The Tough Guy Hides the Villainess

001 – Scorpion CD-ROM

001 – Scorpion CD-ROM

Every man has at least one unforgettable experience.

For example, like a late-night movie you watched by chance during childhood.

The title of the movie I watched was “Perfect Education.”

It was a story about a man who kidnapped a pretty woman and somehow they ended up falling in love.

“I can’t forget it because it was the first erotic movie I ever saw. But there was one thing I couldn’t understand at all.”

Why did the kidnapper and the victim fall in love?

“Later, I found out that it’s called Scorpion CD-ROM. It’s a psychological phenomenon where the hostage empathizes with the kidnapper and defends and sympathizes with them. Am I smart or what?”

“It’s Stockholm Syndrome, you idiot! And can you untie this already? Do you even know who I am? Untie this right nowooo!”

Struggle, struggle, struggle, struggle-.

The sight of a woman tightly bound in chains struggling in a gloomy basement is quite amusing.

“You b*stard kidnapper! Do you know what will happen if my dad catches you? He’ll lock you up in a mountain villa where no one can find you and cut off your fingers and toes one centimeter at a time!”

Anyway. A movie is just a movie.

Love between a kidnapper and a hostage doesn’t exist in this world.

If anyone argues with me, I’ll smack them in the head.

“So, Ga-eul, I’m leaving your meal here, eat well. And if you need to use the bathroom, there’s a cola bottle over there, use that. If it’s a big problem─.”

“Yaaah! aaah! aaah!”

“Alright, alright. Do as you please. I’m leaving now, there’s someone who throws a fit if I’m late.”

Thud-!

Only after closing the heavy iron door did I finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Yeah.

I am the kidnapper who kidnapped ‘Seo Ga-eul,’ the only daughter of the chairman of Seonam Group, the world’s largest conglomerate.

But, how did it come to this?

# # #

The year I turned twenty, the world roughly ended.

It’s funny that this sentence, which feels like the beginning of a novel, actually happened.

There was no cause or warning.

One day, the sky opened up and monsters poured out, completely wrecking the world.

Of course, humans were a tenacious species that survived.

Just as there are people who continue to live by scavenging through garbage dumps despite extreme poverty, people did not lose hope and fought against monsters even in the midst of the apocalypse.

With superpowers and magic.

People called those with such abilities heroes, and among them, those who were most active were revered as “supernovas.”

Supernovas that shine without giving up even in a world where the sun has been swallowed by darkness.

Then what about me?

I was scavenging through the garbage dump.

“Oh! A fan!”

I found a fan with a slightly broken blade among the junk. The exterior looked mostly intact, so it seemed like it would work if it had electricity.

Moreover, there was also a packet of ramen next to it.

“The expiration date is only a year past?”

Finding both a fan and a packet of ramen at the same time, today was a lucky day.

If the rumor spreads that I have a fan at home, wouldn’t pretty girls confess to me?

Because that’s the kind of world it is.

“Yingying! Big brother is home!”

Dragging my aching legs, I felt a bit relieved as I returned home.

Even though it was just a makeshift building made by haphazardly attaching steel frames, wooden planks, and iron plates near the garbage dump, having a home in a ruined world was truly amazing.

“How long has it been since I last had ramen?”

If you add a drop of ketchup, the magical ingredient, to this bubbling broth, ta-da!

Ketchup ramen is complete.

“This is ramen.”

Slurp, slurp-.

As I finished the ramen in an instant, a satisfied smile appeared on my lips.

But soon, a rumbling sound echoed from my stomach, making me feel gloomy.

‘I can’t even remember the last time I ate to my heart’s content. ‘Should I eat the emergency food after all?’

Sneak-.

When I looked at the hamster cage placed in a corner of the house, my “emergency food” was trembling while eating the few strands of ramen I had given it.

It was a very round and blue creature, about the size of a baseball.

━Gyuiing.

“Ah, forget it. Eating that won’t even make a dent.”

Let’s just sleep.

Thud-. Lying on the floor covered with an old but somewhat soft carpet, starlight saw through the hole in the ceiling.

If it weren’t for the mosquitoes buzzing in my ears, it would have been as romantic as an Alphonse Daudet novel.

But today, there was a fan.

A thing that creates a cool breeze in the hot summer?

This is real superpower and magic.

“I am truly happy. I have a full stomach, a house, and a fan, so I think I can be in the top 30 percent of the upper class. In this world, wouldn’t I be the perfect groom?”

Clunk, clunk, whoosh-.

“The fan just broke, so maybe in the top 47 percent? Still, if it’s more than half, it’s average.”

━Whirr.

Swoosh-.

Then, without warning, it started to rain, and water began to drip from the ceiling.

“No wonder my injured knee kept aching.”

When it seemed like it was going to rain, my left foot, injured in an accident at 19, would ache, and I would have trouble sleeping like today.

I suddenly wondered how my life would have changed if I hadn’t injured my leg that day.

Would I have been called a supernova too? I would have been successful as an awakened one and popular with women.

Growl-.

I was hungry but couldn’t sleep.

Above all, I was painfully lonely.

When was the last time I had a conversation with someone, not just talking to myself?

“I wish someone was here with me right now. Preferably a pretty woman. While I’m at it, I wish she had a big chest and a good personality. Also, lots of money and good at cooking─.”

Knock, knock-.

While I was making my wish, someone knocked on the door outside.

─I heard Han Nam-jin lives in this old incinerator.

Han Nam-jin?

Han Nam-jin is my name.

I tried to open the door but suddenly felt suspicious.

The voice I heard outside was that of a thin woman.

No woman would come looking for me.

“Who is it?”

─I have something urgent to tell you, can you open the door?

It was a clear and pure voice that could wake nine out of ten sleeping people.

After much deliberation, I eventually succumbed to my male instincts.

I was curious how much prettier the face of someone with such a beautiful voice would be.

# # #

Clang-.

As I opened the crude iron door, a woman soaked in the rain stood tall and looked at me.

Gasp-. For a moment, it felt like I was losing my breath.

In this ruined world, it was the first time I had seen such a beautiful woman.

She had black hair and striking red eyes with cat-like pupils.

There was a long scar near her left eye, but who cares.

“I’m Hanamjin. Why are you here?”

Could she be a girlfriend hopeful who heard the rumor that I found a fan? Damn! That fan is already broken!

While I was flustered, the woman stepped into the house without even taking off her shoes and looked around.

“Life has become harsher compared to the old days, but in your case, it seems extreme. How do you live in such a dump? The mana concentration is at dungeon level─.”

The woman, who was about to say something, closed her mouth.

She drew a long katana from her waist.

Srrng-!

“A monster…!?”

The reason she drew her sword was not because she was a crazy psychopath, but because she discovered the slime monster I had confined in a hamster cage in a corner of the house.

━Eeeng Eeeng-.

A blue slime the size of a hamster, Eeeng Eeeng.

One of my few conversation partners and emergency food supply.

“Hanamjin! Move! There’s a monster in the house!”

“Wait a minute! Eeeng Eeeng is a monster, but it’s a good monster!”

“I’m warning you. There’s no such thing as a good monster in this world. If a monster shows kindness to humans, it’s only to deceive them for greater malice. So move! Let me kill it!”

“What? Kill it? Hey, you b*tch! Did you cement your ears? Eeeng Eeeng is a good monster!”

“…What!? Cement what in where…!?”

The woman’s eyebrows furrowed deeply.

A beauty frowning was a sight to behold in its own way.

In my case, I might prefer this to her smiling.

It’s not important right now!

“Just because you have a pretty face, I was going to treat you like an older sister. How old are you? Huh? You look younger than me! And you don’t even take off your shoes in someone else’s house!”

“……”

Inside, there was a trembling Yingying and a woman glaring at Yingying. The tension that didn’t fit this cramped house was palpable when the woman’s lips slightly parted.

“Can you prove that it’s a good monster?”

“Prove?”

I took Yingying out of the small hamster house and placed it on my palm.

“Look! It’s calm, right?”

“……”

“If I sing, it even dances. Want to see? If you tie me up and lock me away, two hundred li along the river, Butterfree! Yadoran! The birds’ hometown~. No matter how much they insisted it’s their land, “The crocodiles come out, the crocodiles!”

━Yingyingyay.

Damn it, damn it-.

Yingying started dancing to the song with its slime body, and I was so happy to have an audience for my song that I started dancing too.

“How is it?”

“…It’s strange.”

“Monsters are supposed to be strange. Don’t you know that?”

“Not the monster! Your song!”

The woman, who had been looking at me and Yingying with suspicious eyes for a long time, put her sword back at her waist and flicked her wet hair back. The shampoo smell was really nice.

“I heard there’s a man who tamed a monster, so I came to see. It seems I came to the right place. How did you tame it? Monsters only harbor malice towards humans. Do you have a secret?”

Did I tame Yingying? I just found it while looking for something useful in the trash.

If you insist on asking if there’s a secret, I have one guess.

“Because I sing incredibly well?”

“That’s definitely not it!”

“Then it must be because I make great ketchup ramen.”

“Ketchup what? Anyway, Hanamjin, I heard about you. You’ll do anything for money, right? I have a request for you.”

I felt a familiar sense of déjà vu from the way she looked me up and down.

This woman, she was a customer.

“So, you didn’t come because of the fan.”

“What fan.”

“Never mind! I don’t do anything just for money. I have my pride. You know the saying, a man without pride is a corpse, right?”

“I can give you however much you want.”

“Honestly, pride doesn’t pay the bills. “I’ve always been practical.”

“… It’s good we’re getting along. By the way, I’m not some suspicious person? My name is Seo Gaeul. Me. I was pretty famous. You wouldn’t happen to know me?”

“Seo Gaeul?”

Honestly, this was the first time I’d ever had a conversation with such a beautiful woman, and my mind was spinning. The women around me usually just gave me cold, harsh stares when I spoke to them.

Then, the name Seo Gaeul, muddled in my jumbled memories, suddenly surfaced.

“From 「Supernova」? “The multiple-ability possessor?”

“Right. Supernova. That’s what they called me. They also called me Choi Saeng. “The worst b*tch.”

What the hell?

She shows up out of nowhere, doesn’t even bother to sheath her knife, and calls herself the worst b*tch?

Is she really a psycho?

She’s pretty, though.

Just as I was thinking that, Seo Gaeul asked me,

“You. Have you ever regretted anything in your life? “If you could go back in time, what would you do?”