WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ The Police Do a Better Job Than Heroes

Chapter 18

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As Coincidence Would Have It (5)

The sun rose, birds chirped, and the morning began fresh and clean.

Down at East Precinct 7, though, the day started off busy as ever.

"I'm heading out."

"Yes sir, take care. Get some rest."

The night shift officers, yawning wide, trudged out of the station. Filling the empty seats behind them came the day shift, blinking themselves awake over cups of instant coffee.

"Ugh, couldn't sleep a wink last night. Had some nightmare of a complainant come in yesterday, got me all wound up."

"Yeah? Don't be surprised, but that same nightmare filed a complaint against you early this morning. You're writing up an incident report."

"...What? Hold on, what did I even do to-"

"Alright, alright, you chatterboxes. Save the gossip. Morning briefing time."

"Yes, Chief!"

Papers rustled as the shift handover changed hands. Talk of overnight incidents drifted through the room. Chief Raphael's voice carried the briefing forward.

Amid all that noise and bustle, though, one corner of the station stayed conspicuously quiet.

-Nod.

"..."

-Nod.

In the far corner, Kang Jin-ho was dozing so hard his forehead looked ready to plant itself straight into the monitor. Understandable, really, given that the exhaustion piled up over the last few days had gone well past what any normal person should have to handle.

A week had passed since the Black Faction robbery case. In that time, Kang Jin-ho had been dragged from one place to the next, running a schedule brutal enough to keep him up day and night. Writing reports, filing statements, briefing HQ. It felt like he needed two bodies just to keep up.

Of course, all that suffering had come with rewards too. He'd received a certificate of commendation signed by the Commissioner General, pocketed a decent bonus, and even had his face printed in the paper.

But had it all lived up to what he'd hoped for? That was... a little murky.

For one, he still hadn't confirmed exactly how much karma he'd earned for driving off the 1-rank villain. He hadn't captured the villain outright, only chased it off, so he hadn't expected much. Still, the status window kept showing "Calculating," and that lingering uncertainty needled at him.

And as for the newspaper-

[East Precinct Police Bust Gang Plotting Robbery! Officers' Quick Thinking Shines...]

A grand headline like that had run, sure, but people barely read paper newspapers these days. Worse, the article had left him anonymous, referring to him only as "a certain officer," which was the President's own considerate touch, not that Kang Jin-ho had any idea about that.

Even the commendation had only made waves on the internal police network. Did ordinary citizens ever pay attention to a cop getting an award? People just shrugged and figured it was some routine formality, then moved on.

So Kang Jin-ho had shelved his expectations, chalking it up to the idea that becoming famous was just harder than he'd thought in a city full of heroes.

To begin with, back in the game he'd been managing the whole city from above, so he'd never really gotten a feel for how much an individual needed to accomplish to become famous on their own.

His current mindset amounted to something like, if he just kept working hard, fame would eventually catch up to him.

The one real disappointment was that Trace still hadn't resumed her activities. She'd promised to spread word about Kang Jin-ho to the other heroes once she got back to work, but for now she was holed up at home on a break.

In truth, that was Trace's own way of showing consideration. On the surface Kang Jin-ho had looked composed even after coming face to face with a 1-rank villain, but how could an ordinary person stare down the terror of death and walk away completely fine? Trace had decided he needed at least a month of rest, free of stimulation, and had been holding off on spreading the word because of it.

Kang Jin-ho had a rough idea of what was going on, but he knew this wasn't the moment to insist he was perfectly fine, so he'd let it be. Honestly, he really was exhausted enough to drop dead right now anyway.

"Uuungh..."

If this had been his old body, the one that used to sit in a room gaming all day, he'd have collapsed from overwork and ended up hospitalized ages ago. Lucky for him, his body had somehow been brimming with vitality lately, so he could get by on nothing worse than nodding off at his desk.

"...up."

Just then, a voice drifted in from somewhere far away. Kang Jin-ho mumbled something back, still half asleep.

"Wake up."

"Gah!"

He jolted upright and lifted his head to find Senior Officer Son Jin-woo standing in front of him, famous around the station for his blunt, no-nonsense manner.

"A complainant's here to see you. I know you've had it rough since that day, but you can't just doze off in plain sight like this. If you're really that tired, go take a break in the locker room or something."

"...Yes sir, thank you."

"Right."

Officer Son, usually a stickler for doing everything by the book, looking out for a rookie like this might seem strange, but there was a reason behind it.

Not long ago, in a back alley on the city's outskirts, the 1-rank villain Blackflame had descended. That fact had been kept under absolute wraps. To avoid causing panic, only a handful of senior government officials, the leadership of the Hero Association, and the officers here at Precinct 7 knew the truth.

A 1-rank villain carried enough raw power to level a city single-handedly, which was exactly why the information had been buried. Officers who'd spent years in Light City had a rough sense of just how terrifying that rank truly was.

Any normal rookie would have been shaken to the core, and nobody would've blinked if they'd handed in their resignation on the spot. But Kang Jin-ho had shown up for work the very next day looking completely unbothered, and had been grinding through his packed schedule ever since.

That guy's something else.

To the veteran officers, Kang Jin-ho looked like a plucky rookie clearly wrestling with trauma underneath, but holding it together through sheer sense of duty. (The startled "Gah!" he'd just let out only reinforced the trauma theory, though in reality he'd just been dozing and gotten spooked awake.)

Officer Son left with a short "hang in there" and headed off.

"Jin-ho, you were sleeping so well."

Only then did Kang Jin-ho notice Park Eun-yeong across from him, chin propped in her hand, beaming.

"Ah, yes... aren't you tired, sunbae?"

"I'm fine."

Worth noting, Park Eun-yeong had also come face to face with the 1-rank villain and had been running the exact same brutal schedule as Kang Jin-ho. And yet her skin looked smooth, her mood looked great, she was unsettlingly, perfectly fine.

"Hey, Officer Park. Rookie. You two take care. I'm heading straight to bed the second I get home."

"Yes sir, get some rest."

Remarkably, nobody at East Precinct 7 seemed the least bit worried or found it strange about Park Eun-yeong. That was because her quirky, offbeat personality was already well known around the station.

"Eun-yeong? She's the type who eats a rice ball while looking at corpse photos. Her wiring's just a little different."

"Honestly, sometimes... she seems almost sociopathic. But Eun-yeong gets the job done, doesn't she? Pretty face too. Good enough, I say."

The other officers had all quietly decided that Park Eun-yeong's emotional wiring had always been a bit off, and that quirk had probably just protected her mental state this time.

"Anyway, Jin-ho, are you really okay?"

"Huh? Me? I'm... fine. That was just me getting startled a second ago."

"Good to hear. I was worried you might've picked up some trauma. This was your first time seeing a 1-rank villain in your life, wasn't it?"

"...Yes, that's right."

"I looked it up out of curiosity, you know. Apparently when a rookie officer sees a rank 2 villain or higher in person, more than fifty percent of them quit within a week. Lucky you've got such a strong mind, Jin-ho."

"Yes, thank you."

"Mm, good, good. Where did they even find a rookie like you?"

Park Eun-yeong reached out as if to pat Kang Jin-ho's head admiringly, then seemed to think better of it and gave his shoulder a couple of pats instead.

"So, are you going back to sleep?"

"No, I'm wide awake now."

"Yeah? Want me to grab you something to drink, then? How about vegetable juice?"

"...Could I ask for coffee instead of vegetables, please?"

"Vegetables in the morning are good for your health, you know."

While the two of them traded that idle back and forth...

-Ding.

"Um, excuse me, is anyone here?"

An elderly man in a fine suit stepped hesitantly into the station.

"How can I help you?"

Park Eun-yeong cut herself off mid-sentence and turned to greet him with a friendly smile.

"Well, it's..."

The old man looked like this was his first time ever setting foot in a police station, glancing around with obvious curiosity, and then his eyes landed on Kang Jin-ho and his whole face lit up.

"You!"

"Sorry?"

"You're the officer from the newspaper, aren't you? I asked around and finally managed to track you down."

The old man pulled a slightly wrinkled scrap of newspaper from inside his coat. In the photo, Kang Jin-ho stood next to a senior Metropolitan Police Agency official, both of them smiling awkwardly.

Remarkably, this old man turned out to be one of the rare few in Light City who still subscribed to a paper newspaper.

"This is the anonymous genius officer from the article, isn't it? Same face and everything."

"Yes, that's me, but... what can I do for you?"

"What reason would a citizen have to come find a police officer? I need help."

"Help with what, exactly?"

At the word help, Park Eun-yeong, who'd been quietly standing off to the side, had her eyes light up.

"Yes, officer, miss. Actually, I run a restaurant, and..."

"Hold on. Would you mind starting from the beginning and telling us slowly?"

Kang Jin-ho straightened his uniform and settled in to listen.

A month had passed, and with it, his karma quota had reset.

Now it was time to solve another case.

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