Only Good Food and Beautiful Women Were Worth Living For

The second event in the physical fitness test was the 1,500-meter run.

After waiting about half an hour, Luke finally stepped up to the starting line.

When the referee gave the order to get ready, every contestant crouched into a standard starting position. Only Luke remained standing there, looking blankly ahead.

Is this guy an idiot? the referee thought.

The starting gun fired.

The contestants burst into a sprint. The runner in lane four was charging forward when a blurry streak flashed past his eyes.

Before he had taken two more steps, it swept past him again.

Each time it passed, a piercing sound cut through the air, and the wind it whipped up nearly knocked him off balance.

After four such bursts, Luke stood at the finish line.

0.93 seconds.

The number on the timer stunned both the referee and the contestants waiting their turn.

It took the referee several seconds to recover before he remembered to check the footage from the ultra-high-precision light-sensing camera at the finish line.

The camera had captured Luke crossing the line.

Its shutter speed was one thirty-six-thousandth of a second, yet the image was still somewhat blurred.

In other words, 0.93 seconds was no malfunction. That was Luke's final time.

Worse still, the number did not reflect what Luke was truly capable of.

He had spent half that time just starting.

Luke's reaction time off the line was 0.47 seconds.

There was something else the referee could not understand. At such a terrifying speed, Luke's momentum should, in theory, have been almost impossible to measure.

How had that bald man stopped the instant he crossed the finish line, making all that momentum vanish?

The referee could not help wondering whether A-Train of the Seven could have put on such a frightening performance.

He probably could. After all, A-Train was the fastest man in the country.

What the referee did not know was that if A-Train saw the footage from today's event, he would probably lose sleep for three nights.

1,500-meter run: 10 points.

Standing high jump.

The starting gun fired, and Luke vanished.

The referee stared in disbelief. A living, breathing man had disappeared right before his eyes.

Only when someone below cried out did the referee follow their astonished gaze upward.

Luke's head was embedded in the ceiling, his body dangling and swaying beneath it.

Standing high jump: 10 points.

Shot put.

Sure enough, Luke smashed another huge hole in the ceiling.

10 points.

After roughly three or four hours, Luke finally completed every event in the physical fitness test.

He earned full marks in all ten events, for an impressive total of 100 points.

He went into the locker room and found a place to sit.

Luke had provided his phone number when he registered. If he advanced to the interview round, he would receive a text message.

Of course, with his test results, advancing was a certainty.

Sure enough, after a short wait in the locker room, Luke received a text from Vought International telling him to report to the conference hall on the gymnasium's third floor for his interview.

Outside the conference hall, contestants who had made it to the interview round sat in small groups, waiting.

When Luke walked in, he drew quite a few looks. Some people even stopped talking, and the room grew noticeably quieter.

Everyone was staring at Baldy's gleaming head.

That goofy-looking Baldy had somehow passed the physical test?

Luke looked around.

Then his vacant eyes suddenly lit up.

He had spotted two familiar figures.

One was Starlight, already considered one of the leading candidates.

The other was the stunning Young Girl he had seen in line that morning.

Mitarai Fubuki.

He had to admit, beside Young Girl's nearly flawless beauty, even Starlight seemed to lose some of her shine.

Starlight had noticed him when he came in, too.

But she glanced at him once and looked away.

She was not so childish that she would stare at someone else's Baldy for amusement.

The reason Starlight failed to recognize Luke as the creep she had been unable to catch was that Baldy.

Who would have imagined that someone with a perfectly good head of hair six months ago would suddenly go bald?

Seeing that Starlight had not recognized him, Luke breathed a sigh of relief and found a seat in the corner.

He had chosen the spot carefully. From this angle, he had a perfect view of Mitarai Fubuki's delicate profile.

And her shapely figure.

The world was boring beyond belief. Only beautiful women and good food made it worthwhile.

Luke's imagination began to run wild.

A Girl that perfect—he had to find some way to win her over.

But Mitarai Fubuki was clearly not the sort of girl he could win over easily.

Luke could tell there was something extraordinary about this Girl.

Anyone who stood out among more than ten thousand contestants and reached the interview round was extraordinary to begin with.

Luke was still lost in thought when he suddenly heard someone call his name.

"Is Mr. Luke here?" The conference room door opened, and a man in a suit called out.

A Vought International badge was pinned to his chest.

Luke stood and waved to him.

The man nodded. "You're up. Come on in."

Luke entered the spacious conference hall. An oval table made of solid wood stood in the center.

A chair waited for him. Across the table sat four interviewers, all upright and solemn.

Once Luke was seated, one of the older interviewers asked, "Mr. Luke, who's your idol?"

Luke paused. His idol?

The interviewer smiled. "Which member of the Seven do you look up to? Don't tell me it's Homelander too."

Whenever the interviewer asked that question, more than half the candidates answered Homelander.

Luke shook his head. "I don't have an idol."

Homelander? As if someone like him deserved to be my idol.

The interviewer was visibly taken aback.

"Then why do you want to become a superhero?" he asked.

Luke thought for a moment. "I suppose it's just something I want to do."

Just something he wants to do?

He wanted to become a superhero because he liked being one?

The interviewer shook his head. He had never heard an answer like that before.

Luke, for his part, was quite pleased with his answer.

Why had he chosen to become a superhero, anyway?

To uphold justice? That sounded far too lofty.

Fame? Wealth? Status?

Perhaps those were what really drove most people to become superheroes, but Luke did not care about any of them.

Luke just wanted to live as he pleased and be a hero because he felt like it.

Eat more delicious food. Admire more beautiful women.

And when something upset him, or someone rubbed him the wrong way...

One punch would send them flying.

(End of chapter)