In This World, Police and Heroes Do What They Must

Seeing the morning sun rise, I thought:

My drawing of aggro has somewhat reduced the mindless criticism of Mina in public opinion, albeit slightly.

I don’t know exactly how it happened, but in addition to internet wreckers spreading information about the relationship between me, a police officer, and the hero Mina.

Due to my statements during the press conference, there are also tabloid rumors circulating that I have collusive relations and financial transactions with the hero.

That I’m covering for New Hope in exchange for her helping me and me paying her.

“Do you happen to have money?”

“No. Even yesterday, I filled my stomach with bean sprouts I grow at home. What about you, Detective?”

“I’m completely broke after buying convenience store food, so I’ll have to eat mung bean sprouts. I’m just waiting for payday, but come to think of it, this will be my first paycheck after ending my suspension.”

If people listened to our conversation, they’d know it’s nonsense. That’s a shame.

Oh, the money Sai earned for me? I already donated it all to church. I felt like I’d die from a curse if I used money touched by Sai’s hands unless God used it.

I chuckled and pondered how to resolve the current situation.

To investigate Sai, there needs to be coordination between New Hope and the police to be able to capture Sai or do anything else.

Let’s see, in the original novel, what did the Special Investigation Team do to arrest Sai after the Great Chaos?

As things turn to chaos not only in Korea but worldwide, the government in the novel increases punishment levels for illegal use of superpowers to reduce further damage from superpower users.

They even mobilize the military to capture Sai but fail. It’s not just a defeat—Sai alone faces the military, doesn’t cause any fatalities, and mockingly leaves everyone as severely injured patients before letting them go.

Seeing this, the Korean government thinks they can’t defeat Sai and attempts to negotiate to establish friendly relations with her.

After the Great Chaos incident, Sai, who wants to erase Mina, says she won’t threaten the current government further in exchange for them handing over Mina.

The novel describes it as wanting to give her the powerlessness of being captured by the people and country she tried to protect, and then kill her, but that’s not what’s important.

In response to such a deal with Sai, the government naturally puts out a major public wanted notice for Mina and tracks her down.

But the police officers of the Special Investigation Team disobey those orders, secretly continue the fight while helping Mina.

Eventually, with the help of such brave individuals, Mina doesn’t despair and reaches where Sai is. The final battle takes place.

The portrayal of these police officers showed not only how justly Mina fought but also how they rose up even against the government that had succumbed to evil for Mina’s sake.

Let’s see. The Special Investigation Team people I know would also tell the government to fuck off and help Mina if the government capitulated to their enemy Sai and ordered them to arrest Mina, with whom they had suffered together.

Due to the superpower awakening drug created by Sai, their colleagues died, and because she was hiding among them, the honor of the Special Investigation Team was literally trampled.

How could they accept such an enemy? I don’t think I could either?

But the current Mina is not being pursued due to such an outcome but is a key person of interest and suspect in an incident resulting in a fatality.

If we follow common-sense procedures, it would soon be confirmed that Yagi used Mina to commit suicide, and Mina’s innocence would quickly be revealed—

But. With barely a trace of the original work left now. I must consider: how many of Sai’s puppets remain in the police force?

The Police Commissioner who approached me seems to have just wanted to shift everything onto Mina to avoid damage to the police.

But how can I trust that? The Police Commissioner also changed during the recent reshuffling, so there’s no certainty he’s not Sai’s person.

Although we can consider the Special Investigation Team to have been purged once when we shattered Team 2 along with Yagi, the novel described many subordinates among high-ranking police officials who follow Sai’s orders.

So it’s like this: if we officially take Mina to the police station for an incident investigation now, there’s too much possibility of things not flowing according to principles.

As long as Sai’s subordinates are in the police upper ranks, making Mina look like a criminal is nothing, just as the police of the ’88 era would have done, and they certainly will.

Even if there are senior police officers who are hostile to Sai and understand that Mina is the only hope of stopping her, their opinions are likely to be ignored in the face of the wave of public opinion.

It’s embarrassing for a police officer to say, but the reality is that we can’t even trust fellow police in our country right now.

I feel like cursing. This is what happens when power becomes thuggish—it’s really shitty.

After pondering what to do, I quickly came up with an answer.

“Let’s give up on police support.”

“Eh?”

Mina makes a strange sound.

I understand that reaction. It’s natural to be surprised when a police officer suddenly says to give up on police support.

But there really is no other way.

Rather than Mina being cursed and slandered outside, if she surrenders to the police to clear her name, she’s highly likely to be caught and that’s the end.

It’s especially dangerous now that public opinion is blindly calling for the arrest of New Hope, the superpower user.

And after the stunt I pulled yesterday, I also don’t think I could conduct a proper investigation if I went back.

Given the situation, I probably won’t face suspension or disciplinary action, but it would be difficult to work together with Mina.

So—the best option right now is not for Mina to confess and try to clear her name.

It’s to make people realize how necessary Mina is.

Current public opinion says Mina should be thrown in jail immediately, but honestly, after just a few days or a week passes, people will realize:

That this country needs Mina, New Hope, and heroes.

I’m certain. Sai won’t stop with just this much. She won’t miss this timing and will likely cause something bigger.

In the original work, she waged war against the military or directly subjugated countless supervillains by force to create a massive villain group.

Or she carried out terrorism on water supply systems to spread superpower awakening drugs—just thinking about the major incidents from the original work makes me sick.

Events won’t flow exactly as in the original work, but people will quickly realize how terrible it is not to have New Hope protecting them.

But doing this ultimately means leaving people to be screwed over or not.

This isn’t something I should say as a police officer, and the good-natured New Hope probably won’t accept it even if I say this is the best option.

No, that’s not it. Mina would immediately agree and follow if I said so—but I know she won’t be able to resist flying out when incidents occur. That she can’t ignore people who need help.

Wondering what to do, I decided to think in reverse.

Since we’ve already been found out to know each other’s identities, I said we should investigate to arrest Sai together, just the two of us, until I can lie low.

That this is the timing to move quickly with a small number of people rather than as a group.

As you know, to win on this chessboard laid out by the worst mastermind, we need to capture the king.

After explaining this much, Mina agreed, feeling both joy and embarrassment at my assessment of her. But then she raised one question.

“Then how will you approach this woman—Sai? Her whereabouts are unknown, and we don’t know how large her forces are.”

Mina asked gloomily, saying victory seemed hopeless. It was certainly a concern worth worrying about. Because facing her forces head-on would be like hitting a rock with an egg.

But every organization has gaps. Originally, I was planning to find those gaps through Yagi and quickly approach the king, but that woman committed the crazy act of suicide.

Does that mean the path is completely blocked? Of course not. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have brought up the investigation to arrest Sai.

I took out a case I always carried well-hidden.

Inside were a syringe with neutralization drug and a USB, and I took out the blue USB from the case.

“Detective, what is that?”

“A back road to that woman. To Sai.”

Until now, this USB was just a monstrosity that shouldn’t be opened.

A disaster revealing where the superpower awakening drug was made and who made it—the starting point that deeply entangled me with Sai.

But now that she has revealed her identity, this troublesome item takes on a different meaning.

The information in this USB contains details about who made the superpower awakening drug and where the drug was manufactured.

Since Sai revealed her identity while I was asleep and openly told the world she created the superpower awakening drug, evidence of who made it is no longer important.

But knowing where the drug was manufactured is a different story.

Knowing the location where the drug was made gives us the possibility of finding where Sai might currently be.

Plus, it can help us stop the growing distribution of superpower awakening drugs—currently the biggest problem—from its source.

The reason I remained silent despite knowing this was because the moment we investigate the laboratory, we might be detected by Sai, and we didn’t know what might be at that location.

Additionally, if I tried to use the police investigation network to investigate the location in the USB, Yagi, as her subordinate, would definitely notice.

At least that was the case until now.

But now Yagi is dead. And Mina is by my side, ready to help if I ask.

It’s the optimal time to go to the superpower awakening drug factory whose location is confirmed in the USB.

Although Sai might have moved the factory’s location after Kim Yun-shik confirmed it, preparing a trap.

Given that police have been vigilantly checking for suspicious movements, looking to find the superpower awakening drug, it wouldn’t have been easy to move the location.

Even if it was moved, there are things we can confirm because it was moved.

At least when Kim Yun-shik gathered the information, there was a real factory, and there’s a gap in Sai that someone who was close to being an ordinary person could exploit.

If I find that gap and strike. Then, we can surely capture Sai.

I suddenly wondered: after gathering the information in this USB and trembling with fear at the terrifying facts, what was Kim Yun-shik thinking when he handed it to his sister?

Or did he even have thoughts? Since he had awakened his superpower and lost his reason, he was probably moving according to instinct like an animal.

Yet considering that he handed over the USB in that state and his sister Shin Yu-mi was unharmed, it probably means he didn’t reveal anything about his sister until just before his death.

How he ended up robbing a bank, how he dug into information about Sai—there’s no way to know.

The victim is dead, and the murderer isn’t the type to care about or remember each detail.

Still, thanks to the information Kim Yun-shik left, I got an opportunity to try something as a police officer.

So it seems like it’s time to check if Shin Yu-mi, Kim Yun-shik’s younger sister, is safe.

I deliberately didn’t contact her and just left an emergency contact, telling her to contact me if it’s dangerous. But with the world as it is now, she can’t be safe wherever she is.

Yes, to exercise caution, let’s visit Shin Yu-mi to check on her safety and also find out how Kim Yun-shik obtained such information. That’s what we should do first.

We’ve decided what to do moving forward. And what needs to be done first has been determined.

All good, but one problem remains: both Mina and I are at the center of attention, so our faces will inevitably be recognized if we go outside.

It won’t work if journalists or whoever follow us around being annoying. It’s obvious that journalists will be crowding in front of Mina’s house, and they’ll soon gather in front of my house too—

“Then we can just disguise ourselves!”

Mina said that and brought sunglasses. Then she tied her hair and changed from her hero uniform into the white shirt and jeans that Sai used to wear.

In the process, due to the difference in chest size, Mina ended up looking funny.

Sai’s clothes, which she had bought several sizes too large and then tailored the sleeves, resulted in a strange appearance when Mina wore them—only the chest area was sagging.

I almost burst out laughing, but seeing Mina muttering with dead eyes, “What is this, it’s incredibly large…” I decided to keep my mouth shut.

Then she said nonsense like “Disguise complete! Perfect, right?!” which made it impossible to think about anything else.

“Did you get shot in the head?”

“Eh…? But with this much, no one will recognize me outside…?”

I was genuinely worried that the MSG in the convenience store dumplings I fed Mina had reacted strangely with her superpower cells and damaged her brain.

But absurdly, in this world, no one recognized Mina just because she wore an eye mask.

Even students in her class. It seems she didn’t have anyone who could be called a friend, but still, at least one person she saw frequently should have recognized her, but nobody did.

Is it because we’re in a hero genre world? Is that level of disguise enough? I was genuinely concerned.

But still thinking that wouldn’t be enough, I made her wear a mask and my overcoat to cover her face as much as possible.

Meanwhile, I completely ignored Mina’s blushing and muttering.

Then I also changed my hair color with dye and went outside.

After wasting some time like that, as expected, journalists had already set up camp in front of my house.

Ah damn, are we too late? Seeing the journalists who spotted us approaching, I was considering asking Mina to escape toward the sky.

A journalist shoved a microphone and asked:

“Are you a resident of this building?! Do you know Detective Lee Munsu who lives in this house?!”

“Is Detective Lee Munsu inside?!”

“Are you well acquainted with Detective Lee Munsu?!”

“…I don’t know such a person.”

…Well, I already knew this would happen. I expected it.

During the Chosen Ones incident in the past, despite wearing such a pathetic disguise, no one properly recognized me except for ‘Mina’.

So I knew this would happen. I expected it. But damn, I really hate this.

I narrowed my brows in pain as if someone was erasing my brainstem with an eraser. Mina smiled proudly and intentionally took off the hat I had pressed down deeply.

Yet the journalists didn’t even give Mina a glance.

When the journalists asked Mina the same questions, she answered with a slightly lowered voice, and they truly didn’t recognize her.

My mouth fell open at that preposterous scene. But I closed it again.

Well, in a world of one-eyed people, the person with two eyes is the strange one. I sighed as I dragged my hand down my face.

It was a moment when the hair dye felt wasted.