The World Is Not Equal
I was powerless. It happened back when I was in my first year of middle school. There was this one kid in class who loved stirring up trouble. Whenever he got bored, he'd pick on this other guy who was big but had a pretty quiet personality, just for fun. The big guy usually didn't react much to the teasing. He'd just ignore it and go about his day. But one morning, the big guy came to school in a really bad mood for some reason. The troublemaker started in on him like always, but this time the big guy snapped. He pushed back hard against the jokes. If the bully had backed off then, it probably would've ended there without any real incident. But instead, the bully got just as worked up. Even though he'd started it, he escalated things further and even hurled insults about the guy's parents.
The big guy finally snapped and punched him square in the face. I still remember the look on the bully's face after getting hit. It was this stunned, vacant expression, like he was staring at an insurmountable wall born from overwhelming physical difference. "Ugh... ke... ack..." I have this vague feeling that the face I'm making right now looks exactly like the one that bully wore back then.
"Ha... Treating you nicely and you start thinking you're hot shit, huh?"
"F... fuck... Let go!!! You... son of a..."
I don't even know if I was acting on pure emotion or if I was trying to seize the initiative and firmly reject her sexual harassment. Either way, the result was terrible. The situation now was the complete opposite of what I remembered from middle school. I was the one who was overwhelmingly weak. I could feel it in my bones even now. I'd boldly grabbed her arm, ready to stop her with some choice curses, but it was me who ended up overpowered. The moment I seized her arm, she gave me a look of pure contempt and grabbed my throat with one hand, slamming me against the wall.
"Whoa... Our Siwu is such a feisty little thing, isn't he? Makes me wanna fuck him even more."
If our strengths had been anywhere close to equal, if there'd been any doubt about who would win, she probably wouldn't have had the luxury of openly lusting after me like this. But the outcome was already decided. Resisting now would be pointless. Even a passing kindergartener could see that.
She kept her hand pressed against my throat while licking her lips with a sticky, hungry gaze, savoring the sight of me. The wet sound of it reached my ears clearly, sending chills down my spine.
"All the women call you 'sir' and treat you nicely, so you think you're something special, huh?"
"あ.....あの、先輩！ (U-um, senpai!)"
Her two juniors, who had followed her here, clearly hadn't expected things to go this far. Their faces filled with panic as they stood up, trying to stop her.
"お前らは黙ってろ (You two shut your mouths), you fucking half-breed bitches."
"申し訳ありません..... (We're sorry...)"
She cut them off sharply, mixing Japanese and Korean, making it clear they had no right to interfere with a senior's actions. It seemed that in this world, status was determined by ability and rank rather than whether you were Korean or Japanese. In a way, it was strangely equal. This was quite different from the Japanese colonial period I'd seen in various media back in my original world.
"Keh... hek... ugh..."
"Ah, sorry. Forgot about that."
Just as my vision was starting to blur from the continuous pressure on my carotid artery, she spoke as if she'd completely forgotten she was choking me and finally released her grip.
"Huuuuurk! Kehup!! Cough, cough..."
My brain, desperate for fresh air, sucked it in frantically the moment the obstruction around my throat disappeared.
"Ah... fuck... I'm so goddamn horny I could lose my mind."
Even that seemed to stimulate her sadistic side. Her face was flushed with excitement. She reached out again, as if to savor my body one more time to satisfy her lust, but then her movements suddenly stopped and her hand dropped back down.
"Seriously... At times like this, I almost wish I were a villain. In my heart, I just want to rip off all the clothes you're wearing right now and fuck you like a dog..."
She had switched back to polite speech, but the level of vulgarity in her vocabulary made the politeness feel completely meaningless. She stood up, picked up the briefcase she'd brought, and headed for the front door. Her two juniors hurriedly followed after their senior.
"I don't want to lose this stable government job either, you know. You could say Siwu-nim is extremely lucky."
As a public servant, it seemed continuing this would only work against her. Surprisingly, she backed off quite obediently.
"You... A bitch like you being a public servant... This country is seriously fucked. For real."
Even while gasping for breath, I threw one last jab at her. Even though I knew the overwhelming difference in power, I refused to let my pride break. I felt pathetic for it, even to myself.
"Ah, by the way, let me give one piece of advice to our prideful Siwu-nim..."
She ignored my provocation completely and said what she wanted before leaving.
"Gyeongseong Academy is a place where even crazier bitches than me gather. If you don't drop that pride, you won't last."
I couldn't tell if she was just saying it because she didn't like how I was acting, or if she was genuinely giving me realistic advice about my situation.
"I'll handle my own business, you fu—"
"Never seen such a prideful male bastard before. Did you come from another world?"
She didn't bother listening to the rest of my curses and headed for the door. With a clunk and a beep, the sound of the door lock engaging echoed in my ears after they left. The house fell deathly silent. In that quiet, I mulled over the fact that the world I lived in had completely changed.
"You fucking son of a bitch... You goddamn devil bastard..."
I leaned back against the chair, and all the strength drained from my body. I muttered curses at the devil who had altered the world.
"What the hell is this 'men have it easy' world, you crazy fuck..."
...
...
...
I didn't tell my mother what had happened to me. It was a decision made after concluding that telling her wouldn't change anything. From the news and various media, I knew there were countless cases where high-status women had raped lower-status men, and it was all swept under the rug. Of course, that was excluding cases that became major social issues. Murder, on the other hand, didn't seem to be overlooked so easily. Though even then, it felt like the punishment came from the perspective of destroying a precious resource, given how few men there were, rather than any real concern for men's human rights.
Besides, I hadn't actually been raped. It was closer to assault, and there weren't even any visible marks left on my body as evidence. There was basically no way to prove that public servant bitch's crime. The two people who had followed her wouldn't have taken my side either. My mother's social status wasn't high. She was just an ordinary citizen working at a regular company. Even if I told her what happened, it would only increase her worries and anxiety without solving any problems. That was the reality of the world I lived in.
And more urgent than the fact that I'd been choked was the immediate problem facing me: by order of the country, I was now being forced to attend some university I knew nothing about.
...
In this world, all women are born with supernatural abilities called Individuality. These abilities usually manifest between the ages of eight or nine at the earliest, or fourteen or fifteen at the latest, allowing them to use their powers. While there are differences in how strong or weak these abilities are, there isn't a single woman who doesn't possess one.
In the case of truly powerful Individualities, there's something like the Void, which lets the user designate a specific area of space and completely erase any objects, matter, or even people within that range. During the Pacific War, Korean and Japanese war heroes used this ability to completely annihilate the atomic bombs dropped on Tokyo, Gyeongseong, Daipan (Osaka), and Chungsung (Okinawa), neutralizing America's trump card against Japan (the drop points were different from the original history). There were also records of entire brigades or divisions being wiped out in just two hours, so it was no wonder America eventually threw up its hands.
On the other hand, extremely weak Individualities might only be able to lift objects weighing less than a tennis ball with telekinesis, or slightly improve eyesight, but only for a limited time (five to ten minutes). These were abilities that might help a little in daily life but were otherwise practically useless.
When a child is born, their Individuality must be thoroughly examined and reported to the country along with their birth registration. Failing to report it or falsifying the report carries extremely severe punishment.
In Japan, Individualities are basically classified into five ranks based on their level of danger.
Rank 5: Safe abilities that require no monitoring or regulation.
Rank 4: Safe abilities that require minor caution but no active monitoring.
Rank 3: Abilities that require a license to use; public use is restricted.
Rank 2: Dangerous abilities that are strictly monitored; illegal to use without a Hero license.
Rank 1: Extremely dangerous, nation-threatening abilities that require direct government authorization to use.
Basically, anything from Rank 2 onward is considered a 'dangerous Individuality,' and using it without being a Hero is illegal.
That's right. The so-called Heroes, officially known as Special Security Maintenance Officers. That was the job the public servant bitch had mentioned. It was a separate profession from the police officers who maintained public order. Heroes were not public servants. They were civilians, not affiliated with any government agency. Of course, there were special police units within the force that used powerful Individualities, but hiring every single person with a strong ability and paying them with national taxes (the stronger the Individuality, the higher the salary demanded) would require an enormous budget. So to save money, the country had delegated some legal authority to the private organization called the Special Security Maintenance Officer Association, where Heroes were registered.
And the university I would be attending, Gyeongseong Academy, was the educational institution that specialized in training these Heroes. As that public servant woman had mentioned, after looking into it, I found it was a much more prestigious school than I'd expected. It ranked higher than the Department of Special Security Maintenance at Gyeongseong Imperial University (the equivalent of Seoul National University in the original world). Schools that specialized in training Heroes all had names ending in "~ Academy." Among those located in the mainland, such as Kyushu Academy, Kansai Academy, Tokyo Academy, Hokkaido Academy, and those in Joseon like Busan Academy, Daejeon Academy, Incheon Academy, Pyongyang Academy, and Sinuiju Academy, Gyeongseong Academy was the largest in scale and had the highest admission difficulty.
The question that came to mind was this: As I mentioned at the beginning, every woman in this world is born with a supernatural ability called Individuality. Conversely, that means every man in this world has none. So why send someone like me, who has no Individuality at all, to a school that specializes in training Heroes when I could have just gone to a regular university?