Prologue
Two years ago, in the late winter. It was the tail end of high school, when more and more of the kids whose college admissions were already settled had simply stopped coming to school, and I was left alone in the classroom with her.
Lim Yeri. Eight years together, if I counted short; ten, if I counted long. My precious bond. My childhood friend. And—
the one person who drew out of me a jealousy and an envy I could not bear.
I knew how ugly it was to carry a heart like that toward her. Set beside the media and the entertainment companies that had only belatedly begun to latch onto her, now that she held every eye and every envy; set even beside the male superheroes who had started sniffing around a girl still nothing more than a high school student, all under the pretext of “building a connection”—the pettiness and the ugliness of my jealousy were not one bit less. I had already made up my mind about that.
So when she opened her mouth, I already knew what would come out of it. My answer was already decided.
“Taehyun. There’s something I really have to tell you today.”
“...Yeah?”
“So, um. After we graduate... I don’t think I’m going to be able to go to college. Well, someone from the government came by and said I can go if I want, but looking at my grades, I’d be better off just focusing on hero work.”
“Why? Your grades aren’t bad enough to keep you out of college.”
“It’s just... even if I went, I couldn’t go to the same university as you anyway, so it wouldn’t really mean anything, would it. Hey. You’re going, right, Taehyun? To college?”
“Mm. Well. I guess that’s how it’ll turn out.”
“Listen. This is something I really have to say right now, so I’m saying it...”
Her small lips trembled. Ten thin, fine fingers fidgeted and would not keep still. She had her hands gathered in front of her and still could not hide the anxiety, and I faced her feeling the guilt of knowing I was about to make that anxiety real.
“I like you. So much.”
“I mean, yeah. No. I don’t even have to say I mean.”
“Uh. This is kind of awkward. Ah, but I already said it. Since I’ve gone and said it, I can keep going, right?”
“Lee Taehyun, I like you. From the heart. The truth is, you’re all I have. If you hadn’t been there, I never would have made it this far. Not all the way here.”
“Yeah. If you hadn’t been there since elementary school, I probably wouldn’t be anything like I am now. I wouldn’t have found the courage. I wouldn’t even have been able to go to school.”
“So I really want to ask you this. I don’t want us to end up as nothing more than classmates who just drift apart.”
“Being friends was enough until now. But once we graduate, the name of friendship is only going to push us further apart, and I don’t want that.”
“We’ll get busy, won’t we. Me, and probably you too. So what I want to say—I’m not getting it in any kind of order. It’s a simple thing. Why is it this hard.”
The words spilled out of her in a tangle, so unordered they barely reached my ears at all. If she would only stay afraid, that might have been kinder. Had the fear of rejection remained in her, maybe it would not have closed so tight around my chest. But that voice was slowly changing into the bright, breathless thrill of hope, and I felt tears gathering at the corners of my eyes.
Should I just take her and be done with it? Is what I’m feeling now only because I want her more than I envy her?
“Yeah. I’ve decided I’m going to become an incredibly powerful, great hero. So if we just part as friends, I might never get a chance like this again...”
The moment those words reached me, a cold shard of ice drove into my heart. And I understood, all over again.
A powerful, great hero. So long as I could never shake free of my lingering attachment to that dream—the dream I, too, had wanted so badly to reach—standing at her side would leave a grievous wound. On me, and on her.
“Will you go out with me?”
“I’m sorry, Yeri.”
The answer shot out without a pause for breath, and Yeri’s body locked rigid. An innocent look still sat on her face, the look of someone who had never once imagined being turned down, while her fists—quicker than her expression to grasp the truth—were slowly filling with strength.
I watched the tendons rise along the back of her hand. One flick of a single finger and she could kill me where I stand. And the person who made her into someone who would never do that was me. My part ends there. That’s enough.
“You... you’ll meet someone much better. I...”
“Huh? What? What are you saying? Wait, hold on, I don’t really understand...”
“I’m far too lacking for you. Your talent is the best in the world. However you look at it, I’m ordinary. I also don’t think it’s good to decide who you like too hastily while you’re still in high school. I’m sorry. Truly. I’ll go now.”
“W-wait! I didn’t think about this hastily!”
She was at my back in a burst of speed that left nothing but an afterimage. In ordinary life Yeri kept her powers leashed, but desperation had run ahead of her own principles, and she set a careful hand on my shoulder, trying to hold me there.
“Lacking? That doesn’t even make sense. Because... well, if we’re really splitting hairs, I’m the excessive one, right?”
“It’s not that my talent is enough. It’s too much, isn’t it? You might be... a little short, Taehyun, but there’s a saying that too much is as bad as too little, and you’re not even objectively a lacking person—god, what am I even saying.”
“Ah, I don’t need objective. If you’re the best thing I see, there’s no reason to talk about what’s objective.”
“There are a lot of bad people in this world. Yeri, your talent isn’t excessive. It’s sufficient. The world needs it. Don’t call it too much.”
“You were the first person who ever told me that. You, Taehyun.”
Yeri swallowed. One look at my face, and she knew I was refusing her in earnest.
“Why can’t we, Taehyun?”
“I’m sorry. I’ll say what I actually think. I can never see you as a girlfriend. Never. I’m sorry. Truly. I don’t think it can work. It’s too much.”
“Someday, when the time is right, we can try seeing each other as friends again... Let’s leave it at that. For now, it’s too hard. I’m sorry. I’ll contact you later.”
I had no intention of contacting her. I meant to cut her off completely.
Yeri didn’t reach for me again. She stood at my back, blank and lost, and spoke.
“You will see me again.”
“On television. Somewhere like that...”
“No. We’ll see each other again. It won’t take that long. Until then, I’ll think about it too. A lot.”
“You too, Taehyun... don’t just forget. Think about it. Yeah. I’ll respect what you think. I’ll turn it over.”
“So when we see each other again, before too long, tell me honestly. What the problem was.”
Could I say it?
That my power had stopped dead at an elementary-school level, and I was jealous that yours had grown into something the whole world had to reckon with. That I resented you for being the only one of us who held the qualifications of a superhero I could never become. That I had lived more than six years pressing that jealousy down, and down, until I felt I could not endure another stretch of time lived beside you. Could I have said any of that out loud?
Facing her seemed like a thing that could never make sense, so I changed my number and cut every tie around me. College felt impossible too. The moment I graduated, I filed an enlistment application with the UN forces.
But the choice to join the UN forces so I would not have to face the superhero destined to shine the brightest was nonsense from the very start.
Deep in a jungle grown thick with brush, firing without a thought at the enemy in front of me, I saw a hero in a gray suit fall from the sky like lightning, and the gun dropped from my hand.
Had she come because she knew I was here? Because she knew I was fighting in this place, knew I was losing ground and might die at a villain’s hands at any moment—had she come to protect me?
“Are you all right? Is anyone hurt...”
A single blow from her dropped a villain who had stood untouched through a storm of machine-gun fire off the APC. The moment she turned and looked at me, I understood that this meeting was a reunion she had not expected either.
She could not even bring herself to think of the finishing strike. She stared at me hard enough to see straight through me, and opened her mouth.
“...Hi.”
That brief silence felt like eternity. Three seconds—that was all it took for the villain to catch the opening in Yeri, shove her aside, and flee—and those three seconds were, to me, wretched beyond bearing.
Once, we had stood in the same place. Now I was nothing but a corporal, and she was the gleaming Iron Empress.
That battle was my last in the field. I volunteered for a transfer to the rear, into an administrative post, and a few months later I submitted my discharge to the UN forces and returned to Korea.
Aside from a handful of cautions, the peacekeeping force never asked me for any particular reason. They simply sent me back to civilian life.
Even so, I had the feeling I would be standing in front of her again before long.
Hero alias: Iron Empress.
The hero every villain feared most. The most controversial hero on Earth.
A premonition settled over me, too strong to shake: that running forever from the Iron Empress, from Lim Yeri, would be impossible.