WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 322: Return (5)
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The sheriff, seated across from Gyeoul with a makeshift table between them, asked what he needed.
“Is there something you want to confirm with me?”
“Yes. But this isn’t really the place to talk about it. Let’s finish eating and walk for a bit. It’ll help us digest, too.”
They had to watch for listening ears. Sensitive topics might come up. At this point, there was no language barrier to speak of in the refugee zone. That included the people who had fled Korea during the early spread of the plague. The survival of young and old, men and women alike, had depended on it.
Kathleen had probably guessed the rough shape of it anyway. Accepting it, she bit into the rest of her hotteok. Crunch. It was so crisp that the sound alone was enough to tell him the texture. Brown sugar syrup seeped out richly, like caramel. The sheriff ate with visible relish, licking her lips, and smiled naturally as she did. That too was a kind of everyday life that had never existed before. Not across any of the apocalypses until now.
Gyeoul’s share of hotteok arrived while they made small talk.
The sheriff showed mild concern.
“From what I saw earlier, you didn’t seem to have time to eat anything. Will that be enough for a meal?”
“I grabbed a quick bite on the way. People kept offering me all kinds of things.”
In a manner of speaking, it had felt like a president visiting a traditional market.
“Ah.”
Kathleen’s worry faded, replaced by amusement.
“Well, everyone cares for you and respects you. They must have wanted to show you all this time. How this place has changed. How much more humanely people can live now. That it was possible because you were here.”
“Not yet. It needs to get even better from here. Mm, this is good.”
Gyeoul was satisfied by the crunchy yet moist warmth and the savory, sweet flavor. The aroma of nuts filled his mouth. The sheriff covered her mouth and giggled, as if she had known he would react that way. At the same time, she seemed somehow proud.
They only got up after drinking the sikhye the owners offered. The sheriff was horrified by the strange liquid with fermented rice grains drifting through it, but Gyeoul emptied that too with relish.
‘Still, it is a little strange...’
Surprisingly, it was his first time trying it. It was not an easy drink to get. Since North America was the most favorable land for surviving the apocalypse, none of Gyeoul’s beginnings had ever taken place outside America.
Leaving aside his life before death, he could have had a chance to taste it in the 「Lobby」.
“Then should we look for somewhere quiet?”
At Gyeoul’s words, the sheriff chose a direction.
“There is still a construction zone nearby. Aside from scheduled patrols, no related personnel should enter at this hour. We only need to pass one checkpoint.”
“Will it be safe?”
The question meant whether there might be people who had secretly slipped outside the controls.
“Please don’t worry. I cannot say the base has excellent public order, but even in the Chi... even in the most chaotic residence district, basic order has been established. But...”
“But?”
“Now that I say it, this feels strange. Lieutenant Colonel, you are still armed, aren’t you?”
In other words, it was a joke that if strange people were there, the danger would be on their side instead. Even under the widely spaced lights, the playfulness on the sheriff’s face was easy to see.
After passing the checkpoint, Gyeoul and the sheriff sat on materials stacked to one side, using them as chairs. Before the serious conversation began, Gyeoul sent short texts to a few people through his Net Warrior terminal. The messages asked them to understand if he was out of sight for a while.
When the screen went dark, the sheriff asked, “So, what should I tell you?”
“Anything you think I should know as base commander.”
“Mm... If you receive the handover from Brigadier General Laughlin anyway...”
“What I want is what Brigadier General Laughlin may have missed... and what Brigadier General Laughlin may have seen but ignored. You know what I mean, don’t you? Tell me exactly what you saw, heard, and felt as someone working on-site.”
There was no way the sheriff did not know what Gyeoul was hinting at. She had spent a considerable amount of time working in the refugee zone. Even in front of Gyeoul, whom Brigadier General Laughlin had met again after so long, Brigadier General Laughlin had openly shown aversion to certain refugee groups. Kathleen hesitated for a moment, then confessed with little confidence.
“You may find it disappointing, but in that sense, I’m not blameless either. I got angry when I didn’t need to... and discriminated in ways I shouldn’t have. There were many times when a punishment that seemed appropriate at the time turned out, looking back, to have been harsh. Even when I tried not to, at some point I found myself watching Chinese people as if they were potential criminals. I imagine you understand well enough that this alone changes many things.”
“At least you’re reflecting on it, aren’t you?”
“Are you not seeing me too generously?”
“Why wouldn’t I? You were a sheriff who tried to stand against an entire company to protect civilians.”
Her sense of responsibility, at least, was something he could trust. Hearing Gyeoul’s assessment, Kathleen showed a shadowed look of discomfort.
“And in the process, I hurt the wrong person.”
“It was unavoidable. If you went back to that situation, could you make a different decision?”
“...No.”
“Don’t worry about it and talk. I’ll filter out anything that seems strange.”
After that, the sheriff sank into thought and chose her words very carefully. There were countless times when she opened her mouth, only to close it quietly again. Gyeoul understood her position. Reflection on herself could be close to self-condemnation, and that was fine. What she had been asked for, though, was whistleblowing in the broad sense.
‘If she is not careful, it will end up as badmouthing her superiors and colleagues.’
At the same time, he could glimpse anxiety over whether this conversation might cause her some kind of harm. A natural reaction. His enhanced 「Perception」 easily pierced through the emotions she was trying to hide and supported Gyeoul’s guesses. For someone who had been skilled at reading people even before death, it served to add certainty.
“I should start with this. Arrest numbers for ordinary crimes-”
The sheriff swallowed the words she had just begun and frowned slightly as she asked for understanding.
“Hmm, please forgive me if this is a little disorganized.”
“It’s not as if this is a prepared report.”
“Thank you. Then... arrest numbers for ordinary crimes tend to be higher among groups that receive plausible suspicion than among groups that do not. Before the plague spread, the target was Black people. Well, that is still true now...”
Gyeoul guessed what she was trying to say, but the mood called for listening quietly.
“But that is an optical illusion. Take drugs, for example. People of any race buy and sell them at similar rates. In fact, if you look only at the percentage of searches that lead to arrests... there were even areas where white people came out higher than people of color. Not by a huge margin, but still. In other words...”
“In other words?”
“The reason Black people had a higher crime rate was simply that they were suspected more often. Since enforcement was more frequent, there were naturally more detections... Even if someone was innocent, they looked suspicious. Because you already suspected them.”
“That would happen.”
“Yes. If their hands are low, it looks like they are about to draw a weapon, and if their pocket bulges, you think, is that drugs? There were even cases where someone saw... that, an unusually large thing jutting out through the pants... and mistook it for a concealed firearm.”
“Was that your personal experience, by any chance?”
“...I will exercise my right to remain silent.”
“Do people usually mistake that?”
When he asked mischievously to lighten the mood, the sheriff looked deeply wronged.
“I wasn’t in my right mind at the time. It was my first callout for a mass shooting. I was extremely tense. On top of that, we hadn’t even secured a description of the perpetrator. That person was frightened too, so his behavior was abnormal, the distance was close, and for some reason his eyes seemed unfocused-”
“And he was Black too?”
“Yes...”
Kathleen sighed. With a feeling of resignation, she recalled the incident. She had yelled at him to drop the weapon, and when he said there was nothing there, she pointed with her chin and told him to take it out slowly. Then he had asked whether he really had to take this out. It had been a mess in every way.
“You must have been so scared that it didn’t even feel strange.”
“The treatment afterward was also a bit... Once the incident was resolved, I met him personally and apologized.”
“Did he accept it?”
“He said it was not a good experience, but as a man he was proud, so it was fine. He said he now had something to boast about at drinking parties for the rest of his life.”
In the end, Gyeoul let out a small but genuine laugh. Kathleen gave him a sidelong glare.
“I will return to the main point. I believe the Chinese people in this refugee zone are now in a somewhat similar position.”
“Somewhat? Does that mean you aren’t sure?”
“Yes. Because several indicators are meaningfully high. Mm, to put it simply, it is clear in itself that Chinese people are involved in crime at a higher rate than other districts. Even accounting for the intensity and frequency of enforcement.”
“I understand.”
“But there is one fact that cannot be denied.”
The sheriff raised a finger for emphasis.
“More than half of the Chinese people taken to the station so far were charged with obstruction of official duties. Because they responded uncooperatively or aggressively to demands for checkpoint inspections and searches.”
“I see.”
“The rate at which being dragged in like that leads to imprisonment is also fairly high. Even if there are no other charges. According to the administrative guidelines of the military government office, hostile action against police is established by an officer simply claiming that they felt threatened.”
“Kathleen. Do you think the officers on the front line are doing that intentionally?”
“...No.”
“Then?”
“There must be some personnel who deliberately discriminate against Chinese people. But even for me, when I patrol the Chinese residence district, my skin often prickles. From the police perspective, the threat they feel is real. To call it an illusion caused simply by excessive suspicion... the glaring stares are too clear. Their murmuring among themselves in words I cannot understand puts me on edge too.”
“It’s a vicious cycle. They feel threatened by hostility and overreact, and the overreaction feeds the hostility.”
“Yes, it really is.”
The sheriff sincerely agreed with Gyeoul.
“It truly is a vicious cycle where it is difficult to tell who started it first.”
“That’s how everything is. Rarely is one side one hundred percent innocent.”
“...Even so, if we are talking responsibility, our side bears more of it. No, we definitely do. Either way, power and authority are in our hands, and they are the relatively weaker side. If they are hit ten times, nine times, sometimes all ten times, they have no choice but to take it quietly.”
“Relax your face. Being able to admit this much is already impressive.”
It was not empty flattery. The head follows the heart. Even if his arm was broken and the other person’s neck had been twisted, the side that hurt was the broken arm. Others were always beyond the wall of sensation. To empathize was always to kill a part of oneself. So the sheriff’s level of balance was quite rare.
“Ha...”
The sheriff looked up at the starlit sky.
“In any city, any slum, any high-crime area, if you want to secure public order, you first have to restore trust in public authority. But that is impossible here. The emotional rift has grown too deep to undo.”
“I think I still have a chance, though.”
Gyeoul smiled.
“What I heard just now was quite helpful. I have a sense of what I should do from here.”
“I did have a suggestion... or advice, I suppose, that I wanted to give you...”
But it seems you have already thought of it. Gyeoul affirmed the words she had swallowed.
“For now, let me thank you for playing the bad cop all this time. You worked hard.”
The sheriff covered her forehead and slowly shook her head.
“Oh dear.”
Good cop, bad cop was fairly old-fashioned, but the effect itself had been proven over a long time. It only changed depending on the ability of the people carrying it out.
‘If I loosen things enough for people to feel it, there will be side effects...’
If he failed to hold the reins properly, the Chinese residence district could become an even worse lawless zone than it was now.
Kathleen added, “I say this out of needless worry, but you need to resolve their sense of relative deprivation. Especially the issue of treatment for the volunteers... Even Jeffrey said he did not want to accept them when forming his unit.”
A name he had not heard in a long time. But the nuance was subtle. Gyeoul and the platoon members had called him by name too, but only among people close to him.
“Jeffrey? You call Lieutenant Brown pretty familiarly.”
“He is Captain Brown now. A company commander with a confirmed promotion. And he and I... have been dating for half a year.”
“Wow.”
Gyeoul looked back on the memory of the night at Salinas Dam. Jeffrey himself had said it. If she had not been older than him, he would have proposed. Gyeoul had wondered if it was just a passing comment, but apparently he had been quite serious.
“Should I congratulate you?”
“I’m not sure. It has become a long-distance relationship. The happiness was brief, and only the longing is long. He was dispatched to the front three months ago already. I wonder when he will return.”
The sheriff smiled bitterly and returned to the original flow.
“Anyway, I heard that after the nukes went off, no commander wanted troops drawn from the Chinese residence district. They said they might betray them at any time. Lieutenant Colonel Capston was the only one who said they would be accepted into that regiment... but as I understand it, Brigadier General Laughlin rejected the request. Since headquarters treated them as nonexistent troops too, it makes sense that most of the volunteers still do not even have rank insignia.”
Adding that the police had also looked down on them quite a bit, Kathleen offered a hopeful observation.
“If you resolve those points properly, Lieutenant Colonel Han’s burden will become considerably lighter.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. This was more useful than I expected.”
After checking the time, Gyeoul stood. Messages from several numbers had piled up on his communications terminal.
“I should head back for today. There are a lot of people waiting, so it would be awkward to stay away too long. Can I contact you again when I need help?”
“As much as you like. I’ll be waiting.”
Kathleen also brushed herself off and stood. The festival was still going on.
Footnotes:
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