy to that?!”
“Ghk.”
Cheong-a’s momentum faltered under the culprit’s words.
His shameless outburst.
Her earnest acceptance of that anger.
What kind of farce is this?
Was I seriously watching a magical-girl show being filmed right now?
Was I here to bust a criminal, or had I somehow stumbled into a middle-school theater club?
Apparently pleased with Cheong-a’s reaction, the culprit kept rambling.
“I’ve simply saved the weak and greedy masses. I only punished those fools who were blinded by the promise of instant wealth from a bigeup and crossed the line. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“No way.”
I had the creeping feeling that if I kept engaging him, I’d end up getting stupider too.
With a dull sigh, I turned away and looked back at the book in my hand.
I didn’t know what it was, but maybe he was so brazen because he’d drawn power from this thing?
The book was basically a kind of ghost story novel.
Looking back at the ending, it was clearly a human-vs-monster triumph story where the protagonist awakened and drove off the supernatural horror, so what on earth had this idiot seen that made him go around copying crimes?
Did he seriously latch onto the part where the monster was called the Lord of Fear?
Clang!
At the sound of metal striking metal, I looked up.
While I’d been distracted by the book for a moment, Cheong-a and the culprit had already drawn weapons and started fighting.
No, looking closer, what the culprit was holding wasn’t a sword at all, but something like a mass of black smoke compacted into the shape of a club.
It was almost identical to the abilities described in the book’s supernatural creature.
So could the culprit also use some of the monster’s powers through the book, the same way Cheong-a could?
“Whoa, that’s awesome.”
My own dark history.
At this point, wasn’t it basically a kind of artifact?
I could almost understand why Master Bangjang had put out a wanted order for it.
I stood there and watched them fight.
The culprit swinging a mass of black smoke, and Cheong-a firing beams from her sword—it was actually a pretty impressive sight.
“Bwahaha! Fools, servants of justice. Taste the power of fear!”
“Kgh. At this rate, the power of Black Wing….”
The dialogue was… kind of awful, but.
Both of them were so absurdly serious that I honestly didn’t know where I was supposed to jump in and criticize.
Still, since this had been an incident with actual victims, I’d been pretty tense, so now I just felt stupid for worrying so much.
What if every time I go out to recover another piece of my black history, it’s always going to be like this?
That would be the real terror.
“Kyah!”
The culprit’s attack sent Cheong-a staggering backward, and she dropped to the ground.
That was strange.
Compared to the black-clad man we’d run into in front of the tavern—the one whose movements had been so fast I could barely follow them—this guy’s technique looked downright sloppy.
And yet Cheong-a, unlike before, wasn’t responding properly and was getting pushed back.
What was the difference? Was there some kind of compatibility issue at play?
Seeing the culprit stride toward the fallen Cheong-a, I couldn’t keep watching any longer and started forward.
“Keukkeukkeuk. What do you think of the power of fear? Isn’t it amazing?”
“It’s amazing, all right. Amazingly disgusting.”
I moved to block the culprit’s path, and he jumped back in surprise as if he hadn’t expected it at all.
“When did you—!”
Ah, so this wasn’t audience participation theater after all.
His exaggerated movements made me feel a little awkward, and I scratched my head.
“Unnie… I’m sorry.”
Cheong-a looked at me and apologized.
I waved a hand to tell her not to worry.
That counted as getting the actress’s permission, I supposed.
“…What in the world are you?”
“Why are you swearing at me?”
“Aren’t you afraid of me?”
“Why would I be?”
I mean, I was afraid. Of those creepy lines.
Every sentence dripping with middle-school-edge nonsense made my face burn.
How are you planning to live with yourself later, when you’re embarrassed out of your mind?
“Ghk. Fine. Someone like you wouldn’t understand. People like us—ordinary folk—live in pain all our lives, unlike people like you.”
He kept glaring at me, then launched into another of his rambling self-justifications.
Yes, yes, you’re the villain.
At last, you’re confessing your sins.
“Even seeing this power, you feel no fear. I know your type well—those who strut around acting as though they’ve transcended humanity and love showing off. Ever since I was young, those martial artists….”
“Oh. Yeah. I get it.”
I cut him off mid-sentence.
If I let him keep talking, he’d never stop.
I wasn’t interested in some criminal’s sob story to begin with.
If he wanted to sell me on his tragic backstory, he should’ve at least shown me a little effort before committing the crime.
Then I might’ve sympathized.
How could a crime committed because life was hard ever be justified?
“What matters is this: I’m right, and you’re wrong.”
“You… rotten bitch!”
At my blunt summary of the situation, the culprit’s eyes bulged with fury and he charged at me.
A black club, stabbing toward me in an instant.
But the moment I sensed danger, the world slowed again and his movement froze.
Now that I was used to it, I sidestepped his attack and tightened my fist.
This time, I’ll put a little more power into it.
If he could push Cheong-a back, he was probably pretty strong in his own way.
I swung my small-looking fist a little harder and drove it straight into the culprit’s abdomen.
At the same time, the frozen flow of time began moving again.
Whooom—
A shockwave burst from the point of impact.
The culprit’s body shot backward, smashing through the wall and lodging there.
KWA—ANG!
A massive boom rang out.
Fortunately, the impact didn’t seem to be as bad as the sound suggested, and the wall itself didn’t collapse.
Thank goodness.
I didn’t have money for repair costs.
The culprit, apparently knocked unconscious, hung there in the wall without moving.
He wasn’t dead, was he?
Well, to be honest, he was an evil criminal, so I wouldn’t have minded much if he had died.
I rolled my wrist and looked over at Cheong-a.
She was staring at the wall where the culprit was stuck, her mouth hanging open.
“So, case closed.”
When I smiled, Cheong-a, still looking dazed enough for me to see through the veil, slowly nodded.
Thank goodness he’d just been a drifter.
I really got worked up over nothing.