The Villains the Hero Is Obsessed With #3
By temporarily sacrificing two beads, I managed to extract two pieces of information from Seo Gaeul. A perfect two-for-two trade. This is what capitalism looks like.
“First, tell me why you were put on medical leave.”
“I don’t know.”
Seo Gaeul crossed her arms and struck a perfectly standoffish pose. The sacrificed beads looked like they were crying.
“Hey, you promised to be honest with me.”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re really pulling this shit? If that’s how you’re gonna act, apologize to my poor sacrificed beads right now!”
I yanked down my school uniform pants and thrust my tiger-print underwear toward her. The moment Seo Gaeul’s eyes met the tiger on my lower half, she began shaking violently like a fox caught in a hunter’s trap.
“Ah, fuck. Those goddamn tiger panties again. Change them already! Don’t you own anything else?”
“I don’t. Apologize. Now.”
Apologize to my beads or honestly spill the information. Seo Gaeul had exactly two choices.
After a long staring contest with my tiger, she finally realized how serious I was and let out a deep sigh that seemed to rise from the very pit of her stomach.
“Ha… I seriously don’t know why I’m on medical leave. I’d love to know what the hell is going on inside my father’s head too. His only daughter gets kidnapped by a pervert and he slaps ‘medical leave’ on it? Fuck that son of a bitch. Tell him to stop joking around.”
The way she clenched her jaw so hard it seemed like her teeth might shatter didn’t look like an act or a lie. Well, of course. No one can lie in front of my Tiger of Truth.
“Son of a bitch!”
Seo Gaeul kept spitting raw, colorful curses at her father after that. The stories were too explicit to transcribe anywhere, so I let most of them go in one ear and out the other—until she spoke again.
“So when are you planning to kidnap Yu Yeoleum? You’d better hurry if you can. She’s about to be thrown into real combat soon. I guarantee it—she might actually die this time.”
“What? Die?”
“The Villainers have a lot of tricky concept holders. They’re our seniors, so they have way more real-combat experience. No matter how strong Yu Yeoleum is, do you really think she can handle people like that?”
Swoosh—. Seo Gaeul was rubbing her stockinged foot up and down my shin.
“I was supposed to be deployed with her to cover for that. Aah—, but because some insane pervert bastard locked me in this basement, it looks like Yu Yeoleum will have to face all those Awakened alone. Even if someone replaces me, I doubt they’ll support her as well as I could—”
In other words, there was a real chance Yu Yeoleum could die or suffer a critical injury during this operation.
Anyone else might have laughed it off as a joke, but it didn’t sound funny to me at all. After all, I had only first heard Yu Yeoleum’s name after coming to this school. In the future I knew, among the Supernovas, Yu Yeoleum’s name had never appeared.
The fact that I had never once heard the name of someone who should have shone brighter than anyone—like the August sun—had to mean something.
…Was Yu Yeoleum really going to die? Then the promise I made with Seo Gaeul—that she would cooperate with my training if I brought Yu Yeoleum in—would vanish too.
“Think. Think harder.”
Yu Yeoleum’s real-combat deployment started next Monday. That meant I had tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday. That was more than enough time to fuck, eat, and shit with some left over.
Crack—. I operated my smartphone and decided to summon the No Leftovers Day group chat. That’s what group chats are for, after all.
“Sigh, look at you eat. Just look at you.”
━Kyu-ing.
Late at night, in the deep quiet hours. Ing-ing was frantically devouring the ramen I had boiled until it bubbled vigorously.
Slurp, slurp—chomp chomp chomp.
Watching the little guy eat so heartily somehow made my own stomach feel full just looking at it.
“Eat a lot. You need to stock up now.”
In a year, even this ramen would become a luxury item that cost ten bottle caps per pack.
But Seo Gaeul, the ungrateful wench, refused this delicious food outright.
“I’m not eating!”
“Hey, you’re going to ruin your health at this rate.”
“Give me something normal! Not this dog-food-looking crap!”
Calling it dog food was a bit harsh. In the ruined world, there were countless people who couldn’t even get their hands on that so-called dog food.
But maybe it was different for someone like Seo Gaeul. She had operated as a Supernova based in the City, the only shelter in Korea that still functioned properly until the very end.
I couldn’t afford citizenship to enter the City, so I lived in the garbage dumps on the outskirts. But I heard that inside those tall, massive walls, people could bathe in warm water, eat food made from uncontaminated ingredients, use electricity to light their homes at night, sleep in clean beds, and even access partial medical facilities. It was called the only paradise left in a ruined world.
I used to like sitting on the roof of my shack in the garbage field, staring at the last remaining city lights. I told myself that one day I would collect enough bottle caps to enter that place.
But look at me now. I had returned to a warm, comfortable home that went far beyond a mere shelter. All thanks to the grace of Goddess Seo Gaeul.
“I’m done with the food. Just give me a bath.”
“A bath? You don’t need one.”
Seo Gaeul had desired cleanliness so intensely that she had acquired the new concept Lady. Thanks to that, even after living in this basement far removed from anything clean, her body gave off a refreshing, sweet apple scent instead of any stench.
Sniff sniff—.
“Why the hell are you smelling me, you pervert!!! Anyway, it’s a matter of mood, okay? Even if I know my body doesn’t get dirty, taking a bath still feels refreshing! And while I’m bathing, you have to stay outside the bathroom!”
The water was cut off in this neighboring house. To give her a bath, I’d have to bring her all the way to my place. Make her bathe in my bathroom while I stood outside the door? For some reason the whole idea smelled fishy and didn’t appeal to me at all.
“Hey, pervert. You said it yourself. We’re going to be seeing a lot of each other from now on. Shouldn’t we cooperate and act friendly? Giving me one bath isn’t that hard, is it? Right?”
She had a point. However, the probability that this girl would go berserk the moment she stepped outside the basement was extremely high, so I had no choice but to shut her down firmly.
“Let’s save the bath for the next full moon. When your power weakens.”
“…….”
She was seriously pissed. Maybe I should comfort the sulking Seo Gaeul with a present. I had originally planned to give it to her as a commemorative gift once the next Concept manifested anyway.
“Have you been to a restaurant? You know those call bells on every table? This is one of those. If you press this button, a bell will ring at my house, so just tell me if you need anything.”
In other words, it was a summoning bell. Of course, Seo Gaeul immediately turned her back on me and flopped down onto the mattress as if to protest that she wouldn’t even listen to my explanation.
“…….”
Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong—.
Goddamn it, I was trying to sleep but the summoning bell I had installed in my room kept ringing nonstop. It was all because Seo Gaeul was pressing the call bell throughout the night.
The problem was that every time I went over and asked, “Do you need something?” she would turn her back on me as if she had no idea what I was talking about and wouldn’t even answer.
Then, about five minutes after I returned home, ding-dong ding-dong—the bell would ring again.
Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong.
Ding-dong-ding-dong.
Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong.
This wasn’t going to work. Was she really going to abuse the call bell I had kindly installed for her like this? I was just about to head out to give her thigh a sharp smack with the Whip of Love when—
“Hey! Hanam-jjin! Why the hell did you take so long to come out! How many times do you think I rang the doorbell?!”
“Did you only just wake up? Wasn’t it you who called us here to catch villains?!”
“…….”
Standing right in front of my house gate were Baek Yeoul, Changshik, and Deoksoon. So the bell that had just rung wasn’t Seo Gaeul—it was Ppang-daeng-i and her friends. The sounds were identical, so I had gotten them mixed up. I’d have to change the tone later when I had time.
The real problem was that Ppang-daeng-i and her friends had barged straight into my house.
“Hey! Hanam-jjin! You haven’t eaten breakfast yet, right? I brought tteokbokki from our fridge!”
Stomp stomp—. Baek Yeoul walked in like she owned the place, occupied the kitchen, filled a pot with water, and started boiling it with the sauce. I have no idea how she managed it, but thick black smoke began pouring out of the pot.
“Kwaaaaaah!!!!”
Baek Yeoul screamed, squinting from the sting in her eyes. I wasn’t sure if it was just me, but she seemed to be getting weirder every time I saw her.
Anyway, I felt extremely uneasy about my friends being in the house right now. After all, Seo Gaeul was right next door. Even with all this noise, she hadn’t pressed the call bell or launched a moaning attack, so it seemed she had finally fallen asleep after tormenting me all night. Still, if we kept being this loud, she might wake up.
“Ugh, the smell! Hey! Everyone outside! We’re all going to suffocate in here!”
I first turned off the burner under the completely charred pot and dragged everyone out of the house. Baek Yeoul’s cooking disaster had turned into a stroke of luck for me.
Of course, Baek Yeoul seemed to have regained some of her senses and scratched the back of her head awkwardly.
“Th-that’s weird. It turned out fine when I cooked alone at home…”
We ended up at the nearby park. We bought cup ramen from the convenience store and ate it deliciously. Once we had all finished, it was time to ask.
“Taeseong didn’t come?”
“Taeseong said he had a part-time job today and couldn’t make it. Didn’t he message the group chat?”
“That guy’s amazing! He’s working three part-time jobs on the weekend!”
I guess so. I had been so busy fighting the call-bell war with Seo Gaeul yesterday that I hadn’t checked the chat.
“So, my friend, what exactly did you mean by catching villains?”
I see. They had all gathered just because I told them to meet up, without even knowing exactly what we were doing. It was a fun Saturday, but they were all bored because they had no other friends. Lucky me.
“I’ll tell you why I called you all here. There are a lot of empty houses near mine, right? I want you to investigate who’s illegally occupying them.”
“Understood. Vigilante activity, then? It reminds me of the seniors who caught robbers, received commendations, earned a ton of shop points, and even got usage rights for Bogu.”
“Bogu? What’s that?”
At Baek Yeoul’s question, the knowledgeable Deoksoon kindly answered.
“It means tools infused with concepts… like the Pen of Severing that Captain has. You can rent those items from the academy’s treasure vault once you have a Knight Brooch or higher…”
“So if this external activity ends successfully, we might be able to get Knight Brooches like the class president and obtain Bogu that match our own concepts from the academy treasure vault!”
“Vigilante work! I’ve always wanted to try that! I want a concept-infused tool too! Me too!”
Baek Yeoul, Changshik, and even Deoksoon showed far more enthusiasm than I had expected. It was fortunate they were motivated without me having to persuade them, but I was a little worried they might cause an incident.
The reason I had called everyone today was purely for investigation, not subjugation.
“Then let’s move in teams of two. There might be dangerous ones, so even if you see criminals, do not engage first. We are only doing investigation.”
If I investigated the residences of the illegal Awakened in advance and later took care of them myself—swoosh, slash—then Yu Yeoleum’s real combat would become much easier. On top of that, if I stacked up shop points and obtained a Knight Brooch, I could also get my hands on a Bogu and increase my own combat power.
Just how many birds could one stone kill? This was far beyond killing two birds with one stone—it was the ultimate one stone, many birds strategy. As expected, I was a genius!
“Th-then I’ll go left with Deokhee.”
“…….”
Changshik immediately paired up with Deokhee. That left only Baek Yeoul.
“Hanam-jjin!!!! I’ll carry you!!!!”
The key to this investigation mission would be how Baek Yeoul’s Bad Luck would come into play.