The Cop Is Too Strong [EN]: Chapter 7

“I, I think that guy is crazy!”

“Call the police! Call the police!”

Shin Hae-soo gestured towards Officer Lim, who was standing behind in plain clothes.

“I am the police. Officer Lim, confiscate the perpetrators’ phones first.”

“Yes, sir!”

Today was his day off. Hae-soo asked Officer Lim for help to prevent unnecessary talk when searching the female students’ belongings.

“What! Don’t touch me! I’m going to report all of you for sexual harassment— Aah!”

Officer Lim, having seen the students arguing with and cursing at the teacher, roughly subdued the female students.

There were five people, but a total of seven phones were found.

“Yuri, are these five all of them?”

At Hae-soo’s question, Yuri quietly recalled the past. In fact, to Yuri, all the students were perpetrators. She hated all of them for merely watching, for turning a blind eye, even though they had seen everything so clearly.

But not everyone can be punished. She hoped that at least these five, who directly bullied her, would receive proper punishment. Yuri nodded deeply.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Ham Yuri, you bitch!! Ack!”

Kang Ju-ri foamed at the mouth and tried to pounce on Yuri, but Officer Lim quickly twisted her arm to subdue her.

Creak!

“What is going on here!!”

At that moment, the door burst open and a middle-aged woman shouted. The homeroom teacher flinched and took a step back upon seeing her.

“Principal…”

“What are you doing in my school right now? Shouldn’t you formally request cooperation from the school if you’re going to call students in and investigate?”

The homeroom teacher bit her lower lip once and then took a step forward again.

“I’ve told you several times, but you ignored me.”

“Kim Soo-jin, you shut up! How did such a strange thing get in here as a teacher and disrupt the school?”

With the principal’s appearance, the perpetrator students regained their confidence. Kang Ju-ri sharply shook off Officer Lim’s hand and clung to the principal.

“Grandma! That bitch twisted my wrist; it hurts so much here!”

“You crazy bitch, how dare you touch my granddaughter…”

Suddenly,

Hae-soo took a step forward, shielding Yuri with his body.

“Yuri, are you filming well?”

“Yes.”

At Hae-soo’s words, Yuri simply held up her phone and directly filmed the principal and the perpetrator students.

“Wh-what? What are you filming? Give me that right now!”

“Sunkyung High School will be audited by the Ministry of Education today. Even a little digging revealed very dirty dealings: turning a blind eye to school violence is commonplace, and there are test paper leaks, awarding all prizes to certain students, and controversies over competition eligibility… The Gangjin Police Station’s Criminal Affairs Division will also be investigating soon. Don’t try to destroy evidence and increase your sentence; please cooperate diligently, Principal, teachers.”

“What? What are you talking about right now? I have nothing to be ashamed of! I am confident!”

Hae-soo ignored the principal’s words and looked around at the students, continuing to speak.

“Then, let’s all meet at the police station.”

“Hey, hey, just a moment…”

Hae-soo made eye contact with Officer Lim and nodded. He took the confiscated phones and walked out of the classroom with Yuri.

Walking down the hallway, he examined Yuri’s homeroom teacher’s face. It was full of worry.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay here? All the blame will be directed at you.”

She clenched her fist tightly and nodded deeply.

“Yes, I have to be okay. Our Yuri took courage like this, so I will also take courage and stand up against it.”

Even in this era where students’ rights are prioritized over teachers’ authority, there were true teachers. Hae-soo nodded subtly, silently cheering her on.

***

Kang Ju-ri and the other four had been bullying Ham Yuri for a long time, and of course, they hadn’t considered destroying evidence when they were tormenting her.

So, even before the confiscated phones were forensically analyzed, evidence of assault and verbal abuse poured out.

According to Yuri’s testimony, they went to the places where she had been bullied and secured vivid evidence of assault from CCTV footage.

In a dark room, only the light from the monitor dimly illuminated the surroundings.

A video, in which all the circumstances and evidence of the group bullying against Ham Yuri were neatly organized by date, was being uploaded to a website.

Hae-soo hovered the mouse cursor over [Upload] and turned his head just before clicking it.

“Yuri, are you sure it’s okay to upload it? No matter how much we blur and hide, rumors will spread. Can you handle it?”

Yuri, who was squatting with her knees pulled up to her chest, stared intently at the monitor before nodding.

“Yes, please upload it.”

“Okay.”

Hae-soo clicked upload. Now, the incident was uploaded to YouTube, the most popular video upload site in the world, beyond just Korea.

This was Yuri’s idea. She said that she had been thinking and thinking about how to make them suffer more while the investigation was ongoing.

[I am reporting the group bullying at S High School in Gangjin City. Please spread this widely.]

┗Are you kidding me? Are those things even human?

┗This is why demons never lose their jobs.

┗Those are second-year students at Sunkyung High School. Their names are Kang JR, Kim YS, Jang MM, Kim SR, and Oh MC.

┗Their personal information is out. Recruiting party members to catch those trash.

┗Replace all the higher-ups at the school. Conduct a thorough audit of the Ministry of Education. Maximize the disciplinary action against those kids! Damn it.

┗The school is even more trash. Trash breeds because the school is like that. Ministry of Education, do your job properly this time.

┗She looks pretty, even with the blurring?

┗You’re an idiot whose dick has eaten his brain. I agree.

The video was shared by all the famous YouTubers and spread rapidly. Dozens of articles poured out, and a national petition was even filed within a few days.

Unlike journalists who go through newspapers, videos uploaded directly to YouTube cannot be controlled by external pressure.

Moreover, there was almost no external pressure because everyone except Kang Ju-ri, whose maternal grandmother was the principal, came from ordinary or below-average families.

A few days later, at the Naeju Police Station.

The perpetrator students gathered in one place again. The social repercussions were already so great that their faces were haggard, as if they were fully aware of the sins they had committed.

Hae-soo entered the interrogation room, carefully examining their faces.

“Your faces have all improved in the past few days.”

“…Shit.”

“I’ll curse you…”

As expected, being tormented online for a few days is not enough for rehabilitation.

“Come in.”

At Hae-soo’s words, the perpetrator students tilted their heads. All five of them were gathered, so there was no one else to come in.

At that moment, Ham Yuri, dressed neatly, quietly entered. The students went wild when they saw her.

“Ham Yuri!”

“Yuri, I was wrong. I’m really sorry for everything. Please forgive me just once. Let’s make a deal.”

“Yuri, I hardly ever hit you, you know that? Kang Ju-ri made me do it! If I didn’t hit you, I would get hit by her! I’m a victim too!”

“Shut up, you bi… Yuri, Ham Yuri.”

Kang Ju-ri knelt down in front of Yuri and grabbed her pants leg.

“I, I’m really regretting it. I’ll live my life reflecting, so please, just once, please make a deal with me, okay?”

The pleading expression was quite a sight. Yuri seemed to be wavering, her hardened expression gradually cracking.

“Ha.”

A burst of laughter. The room fell silent in an instant. The source of the sound was Ham Yuri. She looked down at Kang Ju-ri, who was holding onto her pants leg, and gave a sincere smile.

“Just, just because of things like this…”

A tear streamed down her cheek. Yuri made eye contact with Hae-soo and nodded.

“It’s okay now. I will never, ever make a deal.”

“Okay, you’ve worked hard.”

At Yuri’s words, Kang Ju-ri’s expression changed like a demon, as if she had never pleaded. She jumped up and lunged at Yuri.

“You, you bitch!!”

Thump!!

However, Yuri quickly pushed Kang Ju-ri away, causing her to fall backward with the chair.

Yuri glared coldly at the scene and turned around to leave the interrogation room.

“…Shit, shit…”

Kang Ju-ri did not get up and continued to cry, spewing curses in that position.

The investigation was quickly concluded. As it was a case that garnered national attention, all five involved received prison sentences.

Kang Ju-ri, the instigator, and her boyfriend, Kim Eon-seok, received three-year sentences.

Numerous irregularities were revealed at Sunkyung High School, and almost half of the teachers, including the principal and vice-principal, were replaced.

***

The night shift at the Dongbu District Police Station ends at 9 a.m. As Hae-soo was changing clothes after the replacement team arrived and heading to the parking lot, he saw a familiar female student standing with a middle-aged man.

Hae-soo looked at the female student, whose gaze was fixed on him, and opened his mouth.

“You cut your hair, Yuri.”

“You recognized me right away. This is my dad.”

The middle-aged man next to her finally made eye contact with Hae-soo and extended his hand. He had a guilty look on his face.

“I’m Yuri’s… dad…”

“Yes, I’m Police Officer Shin Hae-soo.”

As he grasped Hae-soo’s hand, he didn’t let go and held it tightly with both hands, then lowered his head and shed tears.

“Police officer, thank you. Thank you so much. It’s all my fault. She’s my only daughter, but I couldn’t pay attention to her…”

Hae-soo was embarrassed but slowly patted his back.

“Please take good care of her now. And, it’s not your fault, Father. It’s the perpetrators’ fault.”

Ham Yuri had cut her long hair short into a bob, changed her name, and transferred to another school. She didn’t have to transfer, but Yuri wanted to.

She said that many perpetrators still remained at that school.

***

It had been a month since Hae-soo started working at the Dongbu District Police Station in Gangjin City.

During that time, Hae-soo had gone back to the past six times and learned a few rules:

1. The time is exactly 60 minutes before.

2. It is only possible at the scene. It also requires the prerequisite that the victim is killed or suffers injuries that leave them disabled.

3. It is only possible once a day.

4. The ability is activated when you think about wanting to go back to the past and say the trigger word in your mind. The trigger word was set to ‘Reset.’

5. If the victim is conscious at the time of the reset, they retain the memories from before the reset.

However, memories are created after the reset time. If you reset at 9 a.m. and go back to 8 a.m., the person will have the memories from before the reset after 9 a.m. This is not accurate due to a lack of samples.

Generally, the people involved mistook it for vivid déjà vu [the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before].

Hae-soo had a deep, yet unresolved, fundamental concern.

‘Why did I get this ability…’

Ability, yes, it’s an ability. It was once a chance to correct a distorted past, but now that it can be used according to the situation, it can be called an ability.

Rustle, rustle.

After work.

Hae-soo shaved neatly, put on a well-ironed black suit, and put on his shoes.

The place he headed to, well-dressed, was a memorial park.

In front of a cinerary urn [a vase for the ashes of the dead], there was a photo of a middle-aged man in a police uniform and a male student with a dissatisfied expression.

[The deceased Shin Jung-seok]

Today was exactly 12 years since his only blood relative, his father, had passed away.

Hae-soo quietly stared at the photo. Why didn’t I smile at that time? I regret it every time I see it. I also regret that the only decent photo of the two of us is that one.

‘Father…’

Hae-soo recalled that day 12 years ago.

It was the day he skipped gym class and got into a group fight.

Hae-soo’s apartment was a corridor type, with ten houses on one floor, five on each side based on the elevator.

Ding-dong.

-7th floor. The door is opening.

Hae-soo was about to step out as soon as the elevator door opened, but he stopped. There was a strange man standing in front of him.

A man wearing a black hat, a layered hoodie, and a mask.

Hae-soo, who was a fearless high school sophomore with confidence in his fists after attending the gym, was overwhelmed by the man’s gaze, which he had never seen before, and his body momentarily stiffened.

Hae-soo instinctively read the meaning contained in that gaze, even if it was only for a fleeting moment.

‘Should I kill him or not.’

Goosebumps rose on his spine, and cold sweat flowed. He tried not to make eye contact and barely moved his feet, and the man got on the elevator and went down.

“Dad!!”

And when he got home, his father was hanging from the veranda.

The case was quickly closed. No traces of homicide could be found, and the elevator CCTV had been out of order for a long time.

-Hae-soo, shall we go fishing together this weekend?

-I don’t know, maybe.

However, Hae-soo’s father was definitely not the type to commit suicide.

A person who is going to commit suicide does not make fishing plans with his son.

However, the only circumstance that made Hae-soo suspect murder was the man’s gaze, and the outcry of a reckless high school sophomore was naturally buried.

And now.

He became a police officer to dig into his father’s death and catch the culprit, but he couldn’t find anything in the case records at the time, and the surrounding CCTVs had already been deleted.

It was like finding a needle in the desert, but Hae-soo had not yet let go of the string.

He only believed in one thing: the desire to kill.

That monstrous gaze was saying that he would definitely commit murder again. He believed that if he dug into murder cases, he would be able to face him.

He has to go back to the violent crimes unit.

Swish.

Hae-soo raised his hand and quietly looked at his palm.

If he only had this miraculous ability, he would be able to return to the violent crimes unit without being mindful of those above, even if he had no money or connections.

‘I will definitely catch him.’

***

Before going home from the memorial park, Hae-soo stopped by a convenience store to fill his hungry stomach.

“Hello.”

He went in, greeting as usual, but there was no hearty greeting from the convenience store owner. When he turned his head, he saw no one at the counter.

Did he go to the bathroom? He was about to move to pick out an item when something caught his foot.

“Mister?”

The store owner was lying between the counter and the display stand. In his right hand, he held a piece of paper.

At that moment, the announcer’s voice flowed from the TV.

[…The drawing for the 1006th Korea Bank Lottery has ended. See you next week.]

<#7. Rules of Ability> End