4. Three ways to kill your boss (1)
“Do you know what the three most effective ways to kill your boss are?”
In response to the question from the head of the violent crimes unit, Detective Park Jeong-pal rolled his eyes and then said.
“Wouldn’t it be best to put a bullet in his head, slit his throat with a knife, or burn him with your powers?”
Several other possible causes came to mind, such as death by falling, poisoning, or electrocution, but I decided not to say anything. The chief’s purpose in bringing up such a topic was to discredit me.
And the guess was correct. The manager flatly denied it.
“No. First, the method of messing up the work you’re told to do and making your boss’s blood pressure explode and kill him. Second, the method of not doing what you’re told and doing something random, causing an accident and getting your boss fired, and leading you to starve to death on the street.”
Jeong-pal had a feeling where this story was going. The chief continued talking without stopping.
“Third, the method of passing over your immediate supervisor and going straight to your supervisor’s supervisor to tell them everything, and then making the supervisor who was passed over tremble with betrayal and get cancer from the stress until he dies. That’s weird. Don’t you feel anything?”
It seems like an overly roundabout way rather than an efficient way. I decided to keep that muttering to myself.
“Why is it efficient? You can kill people and still avoid the law’s hammer! I’ve been thinking lately, but our detective Park Jeong-pal… I think our team leader is trying out those three methods in turns. Maybe he wants to put some perfume on my clothes?”
“Are you very angry?”
“Park Jeong-pal.”
“yes.”
“Even though there is a clear chain of command and reporting, why did you run to the chief instead of me and request a reorganization?”
Jeongpal neither mumbled nor avoided the section chief’s gaze.
“I told you several times, but you didn’t even pretend to listen.”
“You have to say something like that for them to listen!”
“Why is it so unreasonable to ask for a reduction in the number of vigilantes and an increase in the number of real police officers in the team? The areas that Team 4 is in charge of are too many bloody scenes. There are too many dangerous dispatches to mobilize vigilantes.”
“That’s your opinion!”
“If I speak my mind, whose mind is speaking?”
“Hey, Park Jeong-pal!”
The section chief shouted, then whispered softly, barely holding back his emotions. ‘Hold on. Hold on… I’ll stop another murder today.’
Hearing that, Park Jeong-pal muttered to himself. This is fucking ridiculous.
The manager said in an appealing tone, as if he had changed his tactics.
“To put it bluntly, most of those vigilantes are young heads of households. In the past, they were the ones who would have donated 100 won each over the phone. If you cut them all out of your team, what are they going to do?”
“I’m not talking about cutting them off. I’m talking about exchanging orders between the detectives in charge of a relatively less dangerous area and the vigilantes assigned to our team…”
Then the manager twisted his lips and said.
“Oh? That’s good. Then, it just has to match our mutual needs, right?”
“······.”
“If there’s a team leader who wants to trade with your team so badly, find him and bring him here! I’ll replace him right away!”
There was no way there could be such a team leader.
Even if there is a team leader who comes up with the crazy idea of giving up a detective in exchange for a vigilante, the detective who is the target of the trade will do whatever it takes to refuse the transfer.
Jeongpal thinks quietly. ‘If I were a human instead of an orc, things would have been a lot different, right?’
The 4th Violent Crimes Unit, led by Jeong Pal, the only orc team leader in the West, was openly avoided by the detectives. There was no way the headquarters would promote him, who would retire in five years, and working under him would be like holding on to a rotten rope.
The reason why the chief considered Jeong-pal a thorn in his side was because he was an orc. Many people had heard him make disparaging remarks about orcs several times while drinking.
“Eat a decent meal, stop talking nonsense, and take this.”
He tosses the case file to him. Jeong-pal instinctively senses that this attempt will also go down the drain and takes the document.
“What is it?”
“This is a case that was left to Team 2, but you guys should take over.”
Jeongpal frowned.
“This is a case of a missing person? We are short on manpower, so if you give us this much….”
Vigilantes are simply personnel mobilized when violent incidents occur, and such formal investigations should naturally be conducted by proper police officers.
“If the Violent Crimes Unit is in charge of the missing persons case, should I go out and direct traffic?”
Jeongpal asked, suppressing his anger.
“If you hand this over to us, what about Team 2?”
“They decided to attach this to the special edition of the Elf Serial Disappearance Case.”
Recently, public opinion has rapidly deteriorated due to the disappearance of several elves, and it seems that a special investigation headquarters has been quickly organized.
Jeongpal wondered. How many orcs go missing each day in the orc community, which is like a slum? Probably no one is counting them, and they can’t be counted.
The public reaction to elves and orcs was thus different.
“Stop talking nonsense and just stick to it and wrap it up nicely and finish it. If you don’t have enough kids, you can run around yourself!”
Even if he wasn’t told to do so, Jeongpal had no choice but to take charge himself. Right now, Team 4 was going back to full strength.
Jeong-pal returned to his seat, imagining himself shooting the chief with a gun, cutting his throat, and burning him with his powers.
***
Ye Min-jun opened the door to the second-floor office without a sign and entered, encountering a guest who had taken over the interior without an owner. She was lying on the sofa without even taking off her high heels, flipping through a newspaper.
The guest sensed the presence and folded the newspaper he was flipping through in half. His fresh eyes were revealed.
“Please change your cell phone.”
“Hey, Cathy? That’s yesterday’s paper.”
“I know. I was curious about what was in the paper newspapers these days, so I looked through them.”
Unlike Minjun, that woman is 100% Earthling and 50% Korean.
Cathy, full name Catherine Kang, grew up with an American father and a Korean mother and has lived in this country since she became an adult. Her appearance strongly shows her father’s bloodline, so she is often treated as a foreigner by strangers, and she often confuses them with her perfect Korean.
“If you have a smartphone, you won’t have to look for a paper newspaper, right? And do you know how annoying it is to call and send a separate text every time?”
Then he took out his cell phone and showed me the screen. The call app was open.
“Look, the second person I contact most often is Minjun! He even pushed my mom out!”
“Then who is number one?”
“······City card.”
Since the calls and texts were all counted together, the honor went to the credit card company. Cathy is a serious shopaholic and once she feels like it, she buys everything through arrogant means.
“Spend moderately and live frugally. If you don’t, you’ll end up a beggar.”
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“Isn’t your salary supposed to be used that much each month? You should spend it lavishly when you have it.”
Minjun belatedly discovered the box on the desk.
“What is this?”
“I picked it up here.”
When I opened it, there were piles of potatoes inside that had not even been cleaned of dirt. I asked because I was dumbfounded.
“How many potatoes did you buy?”
“It’s 10kg. I bought it because it was being sold cheaply online. I brought half of it.”
“Anyway, your hands are big and helpless. Why would a woman living alone buy that many potatoes? Are you going to farm?”
“I bought it to share with a man who lives alone. Minjun likes relief crops, right? Corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes. It’s the taste of people in the old days.”
Anyway, that woman always adds a footnote at the end. Minjun asks, grumbling to himself.
“Since you’ve come this far, it must be work-related, right?”
“of course.”
She said, taking documents out of her bag.
“I’ve still told the immigration office to hold it. I’m not sure if it’s a request that Minjun can accept.”
With her special abilities, Cathy assists Minjun, a field agent, and is in charge of getting work from the immigration office. She has already reached a certain level of ability to automatically reject assignments that he dislikes and quickly snatch away tasks that he welcomes, and Minjun is quite satisfied.
The fact that she hesitated like that means it was a really ambiguous case.
Minjun said while looking through the documents.
“Is this a missing person case?”
“Yes. President Jang Tae-jun of Hyosung Industrial. He is the CEO of a solid company with a market capitalization of about 300 billion won… He suddenly stopped coming to work last week. There is no trace of him.”
“The reason this came through immigration is···.”
“Yes. The immigration office suspects that CEO Jang Tae-jun is an alien who is staying on Earth without a residence permit.”
He scratched his head.
“If I had suddenly become homesick and quietly returned to my hometown, it would have been a happy ending, but···.”
“Even if he suddenly disappears and doesn’t return, we need evidence that he was an alien. As things stand, we can’t recover the stocks that President Jang Tae-jun owned from the national treasury.”
“Is there an heir?”
“There is not a single direct descendant or relative! Isn’t it suspicious? They say there is a will, but the immigration office hasn’t secured it yet.”
“Even if there is no blood connection, inheritance is possible, so you want to intercept it before that happens.”
Minjun thought for a moment. This kind of case is hit or miss. If it is certain that the alien who committed the crime is an alien, he will receive the talent, but if it is a normal human, the immigration office will only give a small reward.
“If they want to entrust me with a trivial case like a missing person’s case, that must mean the government is quite interested in those stocks, right?”
“Wouldn’t that be so?”
“Okay. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to take this opportunity to pay off some of the debt.”
Minjun stood up from his seat holding the file.
“Okay, I’ll go out for a bit. Be sure to lock the door before you go out.”
“Are you going to start work right away? I told you I’m a workaholic.”
There was no sign of burnout syndrome in Minjun’s appearance as he walked out the door like the wind.
***
The place Minjun headed to was a small store on the first floor of the same shopping mall.
‘Evergreen Bookstore.’
An employee was sweeping the floor in front of a narrow store measuring about 10 pyeong with an old sign hanging on it.
“Hello Dongcheol?”
“Hello···, master···.”
The goblin’s characteristically awkward accent. Minjun was taken aback by the content of the speech rather than the tone of it.
“Please stop calling me master. People will misunderstand! Call me hyung, or even better, call me agent! Boss is fine too!”
“The pronunciation… is so hard… hehe. The boss… is on the first floor… so it’s confusing. The first floor is… boss. The second floor is… owner.”
When his employer introduced Minjun to Dongcheol, he explained that he was the owner of this store, but in Goblin’s mind, the previous words seemed to have faded away and only the word owner remained strong.
“anyway.”
Tch. I click my tongue and enter the bookstore.
Inside, it was half grass and half books.
Minjun noticed something as he looked at the large and small flower pots lined up in a row.
“Kiya! You saved this? Amazing, amazing. An elf is truly an elf!”
What he was looking at was the potted cactus that Minjun had given to the bookstore owner a few weeks ago. He had found it stuck in a drawer in a condition that would have required intensive care if it were a human, and he had handed it over here, telling them to do something about it.
And surprisingly, the cactus that seemed beyond recovery had regained its vibrant appearance.
“Are you here?”
The old elf, who had been fixating his gaze on a thick book, raised his head. Then, as soon as he saw Minjun, he shouted at him.
“You, don’t ever buy a potted plant and grow it again! How much abuse must you have done to the child to make him look like that? How on earth did you do it to make the cactus dry up and die?”
“I didn’t buy it.”
It was something that Cash gave me as a gift, saying she had ‘found it somewhere’ at a time when I couldn’t even remember it well. She said the office environment was too bleak.
“Anyway, how many times has this happened?”
In fact, there were more than one or two flower pots that Minjun gave to Elf and Lakefield, the owners of the bookstore.
He changes the subject as he approaches.
“Is Dongcheol good at his work?”
Their gazes stopped at the entrance of the store at the same time.
Dongcheol’s brushing seemed more like rearranging and dispersing dust than cleaning.
The old man cleared his throat and said, “Hmm.”
“You’re working hard.”
I am the type of person who cannot lie even if I die, and I cannot bear to see other people’s faults.
Dong-cheol, a goblin, was lucky to have an employer like Lakefield. With a lower average intelligence than other races, they have a hard time finding proper jobs in modern society. Most of them wander around the labor market and are eventually destined to be sold to work on deep-sea fishing boats or as salt farm slaves after being scammed into contracts.
“What are you reading?”
“This is a new book by my favorite dwarf author. Should I lend it to you after I finish reading it?”
“Ugh. No, it’s okay.”
For Minjun, dwarven literature occupied a similar position to orc metal.
“The novels those guys write are all similar. They all have terrible setups, the plot drags on like crazy, and they all end up talking nonsense.”
“How can I help you?”
Lakefield noticed that Minjun was beating around the bush.
He smiled awkwardly and handed me the file.
“I have someone to look for. This is your specialty, sir.”
Lakefield nodded as he looked at the photos and addresses in the file.
“Okay, I’ll help you out with this much.”
“As a thank you, I’ll give you a discount on this month’s rent.”
“Okay, I have some shame too. I know full well that if I cut it any lower, it’ll be like a free lunch.”
After finishing speaking, Lakefield whispered into the air.
“Can you help me?”
It wasn’t something I said to Minjun or something I said to Dongcheol.
Although he couldn’t see anything, Minjun could tell that something was approaching.
A soft force gathers and vibrates the air quietly.
Whew!
Finally, it took on a form that even Minjun could see. The hazy light had gathered together to form a figure of an elf woman in unfamiliar clothing, scaled down to a 10:1 scale.
Lakefield is one of the best spirit masters Minjun knows. He was amazed at how quickly he summoned him this time.
“Boss, your skills are not fading, but rather improving with each passing day. What is your secret?”
“Concentration and practice.”
The neck of the elf, who had not missed a single day of practice for 900 years, had a clear vaccination mark. This indicated that Lakefield was a first-generation immigrant, a pure-blooded elf with no blood mixed in, and one of the first elves to set foot on Earth.
He looked at the spirit he had summoned with such loving eyes, muttered a few words, and pointed at the photo with his finger. Then the spirit burst into laughter and flew away into the sky.
The spirit master closed his mouth as he looked at the back of the spirit cutting through the wind. Minjun also waited for a moment, respecting the silence.
‘It is said that when an elemental spirit is summoned, it takes the form of the being that the spirit master longs for the most.’
Minjun didn’t know who the spirit was imitating. Was it his mother’s younger self that he had left behind in the original world, his wife that he had been forcibly separated from, or his daughter that he had not seen for a long time?
Just because you’re close doesn’t mean there’s no line you can’t cross. On the contrary, because you’re close, there are things you can’t ask about. The story about Lakefield’s family was one of them. Minjun didn’t plan on asking until the old elf spoke first.
Lakefield, who had been looking outside for a long time, turned his head with slightly moist eyes.
“I’ll contact you when I have an answer.”
“thank you.”
***
The next day, Dong-cheol came to Min-jun’s office to run an errand.
“Boss… Hey… Wait… Come down… Come down….”
“Okay, let’s go.”
Minjun, who went down to the bookstore, asked Lakefield.
“Did you find it?”
“Found it.”
“As expected, the boss is the best in this business!”
I try to applaud, but Lakefield gestures as if he hasn’t finished speaking.
“What are you planning to do by finding this guy?”
“I was going to question you.”
“Really? Then it would be better to mobilize experts from other fields.”
“Yes? Why? No way···.”
Minjun’s words are vague.
Lakefield nodded, confirming his guess.
“I found him, but he wasn’t breathing. He’s dead.”
Minjun asked the most important question.
“Are you human?”
Lakefield frowned.
“You can’t call ‘that kind of thing’ human.”
Minjun thought that things would go better than expected. However, even though he had a good feeling, he was not at ease. His intuition was famous among those around him for being wrong.
And Minjun soon found out that the jinx was not broken this time either.
