Monster Cop Trainee
Gang Tae-won, the oldest hand at Machon Precinct and the leader of Patrol Team Three, was smoking in the staff smoking area behind the station when a stray thought crossed his mind.
"Why does this feel so manageable lately?"
He’d spent twenty years in the police and prided himself on having seen every kind of hardship there was. Even for him, Annam’s Machon Precinct was a brutal place.
There weren’t even thirty patrol officers in total, so they ran a four-team, two-shift system and worked twelve-hour stretches. The precinct averaged one hundred and fifty calls a day. By the time they finished running around all night and got back, there was paperwork waiting for them. In the morning, they had to deal with civilian complaints, so the break room might as well not have existed. Drunks couldn’t hold a normal conversation, which made them completely unpredictable. Victims screamed about how unfair everything was, while suspects threatened lawsuits and demanded lawyers. They never got proper rest, and even when people cursed at them they still had to smile, so it would have been stranger if no one cracked under the strain.
Human stamina and mental endurance weren’t limitless, and even veteran officer Gang Tae-won had recently been pushed to his breaking point.
But at some point, work had started easing up. Then it had become genuinely manageable.
"Yoo Gyeong-ho... Song Tan... those bastards."
More precisely, it was probably because of Song Tan, the rookie who had joined three months earlier. Yoo Gyeong-ho had never been the type to throw himself into work to begin with.
"What the hell was that kid doing before this?"
The question rose on its own.
He was only twenty-three, and yet the way he worked was so meticulous it was almost absurd. It was enough to make you wonder if he’d done something police-like somewhere before.
"No way."
He’d heard that Song Tan had passed the GED and then the police exam right away. He’d also supposedly served a normal stretch in the army, so there was no chance he had any real connection to police work.
"And he does all that just from what he learned at the police academy...? Does that even make sense?"
Most of the precinct had gone through the same academy training, so they knew better than anyone that theory was theory, and the field was something else entirely.
"But Song Tan... what is that guy, anyway?"
Gang Tae-won flicked the burned-out cigarette into the ashtray and thought about it.
He’d decided to keep a closer eye on the youngest member of the team, who had become a man to watch for entirely different reasons.
***
Yoo Gyeong-ho let out a sigh and picked up the radio.
"Two-oh-one, on our way."
He set the radio down and jerked the wheel hard into a U-turn.
"Shit. I thought maybe we could finally get through today without anything else."
"Still, once this one’s over, we can clock out. Hang in there."
Yoo Gyeong-ho glanced to the right.
Song Tan was looking straight ahead with a calm face. He seemed as serene as if they were just out for a drive.
"What a monster..."
"Pardon?"
"Nothing."
Yoo Gyeong-ho thought to himself that the kid clearly wasn’t human, but a robot.
They had handled fifty-eight cases between the two of them that day. That was a number that normally required two patrol cars moving in tandem. And was it exhausting enough to kill them? Not exactly. To be blunt, he had mostly been the sidekick, while the monster rookie had handled the brain-draining problems by himself.
'Yoo Gyeong-ho. Why are you working so hard these days? Did you snort something?'
Lately, that was the kind of thing people said whenever he got back to the precinct.
"Looks like you’ve been lucky lately. Things are getting cleared up real fast."
"Lucky?"
Yoo Gyeong-ho snorted.
It was absolutely not luck.
Usually, drunk suspects were too intoxicated to understand anything, and if it was a fight complaint, both sides were so worked up that talking at all was difficult. That was why everything took so long.
'But the moment Song Tan gets involved...'
One moment, a drunk who’d been completely plastered would suddenly sober up. Another moment, the people who’d been threatening to kill each other would all at once become obedient as lambs. It happened over and over.
Then, whenever they ran into one of those uncontrollable, brazen bastards, the handcuffs were on in the blink of an eye. So cleanly that not even a single scratch showed.
Which meant not even a complaint ever came out of it.
'What on earth is he...?'
He’d been watching from arm’s length for almost four months now, and he still couldn’t make sense of it. Why exactly things always untangled themselves the moment Song Tan stepped forward.
Of course, since the monster junior did everything by himself, it did feel nice, in a way, like running on autopilot with a perfect grinding build.
'But even that has its limits.'
No matter how thick his skin was, he wasn’t shameless. So at the very least, he made sure to move quickly whenever backup was requested or a call came in.
It was his own way of wanting to show even a tiny bit of senior pride.
'Today, I’m really going to keep my eyes open. I need to figure out what the hell that guy has.'
Yoo Gyeong-ho’s eyes blazed with determination as he gripped the wheel.
***
Crash!
"Eek!"
By the time they arrived, the restaurant was already a disaster.
Overturned chairs. Broken plates.
The floor gleamed slick with spilled alcohol and grease.
A crowd of civilians had gathered outside, and Gang Tae-won, who had arrived first with his partner, was blocking the entrance with a baton in hand.
"Hyung! We’re here."
As soon as the long-awaited reinforcements showed up, Gang Tae-won immediately spat out a curse.
"You little shit, why are you only getting here now?"
"We flew over in five minutes."
"Keep talking back and I’ll—"
As Gang Tae-won raised his baton, Yoo Gyeong-ho instinctively shrank his neck in.
"So, those are the guys?"
Crash!
"%*#$@#*$@#*!"
The four large men had briefly settled down, then started rampaging again.
They looked to be in their late thirties to early forties, and all four had thick, unkempt beards.
"Don’t even ask. We can’t get through to them at all."
"Drunks never make sense. That’s nothing new."
"These ones really don’t. All four are Chinese."
"Chinese?"
Only then did Yoo Gyeong-ho realize that what they’d been yelling was Chinese.
"What a nightmare."
The difficulty of the case had just jumped fivefold.
"We already got the owner to evacuate to the back."
"Nice call. Looks like these guys have hit rock bottom."
Yoo Gyeong-ho’s eyes swept quickly over the area.
"They might rush us at any moment... Shouldn’t we use a Taser or something?"
"*&%#@$!!!"
Seeing the number of police had increased, one of the drunk men, now worked up, kicked over a chair.
"I want to, too, but look at what they’re wearing."
Yoo Gyeong-ho frowned as he scanned their clothing.
"Ah... right. Damn, they’re wrapped up tight."
Normally, a police Taser fires two probes connected to the body by wires when the trigger is pulled. Only when both probes hit the target does electricity flow and the muscles lock up.
According to procedure, officers were supposed to aim for the back of the target’s body, and when firing at the front, they had to aim below the sternum. Under those restrictions, even if the Taser hit, if the clothing was too thick for both probes to reach the skin, it was useless.
"Then what do we do?"
At Yoo Gyeong-ho’s question, Gang Tae-won clenched his jaw and shouted at them.
"Stop it! Calm down!"
It was a short burst of English, with both palms held out.
But what came back was a chorus of sneering Chinese.
"What kind of idiot goes around speaking garbage English like that?"
"Hey, but are we really okay like this? Isn’t this just going to blow up?"
The four Chinese men were talking with completely glazed-over eyes.
"Trust me. If we do it like this, we really won’t have to pay for the drinks. Just say the restaurant owner overcharged us, we got mad for a second, and because we were drinking we don’t remember anything."
"Really, that’s enough?"
"I’m telling you, yes. Korean police are different from public security. With all that human rights nonsense, they can’t come down hard on us. In fact, if they so much as touch us wrong and we get hurt, the police will be the ones held responsible."
"Huh? That makes sense? Then how do Korean cops even do their jobs?"
"Obviously, they can’t do them properly. That’s why we do it like this."
Bang!
"Eek!"
The bald Chinese man kicked a table over with a single powerful shove.
"Even if we make trouble, they can’t do a damn thing to us."
Then, from among the police standing off against them, a fluent Chinese voice rang out.
Since you’ve come to another country, you should keep your head down and go home quietly. What are you causing a scene for? Don’t you even know the old saying that when you enter another land, you should follow its customs and be careful with your words and actions? What kind of people are you these days?
The four Chinese men stared in shock toward the voice.
The three other police officers also looked at Song Tan in surprise, because none of them had expected him to speak Chinese.
"You... you can speak Chinese too?"
"I learned a little while ago."
Not just a little. Memories of nearly forty years spent in the Song Dynasty were as vivid as yesterday.
Of course, ancient Chinese and modern Chinese were different, but with a bit of study, the gap could be closed quickly enough.
"Would it be all right if I handled the conversation?"
"Oh? Y-yeah, sure. Perfect timing. If you can, try to talk them down."
"Understood."
Song Tan nodded and strode forward.
The four Chinese men instantly tensed up, gripping beer bottles and whatever else they had in their hands.
"You seem to be misunderstanding something. Crimes committed on the territory of the Republic of Korea are, in principle, subject to Korean criminal law regardless of nationality. And being drunk doesn’t automatically earn you leniency either. In other words, you’re digging your own graves right now—thanks to some half-baked friend who told you the wrong thing."
The pupils of the three men wavered slightly.
Then the bald ringleader exploded in anger.
"Don’t believe that crap from that idiot! He’s just trying to scare you!"
No matter what the man said, Song Tan calmly continued laying out the facts.
"You have exactly one chance. Put down what you’re holding and submit peacefully, and this will most likely end with a fine. But if you drag this out any further here, it could go to trial. Odds are you’d end up in prison. You don’t really want to rot in a foreign jail just because you listened to some friend and acted like fools, do you?"
After exchanging glances at the fact-based threat, the three men eventually set down the things in their hands and slowly raised both palms.
A clear sign of surrender.
"You pathetic bastards!"
Furious beyond reason, the bald man snatched up a shattered beer bottle lying on the floor.
"I’m telling you, even if I rush him, those bastards still won’t be able to touch me. I’ll show you, you idiots."
Killing intent seeped into the bald man’s eyes.
"Watch out, Song Tan!"
Sensing the danger, Gang Tae-won shouted in alarm, but—
"Die!!"
the man was already charging straight at Song Tan.
The pointed edge of broken glass flew toward Song Tan’s abdomen.
Song Tan neither flinched nor retreated.
He simply shifted one step, dodging the bottle, and drew the man’s arm inward.
"Ghk!"
Crash!
The beer bottle slipped from his hand and smashed against the floor.
At the same time, the bald man’s body lost its balance and collapsed downward.
Click—
Before anyone knew it, handcuffs were on both his wrists.
Everything had happened in an instant, like watching a magic trick.
"Take these off?! You fuckers! Take them off!!"
The bald man struggled violently and shouted curses.
Then Song Tan whispered so softly that only the man could hear.
"Actually, you’re right. Korean police can’t lay a hand on scum like you first, no matter how bad you are. But here’s the thing. I’m a little different."
"What the hell are you talking about, you bastard!"
Even with the cuffs on, the bald Chinese man kept thrashing to the end.
"I’ll let your body feel it directly."
Song Tan’s hand lightly touched the man’s shoulder.
To be exact, it brushed somewhere along the boundary where the neck met the shoulder.
It was such a natural contact that not even with dozens of eyes watching could anyone have noticed anything strange.
Song Tan rose from his seat and said calmly.
This time in Korean.
"Sir, you are under arrest in flagrante delicto for obstruction of official duty. You have the right to legal counsel, may request a pretrial detention hearing, and will be given an opportunity to explain yourself."
And the moment he finished speaking—
"KRAAAAHHHH!!"
The bald Chinese man, his body bent like a drawn bow, suddenly let out a beast-like scream.
---