Yes, I Am, Uh... Man! (3)
Thwack!
The thing kicked hard in the stomach by Shiho tumbled across the floor in a pitiful, graceless heap. It regenerated the wound almost instantly — and immediately after, a hail of pellets tore countless holes through its upper body.
Why! Why!
The Imposter felt wronged. Born into a poor family, it had endured a miserable childhood and grown into a powerless adult. The only way it could survive was through back-breaking day labor, scraping together just enough to eat each day. So what, exactly, was so wrong about demanding compensation for a lifetime of misfortune?
If I were in that seat, I could do so much better!
It had been jealous of the neighbor who looked down on it — some nobody errand worker, strutting around as if he deserved to work in a hospital. So it had replaced him, and it had performed his role splendidly.
See! I was never incompetent — I just never got a chance!
After that, it went on replacing roles all over the hospital. Nurse. Security guard. Resident. Before long, it had even replaced a professor.
I'm confident I could diagnose Echoes even better than Lee Jeong-uk!
And so it had set its sights on that man over there.
That bastard is just lucky, that's all! Why shouldn't I get a chance like that?!
Tears welled up. And come to think of it, the woman in front of him was no different. She'd simply been fortunate enough to obtain some gift, and was now using that power to work as Jeong-uk's bodyguard. If it were her, it could do so much better.
This world is unfair!
It wanted to prove itself. And yet—
Then why can't I beat a single woman?!
Unlike usual, not a scrap of strength was coming out of its body.
Why! Why now, of all times!
The Imposter was genuinely confused. It had never once exerted itself when dealing with its victims. The raw strength to snap an adult man's arm like a chopstick. The dynamic vision to track a fist with its eyes. And on top of that, bottomless regeneration.
Every victim the Imposter had ever "invited" had been utterly incapable of resistance — they simply surrendered the skin of their faces to it. If it could have heard the Imposter's inner cries, Jeong-uk would have obligingly explained it all as a matter of narrative.
The root of an Echo is its narrative.
An entity whose narrative is satisfied wields near-invincible power within that story. But the power of an entity whose narrative is satisfied not at all is pitifully weak. The Imposter's story was one of peeling away an unknowing victim's identity and climbing the social ladder through replacement.
Now that its true nature had been exposed, and now that the person fighting it wasn't even one of its intended victims — of course such a creature couldn't summon any strength at all.
"Aaaargh!"
Mad with frustration, the Imposter lunged at Shiho — who kicked it in the stomach with a perfectly indifferent expression.
Crash.
The Imposter demonstrated yet another roll across the floor, its nth of the day. A few items in the examination room got smashed in the process, but Shiho wasn't worried.
It's inside the hospital. Once the weekend passes, it'll restore itself anyway.
Whether she emptied her gun here or set off dynamite, all of it was damage that would repair itself after the weekend.
"Jeong-uk. I'm getting tired. Are we about done here?"
"Yes. All finished."
Having temporarily neutralized the Imposter, she turned around. Jeong-uk was grinning and waving his phone screen at her.
"Thanks to Ji-hye, we were able to spread it quickly."
"Ji-hye... oh, her?"
Shiho thought of the woman she'd saved in the past — the streamer who, like Shiho in that photograph, had grown completely old and was dying.
At the appearance of that long-missed name, a bright smile broke across her face.
"Is she doing well?"
"She's far safer and healthier than we are — worry about yourself first. Would you please subdue that Beggar Royal over there?"
"Yessir~"
She threw the charging Imposter flat, wrenched its arm behind its back, and drove her boot into it, pinning it to the floor. The Imposter squirmed and thrashed beneath her hold — and Jeong-uk pushed the phone screen right up in front of its face.
"A shame, really."
The Beggar never doubted for a moment that he was royalty.
Because he had proven, during the years he sat upon that throne, that nobility flows not from blood.
But the Beggar was afraid.
Afraid that some common mediocrity — who had merely been lucky enough to be born into it — would come to reclaim the seat he had earned through proof.
So he draped rags over the prince, deceived him, and sent him to the executioner's blade.
And thus the Beggar proved himself worthy of the throne.
Long live the king.
Long live the king.
But the Beggar is never satisfied with being merely a prince.
In the end, he sets his sights on the king himself. And then every atrocity he committed comes to light, and he meets his end — face flayed, boiled alive in a cauldron of water.
That was the tale, in full. So what was the moral of this fairy tale?
Don't go handing your seal to just anybody.
In any case, the important thing in this narrative was not exposing the Beggar's identity. The prince had already known it. So had the prince's inner circle. And yet, despite that, the Beggar had whipped the king and the populace into a frenzy and made himself real.
What mattered here was the majority vote.
For the bastard to impersonate someone, he has to satisfy the majority.
The research log listed twelve people, which made it easy to be misled. Plenty of administrators assumed that in-game, all you had to do was notify any twelve people of the Beggar Royal's identity, and the entity would remove itself. And then, the next day, they got to witness an apocalyptic parade of every administrator and researcher murdered and the entity loose in the corridors.
Twenty researchers. Twelve would be the majority.
For the Beggar Royal locked inside the research wing, that wing was his kingdom — and its majority was twelve.
But for the Beggar Royal unleashed into the Management Bureau's corridors, the majority ran well past several hundred. That was why, to eliminate the Beggar Royal—
First, you shrink his kingdom and build a majority.
That was why he'd chosen the sub-channel. The community was far too large, and the hospital was no small territory either. A survivor channel with barely anyone in it — that was small enough to tip past a majority.
"There we go. Unanimous — everyone agrees you're the fake."
"No..."
"Beggar. I hereby impeach you."
"I'm not!"
"Uh, Jeong-uk?"
An ominous sound drifted over from Shiho.
"He's, uh, getting stronger?"
Shiho, who had been subduing the Imposter without the slightest difficulty, was now showing visible bewilderment.
"What is going on with him!?"
It was a rare Echo by Korean standards, so Shiho relied on me entirely — except this was my first time pinning down an entity right in front of my eyes.
What? What is this?
Was my reasoning wrong? But this method had worked perfectly in the game. I scanned our surroundings, trying to grasp the situation — and found the reason the Beggar Royal, despite satisfying the conditions, hadn't so much as weakened, let alone vanished, and had instead grown stronger.
That damned—!
Just outside the examination room, a middle-aged woman was filming with her phone. It was the woman who'd asked me for antibiotics before.
Now that I think of it — she's the mom cafe president!
I'd heard about it once: the mothers in the pediatric ward had set up a survival cafe of their own. That woman was its president. She was filming this entity, planning to share the footage and intel with the other moms.
That crazy woman!
That explained everything. The moms of the mom cafe didn't know this entity's true identity — which meant the vote was no longer a majority.
I shouted desperately at the woman.
"Ma'am! Post to the mom cafe right now! Tell them this thing steals people's skin and impersonates them!"
At my shout, the woman leisurely waved an okay, got it gesture and went right back to filming.
That insane bitch.
I said right now, didn't I? Did I look like I was out here doing outpatient medication counseling? Not tonight when you got home — right now!
Whether or not my conviction reached her, the woman continued filming at her leisure. Just as I was about to sprint over and wrench the phone from her hands, Shiho's urgent voice rang out behind me.
"Jeong-uk! That bastard's coming your way!"
I froze and spun around. The Imposter, eyes dyed blood-red, was charging straight at us.
"Son of a—!"
I couldn't fight worth a damn. The only combat technique I'd picked up back on the basketball team was the foul that never got called — a sneaky elbow swipe to the solar plexus. Naturally, it wouldn't do a thing to an entity.
What do I do?
Before I could even finish the thought, the Imposter was within arm's reach. And then—
Thud!
It slammed into my shoulder and shot past me, sprinting toward my rear.
Huh?
I turned my head in the direction it had gone. A split second later, a piercing scream tore through the corridor.
"Kyaaaaah!"
The Imposter had pounced on the woman. With swollen, bloated fingers it clawed at her face, tearing the skin of her cheeks away.
"Somebody help me!"
"Professor! Save me, please!"
What it was stealing wasn't just her face. It was taking her voice, too. I barely had a moment to wonder how any of this was possible before—
Oh, right. The mom cafe president.
Apparently the Imposter regarded the mom cafe president as a higher seat than Professor Lee Jeong-uk. Within this sealed space called a hospital, my influence extended only as far as the patients who trusted and followed me — but the mom cafe president held sway over the entire pediatric ward, at minimum. To the Imposter's eyes, she must have looked plenty close to a throne.
This is not the time.
I hurried to Shiho, who had been knocked down by the charging Imposter, and hauled her up.
"Shiho! Quickly — the gun!"
"Are you insane? That's a shotgun! It'll kill the woman too!"
"Then can't you handle it with martial arts?"
"Look at it! Where are the muscles!?"
She jabbed a finger at the Imposter. The 'Beggar' who had satisfied his narrative now bulged with rippling,bursting muscle — like some superhuman strongman straight out of a hero movie.
"Unless you've got a suppression baton lying around, there's nothing I can do with a shotgun right now."
"Damn it!"
I looked down at the woman pinned beneath the Imposter. If it stripped her face completely, she would die — that was simply how this Echo was scripted, in narrative order.
"Then get in close and fire the shot at point-blank—"
"No. The moment I get close, it'll decide I'm interfering and try to kill me."
"Then—"
That was when it happened.
Tang!
Another gunshot rang down the corridor outside the examination room — and with it, the Imposter's head burst apart.
"Huh?"
I stared toward the source of the shot. A pale-faced private first class, an IV stand beside him, was issuing instructions to a pair of privates second class carrying rifles.
"Private Kim Gihoon. When I give the signal, you shoot the head. Only the head."
"Understood."
"If you think you might miss, fire toward a direction where no civilians will be hit instead."
"Yes, sir."
By the time the Imposter had regenerated the hole punched through its skull, the two soldiers squeezed their triggers in unison once more. One shot went wide — the other blew its head open again, dead center.
I stood gaping at their marksmanship, mind blank, when—
Tatata-tat!
Shiho tore toward the Imposter at a dead sprint.
"One more! The elbow!"
At her shout, the private first class and the privates second class read the signal and put two rounds into the Imposter's elbow. Even if one missed, the other struck home — and the arm was neutralized. Closing in from that open side, Shiho pressed the muzzle of her shotgun directly between the Imposter and the woman beneath it.
"You could've gone nicely. Arrivederci, you piece of trash."
BOOM!
Both barrels at once. With a report closer to a cannon than a firearm, the entity's body lurched backward off the woman.
Shiho snatched up the smartphone lying in a heap on the floor, unlocked the screen with the fallen woman's fingerprint, and hurled it to me.
"Professor! The post!"
I understood instantly what she wanted me to write. Borrowing that woman's name, I opened the mom cafe and began composing.
What emoji did the moms use again... damn it. That's not what matters right now!
I hammered out the post — the entity's identity, what it did, what it stole — and hit upload. When I looked up after finishing, the fallen Imposter was staggering to its feet as well.
The Imposter called someone's name in a syrupy, wheedling voice. I flinched — judging by the reaction of the fallen woman, it was the name of her child.
The entity, half its stolen face gone, swayed drunkenly as it approached the woman. But before it could reach her, it suddenly looked around, left and right—
It clawed frantically at its own face and sank to its knees. The moms of the mom cafe were starting to see through it.
Its clothes rotted into tattered rags, its body fading slowly toward translucence—
With those final words, it left behind nothing but a battered old brass bowl on the floor — and vanished.