WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 24: Money Follows Naturally (6)

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"Hah, hah..."

Slumped on the floor, Detective Mierou took a deep breath and pulled himself together.

His pride as an elite investigator had been shattered, and his character had taken a thorough beating too, but he hadn't clawed his way to ace of headquarters for nothing.

Negative emotions solved nothing. Right now was the time to accept the situation and think about how to respond.

He brushed the dust off his clothes, straightened his crooked glasses, and his gaze naturally drifted toward Kang Jin-ho.

'Hm.'

The ability the Hero Association had coveted from Detective Mierou was the power to read other people's emotions. People could hide their expressions, hide their actions, but they couldn't hide what they actually felt.

The anxiety of a lying suspect. The bloodlust of a violent criminal. The hostility hiding behind a harmless-looking man's face. He'd used that ability to the fullest to crack countless cases, and it was what had gotten him where he was.

'Can't quite read it.'

But even Detective Mierou couldn't fully grasp Kang Jin-ho's current state.

Kang Jin-ho's emotions were calm. He'd figured out his superior was brainwashed and even named the culprit, all sitting in that chair, without so much as a ripple. Inside, he was as still as if he'd just wrapped up some routine errand, some case that obviously needed solving and nothing more.

And yet, looking closer, there was a fairly sizable knot of tension hiding somewhere in a corner of his mind.

Mierou swallowed his confusion. What in the world was he so tense about? What was he being so careful of?

Was it 3-rank villain Marionette? Had seeing the villain's power in person made him nervous?

He couldn't tell yet. And it wasn't important anyway.

"...Thank you for telling me about my condition. I apologize for my rudeness earlier."

Detective Mierou bowed his head, all courtesy now.

"Now that we understand the villain's intentions, I'll report to headquarters and request hero assistance. It's fortunate there wasn't worse damage. I won't forget this favor."

But Kang Jin-ho shook his head.

"No, no. That would let Marionette get away. We need to catch her, the real her."

"Isn't that unavoidable? If we go to the murder scene now, we'll be walking straight into her trap."

"That's exactly the point. If we want to catch Marionette, we have to go right now."

Kang Jin-ho replied calmly, pulling on the jacket draped over the back of his chair.

"Let's head to the crime scene. Same as the original plan."

Why had he blurted out "you've been brainwashed" without any preamble in the first place? Simple, really. There hadn't been time to spare.

Marionette was a careful villain. Careful enough that at the first sign something was off, she'd scrap her plan and vanish without hesitation.

To arrest her and collect the karma, they needed to head to the scene immediately.

But to everyone else listening, this sounded like an insanely dangerous plan.

"Jin-ho, I trust you, but... are you sure about this? Shouldn't we call for backup? The other side's a villain."

"Right. Should we check with the Association if any heroes are free right now?"

The other officers asked, worried. But Kang Jin-ho turned down the backup.

"If more people show up, Marionette will run. Just me and Detective Mierou."

"I'm currently under mind control, though..."

"There's a separate way to deal with that. Right now, every second counts."

"Rookie."

Chief Raphael blocked the path to the door with his body, his voice heavy.

"We trust you. But you're not pushing yourself just because you want credit for the case, are you? If that's it, drop it. That's an order from your superior."

"...Thank you for the concern, but that's really not it. I mean it, I have a plan."

"You don't have time to explain it, do you? Alright, if that's how it is."

With that, even Chief Raphael stepped aside.

Last of all, Eun-yeong raised her hand.

"I'll tail you from a distance, secretly. How's that?"

"That, I'm sorry, but no."

"...Hmph. Fine."

Thankfully, Eun-yeong didn't push it further. Though Kang Jin-ho's shadow seemed to twitch, ominously, just for a moment.

"Well then, let's head out."

Kang Jin-ho said, wiping a bead of sweat off his forehead.

"..."

Mierou stared at Kang Jin-ho without a word. Just now, while Kang Jin-ho was talking with Park Eun-yeong, he'd seen the tension in his mind balloon massively.

Could it be. Was the source of that tension his beautiful superior officer, not the villain?

"Aren't you coming?"

"Yes, coming."

Mierou thought to himself.

So even that genius falls in love, huh.

* * *

Night had fallen.

A construction site on the outskirts of Light City, still mid-build. Wind slid past the steel girders, making a sound that crawled up the spine.

Construction seemed to have stopped, cement bags scattered across the floor, a hard hat or two left behind that nobody had bothered to collect.

On the seventh floor of that building, at the scene where two victims had stabbed each other to death, only dried bloodstains and yellow police tape remained, bleak in the dark.

"Here."

Mierou said, sweeping the floor with a flashlight beam. Kang Jin-ho crouched down and studied the ground carefully.

"This case doesn't quite fit the classic locked-room profile."

The hallway outside the seventh-floor room had been mid-pour on a concrete job right up until the incident the night before.

Which meant, if anyone had walked into or out of that room before or after the killing, they should have left footprints in the not-yet-cured cement in the hallway. But the cement floor was smooth, untouched, and the room held nothing but two bodies who had stabbed each other to death.

"The site foreman who came up on the lift to fetch the two workers was the first witness. He kept insisting something was wrong, that friends who'd gotten along so well would never kill each other."

The Metropolitan Police Agency had first suspected a double suicide, but once they realized there was no motive, they'd considered the possibility of a mind-control villain. So they'd compiled a shortlist of mind-control-capable villains and sent it to Detective Mierou.

"Here, see this?"

Mierou lit up his phone and showed Kang Jin-ho a file of suspect composites. Flipping through the pages, he stopped on a blurry photo of a woman in a flashy dress, labeled "3-rank villain, Marionette."

"So this is Marionette."

"Yes. First time seeing her?"

"First time seeing her in person."

"...?"

While the two of them talked and scanned the scene, a young woman's voice came from somewhere.

"Oh my, is that my face?"

"The real thing's prettier, you know. I don't get why the police always use the worst photos."

The voice echoed through the empty building, making it impossible to tell where it was coming from.

"Come out."

Kang Jin-ho said, low. A woman in a flashy frilled dress stepped out from behind a pillar.

"The Metropolitan Police Agency's ace, Detective Mierou. And the rising genius officer everyone's been talking about, Constable Kang Jin-ho."

"Marionette."

"Well? Better in person, isn't it?"

The woman said, smiling. No, not just a woman, but 3-rank villain Marionette. Her eyes swept over the two of them.

"Hah... kyahahahahaha!!!"

Her doll-like smile twisted, little by little, into something bizarre and sadistic.

"I've been watching you two. Stupid, or brave, I can't tell. You really came alone, just the two of you? No backup, either, looks like. Didn't think I'd be here? You're police, you know that saying, right? Criminals always return to the scene of the crime."

Marionette said, her eyes flashing.

"It would've been nice if a decent hero had shown up... well, can't be helped. I'm not picky about whose screams I get."

Marionette savored the moment a human being fell into despair. She loved the instant the last thread of hope snuffed out. She lived to watch the moment someone who'd once begged to be saved begged instead to be killed.

So she watched, full of anticipation, for the reaction of the two officers in front of her.

"..."

"..."

No reaction. Fear? Despair? Tension? Not a trace of any of it.

"...You think it's a coincidence you two came here alone? No. That's a misunderstanding."

Marionette whispered, snakelike.

"You've been in the palm of my hand from the start. Ever heard of the subconscious? That Detective Mierou of yours ruled out backup from headquarters and arranged for just the two of you to come to the scene. You think that's a coincidence?"

"..."

"..."

But the two officers still showed no reaction, wearing expressions that said go ahead, say more.

"Fine, you don't believe me. Then I'll just have to show you."

Marionette wiped the smile off her face completely and scrapped her plan to toy with them slowly.

Instead, she'd show them. The pain of being stabbed in the back by someone you thought was your ally. The hell of two people wounding each other, screaming.

Eyes wide open, Marionette intoned meaningfully at Detective Mierou.

"Music box."

"..."

"..."

And nothing happened. Absolutely nothing happened.

"...Music box. Music box? Can't you hear me? Music box!"

"I already undid the mind control on the way here."

Kang Jin-ho said, arms crossed, flat as ever.

"That's your mistake. Two officers showed up, and you walked out here so confidently because you assumed one of them was already yours."

"...Wait, I misheard that, right?"

Marionette asked, frowning.

"You undid the mind control ahead of time?"

"What? Wasn't the trigger word 'music box'? I said it out loud on the way here. Your ability makes the target obey whoever says the trigger word, doesn't it?"

Just as Kang Jin-ho said, there was a blind spot in Marionette's ability.

Once the brainwashing was complete, Marionette herself didn't have to speak the word. As long as someone knew the exact trigger word, even a passerby who said it by accident would inherit the right to command the target.

Of course, Marionette had exploited this blind spot before. Instead of showing herself, she'd have "puppet A," already under her control, speak the trigger word to "puppet B," cutting off the trail and slipping past police investigations that way.

And to guard against this same blind spot, she was extremely careful about picking her trigger words. Words rarely used in everyday conversation, yet subtle enough that if she blurted them out in public, nobody would think she'd lost her mind. "Music box" had been one of those words.

"...What the hell are you talking about! Fine, let's say you somehow noticed Detective Mierou was brainwashed ahead of time. And fine, let's say you figured out I was the real culprit too!"

Marionette was shouting now, openly worked up.

"But there are countless words in the world, thousands, tens of thousands of possible trigger words I could've used, and you're telling me you guessed it on the way here? And undid the mind control based on that guess? You expect me to believe that?"

By any reasonable measure, it made no sense. Even by probability alone, it was absurdly unlikely.

"Just, had a hunch."

Kang Jin-ho said, glancing away slightly.

"Felt like I knew something, so I took a shot, and it worked out."

The truth was he'd seen a "list of trigger words commonly used by mind-control types" on the HiCiSi community boards once, and this was a lucky guess based on that memory. But...

Kang Jin-ho decided to double down instead. There was no way he could tell the truth here anyway.

So he made up his mind, from now on, cases like this, he'd just say "genius intuition!" and stick to it stubbornly.

Wasn't he supposed to act powerless because of Eun-yeong? Too late for that now. He was scheduled for an ability test soon anyway, so he figured whatever showed up on that would show up, and he'd already thrown caution to the wind on that front.

If a person bluffs like this once, people think, what the hell is this guy on about. But if someone bluffs naturally, every single time, people start thinking, huh, guess that's just how they are. And this was a villain he was dealing with, not even the worst-of-the-worst villain who tailed him everywhere, just some 3-rank small fry.

Someone at that level didn't have the standing to earn Kang Jin-ho's detailed explanation, his excuse, in full! (Not that there was any explaining this one away, anyway.)

"A guess, a guess... and you got it right..."

"Yes. Is that a problem?"

"What, what... aaargh..."

Marionette's blood pressure spiked, and she grabbed the back of her neck.

She couldn't believe this was really happening. It felt like the whole thing had to be a dream.

That bastard, appearing out of nowhere. What the hell even was that guy?

Footnotes:

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