The Cop Is Too Strong [EN]: Chapter 26

Shin Hae-soo blinked, his senses returning.

It wasn’t the same man from thirteen years ago, of course. That man had been even bigger than Hae-soo was now. But the chilling gaze… that was not just similar, it was identical.

Psh–

Just then, as the woman yanked the knife from the man’s chest, that look vanished like a mirage, replaced by empty, hollow eyes.

She didn’t even register Hae-soo’s approach. She sat, placing Arin on her lap, and gripped the knife in a reverse hold. Then, she positioned the blade to stab herself in the heart.

Suicide. Before the reset, she hadn’t died by another’s hand, but by her own.

Hae-soo rushed forward, shouting urgently, “I can save you!”

The knife, aimed precisely at her heart, stopped. It had already pierced her chest slightly, and blood was seeping out.

Hae-soo grabbed the hand holding the knife and carefully pulled it back.

“I can save you, Arin, so put down the knife.”

Her eyes widened at the mention of Arin’s name. Now, she seemed to finally believe he was a police officer.

Hae-soo looked down at Arin and spoke into his radio. “This is the youngest [referring to his position as the youngest officer], I found Arin in the far right room of basement level two. Requesting an ambulance.”

-Basement level two, roger.

Hae-soo first checked the woman’s condition. She was covered in blood, but there were no serious external injuries.

He carefully took Arin from her, laid her flat on the floor, and examined her eyelids. Her pupils were constricted, and she wasn’t breathing. No, she was breathing very faintly. Almost imperceptible, but her pulse was still there.

It was a symptom of long-term drug addiction.

“You massage her arms and legs. I’ll do chest compressions.”

The woman stared silently into Hae-soo’s calm eyes before letting go of the knife.

“Hurry, or she’ll die.”

She awkwardly massaged Arin’s body. It was more like just placing her hands on her.

“Harder! Massage harder!”

Only then did she put some strength into it and massage diligently. In the meantime, the team leader and Oh Gyeong entered. They were shocked to see the corpses scattered in the hallway.

“Wow…”

“What is this… Was there some kind of internal strife?”

“Don’t tell me our Captain Slaughter [a nickname for Hae-soo] took them all down?”

The woman flinched and became wary at the sight of the unfamiliar men. Hae-soo explained without looking up. “They’re my teammates.”

She still didn’t relax her guard, but she massaged diligently. As they massaged her body and compressed her chest, her complexion gradually began to return.

“Ah, ah.”

The woman’s face lit up slightly at Arin’s noticeable change.

Hae-soo lifted Arin’s eyelids to check her pupils. Still not good.

“Team leader, is the ambulance on its way?”

“Probably, it should be arriving soon. Oh Gyeong, go out and guide them here, the roads are complicated.”

“I’m already on my way–”

Oh Gyeong came back in less than a minute, along with the paramedics, as if they were already entering.

They put Arin on a stretcher and took her out. As the team leader left and Hae-soo was about to follow, the woman stood still, unable to move an inch, as if she was tied to an invisible snare.

“Please go out first.”

“Huh? Okay, okay, take care of things and come along.”

Hae-soo turned around, approached her, and stood facing her.

He hadn’t realized it because she was covered in blood, but now he saw that she was only wearing a tank top and underwear.

Hae-soo took off his jacket and put it on her, zipping it all the way up. It looked like she was wearing an oversized dress. Then, he grabbed her wrist and offered her his sleeve.

“Hold on.”

She carefully reached out and grabbed the sleeve once, then gripped it even tighter.

“Don’t let go.”

At Hae-soo’s words, she nodded slightly.

***

As soon as Arin came out of that underground world, she was taken to the emergency room.

“Her condition isn’t good, but she’s past the critical point. But this woman should also receive treatment…”

The woman flinched and backed away warily as the doctor pointed at her. Her eyes were sharp, as if she would attack the doctor at any moment.

Hae-soo stepped in between them.

“She’s fine.”

“Yes? Ah…”

The doctor examined the woman in detail from afar and saw that there was blood everywhere, but there were no obvious serious external injuries, so he let it go.

The team leader immediately contacted Arin’s parents.

“…Yes, that’s right. This is Daesung Hospital. Yes, yes…”

*

Arin had a long dream. A dream of wandering in a place where nothing could be seen, in the darkness.

It felt like she would never escape from that place. But someone grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and pulled her out.

Her eyelids were very heavy. Her eyes wouldn’t open easily. She felt the touch and smell first.

Not the musty, stuffy smell she had breathed like air, but a strange but somehow comforting smell.

She felt warmth in her left hand. Someone was holding her hand. There was no one who would hold her hand; could it be her sister?

Slowly…

Arin barely managed to lift her eyelids. The blurry vision slowly returned to normal and came into focus.

‘Is this a dream?’

The face she had always dreamed of when she slept in that hell, that face was in front of her. No way, it couldn’t be.

“…Arin, Arin, are you awake?”

“…Mom…?”

“My baby!!”

Her mother hugged Arin tightly. Her father, who was next to her, hugged them both together.

Arin was bewildered because she couldn’t believe the situation. It felt like a dream, and she was afraid that this dream would end, so she pushed her mother away and looked at her face again.

‘Before I forget, I want to remember more and more.’

But the warmth felt from her mother’s hands was real, and the voice filled with worry was also real.

After a long time, Arin hugged her mother properly and burst into tears.

“I, I was scared, I was so scared, Mom…”

“Yes, yes, it’s all right now, it’s all right, my baby…”

The feelings of parents who had lost their child and found her again after a month could not be expressed in words.

At that moment, when the reunion of emotion was being achieved,

there was someone who was backing away, feeling a pain as if needles were piercing her heart.

Step by step.

The woman couldn’t help but back away as she watched Arin meet her family and be happy.

Arin returned to her family’s arms. Her existence, which reminded her of the memories of that hell, should be separated.

*

No one asked Arin about what happened then, but Arin also lived brightly as if nothing had happened, as if she had forgotten the memories of that time altogether.

However, whenever a young woman passed by, she would turn her head and stare for a long time.

***

The massive dark organization that the Violent Crimes Unit of Gangjin Police Station cracked down on this time was a gang called Jeoksa Society, linked to China. Moreover, despite its large size, it was a branch, not the headquarters.

Only the people rescued from that hellish underground world numbered twelve adult women and twenty children. More than twenty gangsters were arrested without being killed.

Thanks to this, the Violent Crimes Unit of Gangjin Police Station was very short-handed in writing reports.

Hae-soo also left the hospital to the local police to write reports and was about to return home when it was time to leave.

Clang!

“Kyaa!”

A nurse screamed and dropped the treatment kit she was holding.

The woman was holding a pen like a knife and hissing at the nurse, stuck in the corner of the hospital bed. She didn’t let her guard down against the other female police officer who was approaching.

“Hah…”

His feet wouldn’t move. She was a very strange woman. Was she suffering from severe mental shock?

Although it was only for a moment, he couldn’t forget that dangerous look. She could cause a big accident.

“Team leader, I’ll stay.”

“What? We have a mountain of work…”

The team leader spoke and followed Hae-soo’s gaze to see the woman. The team leader also knew that she had killed a gangster, according to Hae-soo.

“Okay, well, come quickly, I’ll be waiting.”

“Yes.”

As Hae-soo approached, she put down the pen and reached out to grab his sleeve. He could feel her fingertips trembling. Not anger or other emotions, but fear.

‘What the hell is this woman…’

At Hae-soo’s gesture, the nurses and police officers went away, and as he stayed still, her breathing gradually stabilized.

Hae-soo sat her on the hospital bed and sat facing her.

“From now on, you have to answer my questions truthfully.”

Since they had to write a report anyway after she received treatment and they took each other’s statements, he decided to write it in advance.

“Name.”

“…”

“Don’t you have a name?”

“Hey, you, bitch, you son of a bitch, you gae-nyeon [Korean slang for ‘bitch’]…”

Hae-soo was embarrassed. She wasn’t just swearing; it meant that she had been called that *as* her name.

“Don’t you remember your real name?”

She shakes her head silently.

“What are your parents’ names?”

She lowered her head a little more and shook her head.

“How long have you been living there?”

Even if she was a woman, she could be a member of the Jeoksa Society, but looking at the numerous scars on her body, including recent ones, he couldn’t think so.

She spread her palm and raised her hand, stopping in the air, and opened her mouth.

“Since this time…”

Presumably, it meant height. Since she was young, it was understandable that she couldn’t remember her name.

She didn’t answer anything before that. He didn’t know if she had really lost her memory or if she didn’t want to answer.

Unless her genes were registered, there was no way to find her identity.

Adult women were either kidnapped from somewhere or sold here because of debt, and were used for prostitution and as playthings.

But this woman in particular had severe scars. Her eyes were also strange.

‘What the hell is her identity?’

*

Gangjin Police Station.

Hae-soo brought the woman to the police station to finish writing the report. However, she wouldn’t open her mouth, which was frustrating.

Then, Oh Gyeong, who was investigating the gang members, pointed at the woman and said.

“She’s a fighting dog, a fighting dog.”

“A fighting dog? Tell me more.”

Since the woman was silent, he collected her information from the gangsters.

According to them, the woman was brought in by the branch manager ten years ago. Unusually, she was not made to manufacture drugs, but only participated in fighting matches.

“…She always comes back battered and bruised, but it’s amazing how she always survives!”

“Am I your friend?”

“…Yes.”

“So, she’s a professional illegal fighting match player, this woman?”

“Yes, the guy who takes her to the matches says she fights pretty well in the ring… but I’d have to see it to believe it.”

The branch manager who brought her in died during the arrest, so there was no way to know her past before that.

Roughly looking at her face, she was in her early to mid-twenties, which meant that ten years ago, she was at most a fifteen-year-old child who was driven into fighting matches where murder was rampant.

“…Those trash bastards.”

Illegal fighting matches are held regardless of gender. There are many perverts who enjoy seeing women get hit, so the detectives thought that she was used to target the tastes of such customers.

In any case, she was a victim of kidnapping, and the killing of the gangster was ruled as self-defense, so they could no longer keep her.

Knowing her situation, everyone felt uncomfortable about letting her out like this.

She was kidnapped when she was young, her fingerprints were not registered, and she had no memory, so she couldn’t find her family. Just in case, they sent her genes to the Missing Persons Genetic Registration Center, but the rate of finding a match was less than 5 percent.

The team leader had a troubled expression on his face.

“What should we do with that young lady? She won’t have any money or a home.”

“But still, what can we do? She’s an adult, so there’s no suitable place to send her.”

“They said it was a branch? Just in case, give her a bracelet [referring to an electronic monitoring bracelet].”

“Yes, team leader.”

Hae-soo took a smart watch for personal protection from the cabinet and put it on her slender wrist.

“If you shake your hand like this, your location will be sent to 112 [the Korean emergency telephone number], shake it when you’re in danger.”

The woman looked at the bracelet with dry eyes and said nothing. He also put a few 50,000 won bills [approximately $40 USD] in the pocket of the training jacket she was wearing.

That’s how she came out of the police station.

“Haaam-”

That night, Hae-soo stretched out and celebrated the end of writing the report. He could finally go home.

Bang-!

At that time, a man who looked like a thug roughly opened the door to the Violent Crimes Unit office and came in. His face was swollen and he was bleeding from the nose, as if he had been beaten by someone.

“Police officers! There’s a crazy woman outside beating people up! Random assault, random assault! Please catch her quickly!”

Hae-soo frowned and stood up at the word “woman.”

“I’ll go out and see.”

“Okay, youngest, go home on the way.”

Following the man outside, he saw a woman crouching in the corner of the bus stop across from the police station.

“That’s her. That’s her!”

As he got closer, a female student sitting on a chair waiting for the bus said.

“That man was hitting on that woman and got beat up. Serves him right.”

Hae-soo’s eyes sharpened at those words. The man suddenly felt a chill down his spine and waved his hand at Hae-soo, backing away.

“No, that’s ridiculous, a woman in rags like that… Anyway, police officer! Make sure to put that woman in jail!”

The man said that and disappeared into the distance. Hae-soo knelt down on one knee in front of her.

Those hollow eyes slowly moved up Hae-soo’s shoes, pants, and arms, meeting his face.

“Don’t you have anywhere to go?”

She nodded slightly.

It was an obvious answer. After being confined and living as a fighting dog, not a person, she came out into society without a penny for the first time in ten years, so there was no way she would have a place to go.

“Hoo…”

He couldn’t just leave this stray cat with particularly sharp claws alone. Hae-soo slowly raised his hand.

As if on cue, she grabbed Hae-soo’s sleeve tightly.

*

Shin Hae-soo’s house is an eight-pyeong [approximately 285 square feet] studio apartment with a bathroom and kitchen.

‘I’ve gone crazy, what am I going to do…’

When he came to his senses, he was facing her alone in that small house.

< #26. Fighting Dog > End