My Calling Is Profiler [EN]: Chapter 7

“I’m going crazy, Detective Park! Help!”

“You always say that when things get tough.”

“Help! I’ll buy you tteokbokki [spicy stir-fried rice cakes]!”

“I told you before, I don’t like tteokbokki.”

Park Do-joon frowned, then a memory from that day flashed through his mind.

“Wait, it’s not impossible to commit suicide that way.”

“Pardon?”

“Wait a minute. No, it’ll take some time, so go ahead and leave. Let’s talk after work.”

Park Do-joon sent Jung Yi-yeon away and hurriedly went into the office to rummage through the So Jin-ah case files.

Since it was a profiled case, the related materials were well-organized and uploaded to the server, so checking them wasn’t difficult.

As Park Do-joon was searching through the server, the team leader approached him and said,

“Enjoying yourself.”

“Pardon?”

“You two are so sweet, I’m jealous.”

“What do you mean, Team Leader?”

“Your girlfriend. Looks like she’s not leaving until you come out?”

“Pardon?”

At those words, Park Do-joon went to the window and looked down, shaking his head. Jung Yi-yeon was spinning in circles at the visible entrance.

“Has it been hours already?”

Turning his head, he saw it was already 6:50 PM. Well past quitting time.

“Team Leader, I’m sorry, but I’ll head out first.”

“Of course, you should go. Definitely.”

After saying goodbye to the nodding team leader and avoiding the glares of the senior officers who were silently criticizing him for leaving early as a rookie, Park Do-joon went outside to Jung Yi-yeon.

“Hey, I told you to wait inside or go home and wait.”

“I don’t know your contact information, Detective Park.”

“You gave me your business card earlier. I can call you.”

“Ah, right!”

“Is this a situation where you say ‘Ah, right!’? Sigh. Let’s go. I think I know what’s going on.”

“Pardon?”

“Follow me.”

Park Do-joon took Jung Yi-yeon to a bookstore, surprisingly.

“A bookstore? Are you buying a book, Detective Park?”

“I just have some suspicions.”

Park Do-joon went to the manga section, bought a volume, and came out. Then, he took Jung Yi-yeon to a coffee shop.

“Why this?”

“Shh. Wait a minute.”

Park Do-joon flipped through the manga for a while, then found something and handed it over.

“Read this part.”

“This is a mystery manga, isn’t it? It’s old, but… Oh? Oh oh? Oh oh oh?”

Jung Yi-yeon took it absentmindedly and started reading, her eyes widening. It was about how to disguise a suicide as a murder.

Just like this case.

“If you fix the knife and lunge backward, stabbing yourself in the back, it’s definitely possible.”

“Wait, is that possible?”

“It’s not impossible. You know the crime scene, right?”

“I do.”

“You know what’s on the walls there, right?”

“On the walls… Yes. I see.”
The walls of the officetel [a multi-purpose building containing both office and residential spaces] had wallpaper for insulation, probably for heating purposes. And it was made of thick, shock-absorbing material.

“That would prevent any scratches on the wall.”

Perhaps So Jin-ah was consumed by anger after Kim Seung-tae left. And she wanted to take revenge at any cost, and she might have considered suicide.

“I saw that manga in the crime scene photos.”

Park Do-joon saw the manga in So Jin-ah’s house. And it was a later volume. That meant So Jin-ah had already read the earlier volumes.

“So it’s not strange that she came up with such a suicide method.”

“So, the other police officers, prosecutors, and judges didn’t know about this?”

“Did you know?”

At those words, Jung Yi-yeon shook her head. She didn’t know either.

“There’s a strong culture in Korea that stigmatizes manga.”

People worry about the future of students who read manga, and if adults read manga, they are often branded as unemployed or social outcasts.

It’s just a way to relieve stress, but in Korea, it’s taboo.

“Moreover, people who have to study a lot, like prosecutors and police officers, probably don’t have time to read manga.”

“I guess. Even I am like that…”

She became a library committee member to study. In fact, she spent more time studying in the library than reading books themselves.

Manga was out of the question, let alone regular novels.

It was unthinkable.

“It’s definitely possible with this. But how did you know, Detective Park?”

“Ah. Well, I read manga from time to time.”

“Really? That’s unexpected. I thought you were cool and aloof…”

“I also read it for work.”

“For work?”

“Human imagination is surprisingly powerful.”

What humans imagine is sometimes possible in reality.

‘There are cases where people commit copycat crimes after reading manga.’

The reason Park Do-joon reads manga is that if he knows the methods that appear in them, he can quickly recognize copycat crimes.

In fact, when copycat crimes occur, most police officers make a fuss, saying it’s a new type of crime, but criminals are not intelligent enough to create such completely new methods of crime.

Most of them learn from someone, and one of those ways is by reading manga and committing copycat crimes.

Of course, writers deliberately create loopholes to prevent such copycat crimes, but depending on the situation, the circumstances may align in a strange way, and the loopholes disappear.

Just like now.

“First, go to the scene and look closely at the wall. There must be a flaw somewhere. Or traces of fixing the knife.”

“Yes!”

“Oh, and ask the National Forensic Service about the angle of the wound.”

“Angle?”

Park Do-joon shook his head at Jung Yi-yeon, who didn’t know anything. After all, they don’t teach lawyers about scientific investigation methods, so lawyers wouldn’t know how to respond.

“The angle will be slightly different between someone stabbing and setting it up to stab themselves.”

“Thank you, Detective Park. I’ll treat you to a meal later…”

“You’re the defendant’s lawyer, and I’m a police officer. It’s illegal to accept a meal from you.”

“Still…”

“Quiet. Go quickly. It doesn’t look good.”

Park Do-joon pushed Jung Yi-yeon away, and she grumbled as she left.

“Suicide, huh…”

After she left, Park Do-joon couldn’t help but smile bitterly at the unexpected turn of events.

***

A few days later. The moment Park Do-joon arrived at work, a fist suddenly flew at his face.

Park Do-joon fell to the floor with a thud, and when he looked up, he saw Han Sung-gi glaring at him with a terrifying look.

“You son of a bitch! Are you screwing over your senior? You bastard!”

“What is this? Are you hitting me?”

“Yeah. What are you going to do about it? Huh? You son of a bitch, screwing over your senior? You haven’t come to your senses yet.”

Han Sung-gi approached Park Do-joon, who was still on the ground, and started kicking him. But no one stopped Han Sung-gi. As if Park Do-joon deserved to be hit.

“How dare you! Embarrass your senior!”

“What the hell are you doing!”

Just as Park Do-joon was about to explode in anger, the team leader, who was just arriving at work, raised his voice.

“Hey! Han Sung-gi, are you crazy? Huh? Hitting a colleague?”

“No, Team Leader. This bastard screwed me over!”

“Screwed you over how!”

“The lawyer in charge of the So Jin-ah case is this bastard’s girlfriend! This bastard leaked information, and I was humiliated!”

Park Do-joon understood only after hearing those words.

‘Looks like he got beaten up properly.’

He probably went to argue that it was definitely murder, but Jung Yi-yeon, based on the manga Park Do-joon gave her and the traces found in the officetel, argued that it was suicide.

And the court probably judged that it was possible, and Kim Seung-tae was too calm and left no traces for someone who had committed murder.

So, as a result, Han Sung-gi thought he had been humiliated.

“Hey, what are you talking about? Is the lawyer your girlfriend?”

“She’s not my girlfriend. Just someone I know.”

“And you leaked information?”

The team leader glared. But Park Do-joon was confident.

“I didn’t leak any information.”

“What?”

“How can it be a leak if the information didn’t come from here in the first place?”

“Didn’t come from here?”

“That suicide method. It’s from a manga.”

Park Do-joon explained the manga he had seen and said that he had only told Jung Yi-yeon about it.

“Information leakage is when you secretly take out and give away police investigation records or evidence.”

But the police department didn’t have any evidence that the case was a suicide, and they didn’t pretend not to know the contents of the manga.

“This is not information leakage.”

“Hey! You! Ugh, I’m going crazy. Let’s talk for a minute.”

“Later.”

Park Do-joon took out his phone as if it were natural, and the team leader hurriedly stopped him.

“What are you trying to do?”

“I have to report it. I was unilaterally assaulted.”

“Calm down and let’s talk for a minute. Huh?”

The team leader coaxed Park Do-joon and took him outside. Then, he handed him a canned coffee from the vending machine in a deserted place and sighed deeply.

“I’m going crazy. Why are you doing this?”

“I don’t think I did anything wrong?”

“I know. I can tell you’re right. I knew Han Sung-gi would cause trouble someday.”

The team leader is also a profiler. Of course, he knows what kind of person Han Sung-gi is and how the profiler team works.

“If you had listened to me from the beginning, this wouldn’t have happened. What’s the reason for working in pairs?”

The reason profilers work in pairs is to prevent errors in judgment.

It would be better to have more team members, but that’s not the situation, so they work in pairs to assist each other’s shortcomings, but Han Sung-gi completely ignored Park Do-joon, insisting that his words were correct because he was the senior.

“Why is he blaming me when evidence comes out that he was wrong?”

“That’s true… You know. Why am I saying this to a rookie? I guess you don’t know.”

“I have a rough idea.”

“A rough idea?”

“Yes. It’s because you’ve become stagnant, right?”

“Huh. You know? This guy is something else.”

There are hardly any police openings for profilers. Even if there are, it’s only one or two at best. That’s because they don’t operate the profiler team extensively, they just form a team and run it roughly, and when they quit, they fill one person again, or they just keep running it.

As a result, they hardly ever recruit rookies. There have been no profiler selections for the past three years, and Park Do-joon is the top this time, but the number of people selected was only three nationwide.