The Cop Is Too Strong [EN]: Chapter 195

< #195. Sudden Acceleration (1) >

“Huff!”

Kang-beom gasped and jolted upright. He was inside the storage room in the corner of the gym.

His team members surrounded him, looking at him with worried eyes.

“Team Leader, are you awake?”

“Are you alright?”

Kang-beom frowned, shook his head, and tried to recall the situation before he lost consciousness.

He only remembered the middle-ranked guy from Gangjin Violent Crimes Unit 4, who had water-muscle [referring to someone physically strong and imposing], approaching him with an angry expression.

He looked at his team members and asked,

“What happened… Argh.”

Kang-beom opened his mouth to speak but then touched his chin, wincing at the sharp pain.

Only then did he remember being punched by Shin Hae-soo and slammed into the floor like he had been struck by lightning.

“This fucking…”

Kang-beom cursed, and his team members avoided eye contact and fell silent.

“Hey, how long was I out?”

“About five minutes…”

“That bastard dared to hit his senior? And with a surprise attack, too?”

Kang-beom gritted his teeth as if he were about to go beat up Hae-soo right away. However, despite his words, his body didn’t move.

Several team members clung to Kang-beom and tried to stop him.

“Team Leader, please calm down.”

“Team Leader, well, after looking into it a bit… that detective Shin Hae-soo…”

Kang-beom was the team leader of Gangnam Violent Crimes Unit 1 despite his terrible personality because, although his sharp intuition played a part, his fists also contributed greatly.

He was strong and had a good resistance to punches, but if someone could knock him out in one hit, he couldn’t be an ordinary detective, so a team member had investigated him.

“…At that time, he dealt with four Chinese contract killers… According to this article, he even subdued seventeen gangsters with knives.”

“What is this, some kind of hero? These days, articles are the problem, writing novels… They need to exaggerate in moderation.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Oh, and… this isn’t just Violent Crimes Unit 4, but a team that used to be the Violent Crimes Investigation Unit, which was disbanded and hastily re-formed when the chief changed this time… Chief Kwak Su-cheol was the leader there.”

Bang!

Kang-beom slammed the mattress he was lying on, looking wronged.

“I knew it, those bastards, they were plotting together, no wonder…”

That wasn’t the point, but the team members just waited for his anger to subside without saying anything.

At that moment.

Bang!

The storage door was opened roughly. When they heard the voice, they knew Oh Gyeong had come.

Thump-!

He slammed the door shut as forcefully as when he had entered, glared at Kang-beom, and opened his mouth.

“Gangnam Team Leader.”

“Gangnam Team Leader?”

“Why, should I call you ‘Hey’? Looking at our police class, I’m two years your senior. Should we compare violent crimes experience? Age? Or should we compare fists? Huh?!”

Kang-beom made a dumbfounded expression at Oh Gyeong’s escalating anger.

“Ha… what is this now…”

“I was really trying to get along, you know? I figured since violent crimes teams that are famous all gathered in one place, everyone would have a strong sense of pride. I was going to understand and let things slide as much as possible, but I didn’t know you were such a maniac. You just get out, go join another team, got it?”

Oh Gyeong glared and spewed harsh words at Kang-beom, and the team members, realizing the seriousness of the situation, tried to stop him.

“S-Senior, please calm down.”

“Calm down, and first…”

But even that sight irritated Kang-beom. Before coming here, he had received the best treatment in the detective division.

His pride, which had risen as high as it could go, was broken twice in an instant, and he couldn’t think straight.

“This fucking…! Who the hell are you to be acting up like this?! I’m from Gangnam Station Violent Crimes Unit 1!”

Kang-beom reached out a hand to grab Oh Gyeong by the collar, and Oh Gyeong grabbed his arm in reverse, turned around, and slammed him to the floor.

Whoosh- Bang!!

In less than ten minutes, Kang-beom once again spun in the air and crashed to the floor.

Oh Gyeong looked down at Kang-beom, who had his eyes wide open from the mental and physical shock, and said,

“Do you think the Special Investigations Unit is a joke?”

Oh Gyeong raised his foot, and Kang-beom flinched and covered his face with both arms.

Oh Gyeong shook his head at the sight and went outside.

*

The fiery ranking [a Korean term for establishing hierarchy through fighting] was over. Kang-beom, as the leader of Violent Crimes Unit 1 in Gangnam Station, was serious about handling cases.

The reason he disliked Hae-soo and his team was because he mistakenly thought they were coming in with connections without any skills, stirring up trouble.

Kang-beom was a staunch believer in meritocracy and pathologically hated women who were naturally weaker than men or teams without skills.

“…I had some misunderstandings, I’m sorry.”

Chief Kwak poured water into Kang-beom’s paper cup and said,

“You, whether it’s a misunderstanding or not, you shouldn’t do that. From now on, take this incident as a lesson and always be careful, got it?”

“Yes, yes…”

Oh Gyeong still didn’t like him, but he followed without saying anything since Chief Kwak let it go.

With their power struggle over, the special team began to discuss how to catch the unidentified individuals in earnest.

Because they are not individuals who commit crimes impulsively but a group, their future actions cannot be predicted. Therefore, it is impossible to predict and prevent or arrest what will happen in advance.

The only way is to monitor or investigate those who are related and track down traces.

The special team, which does not exist on paper, first began investigating Cheonsang, a company that Manager Ma claimed to have worked for.

*

Shin Hae-soo used his free time to call Manager Ma and dig into the Chilseong Society [Seven Stars Society, likely a criminal organization].

Rather than finding the deeply hidden Teacher Cheon and the company employees, the priority is to bring down the Chilseong Society, which is in chaos, at this opportunity.

The police take action towards Teacher Cheon, and behind the scenes, Hae-soo’s plan is to bring down the Chilseong Society with a diversionary tactic.

-…There’s no evidence that that’s the Chilseong Society. Tattoos? They can just say they got them because they wanted to. They might have created secret ledgers in preparation for the Chilseong Society collapsing or being attacked in reverse later, but its existence has not been revealed.

As Teacher Cheon’s closest aide, Manager Ma knew a lot of information.

-But who is Teacher Cheon? He has deeply hidden spies, so he has dozens of weaknesses of those belonging to the Chilseong Society in his hands. Among them are many weaknesses that are big enough to shake up the group. It’s up to you how to use them.

Manager Ma first released information about the KD Group.

-KD Motors, there was a sudden acceleration death accident two years ago. Executive Director Yang discarded the vehicle defect report. There were two inspectors in charge, one changed the results after receiving money, and the other disappeared. The company took care of the missing person case.

“They’ve done all sorts of things.”

-Dig into that. Executive Director Yang will be holding a bomb [meaning he has a secret that could explode and cause damage].

Based on his conversation with Manager Ma, Hae-soo assigned the investigation to the Hae-soo team, and Jung Young-soo quickly found out and shared it with the team.

“This happened on August 17th, two years ago. It’s a case where the driver, Mr. Song, died after hitting a guardrail and a transformer due to unskilled driving. The bereaved family sued KD Motors but lost the case and is in debt because they had to bear the attorney’s fees.”

At Young-soo’s words, Jjok-sae narrowed his brow and clenched his fist.

“Those bastards, that’s why I don’t like rich people. They’re rich, but they suck the blood out of poor people to get even richer. There’s no compensation?”

Hae-soo’s expression also didn’t brighten at the thought of the bereaved family.

Young-soo shook his head at Jjok-sae’s question.

“Probably because giving a lot of compensation to the bereaved family would be like admitting they were wrong, so they didn’t give a penny and instead responded strongly. Instead of condolences, they apparently sent a driver’s license study guide to the funeral hall, making fun of him for unskilled driving. He was an accident-free driver for 11 years…”

“Those crazy psychopaths, seriously.”

Hae-soo clapped his hands to refresh the headquarters, which was full of angry emotions, and opened his mouth.

“Okay, so that’s the result that’s out in the world. The original copy of the result report at that time, Executive Director Yang has it, not discarded. It is presumed that the company has it as a weapon in preparation for attacking him. Finding this is the first mission, and the second is to persuade one of the inspectors in charge at that time.”

Jjok-sae shrugged his shoulders with round eyes, as if he had never been burning with anger.

“Both seem impossible? Who can do such difficult things?”

Hae-soo turned to look at Jjok-sae. Following him, Hwang Jang-soo and then Haru looked at Jjok-sae. Jjok-sae pointed to his chin with his index finger and said,

“…Me?”

***

KD Motors headquarters entrance.

A young woman stands in the center of the roundabout, holding a sign in one hand. On one side, a girl with a yellow bag is holding one of her fingers with her tiny hand.

The woman opened her mouth every time people and cars passed by.

“Please give me your attention just once. Our husband was unjustly killed. Please give me your attention just once.”

People consciously avoided giving her attention and hurried on their way.

The child wiggled her mother’s finger and opened her mouth.

“Mommy, I’m hungry.”

“Ah, Haeun is hungry, Mommy is sorry, just a moment…”

The mother squatted down to meet the child’s eye level, took a chocolate bar out of her pocket, tore open the wrapper, and handed it to the child.

The child put a handful of the chocolate bar in her mouth and smiled brightly.

“Mommy, aren’t you hungry?”

“Huh? Oh, Mommy is okay, Haeun eat it all.”

At that moment, people in black suits rushed out of the headquarters entrance. One of them pointed to where the mother and daughter were.

“Hey, are those people still there? Clean them up quickly, the executive director will be out soon.”

“Ah, yes, Team Leader.”

Soon, two burly men approached the mother and daughter.

“Madam, quickly take your child and go home.”

“If I had gone because you told me to, I wouldn’t be here now. Would you leave quietly if your wife died?”

“Ah, seriously, this madam, madam, if you don’t want to be kicked out in front of your child, just go nicely.”

“Mommy…”

The child, instinctively feeling the energy emanating from the men, was scared and clung tightly to her mother’s leg.

“Oh, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

The woman stared silently at the entrance, shook off the hand of the man grabbing her sleeve, and said,

“Okay. Move.”

“You should have done that from the start.”

“Go away. Yes, far away, please stop coming, nothing will change even if you do.”

The woman moved to the corner with the child. Once they were quite far away, the men stopped paying attention to her and returned to their original positions.

And after a while, several middle-aged people came out, and the entrance became noisy.

The woman, who had been hiding behind a pillar, grabbed the child’s shoulders and said,

“Haeun, stay here and don’t move, Mommy will be back in a little while, okay?”

Haeun nodded, munching with chocolate smeared all over her mouth.

“Ung nyom nyom.”

The woman rolled up her sleeves and ran towards the middle-aged people gathered at the entrance.

“Yang In-seok! Bring back our husband!!”

“Oh oh oh!”

“Hey! What is that bitch!”

The woman, filled with venom, passed through the men and grabbed Executive Director Yang’s sleeve.

“Aish, what the hell!”

Executive Director Yang checked the woman’s face and shook his arm violently.

The woman lost her balance and fell on the stone floor.

“Bring back our husband! Please!”

The woman didn’t care and got up again to run towards Executive Director Yang. However, she was grabbed by other men and couldn’t move.

Executive Director Yang averted his gaze from the woman, dusted off his clothes, and tried to move. At that moment, he felt something unpleasant on his hand.

A brown, watery liquid, he narrowed his brow and smelled it, it smelled sweet. It’s chocolate. It’s also slightly묻어있다 [Korean word meaning ‘smeared’] on his suit sleeve.

Executive Director Yang frowned and took off his jacket and threw it at the woman who was rushing at him.

“How the fuck am I supposed to bring back your dead husband! Am I a god? Huh?! What are you going to do about this suit, you bitch!!”

The woman was hit squarely by the violently swinging clothes. The button grazed her face, scratching her.

“Ouch!”

The child, who had been watching from afar, burst into tears and ran over.

“Mommy! Mommy, Mommy!!”

The child was worried about her mother and ran recklessly, and the child collided with the leg of a man who was backing away to avoid Executive Director Yang’s swing.

Thud-

In the meantime, a car was coming to pick up Executive Director Yang on the main street, and the child was pushed back and was about to hit the car.

Crash!!

At that moment, a large man in black clothes hugged the child and crashed into the car bonnet at the same time before falling to the ground.