The Pushover Villain of the Burger Joint

The last of the oil hissed as it ran down the strainer and into the fryer.

Past midnight, the kitchen was dark but for a single fluorescent tube. Grease had cooked itself into the stainless worktable, the fry baskets lay flipped and stacked, and beside the floor drain Kwon Sion crouched.

He shook the strainer in a rubber-gloved hand. A blackened clot of burnt scrap dropped into the waste-oil drum with a dull thunk.

"Hey. Kwon Sion."

The voice drifted over from the counter.

Park Hyejin.

She stood at the register, using her phone's front camera for a mirror while she laid on another coat of lipstick. Closing was minutes away, and still her makeup looked freshly done. Beneath half-lowered lids, brown eyes with a slight flick upward at the corners traveled over her own face on the screen, and dark brown waves long enough to reach her waist spilled thick and full from under her visor cap.

It was the same uniform everyone wore, and on her it sat differently. The black short-sleeved shirt with its red collar had the top two buttons undone, and the deep cleft of her cleavage showed through the gap without apology. The name tag reading Park Hyejin / Assistant Manager lay almost flat across a chest that looked ready to split its seams.

Behind her, a red apron yanked tight with a large bow cinched her waist narrow. Below it a black skirt clung to her body and cut off high on the thigh. She leaned half her weight into the counter, one hip cocked out.

…Dressed like that, and the second an SV from headquarters walks in, she'll button it from the collar down.

Park Hyejin. Twenty-eight. Assistant manager over the night shift and closing for this store.

In front of the store manager, or a supervisor down from the main office, she was the sweetest thing alive. Today the manager wasn't in.

"I already ran the close-out, okay? I've got plans, so I'm leaving first."

"Ah, yes. But the security close—"

"You can do it. You know the code."

A clink. The ring of keys slid across the grease-filmed worktable and stopped.

"And that. The grease pooled under the grill."

She jerked her chin toward it. The corner of her mouth was smiling.

"Do the job right. How many times do I have to say it before it gets through?"

"Ah, yes. I'll wipe it right away."

Kwon Sion hitched the corners of his mouth into something awkward. Seven years had pressed the habit into his body: whenever the mood turned foul, the smile came out first.

…You're the one who used it in the dinner rush and shoved it in a corner, you bitch.

"Finish the recycling and the rest of the cleanup. Oh, and the food-waste bin. You see what I did to my nails?"

She held up a hand. Each long pink almond nail was set with cubic stones and little pearls, glittering for no reason under the fluorescent light. A thin gold bracelet at her wrist chimed along with the motion.

"Yes, yes. Understood. I'll take care of it."

Sion kept the smile on his face and answered with nothing but a small nod.

A human. Daring to work me like a servant?

This body came to take the order of this planet in its fist, from the very top down. And yet I…

…am on food-waste duty.

If a villain had any dignity left, it had sunk to the bottom of the waste-oil drum and settled there with the scrap.

…Endure it. This ends soon.

Park Hyejin went to the closing checklist stuck on the wall beside the counter. She bit the cap off a pen and drew a mark through every box, missing none.

Seven minutes on the register and one pass with a rag. That's how she ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fills five boxes.

"Oh, and."

She tossed the pen aside and turned only her head.

"Don't go running your mouth to the manager tomorrow."

"What would I even say? I don't know a thing."

"Right? That's our Sion. At least he knows how to take a hint."

She let out a short little laugh and vanished into the locker room.

Something boiled up in his ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠gut. His hands, though, were already tugging the rubber gloves straight and turning toward the grill.

…Shit. The body moves first.

A few minutes later the locker-room door opened again, and she was someone else.

A black lace strap showed through a white ribbed knit slipped off one shoulder. The neckline plunged far lower than the uniform shirt had, and at the waist of a black leather skirt plastered to her ass hung a small bag on a dangling gold chain.

Freed from the visor cap, her long hair poured down her back. She touched a swaying gold earring back into place at her earlobe, lifted her phone, and snapped a few selfies.

"Ugh, the lighting's garbage. Why is it so dingy in here?"

"…The fluorescents are a little old."

Replacing those will be my job too, of course.

Park Hyejin didn't bother with an answer. She flicked through the screen, then put the phone to her ear. Her voice climbed half a tone and went sweet enough to melt.

"I'm off~"

"Get home safe!"

Kwon Sion looked down at his own body, folded halfway at the waist in a bow, the way he might have looked at someone else's.

The bell over the door chimed. A sweet trace of perfume lifted for a moment over the smell of grease, then scattered.

He straightened. Only then did the smile stuck to his face slide away.

Stress. Who the fuck was the one who took it.

Bow to those above. Press down on those below. Even inside this little store, Park Hyejin lived by drawing that line with perfect accuracy.

And in the box underneath it sat Kwon Sion.

…Right. For now.

Closing always ran in the same order.

Scrape the grease from under the grill, mop the floor, flip the dining-room chairs up onto the tables. He hauled the stuffed trash bags out the back door to the recycling station. When he tipped the food-waste bin, a sour reek rose in a wave.

They eat this much in a day, and throw this much away.

…One thing about the creatures on this planet — I've got their ecology down.

Hourly pay barely clearing minimum wage. Rent. The building-fee notices. He still couldn't walk away from this life.

A man who starved to death collected nothing.

Beep.

He ran the shutter all the way down and set the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠lock. The clock on his phone read 1:17.

Tonight, the hand pulling that shutter down felt light.

Turn your back on the shopping street and cut into the alleys, and the lit signs thinned one by one. What lasted to the end was a single twenty-four-hour convenience store, and beyond it a shabby four-story building of one-room units.

Tiles had fallen off the outer wall in patches, baring the cement underneath. The sensor light in the first-floor entry was half dead; when someone stepped in, it flickered on a beat late. The stairs were barely wide enough for one person to pass, and at the end of every corridor a yellowed sheet of film clung to the window.

Kwon Sion climbed. The grease worked into his clothes rose and filled the narrow landing, with nowhere else to go.

He had just reached the second floor.

"…Do you even know what time it is?"

A voice leaked through the front door of the unit at the end of the hall.

"I told you, I came straight from my shift. I texted."

"You call that texting? One line, fired off, and that's it?"

"God, Mom, why do you always grab onto just that!"

A slam. The door shut, and the corridor went quiet again.

A mother and daughter, then.

He had lived in the building more than a year, and that was the whole of what he knew.

He didn't break stride as he passed the door.

The last room on the fourth floor.

Click.

The fluorescent stuttered twice and came on.

The room was not even a hundred and eighty square feet. A mattress laid straight on the floor, a blanket left half-folded, a folding desk, a hanger with a few shirts on it. The single window faced the wall of the next building at an arm's length, so even by day the sun never came in. In the corners of the wallpaper, stains of damp had spread like a map.

He tossed his uniform shirt into the laundry basket, pulled out the chair at the desk, and sat.

Click.

Under the desk the tower's fan started up, grinding a thread of metal into the whir. A desktop at least seven years old, bought for a little over a hundred dollars at a secondhand shop.

Hold. Just for tonight, don't die on me.

After a long stumble of loading, the desktop appeared. One icon. A pitch-black square with no name.

And beside the monitor lay a Black Mask.

Large enough to cover a whole face. The surface was smooth and hard as obsidian, dully throwing back the monitor's light, and only the places for the eyes were cut in a thin slit. Look close, and beneath that black surface a grain like red thread pulsed, very slowly.

His face reflected, faint, in the mask's black surface. Hair soaked through with grease. Hollows under the eyes.

Twenty-five years.

Eighteen in the orphanage, seven since he got out. Parents unknown. A high school diploma. Closing shifts at a burger joint.

He laughed once, under his breath.

The advance vanguard they sent to scout, and here he is filtering fryer oil.

The order had been simple. Descend to this planet, observe, assess, report.

What he arrived as was a blood-wet newborn.

A body that couldn't properly close its fingers around anything — and the humans of this planet asked no questions. They wrapped it in a blanket and carted it off to an orphanage.

Kindness, probably. Kindness or not, a kidnapping is still a kidnapping.

A name got attached. Papers came into being. A bed was given a number.

After he left the orphanage at eighteen, it grew simpler still. Do the work well, and more work was piled on. A full-time spot always went first to someone somebody knew.

Park Hyejin showing off her nails from the box above, Kwon Sion crouching every night in front of a waste-oil drum — in the end, both came from the same place.

Money. In the end, it's money. This fucked-up faith that cash is everything.

Seven years, and his body had learned it. Where a person breaks. What they bow their heads before. Who stands with a foot on whom.

And through all of it, he gathered.

The power scattered across this planet, a drop at a time, where no one's eyes would catch it. It took a long while. What he gathered needed a Vessel to hold it, and with nothing fit for the purpose he poured it into this computer. The thing he shaped as a passage, to turn that power back into flesh, was the mask.

…It's all gathered now.

The moment he put the mask on, the amplified power would pour into this body all at once. The human shell would tear away, and his true body would return — the form of a Demon Kin.

After that, it's simple. With this thing I've spent so long preparing, I hand down punishment, one by one, to those vicious, contemptible humans. And number one is Park Hyejin. Wait for me, you bitch.

After ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that, this city. And after that…

A thin whine rose from the tower under the desk. It shuddered, sounding like something dying.

…A shame the medium has to be this piece of junk.

Right now, the only Vessel he had was this one.

Doesn't matter. It starts with this.

Kwon Sion took the mouse and double-clicked the black icon.

The screen went dark.

The tower's fan seemed to cut out — and then, from the center of that black screen, a red light spread like a pulse.

Thump. Thump.

The mask beside the monitor flushed red in time with it.

…It's on.

He picked the mask up. It was cold, and absurdly heavy for its size.

The smiling ends here.

He lifted it in front of his face.

And—

set it on.

A slap.

The instant the inside of the mask touched skin, the cold vanished. The edges melted against him and clung, sweeping in one rush from his brow to his temples, along the line of his jaw, and down beneath his ears.

"…Ngh."

The red grain across the mask's surface brightened once, then again, in time with his heartbeat. While the pulse traveled the bones of his face and rang inside his skull, the feel of the desk's edge under his palm was the first thing to erase itself.

Then his knees. His waist. The weight of the body itself.

The last thing left was the sound of the fluorescent at his ear.

A thin electric hum.

Even that receded.

There was no one in the room.

The chair at the desk rolled back on its wheels about a hand's width, then stopped. The monitor, still lit, shone on an empty room.

Only the smell of grease remained.