Although a Villain, My Wish is World Peace

Disappearing as if he would never return here again, Kim Jae-ho came back after just two days. And the first thing he said was ‘Give me food.’

Ha, I burst into laughter at those words. And then I gave him food.

“You, you can speak!”

Belatedly, Han Seo-hyeon shouted as he looked at Kim Jae-ho. Well, Han Seo-hyeon had thought Kim Jae-ho couldn’t speak.

Circling around Kim Jae-ho, who tightly gripped the rice bowl I had handed him, Han Seo-hyeon fired off a barrage of questions:

“So you’ve been understanding all this time while pretending not to? Did you come back, or did you just come for food? Are you going to leave again?”

But Kim Jae-ho didn’t respond to any of those questions, until Han Seo-hyeon eventually grew exhausted and gave up.

“You’re really too much!”

“Just leave him be.”

At my nonchalant words, Han Seo-hyeon exclaimed:

“Doesn’t it bother you, Boss? After leaving so brazenly, now he just waltzes back in as he pleases. Look at that! He’s going right back into the cage!”

Filthy from who knows what he had done over those two days, Kim Jae-ho hugged the teddy bear as he drifted off to sleep.

I shrugged.

“I told you, I’m letting him do as he pleases.”

“Even so, that’s…”

Clicking his tongue as he glared at Kim Jae-ho’s back, Han Seo-hyeon didn’t seem to like him much.

It was understandable – while Han Seo-hyeon rolled around training diligently every day, Kim Jae-ho did nothing at all.

Kim Jae-ho was lawless. He would sleep in the cage, then wander aimlessly before seeming to magically appear only during mealtimes.

For several days, I wordlessly provided Kim Jae-ho with meals.

And today.

“Kim Jae-ho.”

I called out to Kim Jae-ho. Of course, he didn’t respond, but today I intended to put an end to this.

“If you keep disappearing like that, I won’t feed you anymore.”

At those words, Kim Jae-ho came before me with a rather displeased expression. Plopping down unceremoniously, he glared at me with insolent eyes.

As I thought, this guy could understand everything, couldn’t he?

“We can’t keep going on like this.”

While providing a single meal wasn’t difficult, we had tasks ahead that couldn’t be accomplished with Kim Jae-ho in this state.

“You’re telling me to leave?”

“No. Whether you stay or go is your freedom. But if you want to remain here, you need to make a choice. You can’t continue doing nothing like you have until now.”

“I want to be free.”

“Freedom and licentiousness are different things.”

“What’s that?”

“Acting however you please without taking any responsibility is licentiousness, not freedom. True freedom requires taking responsibility for yourself.”

I tried explaining it that way, but Kim Jae-ho only tilted his head looking utterly lost.

Well, I didn’t summon him here to hold a Korean language class. But for the sake of Kim Jae-ho’s future life, I had to properly teach him.

“If you want to stay here, you need to work.”

“What work?”

“Various tasks. Ah, and if you don’t like the work, you can leave us at any time.”

At my words, Kim Jae-ho blinked.

“Any time?”

“Yes. Try it out first, and if you really dislike it, just leave. I won’t stop you.”

Kim Jae-ho rolled his eyes before nodding his head. I asked him several more times – was he really okay working with us? Okay with the tasks I assigned? And each time, the answer was the same.

I didn’t know if he truly understood, but I had at least received his answer.

“You can leave whenever. But if you don’t leave, then I’ll be responsible for you.”

My goal was to teach this ignorant, naked individual how to survive in this world.

So should I start by taking care of that matter I’ve been holding off on?

“First, let’s get you showered.”

“Shower?”

“Yes. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Over the past few weeks, Kim Jae-ho hadn’t bathed at all. Confined in the iron cage, there was no way for him to bathe, and he didn’t seem to have any intention of cleaning himself either.

Naturally, he had progressed well beyond just being filthy – he reeked of a foul, musty odor. His untrimmed hair had grown so long and shaggy that it completely obscured his face, while his finger and toenails resembled those of a witch from a fairytale.

Even in these remote mountains, where I showered multiple times daily out of my obsession for cleanliness, Kim Jae-ho’s grimy state after months without bathing was honestly too much for me to bear.

At my words, for some reason, Kim Jae-ho threw a tantrum.

“No!”

Then he brazenly tried to flee from me.

Hey, I wasn’t asking him to do anything unreasonable, just take a shower!

“I already told you, you have to do it!”

I had no intention of postponing this long-overdue shower any further.

Drawing all the mana into my body, I fired a stream of water at Kim Jae-ho.

Unlike the pathetic one-stroke jets, this two-stroke stream of water was on another level. Augmenting it with the bracelet’s mana, I drenched him thoroughly.

“Uhaha! That feels so refreshing!”

—Rather than a shower, that was, well, a bit…

“Hukhukhukhuk.”

If it sounded like the freshly showered Kim Jae-ho was crying piteously, that must have been a misunderstanding.

Bathing felt so wonderful, didn’t it?

After cleaning up Kim Jae-ho, I called over to Han Seo-hyeon.

“You should do something about that shaggy fringe too.”

“Fringe?”

“Yes.”

Whenever a slight breeze blew aside Han Seo-hyeon’s fringe, his face looked quite handsome. While carrying a gloomy, sullen expression unlike his brother Han Jo-hee, his features were well-defined enough to be called a ‘pretty boy.’

But Han Seo-hyeon always kept that handsome face hidden behind his fringe.

“If you let your fringe grow to conceal your identity, I can respect that. But even so, your fringe is a bit too unkempt. You’d be better off wearing a mask like me…”

Should I give Han Seo-hyeon a mask too? And one for Kim Jae-ho as well? It might look quite stylish if we all wore masks together.

While I thought it was a decent idea, upon hearing my suggestion, Han Seo-hyeon recoiled in horror.

“A mask is too much. I didn’t grow out my fringe for that reason in the first place.”

Sheesh, what was wrong with masks? I was almost offended.

“Then how about taking this opportunity to tidy up your fringe? It’s a waste to hide such a handsome face, you know.”

“…Alright.”

Since it was inconvenient to visit a hair salon, I decided to trim Han Seo-hyeon’s fringe myself.

“You can really cut hair well, right?”

“It’s just a simple fringe trim. Do you have so little faith in your boss?”

At my words, Han Seo-hyeon sat in the chair with an uneasy expression. Hmm, I calmly picked up the scissors. Trimming a fringe was easy enough.

Snip. Han Seo-hyeon’s fringe was cut.

Wait a minute.

“Hmm.”

Was it because these scissors were slanted? It had been cut diagonally. The left side was longer than the right.

But there was still a chance to fix it.

Snip.

Damn. Now the right side was longer.

But I could still salvage this!

Snip.

Damn.

Snip.

Damn.

With trembling hands, I set down the scissors.

“…Seo-hyeon-ah.”

At my words, Han Seo-hyeon silently took out a mirror.

“What is this!”

It was ruined. Completely ruined.

Han Seo-hyeon’s hair was a total mess. No, I had only intended to even out the lengths, but before I knew it, his fringe had vanished entirely.

As the sniffling Han Seo-hyeon cried, I tried to console him:

“Th-that hair salon, let’s visit it before the auction.”

“How can I go out looking like this!”

“They’ll fix it at the hair salon. Modern salons are really amazing these days. They use some kind of regenerative particles, you know. They can even grow new hair and attach it.”

“You expect me to teleport straight to the salon?! It’s ruined! Completely ruined!”

Seeing Han Seo-hyeon’s wailing state, even Kim Jae-ho fled whenever I picked up the scissors.

‘Damn it.’

I should have trimmed Kim Jae-ho’s hair first.

Belated regret struck me.

* * *

“Security duties have been assigned around the time of the upcoming auction.”

At Park Cheol-wan’s words, Do Chae-hee creased her face.

“I believe I mentioned being occupied with investigating that murder case.”

“You mean that investigation with no progress whatsoever?”

Do Chae-hee bit her lip in vexation at Park Cheol-wan’s remark. Kang Yi-sin had vanished as if completely evaporated from this world. There were no longer even the slightest clues to track him down.

Ah, there had been one lead, but the problem was that everyone had prevented her from investigating it.

“What happened with my request to investigate the black market?”

“Didn’t I tell you? The black market needs to be maintained for our own convenience as well. It’s not a place for some rookie team leader to go rummaging around.”

“Dammit.”

Even the Korean government had designated the black market as a necessary evil. The first issue was the backlash that would arise if they tried to shut it down. The second issue was that doing so would only cause it to retreat into untraceable depths.

“But in the end, isn’t it all just dirty money?”

“That’s the reality for adults.”

“I’m an adult too.”

“Then stop spouting such childish nonsense.”

Narrowing her brow, Do Chae-hee asked Park Cheol-wan:

“Is providing security at that place also part of this ‘adult reality’?”

“It means stop dodging taxes.”

“Dodging taxes? After how diligently I’ve worked until now.”

“So what if you work hard? There hasn’t been a single cent of income for a month. The higher-ups don’t care how hard you work – they just want results.”

Do Chae-hee clenched her fists tightly.

“I’ll find him, no matter what I have to do.”

Kang Yi-sin was strange. Until that day, aside from being a Babel Academy graduate, there had been nothing remarkable about the man. Yet he had vanished in an impossibly clean manner, without the slightest mistake typical of amateur criminals.

Either he had an innate talent for crime, or he had an accomplice. Do Chae-hee had focused her investigation on the latter possibility, but the more she dug, the murkier the accomplice’s identity became.

There was another lingering concern – the disappearance of Han Jo-hee’s younger brother, Han Seo-hyeon. She had informed Park Cheol-wan, but no one seemed to consider it important.

‘Surely he didn’t lay a hand on the brother too?’

She recalled their appearance at the hospital. They had seemed quite close as brothers.

‘Just like me and my own brother…’

Do Chae-hee shook away the thought that had surfaced.

In any case, finding Kang Yi-sin would unravel all these mysteries. But the world wasn’t making it easy for Do Chae-hee.

“You’re refusing, then?”

Do Chae-hee frowned.

“Ugh, I should be able to handle it, right?”

“Watch your attitude with your superior!”

With a sigh, Park Cheol-wan added:

“All the big names will be there, so mind your manners. Don’t go picking fights with just anyone.”

“Do you really think I’m some deranged person who randomly starts fights?”

You do pick fights.

Seeing the expression on Park Cheol-wan’s face, Do Chae-hee snapped in irritation before turning away.

“Fine, I’m going!”

“Tsk, that damn temper of hers.”

* * *

Han Seo-hyeon whispered to me:

“The biggest items appearing at this auction will be the Red Flame Mana Stone and the Vampiric Lord’s Ring.”

At those words, my eyes widened. Normally at such auctions, only one major item is offered. But this time, there were two.

Acquiring either one would be a massive jackpot.

“Ah, and about the security…”

Han Seo-hyeon recited a stream of information.

It was an absolute goldmine.