WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ The Police Do a Better Job Than Heroes

Chapter 28

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Staying Still Gets You Halfway There (2)

"The test itself is simple, but..."

Kang Jin-ho trailed off, asking whether she planned to go meet the man right away.

"Huh? Well, I just got off work, so I was thinking of meeting him for a bit..."

"Where were you supposed to meet him?"

"We were going to go to a manga cafe together..."

"Hm."

A manga cafe. The handful of possibilities Kang Jin-ho had been weighing narrowed down to just two.

To pin down which one it was, he asked one final question.

"When you meet this man, do you notice any kind of smell?"

"S, smell?!"

"Not that kind of smell. I mean something like a sweet perfume."

"He doesn't wear perfume... I don't think there was really any smell at all, now that I think about it."

"I see."

Kang Jin-ho nodded, sorting through his thoughts.

'Not a pheromone-type ability, then.'

Pheromone-type abilities always carried some distinctive scent, sweet or sour, something the target couldn't help but notice. That was why users of those abilities typically masked the pheromone smell under heavy perfume or food odors.

But the Gold Sun in question apparently had no particular smell at all, which ruled out a pheromone ability.

That closed the last gap in the puzzle. All that remained was confirming whether an ability had actually been used.

"Alright, the test method is simple."

Kang Jin-ho cleared his cluttered thoughts, leaned his back against the streetlamp, and spoke.

"The method is."

"Method?"

"Ask him to meet you outside."

"...Huh?"

The older sister blinked, thrown off by how ordinary the test sounded. But Kang Jin-ho spoke with a voice full of conviction.

"Think back to the situation your brother described when he followed you. All those dates you two had. Eating, escape room cafes, movies... every single one of them was indoors, in an enclosed space."

"That's... true. Every date so far has been indoors. Though I am introverted by nature, so I do prefer indoor places..."

"Setting aside your personal preferences, ma'am, if a superpower really was used, it's probably one that only works indoors. That's my guess."

Kang Jin-ho thought back to the restaurant case he'd solved not long ago, the one involving Driver Kim.

"I think it's probably a long-range heat manipulation ability."

"Hm?"

Eun-yeong, who'd been listening with her arms crossed, cut in.

"Jin-ho, how does raising someone's temperature seduce a woman? Is that even possible?"

"Yes. Conditionally, it is."

Kang Jin-ho pulled out his phone and searched something on a wiki site.

"Senior. A person's physical response in front of someone they're attracted to is remarkably similar to how the body reacts on a hot day. The face flushes, body temperature rises, the heart beats faster."

Kang Jin-ho showed Eun-yeong a screen labeled "the suspension bridge effect."

"It's the same as what people call the suspension bridge effect. Misreading a fear or excitement-induced spike in heart rate as attraction to the person you're with. As far as I know, a rise in body temperature can produce a similar result."

The older sister's mouth slowly fell open as she listened. Now that she thought about it, it did seem oddly hot every time she met the bleached-blond, tan man.

"So... my body was just getting hot, and I mistook that for attraction?"

"It's only a theory, but yes. That's my guess. As for why it didn't trip the bank's superpower detector, maybe the ability's just too weak. A strong heat surge would obviously set it off, but subtly raising the ambient temperature by one or two degrees probably wouldn't trigger the alarm."

"Ah..."

"If the temperature spiked all at once, you'd have noticed right away, ma'am. But if it rises slowly, little by little, it's not easy to notice the air around you getting warmer."

In fact, superpower detectors were designed to ignore abilities that were too weak, specifically to avoid tripping over customers who unconsciously used minor abilities without meaning to.

"Of course, I could be wrong. So let's test it. Cancel the manga cafe plan and ask him to meet somewhere outside, where there's a cool breeze."

"..."

"If you meet him outside and don't feel that same fluttering as before... then it was the ability doing the work."

"...I'll call him right now."

The older sister, after a moment of hesitation, pulled out her phone and dialed Gold Sun.

"Hey, Jin-ho."

Eun-yeong, standing beside him, lowered her voice.

"I get that raising body temperature could trick someone into mistaking it for attraction. But can that alone really be enough to seduce a woman? If the guy has no charm to begin with, wouldn't she just feel hot and nothing else?"

"Correct."

A sharp observation, no question. No matter how high the heart rate climbed, if there wasn't at least some minimal spark of appeal to begin with, it would just feel unpleasant and end there. Ability or no ability, Gold Sun himself clearly had some charm, or the feelings wouldn't have taken root at all.

"That's exactly why this situation is so murky. Calling it illegal feels like a stretch too. Hard to say, honestly."

Kang Jin-ho clicked his tongue and kept turning the thought over in his head.

Back when he used to play HiCiSi, the game had contained more than just prebuilt quests and cases. There were also one-off random events called "procedurally generated events." Nothing that carried much weight or affected the city in any major way, just small, oddly entertaining little quests.

Among that huge pool of events, one had been almost identical to the situation unfolding right now. Because it truly only happened once, it had taken Kang Jin-ho's improved memory a real effort to dredge it back up.

'The culprit didn't cause any physical harm. All he did was make things a little warmer.'

Was warming up the air around someone a crime? Was raising the ambient temperature by one or two degrees a crime? If so, then would an explosion-type hero setting off a flashy blast during a proposal count as a crime too? Would an ice-type ability user gifting a flower made of ice also count as a crime?

It was a topic genuinely difficult to draw a clean line on, and in the end it had been one of those headache-inducing events where the player had to choose whether to throw the culprit in jail or let them off with no charges.

"Jin-ho. Here's something I always think about."

Eun-yeong said, sitting on the bench, swinging her legs.

"Things other people have no business meddling in, the people involved should just get to decide for themselves."

The moment Eun-yeong finished speaking, a figure came sprinting into the clearing where the older sister waited, arriving in a rush.

Loud bleached hair, flashy clothes. It was Gold Sun, the man the younger brother had so thoroughly despised, finally arriving.

He arrived out of breath, and after a brief, serious-looking exchange with the older sister, he bent at the waist in a full ninety-degree bow.

"I'm really sorry! I wanted to get closer to you, wanted even a little bit of your affection, so I used my ability! I'm sincerely sorry!"

The distance meant they couldn't hear the whole conversation, but the man's booming apology carried loud and clear. Suddenly switching the meeting spot to outdoors, then getting subtly pressed on it, must have spooked him into a full confession.

"But my feelings were never fake! I swear I never meant to do anything wrong! I just, I just liked you so much..."

"..."

Gold Sun stammered out his true feelings, flustered. But maybe it was the confession of having actually used his ability. The older sister's brow furrowed, and something like anger settled over her face.

Right at that moment.

Gold Sun hesitated for a beat, then carefully pulled something out from behind his back.

Nothing more than a small, pretty bouquet.

"I know this isn't the moment for it, but I want to say it before things get more misunderstood. Will you go out with me?"

Holding out the bouquet, the blond man made his confession.

The older sister looked at the bright flowers, hesitated for a moment, then answered with a smile.

"Yes. I'd like that."

**

Thirty minutes later.

"Should we go get ourselves tested for powers now?"

"Isn't it a bit late? I haven't even changed out of my uniform..."

"Just wear the uniform, then. And superpower testing facilities are usually open 24 hours. It's the law."

"Oh, is that so?"

"Yep. A lot of newly awakened people don't fully understand their own abilities, and that raises the risk of accidents. There's also the issue of people in a pre-awakening state."

"Ah, I see..."

The case had wrapped up on a reasonably good note, more or less. Kang Jin-ho and Park Eun-yeong were eating sandwiches bought from a street stall and talking. They'd missed dinner, so they were making do with something quick.

"Excuse me, thank you so much for your help!"

Just then, the boy came running up, arriving late, and bowed deeply toward the two officers.

"No need to thank us. We just did our job."

"No, really. I know I was being pushy, so... just having you come out here means a lot. I'm sorry for the trouble!"

The boy kept apologizing, then fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his phone.

"Um..."

"What's this?"

"My account. I'm actually kind of well known online..."

The boy showed off an SNS account with over a million followers. He'd built a decent following online around a "pure clear eyes" persona.

"I'm going to post about how these two amazing officers helped me out today. The publicity should be great for you! Oh, wait, would this cause trouble for you as police officers...?"

"I'm all for it. And, about your sister... that's a shame, what happened."

"Huh? It's fine. She and that guy are already breaking up."

The boy said it in a flat, matter-of-fact voice. Kang Jin-ho, baffled, asked again.

"Wait... didn't they just start dating a minute ago? Why are they already breaking up?"

"Tell me about it."

The boy sighed.

"Since they're dating now, my sister listed off some things a boyfriend should 'obviously' do, you know? Share his phone password, keep a location-sharing app running, delete every woman's number from his contacts, and some other stuff too. Really nothing major..."

"..."

"But that punk, partway through hearing it out, his face just went pale, and he pretended he had to use the bathroom and bolted. Isn't that ridiculous? It's not even a big deal. Guess he never really loved her after all."

The boy sighed, lamenting how many strange men there were in the world.

"..."

Kang Jin-ho, listening quietly, thought to himself.

Those two siblings, he decided, were probably better off just living their lives on their own.

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