WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Dionysus
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Newbie Civil Servant Hunts Villains Before Going Home ◈
Chapter 22: What Am I Supposed to Move? (2)
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* * *
The reason they needed children was to make experimental subjects.
Just like Hyeonyul.
They were trying to create more monsters like him.
They were about to do something so horrific.
Of course, Hyeonyul’s emotions surged.
“Looks like you really didn’t know, you idiots.”
Hyeonyul sneered at the enemies watching him warily.
“Kill them...!”
The enemies rushed forward, but Hyeonyul stood calmly.
“Three adults trying to take a child away. Aren’t you ashamed? Even Villains should have a minimum line they don’t cross. Leave children alone.”
“You Black Eagle bastard, are you insane? If I cared about that, why would I be here?”
Flames bloomed in the enemy’s hand.
Seeing that fire made Hyeonyul think of Serin.
“Then bark. Beasts can’t speak like people.”
Hyeonyul threw his dagger forward.
Black power clung to its tip as it lodged firmly in the flame-wielding Villain’s head.
Watching the dagger wag vigorously like a puppy’s tail, Hyeonyul counted.
‘Two.’
Hyeonyul caught the dagger as it sprang up from the shadows.
Black Eagle had made it for him, so it had excellent bounce.
When Hyeonyul stepped forward, he glided past one enemy as though sliding across the ground.
Following the dagger’s smooth arc, the enemy’s head separated from their body, and thick blood burst forth.
Hyeonyul quietly walked toward the last remaining enemy.
After watching their companion die in a spray of blood, the enemy stumbled over a rock and fell.
‘...That’s Black Eagle?’
At least, none of the Black Eagles they knew were like this.
There were always fools who strutted about in the name of justice, or let people go if they begged nicely enough.
And their actions were incredibly inefficient.
Just look at the kindergarten.
What kind of fool would raise children with powers like that?
They knew the children would not be taken if they were locked away and raised in confinement, yet they had openly let them roam around as if inviting someone to take them.
They let them loose to be stolen, then called the people who took them evil. That was Black Eagle.
But that man spoke and acted differently.
It felt like facing a major Villain.
“You have a rough idea of the situation, don’t you? Crawl back to your headquarters like the beast you are.”
“...W-Will you spare me?”
Hyeonyul approached the Villain, whose mind was racing.
He lightly gripped one of the Villain’s fingers.
“People have ten fingers. How many would have to disappear before it became inconvenient?”
“...”
The Villain swallowed dryly.
“I have less patience than you think. I won’t tolerate you testing me.”
Hyeonyul held out his dagger.
First, one.
Before a scream could spread with the missing finger, Hyeonyul covered the enemy’s mouth.
“Shut up and lead me to your headquarters.”
With tears in their eyes, the Villain nodded.
* * *
“It’s all right now. You waited a long...”
Startled by the sudden voice, Serin accidentally released fire.
Flames blazed around Serin’s body.
‘Small.’
It was not even enough to cook anything.
Hyeonyul calmly put out the fire.
“...!”
Only then did Serin look at Hyeonyul in surprise.
Hyeonyul was looking at Serin with the same expression as before.
“Let’s go back to the kindergarten.”
“...Serin won’t get scolded?”
“Why would you be scolded? That fire is there to protect you, and it worked well.”
“To protect... Serin? But I tried to hurt you, mister! Serin tried to do bad things again, again, again!”
“A little fire cannot harm me at all.”
“That’s because you’re Black Eagle, mister!”
Serin pointed at Hyeonyul.
Hyeonyul did not understand what Serin meant, but after thinking for a moment, he spoke.
“You may hate that fire now, but you only need to become friends with it. If you see it often and touch it often, you will surely be able to control it.”
The more Hyeonyul spoke, the brighter Serin’s eyes became.
“...Really?”
Once, when fire came from their body, Serin had burned down a room.
They said it was all Serin’s fault.
They shouted at Serin, asking why they had not been more careful.
After the fire, even the friends Serin had played with avoided them.
But Hyeonyul did not say such things or look at Serin that way.
They simply looked at Serin as they always had.
“Yes. You do not need to go over there anymore.”
“Then can I bring my friends? My friends are over there.”
Hyeonyul considered what to say in response to Serin’s innocent words.
There were things he needed to keep in mind to complete the mission.
Do not forget that the person to protect is a child.
Do not frighten the child.
Do not let the child know they are being targeted.
“No. They went somewhere farther away.”
Hyeonyul looked Serin directly in the eyes.
Serin’s friends might have been taken away somewhere as experimental subjects.
He did not make the foolish promise that he would bring them back.
There might not have been any possibility of doing so.
It was better not to make empty promises.
“...Hmph! They could at least say goodbye!”
Serin pursed their lips, then suddenly waved toward the other side of the forest.
“Guys! Go on ahead! See you later!”
The more Serin spoke, the more brightly they smiled and waved.
Hyeonyul knew it was meaningless, but he waited for a moment.
Around the seventh time Serin said a friend’s name, Hyeonyul realized it was the first friend they had mentioned.
“Let’s go back now.”
“Mister.”
“Go ahead.”
“There’s something I wanted to do with my friends. Can I do it with you instead?”
Could it be related to the mission?
Hyeonyul thought briefly before asking.
“What is it?”
“I want to see fireworks at a festival!”
Serin raised both arms high and waved their sparkling hands.
Their eyes closed gently, and their plump cheeks lifted high.
“I’m sure I’ll be happy if I see them with you, mister!”
Hyeonyul’s shoulders slowly sank.
There was no way Serin would be happy seeing fireworks with him.
Yet Serin said it with such certainty that Hyeonyul felt strange.
Very confused.
* * *
Jihwan’s lips trembled.
How shocked had he been when he received Hyeonyul’s texts?
Why was Hyeonyul taking the child with him?
Shouldn’t he have gone alone if he were going at all?
As such thoughts swirled through his mind, Hyeonyul stood there with the child.
“Finished sooner than expected. Child Serin is safe.”
Jihwan wanted to say something at Hyeonyul’s matter-of-fact words, but he held it in.
The child was safe, and Serin’s eyes as they looked at Hyeonyul were so clear.
“I’m going to head out again, so please take good care of the child.”
It sounded so natural that Jihwan nearly waved him off.
Jihwan soon came to his senses, took Serin back to the kindergarten, and followed Hyeonyul.
‘This is the place...?’
Jihwan’s gaze rose.
It was a building.
‘...Three floors, five floors, eight floors?’
It was quite tall.
Jihwan looked down at Hyeonyul.
Why had he come here?
Hyeonyul clenched and unclenched his hands, then sat on a nearby bench for a moment and took something out.
“Hyung. Where is this?”
Jihwan was curious about what was in the bag, but he wanted to know why Hyeonyul had come here.
“It is the headquarters of the people who tried to kidnap the children.”
Hyeonyul had not forgotten to deal with the Villain after learning the location.
It just happened to overlap with the time he needed to take his medicine before attacking.
“...What?”
Jihwan could not understand what he had just heard.
A headquarters?
Had tracking down a Villain headquarters always been this easy?
“Mr. Ye Jihwan.”
“...Yes?”
Jihwan almost laughed at the reality crashing down on him.
If they could track headquarters, how many cases could they have solved long ago?
But their enemies were not fools.
They had been all the more thorough in hiding their headquarters.
‘He solved this... this quickly? What? How did he do it?’
Jihwan wanted to ask Hyeonyul immediately.
“Can you destroy it?”
Hyeonyul had seen Jihwan’s magic before.
A mage’s magical power varied, but Jihwan was particularly strong.
“Destroy... what?”
Jihwan could not shake his blank expression.
He had not been able to keep up with Hyeonyul’s pace for a while now.
“The building.”
Hyeonyul lightly pointed at it.
He had tried swallowing a building before.
It only made him feel worse, so it had been quite inefficient.
“I will go in and kill the boss. Once I come out, please destroy the building.”
Only after saying that did Hyeonyul look around.
The neighboring building was somewhat close, but he did not think it would suffer much damage.
More than anything, killing them all at once would let them get off work earlier.
Ah.
Remembering something he had forgotten, Hyeonyul continued.
“If the building collapsing would cause serious damage elsewhere, I will try to rescue the people.”
He thought that should be enough.
He looked at Jihwan.
Jihwan’s dazed expression did not return to normal.
“It appears I made an unreasonable request. You do not have to worry about it anymore.”
“I can do it. ...But, um, what happens to the people in there?”
“They die.”
It was an obvious question, so Hyeonyul gave the obvious answer.
When Jihwan fell silent, Hyeonyul swallowed his medicine and spoke.
“I told you that I used to be a Villain. Do you remember?”
“I remember.”
“Once someone becomes a Villain, they do not remain one out of ignorance. Mr. Ye Jihwan, you may think they should be given a chance. But they have already had countless chances. It must have been difficult, but they could have stopped. They chose not to.”
Hyeonyul had no intention of making excuses for himself either.
He could not afford the ever-growing cost of his medicine, and he needed to find the people who had made him an experimental subject, so he had stayed a Villain and worked at a Villain company.
“You do not have to do it, Mr. Ye Jihwan. I am already someone with blood on my hands. One more will make no difference.”
Hyeonyul smiled at Jihwan.
He would not care if Jihwan condemned him as the same as the others.
“Hyung. Let me ask you one thing.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why do you have to go this far?”
“Villains are weeds. Even if you think you have pulled them out, they grow back when you turn around. The more poorly you pull them out, the more they spread.”
One corner of Hyeonyul’s lips lifted as he looked at the building.
Watching the atrocities of people who could not even keep an employment contract, he had learned that Villains had to be wiped out completely.
“If we leave them alone, countless children will be taken away as experimental subjects. Children should not grow up like that.”
As Hyeonyul’s words grew heavier and heavier, Jihwan’s lower lip trembled.
“...Hyung!”
Hyeonyul’s eyes shook greatly at Jihwan’s sudden approach.
“Hyeonyul hyung! That was really cool!”
Jihwan clenched his fist firmly, looking like he wanted to clap hands with him.
As a coworker who would carry out many missions with Hyeonyul, Jihwan had wanted to know what sort of person he was.
‘Now I know exactly what kind of person he is!’
He was someone hopeful, who had settled accounts with his past and dreamed of a new future.
‘Right. What does appearance matter?’
Hyeonyul only looked a little scary because of the scars on his face, but he was quite striking.
‘What does the past matter?’
What mattered was the present.
Jihwan stared at the building.
It was a place that tried to turn children into experimental subjects.
It looked disgusting.
“Hyung, to be honest, I’ve always wanted to blow up a building at least once. I wondered countless times whether I could do this or not, and the weight of the responsibility was too much for me to do it.”
Hyeonyul watched Jihwan warily and stepped back.
He did not know why so many words were needed just to blow up a building.
“If hyung has resolved yourself like that, then as your teammate, it’s only right that I resolve myself too.”
“What are you resolving yourself to do...?”
“To root out the Villains. I was too complacent. I thought this would be enough, but that was half-hearted.”
When it was time to act, one had to act.
He had learned that through Hyeonyul.
Without looking at Hyeonyul, Jihwan raised a thumb.
“Let’s go, hyung. I won’t let even a single rat escape.”
“How long will it take?”
“Give me five minutes. It’s my first time blowing up a building this big too.”
“Then I will finish taking my medicine before I go.”
Only then did Jihwan look at Hyeonyul.
Seeing the handful of medicine in his palm and the injection Hyeonyul gave himself in the stomach, Jihwan could not ask anything.
Hyeonyul had once been an experimental subject.
Could a living experimental subject be healthy?
‘...So hyung came to Black Eagle to burn his last flame?’
Seeing how much medicine Hyeonyul took, Jihwan could only assume he was terminally ill.
A healthy person would not take that much medicine.
‘Is this what atonement is...?’
“I am fine.”
When Jihwan’s expression turned strange, Hyeonyul said it firmly.
Jihwan merely nodded.
His gaze still seemed strangely uneasy, but Hyeonyul thought he understood and slowly walked away, covering his eyes.
The boss was usually at the top.
Hyeonyul began looking from the highest floor.
A boss’s office was obvious.
One room stood out from the rest.
A room made to maintain a grand atmosphere, despite its occupant doing nothing but sign documents and play golf.
‘There.’
The president’s office.
Hyeonyul checked the nameplate.
To make sure the boss was there, he covered one ear and walked closer.
“Are you dawdling around like this because you cannot even handle one thing?”
Hearing the reproachful voice alone gave Hyeonyul a sense of it.
‘That’s them.’
“Hurry up! Do you know how angry the Poison King is? Move all the children we acquired, quickly!”
‘...What?’
Hyeonyul doubted his ears.
Why was the Poison King involved here?
Hyeonyul walked until Jihwan could no longer see him.
There was no CCTV in the president’s office.
People with something to hide could not carelessly install such things when they might reveal their weaknesses.
Hyeonyul melted into the shadows and appeared behind the president.
He drew his dagger.
“Do not forget to check the merchandise before you leave! Understand?”
The president irritably ended the call.
“One day, I should just kill that bastard.”
They took a cigarette from their pocket.
They opened the drawer to find a lighter.
Screeech.
As the drawer slid open, a voice came from behind them.
“Where are you moving it, and what exactly are you moving?”
The voice was deep and chilling.
The president’s eyes moved before lowering.
They saw a blade lightly pressing into their neck.
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