VWO Ch12

He had been cutting off all small talk and only telling him about work-related matters, but when he received the same question for the fourth time in an hour, he couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Jeong-hoon, do you know that you’re asking the same thing every ten minutes? If it were me, I would have written it down. What’s the point of me telling you over and over again when you don’t even memorize it? Find some scrap paper and at least pretend to write it down. Even something this basic…”

Shin Jae-eon, who was speaking calmly while suppressing his emotions as much as possible, closed his mouth when he saw Kim Jeong-hoon shedding tears in front of him. He stared at him with a dumbfounded expression, and Kim Jeong-hoon shouted loudly.

“You said it’s okay to ask over and over again because I’m new. I asked because I didn’t know, but if you’re going to give me such a hard time, are you telling me to work or not?”

“That’s why I’m telling you to write it down…”

“You could have said it nicely, but did you have to say it so aggressively that I felt ashamed?”

Team Leader Park strode over and stood between them at Kim Jeong-hoon’s suddenly raised voice. Shin Jae-eon looked at Team Leader Park and touched his forehead.

What kind of jerk is that?

Deputy Jung took the new employee out, and Team Leader Park took Shin Jae-eon to the pantry and poured him a cup of coffee in a paper cup.

“Ugh, it must be tough, Jae-eon?”

“It’s okay.”

“That new employee. He must have caused a big fuss this morning. A report came in, so we have no choice but to hold a committee, but honestly, no one on our team, or even in the company, believes it. It doesn’t make any sense. We’ve seen you for three years, and we know best that you’re not that kind of person.”

Team Leader Park patted him on the back and comforted him, but Shin Jae-eon was truly on the verge of exploding. There’s a joke that there’s a law of conservation of crazy people everywhere, but Deputy Kim is still at the company.

To have one and then have another added on top of that. It was too cruel for him to have people making things so difficult for him from above and below.

In the end, the situation was resolved by changing the new employee’s training supervisor. After that, the new employee was very quiet without saying anything. Every time he saw him walking around confidently after unfairly reporting him for inciting workplace bullying, his neck stiffened.

Shin Jae-eon, who had made a drinking appointment with Cha Min-jae, immediately ran to the bar. He gulped down a 500cc glass of beer and groaned, burying his head on the table.

“I’m going crazy because of that troublemaking new employee. Why did the company even hire someone like that?”

“Jae-eon, your drunken grumbling is cute.”

Cha Min-jae, who smiled brightly and poked Jae-eon’s cheek with his index finger, was a beautiful person even down to his hands. His fingers were long and his nails were neatly trimmed, and his pink fingertips stood out even more thanks to his fair skin. He was perfect.

He usually wore a suit and styled his hair to show his forehead, but today he appeared in a black hoodie and jeans with his hair down, making him look younger.

Jae-eon, whose heart melted at the sight of his heavenly beauty in front of him, smiled awkwardly and straightened his back.

“I’m sorry, Min-jae. I talked too much by myself, didn’t I?”

“No, it’s okay. It must be tough to have such a new employee come in.”

“Haha.”

Feeling embarrassed to get any more worked up here, Jae-eon smiled awkwardly and put a chicken leg in his mouth.

The two of them were currently at a chicken restaurant that was quite famous in Seoul, and the place was crowded with people who had come to eat chicken.

Rehell was so famous and his face was well-known that he was reluctant to go to crowded places, but he couldn’t give up on the chicken at this restaurant because it was Jae-eon’s favorite. He was satisfied with being able to sit in the corner of the restaurant and keep a low profile.

“Min-jae, what do you do in situations like this? The Hero Association must have new hero recruits coming in every year too.”

“Well… there aren’t any foolish heroes trying to take me on… but if there were…”

“Yes.”

“I would have ripped their mouths apart.”

“……”

He said it with a smile, as if it were a joke, but considering his history of actually ripping someone’s mouth apart in the past, his words were quite believable.

Cha Min-jae genuinely hated being called by his hero name, Red-Hell-Fire. So much so that he wanted to take a drill and tear apart the mouths of any villain who called him that.

Then again, Shin Jae-eon, who had ripped up a newspaper in outrage when he heard his villain name, Dark Chaos, wasn’t exactly one to talk.

Sipping his beer and lamenting about work, Shin Jae-eon’s eyes drifted to the TV installed on one side of the bar, and he propped his chin on his hand.

***

The unofficial association, the Villain Association, is steadily growing in power. It has been revealed that many criminals have joined the Villain Association under the influence of Dark Chaos. Furthermore, simultaneous terrorist attacks occurring worldwide have been identified as the work of the Villain Association, causing great shock. With the bounty on the unrevealed face of Dark Chaos rising to five million dollars, the world is watching to see if he can be caught.

‘…When did I ever commit terrorism!’

He was being blamed for something he didn’t even do, and it was incredibly unfair. Jae-eon just gulped down his beer, glancing at Min-jae.

Cha Min-jae paid no attention to the news, staring intently only at Jae-eon’s face. He simply offered a smile that seemed to melt Jae-eon whenever their eyes met.

“What happened to that kid? I heard his father was an A-class hero. Aren’t you Min-jae-ssi, his superior?”

“I called him in and gave him a warning. But the victim student vehemently denied being bullied, so the investigation is facing difficulties.”

“……”

Last night, he had also said that he didn’t particularly want revenge and didn’t have enough hatred to awaken his powers. Then what on earth did that student want? It was a little hard to watch him being bullied…

Someone had falsely reported that they were being ostracized even though they had never been bullied, while someone else was being severely bullied but defended their tormentors, saying it never happened.

Seeing Shin Jae-eon’s serious expression, Cha Min-jae smiled kindly.

“Don’t worry too much about it. I’m keeping an eye on it too.”

“Really? That’s so reassuring.”

Cha Min-jae was truly an angel. When he smiled, the world seemed to brighten.

When they first met as a model and manager, he had almost been blinded by the radiant halo around him. Rehell’s publicly known personality couldn’t be described as good by any stretch of the imagination, but he was always kind to Jae-eon.

In fact, it was Cha Min-jae who had contacted him first, expressing interest.

Compared to the trash Jae-eon had met so far, he was the most gentlemanly person he had ever encountered.

Shin Jae-eon grinned, using Cha Min-jae’s face as a snack while he chugged his beer. Watching him, Rehell covered his mouth with his hand, wearing a meaningful smile.

He was getting drunk.

In the end, he mixed soju with his beer, and the sky was spinning. Jae-eon adamantly refused Min-jae’s offer to take him home and got into a taxi, checking his phone screen.

Min-jae’s text message, telling him to contact him when he got home, had already arrived.

How could he be so kind!

It had been a bit long for just flirting without actually dating, but strangely, he wasn’t impatient. After exchanging messages with Cha Min-jae for a while with a giddy expression, Jae-eon realized that the taxi driver hadn’t moved for quite some time.

“Sir, please start driving.”

But there was no response from the taxi driver. How long had it been? The taxi driver finally turned his head, and his eyes were cold. He had an ominous feeling.

Now that he looked closely, the driver was holding a large kitchen knife in his hand.

Uh oh?

As Shin Jae-eon panicked, the taxi driver reached over from the driver’s seat and lunged at him.

Thwack-

No, he was about to lunge. In an instant, a long, slender hand shot out from the passenger seat and snapped the taxi driver’s neck.

Chairman was sitting in the passenger seat, having appeared out of nowhere. Chairman snapped the neck of the taxi driver who had tried to attack Shin Jae-eon once more in the opposite direction, wearing a look of pity.

…Was I seeing things because I was too drunk? What is this? What’s going on?

Was it common for a taxi driver in the middle of Seoul to try to kill a passenger he had never met with a large kitchen knife?

Feeling the alcohol leaving him, Shin Jae-eon asked in an absurd tone.

“What is this?”

Then, the taxi began to fill with ghosts. The Saintess of Ghosts, who hadn’t shown himself in a while, appeared next to Shin Jae-eon, who was awkwardly sitting in the back seat.

The dead have no voice, but souls do. He was grateful that they had appeared at the right time, but if two major villains appeared in the middle of Seoul, it was bound to cause a commotion.

“Let’s get out of here.”

Soon, the taxi was left empty, with no living person or even the taxi driver’s corpse remaining.

Thanks to Chairman’s ability, Jae-eon was instantly transported to a villa on a cliff, where he carefully examined the already dead taxi driver. Surprisingly, he wasn’t just an ordinary taxi driver; various weapons were found in his possession.

A large sashimi knife, a coping saw, a hammer, and so on… What on earth was this man planning to do?

The Saintess of Ghosts forcibly extracted the soul remaining in the taxi driver’s body and examined it for a long time before nodding. As his name suggested, he had communicated with the soul and smiled at Jae-eon.

“Father, an apostate named Kim Jeong-hoon commissioned him to kill you.”

“Well done.”

Chairman, who was very affectionate to his siblings, didn’t hesitate to praise his youngest sibling. At the familiar name, the expression disappeared from Shin Jae-eon’s face.

“Who did you say?”

“A man named Kim Jeong-hoon.”

“Are you sure?”

“I would never lie to Father. That would be a terrible betrayal of my faith in you.”

His children, including the Saintess of Ghosts, never lied to Dark Chaos. Shin Jae-eon asked again, even though he knew this, because he wished it was a lie.

Contrary to the anger that was rising to the top of his head, Jae-eon’s expression grew colder.

Shin Jae-eon wasn’t generous enough to forgive someone who tried to kill him for such a trivial reason.