In This World, the Police Officer Became Part of the Violent Crimes Unit(5)

I go to work without being able to sleep. Why must working adults bear such a sad fate?

I was enduring the shaking with my thousand-pound heavy neck leaning against the bus window, when suddenly I recalled things from when I was in the Special Investigation Team.

No need to be dispatched to face superhuman supervillains, no meeting people who recognize me and kneel asking for help.

I don’t even have to drag around the world’s worst villain as a junior, or see the capable but more infuriating team leader and the bald guy spraying hair growth products looking for hair that will never return.

Is there a reason to go to work so depressively when I wanted to escape from the Special Investigation Team so badly?

No, no. I escaped from the Special Investigation Team as I wanted, so what’s the big deal about not sleeping for one night? As a police officer, not sleeping for a day or two is everyday life anyway.

Thinking that way, my steps felt lighter and the headache I was feeling seemed to wash away like rain.

Right, people suffer because they keep complaining. Humans are creatures that can live happily just by changing their thoughts.

“That person is going to work taking weird steps right now.”

“He’s been famous for a while. They say that guy sometimes loses his mind.”

“They say crazy people come out when it rains, but that guy is like that when it snows.”

I ignore what the Violent Crimes Unit detectives are saying. I already know I’m being treated as someone not to be messed with because of what I did with the paper cup on the first day anyway.

After completing my arrival at work, I made a cup of coffee in the pantry and sat at my desk.

I’m quite worried about the safety of my house with Sai left at home, but I’ve already relayed yesterday’s story to Yagi.

Since she came first to appeal that she knows about Sai in my house, shouldn’t I use everything I can use?

If possible, it would be scary if Sai regained her memories and left- my house.

Okay. Let’s think about later things later.

Thinking that, I put the hot coffee to my lips-

“Hey hey! Everyone come out! We got an eyewitness report that Ma Cheong-woo bastard was spotted in Amsa 1-dong! Everyone who can move, come out!!”

Ma Cheong-woo. The son of a bitch who committed 10 serial child murders. Right, catching one such son of a bitch might be better than drinking coffee as a start to the day.

Something feels strange? You’re right.

The woman couldn’t remember even her own name.

She couldn’t remember how she grew up, who her family was, where she grew up, what her childhood memories were. She didn’t even remember if she had friends.

The fear of not being able to see the path of her past, covered in pitch-black darkness, was an unbearable pain.

Lonely. Painful. The woman felt indescribable terror when she opened her eyes in that dark alley with the smell of rotten vomit rising.

The moment she regained consciousness, she recognized herself, but the sensation of not knowing anything that made up herself was still a chilling sensation even now when she recalled it.

Anything is fine. Anyone is fine. Please tell me who I am. The woman wished while shivering in the cold of that freezing night.

Surely that was the case, but-

Now, over two months after meeting a police officer and receiving his protection. Quite amusingly, the current woman now hopes that memories of her past self don’t come back.

For two months, the woman felt immense happiness.

The kind of happiness that warms your heart and makes you smile just by being still.

With a sulky and tired-looking face, sometimes making strange expressions, he took meticulous care of her who was just a freeloader, pretending she wasn’t Lee Munsu.

For a woman who lost her memories and didn’t know where she came from, he bought underwear while blushing, prepared meals, and deliberately went to the trouble of buying necessary items.

He made excuses saying he was just doing his job as a police officer, that ordinary people would do the same, but the woman knows.

Although she had no episodic memories of the past, she could tell because knowledge memories like how to ride a bicycle or operate a microwave remained.

Ordinary people don’t do such things. Even police officers don’t go to such trouble to take care of someone like her in the first place.

Why is he doing this? The knowledge memories remaining in the woman’s mind formed the hypothesis: Is he after my body?

Anyway, the woman had no shame or fear in front of the concept of men feeling sexual desire and having physical relations with women.

For some reason, she couldn’t understand such emotions. It’s closer to that, you could say.

The woman thought that since she was receiving help from the man named Lee Munsu, it wouldn’t wear her out to let him use her body – but he showed no signs of such intentions at all.

He wasn’t being kind with the purpose of getting her body. She earned money through stocks and handed it to him, but he didn’t use the money extravagantly except for buying clothes, necessities, and food that the woman needed.

So she couldn’t understand. The woman couldn’t understand the man named Lee Munsu. But because of that, she wanted to know more about him.

When the woman felt such emotions. She felt that she had thought the same thing before losing her memories.

It wasn’t that her past came back, but only a vague sensation that she had felt these emotions arose.

Ah, I was acquainted with this person.

The woman bit her lip. She knew. She had sensed it seeing him show signs of wariness and dislike while being kind.

So, she doesn’t want to remember. Because someone even a good person like that is wary of surely wasn’t a proper human being.

Her past was pitch black and more wicked than the smell of the garbage dump she smelled when she first regained consciousness, and also lonely.

When eating meals together with Detective Lee Munsu. She instinctively knew that her past self had never eaten meals with anyone, feeling the tickling sensation in her chest.

When saying good night to Detective Lee Munsu before going to sleep. She realized that her past self had never even exchanged such greetings with anyone before losing her memories.

When she secretly snuck into Detective Lee Munsu’s arms while he was sleeping. With a warmth that made her want to cry, the woman instinctively knew she had never shared warmth with anyone like this in her life.

And when she felt her heart flutter looking at Detective Lee Munsu. Because that sensation was so unfamiliar, she realized that she had never loved anyone.

Just how lonely of a person was her past self?

Every time she inferred about her past self, the woman felt her lips tremble and her heart sink.

At first, she wanted to quickly regain her memories and return home. But not anymore. The woman hoped nothing would ever come back.

Because she knew that if she remembered her past, she surely wouldn’t be able to stay by Detective Lee Munsu’s side, and everything from her daily life so far would be shattered with nothing left, the woman didn’t particularly try to recall her past.

But as long as humans live, the past always follows, said the knowledge in the woman’s mind.

“Pleased to meet you. My name is Yagi. I’m Detective Lee Munsu’s, colleague.”

A woman appeared at the house.

Long silver hair and gray eyes. The woman named Yagi, dressed in a women’s suit, looked at the woman with a somewhat tired face.

The warm indoor air thanks to the running heater becomes strangely cold when Yagi enters.

The woman almost screamed in fear seeing Yagi’s eyes.

Yagi’s eyes looking at the woman were like those of a fanatic looking at God.

Blind, filled with madness, eyes of one who believes that any truth will be changed by the woman’s hand.

This woman is a mere doll. Not human. The identity of the woman named Yagi is one where what should be called humanity and free will have been removed like removing undesirable toy parts.

And the most terrifying thing there is. That it was the woman’s past self who created such madness-filled eyes.

Yagi knelt before the woman. Looking at Yagi with terrified eyes while trembling, the woman swallowed her breath.

“…I know you have a plan. I know you’re preparing something that someone like me can’t even imagine. But, please tell me. Please tell me what I should do. Sai-nim. Please show this inadequate one the way.”

“I’m here according to your words. I can do anything to fulfill your will. Please, anything is fine. Tell me what I should do…”

Yagi begging with her head on the floor, not satisfied with just kneeling.

How fearful must a puppet be that has lost the strings controlling it? The woman felt her breath catch.

What on earth did her past self do to this woman? Was there a reason to make a person like this? For what purpose? Is there a reason to break someone this much?

The unavoidable past follows, taking form. The woman felt tears flowing.

As if trying to escape from the fragments of the past before her eyes, the woman waved her hands and shouted:

“D-Don’t come! I don’t know anything! I don’t remember! Please, please just leave me alone!”

At the woman’s words, Yagi stiffened her body and then stopped in place like a machine that had stopped operating.

Does she interpret even such screams as orders? The woman ran to escape from the past, faced with the machine named Yagi before her eyes.

But.

“So you really erased your memories. Sai-nim.”

A man in a pitch-black suit with a snake-shaped tattoo on his face appeared before the woman.

An ominous smell of blood brushes her nose. An illusion of blood dripping from the tips of his fingers is drawn in the woman’s eyes.

“No, that’s not it. We can’t know if you really lost your memories. You already knew I would move when the opportunity arose, so you must have made preparations.”

You can’t run away from the past. Even if the past is invisible.

Because you can’t make it as if it never happened.

The woman swallowed her tears as she watched the man reaching out his hand to her.