Chapter 251: Smile (5)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 251: Smile (5)
“Is your mom a housewife?”
At Go Eun-chae’s question, Seo Hye-ri hesitated for a moment before answering.
“She is… but she also works from home…”
“Work from home? Doing what? Paid comment trolling?”
Why is your mind so cheap?
As I stared at Go Eun-chae with disdain, Seo Hye-ri shook her head with a small smile, seemingly taking it as a joke.
“No, she does investing and stocks… I’m not sure if they’re employees, but a few people come over for meetings while I’m at school.”
It matched the information the police had gathered.
Her mother had already been ruled out as a suspect.
Why? Because the money she made was far more than what could be earned through drug trafficking.
Just owning a mansion like this was proof of how much she earned.
If this were about revenge for her daughter, Smile had instead shown signs of cooperating with the Iljins, and the drugs she sold occasionally were mere pocket change to her.
She’d gain more by looking at a stock chart for a few more minutes.
“Oh—she’s impressive. I do some stocks too; it’d be great if I could get some help from your mom.”
“You do stocks too, Eun-chae?”
“Yeah, there’s this thing called ‘ladder games.’ It’s pretty lucrative.”
… …?
“…Sorry, I’ve never done stocks, so I don’t really know the terminology…”
Seo Hye-ri scratched her head, admitting her ignorance.
No, that’s not stocks.
What does illegal gambling have to do with stocks? And why are you talking about it so casually?
The triumphant Go Eun-chae continued to ask questions without a care.
Actually, I’m glad I brought this brat along.
She was naturally asking all the questions I had planned to check myself.
“Then what about your dad? I didn’t see him earlier. Are they a dual-income couple?”
“No… not dual-income…”
“Ah, so he went out to have some fun.”
No, you idiot. Can’t you see she’s intentionally avoiding answering about her father?
Just as I was about to praise her, Go Eun-chae stepped on a landmine. I quickly changed the subject.
Seo Hye-ri’s father had died in a car accident.
It wasn’t anything suspicious; he had simply lost his life in a major accident when his car skidded on a snowy road.
The more I read about her, the more I understood why Elisia said she was filled with hatred and rage.
As we passed the time talking, the mother walked in with a gentle smile.
“You haven’t had dinner yet, have you? Stay and eat.”
“Oh? Really? Thank you!”
Go Eun-chae jumped up, excited.
You really have no shame.
Following the shameless girl and Seo Hye-ri downstairs, I saw a large dining table in the kitchen overflowing with food.
“Wow—thanks for the food!”
Dinner with Seo Hye-ri’s family was ordinary.
Except for the fact that her older sister, Seo Da-ye, was absent.
I didn’t plan on asking about her openly anyway.
I planted a bug on the underside of the table where it wouldn’t be noticed and even enjoyed a wonderful dessert.
While sitting in the living room chatting and eating fruit the mother peeled for us, I installed another bug under the sofa.
Claiming I needed to use the bathroom, I placed them in every nook and cranny of the first floor before we finally left the house.
Once we were alone, Go Eun-chae started pressing her chest against me with a lingering gaze. I sent her home and returned to the apartment.
Oh Eun-yul, who hadn’t left the undercover apartment for days while analyzing footage, greeted me with hollow eyes.
“You’re here.”
The desk where she sat had four monitors.
There was footage from the hospital where Jo Ga-young and her gang died, nearby surveillance cameras and car black boxes, footage from Dogok Station where the call was traced, and now even surveillance footage from the area where the detective was killed.
While I was at school, her team had been working themselves to death analyzing videos, trying to pick out any overlapping faces.
Oh Eun-yul might die before the culprit is caught at this rate.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. It’s much more comfortable than those risking their lives in the field.”
The haggard-looking Oh Eun-yul waved it off.
“Let’s have a meal together once this is over safely. I’ll buy you something nutritious.”
“Haha… this is my job. But if you’re buying, I’ll gladly accept.”
Oh Eun-yul nodded with a weak smile.
As expected, asking the police to handle the wiretapping is a bit much, right?
The police were currently pouring an enormous amount of manpower into this.
They had arrested Jo Ga-young only for her to die due to a detective’s mistake, so a first wave of additional personnel was brought in to restore their honor. Now, because that same detective had been brutally murdered by Smile, a second wave of reinforcements had arrived.
It was a bit petty, but the message was clear: You dare touch the police? We won’t forgive you.
Of course, taking action like that allowed the police to pressure criminal organizations and proceed with the investigation more effectively.
Police are human too; they only work hard when a certain level of safety is guaranteed.
That’s why even ruthless villains usually avoid touching the police.
If a cop dies, the police will go ballistic, even requesting help from the Association, and will do everything in their power to catch the culprit. Most villains avoid them just to skip the hassle.
Despite the massive influx of personnel, they were still short-handed, to the point that Oh Eun-yul, who was in command, had hollow eyes from analyzing footage.
She knew they were spread thin and tried to narrow the scope of the investigation to the high school, but her superiors had rejected it.
I don’t know what they’re doing—it’s not like they’re even playing a numbers game.
I informed Oh Eun-yul that I had installed the bugs.
It was illegal, but since it was part of the operation, I had to make sure the police knew.
That way, if a problem arose later, I wouldn’t be the only one taking the fall.
Oh Eun-yul was also cautious about this.
The detectives gathered in the master bedroom were all people she trusted. She glanced at the deactivated bugging equipment and nodded.
“Yes, good work.”
“You’re the one working the hardest, Detective. Should I give you a massage?”
“I can’t indulge in such luxury with a Hero.”
I could feel her colleagues glancing over as if they wanted one too, but Oh Eun-yul declined and said she had something to show me.
The monitor showed black box footage from near Dogok Station at the time Smile had called me.
“Is that her?”
“Yes, you recognized her immediately.”
A slender woman with a hood pulled low, making her face nearly invisible, was on the phone in the distance.
“The traced phone belongs to a completely different person. The original owner is a college student who realized their smartphone was missing while commuting on the subway. The investigation shows they’re clean.”
After finishing the call to me on the stolen phone, Smile disappeared into the station.
The way she casually tossed the phone into a trash can looked like a scene from a movie.
Standing behind Oh Eun-yul, I watched the video while kneading her shoulders.
Whoa—she’s stiff.
How many days has she been stuck inside for her muscles to be this knotted?
Oh Eun-yul flinched at my touch but continued her briefing.
“There was no… ngh… information found on the smartphone.”
“How did she bypass the security?”
“If you rewind and look at when she first appears, the screen is already on. She likely unlocked it the moment she stole it or peeked at the password from nearby.”
For an Awakened, peeking at a password or pattern being entered is easy.
“This is all the information I’ve gathered so far. It wasn’t much help… hnnng… was it… ah…”
At her suggestive moans, her colleagues’ heads turned silently.
I continued to massage her shoulders, which were now softening as the tension released.
“Not much help? This is a great first step.”
Just being able to identify her build meant they could pick out similar figures from other footage, speeding up the investigation.
She deserved praise for analyzing the videos with such near-obsessive focus.
“Th-thank… you… haah…”
Oh Eun-yul, her body seemingly melting with relief, let out a ragged breath.
“Um… Hero Jeong Yeon-woo.”
“Ah, yes?”
“I also have something to show you…”
“Me too! I have something too!”
The detectives raised their hands like students asking questions and shouted.
It wasn’t particularly helpful information, but as I took turns massaging each of their shoulders, their faces turned languid, like puppies lying in the sun after a good meal.
They worked hard, so they deserved this much service.
Watching the happy detectives, I turned on the bugging device.
“Static—Da-ye? Static—”
As expected, since I had tucked it away in an inconspicuous spot, the reception wasn’t great.
I heard the mother’s voice calling for Seo Da-ye.
“Yes, Mom… shhhhh—I static, crackle—”
Seo Da-ye’s voice was almost inaudible.
“The reception can be bad depending on the situation.”
A detective comforted me, saying it wasn’t because I had installed it poorly.
Hmm… this isn’t just an excuse; there’s a problem here.
Even if the sound quality is poor, I can still hear the mother’s voice, but only Seo Da-ye’s voice is muffled.
It’s as if there’s some kind of interference around her.
Given the sound of a door, if I had to guess, the mother is near the door and Seo Da-ye is inside the room.
Wait?
“Has anyone entered the house since I left?”
“No, we haven’t received any reports.”
The detectives staking out Seo Hye-ri’s house said no one was there.
Then what? When I sensed the house, there were only Seo Hye-ri and her mother.
There was a housekeeper, but she had finished work before we arrived, and when I left, it was just the two of them.
The shed…?
The shed in the garden had its door firmly shut, so I couldn’t check inside with Presence Detection.
I’ll have to investigate that place too.
After the mother left, the room went quiet, so I switched channels to find her.
But she must have gone into the bedroom, as no sound came from the other bugs.
It was a shame I couldn’t install one in the bedroom because the door was in such a visible spot.
Anyway, the shed comes first.
It doesn’t look like much, but I’ll have to comb through it.
Smile lay on her bed, holding a tablet and watching a video.
She intentionally lay against the wall and turned the screen inward, preparing for any potential cameras.
Smile’s eyes narrowed as she stared at the screen.
She saw Jeong Yeon-woo enter a room and install something.
Turning her gaze to the spot where he had placed the device, Smile suppressed a laugh.
A year ago, Smile had been an ordinary student, but now she found the police and Heroes chasing her incredibly entertaining.
It was like a battle of wits or a chase scene between a criminal and a protagonist from a movie, and color seemed to be filling a world that had once looked like a black-and-white film.
The fear of being caught never crossed her mind.
Rather, she hoped that Jeong Yeon-woo, the Hero everyone loved, would keep chasing her.
Like a male lead wooing and obsessing over an unremarkable woman.
In romance movies, it was usually the opposite, but lately, "man-crush" style movies where a man actively pursues an ordinary woman were gaining popularity.
The more she felt him chasing her, the more her heart raced.
Smile.
Even now, she thought it was a childish name.
But when she first discovered a dungeon and succeeded in creating drugs from the materials she had struggled to gather, she couldn't stop laughing.
She thought of crime movies about drug lords and felt a thrill through her entire body, imagining herself as the protagonist.
She couldn't even remember the last time she had laughed in this miserable world.
That’s why she chose the name Smile.
The name of the drug, and her name as a villain? She wasn't sure if she should be called a villain, but she wanted to make "Smile" a symbol.
Smile.
Smile would bring laughter to the people of the world, and she would make herself laugh.
But that damn bitch who had cast her into the depths of hell would never laugh.
Even if everyone else in the world laughed, that girl never would.
As in most crime movies, Smile expected that she would eventually meet a gruesome end.
But not now.
Ruin is the ending; it shouldn't happen in the middle.
Her scenario had only just begun its intro.
“Kikikik…”
Thinking of the highlight of her scenario, Smile laughed under her breath.