Inside a café with “Duchil’s Beans” written on it. When Park Eun-young and Kang Jin-ho arrived, a huge Black police officer was standing there, stroking his chin as if troubled. It was Raphael, the chief of East 7 Police Box whom they had seen earlier.
“Chief?”
Officer Park Eun-young stepped forward and addressed him.
“Oh, you’re here? The rookie’s here too. Rough first day, huh.”
“Is this person the owner?”
“Yeah. I was just listening to her story, and it’s a real troublesome case. Doesn’t look like there’s much we can do.”
Behind Chief Raphael stood a middle-aged woman in an apron, trembling anxiously. Judging by her clothes and expression, there was no doubt she was the owner.
“But what do you mean, there doesn’t seem to be much we can do…?”
“Because it’s almost certainly a superpower crime. I just got here myself and was in the middle of the briefing. Want to hear it together? Go ahead, Corporal Kim.”
“Yes, Chief.”
At Chief Raphael’s signal, Corporal Kim, who had been the first to arrive, slowly began explaining.
**
Last night, the café’s entire counter disappeared. The cash inside the register amounted to exactly 987,000 won.
“Hold on. I thought cafés these days mostly take card payments, so they don’t keep much cash at the counter?”
“We only accept cash payments…”
“…Ah, I see.”
With Chief Raphael’s awkward cough, Corporal Kim continued the briefing.
“First of all, the CCTV inside the shop has been broken for three weeks, so we couldn’t confirm the situation at the time of the crime.”
“What about outside? You checked the cameras facing the main street at the front entrance and the alley by the back door, right?”
“Yes, we obtained and thoroughly checked the external CCTV footage as well, but… after the shop closed yesterday afternoon, only one person went in or out through either the front or back door.”
“One person?”
The café owner answered in a trembling voice.
“I, um, remembered that I’d left something at the shop… so I stopped by around seven in the evening, just for a moment. The register was still there at that point… But when I came in this morning, the whole counter had vanished without a trace…”
“Hmm…”
Chief Raphael stroked his chin and organized the information.
Between seven yesterday evening and this morning. No one had entered the shop, yet the register inside had disappeared. In other words, a perfect locked-room theft.
By ordinary common sense, it would be enough to make one think a ghost had done it, but this was none other than Light City. A neighborhood where no kind of superpower would be strange.
“An invisible person… probably not.”
“Yes. If that were the case, we would have seen the door open and close.”
“A spatial transfer ability user… It’s possible, but it doesn’t make sense.”
Spatial transfer ability users were among the rarest and most powerful ability users. Someone like that robbing a café like this just to make a measly million won? That, too, made no sense.
This was the problem with superpower crimes. There were truly countless superpowers that made a crime possible one way or another, but there was practically no way to identify them without using another superpower.
“Ma’am. I’ll speak frankly.”
Having gathered his thoughts, Chief Raphael spoke to the café owner, whose face had darkened.
“If we submit this case to an information-type Hero, we could probably catch the culprit.”
“B-but aren’t those people already swamped with work?”
“They are. In this case, the amount of damage isn’t that large, and there were no casualties, so it probably won’t attract much attention. The chances of them accepting the request are low. We’ll do everything we can, but catching the culprit will probably…”
“Um, Chief? Could I speak to you over here for a moment?”
At that moment, Officer Park Eun-young, who had been listening with interest, cut in.
“Hm? Officer Park? What is it?”
“Well, you see.”
After confirming that they were far enough away from the café owner, Park Eun-young spoke in a cold voice.
“Doesn’t this look highly likely to be staged?”
“Staged?”
“Yes. The case is too convenient.”
Park Eun-young listed the strange points of the case one by one.
“The internal CCTV just happens to be broken, and then, by sheer coincidence, a superpower user steals just about one million won, which can’t really be called a large sum… It feels like too extraordinary a coincidence. It’s too ambiguous to call in a Hero, and too ambiguous for the police to investigate properly.”
“…Couldn’t someone who knows the café’s circumstances well have stolen it? I do admit the case is oddly convenient.”
“And wouldn’t the person who knows the café best be the owner? If she has crime insurance, there seems to be a high possibility that she’s staging this.”
“Hmm…”
Chief Raphael tilted his head to the side, but continued asking questions.
“It’s not impossible, but… assuming that’s true, would the café owner be able to hide the register? If she took it outside, it would have been caught on CCTV, and Corporal Kim would have mentioned it.”
“Yes. The café owner was definitely empty-handed.”
“She could have hidden the register somewhere inside the café. Or she could have smashed it into small pieces and carried it out inside her clothes. The part I understand least is that the entire register disappeared. What thief in the world takes the whole register? It would be far less likely to get caught and far more efficient to take only the cash. Even a spatial transfer ability user wouldn’t take the entire register, would they?”
“Mm.”
Chief Raphael found himself nodding before he realized it. Officer Park Eun-young’s reasoning was persuasive. Compared to the claim that some bored teleporter had suddenly popped out of nowhere to steal pocket change, the idea that it was a staged act by the café owner sounded far more plausible.
But just because it sounded plausible did not mean they were in a position to do anything right away.
“I admit Officer Park’s opinion sounds plausible. But I don’t think the evidence is clear enough for us to arrest her on the spot. You understand that too, right, Officer Park?”
“…Yes, of course.”
“Then let’s leave speculation at that. Let’s do what we have to do first. Finish taking photos of the scene, wrap up our interview with the owner, return to the station, and file the report. Headquarters can handle that kind of detailed investigation. Let’s just do our job.”
“…”
Despite Chief Raphael’s realistic instructions, Officer Park Eun-young lowered her head with a rather unsatisfied expression. No one saw it properly, but for some reason, her shadow seemed to writhe ever so subtly.
“Th-that!”
“Hm? Rookie? What’s wrong?”
Kang Jin-ho, who had been watching all this, ended up springing forward without realizing it. It looked as though Park Eun-young’s shadow was about to cut off the officers’ heads at any moment, so he had stepped in first, but once he had, he found himself at a loss for words.
“What’s wrong? Do you have something to say? Does something look different to our genius rookie?”
Park Eun-young asked with sparkling eyes. Kang Jin-ho, struggling to avoid that gaze, soon made up his mind.
‘Fine. Since I’ve already blurted it out, I’ll do this properly. If I’m going, I’ll go all the way. It’s already too late to stop.’
Having steeled himself, Kang Jin-ho spoke in a calm, serious voice.
“I’m hungry, so… would it be all right if I packed up some cake from here?”
“…Huh?”
Park Eun-young was flustered by the unexpected words. Chief Raphael waved his hand as if to say he could.
“Uh, yeah. That’s fine. Ma’am, could you pack up a slice of cake?”
“R-right now? Yes, well…”
The café owner opened the display case with a reluctant air.
“Not that one. Please give me that squashed one in the corner over there.”
“Ah, this one? I was going to throw it out because it looks odd…”
“You must be feeling awful, so I should at least buy something like that. Hehe.”
“Then I’ll give you a small discount. It’s six thousand won.”
“You only take cash, right?”
“Yes, bank transfers are fine too.”
“…”
At the sight of him leisurely buying cake in the middle of an investigation, killing intent appeared in Park Eun-young’s eyes. Kang Jin-ho met those eyes for a moment and nearly pissed himself, but he barely managed to maintain a calm attitude.
‘I am a genius. I am a genius. I am a fucking outstanding genius.’
Because in order to leave a deep impression on Park Eun-young, this relaxed attitude right now was important.
**
On the way back to the police box. Officer Park Eun-young did not say a word.
“…”
She merely glanced at Kang Jin-ho from time to time and looked him up and down, clearly pondering what method she should use to “make him quit.”
After enduring that time of discomfort as if sitting on a bed of nails, the two patrol cars returned to the police box.
“All right, everyone, let’s write the report first. It’s a superpower crime anyway, so focus on the facts as much as possible. Only what we saw and the information we know for certain. Everyone got that?”
“Yes, Chief.”
“And rookie, sit next to Officer Park and watch her write the report. I’m saying you should just get a rough feel for how it’s done. Oh, and you said you were hungry, right? Hurry up and eat your cake.”
“About that cake, sir.”
Kang Jin-ho rummaged inside his coat, took out the packaged cake, and placed it on the table where everyone could see it clearly.
“Now then, please confess.”
“?”
The officers who were taking off their outerwear all looked at Kang Jin-ho at once. They had just returned to the police box, so they wondered what on earth he was suddenly talking about.
“R-rookie? What are you saying out of nowhere?”
“Ah, I was speaking to the culprit. Now that they’ve come all the way here, they can’t run away, can they?”
“?”
Clear question marks appeared in everyone’s eyes. What? The culprit? He’d brought them all the way here? When?
At that, Kang Jin-ho pointed to the cake he had brought back and said calmly,
“This cake is the culprit that stole the register.”
“…”
A moment of silence.
“Interesting.”
The instant Park Eun-young’s eyes sparkled, Chief Raphael exchanged glances with the other officers.
“I heard that wrong, didn’t I? What did you say?”
What was this rookie, who had only joined today, saying now?