Winterer vs S-Rank (1)
Winterer vs S-Rank (1)
Winterer had proposed a single bargaining condition: she would stop killing.
Seol Hayeon asked for clarification.
"...Did I hear that correctly? A villain claims she won't kill?"
"Don't worry. Your ears have not rotted away with age!"
"Hmph."
The unbelievable answer remained unchanged.
Seol Hayeon immediately recognized it for what it was.
It was a trap meant to lure her in.
Winterer's words were only bait; her true intention was to draw Seol Hayeon close and kill her.
'A lie not even worth hearing... but perfect for buying time.'
"Just yesterday, five villains attacked Awakener Seo Yujin. How can you say that after seeing what happened?"
Still, she left room for dialogue.
That sociopath's scheme would buy Alice and Sia time to disarm the ice bombs.
Winterer's smile deepened.
"That's because you people keep hounding us. I can't manage every worthless bitch under me while we are constantly on the run."
"You claim you will rule them, yet you can't even control your own subordinates. Why should I hear you out?"
"If you stop hounding us—no, if you officially recognize me—then things will be different. First..."
With that, she laid out her plan.
First, villains were inevitably born.
Just as darkness existed wherever there was light, a villain could be born at the moment of awakening.
"What did we do wrong? Was our only crime awakening incorrectly? Was being born itself a crime?"
"......."
"Until we awakened, we were just ordinary people. We had families and friends."
They had not chosen to become villains.
We were just like you.
"Honestly, I understand why you act that way. We are the bitches who get off on killing people. Of course you think we're monsters."
"At least you understand that."
"That is why I, Winterer, will step forward—to rule and control these pitiful monsters."
She would step forward and rule them.
She would stop them from killing civilians.
She would prevent them from committing crimes.
So...
"We want only one thing: coexistence. We want to stop killing one another and acknowledge our differences."
Let's live together.
It was a proposal as beautiful as a fairy tale.
But Seol Hayeon shook her head at once.
Countless hardships had long since worn away her childhood innocence.
"You expect me to believe you can resist the Murder Impulse? Villains are several times more deeply addicted than heroin users. It is impossible."
"True. We do have to kill. If we keep holding it in, we eventually explode."
"......?"
"But we don't have to kill you, do we? Other countries are full of monsters who deserve to die. Villains."
"......!!!"
Had she sensed Seol Hayeon's lack of interest?
Winterer's fairy tale abruptly shifted into a practical proposal.
She would acknowledge and accept the Murder Impulse.
She would direct it toward villains outside Korea.
She would become a villain mercenary who eliminated foreign villains.
Even Seol Hayeon was momentarily taken aback by the proposal.
'Then again, Korea only captured villains alive because people here cared about villain rights and such. Elsewhere, summary execution was usually the rule...'
In other countries—America, for example—deaths caused by villains numbered in the hundreds every day.
And no one was about to care about villain lives there.
In other countries, villains were vermin, to be caught and killed on sight.
But what if Korea dispatched villain mercenaries to eliminate villains abroad?
What if they didn't flee or cause trouble, and returned after satisfying only their Murder Impulse?
They could kill villains far more efficiently than awakeners could.
If awakeners were specialists at killing monsters, villains were experts at killing people.
The benefits to the nation went without saying.
Only one problem remained.
"Impossible. A villain could never be selective about whom they killed."
——whether any of it was remotely possible.
For the past forty years, humanity had tried to accept villains.
When a family member, friend, or colleague became a homicidal maniac overnight, how could anyone cut them down without hesitation?
Humanity did its best to rehabilitate villains.
But it was impossible.
Humanity and villains could not coex—
"Impossible, my ass. Look at this baldy. He's still alive, is he not? Even we can be picky about what we eat."
"H-hiiik..."
As if to refute her doubts, Winterer casually rubbed the hostage's bald head.
Given Winterer's ability, murder could have occurred at any moment.
Yet the hostage—the Prime Minister of Japan—remained completely unharmed.
Winterer herself wore an indifferent expression.
She looked as though she felt no Murder Impulse at all.
Seol Hayeon scowled.
"Ha."
'What nonsense.'
It certainly sounded plausible, but...
her Sixth Sense screamed that it was a blatant lie.
Pretty-sounding bullshit.
It was nothing more than a scheme to use the hostage as bait and hook a prize as large as Seol Hayeon.
Lines deepened between Seol Hayeon's brows.
She couldn't read Winterer's true intention.
'She should know what kind of person I am. Why bother with this charade...?'
—Murmur, murmur.
"Is she for real?"
"It does sound worth hearing her out."
"Association President! If Winterer really can control the villains...!"
"Why are all of you... Hm?"
The lines deepened a little further.
The awakeners surrounding her were wavering.
'This was never meant to persuade me. It was meant to shake the awakeners raised in Korea—the world's strongest awakener nation—who've never truly faced villains.'
She knew better than anyone that villains were beyond redemption.
As one of the earliest awakeners, she had witnessed every kind of atrocity. How could she not know?
But... the youngsters these days?
Those who had directly faced a villain were a minority.
And even they were mostly limited to the villain pursuit squads.
Inexperienced awakeners held vain hopes.
Hopes, picked up from comics or wherever, that villains could be rehabilitated.
Hopes that everyone could be happy.
A sigh escaped her.
[What do you think about the possibility of rehabilitating villains?]
[I guarantee you, it is absolutely impossible.]
'Yujin is simply exceptional. Are all young people like this now?'
The unexpected praise for Yujin was merely a bonus.
Nevertheless, Winterer calmly extended her hand.
As though offering reconciliation.
"If my proposal appeals to you, come shake my hand!"
"Is a handshake truly necessary?"
"Ahaha! After everything I have said, you still insist on treating us like monsters? Then I suppose we have no choice but to become monsters—just as you want. Forever."
"......."
"Choose. Shake my hand and create a Korea that never has to fear villains again. Or detonate every bomb, kill roughly ten thousand people, and continue killing and dying against every villain born from now on."
If Seol Hayeon didn't see them as monsters, she should shake Winterer's hand.
If she did see them as monsters, Winterer would become exactly what she wanted.
It was an extreme binary choice.
Murmurs spread through the crowd.
"...Wouldn't it be better to at least hear her out?"
"If Winterer is telling the truth, the civilian casualties will be uncontrollable."
Even her adjutant was suggesting, "Perhaps we should accept for now."
Seol Hayeon sighed and discreetly checked the time on her phone.
Exactly twenty minutes had passed since she arrived.
Just as her Sixth Sense had told her.
'...Could I buy even three more minutes?'
—Step. Step.
"Association President?"
"Don't follow. I'm going alone."
She left the group of awakeners and began walking slowly.
Across the cracked road, toward Winterer.
A smile appeared on Winterer's lips.
"You made the right choice. We can also..."
"———This old woman will tell you a story from long ago."
"......?"
At that moment, a smile appeared on Seol Hayeon's lips as well.
"I still remember it vividly. Thirty-three years ago, when we first learned that villains weren't merely criminals intoxicated by power."
"Wait. What does that—"
"We captured a newly awakened villain—what we called a mutant back then—right at a murder scene in a busy district."
Before she knew it, the scene from the past had taken shape before her eyes.
The 1980s, when she had devoted her youth to Korea.
It was a time when the world still regarded awakeners as monsters.
"There was only one victim. Today it would dominate the news, but back then, something like that was almost ordinary."
"Why are you suddenly telling an old story?"
"Just listen. I restrained her immediately. There were no specialized restraints for awakeners back then, so I had to hold her down myself."
Seol Hayeon's voice grew a little slower.
Partly to buy time...
but above all because it wasn't a story she could tell lightly.
"While I was struggling to hold her down with my bare hands, a woman came running over in a panic. She was the villain's mother."
"Wait, what does that have to do with—"
"Do you know what she said to me? "Oh my, why are you doing this to my child? Why have you made her so bloody when she dressed up for such a happy day? What if her face scars and she can't marry?""
Only the sound of the wind remained on the road.
Everyone listened with bated breath.
Her story carried that much weight.
"I pointed at the corpse and shouted, "Can't you see that? This bitch did it. She is no longer the daughter you knew.""
"But how could a mother abandon her daughter? Instead, she struck me again and again, shouting, "My daughter could never do that! Let her go, you monster!""
"To an awakener, her blows were nothing... but they gave the villain I was pinning down enough of an opening."
"The next thing I knew, I was flying through the air. The villain had kicked me away."
After saying that,
Seol Hayeon swept her gaze over the crowd.
The awakeners who had been excited only moments before.
Youngsters who still looked like children to her.
"Let me ask you. What do you think the villain did next?"
—Murmur, murmur.
Murmurs spread through the crowd in response.
Meanwhile, Winterer's face contorted.
She knew all too well what a villain would do.
"Shut your mouth right no—"
"———She lunged at her own mother and tore open her throat."
"......!!!!!"
Everyone inhaled sharply at once.
"That was the first time I learned how much blood could pour from a human neck. A fountain of hot blood burst out."
"So I beat her down immediately. This was before standards like S-rank existed, but a newly awakened villain was no match for me."
"Then I asked her why she had attacked her innocent mother instead of me. Why, after finally kicking me away, had she ignored the opening and attacked someone defenseless?"
Only then did the Chairwoman stop walking.
Only five meters separated her from Winterer.
Their eyes met.
"What do you think she said, Winterer?"
"...Tch. She wanted one more taste before she was caught."
"Correct. She said killing the person beside her was more rational than fighting an opponent she couldn't defeat."
Winterer's eyes blazed with hostility, as though she had never spoken of peace.
"That is why I will control those bitc—"
"If that were all, I wouldn't even remember it. Villains killing their own parents was common in those days."
"Would you let me fini—"
"But the reason I still remember it is..."
Seol Hayeon looked down at Winterer coldly, as though she too had never smiled.
"The mother, dying from blood loss beside her, desperately crawled toward me. Blood bubbled from the hole in her throat as she said, "I'm fine. Our Mingyeong would never do this. Please, sir, pretend you didn't see anything. I'm fine, so please...""
".........!!!"
"You damned bitch..."
"The villain stood beside her laughing and said, "See? She says she is fine, so let me go.""
The awakeners covered their mouths in shock.
Winterer radiated open hostility without attempting to hide it.
Seol Hayeon raised her hand.
"That is what you are. Villains."
"Fuck! All of you, get out here and hit this bitch!"
—KWAANG!!
"Puahaha! Finally!"
"You fucking bitch! Die!"
"......!! Association President!!!!"
At the same moment, villains leaped down from every direction.
There were nearly fifty of them, but...
"For the third and final time: I do not negotiate with villains."
Seol Hayeon merely pressed together the fingers she had raised.
—Snap.
"———I bought you twenty-five minutes, Yujin."
A finger-snap.
The mana-infused snap pierced the chaotic road.
"Master!!"
—TWOO-KWAAAANG!!!!!
".........!!!!!?"
With a deafening roar, violet trajectories filled the air.
They surged like dozens of whirlwinds.
A storm descended.