WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ The Police Do a Better Job Than Heroes

Chapter 30

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Staying Still Gets You Halfway There (4)

After leaving the awakened persons examination center.

The sky had darkened, and only the streetlights lit the street now.

Usually this area still had a decent number of people around even at night, but tonight, for whatever reason, there was no one. Walking under the streetlights, it almost felt like an illusion, like everyone else in the world had simply vanished.

Tap. Tap.

The silence pressed in so hard that his own footsteps sounded loud, and Kang Jin-ho couldn't stand the awkwardness anymore. He spoke up first.

"Um, sunbae-nim?"

Eun-yeong, walking ahead of him, stopped and turned around, staring at him fixedly. That gaze, that silence, made a bead of sweat run down his spine.

"Jin-ho-ya."

Eun-yeong tilted her head, expressionless. Her crimson eyes caught the streetlight and glinted with something unsettling.

"What are you?"

"..."

"Information-type ability users trigger their power by will. But you say yours just happens naturally, no intention involved at all. And yet you're way too healthy to be a prophecy-type. It doesn't add up."

Blink. Blink. The streetlight flickered ominously.

"You said it earlier, right? That you naturally come to know things about a culprit's method, or about clues."

"...That's right."

"What kind of power is that, exactly? Is it even a superpower to begin with? The more I learn about you, Jin-ho, the less I understand. I've never had this experience before."

Eun-yeong murmured this almost to herself, then suddenly smiled.

"What are you doing this weekend?"

"...Out of nowhere?"

"Yeah. What are you doing this weekend?"

"I'm not on shift, so... I guess I'll just rest?"

"Then come somewhere with me."

"Wh, what???"

"It's a promise now, okay?"

Eun-yeong made the plans all by herself, then walked off cheerfully, practically skipping.

"...How did this happen."

Kang Jin-ho watched her back for a long moment, then scratched his head in irritation and followed after her.

"Let's go together then, sunbae-nim!"

**

Officer Ahn Seong-sil, East Precinct 7's resident slacker, had a saying he lived by.

"Listen, kid. You don't have to try to do a good job. You don't have to stick your neck out. Just do what you absolutely have to do. Stay still and you're already halfway there."

That's how the civil servant world worked.

Someone proposes something new? The answer that comes back is, "Since you brought it up, why don't you take charge and see it through." Same salary, more work.

Someone points out a problem? The answer that comes back is, "Since you brought it up, write a report on the current situation and a solution, and bring it in." Again, just more work.

Stay still, and nothing happens. But the moment you take one step forward, a storm of work comes crashing down.

"Hey, Jin-ho. Heard the news."

"You're not prophecy-type, you're closer to information-type, huh?"

That was exactly the scene waiting for Kang Jin-ho when he showed up to work the next day. Everyone greeted him with a smile, everyone wanted to talk to him.

He'd never had a bad relationship with his sunbaes, but today they were being oddly, suspiciously friendly. Sensing something off, Kang Jin-ho looked around uneasily and asked.

"...Did something happen? Why is everyone suddenly..."

"Huh? It's confirmed you're not a prophecy-type ability user."

"Once a civil servant gets an ability checkup, it updates in the system right away, you know? Yours says 'presumed special information-type.'"

"Thank god, thank god~ We were so worried~"

The sunbaes clapped his shoulders over and over, delighted. Kang Jin-ho had no idea why they were so happy and just felt confused.

"What... were you all worried about?"

"Ahh, honestly? We thought you were a prophecy-type ability user. Information-type users have to concentrate hard, meet certain conditions, there's all sorts of restrictions. But you never showed any of that, right?"

"But prophecy-type users, the more they use it, the more their bodies break down... so we were really worried. Glad it's not that."

"We even talked about you over drinks, you know. Wondered what kind of story you must have, working yourself to the bone as a cop like that. Officer Choi over there even said something like, 'Maybe Jin-ho doesn't care about money because he knows he's going to die soon.'"

"Hey! Jin-ho donates a lot normally, that's why he said that, it was a joke, a joke."

Setting aside the fact that they'd all assumed he must be some kind of ability user in the first place, these people had genuinely, truly been relieved that he wasn't a prophecy-type.

"Is that... so? I had no idea."

"We just didn't show it. What good would it do to mope around about it?"

"..."

Kang Jin-ho thought back on things.

'Hey, Jin-ho-ya, leaving some cookies here for you.'

Now that he thought about it, his sunbaes had often stopped by with snacks.

'Sunbae-nim, I'll take care of this.'

'No, no. You rest. You've got bigger things to do later. I'll handle this.'

They'd looked out for him with the small chores too.

'Jin-ho-ya, where'd you say you lived?'

'Ah, it takes about forty minutes by subway.'

'Hm... I live near here, you know. We've got a spare room. Want to move in? My wife said it's fine.'

He hadn't taken them up on it, but they'd made the warm offer all the same.

Until now, he'd figured people were just kind, and cutting the rookie some slack. But it seemed like the whole time, he'd been mistaken for someone with a terminal illness.

'...I had no idea I was under that kind of misunderstanding.'

To begin with, Kang Jin-ho wasn't an ability user of any kind. His body had simply improved from the karma he'd earned, and it wasn't that he was using some prophecy or information-type power, he just knew things because he was an old hand at HiCiSi.

Of course, Kang Jin-ho himself had thought, back when he used his game knowledge to nail a culprit in an instant, that people might mistake him for an ability user. To some degree that had even been intentional.

But he'd figured they'd assume some kind of information-type power, roughly. He never expected to be pitied like this.

"Anyway!!! Now that it's confirmed our Jin-ho is just a healthy young man."

"Mm-hm."

While Kang Jin-ho had been lost in thought, his sunbaes wore broad, satisfied grins.

Thud!

"Here, enter these documents into the system for us."

A hefty stack of paperwork landed on Kang Jin-ho's desk.

But that was only the beginning.

"Once you finish that, do some cleaning too. Saw the entrance was pretty dirty earlier."

"Oh, and my relative's got some trouble going on, mind looking into it for me?"

"I bought some Blue Net stock recently, think it'll go up? Use that gut feeling of yours and check it out."

"We used to cut you a lot of slack on night shifts, but now we're loading all that back on you at once, got it?"

Every bit of quiet consideration he hadn't even noticed before vanished, all at once, and the workload came flooding in.

"If you've got a case you need to solve, we'll cut you some slack."

"But outside of that, you're doing everything everyone else does."

"The rookie's supposed to go looking for hard work. Gotta do what needs doing."

The sunbaes teased him, laughing the whole time. Kang Jin-ho couldn't even find anything to say in response, because the truth was, all that special treatment he'd been getting was never normal to begin with.

"That... yes... understood! Leave it to me!"

"Jin-ho-ya, your face looks a little off. You're not upset, are you?"

"Not at all!"

He said that, but inside, Kang Jin-ho thought.

'...I should've just stayed still!'

If he'd just stayed still, he'd have at least made it halfway!

***

And a step removed from all that chaos.

Eun-yeong sat at her desk, quietly watching Kang Jin-ho.

More precisely, she was watching Kang Jin-ho's shadow.

Where there is light, there is shadow. When people look at the light, the shadow watches too.

Eun-yeong was someone who watched the shadow no one else paid attention to.

"Hmm..."

Just as a person leaves traces behind when they move, a shadow leaves traces too. Not complete traces, and normally there wasn't even a way to read them at all.

But Eun-yeong, who commanded darkness, knew how to pull useful information out of a shadow. It let her glimpse, roughly, how a person had lived their life.

That was how she'd figured out who Clayboy really was, back then, by reading his shadow.

"Jin-ho-ya, turns out you've got a real talent for grunt work, huh? Still, don't push yourself too hard."

"It's fine. I'm okay."

"Yeah? Then work hard."

Over there, Kang Jin-ho and his sunbaes traded banter.

Eun-yeong smiled.

She'd looked into Kang Jin-ho's background. Where he was born, what kind of life he'd lived, how he'd ended up a police officer, how he'd ended up working here at Light City's East Precinct 7. She'd spent no small amount of money finishing that investigation.

Kang Jin-ho's life had been full of twists. He'd lost his parents to an ability user, grown up in an orphanage, but thrown himself into his studies and graduated top of his class from the police academy, a fine, composed young man. At least, that was what the records on file said.

But the "Kang Jin-ho" standing right in front of her, right now.

"Jin-ho, out of everyone I've met in my life, I think you're the strangest."

He had no past before he started working at the precinct. His shadow held no record of anything before that.

"It's fun just watching you."

Like he'd simply dropped out of the sky.

'That's different from the police academy exam hall too, isn't it? That place has kind of a shabby feel to it.'

'...That's right.'

For reference, there was no such thing as a "police academy exam hall." Police academy students got their checkups at the nearby awakened persons examination center too.

Eun-yeong asked, inside her own mind.

Who are you?

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