I Became a Police Officer in a Superhero Genre

The sudden encounter between a superhero and a villain. It was a monumental scene.

The two who met by chance in a police hospital room didn’t recognize each other because they were hiding their identities, simply perceiving each other as one of the passersby, but

was this chance meeting like this the original fate of this world? I blankly watched the red and blue eyes blinking towards each other intersect,
and if I were to describe the impression of a third party witnessing the first meeting of the protagonist and arch-enemy in a superhero genre, it would be like this:

Wow! The world’s only innate superpower users have met! And right in front of me! Fuck, I want to run away!

In movies or comics, there are always people watching when heroes and villains fight, and in reality, there are always people filming with their phones at crime scenes, but.

When I get caught up in a similar incident, I wonder what’s wrong with those bastards who do such antics when they’re likely to get screwed too,
and I want to ask the gods in heaven what I did wrong to be lying here unable to escape when I could get involved.

Along with a sense of disillusionment about life, an absurd delusion raises its head, wondering what if these two recognize each other and try to kill each other, but ignoring me, those two continued their conversation as they pleased.

“Oh, Detective. Who is this?”

“I’m Sai. I’m Detective Lee Mun-su’s junior partner. You are – a family member?”

“No. I’m Mina. I’m a… younger acquaintance, should I say? Who’s close to the detective. I heard from someone I know that Detective Mun-su was hospitalized, so I came.”

“I see. Then… I should give you space. Have a good talk! I’ll see you later, Deputy Chief!”

After that, Sai left the room without another word. Just as I was feeling relieved that it ended so lightly and quietly, unlike what you’d expect from the first encounter between the protagonist and final boss,

Mina briefly looked at the door Sai had left through, then suddenly approached me and asked with a displeased face, whispering in my ear.

“Was that person just now a female officer? I don’t recognize her?”

“No. He’s a man. A friend who recently transferred in.”

Originally female, but currently literally in a male body, so he is a man. It gets complicated if we start talking about mental gender and such, but for now, he’s a man. Probably.

As I answered while having such idle thoughts, Mina was furrowing her brow as if something didn’t sit right with her.

Is it a hero’s instinct? Or did she notice another superpower user besides herself? Her brow remained furrowed as if in deep contemplation.

Seeing that, I started to feel chills down my spine, so I changed the subject and asked.

“… By the way, who told you I was hospitalized?”

“Uh- One of the detectives.”

“Who?”

“The one with the… scar?”

Is there anyone in the Special Investigation Team without scars? As far as I know, there’s no one except Sai. I have a large scar next to my ear right now too.

Judging by that reaction, it seems this kid found out I was injured by tapping into the police radio. Looking at Mina avoiding eye contact and trailing off, there’s no evidence, but my gut feeling is certain.

The hero New Hope tapping into police radio and checking radio contents even on her day off is something that appeared in the novel too – and she’s been caught by me directly before.

Fortunately, she was caught while being Mina, not New Hope, so I just warned her not to do it,

but it was really absurd that someone who claims to hide their identity was boldly tapping into police radio with their own phone.

More than that, I wondered how it was possible to tap with just a phone even in today’s advanced world, but thinking about it, if tow truck drivers can tap into it, it’s not strange for a high school girl to do it too.

“Take it easy.”

“Hehe…”

Mina scratched the back of her head sheepishly at my words. I took the Bacchus bottle she handed me and pulled my legs back to let her sit beside me.

Then I felt pain in my back. The bruising they mentioned hurt so much that tears almost welled up, making me wonder if there wasn’t a problem with the bone.

I wanted to hit the suspect once for hitting my back of all places, but I realized it was meaningless since he was already finished, eternally sleeping somewhere without people, be it a reservoir or deep in the mountains.

“… Detective. That criminal will definitely be caught.”

As I was thinking this, Mina muttered briefly, and in her eyes was an inexplicable determination.

Did she feel a sense of responsibility as a hero because someone she knew quite well got hurt? Or maybe she’s harboring pure revenge.

I know you have power, but being pitied by a kid like you is a bit…

I wanted to say something like a complaint, but if I speak carelessly, it might reveal that I know her identity. So I need to be careful with my words. I shrugged my shoulders and said.

“We have to catch him.”

Though he’s probably already dead.

I thought this as I waved my hand leisurely. After that, I spent time chatting with Mina about today’s weather and other small talk. Not long after, Mina left, telling me to take good care of myself.

The hospital room after Mina left. The room was noisy with other patients’ families and acquaintances coming and going, but it wasn’t a big problem for resting.

Now that my wallet has some leeway thanks to the gracious leader’s help, I calculated in my head how long I could rest while lying in bed.

The performance is poor, but my brain, which runs better than a supercomputer only when it comes to malingering, first recalled the injuries I’ve seen so far and their corresponding treatment periods.

An injury with a crack in the pelvic bone, so at least 1 week? Assuming it’s an injury that takes about 1 month. Considering the time it takes for the bone to fully heal – anyway, I should be able to rest well.

Still, given the lack of money, I’ll need to be discharged quickly, but I should be able to rest for a few days. After finishing this calculation, I slowly closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

When I opened my eyes again, the sun had risen the next day. Did I sleep all day? I didn’t think much of it since I was planning to rest for a few days anyway, but that was only for a moment.

“Good heavens. Are you perhaps a superpower user? Yesterday, there was clearly a crack in your pelvic bone, but… it’s healed in just one day? Even the wound on your head has healed quite a bit. This is really strange. The test results showed you weren’t a superpower user though.”

“?”

After taking another X-ray for examination, the doctor spoke while looking at me as if I were a strange person.

The doctor continued explaining using some medical terms, saying that normally the pelvic bone doesn’t heal this quickly, but it didn’t register in my ears.

In a situation where I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad about the miracle of my body healing in a day. While I was unable to understand what was going on, as I had always been sturdy but not to this extent,

The leader suddenly called me out, saying it was an emergency situation.

For a person who gave me money yesterday and told me to rest well to change his words, it must be quite an incident. With a sense of foreboding, I asked what kind of incident had occurred, and this is what the leader said:

“Some crazy bastard has gone into Seoul City Hall and is staging a hostage situation. Even the mayor is being held hostage. He says he’ll kill them if they don’t confess to some corruption. This is insane! Fuck.”

A suddenly appeared supervillain. News of an insane incident where a goblin appeared and is holding the mayor of Seoul hostage at City Hall.

For a moment, my mind went blank at this absurd news, but I belatedly recalled that this was an episode that appeared in the novel too.

It’s a major episode that made people mistake Sai for a police officer who typically helps the protagonist when he first appeared, working together with the protagonist.

When I read it in the novel, I thought it was quite funny that someone would infiltrate City Hall and stage a kidnapping in South Korea, but.

Now that I’m stuck in a world where such impossible events occur, there was only one thing I could say.

“Is there any surgery where they break your legs at the hospital?”

“They don’t do that.”

Why don’t they do it? It would be nice if they did.

Different place, different time.

As summer fades and the weather becomes cooler, the sky is clear without a single cloud. The young man looking at the sky thought it was an amazingly good weather day.

This young man, working as a police officer on duty at Seoul City Hall, was grateful that there wasn’t much time left until the end of his shift, and prayed that nothing would happen until the very end.

Originally, mentioning such things usually leads to incidents happening, so that wish didn’t leave his mouth, but did the sky read his thoughts while looking at the young man?

The young man doubted his eyes for a moment when he saw a strangely dressed person boldly entering the City Hall entrance.

Anyone would have the same reaction as the young man, seeing a strange person appear at the City Hall entrance wearing white hemp clothes and what’s commonly called a dokkaebi (goblin) mask.

The young man rubbed his eyes and then carefully examined the suddenly appeared eccentric. Height around 180cm. Holding something like a danso (short bamboo flute) in his hand,

wearing straw shoes, he walked gracefully, looking ridiculous as if he had just stepped out of the Korean Folk Village, and after examining this eccentric carefully, the young man unconsciously blurted out a question.

“What is that?”

The young man squinted his eyes as the person with the strange appearance appeared.

Given the nature of City Hall, where many strange people easily enter and cause disturbances, this young police officer naturally had to be wary when he saw a strange person.

As the young man prepared to request backup and observed the appeared eccentric, the strange hemp-clothed young man who entered City Hall didn’t do anything particularly strange after entering the hall.

All he did was wave to children passing by or lightly dance with his shoulders while holding the danso.

And children passing by were drawn to this mysterious sight, gathering around the hemp-clothed man and laughing.

“Eolssu!”

“”Eolssu!””

Is he not a malicious complainant but just someone who came to play? But why hemp clothes and a danso of all things? The young man was scratching his head with the tip of his radio antenna at the sight of this eccentric,

when the young man’s mentor, a middle-aged man, walked over to the young man’s side. Furrowing his characteristically thick eyebrows, he muttered.

“Come to think of it, there was an uproar on the internet about some Japanese police experience or something in Seoul City. Looks like a bastard who came to get attention for that.”

“Is it Gaksi-tal (Bride Mask)?”

So it was an internet attention seeker. The young man exhaled sharply through his nose and slowly walked to escort the Gaksi-tal that had appeared in City Hall out.

Now that the weather’s getting cooler, crazy people are wandering outside. Thinking this, the young man slowly approached to escort the hemp-clothed man out.

“Eolssu! Those who eat the country’s salary deceive the eyes of the common people and wag their three-inch tongues to spout hypocrisy! Even the mountain goblin was so appalled that he came here!”

The strange man began singing a peculiar song that was similar to but different from Arirang from inside his mask.

His appearance of singing enthusiastically, lost in the excitement, without caring whether the police were approaching or whether there were children around, made one suspect he might be drunk.

The young man bit his lip. Talking about hypocrisy and such, is he referring to the recent allegations of corruption by the mayor mentioned in tabloid news?

The young man thought he couldn’t just leave it as the voice was getting louder.

“You’ve really nailed the concept. Ah, sir with the mask. You can’t do that here. If you want to do it, rather go over there-”

The moment he reached out his hand to escort the man out as amicably as possible, the young man felt a chill enveloping his body that made him shudder.

Did they lower the air conditioning temperature? No, that can’t be it. Unless there’s a malfunction, the air conditioning temperature in City Hall is fixed and doesn’t go down.

Then what is this cold? The young man felt his breath catch. An illusion as if his body had frozen from the extreme cold.

… No, it’s not an illusion. Really, his body won’t move. As if invisible threads had bound his entire body, he couldn’t move even a finger. What is this?

“Listen! There is an official who ignores his duty to bear and only fills his own greed! I won’t tell you to be an incorruptible official in this harsh world, but I simply can’t stand the sight of him smiling while pinning his own crimes on innocent people!”

The man in the goblin mask shouts while cackling. At the same time, the young man’s eyes caught sight of black things, whether human hands or tree branches, crawling up from the floor on the windows and doors of the City Hall building.

Those black things tangled together and became a huge dome-like shape, blocking all entrances to this building. The interior where light doesn’t penetrate.

All windows and doors visible to the young man were blocked. A sudden abnormal situation.

The young man realized that the current situation was an emergency and tried to urgently request backup through his radio, but his body still wouldn’t move.

Rolling only his eyes that could barely move to look around, it seemed other colleagues were in the same state as the young man, unable to move.

A bright red light flickered in the eye part of the goblin mask worn by the eccentric.

Unlike the police officers, ordinary citizens seemed to be able to move freely, but they too were bewildered by this situation and could do nothing but scream.

City Hall plunged into chaos. But even in the midst of this, the man in the goblin mask, out of place with his surroundings, danced excitedly while waving his danso as if a ruffian wielding a sword, and shouted.

“Listen, you corrupt officials! I, the goblin, have come! Either reveal your crimes, or die!”