The stadium was too bright.
Floodlights, holo-screens, sponsor logos, drones — all of it pointed at the same unremarkable man in a cheap suit, standing in the middle of the stage with a plastic employee badge still clipped to his belt.
The badge read:
> FOMO Corp — Sales, Mid-Level.
Name: [REDACTED]
Above him, the gigantic main screen flashed his face again and again, zooming in until every pore and every drop of sweat became public property.
The audience didn't cheer.
They just… stared.
Somewhere in the front row, a kid started crying.
"Th–That's Hero X…?"
"No way."
"He's just… some office worker."
X adjusted his tie, which was absolutely not designed for galactic-scale hero ceremonies, and rubbed the back of his neck.
"You know," he muttered, voice only loud enough for the mic to pick up, "I did tell you all I wasn't interested in being a hero."
The crowd reaction bar projected above the arena — a live visualization of public Trust and Faith — twitched like a heart monitor having a panic attack.
> TRUST VALUE: X
Status: CALCULATING…
Beside him, Ahu stood upright on two legs, wearing his hero outfit and holding his spear. A Shar Pei dog turned eighth-rank hero, tail trembling as he scanned the shocked crowd.
"Boss…" Ahu whispered, "the humans look broken."
"Mm," X answered. "They're fine. Reality just lagged."
---
The Top Ten
One by one, the other top-rank heroes stepped forward, forming a loose half-circle.
Lin Ling, the Commoner, in his patched-together outfit that screamed "hero merch on discount."
Lucky Cyan, flicking her coin nervously between her fingers.
Loli, with her unsettlingly sweet smile.
Ghostblade, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
The Johnnies, striking poses in sync for all the cameras.
Queen, regal and annoyed, as if someone had ruined her favorite game.
Dragon Boy, eyes burning with resentment at everything and everyone.
Ahu, still trying to look taller than he was.
And then, of course—
Nice.
Nice's body was full of fractures now, like cracked porcelain held together by pure obsession and leftover faith. His eyes were empty and too bright at the same time. Every step he took left faint flickers of glitching reality in the air behind him.
The crowd went quiet when they saw him.
Not out of respect. Out of confusion and fear.
"Didn't he… die?"
"Is that a double?"
"Is this some marketing stunt?!"
Nice stared straight at X.
X looked back at him.
For a moment, the entire world felt like a paused video. Sound faded. Drones froze mid-air. Even the wind stopped, as if it was waiting for a director's cue.
In that frozen instant, X could hear it clearly — the grinding sound of fate turning its gears.
You're off script, something wordless hissed at the edge of his awareness.
Get back on your square, chess piece.
He smiled faintly.
"No," he thought. "Not this time."
---
Hero Affairs Commission View – Backstage
Behind the stadium glass, in a soundproof VIP room, the heads of the four major agencies and the Hero Affairs Commission were all standing.
No one sat.
A giant monitor showed multiple angles of X on stage.
The Commission Chief slammed his hand on the table. "He revealed his civilian identity himself?! Before the official narrative briefing?!"
"Trust Values are fluctuating across the entire nation," an analyst reported, eyes wide as graphs spiked and crashed on her tablet. "Some people are losing faith, some are gaining it. We can't stabilize the system."
"Can we still push the execution order?" another asked quietly. "He's exposed now. We could—"
The lights flickered. The screens distorted.
For half a second, every monitor in the room displayed the same thing:
A chessboard.
Ten pieces.
All of them falling off into a void.
Then it snapped back to normal.
The Commission Chief went pale.
"...He heard that," he whispered. "Didn't he?"
---
Back on Stage
"Hey," X said softly.
Hero-class microphones were designed to pick up whispers like they were declarations of war. His voice rolled across the stadium, through thousands of headphones, into millions of live streams.
"I'm sure you all have questions."
He shrugged. "So do I."
The Trust bar above him spiked, dipped, then began spinning like some bugged-out game UI.
X raised his hand lazily.
Space folded.
For the crowd, it was like someone grabbed the video of reality and dragged the timeline slider. The stadium stretched, rewound, and snapped back. All the drones froze mid-air, their propellers still spinning but stuck in place. Sound vanished like someone hit "mute" on the universe.
Only the top-ten heroes could still move. Their bodies flickered at different frame rates, depending on their trust.
Ahu looked around, panicking. "Boss!? Did the Wi-Fi of reality just die!?"
"Pause button," X said. "We need a meeting."
Lucky Cyan clicked her tongue. "You just paused the world because you don't like awkward silences?"
"Awkward silences are the worst," X replied. "Also, we're about to die. That too."
Lin Ling swallowed. "Um… is this about that 'truth of the world' thing you were saying earlier? The chess pieces, fate… all that?"
X glanced at him. "Exactly."
Nice stepped forward, fractures in his body glowing faintly.
"This is pointless," Nice said, voice echoing weirdly as if someone was playing it from a broken speaker. "The crowd wants a show. The Commission wants your head. I want—"
He stopped, as if the sentence itself hurt.
Queen tilted her head. "What do you want, Nice?"
Nice's fingers twitched.
"I… don't know," he whispered.
For the first time, the cracks on his body looked less like power, and more like someone desperately holding themselves together with tape.
---
X's Truth (Second Layer)
X clicked his fingers.
This time, the stadium vanished entirely.
The top heroes now stood in an endless white space, like the loading screen of a game that never finished installing. Bits of old battles, fragmented crowds, UI elements from different episodes floated around them like broken textures.
"Welcome back," X said. "Meta-Stage. The layer between our show and its audience."
Dragon Boy scoffed. "You think parlor tricks and fourth-wall nonsense are going to fix this world?"
"No," X replied calmly. "But they let us talk without the script listening."
The others fell silent.
Fragments of past scenes drifted by: Smile laughing. Rock staring at monitors. Shand's smile, full of knives. Ahu's first act of "bravery." Lin Ling putting on Nice's suit and hating himself.
Ahu looked around, ears flattened. "Boss… what is this place, really?"
"It's where I stand," X answered. "Between their expectations and our lives."
He pointed upward.
Above them all, impossibly high, there was something like… an eye. Not human. Not mechanical. Just a vast attention, watching. The collective gaze of every viewer, every citizen, every believer.
"Trust," X said. "Faith. Ratings. Whatever you call it."
He turned back to the others.
"You've all felt it, right? When people expect you to be a certain way — and the world bends so you match their image. You gain power, but lose… yourself."
Ghostblade narrowed his eyes. "Get to the point."
"The Hero Affairs Commission wants to use that gaze," X continued. "To pin us down to a script. Kill off pieces that get too strong. Rewrite others. Keep the board stable. Keep fear and faith balanced."
He smiled, tired.
"And I'm tired of being a piece."
---
A New Problem
Lin Ling raised his hand slowly.
"So… what are you going to do?"
"Break the board," X said simply.
Everyone stared at him.
Queen laughed once, sharp and disbelieving. "You can't be serious. You break the board, you break the game. No more heroes. No more Trust. No more… us."
"I know."
Ahu stepped closer, gripping his spear.
"Boss… if you break it, do I… stop being a hero?"
X looked at him sadly.
"If I do nothing," he said quietly, "you die in about three episodes."
Ahu's tail went rigid.
"What?"
Dragon Boy's eyes widened just a fraction. "You've seen it?"
"I've seen enough," X replied. "Execution orders. Sacrifices for drama. 'Necessary tragedies' for ratings. They want a spectacle for the 21st Heroes Tournament."
He looked at each of them in turn.
"I'm done letting someone else write our ending."
---
Back to Reality
X snapped his fingers.
Sound returned with a violent rush. The stadium snapped back into place. Time resumed like someone hit "play" again.
To the audience, only a second had passed.
X was still on the stage, still in his cheap suit, the same awkward smile on his face.
But the way the heroes looked at him had changed.
The Trust bar above them, still spinning, finally glitched… and split.
> TRUST VALUE: X – ???
NEW PARAMETER DETECTED: DOUBT
People were confused, scared, curious. Some believed more. Some less. Some started questioning the system itself.
And doubt, X knew, was still a kind of attention.
He looked straight into the main camera.
"Good morning," he said. "My name is X. I'm a salaryman."
He bowed slightly.
"And starting today… I quit being your perfect hero."
The stadium exploded into chaos.
And somewhere high above, far beyond cameras and concrete, the invisible "eye" of fate narrowed in irritation.
Chess piece, it thought. You're not allowed to move like that.
X straightened, eyes calm.
"Then don't call me a piece," he whispered under his breath. "Call this… the first illegal move."