chapter 19

“You little bastard! Do you know who I am? I’m a detective! Detective! I’ll make sure I put you away! You bastard! Know you’ll be rotting in jail for at least 100 years!”

“Please calm down and take a seat. Causing a scene like this will not change anything.”

“The same goes for all you guys! If you guys are the police, shouldn’t you be policing gangsters like this and locking them away! Huh! I remember all your names! You know I ate with your boss! And even went to a sauna with him! I did it all! You bastards!!!”

The middle aged man held onto the collar of the young officer trying to calm him down and yelled into his ear. In an instant, this one man show had caught the attention of every officer in the station. Lieutenant Lee, who had been patiently watching all this unfold, couldn’t take it anymore and put the man in handcuffs.

Clack!

“What, what are you doing! I demand you uncuff me this instant!”

“It is against the law to cause a commotion within a police station. If you do not wish to be locked up…then shut your mouth and sit down.”

The last phrase was barely audible to anyone else. Hansol’s father’s face immediately became bright red.

“How dare this shit talk to me like that!”

Temper tempter. No matter how powerless our Korean officers may be, attacking them so obviously was a bit too much. Shouldn’t he know better than that if he was a detective?

In the end, Lieutenant Lee and some other officers took him into a holding cell.

“Ha…there is always one person like that no matter where you go.”

Sooah said.

“It’s not like it’s the first time we’ve see this. So.”

“Are you mad, SunbehOppa? You almost got hit. He even cursed at you and called you a gangster.”

“Does it make you mad?”

“A little.”

“With more experience, that’ll change.”

“I guess.”

She nodded her head. When you live a porter’s life, you hear all sorts of things. It’s almost so bad at first that you can’t sleep. But soon it becomes an everyday thing and you get used to it..and then you eventually forget how to even get mad at some point.

I looked at Lieutenant Lee and said.

“But are you ok? If he’s a real detective, it’ll be a big headache.”

“He’s not a detective so don’t worry. And it isn’t even the first time Lee Hansol got into trouble with the law.”

“Is he a well known troublemaker?”

When Sooah asked, Lieutenant Lee let out a short sigh.

“In the neighborhood, yes. There were a few incidences of attacks on other people but it seems his dad has some money so the cases always got squashed or he silenced them somehow. He supposedly owns a three story commercial building. Oh yes. You said you were a hunter?”

“Yes.”

“So there isn’t any proof of you having used or being armed with a weapon at the scene, I don’t see one on you so I can say you probably didn’t have any hunter grade equipment on you at the time either…did you use a skill by any chance? If proof comes out that a hunter had used a skill against a civilian, it could get really ugly.”

“No. I don’t have a skill.”

There was no point in trying to lie to an officer about not having a skill. This is because in every station, there is at least one person who is able to check a person’s skill.

But there was a reason why I risked telling this lie.

“We’ll know after we check. Wait here just a moment.”

Lieutenant Lee said this and left his seat.

A few moments later, Lieutenant Lee returned with a woman wearing a blue police jacket. Long hair in uniform. Isn’t that a violation of uniform regulations?

“This is Lieutenant Sohn Aram. Say hello.”

“I am Jeon Sangmin.”

“Mapo Police Department Special Response Team Inspector Analyst Lieutenant Sohn Aram. I would like your cooperation in checking for any skills.”

“But do we have to do this?”

When Sooah asked, Inspector Sohn Aram responded.

“In serious cases such as this, we must be thorough in establishing his self-defense claim. We must be able to conclude that Mr. Jeon could not resolve the situation without defending himself – and to that end, we need to confirm that the amount of force used was also justifiable. It has helped your case because of the fact that they had used weapons and outnumbered you by so many. And because the power level of a civilian and hunter is so disparate, whether or not you used hunter grade equipment or skills becomes a very important point as well.

“But…”

Sooah looked at the officers for a moment before whispering into my ear.

“What are you going to do if they find out about your skill?”

Instead of answering her, I just shrugged my shoulders. Lieutenant Sohn Aram cleared her throat twice before saying.

“Remain still just like that.”

She grabbed my hand and closed her right eye. The skill for finding out another person’s skill is called ‘harmonizing’, and if you held onto a person’s hand like this then you were able to check for their skill as if it were your own.

The problem was, my skill only shows up in the left eye.

“Hmm..”

A moment later, she let go of my hands and turned to Lieutenant Lee and said, “He does not have a skill.”

“So it is true.”

“Yes.”

Of course I definitely had my level 0 skill. They just didn’t know it.

Strength, endurance, reflex…I had pretty much raised them at least about 50 percent. They were just unable to identify it. If she had closed her left eye, I would have surely been caught but who would ever think to do that?

It even took me, the owner of the skill, several days to figure that out.

“To win against 10 people without a skill or equipment. Whew. And you don’t even look like you would be any good in a fight. No offense.”

Lieutenant Lee stared at me with narrowed eyes for a minute. I casually accepted the gaze and stared right back at him. Lying and acting was a passive skill to a porter, it came very naturally with experience.

We were finally able the leave the station after the sun had already set. As I left through the doors, I turned around to look at the station. I saw Lieutenant Sohn Aram walking by beyond the doors.

“What happened? What does it mean that you don’t have a skill? Weren’t you training to raise your skill level?”

“I just happened to not get caught by the harmonizing skill.”

She stared at me as if she didn’t believe a word of what I was saying. She was probably thinking there was no way that I had a skill that couldn’t be detected by the harmonizing skill.

“Just tell me the truth. Do you have a skill or not?”

“Why the heck would I lie to you?”

“So that you could have an excuse to meet me…”

“I’m leaving.”

“Come on.”

***

As soon as I got home, I decided I should organize my thoughts and findings on my skill. I sat down at my desk.

Flip.

I opened a notebook to an empty page and I wrote down the bullet points of the effort skill that I uncovered so far.

These four were the essential points. Under that I wrote out the different level ups I was able to do.

[Increase strength: 50%]

[Increase endurance: 50%]

[Increase reflexes: 50%?]

I was able to pretty much figure out the increase in strength and endurance using weights and timing myself, but finding out just how fast my reflexes were now was hard to really measure. But I just put down 50% for now since strength and endurance went up by the same percentage.

I closed my left eye and confirmed my stats. [0,3,350] It looks like every time I upgrade an ability, my proficiency goes up one as well. That means I can do this at least 97 more times.