Chapter 11
Chapter 11
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 11
Chapter Title: Detective
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Na Gang-in thoroughly washed away the fire residue from his body at the sauna. Afterward, he settled into one of the spacious rooms.
"I haven't earned enough operating funds yet to splurge like that here."
Jeon Ji-in's voice suddenly sped up. The content shifted too.
Na Gang-in turned his head that way. Yoon A-reum was wandering around.
She beamed brightly as she approached Na Gang-in and sat down in front of him.
"Whoa, Chef Oppa. Did you follow me here?"
"I came to wash up too."
"I had to wash here because my house burned down completely. But why are you washing here, Chef Oppa? Don't you have a home?"
"Yeah. I don't have a home."
Yoon A-reum looked a bit flustered.
"Huh? Why don't you have a home? Did your house burn down too, Oppa?"
"I've only been in this neighborhood a few days, so I've been sleeping at the PC bang until now."
"Ahh."
She nodded, then suddenly grinned widely.
"Heehee. Hey, Oppa."
"I'm hungry. Buy me some food."
"I saved your life, and now you want me to fill your stomach too? Don't you have any money?"
"My house burned to the ground—did you think I'd have the presence of mind to grab my wallet?"
"But you had enough for the sauna?"
"I only had exactly enough in my pocket for this place. No money left for food."
Na Gang-in knew another solution.
"You're all cleaned up, so let's head to the PC bang. I'll cook for you."
"Whoa! Yes!"
Na Gang-in returned to the PC bang with Yoon A-reum in tow.
Cha Eun-seo asked,
"Didn't you say on the way back that you'd look for the lost spices? Did you find them?"
"Nah, everything there had been cleared out—nothing left. But I found her instead."
Cha Eun-seo glanced at Yoon A-reum and looked slightly surprised.
"I figured she was a regular who came with you. But you were looking for this customer?"
"She lived in that building that caught fire right in front. House burned down, no place to go."
Yoon A-reum nodded vigorously.
"Burned to a crisp, completely."
"She left her wallet at home too, so she's flat broke. That's why I brought her along."
The boss's niece, Cha Eun-seo, narrowed her eyes.
"Flat broke means no PC bang fees either, right?"
"Yup. Heehee."
Na Gang-in explained,
"I'm not bringing her to game. Just to feed her at least."
Cha Eun-seo grumbled,
"Hey, are we a restaurant or what?"
"Then why haven't you gone home?"
She declared confidently,
"To eat first."
Na Gang-in stared at Cha Eun-seo. She averted her gaze.
"Eun-seo, don't you hear 'shameless' a lot?"
"Ah! You're selling food, so yeah, we are a restaurant! A fancy one at that!"
A short distance from the scene, miscellaneous items were haphazardly piled up.
Detective Park Ki-jeong asked,
"What's all this stuff here?"
A uniformed officer at the site replied,
"Anything in the way of firefighting got moved over here."
"Even a supermarket plastic bag?"
His fellow detective said,
"Probably someone gawking at the fire got distracted and left it."
Park Ki-jeong stared at the supermarket bag for a moment, then said,
"To climb to the top of a five-story building between two fires to save someone, you'd need both hands and feet free, right? If they had a plastic bag, they'd have set it down on the ground naturally."
His fellow detective asked,
"You think this bag was left by that tightrope expert?"
"Could be."
The fellow detective opened the bag and checked inside.
"Just sauces for cooking. Oh, receipt too. Well, there was one, but it's soaked and torn—hard to tell whose it is."
"We can still see the store name. Check their CCTV, and we'll know who bought it."
The fellow detective asked,
"Do we really need to go that far just because they saved someone? They're not a suspect."
They had plenty of other cases to solve. With a fatality from this fire, their own plates were full too.
Park Ki-jeong grumbled,
"True, but the boss said to find them. What can we do? If he says dig, we dig."
"Damn it."
Na Gang-in plated the cooked meal.
Yoon A-reum ate it and marveled,
"Chef Oppa's skills are seriously the best! I could eat this every day!"
"Flattery won't get you seconds."
"It's true."
"Finish eating and go."
"My house burned to a crisp, remember? Nowhere to go right now. No money either. But hey!"
She pointed at the A4 paper on the table.
"You're hiring help here, right? Score!"
"That's not my call."
Cha Eun-seo chimed in from the side,
"Our night shift quit due to personal issues. Makes sense why they've been late lately. So we're hiring new. Uncle printed that out just in case..."
Yoon A-reum quickly flipped the A4 paper over to hide the ad and said,
"Unnie! No need to post that. I can start right now!"
"Huh? I'm unnie?"
"I'm a freshman at Korea University!"
"Ah..."
Cha Eun-seo was older. She said,
"We already have a Korea University freshman doing part-time."
"I'll get along with her too! Is she coming today?"
"We only call her when it's busy, so not today. Anyway, telling me won't help. Uncle handles hiring."
Yoon A-reum blinked pitifully.
"I have no home now, so I gotta live at the sauna. But my wallet and phone burned too—no money even for that."
"Doesn't fire insurance pay out?"
Yoon A-reum clasped her hands together with the most heartbreaking expression.
"How long would that take to come through? I'll starve first. Let me work, please?"
Her face was so desperate, her posture so forlorn. She looked just like the little match girl shivering in the cold.
"Yeah, I know. She was full of energy just a minute ago."
Her act worked on Cha Eun-seo.
"Alright. When Uncle comes out later, I'll put in a word."
"Score!"
Boss Cha Dong-seok conducted a brief interview.
The original night shifter had quit abruptly, and he needed someone starting tonight. Without one, he'd have to cover it himself, but he was busy with his outside work.
Plus, Yoon A-reum's pitiful act worked on Boss Cha Dong-seok too.
"Man, with a tough situation like that, it'd make me the bad guy not to hire you. You're in!"
The next day, Na Gang-in spent the afternoon as usual, gathering various info from the internet.
"No way."
"See? It's 2022."
"Right? Even a massive data center floor turned into AI from some multinational might be possible, but implanted type? Not with current tech, yeah?"
Jeon Ji-in was an Implanted Combat Support AI.
"What can we do? Whether I look at cooking or whatever, it's 2022 right now."
The PC bang door opened, and a man walked in. But he wasn't a customer.
Detective Park Ki-jeong headed to the counter and held up the neighborhood supermarket bag.
Boss's niece Cha Eun-seo asked,
"Need help with that?"
"Ah, no."
Park Ki-jeong flashed his badge. Then he opened the bag containing various sauces and spices and asked,
"The card used to buy this was from here."
Cha Eun-seo clapped her hands the moment she saw the contents.
"Oh! This is it!"
"You recognize it? Who bought..."
"Gang-in Oppa! The police uncle brought back the spices you lost watching the fire yesterday!"
Park Ki-jeong deflated upon hearing that.
'So it was just left by some fire gawker.'
Cha Eun-seo marveled,
"Wow, our police are amazing. They even track down the owner for something like this."
"Uh... that's not..."
Na Gang-in walked over from the corner of the PC bang and took the bag.
"Thanks."
Park Ki-jeong smiled awkwardly.
"No problem. It's all part of the job."
Detective Park Ki-jeong handed over his business card and left. Na Gang-in took it back to his secluded seat.
"Think it'd be fake?"
Detective Park Ki-jeong left without saying much about the fire case. Na Gang-in grew a bit curious about how things stood there.
"Ji-in, forget that—look up what happened to that burning building yesterday."
Related articles popped up immediately.
Na Gang-in frowned.
"Did we miss someone there?"
That studio building wasn't a double-corridor layout. People lived only on one side.
"Maybe in the bathroom or somewhere we didn't see?"
"Then we would've seen directly through the window. How'd we miss it? I might, but you couldn't."
"With a fire that big, no normal person stays put. Maybe drunk, passed out under the covers?"
AR photos of the room interiors from yesterday's climb flashed by via the AR lens.
"Fell off the bed then."
Blind spots appeared marked on the floating AR photo.
Na Gang-in considered another possibility.
"Or already dead by then."
He turned his chair sideways.
"Ji-in, got anything like infrared vision skills?"
"AR lens is on my eyes, though."
"Worth a shot."
He slipped Detective Park Ki-jeong's card between his fingers and wiggled it.
"Anyway, could be murder. Gotta meet that detective again."
"That kind of help's just a bonus that comes with catching the killer."
Detective Park Ki-jeong sat at his desk in the detective division.
"Kinda figured."
His desk neighbor asked,
"What? Not the tightrope guy between the buildings?"
"Nope. Just something lost by a fire gawker."
"What does he do?"
"Not a suspect, so didn't check that far. But the part-timer knew his name, so probably works at that PC bang or a long-time regular."
"Unemployed?"
"Vibe was like that... Huh?"
Na Gang-in walked into the detective office. Park Ki-jeong stood with a smile.
"Coming all the way here over a lost item I returned? Haha, we can't just take drinks or... you're empty-handed?"
"Not why I'm here."
"Got it. So, what's up?"
"Checked some articles. Turns out there was a fatality in that burning building."
Park Ki-jeong's face darkened slightly.
"Ah, yes. Truly tragic."
The fatality was the most tragic part.
But it piled on Park Ki-jeong's workload and killed his vacation. That stung too.
Na Gang-in said,
"It's murder."
"Not unusual to suspect that with a death. We're investigating without ruling it out."
"This isn't 'not ruling it out' territory. High probability it's murder."
Park Ki-jeong often dealt with civilians speculating wildly on cases.
"Claims like that need evidence. Without it..."
"When I passed that room's window climbing up, no movement inside. Who stays still during a fire? Means the victim was already compromised."
"Right, passing the window climbing... Wait, what?"
Park Ki-jeong panicked.
"Hold on. So..."
He looked at Na Gang-in and swallowed hard.
"You're the one who tightrope-walked between those burning buildings yesterday?"