WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Police Do a Better Job Than Heroes

Chapter 7

──────

Get Famous First. (1)

By and large, the residents of Light City didn't trust the police much. The common sentiment among citizens was that "the police don't actually do anything," and plenty of people went around openly saying they'd rather put their faith in heroes. Some, if pushed far enough, would say "tax thief" straight to an officer's face.

"You're the officers who responded, right?"

"Yes. Are you the one who filed the report?"

"That's right."

Still, if someone had bothered to call the police at all, odds were good it was one of those cases that fell into a strange gray zone.

Too vague to justify going public and asking a hero for help... but too infuriating to just let slide. That peculiar kind of incident, the kind where you'd take help from anyone, even a cat, was exactly when the police's turn came around.

"Could you walk us through what happened, in detail?"

"Um, well..."

A middle-aged woman opened the door of her first-floor apartment unit, letting out a long sigh.

"The truth is, my daughter's been acting strange for a while now... I was hoping you could talk some sense into her."

"Strange how? Could you give us a bit more detail?"

"Right, so here's what's been going on..."

Here was the reason she'd called the police.

The woman had a daughter, and for the past week, every night, the girl had been hearing things that weren't there, unable to sleep a wink.

"Once night falls, she says she hears bugs buzzing near her ear, or chalk scraping on a board, and she has these fits... but I don't hear a single thing. At first I figured it was just exam stress. But she's started throwing things around, acting like she's not herself..."

The mother had tried sleeping pills first, tried to soothe her daughter gently. But tonight the girl had swung a pair of scissors at the empty air and nearly hurt herself, and that was what finally scared her mother into calling the police.

"So I was hoping you could come to the apartment and calm my daughter down a little. She won't listen to me, but maybe if officers spoke firmly to her, she'd settle down?"

"So you're asking us to, essentially, give her a talking-to?"

"Yes. Something like, the neighbors filed a complaint, so please keep it down. Something along those lines would be fine."

The mother didn't expect much from the police. She wasn't asking them to solve anything, just to get her daughter quiet enough that she wouldn't bother the neighbors upstairs or down.

She hadn't put much faith in the police as a profession to begin with, and besides, what could police officers possibly do about her daughter's mental state?

"Hm."

Park Eun-yeong, who'd been listening quietly, turned her head slightly and murmured to Kang Jin-ho.

"Doesn't sound like much, does it? Too bad, Jin-ho. Right?"

A flicker of disappointment crossed her crimson eyes, probably because she'd spent the whole ride over in the patrol car wondering, "I wonder what kind of case this'll be," building up her expectations for nothing.

Why does this woman even work as a cop?

Kang Jin-ho barely held back the urge to say something to this dopamine-addicted villain, and answered just as quietly.

"Well... I think it might actually be solvable."

With that, he followed the mother inside the apartment.

"???"

Park Eun-yeong's eyes went wide with shock as she stared at Kang Jin-ho's back.

Wait, how do you even solve a daughter who can't sleep?

**

"Excuse us. We got a report about..."

"Get out! Get out of here!!!"

The moment Kang Jin-ho and Park Eun-yeong stepped quietly inside, a large pillow came flying at them from deeper in the apartment.

Thump.

"...Hmph."

Park Eun-yeong caught the pillow with one hand, effortlessly, and looked toward the daughter with flat, settled eyes.

"...I said get out!"

Right after that, the daughter, looking somewhat frightened, clutched her head in her hands, slammed her bedroom door shut, and locked it.

"Are, um, are you all right?"

"I'm fine, it was just a pillow."

They'd called the police, and now the daughter was suddenly throwing things.

The mother, watching from behind, was mortified and kept apologizing over and over. Park Eun-yeong smiled and said it was fine, but Kang Jin-ho felt something cold behind that smile. He half expected a girl's head to come flying off that very night.

"Excuse me! I have a question, ma'am!"

Sensing the girl might genuinely be in danger, Kang Jin-ho quickly stepped forward. He'd heard enough now to have a pretty good idea of what kind of case this was.

"How long has this... hysteria been going on?"

"Um... about a week, I'd say?"

"Has your daughter done anything recently that might've earned her a grudge from someone? Even something small?"

"A grudge?"

The mother couldn't hide her confusion. Why would he ask about grudges when the issue was that her child couldn't sleep?

"My daughter's got a bright personality, she's a lot of fun to be around... I really don't think that's it. And I know she gets along well with her classmates at school..."

"Are you sure about that?"

Kang Jin-ho knelt on one knee and knocked his knuckles against the floor a couple of times.

"This building. I understand it's one of the older apartments in Light City. Is that right?"

"Yes, that's true, but..."

"Maybe that's why. I've heard this is a building with poor soundproofing, and a lot of conflict between neighbors because of it. You mentioned your daughter's lively, that she dances and sings even at night... wouldn't that have bothered the unit below you?"

"Yes, I do feel terrible about that... I went down a few times to apologize, brought over some food as a peace offering..."

"Who was living in the unit below you?"

"A young man, living alone, as far as I know..."

"I think that man is the one behind this."

"...?"

The mother's brow furrowed. She tilted her head, clearly not following.

"What does the man downstairs have to do with my daughter acting strange...?"

"People get on edge when they can't sleep properly. And it's clear your daughter hasn't been sleeping."

"That's true, but..."

"I've been thinking about why she couldn't sleep. You said you didn't hear anything yourself. But what if your daughter really was hearing noise, just not the kind you could hear?"

"What...? Is that even possible?"

"It is. If it's a telepathic ability."

"!!!"

Telepathy was a relatively rare ability in Light City, and also one that got mocked for all sorts of reasons.

A truly powerful telepath could be invaluable, coordinating operations from behind the scenes. But mediocre telepaths were useless pretty much everywhere.

Having telepathy didn't mean you could work better, didn't mean you could do things others couldn't. It was so hard to translate into anything of practical value that it was an ability nobody really welcomed.

"Generally speaking, low-tier telepaths can't read minds or hold conversations with people. But pushing a short word, or some kind of noise, into someone else's brain, that they can manage."

Kang Jin-ho glanced toward the closed bedroom door as he continued.

"I'd guess the man downstairs got fed up with the noise from upstairs and decided to hold a grudge. He couldn't sleep because of the racket, so he paid back the source of that racket, your daughter, in kind. Pushing loud noise straight into her brain at night. Which is exactly why you, sharing the same apartment, wouldn't hear a thing."

"Hm... I suppose that could be it."

The mother, listening quietly, found herself nodding without meaning to.

There wasn't any hard evidence behind Kang Jin-ho's reasoning, but the logic held together well enough. If the young man downstairs really did hold a grudge, and really did have telepathy... it was a scenario that could plausibly play out exactly like that.

"Wait, Jin-ho, can I ask you something?"

Park Eun-yeong cut in suddenly, tapping his shoulder.

"Your explanation makes sense and all, but... why telepathy specifically? Couldn't it be some other ability? And it doesn't have to be the guy downstairs, does it?"

Kang Jin-ho picked the pillow up off the floor as he answered.

"When she threw the pillow and ran back in, did you notice she clutched her head instead of covering her ears? If she'd really been hearing a sound, she would've covered her ears, not held her head like that. There's actually research showing that prolonged telepathic exposure causes headaches."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes. And if this is someone else's doing, the goal looked like causing as much pain as possible, which is why I figured it was grudge-motivated. Since her personality's supposed to be cheerful, I doubt she has any enemies besides someone who might've resented the noise she made without meaning to."

"Hmm... impressive."

Park Eun-yeong grinned, holding back the urge to applaud.

Taken apart piece by piece, the reasoning could look flimsy, even forced. But put together, it looked surprisingly solid. Like a crooked drawing that suddenly looks fine once you step back far enough.

Someone might say, "You can't go around suspecting a citizen over a scenario like that." But Park Eun-yeong didn't agree.

Superpower-related crimes almost never leave solid evidence unless you're using the same kind of power to investigate. And even then, there was no answer to "what if the hero in charge is lying?"

Looking at the handful of cases where ordinary human officers had actually caught a superpowered criminal, most of them started exactly like this, with a plausible-sounding scenario, followed by brute-force investigating that happened to pan out. Proper evidence almost never survives these cases to begin with.

What mattered was how accurate the suspicion turned out to be. And as far as Eun-yeong could tell, Kang Jin-ho's instincts looked frighteningly accurate. Maybe the sharpest instincts she'd ever seen in a person, in her whole life.

"Excuse me, but... are you really police officers?"

The mother, who'd been quiet, couldn't help but let her mouth fall open. It made sense. In Light City, the police were basically synonymous with incompetence. Solving a real case was supposed to be a hero's job. Nobody had ever heard of an officer pulling off deduction like this.

"My rookie here's got some real talent."

Park Eun-yeong puffed her chest out, delighted, as if she were the one being praised. She looked at Kang Jin-ho with eyes practically dripping with glee.

"Uh, yeah."

Kang Jin-ho avoided that uncomfortably intense gaze and slipped quietly toward the front door.

"It's still just a theory, in the end. Let's head downstairs first and talk this through in detail. If we check his registered ability license, we'll know whether my guess was right."

Honestly, Kang Jin-ho wasn't in a bad mood right now either. As far as he could recall, this seemingly minor case was loosely connected to a certain hero.

If this case ended up being his in with that hero, he could burn through the rest of his karma quota in no time. How could he not be pleased?

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried