WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ The Police Do a Better Job Than Heroes

Chapter 57

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Luxury Is In the Details (6)

Time passed. The party's mood had ripened into something warm and easy.

"Ha ha ha!!!"

"Ho ho ho!!!"

Laughter kept bursting out from all corners of the Gallon family. Of course, the veneer they'd worn their whole lives hadn't vanished overnight. There was still something performative in their words, in their laughter.

Even so, this whole incident had left them with no small amount of realization. Not a pretense of change, but something that had genuinely shifted in their hearts.

"Family really is the best, after all."

Gallon knocked back a glass of strong liquor in one go and spoke in a heavy voice.

"It's fine to scatter and live your own lives. But in the end, when a crisis comes, blood is the only thing you can turn your back to and trust. Family is the bond that's been there since birth, the one thing you can rely on no matter what happens. We need to stick together."

"You're right, Father."

"Well said."

The day the youngest sibling had vanished, the whole family had torn the estate apart, hearts in their throats, terrified it might be the work of some villain. Then came the intelligence that villains might be targeting the Gallon family on top of that. All of it together had clearly moved something in the family's hearts.

"Little one. All this time... we didn't understand what you really wanted."

"We cared too much about appearances, didn't we? Come here. Let me hold you. From now on... I'll treat you honestly."

"I never knew you'd been feeling so suffocated. I'm sorry."

One by one, the family offered their apologies. Given how stiff and formal they usually were, these words must have taken real courage. Like ground packing solid after rain, warmth was finally beginning to circulate through the Gallon family. It was, all things considered, a heartwarming scene.

"...No, it's me who should apologize for worrying everyone."

The youngest sibling laughed awkwardly and blended naturally into the mood.

...Naturally, only on the surface.

'Fuck, I'm losing it.'

The youngest sibling, no, Body Snatcher, felt like he was about to lose his mind. Irritated, sick of it all, and on top of that, helpless, because there was nothing he could do about any of it.

The cause was singular. The cop over there, cracking jokes and chatting away. Kang Jin-ho.

First, saying he'd bring Tienrang over. Then recommending a thorough checkup. Up to that point, Body Snatcher had chalked it up to coincidence. Things anyone might casually say, plausible enough on their own.

"Oh, little one. Do you usually sit like that?"

But the way this cop kept tossing out remarks in passing.

"Ah, could you hold this for a second?"

"Sure, I guess..."

"Do you usually hold your water glass like that?"

"..."

Trivial-seeming little jabs that scraped at the nerves in a strange, specific way.

"Excuse me, eldest daughter. Did the little one always make that hand gesture?"

"I don't really remember, to be honest..."

Kang Jin-ho's remarks, pointing out truly "minor" habits, felt like they were clawing at the back of Body Snatcher's brain.

Of course, Body Snatcher had the youngest sibling's memories. How he spoke, what expressions he made, what kind of person he was, all of it was there.

But when it came to habits, things were different. People don't clearly remember the habits they perform unconsciously. That's precisely because they happen "unconsciously."

These kinds of behaviors weren't done with conscious intent, so no amount of digging through memory produced a clean answer. It was exactly why perfect replication was impossible for Body Snatcher, one of his few weaknesses.

"That's a little odd, isn't it?"

"Well, the little one's probably just not feeling well."

"Is that so..."

On some minor point that nobody else would even care about, Kang Jin-ho kept scratching endlessly, in a fine, catch-it-if-you-can, never-mind-if-you-don't sort of way, hoping something would finally stick. For Body Snatcher, it was enough to induce a nervous breakdown.

How did the youngest sibling usually sit? What hand gestures did he usually make? How did he move, what routines did he have? Just managing every little detail of that was exhausting enough, and with Kang Jin-ho tossing out remarks beside him the whole time, the irritation doubled.

By this point alone, Body Snatcher's nerves had already reached their limit.

"Now that I think of it."

Kang Jin-ho didn't stop. In the middle of idle small talk with the Gallon family, he suddenly slipped in a strange question.

"Most of the Gallon family are ability users, aren't they?"

"That's about right. Living in an ether-rich environment, we naturally end up awakening abilities. Not the most useful powers, but there are advantages just from having awakened at all."

"I'm curious about abilities in general, sir. Are there any among your family that, once used, can't be used again for a certain period?"

"Hmm... I don't think anyone in our family has one like that."

"Are you sure?"

"?"

The Gallon family didn't quite follow, question marks practically floating over their heads, but beside them, listening in, Body Snatcher felt his heart drop. Wasn't it exactly the case that his own ability couldn't be used again for a while after use?

'...What did that mean?'

On top of that, even while chatting with someone else, Kang Jin-ho kept glancing over at the youngest sibling now and then. And whenever their eyes met, he'd casually look away again, as if nothing had happened.

If it were a clear threat, Body Snatcher could have gone to Gallon and had Kang Jin-ho thrown out. Or if Kang Jin-ho had come right out and said, "That person is Body Snatcher!" there would have been room to argue against it.

But this... it was like he was giving a pointed look without quite crossing the line, tap-dancing in that razor-thin gap between suggestion and accusation, some sticky sort of line-walking. Body Snatcher genuinely felt like he was about to snap.

For now... one thing was certain. Kang Jin-ho knew that Body Snatcher had stolen this body.

But even that premise made no sense to begin with.

'How could he possibly be certain I stole this body?'

Why had Body Snatcher been designated a 1-rank villain in the first place? Because the things he could do by stealing bodies were essentially limitless, while the methods to detect it were vanishingly few. In the end, the alpha and omega of the ability was that it was "nearly impossible to detect."

Think about it plainly. Say someone you know well suddenly seems a little different, acts slightly off from before. Normally you'd think, "I guess people change," or "something must have happened to them."

But right now, Kang Jin-ho was pushing at it with, "You, the person inside you has changed, hasn't he?" Was that even a logical leap to make? Wasn't making that kind of guess something only a psychopath would do? It was the same reason no character in a web novel ever says, "I have a feeling the youngest young master got possessed by someone from another world."

What made even less sense was that, in this particular case, the person inside really had changed. That was the part driving Body Snatcher out of his mind.

"...Hm."

On top of everything, this space blocked the use of abilities. Even if he'd used his power, there was no way to do it without it showing. There was no possibility that the lunatic cop had detected him through ability use.

Then had that cop figured out that Body Snatcher had stolen this body through pure deduction alone? No, that was impossible too. This wasn't the domain of intelligence or reason. There'd been no clues to begin with, and even if there had been, there was no basis to build them into a conclusion.

So then how, through what path, had that bastard picked up on Body Snatcher? Only one explanation came to mind.

'...Someone leaked it.'

Betrayal. One of the 1-rank villains who knew about Body Snatcher's infiltration had sold him out.

'Who?'

The first face that came to mind was Blackflame. They'd never gotten along particularly well, and they'd even come to blows recently. But would Blackflame really go so far as to betray him? If it were an open move against him, maybe, but resorting to this kind of underhanded tactic did neither of them any good.

Who, then? There was no way to be sure. Villains, bound only by mutual interest to begin with, had no camaraderie to speak of. In this line of work, genuinely anyone could betray anyone.

Whoever it was, if he really had been betrayed, this was an enormous crisis right now.

'If the police know...'

That meant the Hero Association knew too. Which meant this whole warm, friendly party, and Kang Jin-ho's line-walking, all of it was nothing but a single elaborate act. Pretending not to know Body Snatcher's identity, laughing and chatting, all just to buy as much time as possible.

Of course, all of this was nothing but Body Snatcher's own misreading of the situation. Kang Jin-ho was simply holding back because he had no grounds to say outright, "This one's the villain." The subtle pressure was meant to provoke some kind of suspicious behavior, to build a case for cornering him as a villain. But with no way of knowing the truth behind it, Body Snatcher experienced the whole situation as one enormous trap closing in.

'No time left.'

Body Snatcher made up his mind. He had to escape now. If this dragged on any longer... the "number one" might make a move. With everyone loosened up from drinking, now was the moment to slip away unnoticed.

"Excuse me, I'll just step out to the restroom for a moment."

Body Snatcher, no, the youngest sibling, rose quietly from his seat. Then, with an easy, natural gait, he slipped out of the main hall.

What was remarkable was that nobody noticed him moving at all. The body in motion was the youngest sibling's hopelessly frail one, but the soul housed inside it was that of a 1-rank villain, overflowing with ether to the point of spilling out.

Movement that could only be called uncanny, and a sense for slipping past other people's gazes like water through fingers. Body Snatcher left the estate calmly, without catching a single eye.

"...Good."

The moment he thought he'd made it out clean.

Thump!

"Ow!"

"Hey, watch where you're going."

Body Snatcher, failing to see what was ahead, collided head-on with someone. Knocked flat on his backside by the impact, Body Snatcher rubbed his forehead and slowly looked up.

"Huh?"

Standing in front of him was a well-built man with the eyes of a wild animal, Chinese by the look of him.

"...Why are you here?"

"...Something smells off about this one."

It was Tienrang, the S-rank hero, whose presence Kang Jin-ho's bluff had turned real after all.

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