WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ The Police Do a Better Job Than Heroes

Chapter 51

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Even a Sparrow's Steps Are Steps (7)

"..."

"..."

An awkward silence hung over the dirty back alley, one that felt out of place there.

"..."

Lethe stared straight at Eun-yeong, unable to understand what had just happened.

"..."

Kang Jin-ho, being fairly insensitive to ether himself, was struggling to work out exactly what was going on.

"..."

And Eun-yeong, watching the whole scene unfold with a finger resting on her lips, seemed to mull something over for a moment before.

"Ugh... my head..."

She suddenly staggered, awkward and pitiful, and sank down to the ground.

"Uh, senior?"

"My head, my head hurts so much... hic..."

Eun-yeong wiped at tears with a wistful look, like a princess out of a fairy tale who'd just been cursed.

"...?"

"...?"

Kang Jin-ho and Lethe both fell into confusion at the same moment.

'There's no way Eun-yeong could get caught by Lethe's ability. The gap in ether levels is way too extreme to begin with.'

Kang Jin-ho found the weakness Eun-yeong was displaying flatly impossible.

'The reaction seems off, though. There's no way she's that weak.'

Lethe was confused too. Her ability had landed, technically, but something about how it landed felt strange.

In truth, this was just the result of Eun-yeong hearing the word "cry" and improvising some acting on the spot. But neither of the other two knew that, and they both just stared at Eun-yeong crying rather unconvincingly.

"You're next."

"Senior Eun-yeong got taken down?!"

Having apparently accepted the situation, the two of them squared up, each getting ready to fight.

Kang Jin-ho figured it was about fifty-fifty: either Eun-yeong had let her guard down and gotten hit ever so slightly and decided to milk it for a joke, or she was just messing around from the start.

Lethe, meanwhile, decided it was probably a case of "sometimes when the target has strong mental fortitude, part of the memory gets lost before it takes root." That, or the woman in front of her was a monster on a scale Lethe couldn't even imagine, which was absurd, because someone like that had no business working as a cop.

"Pretty gutsy."

Lethe wiggled a finger.

"Watching your partner end up like that and still not running."

"Would you let us go if we ran?"

"No. Not a chance."

"Then there wouldn't be much point in running, would there?"

"...Cocky."

Lethe pulled out the illegal drug again, jabbed it into her wrist, and fired a violent pulse of ether straight at Kang Jin-ho.

This time it wasn't injecting a memory, it was stealing one. And the memory she meant to steal was... the memory of breathing.

Any living creature grows used to breathing. It's something done since birth, a motion performed constantly without ever needing conscious thought.

But strip away only the memory of "breathing" that someone has carried their whole life, and.

'Something's wrong with my body! It keeps moving on its own!'

'Help me! Air keeps forcing its way into my body! I feel like I'm going to burst! AAAAAAH!!!'

Breathing turns into the single most terrifying thing in the world. Lethe had seen people so terrified of breathing that they stopped on their own and died.

A blue pulse laced with murderous intent tore straight through Kang Jin-ho's body.

"..."

"..."

Once again, nothing happened. Kang Jin-ho was completely fine. Far from gasping for air, he was breathing calmly and evenly, right on rhythm.

"You... what did you just do?"

"You tell me."

Honestly, Kang Jin-ho himself was a little startled.

There were broadly two ways to deal with Lethe's ability. First, possess an amount of ether so overwhelming it dwarfed hers. Impossible for Kang Jin-ho, so scratch that.

Second, dissociate yourself from yourself.

The more Lethe stole and the more extreme the content she stole, the shorter the effect lasted. So the key was simple: survive that short window.

Kang Jin-ho had just dissociated from himself a moment ago. The pain he was feeling, the agony, none of it was his. The real him was standing off to the side with his arms crossed, just watching, a kind of mental victory trick. That trick was the easiest way to deal with Lethe.

It couldn't be sustained for long, but that was all it took to beat her, just holding out. In fact, once hero headquarters finished researching their "mental fortitude training method," Lethe would be downgraded to a pushover villain. The only problem was that the research was taking forever to get greenlit.

But right now, Kang Jin-ho hadn't actually done anything. No dissociation, nothing. No painful memory seemed to have been injected either. And it didn't feel like any memory of his body had been stolen from him either.

'Her ability just... isn't landing on me, I think.'

He didn't know why, but it was pretty clear Lethe's power simply wasn't working on him.

"...What."

Lethe's expression twisted. Even Kang Jin-ho, the one it happened to, hadn't seen it coming, so there was no way Lethe could have predicted it either. And now that she thought about it, her ability hadn't worked properly on that female officer either...

At this point, Lethe's stubborn streak kicked in. She couldn't tell if something was wrong with those two or if something was wrong with her. But one thing was certain: she wouldn't feel settled until she saw these cops screaming in pain.

Lethe pulled out a small glass vial, not from the bag this time but from inside her coat. Without hesitation, she twisted off the cap of the expensive-looking vial.

She swallowed the golden pill. A single pill worth tens of billions of won, the highest grade ether amplifier on the market. Not something meant to be wasted on ordinary cops like these, but Lethe wasn't operating on reason anymore, only feeling.

"Hehe, hehehehe..."

Lethe's eyes narrowed into thin crescents. The narrow alley shook.

Past a certain threshold, an ability user's emotional swings alone could bend reality. And Lethe's emotions were, without rival, the most twisted thing in all of Light City.

Trash on the ground sprouted cigarette butts and grew. The walls tangled their tongues together. Cockroaches were born straight out of thin air.

In the middle of all that chaos, Lethe laughed. Maybe she was crying too. Whatever she was feeling right then, human language had no way to describe it.

But one thing was certain.

"I'll take every single one of your memories."

Every sense Lethe possessed had locked onto Kang Jin-ho.

The wall crumbled. The air screamed. Ether thick enough to feel sticky fired straight at Kang Jin-ho.

"Wait."

It was threatening enough that even Eun-yeong, who'd been quietly watching the whole thing unfold with a secret little smile, shot up to her feet.

The deep blue pulse Lethe fired at Kang Jin-ho. A shadow rose up from the ground to intercept it, and right before the collision.

Ping.

The pulse Lethe had fired vanished. As if nothing had happened at all, the world snapped back to normal.

"..."

"..."

While Kang Jin-ho and Eun-yeong both froze, unable to process what had happened.

"Uh, uh...?"

Lethe's eyes went wide. The "memory theft" ability she had unleashed with everything she had, a 2-rank villain giving it her all, had been swallowed up almost entirely by some inexplicable resistance. But some of it had gotten through. Even that fragment succeeding was proof of just how much power Lethe truly had.

And it might have been better for her if it hadn't succeeded at all.

A memory she was never meant to know poured into her mind.

"Hi... CiSi...?"

A gray, unfamiliar city. A landscape of some other South Korea.

Kang Jin-ho sitting at a computer. 3D models moving across a monitor screen.

And beyond that. Some piece of information even Kang Jin-ho himself had already forgotten.

Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information. Information.

"...Ah."

Lethe's pupils turned hazy and unfocused. As if the strings controlling her body had been cut, she crumpled limply to the ground.

Thud.

A slab of meat collapsed onto the pavement. And then it stopped moving entirely.

"...What happened here?"

Kang Jin-ho stepped closer to check on Lethe's condition.

"Heh, hehehe..."

Lethe's eyes had gone completely unfocused, drool trailing down her chin as she muttered something dumb and slurred. That signature hazy, unhurried air of hers was nowhere to be found now.

"Doesn't look like she's acting."

"Yeah. Any guesses? Even a hunch? This is clearly something to do with you."

"No... I really don't know."

After cuffing her, Kang Jin-ho scratched the back of his head, baffled.

"By the way, Jin-ho."

"Yes, senior."

"What's HiCiSi? Looked like she took it straight out of your memory."

Eun-yeong asked with her eyes curved into a smile, curious as a cat. She looked completely fine now, as if she'd never been sick in the first place.

"...I really don't know either!"

Kang Jin-ho desperately avoided Eun-yeong's gaze.

Of all the memories to see, she had to see the weird one...!

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