Ripple Effect (1)
A week had passed since the Gyeongso Daejeon.
The media hadn’t known a quiet day since.
That was right. In my previous life, what had been buried quietly in the dark had now risen to the surface.
It was the fact that one hundred villains had been thrown into the Gyeongso Daejeon.
Of course, the police denied it.
I sat in the living room and watched the news with my family.
The police commissioner faced the camera and ranted with all the indignation he could muster.
“I stake the honor of the police on this: I have never partnered with villains, nor have I ever received bribes!”
Sometimes it was hard to tell.
Whether that bastard was telling the truth without even blinking, or whether he was simply lying to himself.
Shameless, through and through.
Grandmother came back with a plate of sliced fruit.
“Eat some fruit.”
My younger brother, who had been lounging on the sofa with his phone, let out a cheer.
“Yes! Melon!”
I looked down at the fruit on the tray. Ripe watermelon and melon, fresh gold kiwis, and mangoes so juicy the flesh was practically dripping off the knife. It was a luxury I hadn’t even dared to imagine in my previous life. Just that one snack was enough to show how much easier our household had become.
My younger brother picked up a slice of melon with a fork and held it out to Grandmother.
“You eat first, Grandmother.”
“Give some to Yongki first. I don’t know why that boy’s gotten so skinny lately. He eats plenty, but he still looks like that.”
Because I’d been doing strength training every day and swinging a blade without rest, my basal metabolism had gone up. Even after three square meals a day, I kept losing weight.
“Bro, this.”
I put the melon he handed me into my mouth.
The thick, sweet flavor spread over my tongue, and I felt my mood lift at once.
My brother took a slice of watermelon and settled back onto the sofa.
He wasn’t interested in the news at all. He was just lost in his phone.
Seeing him pull that off and still come in first place in the entire school every time made it pretty clear he’d been blessed with a monster brain.
- Here’s the next story.
The anchor kept talking.
- During this Gyeongso Daejeon...
I let out a quiet sigh.
I’m already getting sick of this.
I reached for the remote, ready to change the channel.
- Attention is now turning to a newly emerging figure from the Gyeongso Daejeon, the Purple Devil.
My hand stopped.
The screen changed, and a reporter began his explanation.
- A man descends from the sky on a wyvern. The man in the purple mask and suit is the Purple Devil. First seen during the Big Lava incident, this masked figure has made his first on-camera appearance since attacking a Dio Guild hunter.
There had been a huge number of reporters at the Gyeongso Daejeon.
It had been planned that way, because I’d deliberately intended to make a flashy entrance.
Of course, I’d expected the entire nation to remember the existence of the Purple Devil.
Only...
“I was on the scene of the Gyeongso Daejeon to cover a historical event without precedent anywhere in the world. The moment he came down from the sky, I knew instinctively that I was witnessing something that should be recorded in Korean history. It is a journalist’s duty to preserve moments like this in the public record.”
A huge photo flashed onto the TV mounted on the living room wall.
The Purple Devil... no, me, was shown leaping from the back of the wyvern, planting one hand on the ground, and landing in Gwanghwamun Square.
My younger brother lowered his phone, his mouth falling open.
“Whoa... That’s insanely cool.”
Through the haze of smoke, the purple mask glinted, and behind the Purple Devil, countless firefighters stood with Admiral Yi Sun-sin’s statue far in the distance.
I hadn’t intended it that way, but...
It really did look like a scene from a movie.
The news continued.
- The photographer, Evan Matthew, won the Pulitzer Prize the following year for a photo taken at the Black Lives Matter protests that swept across the United States after George Paul’s death in 2020.
Was fate something already decided?
Or was it just a chain of coincidences?
When the Gyeongso Daejeon first began, I’d thought of George Paul’s death.
And now the same reporter who had photographed that event had been the one on the scene here too.
Hah. That’s pretty funny.
My younger brother picked up his phone and started searching for something.
“Whoa. This is no joke. Hyung, look at this.”
He showed me an unfamiliar site, and the entire page was plastered with posts about me.
Have you seen the Purple Devil photo?!
A dry laugh slipped out of me.
Fame wasn’t something you could just wish into existence.
And it wasn’t something brute talent alone could solve, either.
Having charm that the public would actually latch onto was only the basics.
You also needed luck.
Of all people, the reporter who had covered the George Paul case happened to be at the Gyeongso Daejeon scene. Of all people, he happened to take a photo that looked that damn cool.
I asked my younger brother, “Has the Purple Devil gotten that famous lately?”
“Famous? That’s an understatement.”
He flicked through the screen again and again.
“That image is all over every community site.”
He sprang up from the sofa, braced one hand on the floor, and struck the Purple Devil pose.
“People are making parodies of the caption, like ‘I am the Purple Devil,’ and now it’s turned into this whole meme where everyone says ‘I am ___.’”
Grandmother kicked him in the ass.
“You damned brat, what the hell are you doing making dust fly all over the place while you’re eating fruit?”
“Ow, ow! Grandmother, you don’t know the Purple Devil?”
“What? Ink porridge?”
Grandmother seemed not to hear very well, because she answered completely off the mark.
“Ugh. Never mind.”
My younger brother sighed and tried to sit back down, only to jump right back up.
“Whoa, holy crap. Hyung, look at this—this member of Vernis, Sua, is doing the Purple Devil meme too?”
The idol name was familiar.
One look at the video my brother showed me, and I knew exactly who she was.
“Ta-da! I’m Sua from Vernis!”
A woman with a tiny face and flashy clothes copied the Purple Devil pose.
She was the woman I’d saved from being kidnapped by the cult leader’s apostle during the Cheonyangji incident.
...A total airhead.
“Huh? Hyung, what did you say?”
Grandmother barked at us again.
“You damned brats, the fruit’s all gonna go bad. It’s gonna rot. Are you gonna eat it or what?”
Obediently following the orders of the boss of our house, my brother and I sat side by side.
“This watermelon’s crazy sweet.”
“Want me to cut more?”
“No, I’m good. I’m full.”
I’d come back from the edge of death at the Gyeongso Daejeon.
It made me realize all over again how precious an ordinary, peaceful day really was.
- Here’s the next news story. So, what exactly is the Purple Devil’s true identity...?
Once they caught a taste for the gossip, every story after that was more of the same.
The Purple Devil leaping from the wyvern, defeating villains, winning...
I glanced at Grandmother, who was sitting nearby.
She was chewing on a piece of mango with great care.
She’s eating that like it’s the most delicious thing in the world.
Had I ever bought Grandmother mangoes in my last life?
Of course not.
Heroes mattered, sure, but protecting my family came first.
“Grandmother. Come here. I’ll massage your shoulders.”
“Aye, work them hard.”
I kneaded her thin, fragile shoulders and tilted my chin toward the Purple Devil, who kept appearing on the TV.
“Grandmother, what do you think of that guy?”
Grandmother snorted.
“Why’s that damned bastard flying around on a bird? Yongki, you absolutely mustn’t go doing dangerous crap like that. Got it?”
...
Faced with Grandmother’s fierce glare and stern warning, I nodded like an obedient little lamb.
“Yeah. Of course.”
A rally with more than ten thousand people gathered at Gwanghwamun Square had set all of South Korea buzzing.
It affected the media, the economy, and even the political world, and before long it had been elevated to a major agenda item in the Blue House.
The presidential chief of staff, Jeong Jin-ong, knocked on the door and stepped inside.
“Good morning, sir.”
The man who received Jeong Jin-ong’s greeting was sitting in a chair with his back to a massive desk.
“Hah. Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it a good morning.”
He was a minister-level political appointee and the head of the presidential secretariat.
Among all civil servants with the title “secretary,” he held the highest rank.
And yet Jeong Jin-ong swallowed hard.
No matter how powerful the chief of staff might be, in front of the president he was no more than a mouse before a cat.
“Is something bothering you, sir?”
The chair spun around, and someone rose to his feet.
A man with a slightly receding hairline, a broad frame, and a rough, gravelly voice.
Ha Man-dae, the most powerful man in South Korea, the president himself.
“Of course I’m bothered!”
Ha Man-dae slammed the newspaper he’d been holding down onto the desk.
Jeong Jin-ong, sharp-eyed as ever, checked the headline.
Jeong Jin-ong bit his lip.
So it really is because of the Gyeongso Daejeon.
Every citizen of South Korea knew full well that the police were in league with villains.
The problem was...
“Because of that Matthew or whatever his name is, I can’t even walk around with my head up these days!”
The Pulitzer-winning reporter had come to Korea and taken a photo that would go down in history.
That photo had been selected for the cover of Time and spread all over the world.
“What kind of international disgrace is this? Hah! I swear, I...”
Jeong Jin-ong hurried over and stopped him.
“Please calm yourself, sir.”
“Calm down, my ass. Get the car ready right now!”
“Where would you like to go, sir?”
The president’s schedule for the day had already been set.
He had planned to visit a battery factory in Jongno District and inspect the disaster area.
“We should go visit the fire scene first...”
“Forget it. If I go there, I’ll just get cussed out again.”
Ha Man-dae ground his teeth.
“Take me to the Seoul Police Station.”
“The police station, sir...?”
It was rare for the president to visit a police station in person.
Usually he issued orders, and a proxy carried them out on his behalf.
“I’m going to go cut that son of a bitch Park Nam-yong loose first.”
Ha Man-dae mentioned the police commissioner.
Jeong Jin-ong let out the smallest sigh imaginable.
Ha Man-dae had won the presidency thanks to his confidence and blunt, no-nonsense style.
Sometimes he really does press the accelerator too hard.
Jeong Jin-ong caught Ha Man-dae by the arm.
“Mr. President. First, please calm down.”
“What’s this? You not gonna let go? I’m going to replace every last one of Park Nam-yong’s cronies.”
Jeong Jin-ong’s head spun.
How was he supposed to stop the president now?
“Fine! We’ll replace the police leadership altogether this time. But after that... what then?”
Ha Man-dae’s stride faltered.
Could rotten public power be reborn just because a few senior police officials were removed from office?
“After that, well...”
He fumbled for words, unable to finish the thought.
Ha Man-dae was hot-tempered, but the biggest reason he had become president in the first place was because of his strategist, Jeong Jin-ong.
“We’ve got to stomp the villain bastards too.”
“Exactly. But you know that isn’t an easy thing to do.”
“...Hngh.”
Before Ha Man-dae, the former president had been murdered.
Even his family had been slaughtered without mercy.
It had been the work of villains.
Dark Alliance, with its countless awakened members across the country, was not something that could be handled by the police alone.
Ha Man-dae clenched his teeth.
It was the kind of job that might barely be possible even if the army were mobilized in full.
He let out a deep sigh.
“Then what are you suggesting?”
At last, Jeong Jin-ong smiled a thin, sly smile.
“We hand it over to the prosecutors first, Your Excellency—without you having to dirty your hands.”
“Hmm. And you think those guys would risk their necks fighting villains because they’re crazy?”
“Exactly. Which is why, when you need medicine, you go to a pharmacist. And when you need murder, you leave it to the professionals.”
“Professionals?”
Jeong Jin-ong smiled faintly and lifted one finger.
“Hunters.”