Chapter 34 - Reasonable Doubt

[Good evening, everyone. This is the 9 o'clock news. Earlier today, there was an airplane terror attack by a villain. Our nation's hero caught the falling plane and saved everyone aboard. Reporter Jeon Jae-seung has the details.]

[1 PM today. The screens of the three terrestrial broadcasters suddenly changed.]

The TV screen, which had been showing an entertainment program, turned black. Then suddenly, the interior of an airplane began broadcasting. People trembling in fear, and Egostic's voice echoing through the cabin.

[Welcome to the greatest quiz show in the sky, The Ego Show Live!]

The TV displayed previously recorded footage of Egostic. His face twisted in a sinister smile.

[This is Egostic's third terror attack, following two previous incidents where he broadcast his terror scenes on public airwaves.]

Egostic's voice rang out again.

[The rules are simple! There will be a total of 10 Non-Sense Quiz questions, and you just need to answer them correctly! If even one person gets them all right, I'll safely—very safely!—release the plane. But if everyone gets them wrong? Boom. The bomb goes off!]

The passengers, thrown into chaos, frantically tried to solve the quiz questions in their confusion.

[His threat was clear: solve the Non-Sense Quiz and live, or fail and he'd detonate the bomb attached to the plane. Despite their panic, the passengers calmly attempted to solve the problems. However.]

Egostic's mocking voice echoed through the cabin.

[...is not the correct answer!!! How unfortunate. Well then, hmm, tsk. Goodbye now!]

Boom— The aircraft shook violently with the sound.

People screamed as the plane began its descent.

The camera switched.

The news broadcast showed footage from a ground camera filming the distant sea.

At first glance, it might be hard to tell, but looking closely, the plane was clearly descending at an angle.

As the airplane plummeted desperately downward.

A small dot began flying toward the plane.

The dot collided with the aircraft.

Thoom—

A tremendous vibration, powerful enough to be felt by the camera recording the scene.

The anchor continued.

[Toward that falling plane, one figure flew. Her identity: A-Rank Hero Stardus. She had been waiting near the plane's predicted landing point, and when it began to fall, she flew alone to stop it.]

[Many experts predicted that her known abilities wouldn't be enough to stop it, but defying those predictions, the plane is visibly slowing down.]

In the footage, the plane was noticeably falling more slowly.

[Eventually, the plane stopped, and all passengers were safely rescued. Stardus collapsed afterward and was transported to the hospital, but the Hero Association announced that she had merely fainted from exhaustion and her life is not in danger. This has been reporter Jeon Jae-seung.]

With the reporter's coverage complete.

The news returned to the female anchor standing in the studio.

She opened her mouth.

[Yes, a hero. What is a hero? Justice, salvation, sacrifice, faith... What Stardus showed us this time was truly the work of a hero. On behalf of our broadcasting station, we extend our gratitude to Stardus for protecting the citizens of South Korea.]

The anchor bowed her head deeply.

***

[Come on, after doing all that, you deserve at least a day off, don't you think? Come down, look at the ocean, and clear your head. Let's go for a run together like old times.]

"Okay, I'll come this time."

[Really? Promise! You promise?]

"Yes, yes."

The call ended.

Setting down her phone, she sat in the chair at her desk and let out a deep sigh.

"..."

Several days had already passed since she'd stopped that plane alone.

Even she found it miraculous that she'd somehow managed to stop it and was still alive.

Regardless, what mattered was that she had stopped the plane and saved people, and she was still perfectly fine.

She clenched and unclenched her right hand once.

Her strength had increased again.

And this time, far more than before.

Witnessing her unprecedented growth, the Association concluded that they had underestimated her power all along.

They accepted that she had possessed such strength all along, but no one had realized it.

In truth, the enhancement of her abilities didn't stop there.

When she flew toward the plane, gritting her teeth and racing desperately forward.

She had broken through another barrier.

For some reason, her flight speed had become much faster than before.

The Association explained that she seemed to have underestimated her own power until now.

But because it was her own power, she knew clearly.

Her abilities hadn't always been this strong—they had grown.

It wasn't a matter of doubting whether such a thing was possible.

Truly, her abilities had grown stronger.

Why?

She encountered a situation her abilities couldn't handle, and her powers grew on their own to resolve that situation?

Did that make sense? How conveniently contrived was that?

Yet she couldn't deny that her abilities had grown stronger, as it was already an established fact.

However, in truth.

She wasn't particularly focused on the fact that her abilities had grown.

Rather, what she kept thinking about was—

Egostic. Him.

Due to this airplane terror incident, many of those who had blindly worshipped Egostic as an anti-hero had disappeared. Through this event, people were reminded once again that he was a villain officially designated by the Association.

Although there had been no civilian casualties this time either, this truly would have resulted in many deaths if Stardus hadn't stopped it, so there were many voices criticizing him.

However.

Stardus alone, the person at the center of this incident, was thinking differently from the public.

When she had stood there helplessly, a message had suddenly arrived.

And he had told her.

To stop that falling plane.

'You need to fly and save that plane.'

When she asked how she could possibly stop it—

With a voice full of conviction, he said:

'You can do it. Stop the plane's fall.'

When she asked if he was trying to kill her, he had said this:

'What meaning would I have without you? Without you, I'm just another common, ordinary villain.'

'You complete me.'

As she felt slightly flustered by his sudden declaration—

He followed up with a voice full of sincerity, speaking as if pleading with her.

'So step forward.'

'Clench your fists, put strength in your legs, and fly into that sky to save those people.'

'You can do it.'

'Because that's who you are.'

His words—words she had never once heard in all her time as a hero, words that seemed to believe in her even more than she believed in herself, words filled with such trust.

Had there ever been a single person who believed in her like this?

Even when she first began her career as an A-Rank Hero, all she heard were negative comments: too young, too slow to resolve incidents.

Amidst a public that didn't trust heroes much to begin with, she had simply worked in silence.

She had done it all quietly, simply to uphold her own sense of justice.

Yet the first person to speak words of complete trust in her was her nemesis—a villain. It was truly ironic.

And things had actually turned out exactly as he said they would.

She didn't know what he had seen in her to speak with such certainty, but regardless, she had succeeded just as he predicted.

Like throwing an egg at a rock.

A suicidal act.

No matter what words one used to describe it, something that should have been impossible had actually happened.

Just as he had first foretold.

"Egostic..."

Alone in her home, she quietly murmured his name.

He had said he believed in her.

He had told her to lift the plane.

But the point to focus on here wasn't actually the part about believing in her.

It was that he had told her to lift the plane.

Why?

He dropped the plane, then told her to save it?

Then why drop it in the first place?

To simply dismiss him as a psychopath who killed people with his abilities—there were too many inconsistencies for that.

The plane would have crashed if she had done nothing.

But because he told her to save it, she was able to.

So why tell her to save it?

Did he want to orchestrate an insane death game where a plane crashes if you get a nonsense quiz wrong, but didn't actually want to see civilians die?

Sure, that was possible. It was, but...

Her intuition was somehow screaming that it wasn't that.

'Without you, I'm just another common, ordinary villain. You complete me.'

His words continued to echo in her ears.

Without her, he was just an ordinary villain, so he needed her.

Why would not having her make him an ordinary villain?

Wouldn't it be the same if another hero came to be his adversary instead of her? Was it just because she was the only A-Rank Hero near him?

It didn't seem like that.

Her intuition kept insisting so.

There seemed to be some other reason.

A baseless speculation with severe logical leaps, utterly absurd. Frankly, it was almost a kind of delusion.

But this time, she decided to trust what her senses were telling her.

"...I need to investigate his past actions."

What had he done until now?

How had it all concluded?

If she gathered all the incidents he'd caused, wouldn't something emerge?

She rose from her seat and started heading outside.

Egostic. The suspicion that he was planning something, intending something, doing all of this with purpose.

It couldn't be called reasonable doubt, but still.

She decided to try deducing the truth.

And so Shin Haru grabbed her clothes and headed out.

Egostic. Whatever you're hiding. Whatever you're planning.

I will find it.

***

"Huh, why are my ears itching?"

"Oppa, isn't it because you don't clean them?"

"No, I don't think that's it."

What is this? Is someone talking about me?