Infiltrating the Superhuman Training Girls’ School of the Republic of China!

“So, you’ll need to become a woman.”

Recruited by the CIA at the age of high school graduation, I’m now in my fifth year as an agent. Until now, I’ve silently followed orders given from above without complaint or question. In a world overrun by communists, fanatics, super villains, and psychopaths, a national intelligence agency agent isn’t in a position to harbor discontent about orders and act on it.

But even for someone like me, I couldn’t help but ask in response to the order that just entered my ears.

“…Is it absolutely necessary?”

“It’s absolutely necessary. It’s an order from above. They’ve determined that you’re the only suitable agent for this mission.”

The person telling me this is my superior, Marilyn Jefferson, an operations officer in the Directorate of Operations, known to have walked this path from a young age like me. With her attractive curly blonde hair, a straight nose like Cleopatra’s, and a sensual figure visible even under her men’s suit shirt, I heard she was called America’s Mata Hari within the organization since her teens. However, I’ve never heard of her actually being deployed on espionage missions using her beauty.

She might have actually performed such missions, and I just haven’t heard about it. In fact, I’m not even sure if Marilyn Jefferson is her real name. In this world, I’ve learned well that you shouldn’t be certain about knowing anything about your colleagues.

“If it’s something that must be done, I’ll carry it out faithfully,” I mumbled.

“But couldn’t I at least hear exactly what the mission is before giving a definite answer?”

“Well, that’s understandable. Black or white, we’re all human. Cross-dressing is one thing, but a sex change by order from above… It’s such a human rights violation that if it got out, there’d be a huge uproar. Honestly, I didn’t expect to have to assign you such a mission either.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk back.”

“That’s why I understand.”

Jefferson smiled, running her finger across her lips. I’m not sure if she actually seduced the British king, but seeing that smile, one thing is clear: Marilyn Jefferson is not someone who would fail such a mission if given one.

“I’ll tell you briefly so it’s easy to understand. You’ve been decided to go to Guangzhou in June. In China.”

“I know Guangzhou is in China. Do we have a branch there too?”

“We have branches everywhere in the world. At least in cities of that scale. But not in Guangzhou. The surveillance from the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics is too strict to establish a branch and operate there.”

“I thought we had a branch in Nanjing too.”

“Yes. It’s easy to plant a spy next to the Presidential Office in Nanjing. But Guangzhou and Beiping are difficult. With this much said, you should have a rough idea of where you need to infiltrate, right?”

Guangzhou and Beiping. If you can’t immediately recall the commonality between these two major cities, you’re a spy. No, you’re disqualified as a spy. In Beiping, there’s a large military academy established about 60 years ago for training superhuman officers. A school originally created to fight the Japanese army is still continuing to this day.

On the other hand, in Guangzhou, there’s a girls’ school built by renovating a military academy established four years earlier than the one in Beiping. It’s a prestigious superhuman training academy established by the Chinese government, which judged that not accepting female students at the superhuman training school in Beiping could lead to national loss.

So… it’s a girls’ school. It’s certainly a prestigious school, to the extent that even high-ranking officials and promising talents from foreign countries, including Korea, often choose to study abroad there, but still, it’s a girls’ school. Yeah. The mission of infiltrating a superhuman school itself isn’t surprising. China was considered a weak country in the world until about 60 years ago, but after they started deploying ‘Awakened Ones’ in war for the first time in the world, they caused an enormous historical upset by completely defeating the Empire of Japan, which had been a victorious nation in the Great War and a permanent member of the League of Nations.

For about three years after Chiang Kai-shek’s Northern Expedition, it seemed like superhumans were ‘awakening’ only in China, elevating China to the status of a world superpower, but soon superhumans began appearing all over the world, so that didn’t happen. The point is, China became the first country in the world to possess superhumans, making it the most authoritative and traditional country in superhuman training and education.

That’s why among the foreign students who sometimes come to study abroad in Beiping or Huangpu, there are many spies who come under the instructions of their country’s intelligence agencies to investigate the school’s education system, know-how, and state secrets. As such issues arose, there were occasional talks within the Chinese government about banning foreign students from superhuman schools, but China, wanting to maintain its ambiguous title as the ‘originator of superhuman schools’ – somewhat recognized yet not fully acknowledged – had not yet made such a decision.

The reason why Guangzhou and Beiping have become so strict that even our CIA finds it difficult to gain a foothold is that there have been numerous attempts by various countries to plant operatives in these two cities. Yes, I can understand the mission of infiltrating a school in China. As it happens, I’m also an Awakened One, and there aren’t many young people who are both Awakened Ones and capable of performing black ops missions, so it’s a mission with enough plausibility for me to take on.

But why a girls’ school? Why Guangzhou and not Beiping? And even changing gender? No, what does it even mean to change gender in the first place?

“You must have many questions,” Agent Jefferson said.

“Why Guangzhou and not Beiping? Well, let me make one thing clear. What Washington wants to uncover now isn’t something like China’s superhuman training education program. We know enough about that, and there’s not much more to learn. The White House already judges that New York has an education level no less inferior to Guangzhou or Beiping. And actually, the results aren’t bad either.”

“Then what’s the mission?”

“There’s an individual in Guangzhou who has contacted us, saying they want to pass on important secrets to us. The higher-ups are suspicious whether she’s really an informant who wants to cooperate with us, or conversely, a spy trying to uncover American secrets.”

“I assume it’s a student at the school.”

“A second-year student, Chen Yayuan.”

Marilyn slid a photo towards me. I took the photo and examined it closely. It was an Asian woman with long chestnut-brown hair and striking gray eyes.

“If this woman is the informant who wants to contact us…”

“It’s suspicious, isn’t it? A student at Huangpu, which is under strict surveillance by the Chinese government with very few in number, contacting us.”

“Could it be because of her superpower?”

“Who knows. Anyway, the higher-ups are hesitant to trust her recklessly. The government wants the CIA to infiltrate a foreign student into the school to investigate Chen Yayuan further, without her knowing. The person selected as the best candidate for this mission is you, Jae-won.”

“But if the goal is to infiltrate a girls’ school…”

“You’re thinking another female superhuman could do it, right?”

I quietly nodded. Marilyn Jefferson clicked her tongue, shaking her head as if regretting she couldn’t do it herself.

“Unfortunately, our other female superhuman agents are quite well-known.”

“Even I don’t know who the female superhumans in other departments are, so how…”

“Remember. The enemy knows more about our organization than we know about our colleagues in the next department.”

“Ah, I see.”

For a moment, I almost forgot the most important fact. That the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics of the Republic of China is a formidable spy organization that doesn’t fall behind any intelligence agency in the world. Whether China should be called an ‘enemy’ in the current international situation, I’m not really sure.

Now as before, the greatest threats to the United States were the Soviet Union and Japan. China and the United States were cooperative when opposing the communists, but at times like now, they often clash greatly.

“So we need to send someone nobody knows. Someone young enough to not look out of place as a foreign student, and an agent from an undeniably friendly country to China. Korea is perfect. The Republic of Korea is under China’s sphere of influence under the name of an anti-communist barrier.”

“If that’s the case…” I muttered with a sigh.

“I might be suitable. Honestly, I feel a bit uncomfortable, but…”

“I understand, I understand. If you really don’t want to do it, I can talk to the higher-ups again. How about that?”

“It doesn’t seem likely that the higher-ups will change their minds though.”

“That, I agree with.”

Well, I guess there’s no choice.

To some, this might be just a job, but to me, this terrible organization is also my livelihood. It was the government of this country, the intelligence agency, that reached out to me when I suddenly became an orphan. Later, I realized that they didn’t help me out of kindness but because they coveted my abilities and wanted to recruit me, and I know that even if I had stayed put, the Korean government would have taken me and used me anyway…

Still, this organization means a lot to me. So much so that I can only nod quietly even when asked to give up my gender for just one mission.

Besides, given my background, there’s no one who would be particularly surprised or saddened if I suddenly appeared as a woman.

“I understand,” I said, firming my resolve.

“I’ll carry out the mission. What should I do?”

“Good, then before you change your mind…”

Agent Jefferson held out a glass bottle containing a purple liquid to me. I took the bottle from her and tilted my head.

“What is this…?”

“A gender-changing drug. It’s a medicine manufactured by an Awakened One with pharmaceutical-related superpowers. It’s very rare, and there’s only a tiny amount. The higher-ups barely provided one bottle because of the importance of this mission.”

“Is the effect permanent?”

Jefferson nodded.

“You could revert back if you take the same drug again.”

“If it’s such a rare drug, that wouldn’t be easy either, I guess.”

“Don’t worry. When all the missions are over, if you absolutely want to return, I’ll somehow get you another bottle. Drink it all at once. If you take an ambiguous amount, who knows what might happen. We haven’t tested it.”

I felt like the longer I pondered, the more complicated my feelings would become.

I opened the cap of the bottle and swallowed the contents. The drug didn’t have any particularly special taste.

In fact, up until the last moment, I was hoping that this might be a loyalty test for me by the organization. That all this talk about a secret mission was a lie, and it was some kind of test to verify if I was willing to give up even my gender identity for the organization.

But the moment I drank the drug and felt an intense pain that made my heart throb, I could be certain that this wasn’t just a fake drug to test my loyalty.