The Police Do a Better Job than Heroes - Chapter 12

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

◈ The Police Do a Better Job Than Heroes

Chapter 12

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Get Famous First. (6)

The 4-rank villain Clayboy. Also known as Do Jin-hyuk.

The word "villain" carried a certain weight to it, but honestly, being a villain wasn't that big a deal. Any superpowered criminal with a bad enough streak got the designation.

Dig into the Hero Association's fine print and there were detailed classification standards, distinctions between villains and ordinary superpowered criminals... but none of that mattered right now.

What mattered was rank. The villain danger scale ran from rank 5, the lowest, to rank 1, the highest.

Rank 5 meant the ability itself wasn't much different from an ordinary person's, but the person's temperament was violent and vicious enough to warrant watching.

Rank 1 covered people who could do serious damage to Light City single-handedly. People who could unleash massive explosions. People who could mind-control crowds on a huge scale. Or people who manipulated darkness and space while posing as a cop and quietly studying humanity, among other things.

So what was rank 4? Rank 4 held the most villains and was, at the same time, the hardest rank to define.

Ability's decent but the person's brutal and vicious? Rank 4. Ability's weak but the mindset is pure criminal, needs locking up ASAP? Also rank 4.

And finally, no cruelty or aggression to speak of, but the ability itself is outstanding? Also rank 4. Too dangerous to bump up to rank 3, too capable to knock down to rank 5.

Clayboy fell squarely into that last category. His ability was molding clay into figures that looked exactly like real people. The figures couldn't hold a conversation or perform delicate movements, but they could follow simple instructions.

Because of that, there'd been talk of bumping Clayboy up to rank 3. He'd never committed a major crime, but the versatility of his ability was near limitless, and he was a pain to catch.

"Jin-hyuk. It's Jin-hyuk, right? What are you doing here?"

Eun-yeong strolled up naturally and greeted him with a smile.

"Hiiik...!"

Clayboy, Do Jin-hyuk, buckled at the knees and dropped to the ground, eyes shaking like leaves in a storm. Cold sweat poured down his whole body and his face drained of color so fast that anyone watching would have found it strange.

"Um..."

Just as Kang Jin-ho started to ask if he was okay, Clayboy latched onto his pant leg.

"Officer! Your badge, it says, Kang, Kang Jin-ho, Officer!!!"

"Wait, what's going on all of a sudden?"

Startled, Kang Jin-ho tried to back away, but Do Jin-hyuk clung to his leg like letting go meant death.

"Actually, I just committed fraud! I jaywalked too! I stole money from the old man next door! And last week I threw regular trash in with the plastic recycling! Please, please arrest me! I'm a villain! Do you know Clayboy? I'm a real piece of garbage...!"

"...Sorry?"

"No, I'm asking you to arrest me! I'm a 4-rank villain! This is dereliction of duty! Where are the handcuffs!!!"

"Both of you, quiet."

"...Yes, ma'am."

Five minutes later, Park Eun-yeong tidied up the situation with a simple "there's been a misunderstanding." The two men still didn't really understand, but neither had the nerve to ask what exactly the misunderstanding had been.

"Jin-hyuk, get up. Why are you doing that down there?"

"I, I'm comfortable here!"

Do Jin-hyuk knelt on the ground, trembling. Understandable, considering he still hadn't forgotten the day he first met Eun-yeong.

One year ago, Clayboy had sold a clay doll made with his ability to a human trafficking ring, passing it off as a real person.

"You idiots! Nice doing business with you~ You'll see later... later?"

Just as he was about to skip town with the money he'd scammed, he saw it through the clay doll's eyes.

Inside a dark warehouse on the docks. Rippling black shapes dragging the traffickers' bodies into the shadows. And standing in the middle of all that horror and screaming, a woman with deep crimson eyes.

The woman glanced at the clay doll once and said,

"You saw my face, didn't you?"

The next moment, the woman was standing beside Do Jin-hyuk. She gave him a chilling smile, looked him over carefully, then let out a short laugh and said,

"Not quite rotten to the core, huh. Consider yourself lucky."

From that day on, Do Jin-hyuk went completely straight. He scraped together money now and then with side gigs like "restaurant waitlist proxy," "college attendance proxy," and "standing in line for X-ketmon events" using his clay clones. He never wanted to know who that woman was, and he never wanted to cross paths with her again.

'That woman was a cop?'

He never imagined he'd run into her again, here, like this, in this way. He'd just gotten paid fifty thousand won for a line-standing gig, and now he wanted to bite his own tongue for choosing this spot to collect the money.

"Hehe."

Eun-yeong crept up to the kneeling Do Jin-hyuk.

"So, Jin-hyuk. What was that money from earlier? You didn't do anything bad again, did you? Oh, Jin-ho, this guy used to do bad stuff and I caught him at it, but he promised he wouldn't do it again. So, were you a villain?"

Her voice stayed soft and easy, but underneath it lurked a quiet, deadly menace. Do Jin-hyuk slammed his forehead against the ground and shouted.

"I, I am registered as a villain, that's true! But I really have gone straight lately. I'm living clean. Please believe me!"

"Hmm... really? Shouldn't I just arrest you right now?"

Park Eun-yeong drew the words out slowly, smiling. But the other two in the alley knew that smile wasn't a good sign.

"Really, I mean it! My bounty isn't even that high! I haven't touched anything shady in the last year, not once!"

Do Jin-hyuk protested fiercely. Kang Jin-ho, listening beside him, chimed in to help.

"He does seem like he's gone straight."

"Why do you think that, Jin-ho?"

"His clothes and his movements, for one. Someone pulling in real money from vicious crime wouldn't be wearing cheap clothes like this, and the soles of his sneakers are worn down way too much. Plus the money he just got paid was only fifty thousand won cash."

"Really?"

"Yes. A 4-rank villain isn't going to risk a face-to-face deal in a dead-end alley like this just to make fifty thousand won. The risk doesn't match the payoff."

"Mm-hm."

"More than that, he's missing the usual ease of a repeat offender, and he's not scrambling to make up excuses. If he'd used his ability recently there'd be traces of clay on his clothes or hands, but there's none of that either."

Kang Jin-ho defended Clayboy based on whatever was visible at a glance, doing his best imitation of a detective's lines from some drama or movie. It seemed to work, judging by the impressed look on Eun-yeong's face.

'Him saying "Clayboy" himself is what jogged my memory.'

Clayboy. Not a villain who caused major casualties, but the kind of annoying rat that chipped away at city assets through small-time crimes.

Left alone, Clayboy only caused minor damage through fraud and theft. But when his ability got folded into another villain's plan, the scale and damage of the crime grew exponentially.

Terrorism using clay dolls stuffed with bombs. Fake alibis for other villains. Flooding a city with identical-looking decoys to throw off investigations.

In short, unimpressive on his own, but genuinely dangerous once he fell under another villain's command. A support-type character, in gaming terms. Here, it looked like Eun-yeong had burned him badly enough that he'd gone completely clean.

'Let's build some goodwill here.'

Kang Jin-ho had defended him partly to build a connection for later. In the game, whenever Clayboy could be pulled onto the hero side, he always turned out to be a huge help.

"Wow, our Jin-ho. Sharp as ever, huh?"

Eun-yeong clapped her hands, impressed. At the same time, the quiet killing intent pressing down on Do Jin-hyuk vanished like it had never been there.

"..."

The person most shocked by all of this, honestly, was Do Jin-hyuk himself.

'That monster of a woman goes docile the second the rookie cop says something?'

Grateful as he was that Kang Jin-ho had backed up his innocence, Do Jin-hyuk understood something on a purely animal level. He needed to get on this rookie's good side. He didn't know how, but this cop had some kind of leash on Park Eun-yeong.

Partly to repay the favor. Partly to score points.

"Officer, thank you for the help. And while we're at it, mind if this innocent citizen offers up a little tip?"

Do Jin-hyuk rubbed his hands together, speaking in the fawning tone of a professional flatterer.

"A tip? Sure, go ahead..."

"I really haven't done anything bad lately, you know? But a few days ago, this super sketchy job request came in through an old account of mine."

"Sketchy job request?"

"Yeah. Someone sent me a photo of a person and told me to make a doll that looked just like them and sit it on a bench at XX Intersection. The pay was pretty good, but jobs like that leave a bad taste in my mouth. And I've gone straight, so. I turned it down flat."

"XX Intersection, huh."

Something clicked for Kang Jin-ho and he asked carefully.

"That photo, by any chance, did the person have a snake tattoo on their right forearm?"

"Uh, yeah? I think so! How did you know that?"

Do Jin-hyuk's eyes went wide. He'd only mentioned that a job request came in. How did this cop know about a forearm tattoo?

Combined with what he'd shown earlier, this wasn't just good instincts. This had to be someone hiding actual mind-reading or precognition.

"Are you maybe a superpow..."

"No, I don't have a superpower. I reasoned it out. There was a piece on TV recently about the Black Faction and the Axe Faction. There's a big gold exchange near XX Intersection, right?"

"Oh, they mentioned that gold exchange too! Said no matter what happened, the doll had to hold its position, no matter what..."

"That confirms it. Sounds like a robbery at the gold exchange."

"...Wait, I was going to tell you the robbery part later. You got there from just that much?"

"Gut feeling."

Do Jin-hyuk stared, mouth hanging open, at Kang Jin-ho's confident tone.

Beside them, Eun-yeong hummed happily to herself, beaming like a proud parent showing off her rookie. Watching people ask Kang Jin-ho if he had superpowers was, for her, one of life's greatest pleasures.

'The snake tattoo checked out. This is an opportunity.'

Whatever Eun-yeong was thinking, Kang Jin-ho clenched his fist in quiet delight. This had to be the setup for the Black Faction robbery case. A pretty big-scale event for something happening this early, and a big scale meant a big karma payout.

He'd just been doing routine patrol, and a lead like this had practically rolled up to his feet. Pure luck, plain and simple.

Watching all this unfold, Do Jin-hyuk muttered under his breath, sounding genuinely confused.

"I mean, seriously, with skills like that, why's he working as a cop..."

"Working as a cop?"

Right as he got that far, Do Jin-hyuk felt goosebumps break out across his entire body.

A pair of deep crimson eyes locked onto him directly. It felt like those eyes were the only thing left in the world, and everything else blurred into a haze.

"You okay, Jin-hyuk? You don't look so good."

"N, no, I'm fine! I think I'm coming down with a cold!"

"Oh, are you? Go home and rest up, then. Your throat must hurt. Stop talking."

"...Yes, ma'am!"

"I said stop talking."

"..."

That was the moment Do Jin-hyuk finally understood.

Ah, that crazy woman was the one keeping him chained to being a cop.

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