Evil, who had been yawning and sitting in a slovenly posture as if every process was bothersome, uncrossed his legs. He looked back at Cheche with a quite surprised face.
“Hey, they said you filmed it?”
“Yes, I filmed it.”
“What? Why?”
“……?”
“How did that happen?”
Cheche blinked his eyes and grasped the meaning of Evil’s questions “Why?” and “How did that happen?”
“Because it needed to be made known.”
“……”
“It needed to be made known, but there were no reporters who would come to such a dangerous place, so I obtained a camera and filmed it myself.”
The reporters who had been mercilessly pressing camera shutters to capture Evil and Cheche’s eye contact and conversation on this official occasion, the first since Cheche’s employment, coughed awkwardly.
“You picked out sad music and edited it yourself? A fucking ignorant refugee brat who doesn’t even know how to log in?”
“Someone I know helped me. I only filmed it.”
“Hmm.”
Evil narrowed his eyes, then bluntly said to the host who had been quietly waiting for the conversation to end before proceeding.
“Play it.”
“P… pardon?”
“Play it again. Fuck, don’t make me say it twice.”
Evil’s voice lowered. Even children knew that he hated saying things twice. The host snapped to attention as if struck by lightning and hurriedly sent hand signals to the video staff.
“Th-then, we’ll show the video once more…”
Even as the lights in the hall went out, the reporters still made a commotion clicking photos. That touched Evil’s nerves.
“Fucking noisy. Cowards who didn’t go to the battlefield because they were scared. Make that shutter sound one more time. I’ll shove the camera into your mouth.”
“……”
The hall became as quiet as a mouse.
Actually, most of the reporters gathered here were domestic political reporters, somewhat different in field from those who made the affairs of civil war countries known to the world. But no one dared tell Evil that.
Before Evil’s temper got any worse, the staff quickly played the video. Evil watched the video with his chin resting in his hand.
As sad music flowed, the first scene that appeared was a collapsed school. To be precise, it was children practicing writing by scratching the ground with stones in the ruins that had been a school. Next was a young man who had lost one arm digging dirt with his good arm, then next appeared parents crying while clutching the corpse of their young child whose flesh had sunken in. And similar scenes passed by.
The crude video made purely to stimulate human sympathy likewise failed to evoke any emotion in Evil.
Do ordinary people really feel sympathy for such things? Looking at people with hair color similar to Cheche’s, similar skin color, the only thing Evil realized was that pretty appearances like that lowly refugee brat were rare.
Having become indifferent, Evil didn’t interrupt the proceedings anymore even after the video ended, and the press conference quickly ended in a grim atmosphere. The reporters hurriedly left the hall.
Normally Evil would have left first, but for some reason today he sat there until the staff who were cleaning up came in. Because of this, Cheche and James also remained sitting still. James noticed Evil’s atmosphere was unusual and signaled with his eyes to the staff. Fortunately, one staff member who understood took the other staff and left the hall.
Evil, who had been resting his chin while observing Cheche, raised only one corner of his mouth and sneered.
“You must know all the people in the video.”
“……”
“You said you filmed it yourself. Then those kids who died from unexploded ordnance or corpses who starved to death there, they were all people you knew, right?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
Cheche answered calmly.
“Not all of them, but most were people I knew.”
“Not all those many people died, there must be people still alive, but you abandoned them all and came here, right?”
“Yes.”
“Wow, look at that, not even a change in expression… You’re a really scary guy.”
Evil laughed and stood up. Cheche also stood up following him. Even while leaving the hall, Evil kept laughing.
James felt the hair all over his body stand on end. Having been with Evil for a long time, he instinctively realized he shouldn’t be near Evil at this moment.
“I’ll clean up before I go.”
“I’ll help.”
“No, that’s not necessary. Cheche-ssi, please go up to the secretariat.”
James pushed Cheche into the jaws of death and hurriedly returned inside the hall.
Evil had no interest in the secretary-general fleeing in a hurry. The fear flowing from him was too familiar, and the cowardice of running away leaving only the refugee behind was familiar to the point of being sickening, so he didn’t care at all.
Currently, Evil’s interest was in the war hero who showed neither fear nor cowardice despite having escaped the battlefield alone saying he wouldn’t die. Evil kept laughing, then finally in the elevator even grabbed his waist while making keukeuk sounds. His blood-red eyes were full of cold laughter.
“Wow, even abandoning comrades and coming out, you’re living well while being treated as a hero. Living in the world is really easy.”
“……”
“Even you, if you had a conscience, wouldn’t it prick you? Hm? Aren’t you sorry?”
“……”
“I’m asking if you’re not sorry for running away.”
“…Always…”
Cheche opened his mouth then quickly shut it. What emotion had fleetingly passed across his emotionless face, even Evil who had lived without feeling such emotions could sufficiently guess.
Something called guilt.
Intoxicated by the fact that he had drawn out emotion from that expressionless refugee, Evil let out snickering laughs.
“As expected, when you die it’s over. Friends or whatever don’t matter.”
“……”
“Yeah, well, I have to survive and see. That’s what humans are.”
“……”
Evil laughed continuously. The elevator arrived, and it was when he took one step to get off.
“Is Director-nim having fun?”
An indifferent question was thrown from behind.
“…What did you say?”
Evil turned around with a coldly hardened expression. A normal person would be frightened and apologize immediately, but Cheche continued the question.
“Because you keep laughing. Is my abandoning my comrades and escaping from Tar something fun to Director-nim?”
“Fuck, you refugee brat. Do you really want to die?”
“Is this kind of question something I should want to die for…”
Cheche, whose collar was grabbed by Evil, couldn’t finish his words.
“You’re really like trash. There’s a limit to how much I’ll tolerate your arrogance. You must miss your hometown so much you want to return even as a corpse, huh? Should I kindly debone you and send you for the refugees there to eat? Huh?”
Evil grabbed Cheche’s collar, lightly lifted him with one hand, then slammed him against the elevator wall with a thud. Because the impact was transmitted directly from the back of his head, Cheche groaned and squeezed his eyes shut.
“For someone whose appearance is…”
Evil hung a sneer on his lips.
“If I spread the rumor that you weren’t actually a hero but a slave who groveled to the government forces and send you back to Tar, a more interesting situation than that video would occur, huh? Should I do that for you? Some fucking trash daring not to know his place and making me feel bad.”
Amidst the pouring curses, Cheche quietly looked at the other person. Evil’s face was distorted like a demon.
Death wasn’t scary. Whatever rumors spread didn’t matter at all. How he died, what happened to his body after death, such things had long ceased to matter. He was just curious. What was so fun that he laughed…
Because that was absolutely not something fun…
“For a refugee…”
Evil, who was looking at Cheche’s expression, ground his teeth.
‘I’ll kill him right here.’
The thought that came to his eyes was read as is. Cheche, as always, didn’t make meaningless resistance.
A large palm cast a shadow over Cheche’s face.
***
What Evil did to Cheche was clearly attempted murder, and fortunately it ended as an attempt. This was because the secretaries who came out when they heard a loud noise saw Evil pressing down on Cheche’s nose and mouth with his hand and immediately called security.
Of course, even calling all the security wouldn’t have been a match for Evil, but Evil let go when Cheche lost consciousness. To be precise, he threw him away. Setting aside the difference between a user and non-user, the sight of large Evil using violence on small Cheche was very… very unpleasant to see.
They handled the surveillance cameras in the elevator and hallway and silenced the security guards, but somehow it leaked and rumors spread on the internet that Evil had assaulted Cheche. To make matters worse, even eyewitness accounts of Cheche hospitalized were posted. The hospital where Cheche was admitted was owned by the Endem family and boasted ironclad security, so those eyewitness accounts were false, but as the internet always is, they spread in an instant.
