Inside a cramped gosiwon room without a single window. From the walls blocking her in on all sides came the faint sound of someone snoring in the next room.
Hero Nova—Lee Seoha examined her own body again and again, still wearing an expression of disbelief.
Under the light of the old lamp, her skin was smooth.
Only a few hours ago, her bones had surely been shattered by that villain’s brutish fist.
Her arms and legs had been bent in grotesque directions, and her entire body had been drenched in blood she couldn’t tell was hers or someone else’s.
The sensation of that terrible pain, of the shadow of death pressing down on her whole body, still seemed to linger at her fingertips.
Yet her body now was clean, without a single scar, as if it had never gone through such a tragic ordeal in the first place.
‘This makes no sense…….’
No matter how much her physical enhancement ability gave her better regenerative power than others, it was impossible for her, a mere B-rank, to recover from such fatal injuries in such a short time even if heaven and earth were overturned.
No, even if she generously accepted that her body had miraculously healed, the fact that her suit, which had been reduced to rags, and her smashed equipment had been restored like new was far beyond the realm of common sense.
“……It must have been that civilian, right?”
There was only one cause.
When everyone else mocked her and passed her by, he had been the only man who stayed by her side and looked at her with worried eyes.
His impression had been a little rough—no, to be honest, he had looked even scarier than the villain who had been rampaging at the time—but when she recalled the voice that had called her a hero, Lee Seoha’s heart began to pound once more.
She wrapped both hands around her burning cheeks and plopped down onto the creaking bed.
“No one’s ever…… said that to me before.”
—You are my hero.
Ever since she had begun her hero work, she had only ever heard that she was incompetent, a nuisance. To her, that one sentence had been a shock that pierced deep into her heart.
That clumsy sincerity echoed in her head, refusing to fade.
“I should have thanked him properly…….”
Before she could even express her gratitude, before she could fully regain her senses, the man had disappeared.
She should have at least asked his name. Or his contact information……
Lee Seoha parted her lips in regret, then hugged her old, worn-out pillow tightly.
Her quiet murmur rang through the narrow gosiwon room.
“……Will I be able to meet him again?”
The gratitude she had been unable to convey then—this time, she wanted to deliver it with a bright smile.
It was the same cold, dark room as always, but for some reason, just for today, the air inside felt warm.
@
As the old saying went, birds hear the words spoken by day, and mice hear the words spoken by night.
By dictionary definition, it meant that no matter how secretly something was said, it could eventually reach someone else’s ears, so one should be careful with words. But in my case, the meaning was completely different.
Because to me, birds and mice weren’t watchers I had to be wary of, but my most loyal and covert informants.
“Caw. Caw!”
“Oh, is that true? Good job, Kkakkkak.”
“Squeak, squeak. Squeak!”
“Really? Okay, Jjikjjik. Good work. Hang in there a little longer.”
Resonance. It was one of the abilities I had gained in this world.
Rather than an ability that let me communicate with animals and receive their help, it was the perfect ability for making them work for me at an incredibly cheap price.
Thanks to that, without moving personally, I was able to place crows and mice around Nova and steadily accumulate information.
Hero name, Nova. Real name, Lee Seoha. Age, twenty, just barely an adult.
Her current hero rank was B-rank, and her ability was simple, brute-force physical enhancement.
She already had two years of experience as a hero. She had obtained her hero license at a young age and debuted amid talk of being something of a prodigy, but the problem came after that.
She had no achievements in resolving any noteworthy incidents, and even the growth of her ability had hit a limit and stagnated.
As a result, her current treatment was nothing more and nothing less than that of an ordinary B-rank hero, the kind you could find anywhere on the street.
My evaluation of Nova, after observing her through the eyes of animals like this, was, to put it coldly, truly miserable.
If this world had been a game instead of a novel, she would have been, at best, a two-star—no, a one-star trash character.
Her stats were worse than a basic character handed out after clearing the tutorial at the start.
No matter where you looked, there was nothing impressive. That was the current state of Hero Nova.
“Huh. I didn’t think it’d be this bad.”
No matter how I looked at her, I couldn’t find anything that seemed usable.
In order to give Tanaka-kun a giant middle finger, I had planned to take the Korean character he hated so much—on top of that, Nova, a disposable prop villain meant to be used up early on—and turn her into a proper protagonist. But I already felt like I’d hit a wall before even starting.
“Meow, meow-meow.”
“Nyangsik, even you think she’s really ordinary, right? No, is she below ordinary?”
To put it nicely, she was inoffensive. To put it badly, she had nothing to boast about. How could I place the crown of protagonist on this character?
The only unusual thing I’d discovered during my investigation was that her only family was one younger sister.
“Woof, woof-woof!”
“……Yeah, Daengdaeng. Still, the kid really is kind.”
Her one and only younger sister was currently hospitalized.
I couldn’t know exactly what she had been hospitalized for, but according to what Daengdaeng had observed over the past few days, she had been a long-term patient for a very long time, long enough to know all the hospital nurses by face.
Most of the meager income Nova earned as a hero was being poured into her sister’s hospital bills, while Nova herself was barely living and breathing in a gosiwon like a chicken coop.
When I investigated separately, I found that normally, if someone was a hero’s family member, they should usually receive benefits exempting them from hospital fees, but her case seemed to be an exception.
Maybe it wasn’t an ordinary illness, or maybe her rank within the Association was too low and she had fallen into a blind spot in the benefits system.
‘If she’s been hospitalized that long, it means it’s an illness ordinary medicine can’t cure.’
A hero of an insignificant rank.
She risked her life to protect citizens, yet what came back to her was not warm encouragement, but cold jeers and mockery.
Her only blood relative lay sick in bed, and she herself lived a pitiful life eating cup ramen in a cramped gosiwon room.
Every single part of it was a ruinous environment where it wouldn’t be strange if her heart twisted and she became a villain.
“She really is a lousy hero who makes me worry in all sorts of ways.”
Nevertheless, the more I recalled those eyes that had shone so foolishly upright even in that complete mess of a situation, the wider the corners of my mouth rose.
“You guys think so too, don’t you?”
“Caw!” “Squeak!” “Meow!” “Woof!”
Even the speechless beasts raised their voices in their own ways, as if sympathizing with my will.
So what if she was ordinary? So what if she was insignificant?
Hadn’t many protagonists in the countless novels I’d read also started off miserably, called humanity’s weakest or quirkless?
But even they grew by obtaining fortuitous encounters through the so-called protagonist correction.
What? Nova isn’t the protagonist, so she doesn’t have protagonist correction? Who cares?
The fact that she already met me is her fortuitous encounter and her protagonist correction!
This is the world inside a novel I devoured all the way to the ending.
If there’s one thing this neighborhood is known for, it’s fortuitous encounters lying around everywhere.
Those fortuitous encounters that bastard Tanaka tried to pile solely onto his protagonist—I just have to snatch them all away and lay them at Nova’s feet.
“Kekeke! Nova, I’ll make you the protagonist no matter what!”
And look forward to it, Tanaka-kun. I’m going to ruin your work so thoroughly you won’t be able to sleep from how much it twists your guts!
@
The waters near Okinawa.
Right now, I was quite literally sprawled out on the deck of a yacht I’d chartered.
“Uuughhh……”
The groan escaping my mouth sounded just like a zombie’s death rattle.
After several days of barely being able to eat and only throwing up, I was starting to wonder if I was even human anymore.
Ughhh, no matter what, the fact that I felt like death didn’t change. No, I would rather someone just knock me out.
They say you should strike while the iron is hot, and after deciding to make Nova the protagonist, it had been all well and good that I immediately flew to Okinawa, Japan.
A secret measure that could power up our lousy Hero Nova in one go!
A core fortuitous encounter that had allowed the high school protagonist of the original work to mow down countless villains and become unmatched!
I knew that it was sunk at the bottom of this blue sea off Okinawa, so I had recklessly launched a boat, but……
“M-my stomach…… My stomach’s churning, urp! Uweeeek!”
Terrible seasickness was a domain even knowledge of the original work couldn’t overcome.
Every time the waves rose, my stomach danced along with them.
“Ugh…… I really can’t last much longer. Please hurry up and find it, guys……”
I had thrown up so much that even the sour bile had dried up.
How many days had I already spent out at sea?
I had resonated with marine life and ordered a wide-area search, but the sea was far, far too vast.
Just as my mind was growing hazy and I was beginning to want to throw myself into the ocean, it seemed my desperate wish finally reached them.
Pwoooooo—!
With a majestic cry, a huge column of water shot refreshingly toward the sky.
“Ooh……! Did you finally find it, Big Boss!”
The moment the signal I had waited and waited for arrived, my eyes snapped open as if I had never been on the verge of death, and I sprang to my feet.
Even my churning stomach fell silent before this immense anticipation and quietly held its place for a moment.
When I grabbed the railing and looked down at the sea, there was Big Boss, an overwhelmingly massive humpback whale, displaying his tremendous presence above the blue surface.
As soon as Big Boss saw me, he let out a low, deep Uuuuuuuung!
His eyes seemed to ask whether this was the object I had been searching for so desperately.
On Big Boss’s broad back sat a large metal capsule, balanced precariously.
Because it had sunk in the dark depths of the sea for quite a long time, it was covered in barnacles and unidentifiable seaweed, giving it a grotesque appearance. But I could tell at a glance.
That was the fortuitous encounter I had been searching for so desperately—the Cradle from the Future.
“K-kekek! I finally found it! I finally found it!”
Overjoyed at obtaining the fortuitous encounter I had yearned for so long, I cheered as if I were about to jump, completely forgetting my seasickness.
And perhaps because my heightened emotions were transmitted through my Resonance ability, Big Boss also cried out happily, Uuuuuung! and slapped the water with his enormous fin.
The problem was that, because that enormous whale shook his body in excitement, the small yacht I was riding began to toss about like a fallen leaf.
“Kehehehehe! Finally…… Kheuuuugh! Uweeeeeek!!”
My laughter of joy turned into miserable vomiting in one second.
The storm-like seasickness came crashing back.
My overturned stomach screamed as it dragged me mercilessly back down to the deck floor.
“Uuuuuugh……! I-I’m never getting on a boat again, gueeeeeek!!”
It was a truly fitting moment for me, with the ecstasy of success and wretched retching surging over me in alternating waves.