Academy’s Villain Professor-Chapter 133 : Chapter 133

Chapter 133 : The Reason
Between the wrinkled corners of his eyes, the chairman's eyes gleamed with a faint light.
“Not let me leave here alive?”
He made a deflating sound as if amused and tapped the ground with his cane.
“In the first place, the one who came here is a clone made with a Trait.”
“It’s not a clone, it’s your real body. Right now.”
At Ho-cheol's confident statement, the chairman fell silent.
He still didn't show any emotion on the surface, but even that silence was enough of an answer.
Ho-cheol tapped the corner of his eye with his index finger.
“You’re using the same Trait on me three times? You guys have gotten a little complacent, haven't you?”
It was something they would never have done against the Ho-cheol of his villain days.
“It’s a pretty well-made clone, but in the end, the limits of the Trait are clear.”
Besides, it was impossible to create such a sophisticated clone so quickly and maintain it for a long time.
This time, because Ho-cheol had called him so suddenly, saying it was an important matter, even the chairman didn't have the time to prepare the clone.
“You didn’t bring any guards, probably to give the fake impression that this is a clone. Who would fall for that.”
Ho-cheol briefly glared at his shadow.
“Well, it seems you brought the real guards hidden under your shadow, though.”
“So you’re going to harm this old body just because you don’t get the answer you want?”
“Not the answer I want, but if you don’t answer properly. It seems you sometimes forget because I’ve been too obedient.”
Ho-cheol pulled out the pen embedded in the desk again.
He raised the pen tip and aimed it at the chairman.
“You were on the revenge list I made during my villain days, too. You’d better not get on my nerves.”
His gaze was as sharp as if it could cut skin.
“Anyway, let's get to the point. What on earth is so important that you would call me with such an absurd pretext and even threaten me.”
“Eclipse.”
As if he had been waiting, Ho-cheol brought up a name.
“No, Lee Byeong-hoo.”
Ho-cheol's question was not about the once-greatest hero, nor the fallen villain.
“I need to hear his story.”
It was simply about a single human being.
In fact, Ho-cheol hadn't paid much attention to Eclipse's defection.
A man who had a strong sense of justice suddenly turned, so there must be some grand story, some pitiful past.
But more than half of the villains had such reasons.
Hadn't he himself become a villain due to a sad story that was difficult to even express in words?
Especially if that past involved the loss of a loved one.
It was nothing more than self-destruction in a situation that couldn't be undone anyway.
At least until a few days ago, that's what Ho-cheol had thought.
But the recent appearance of a villain who tempted him by offering to revive a loved one in exchange for joining them had completely complicated things.
These damned heroes and idiot villains, they all had someone buried in a grave.
The deeper the affection for the deceased, the higher the probability of cooperating with them.
At least the Sword Demon still had the title of hero, and his blood relative, Da-yeon, was alive.
As long as the two of them didn't go over as a set menu, a certain degree of stability was guaranteed.
But Eclipse, who had already become a villain, had nothing to hold him back.
He was already piling up a criminal record with his villainous acts; there was no reason not to cooperate with other villains.
The reason those guys had contacted Ho-cheol was, in their own minds, because they were fans, but in reality, their goal was probably to fill the military aspect of their organization.
And Eclipse was the perfect second-choice military power in a situation where Ho-cheol was absent.
Ho-cheol, with his arms crossed, recalled the events of a few days ago.
“I recently found a tombstone at the Hero Cemetery with that man’s name engraved as the father. There’s no way there’s a hero in the S-rank with the same name, so it must be Eclipse. But in my memory, that man was unmarried, let alone had children.”
He tapped his arm with his index finger, moving it up and down.
“What the hell happened while I was counting the stains on the ceiling in Zero Chain? I need to hear it properly this time.”
Regarding Lee Byeong-hoo, the probability of the dean, let alone the head of the Legal Department, knowing the full and complete truth was quite low.
“I’m warning you again. It’s better not to omit important details or distort them to suit your taste.”
In any case, Ho-cheol didn't trust the Hero Association or Eclipse.
Therefore, to grasp the situation from the most neutral position.
“Because I’ll find a way to hear this story from Eclipse later anyway.”
He planned to hear both sides of the story.
It was a warning not to utter lies that would eventually be found out, just to escape the current situation.
“This is information classified as top secret within the Association. There would be no benefit to this side to explain it.”
“You have to be selective about who you pull that damned vending machine act on. Are you going to do business the same way with someone who puts money into a vending machine and someone who beats it until what they want comes out?”
When Ho-cheol threatened him in a low voice, the chairman fell silent.
In any case, he had firmly held his position as the head of an organization for decades.
And the calculation was in.
Against a guy like this, the best course of action was to just quickly tell him what he wanted to know and avoid getting involved as much as possible.
The chairman slowly walked over and stood right in front of Ho-cheol.
“It's a simple story. Before Eclipse was a villain, while he was active as The Sun, he picked up an orphan from a villain disaster.”
“Ah. Good grief.”
Ho-cheol neurotically made a few more holes in the desk with his pen.
“Choose your words carefully, will you? Who’s the villain, who’s the hero. I can’t tell the difference.”
“He adopted her. And while you were locked up in Zero—Chain, the child died.”
“Cause of death?”
“It was an accidental death due to a villain disaster. A terror attack committed by a mentally unstable villain in the middle of the city. It was a major catastrophe, on a scale that wiped out an entire small city district.”
“……That's strange.”
A death that could have happened anywhere.
In that case, shouldn't he be burning with hostility towards the villain?
“However. She wasn't directly killed by the villain. There was enough time to evacuate and be rescued.”
As if it was difficult to explain in words, the chairman took out his phone from his pocket.
A secure site accessible only through his phone, and a dedicated folder accessible only by the highest ranks.
After entering his personal code, a video appeared on the screen.
“It’s better if you see it for yourself.”
Ho-cheol took the phone and pressed the play button.
He focused on the screen.
A CCTV installed on the side of the road.
In the corner of the screen, a girl was trapped under a fallen utility pole.
However, since only her ankle was caught, it seemed she could have easily pulled her foot out and evacuated to a safe place with a little help from someone.
The girl shouted for help to the crowd around her several times.
But none of them offered her a helping hand.
Very occasionally, there were those who looked back and hesitated.
But that hesitation was fleeting.
They all, without exception.
“A hero will help. So……”
With those words, they evacuated again.
The video was over 20 minutes long.
The girl had also been alive for 20 minutes.
And at the end of the video, the ground shook and the building next to it collapsed.
The video ended as the several-story building fell onto the road.
The moment the debris of the building poured down on the girl, watching the shape of her mouth, Ho-cheol realized that her last words were directed at The Sun.
Watching the paused video, Ho-cheol let out a faint sigh.
“……Literally an accident. That’s what it is.”
There was no perpetrator here.
In the first place, that was the villain who had run rampant.
From Ho-cheol's perspective, he couldn't blame the citizens.
An S-rank equivalent villain was rampaging nearby, and for ordinary citizens, it was a disaster where their lives could be snuffed out with a single gesture.
But everyone here was a bystander.
And in the eyes of the victim, a bystander was a perpetrator.
A hypothesis that suddenly came to mind made Ho-cheol raise his head.
“Ah. Don't tell me, among the villains who were burned to death by that man in Zero—Chain……”
“Yes. The villain who was the culprit of that incident was also there.”
Ho-cheol clicked his tongue.
“I was wondering why he was being so docile in there.”
For the sake of revenge, one can endure anything.
The chairman, having received his phone back, shook his head as if in pity.
“For almost a week, Eclipse replayed this video over and over again in the intelligence department. He refused all food and drink, and didn't even sleep. And the words he said when he came out of the records room a week later were.”
The chairman had a premonition then that Eclipse was completely finished as a hero.
“My child did not die in an accident. She was murdered by this society.”
A society that depended on heroes for everything.
Like a fetus drowning in amniotic fluid, the citizens of this society were slowly dying.
“She could have been saved. But the complacency of the citizens, the social perception that saving others is the job of heroes alone. He claimed that’s what killed her.”
At those words, Ho-cheol muttered softly.
“A grand absurdity.”
When Eclipse had urged him to join hands.
He had claimed that there was a grand absurdity in this society.
This was the social malady he claimed, the rotten part that needed to be cut out.
“So the ultimate goal is the abolition of the hero system?”
“No one knows. Is he just a revenger with that justification? Or a revolutionary? We fully empathize with his sorrow, and we feel strongly that such a thing should never happen again. But he has already crossed the line.”
Whatever the case, as long as he was stained with the blood of people, he was clearly a criminal.
Ho-cheol closed his eyes for a moment and pondered something.
He calculated a few possibilities.
The things he had experienced and the things Eclipse had experienced.
The things needed to persuade him and the probability of success when persuading him with those things.
When he considered the various possibilities.
Ho-cheol clicked his tongue and opened his eyes.
“This is screwed. This.”
There was no room for persuasion with Eclipse under any circumstances.
If they met next time, one of them would probably really die.
Of course, he had no intention of dying, so the one who died would be that man.
“The reason you didn't explain that to me at first. Did you think I would sympathize with that man or something?”
“Yes.”
The chairman answered obediently.
Ho-cheol had also entered the path of a villain in a similar, though not identical, context.
If he had sympathized with Eclipse's story, it would have been the worst outcome imaginable for the Association, no, for this country.
“That’s enough.”
Ho-cheol silently turned his head and looked out the window.
The sun was already setting.
He muttered softly.
“But it's a little funny.”
“What is?”
“That man. Didn't he know why I became a villain?”
The chairman, about to answer, instinctively stopped himself.
And that silence was the right choice.
Ho-cheol's question wasn't directed at the chairman in the first place.
A darker and heavier energy than ever before began to ooze out, centered on Ho-cheol.
“Dying from the indifference of others is a blessing. Some people's loved ones all died because of the malice of others.”
What did he say to me back then?
No matter how angry and despairing you are, that’s no reason to spill the blood of innocent citizens.
Was it?
Ho-cheol chuckled and asked the chairman again.
This time it was a real question.
“Don’t I seem amazing to you? To endure so well after seeing all that disgusting filth in the world?”
Human nature doesn't change.
It's just that one suppresses it perfectly, is not swayed by it, and chooses and acts with proper reason.
“So. Please treat me well.”
He could still return to being the villain Jeong Ho-cheol at any time.
The next day.
Ho-cheol's written exam score and pass/fail status were announced.
“Well.”
Sitting in his chair, he tapped his lips with his fingertips with a displeased expression.
“It’s a natural result, if you think about it.”
The first and third periods were fine.
In the self-grading, he had surpassed the stable passing line.
The problem was that during the second period, while interfering with the other cheating examinees, he himself had no choice but to solve the problems a little carelessly.
The result.
[Fail]
Since the pass/fail was decided by a single question, the price of not concentrating for a whole period was steep.
“Aish.”
“It’s okay.”
Ji-an, sitting on the floor, patted Ho-cheol's thigh, offering a consolation that wasn't quite a consolation.
“You can just pass next time.”
“That’s right.”
There was no great disappointment.
In any case, it was physically difficult to achieve both goals.
It was just that he was left with the regret that if he hadn't been so engrossed in interfering and had focused more on the problems, he would have succeeded in both.
And one of the licenses he had intended to obtain this vacation required this license, so that was gone as a set.
“Can’t be helped. I’ll have to prepare for the next exam.”
Dwelling on the past and letting it affect future plans would be even worse.
That's why Ho-cheol quickly brushed it off and was about to prepare for the next exam, when.
Clank—!
Suddenly, the front door opened and So-hee burst in.
“Congratulations!”
“On what?”
“They said you passed the written exam.”
“What are you talking about? I failed.”
She wasn't teasing him, was she?
For a moment, So-hee blinked her eyes blankly, then soon grinned.
“Ah, you didn’t see the notice. A lot of the successful candidates got their heads chopped off for cheating this time.”
Normally, with the slow work processing unique to civil servants, it would have taken years for the results to come out even if they had filtered out the disqualified candidates.
In fact, this case would have been the same.
But the appearance of the chairman turned the situation around.
The ordinary civil servants, who didn't know the relationship between Ho-cheol and the chairman or the details of the incident, simply saw that corruption had been discovered and the chairman had come to handle it.
Misinterpreting that, they processed it at lightning speed as if their feet were on fire.
Thanks to that, they discovered dozens of examinees who had passed through cheating in a single day, disqualified them, and that many spots opened up.
And as many as that number were moved up from the disqualified candidates in order of their high scores.
“You just happened to fall into that score range.”
“Then.”
So-hee approached with small steps, reached out, and clicked the refresh button on the computer.
“So. Like this.”
The screen changed, and the red letters that had said ‘Fail’ until just a moment ago had changed to green letters that said ‘Pass’.
So-hee, as if she had made him pass herself, triumphantly placed her hands on her hips and lifted her chin.
“You passed. Congratulations?”
“Good grief.”
To think he had almost failed by just one question, and then passed by the skin of his teeth.
Wasn't this real luck?
“See? You have to live right.”