“Why, are you short on evidence?
You said it was an on-site arrest.”
At his question, Sejin’s face flushed red, and she hemmed and hawed.
“N-no, sir.
It’s not that we’re short on evidence.
It’s just…”
“Then why are you trying to drag Ms.
Cha into this?”
“It’s just, those bastards—I mean, those guys, you can tell at a glance they’ve got some massive connection covering their asses, so…”
Ha.
Seunghyun let out a disbelieving laugh.
Sejin flinched at the sound and ducked her head.
“I get that you want to squeeze more charges out of the gangsters you’ve already caught and pad your stats, but if you can’t do that, then focus on the charges you’ve already booked them on.
Make it airtight, so they can’t slip through.”
“Y-yes, but the Team Captain said we could use her whenever, and with Ms.
Cha’s ability, it’d be easy to identify the higher-ups…”
“Kwon Sejin.
Is Ms.
Cha the one conducting the investigation?
We are.
If we start using abilities on cases that don’t even require them, then what do they need us for?
What does the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency need Detective Kwon Sejin for?”
Sejin fell silent.
In his usual even tone, Seunghyun picked her apart point by point.
From her seat, Yeonsu could only roll her eyes.
“Not going to answer?
Am I wrong?”
“N-no, sir!”
Resentment colored Sejin’s reply.
From the desk across the way, Wonyoung clicked his tongue loudly.
“Tsk tsk, kids these days, always looking for the easy way out.”
“Go.
Investigate with your own efforts.”
Face burning bright red, Sejin retreated from Seunghyun’s desk.
He had already turned away countless detectives.
Lately, this had become one of his daily tasks.
Yeonsu’s ability was a kind of cheat code.
With it, they didn’t need confessions from criminals who refused to talk, and they could easily uncover any hidden crimes.
Since more than a few team members thought this way, they kept requesting Yeonsu’s help even on cases they were perfectly capable of handling on their own.
Seunghyun clicked his tongue, clearly displeased.
“Detective.”
Yeonsu called to him, her voice full of obvious dissatisfaction.
“I’m fine.
Didn’t you bring me here to be used?”
“Whether you’re fine is not the issue.
As I said, investigations are done by detectives.”
His reasoning was sound, but Yeonsu couldn’t just sit there and do nothing.
The only reason she was here at all was the condition that they would leave her uncle Seokjoong alone.
Yet for a full week, she had done absolutely nothing.
If they worked her to the bone, at least her conscience would be clear.
Then she could demand what was promised to her.
“At the very least, it should be a case we can’t resolve on our own.
Even if you don’t get impatient, there will be more than enough opportunities to use your ability.
Is it that hard to do nothing?”
His eyes flicked toward her, briefly sharpening.
“Still, this is just too…”
Spinning his chair around, he turned back to his paperwork.
“Besides, if you overuse your ability, I’m the one who has to deal with the aftermath.”
‘Oh.
So in the end, that was the problem?’
She glared daggers at the back of his head.
Tae Seunghyun was not a man of many words, yet every single thing he said provoked a reaction from her before she even realized it.
She had no idea why that irritated her so much.
“Stare all you want, you’re not going to burn a hole in the back of my head.”
Turning off his monitor, Seunghyun stood and grabbed his coat, then looked at her.
Startled, Yeonsu quickly averted her eyes.
Even so, he easily read the dissatisfaction in them.
“Get up.”
He had barely said anything, yet in that instant, color returned to her face.
Watching that quicksilver change, he rubbed at the corner of his mouth.
“Is there something I can do?”
“No.”
Her expression fell again, clearly not the answer she had wanted.
He could see the frustration in her eyes as she looked up at him, as if she couldn’t understand why he refused to use her.
Instead of being glad he wasn’t overworking her, she actually wanted to work.
‘What a ridiculous woman…’
From what Tae Seunghyun had observed, Cha Yeonsu was a woman starved for affection.
She had to know that her uncle had abandoned her, yet she still clung to the belief that he hadn’t, accepting every unfair condition laid down for his sake.
Because she was that kind of person, she was uncomfortable around the members of Team 1, yet whenever they showed her the smallest bit of consideration, a flush would bloom on her cheeks.
Seunghyun had seen countless people with harmless faces calmly commit crimes.
Yet when he watched someone like Cha Yeonsu, he felt his own suspicion thinning.
Sometimes he even caught himself thinking that he was the one in the wrong.
“You can’t keep wearing my clothes forever.
And there are some things you need to buy.”
He pointed at her outfit.
The baggy sweatshirt that hung off her small frame and the sweatpants cinched tight at the waist were all from his closet.
From behind a partition, Wonyoung poked his head out to chime in.
“Yeah, I was going to say the same thing.
Right now you look exactly like a kid wearing her dad’s clothes.
Go on, get out of here.
You don’t have anything to do here yet anyway.”
Only then did Yeonsu look down at herself.
The fit was a bit big, but it wasn’t unwearable.
She didn’t understand what the fuss was about.
“Then you can just go by yourself, Detective.
Or, I mean, you could order online…”
“If we order online, are you going to keep wearing my clothes until everything arrives?
And I don’t know women’s sizes.”
Left with nothing to say, she answered weakly.
“…Okay.”
He had thought she would be happy just to get some fresh air, but her reaction was disappointingly flat.
To the noticeably reluctant Yeonsu, he said, “It’s lunchtime anyway, so we can eat while we’re out.
Let’s go.”
Yeonsu felt strange.
It was her first time going to a mall specifically to shop, and her nerves had her shoulders locked up tight.
She hadn’t even used her ability, yet she felt mentally and physically exhausted.
“Detective.”
Staring in dismay at the shopping bags piled high in her arms, she called out to Seunghyun, who was walking ahead.
When she came back to her senses, they had somehow bought a mountain of things.
“This is too much.”
He answered without batting an eye.
“We only bought what you needed.”
There was no way a man living alone would have any women’s items at home.
That was why, despite his initial plan to buy only what she needed right away, they had ended up with far more than expected.
“I don’t need this many.
I can just wash and rewear…”
“Think of them as uniforms.”
This brute-force shopping spree was the inevitable result of their combined inexperience.
Seunghyun, having never picked out women’s clothes, tried to buy everything that caught Yeonsu’s eye.
Yeonsu, having never gone shopping for pleasure, was simply overwhelmed.
Together, they were the worst possible duo for the task.
“Same goes for underwear.
And why are there so many snacks…?”
“There are no snacks at my place.
Eat them whenever you feel like it.”
The bags were also stuffed with brightly colored snacks, as if they had swept the shelves.
Once inside his apartment, Yeonsu would hole up in her room and never once complain about being hungry.
Nor did she use the kitchen to make herself anything.
She simply ate whatever simple meals he managed to cook and set before her.
It wasn’t like she was staging some kind of protest.
Still, if he at least stocked some snacks, she couldn’t claim the police were starving her.
“Ah.
It’s still too much, though.”
“Is it because you don’t like them?
We can go back and exchange them.”
Startled by how ready he seemed to turn around and do just that, Yeonsu’s face flushed even redder.
“N-no.
That’s not it.”
“Then why do you look like that?”
Yeonsu was speechless.
“What is it you don’t like?
Say it clearly.
Otherwise, I won’t understand.”
Flustered, she rushed to answer.
“N-no, it’s not that, it’s just…”
“Just?”
He was not the kind of man who ever let anything slide with a “just.” Avoiding his steady gaze, she murmured in a small voice,
“It’s just…
this is my first time doing something like this, so I think I got a little…
excited.”
She added, her whole face blooming red.
“So how did you buy things before this?”
“Well, it was hard for me to come outside like this, so sometimes my uncle would buy what I needed, and mostly I ordered things online.”
“…I see.”
He felt an urge to press his hand to his forehead.
He didn’t know why this woman had so many firsts.
She had been the same way when she first stepped into his apartment.
She had stood there with her mouth hanging open, staring at the night view like someone seeing an amusement park for the first time.
Back at the mall, she had worn almost the same expression.
“So I just wasn’t sure if it was okay to buy this much.”