WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ The Police Do a Better Job Than Heroes

Chapter 58

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Luxury Is In the Details (7)

"..."

"..."

Body Snatcher and Tienrang stood off in silence for a moment, trading a subtle look.

"Um, I actually have some business outside..."

"Ehey~ Where do you think you're going. Come on, let's go in together. Yeah?"

Body Snatcher tried to slip outward for an instant, but Tienrang casually threw an arm around his shoulder and hauled him back inside.

"W, wait a second..."

"Wow, nice house. You're one of the Gallon family? The youngest? Right?"

"..."

Body Snatcher squirmed, trying to wriggle free of the hold, but the gap in raw power was simply too vast. If it had been Body Snatcher's original body, he wouldn't have been manhandled this helplessly, but right now he was wearing the youngest son's weak little frame.

Clang!

Still with his arm slung around Body Snatcher's shoulder, Tienrang threw the door wide open.

"...Huh?"

"Kiddo? When did you go out?"

Every eye at the table, warm with drink and laughter a moment before, snapped toward the entrance. The youngest son who'd just been laughing along with everyone had slipped out and come back, which was strange enough on its own. And of all people, he'd brought back some odd stranger with him.

"Wait, that man is..."

"Nice to meet you all. You all know who I am, right?"

Tienrang kneaded the youngest son's shoulder with one huge palm, talking in that easy, cocky way of his. Whatever his slick manner suggested, the family's faces went stiff the moment they recognized him.

And standing awkwardly beside him, Body Snatcher.

'...Fuck.'

He squeezed his eyes shut.

'So calling Tienrang wasn't a bluff after all?'

Betrayal. Information. Police. Kang Jin-ho. A whirlwind of words spun through his head. If this whole job had been a trap from the start, then where exactly had it been designed? Was it a trap when one of the other 1-rank villains said they should look into the Gallon family?

Or maybe it went back even further, all the way to Lethe getting caught. Come to think of it, there'd been rumors that it was this very cop who'd turned Lethe into a vegetable.

Maybe... even the moment the Gallon family first got their hands on that information had been engineered. The Hero Association had plenty of capable heroes, after all. Just how long had he been dancing on strings like some puppet? Where did it all start?

While the youngest son hung his head in despair, Tienrang bared his teeth in a grin and started talking, oily and self-satisfied.

"So I ran into this guy on my way over here, right. Anyway, this guy's smell is real off. People don't usually smell like this, you know... this has gotta be-"

Just as Tienrang was about to spin some plausible-sounding explanation.

"...Yeah. That's right."

"Hm?"

The youngest son, head still bowed beside him, suddenly spoke up. His voice was resigned, the voice of someone who'd already realized he'd been thrown into a pit he couldn't climb out of.

"I'm... Body Snatcher. I took his body when he stepped outside the core district for a moment. Satisfied now?"

"..."

For a moment, silence dropped over the wide main hall. The Gallon family exchanged glances, wondering what on earth they'd just heard.

'...The hell is this guy saying?'

Tienrang, gripping Body Snatcher's shoulder tight, froze solid.

Honestly, Tienrang hadn't been thinking much of anything. The rich kid just gave off that particular smell people who'd done something wrong tend to have, and Tienrang had figured, at most, drugs, or maybe he'd laid hands on some woman. You know, the kind of thing bored rich sons with too much money and time on their hands tend to get up to.

But out of nowhere, what was this? I'm Body Snatcher? He stole a body? Watching the guy talk, it didn't sound like a joke, and judging by the killing intent leaking off him, he really was Body Snatcher...

Tienrang had strolled into this mansion with a light heart, and now this was just... just...

"Heh heh... yeah, should've just come out with it from the start."

What kind of jackpot is this?

Even as he panicked wildly on the inside, Tienrang let a long, knowing smile curl across his face, as if he'd known everything from the beginning.

"You think the great Tienrang came all the way out here for nothing? Nice, cutting straight to it. I like that."

"How..."

Body Snatcher, his face gone pale as a corpse, asked Tienrang.

"How did that cop... manage to call you here? I thought it was a bluff... or is there some connection between the two of you?"

"Uh..."

At that, Tienrang's expression twitched, very faintly awkward.

Honestly, Kang Jin-ho had never called Tienrang. There was no real connection between the two of them. If anything came close to a connection, it was this.

Earlier, Kang Jin-ho had sent a message to Trace. It read, "I'm going to invite Senior Tienrang to the party." The message had been written entirely for show, something to flash in front of his staff, and he had, in fact, made a point of typing it out where his employees could see.

Trace hadn't thought much of it either, and had simply mentioned it in passing to a fellow hero.

"Oh, senior?"

"What? Someone's calling for me?"

Tienrang, who happened to be curious about Kang Jin-ho at the time, got interested and came all the way here just to see the officer who'd apparently solved the Lethe case.

In other words, running into Body Snatcher here was pure, complete coincidence.

"Still haven't figured it out? Fool. You were finished the moment you walked in here."

Not letting any of that show on the surface, Tienrang struck a heavy, meaningful tone, playing up the atmosphere for all it was worth. Then he shot a quick wink at Kang Jin-ho.

A wink that meant, roughly, "Hey. Play along a little, will you? You know."

"...Sir?"

Kang Jin-ho, on the receiving end of that wink, blinked before he could stop himself.

Honestly, the situation had gone sideways. Why hadn't he simply said, "This man is Body Snatcher!" from the start? Right now Kang Jin-ho had no evidence, no way to draw out any information, and this place was exactly the kind of environment where he wasn't supposed to be able to notice anything at all. It was a zone where he couldn't use his powers.

So if he clumsily played along here with a "Yes, my plan worked exactly as intended," it would be a nightmare to walk back later. He'd have nothing to say to explain it to everyone else, and worse, nothing to tell Eun-yeong.

But bluntly denying it with an "Huh? I had no idea either?" wasn't an option either, not with Tienrang standing right there watching. And if the mood tipped that way, it would put a crack in the reputation he'd worked so hard to build, not to mention wreck his whole plan of getting on the good side of the number one ranked hero...

In the end, what Kang Jin-ho settled on was this.

"Haha... I honestly have no idea. Shouldn't you know better than me? Haha..."

Standing right on that razor-thin line between intentional and unintentional, playing the fool just enough. In theory, it was the best option available to him.

"You, you son of a bitch...! That crazy pig!"

But from where Body Snatcher stood, with no way of knowing the full picture, it looked exactly like being teabagged. He'd only revealed that he was Body Snatcher in the first place hoping to fish some information out of the situation, and here was this cop, seeing straight through even that and sitting there smirking about it.

"...Right. I understand now."

Body Snatcher, his whole body trembling with rage, spoke in a voice gone flat and dark. Cold murder flashed in his eyes for a moment.

"Kang Jin-ho... you're the key piece here, aren't you. You're the one who laid out this whole plan. Something felt off from the start."

"...Sir? No, wait, I-"

"I'll come find you soon. I'll make you regret ever pulling this."

Body Snatcher cut Kang Jin-ho off and stuck his tongue out, long, before Tienrang could do a thing about it.

Crunch!

"Wh, whoa!!"

"Wait, stop him! That's the youngest boy's body! We have to stop him!"

The bite was hard enough to spray blood off the tongue, and the watching Gallon family shot up from their seats all at once and rushed in. Until now they'd stayed frozen, watching, because none of it had felt real, but the moment the youngest son's body was actually hurt, they finally moved.

"Stop him, stop him!"

"Huh? He's gone quiet."

By the time the Gallon family reached him, the youngest son was lying still. Peaceful, as if asleep, breathing softly in and out.

"...So he escaped. The scent's changed."

Tienrang ground his teeth. None of the people here knew it, but this had been Body Snatcher's emergency escape ceremony.

The vast fortune he'd amassed over long years. All manner of rare materials, near impossible to obtain twice. And finally, a substantial portion of his original body's ether. Every bit of it burned as sacrifice in a single instant, a last resort that let him return to his true body just once.

Body Snatcher had never once used this ceremony before now. It let him return to his original body, but the cost was simply too enormous. It was the kind of last card he'd figured he'd never need to use, but right now, there was no other way.

"Is... is the youngest son back?"

"Thank god."

"..."

While the Gallon family exchanged words back and forth, Kang Jin-ho looked down at the boy lying there, his expression complicated.

Kang Jin-ho had never expected to actually catch Body Snatcher here in the first place. He'd known the emergency escape ceremony existed, and his plan for today had only ever been to apply pressure. Uncovering Body Snatcher's true identity had always been meant to fall to the Gallon patriarch.

But right now, he'd earned himself a great deal more misunderstanding than he'd bargained for.

"...There's a reason he's famous."

"Where did it all... start?"

"Incredible..."

Awe. Admiration. Astonishment. The Gallon family and Tienrang stared at Kang Jin-ho, their eyes a tangle of every emotion at once.

Nobody could use their powers here without being noticed. Which meant, if Kang Jin-ho had used any power at all, it had to have happened before he ever came to the core district.

Where had he started designing all this? Where did the picture this man was painting even begin? Everyone had assumed the Gallon family had put in the request themselves, but... had they been guided into putting in that request in the first place?

While everyone turned over their own thoughts, glaring at the miracle cop.

The man himself, meanwhile, was thinking.

'...What do I even tell Eun-yeong?'

This situation had gotten thoroughly, hopelessly tangled.

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