The next morning.
—Slurp.
Kang Jinho, Park Eunyoung, and Trace were eating ramen in a dingy underground PC room.
“Jinho, let’s swap ramens. I want to eat jjajang ramen too.”
“That’s why I told you to order jjajang ramen from the start…”
“…You don’t want to trade?”
“Not at all! Honestly, I wanted the soup-based ramen too!”
“Right?”
Kang Jinho frantically swapped their ramen bowls. Trace, who had been watching the farce with her arms crossed, let out a deep sigh.
“Excuse me, Officer Kang Jinho? Why did you tell us to come to a PC room?”
“Ah, didn’t I tell you via text? I had to contact some gangsters, so I came to a PC room.”
“Did we really need to come all the way to a PC room like this? I could send it without a trace using my personal equipment.”
“That’s too clean. Sometimes a suitably analog detour works better.”
Muttering about a lesson learned from ‘Hissishi,’ Kang Jinho opened an illegal messenger program.
“Uh, how do I do this here…?”
In the game, he could perform the related operations with a few clicks, but since this was his first time using it in reality, he fumbled a bit, but—
“Ah, you just press this and this.”
“…Thank you.”
Thanks to his senior, Park Eunyoung, who suspiciously knew the controls very well, they finished the setup without much trouble.
“Alright, then I’ll send the message. Shall we wait for a reply?”
After tapping out and sending the message, Kang Jinho slurped down the broth ramen Park Eunyoung had given him.
“Excuse me, Officer Kang Jinho?”
At that moment, Trace, who had been staring intently at the messenger, furrowed her brow.
“The contents of the message you sent, and… the photo you attached here. About this.”
“Yes. That’s a screenshot of the request ‘Clayboy’ received. You can see the content asking them to make a fake doll with a snake tattoo, right?”
“W-well, I can see it… but the recipient is the Black Snake Gang’s action captain?”
Truthfully, Trace didn’t quite understand.
The message Kang Jinho had sent was a brief summary explaining that the Black Snake Gang would soon rob a jewelry store.
But what was the point of sending the Black Snake Gang a message saying they were going to rob a jewelry store? They weren’t the type to listen to threats, and it would only breed resentment.
“It’s not the Black Snake Gang.”
“Huh?”
“The ones trying to commit the robbery in the first place aren’t the Black Snake Gang.”
Kang Jinho explained nonchalantly while eating his ramen.
—Ding.
Just then, a messenger notification rang, as if a reply had arrived.
[Who the fuck are you, you son of a bitch?]
The Black Snake Gang’s action captain was clearly furious, cursing right from the start. But Kang Jinho leisurely bit into a piece of pickled radish and tapped the keyboard.
[The Axe Gang is planning to raid a jewelry store soon while pretending to be the Black Snake Gang. The raid is intended to fail, and the Black Snake Gang will be wiped out by the Hero Association.]
“From the start, it doesn’t make sense for an organization of the Black Snake Gang’s size to hit a jewelry store.”
“Why? Couldn’t they at least try?”
When Park Eunyoung retorted, Kang Jinho answered without taking his eyes off the monitor.
“In Light City, where villains run rampant, jewelry stores are guarded almost as tightly as banks. The Hero Association leaves the Black Snake Gang alone because they aren’t that big of a threat, but for an organization of that scale, the risk of breaking into a jewelry store is too high.”
“Ah, I suppose that makes sense.”
—Ding.
[Quit spewing shit, you dumbfuck. You expect me to believe that?]
The action captain’s reply was laced with suspicion. Kang Jinho sent a reply saying, [Check the newest recruit. He’s a plant from the Axe Gang,] and continued speaking.
“Moreover, the alibi fabrication is too crude. Do they think they can fool an information-type hero’s eyes by casually propping up a clay doll in clear view of a CCTV camera? If you were to deploy, Trace, it would be exposed in an instant.”
“…Yes. The moment I used my ability, I would have realized it wasn’t a person but a fake doll.”
“That’s why I thought, from the beginning, this incident had no intention of actually robbing the jewelry store.”
“So you think it’s a false flag operation by the Axe Gang to eliminate their rival, the Black Snake Gang?”
“Yes. If they touch a jewelry store, heroes will come and crush the Black Snake Gang. They must have planned to cleanly remove the thorn in their side that was the Black Snake Gang.”
After closing the messenger program, Kang Jinho leisurely took a long sip of cola.
“The Axe Gang will cover their faces with masks at the raid site, but they’ll likely flash the fake snake tattoos on their forearms. It’s a ploy to make any information-type hero who arrives late mistake them for the Black Snake Gang.”
Though it was something that hadn’t even happened yet, Kang Jinho’s voice was full of conviction. Listening to his explanation, Trace felt chills run down her spine.
“Wait, those words… it sounds as if they acted with the assumption that I would be the one to deploy.”
“I thought the same thing. Haven’t you been active in this district recently, Trace?”
“…That’s humiliating. Did those criminal scum really think I’d fall for such nonsense? But there’s one thing I don’t understand. How did you know the Black Snake Gang’s new recruit was a spy?”
“If the Axe Gang is carrying out an operation, there’s no way they wouldn’t have planted a spy. Then the most recent recruit would be the spy. I called it.”
In truth, he had seen it in the game, but Kang Jinho spoke with confidence. Well, he really was a spy, so what could anyone do about it?
“Aha~”
Park Eunyoung pushed aside her empty ramen bowl, rested her chin on her hand, and grinned as she spoke.
“When you said at the station yesterday that we didn’t need to fight and could just confidently go arrest them, I wondered what you were talking about. So you had this ingenious method? You plan to make the Black Snake Gang and the Axe Gang fight, then arrest them all at once?”
“Yes. We just need to slip in when their strength is spent, so there’s no need to fight. And with you here, Trace, we can secure evidence of the robbery. Since we’d be arresting them while the two organizations are fighting, we can catch them red-handed and chalk up some results, can’t we?”
“…”
Trace stared blankly at Kang Jinho’s profile.
She was someone accustomed to being called a genius, which made this situation even harder to understand. She had thought the same when she first met Kang Jinho… but could this really be explained simply by ‘exceptional intuition’? Wasn’t this practically the realm of prophecy?
But after conducting a secret background check, she had confirmed that Kang Jinho really was powerless. The results of the examination from police school remained on record. That man had no superpowers whatsoever.
‘Even better.’
A true genius. A heaven-sent talent. In this city overrun with superpowers, such extraordinary intelligence was precisely the unpredictable weapon others couldn’t foresee. If she was with Kang Jinho, rising to become an S-Rank Hero wouldn’t be a dream.
A subtle flame flickered in Trace’s eyes.
“…”
Park Eunyoung noticed it too, but.
**
The Black Snake Gang’s hideout. Inside an office hidden within an old billiards hall.
“Hoo…”
The action captain glared at his phone screen with a grave expression.
[The Axe Gang is planning to raid a jewelry store soon while pretending to be the Black Snake Gang. The raid is intended to fail, and the Black Snake Gang will be wiped out by the Hero Association.]
[Check the newest recruit. He’s a plant from the Axe Gang.]
To be honest, he had thought it was nonsense. He figured some clueless bastard was messing around for fun. The message had even been sent from a PC room. There was absolutely no reason to trust the guy.
But the scenario written out was so specific, and if it really happened, it would be fatal to the organization. Like a piece of meat stuck between his teeth, the nagging doubt simply wouldn’t go away.
“So I was just, you know~ Really! I only intended to check just in case~”
The action captain stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. Then he slammed the back of the new recruit’s head, who was face-down on the floor.
“Aagh! Boss! It’s really a misunderstanding!”
“Misunderstanding? You bastard. I’m smoking a cigarette, and you use a lighter plastered with the Axe Gang logo to light it, and you call it a misunderstanding? The fuck do you guys use Axe Gang merchandise or something? Why’s the logo on the lighter?”
“W-well, this is trending among the MZ generation these days.”
“…Ha, fine. I’ll give you that. But why’s there a photo in your phone gallery with the Axe Gang’s boss?”
“That person is someone I personally respect…”
“What the hell is this crazy bastard saying! If you’re going to be a spy, at least show some professionalism!”
The action captain grabbed the back of his neck in disbelief. The Axe Gang was unbelievable for sending such a sloppy spy, and his own underlings were equally absurd for not noticing something was off while living with this guy.
He let out a rough sigh and shouted toward the door.
“Is anyone outside!”
“Yes, Boss!”
With a thunderous reply, men with severe buzz cuts poured into the office. Some of them seemed to have been eating jjajangmyeon, putting on solemn expressions with black bean sauce smeared around their mouths.
“Hey. You guys saw this lighter and didn’t think anything of it?”
“Isn’t that something trending with the MZ generation these days?”
“…Yeah, fuck. You guys just need to be good at fighting.”
“Huh? Why, Boss?”
“Shut up. Get the tools. And this bastard on the floor. Throw him in the trunk too.”
The action captain stuck a fresh cigarette between his lips and slung an iron pipe resting in the corner over his shoulder.
“I need to have a nice~ long chat with those Axe Gang sons of bitches.”