People desire heroes. The tougher the world gets, the more they do. M Company has Iron Man, D Company has Batman – those with extraordinary powers that ordinary people don’t possess have always existed in people’s imaginations, implementing justice.

And now, the world truly has heroes.

“Did you hear? They appeared again yesterday.”

“Did you see the bridge collapsing? They were flying around above it…”

“It’s really amazing. What could their identity be?”

What else could it be?

It’s these idiots in front of me now, getting angry because there’s no meat in the school lunch.

Na Eun indifferently answered in her mind to the whispering conversations here and there, while blankly staring at the opposite side. Though lunchtime was always noisy, the atmosphere was much more unsettled due to the incident that occurred last night. It seemed some crazy person had planted a bomb in the middle of a bridge in the city center and committed an act of terror, but everyone was buzzing about the unidentified heroes who flew around the collapsing bridge, saving people.

For about 10 years now, people had started giving the title of hero and nicknames to those who appeared at terror or accident scenes, saving innocent citizens with supernatural abilities.

“Was it ‘K’ who appeared yesterday?”

“No, wasn’t it ‘J’?”

“No, I just saw an article that went up. It says it was K and L.”

“Ah… they all wear the same clothes and hats, so it’s hard to tell them apart.”

That’s right. The heroes who appear suddenly at disaster scenes like Superman were quite numerous, but they always wore the same outfit. A black suit presumed to be a military uniform, a black hat, and a black mask. With everything being the same color, it was difficult to even confirm their gender, so the public conveniently gave them alphabet nicknames.

The first person to appear was A, and the next was B. Although no one had decided and given these names, this trend that started naturally online spread instantly despite objections that they needed proper names like Spider-Man or Wonder Woman since they were heroes, simply because it was easy and convenient to call them. Even the news now refers to them using alphabets from A to L. So far, 12 heroes have been confirmed, with K and L being the most recent to appear. They were the two who played active roles in the bridge explosion incident yesterday, and also happened to be the guys ranting about the definition of stir-fried pork in front of Na Eun right now.

“So where exactly is the pork in this stir-fried pork? Is this onion stir-fry or pork stir-fry? Is this stir-fried pork?!”

“Shouldn’t we report our school for fraud?”

If you look closely, these guys seem to come to school just to eat. Na Eun shook her head as she stared blankly at the two friends who couldn’t contain their outrage over the injustice of school meals while holding their chopsticks. L, no, her friend Sun Jin sitting directly across from her, wrinkled her nose.

“What, Na Eun? Don’t you agree? You don’t actually think this is proper stir-fried pork, do you?”

“No way. If you do, we’re not friends anymore.”

K, no, Seung Joo sitting next to Sun Jin, glares at her, demanding agreement. Na Eun had a lot she wanted to say but couldn’t, so she just smiled vaguely.

“But we got cookies for dessert.”

“Hey, cookies are cookies and pork is pork!”

“That’s right, that’s right.”

Na Eun nods in agreement with Seung Joo’s anger as Sun Jin starts munching on the cookies given as dessert, having finished her meal tray. As if to show that the anger over the poor quality of the stir-fried pork and the joy of delicious cookies were separate matters, Sun Jin’s expression was strangely relaxed as she bit into the snack.

Are the cookies good? Yeah, they’re really good. Oh, then I should eat mine quickly too. At Sun Jin’s response that they were delicious, Na Eun stared blankly at Seung Joo hurriedly shoving the remaining rice into her mouth to eat the cookies faster, and thought.

Did you two really fly around above the bridge yesterday, saving people and catching terrorists?

If she asked like this, how would these guys respond? Seung Joo would probably spit out the rice she was eating, and Sun Jin would choke on cookie crumbs. Na Eun couldn’t injure these great heroes who protected the country, and even the world, with such trivial matters, so she chose a different topic to divert their attention.

“You know we have a chemistry performance assessment today, right?”

“Huh?”

“What?”

I knew it. Na Eun’s eyes narrowed.

These friends, who had been in the same class by chance since their first year of high school and had been close until now in their third year, were quite negligent in their studies, perhaps due to being busy with their secret heroic activities. Since learning their secret in the first year, Na Eun had tried to understand, but when they showed such ignorant attitudes towards exam schedules like this, she couldn’t help but feel frustrated.

How can third-year high school students in South Korea not care about performance assessments and exams? From Na Eun’s perspective, who was serious about college admissions, it was hard to comprehend. Recalling Sun Jin’s innocence when she asked “What subject is the exam for today?” during the last test of their second year, Na Eun shook her head.

“The teacher said the ideal gas law equation would be on the performance assessment today.”

“I’m doomed. I don’t know that.”

“What equation? Did we learn something like that?”

As expected, faced with her friends’ reactions, Na Eun picked up the cookie given as dessert and said,

“I have printed notes, so memorize from that. We have the test in the last period, so you can memorize by then, right?”

As soon as Na Eun saw the breaking news of the bridge collapse on last night’s news, she had already prepared a way to somewhat salvage these friends’ performance assessment scores. There was no way these kids, who would be busy saving people and stopping terrorism, would remember a school test the next day.

With three years of experience as a civilian friend of undercover heroes, she could handle this much skillfully.

“As expected, Na Eun. You’re the best.”

“I love you.”

Na Eun smiled back at Seung Joo, who was throwing finger hearts saying she was more reassuring than ten thousand troops, and Sun Jin, who expressed affection with the driest “I love you” in the world. However, she couldn’t respond with a smile to her friends’ subsequent conversation.

“Damn, but when am I supposed to memorize all that? Should I just not do it?”

“We can’t. They said if our grades drop below level 5 this semester, our activities will be suspended.”

“That’s what I mean. I don’t get it. What does saving people have to do with grade levels? If you’re not good at studying, you can’t go out and work?”

We were up all night running around until dawn yesterday, how are we supposed to take care of exams when we’re dying of exhaustion!

Na Eun closed her eyes tightly as she watched Seung Joo raging about how you can’t even be a hero in Korea if you’re not good at studying, asking who made this crazy grade-centric rule, and Sun Jin patting Seung Joo’s back.

Here we go again, these two.

“But the Center Director said it’s okay as long as we get level 5.”

“Level 5 is easier said than done. Damn. Let’s see him try staying up every night running around Seoul suppressing terrorism. Is studying easy while doing that?”

“I heard the Center Director graduated from Y University.”

“Crazy. He was a cheat character?”

As Seung Joo exploded in frustration again, saying that’s why he couldn’t understand the feelings of those who weren’t good at studying, Na Eun held her forehead.

Na Eun, who had never been good at using harsh words or swearing, sincerely wanted to say:

Guys. Just shut up.

“Hey guys.”

“That’s impressive. So he was catching those crazy guys while being that good at studying?”

“Guys?”

“They say he was active long before us. I guess so.”

“…Kids.”

“Well. I guess that’s why he’s the Center Director, because he’s so great.”

“…”

Even when she tried to stop them by gently calling out, her friends were absorbed in their own conversation, blurting out things that should be kept secret. Na Eun, who had finally given up, took out the earphones she had prepared.

One of the habits that had naturally become ingrained while spending high school life with these friends was always carrying earphones.

Na Eun blocked her own ears to avoid overhearing her friends unintentionally leaking confidential information, and turned her gaze away. She had to think about something else and look elsewhere as much as possible to prevent things she shouldn’t hear from entering her ears.

Staring blankly into space, Na Eun pondered.

Are heroes usually a bit stupid?

The heroes shown on the news were monsters with superhuman abilities, holding up collapsed buildings with bare hands, extinguishing fires, and lifting cars. Just looking at how they catch terrorists who have been rampant in the center of Seoul for some time, they must undoubtedly be smart and great people, but the sample in front of her didn’t match the image she had imagined at all.

The person they called Center Director or whatever earlier was said to be smart, so are these two just especially stupid? Thinking about it that way, it seemed like a reasonable inference. Just because they have superhuman strength doesn’t mean they’re all dumb. Superman and Iron Man were all geniuses. Hulk was too. …Right. Let’s say these two are special. Despite it being somewhat rude to her two friends, Na Eun decided to understand it that way.

She didn’t know from the beginning.

Na Eun, who naturally became close to these two after sitting nearby by chance in their first year, didn’t think that her two closest friends would be figures appearing on the news as regularly as eating until three months after that point. Who could have guessed? Maybe she didn’t even want to know. It was almost as if she was forced to find out due to the special place called school where they stuck together almost all day, and because Na Eun was quick-witted and smart.

They would always be absent for a few days after a major incident likely to be on the news, sometimes come with noticeable injuries, and show Olympic athlete-level fitness and records when running on the playground despite being poor at studying – it was difficult to pretend not to notice these two.

Moreover,

“Damn, they want us to gather again tomorrow.”

“Please, we’re students.”

“Our country has no human rights for third-year high school students, and no human rights for heroes. So we have no human rights.”

“Stop using that way of speaking, it makes me want to swear.”

…Hey, guys. You do intend to keep this a secret, right?

No matter how comfortable they were with their friend, Na Eun’s face looked like she was about to cry at Seung Joo and Sun Jin’s conversation that seemed to have no intention of hiding anything at all. In the end, while wearing earphones and secretly checking if anyone was listening to this conversation around the table where they were sitting, Na Eun once again recalled the most important first rule of the precepts that should be followed as a civilian friend of heroes, which she had written in her secret diary. She had organized these thinking it would be good to follow them to be a good friend, based on movies and comics.

The first precept.

Pretend not to know even if you do. Pretend not to hear even if you do. Never know what you shouldn’t know.

…That’s how you live longer. For the civilian friend who isn’t a hero, that is.