Chapter Text
Han Sooyoung, we are honoured that you have chosen to apply to…
Han Sooyoung lives a fortunate life. She can admit this. She’s never known true want. If she’s hungry, there’s food in the fridge. If she’s bored, there’s a room full of untouched games and movies. If she’s cold, the penthouse has a state of the art heating system. Han Sooyoung is richer than even she can imagine and she has nothing to complain about.
(When Han Sooyoung is five she realizes that every person in her life is bought, from her tutors to her ‘companions’. At fourteen, going on fifteen, and she has no friends. She has two famous absentee parents that think throwing a banquet is the same as ‘spending the night’ with her.)
The problem, Han Sooyoung realizes as she tries not to cry, is that she doesn’t even really want this. Han Sooyoung knows that she’s not a ‘good’ person. She doesn’t want to sacrifice herself and save the day. She doesn’t have the tragic backstory or motivation to change the world, to try and make it better. At the end of the day, what Han Sooyoung wants is for someone to look at her.
It hurts though. It burns to have someone looks at her, at her quirk, at her work and says ‘you’re not good enough’.
But it hurts even more to not be noticed.
...Your essay on Quirk discrimination and its link to mental disorders was unique and enlightening…
They don’t even see it themselves. An associate sees it on the living room table and makes a throw away comment to her about persevering.
The letter lies there for half a month without them noticing.
At least they wait for them to leave before making a scene.
“I’ll make the call. Donate to the facilities, a few million should cover it.”
“Mom, no.”
“Sooyoung-ie, this is what you want. A few million isn’t much to spend on getting you into a good school.”
“Your mother is right. Let me make some calls as well, how could you not get in? Your scores are always perfect and your quirk control is flawless. There must have been a mix up.”
“Dad.”
“This is what you want, Sooyoung-ie. It no trouble at all to do this.”
Han Sooyoung wants to scream because no, she doesn’t want this and her parents don’t know that. She applied on a whim. A fucking whim. Because everyone in her class agreed to try out together, and it was something she could do. Something that would only be about her and not-
“Honestly, the school probably just rejected you because of the new permit laws that passed. Completely unprofessional to let my work affect your chances like that.”
“Honey, can you have your secretary take care of that? I could do an interview with MBC, get some exposure about how unfair it is?”
“Hm, might work. A little pressure from a star like you could go a long way to shifting how the public sees it, there’s probably a few other’s I could pull in with similar claims. Didn’t Park Chunghee’s son apply last year and get rejected?”
“No, it was Park Chungho’s son.”
-about them. Because it’s always about them.
It’s stupid. She’s stupid, because she’s let them hype themselves up and now phones are coming out and one of them is going to make all this a reality all because she wanted to have a little fun. So she lies. “It isn’t mine. Its Eunjung’s.”
And since she’s such a good daughter, they don’t question it.
“Myonghee’s daughter?” Her mom asks.
Han Sooyoung nods. “You know how protective Myounghee-eonni is. She asked me to hold on to it until her mom’s out of the country again.” Technically not a lie, she actually does have Min Eunjung’s rejection letter in her room for safe keeping. Min Eunjung wants to add it to her scrapbook without her mom freaking out and sending her to a nunnery. Han Sooyoung doesn’t see the connection either but she’s not going to turn down free blackmail.
“Oh well, Myonghee is a little… impulsive.”
“She’d send the girl to a nunnery Honey, no teenage girl wants that.” Her mom smiles wryly. “It is good to see that this is a misunderstanding and that Sooyoung-ie isn’t doing something dangerous.”
“Yes, on second thought her quirk is a little unstable for hero work. Wouldn’t want to turn out like your cousin Jin.”
The look her mom shoots her dad is pure venom. “Inappropriate, dear.”
Jin is a dirty secret, the kind that invites scandals and uncomfortable visits to quirk doctors and therapists to ensure she doesn’t develop the same ‘instability’. It's the kind of secret that her mom pays lots of money to keep quiet.
Han Sooyoung thinks it says a lot about her family’s priorities that they’ve never offered to have a quirk therapist look at him.
Han Sooyoung thinks it says a lot about her parents that never saw the scrapes and bruises from the practical.
…due to medical concerns about your quirks volatility, our Heroics Department is not allowed…
Han Sooyoung doesn’t really know her neighbors. She knows they exist, in that vague way that people know the person driving the police car is a police officer. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred you’re right, but there’s always that one chance someone stole it. So Han Sooyoung has always believed with almost one hundred percent certainty that she has neighbors and the apartment across from hers isn’t overrun with squatters. Han Sooyoung may need to rethink that fact though.
There is a tiny homeless person standing in front of neighbor’s door trying to break in. She’s already punched in the first couple of digits for the emergency line when the burglar turns and peers up at her with a familiar face.
“Ah, Yong Seung-ah?”
“Who is this Yong Seung? I’m the great Abyssal Black Flame Dragon!” probably Yong Seung yells, sweeping his arm out and pointing to her.
Han Sooyoung is having a war flashback. Suddenly, she’s back to five years ago, being eight with arranged playdates with the most annoying loudmouth three year old in existence.
Weeks of staying overnight with two strangers and having fun with their son.
Some reflexes never leave a person. Her hand moves faster than her mind and her palm sweeps toward Yong Seung’s head. He tries to dodge, tucking and rolling out of the way. He actually does get out of her swipe zone, only to roll his forehead straight into the door knob.
Ah yes, she thinks staring down at him, she remembers this idiot. “Seung-ah, stop being stupid.”
“Nuna is still so mean!” He cries holding his head.
Han Sooyoung is not equipped to deal with this. She isn’t breed to wipe away tears and kiss booboos. Quietly panicking as Yong Seung starts to cry in earnest, she can’t help but think it's a good thing she won’t be a hero if this is what she would have had to deal with.
Then she realizes what she just thought and thinks fuck that.
“Here, candy.” Yong Seung doesn’t have a chance to respond before Han Sooyoung is shoving a piece of hard candy into his mouth. “Get in here.”
She dumps him onto her couch and goes to call maintenance to get his apartment unlocked. She comes back to him screaming on the couch.
“I’m the Abyssal Black Flame Dragon! I’m the great beast that will destroy the world!”
“Haaa? Were you playing hero or something earlier?”
“Heroes are stupid. Villains are way cooler.”
“Nobody wanted to play with you, did they?”
“Shut up! I’m gonna be the bestest villain and then they’ll all regret the day they didn’t want to be my minions!”
“You’re gonna get in trouble if someone hears you say that, that’s what’s gonna happen.”
“But it’s true! Heros are stupid! It’s not like nuna is gonna become a hero, you failed the exam, didn’t you? You can be my first minion.”
“Shut up! Where did you hear that?”
“Ow!”
“Who the hell would want to be your minion? You’re so dumb you think a garbage back is a cape!”
“You’re so dumb you can’t be a hero!”
“Who says I want to be a hero!” Han Sooyoung wacks him a couple more times. This dumb brat. “Do you know how much trouble being a hero is?”
Yong Seung covers his head and cower. “You can’t defeat the Abyssal Black Flame Dragon with such weak blows!”
“I’m a million times stronger than those hero students!”
“Nuna’s as strong as a cricket!”
“I’ll prove it you brat!”
“Um… ma’am? You called for maintenance?”
…a spot in our General Studies is open should you wish…
Han Sooyoung doesn’t skip her first day of school. She doesn’t skip the second or third.
Instead, she quits cram school on her first day. She walks up to the receptionist and tells her that she won’t be attending this year. That night types an email from her dad to the school explaining that she will be having private tutoring to prepare her for applying to an liberal arts university in the United States. She contacts the accountant and has him transfer the payments to her ‘tutor’.
On the second day, she picks up Abyssal up from primary school. She meets him outside of the gate and walks him back to the apartment. They end up spending the afternoon at an arcade and being run off at ten.
Day three sees her and the brat meeting at lunch. She pulls him out of class just to see if she can. It's a little worrying that it works.
The fourth day is when they put their plan into action. She calls them in sick and they take a train to Busan in the morning. Three blocks from the school is where they get changed.
She buys a read poncho from a store nearby for cheap. There was a blank mask in Yong Seul's parents' room that wasn't nailed to the wall so they stole it. She found a horned headband from when she was little that still fit and some old elbow and knee pads from her skater phase. Yong Seung found her a sword. Granted, its old as hell and can’t cut for shit, but its metal and heavy so it still hurts to get wacked with it.
Yong Seung has an actual cloak he payed big money for and a set of nicer fake horns. He’s also got a blank mask to match hers, although it's a little big for him and he keeps readjusting it. He does not get a sword because as she keeps telling him, he's eleven.
Looking at her clones, dressed similarly but wearing literal garbage bags instead of actual ponchos and without the horns and sword, Han Sooyoung think they looks like garbage. But Yong Seung is over the moon so it can’t look that bad.
“I wanna come!”
“Hell no.”
“This is my plan!”
“Exactly. So, when this goes pear shaped, I need you on the phone, ready to set fire to the gym over there so I can get away.”
“That’s so boring.”
“Look, you can set fire to the track field as well. Number 3! Make sure he doesn’t blow his load prematurely.”
One of her clones gives her a lazy salute before picking up a squirming Yong Seul and running off. She waits until they round the corner before addressing the rest of the clones. She’s got a good amount of variation going. A few tall ones, a really short one, that one over there looks almost skeletal, all in all, nothing that says, ‘there’s actually only one person here’.
“Everyone have their stuff?” The clones lift up paint buckets and brushes. The plan is simple, a little light vandalism, throw a rock through a window, taunt, then run like hell. Simple, easy, no way it can go wrong. They’re just about to throw the rock when something explodes and her phone rings.
“Boss! We’re surrounded by heroes! Yon- Abyssal Black Flame Dragon needs extracting!”
“Fucking brat! What did he do!?”
“BOW BEFORE THE GREAT ME PUNY HEROES!”
…we look forward to seeing you in the coming school year.