Chapter 1458: Testing (3) |
Colonel William Reese nervously swallowed his saliva.
He didn’t need to hear what happened here to figure it out, more or less. After all, cops treating the “other” racial groups unfairly had been a growing societal issue in America of late.
The changing of the administration ushered in policies driven by America-first ideals and imperialism, and that had become hot-button issues in the country for a while now.
As a soldier, Reese was in no position to say this and that about the current administration’s policies. But even he had to admit that some of these policies had emboldened the problematic members of the society to where they felt it was okay to crawl out of whichever dark hole they had been hiding until now.
That motherf*cking as*hole…!
Reese glared at the cop with the intensity of a serial killer. This cop fit the “racist white cop” archetype to a T. And that made him grit his teeth even harder.
He would’ve dearly loved to rush over and shove as many donuts as he could find down the cop’s throat! But Reese couldn’t afford to act out like that in Kang Jin-Ho’s presence.
Fine! I’ll deal with you later, you piece of sh*t!
For now, Reese’s priority must be with resolving this crisis.
Just before Reese could say something, Lee Hyeon-Su suddenly elbowed him in the side. When he turned his head to see why, he saw this unbridled panic on Lee Hyeon-Su’s face.
…?! Huh?
Lee Hyeon-Su never made a face like that during their visit to Area H27. Hell, he even remained unflustered while Kang Jin-Ho stood before a thousand soldiers! But now, his complexion was as pale as it could get?
That was when a piece of information regarding Kang Jin-Ho suddenly re-entered Reese’s mind.
–Kang Jin-Ho. Cares more about his acquaintances than himself. A type to go to extreme lengths for his companions.
Reese’s expression hardened in an instant.
Goddamn it, I almost forgot about that!
If that piece of information was to be believed, Kang Jin-Ho must be even more furious right now than when he got disrespected or when someone took something of his. So, if Reese carelessly said something cliched and unhelpful, this crisis might balloon into a catastrophe beyond his control!
When he realized all the hard work he had put in could go down the drain from this minor incident, he almost fainted on the spot.
“Uhm, I…”
Reese knew he had to say something and opened his mouth to do that. However, his brain failed to produce the right words for this situation, and he was left floundering for a moment or two.
No! Get a grip, man!
Reese bit his lip to sober up, then raised his head to stare at Kang Jin-Ho. In a situation like this, being straightforward should be a much better bet rather than trying to talk his way out of it.
Reese deeply bowed toward Kang Jin-Ho. “Please accept my apology, Assembly Master.”
Kang Jin-Ho’s head cocked at a crooked angle. “Not sure why you’re apologizing to me?”
“Oh…” Reese quickly realized his mistake, then hurriedly turned toward Choi Yeon-Ha. “My sincerest apologies, Miss Choi. I never imagined something like this would happen in a million years.”[1]
“Who are you, and why are you apologizing?” Choi Yeon-Ha coldly asked. She was obviously asking why Reese apologized when the guilty party was someone else.
Yes, ma’am. I totally agree with you.
Reese subtly gritted his teeth. If he successfully deals with this crisis, he swore to himself to grind that goddamn pig of a cop into meat paste and shove the remains into a cheap sausage!
“Making the guilty apologize to you is certainly a good way to resolve this incident. But I feel that won’t be quite enough in this situation. I give you my word that, if you graciously head back to your room and wait for us, I will personally drag the representatives of these people to you.”
“The representatives? Like who?”
“At the very least, I’m thinking of the chief of police,” Reese exhaled deeply. “I will completely grind all those related to this matter into fine dust. That’s why, please, quell your rage.”
“Hmm…?” Choi Yeon-Ha slowly nodded as if what Reese said pleased her. “Fine. Do that, then.”
“Thank you.”
Reese turned around and stared at Kang Jin-Ho, hoping to gauge the latter’s mood. He wanted to know if it was fine to proceed since Choi Yeon-Ha had given him her go-ahead.
Kang Jin-Ho mouthed a fresh cigarette, lit it up, then dragged in a deep puff.
“Fuu-woo…”
He leisurely exhaled the smoke, then stared at Reese, his gaze remaining cold and withdrawn.
“I’ll look forward to it.”
“…”
“Let’s see how you’ll handle this one.”
That expression on his face, and the vibe Kang Jin-Ho gave off, differed so much from what Reese had seen until now. A creepy chill ran down Reese’s back just then.
This… This is not something I can take care of on my own!
Reese hurriedly nodded back at Kang Jin-Ho while thinking that he must call his higher-ups right away.
***
Kang Jin-Ho asked again. “How are you holding up? Are you okay?”
Choi Yeon-Ha replied nonchalantly. “Of course, I’m fine. I’m not gonna suffer a mental breakdown from something like that.”
Kang Jin-Ho carefully studied Choi Yeon-Ha. He could tell that she wasn’t merely pretending to be strong. Her calm demeanor was genuine. Even her qi flow felt more stable than he thought.
He sighed. “Why didn’t you try to talk it out? What if you got hauled off to a holding cell?”
Choi Yeon-Ha casually shrugged. “You would’ve freed me, anyway.”
“…”
Well, she was right. Kang Jin-Ho would’ve definitely done that.
“Still, what if I couldn’t get you out?”
“Then, I’m sure you’d have broken the walls down to rescue me.”
“…”
Well, that… was also right. He’d have resorted to doing that, too!
Choi Yeon-Ha noticed Kang Jin-Ho’s dazed expression and chuckled softly. “I was only kidding, okay? I don’t want you to do stuff like that for me. Even if you wanted to do it, I’d be the first one to try stopping you.”
Kang Jin-Ho tilted his head while staring quizzically at Choi Yeon-Ha. “Then… What were you planning to do if you got arrested?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking straight at the time, anyway. Well, things got heated up pretty badly, and I just lost my cool, you see?”
“…”
“It’s impossible to think about the consequences of every little thing you do, though. At least I can’t.”
How… brazen! And shameless! But not in a positive way, either!
Choi Yeon-Ha sat up tall and confidently declared, “I’ll rather chew on prison food than endure crap like that, okay? What did that cop say? I better pay the compensation and come to an agreement?! I’ll die first before that happens!”
For the third time during this conversation, Choi Yeon-Ha got it right again.
She turned to look at Kang Jin-Ho. “I’m sorry about making things worse, but it wasn’t something I could just overlook, Mister Jin-Ho. You know what? Remembering it is pissing me off even more! Maybe I should’ve dropped a heel kick on the as*hole’s head before leaving!”
“…You might get shot if you do that in America,” said Kang Jin-Ho.
“Tsk…!”
Choi Yeon-Ha loudly tutted, and Kang Jin-Ho couldn’t help but shake his head.
If something like this happened to other people, they would have counted on the protection offered by Kang Jin-Ho and acted accordingly. But not Choi Yeon-Ha. As far as Kang Jin-Ho knew, she was not the type to calculate such things.
If she was, she would’ve phoned Kang Jin-Ho beforehand, at the very least!
Since that was the case, she really had no plan or the fear of the consequences while confronting that cop. In a way, wasn’t that…?
Yeah, you could say she’s remarkable.
Or, utterly irresponsible, depending on one’s point of view!
Kang Jin-Ho chuckled softly. What could he do about it, though? That was who Choi Yeon-Ha was, after all.
“I’m sorry about arriving late,” said Kang Jin-Ho.
“No, don’t say that. Because if you do, it sounds like I deliberately created that scene because I knew you’d be coming to back me up. I’m not a kid in a playground who’s busy crying and saying how her big brother is coming to beat up the bullies, you know.”
“I’m pretty sure no one will think that way, though.”
Choi Yeon-Ha cocked an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Because no one would be suic… Kuh-hmm.”
“Sorry? What was that?”
“No, it’s nothing. Don’t mind me.” Kang Jin-Ho smiled awkwardly, then turned his head toward the hotel suite’s exit. “Okay, so…?”
The smile instantly left Kang Jin-Ho’s lips, and his expression hardened while looking at three men currently standing by the exit.
“What are you going to do about this incident?”
The three men stiffly standing around were Reynold Spencer, William Reese, and the Chief of the City of Los Angeles Police Department, Ronnie McCain.
McCain nervously swallowed his saliva.
Goddamn it! How am I supposed to explain this situation?!
As the chief of the one-and-only LAPD, he never imagined that one day, he’d be summoned to a hotel room to explain and apologize for a minor incident.
Was the Pentagon behind his appearance today? Unfortunately, no.If the Pentagon had ordered him to do this, McCain would’ve just laughed in their faces. Why? The way he saw it, the Pentagon didn’t have the authority to order him around. The best they could do was officially—and politely—request him for cooperation.
Unfortunately for McCain, though, the one who rang him up wasn’t the Pentagon. No, it was the mayor herself! She had personally ordered him to get his ass down here!
McCain could swear on his life that he had never heard or seen the mayor being so furious like earlier today. For someone who was pretty chill about most things to unleash a torrent of insults intense enough to almost break the phone line down… It was as if she had found her partner in bed with another woman or something!
However, that wasn’t the end of the trouble for McCain.
When the phone conversation with the mayor ended, McCain immediately received another call, this time from the state governor himself. And that was when he learned that the mayor was being pretty chill about this situation all along!
Compared to the torrents of insults and abuse the governor had unleashed, what the mayor said was child-friendly enough to be published in textbooks! McCain had never heard such an emotion-fueled variety of insults and swear words in his life. So much so that he almost blurted out to the governor that he should debut as a rapper once everything had calmed down sufficiently enough!
…And so, after answering not one, but two intense-st phone calls of his life from his superiors one after the other, Chief McCain was understandably half out of his mind with anxiety right now.
Just who were these people? Were they really important enough to plunge McCain’s superiors into such panic?
Even if some country’s prime minister got humiliated by his officers, McCain’s superiors still wouldn’t have phoned him in a row to burn his ears off with a barrage of red-hot insults. Since that was the case, the people in this room must’ve exercised a level of influence far outstripping a mere prime minister.
But now, one of them got sexually harassed?!
Why didn’t that cop just kill himself on the spot? What was the point of carrying a firearm, anyway? Wasn’t it for the purpose of shoving it in one’s mouth to blow one’s brain off?!
Goddamn it! Why didn’t you kill yourself and save me the trouble of cleaning up your f*cking mess!
McCain suddenly became aware of Reese’s and Spencer’s pointed stares and anxiously swallowed his saliva again.
Whatever the case might be, he was still the chief of police in this city. He must answer for the stupid things his subordinates did. That was his responsibility. If he couldn’t handle this, and it got transferred higher up the food chain, then…
Then, the mayor would do whatever necessary to get him fired from the position, then recommend he start a corn farm out in the sticks. Just so that one night, she could have him killed and buried in a shallow grave somewhere on the farm!
After wiping away drops of sweat from his forehead, McCain shakily stepped forward.
“First of all…”
While praying for his tongue to operate as slickly as possible, McCain addressed Kang Jin-Ho.
“As the chief of police in this city, I’d like to offer you my sincerest apology. Failing to keep my officers in line was a serious oversight on my part. And to the victims of this unjust action, I…”
Kang Jin-Ho tutted. “Are you holding a press conference to apologize to the public?”
“…”
“It sounds like you’re reading off a script or something. Drop the preamble and get to the main topic.”
McCain cautiously looked behind him, only to notice Spencer and Reese glaring at him urgently.
Goddamn it! What do you want from me?!
Those two knew who this young-looking Asian man was, but not McCain. How was he supposed to offer a good-enough apology when he didn’t even know who he was apologizing to in the first place?!
When McCain asked who he’d be speaking to, Spencer and Reese replied that a mere chief of police didn’t need to know. So, for them to dump all the responsibilities on McCain’s shoulders and urged him on with those silent glares…!
McCain felt one of the nastiest heartburns he had ever experienced flaring up in his chest.
“F-first of all…”
Unfortunately, what choice did he have? This was a part of his job description, wasn’t it?
“The officer implicated in this incident will be relieved of his duties. He already confessed that his investigation has not been impartial.”
Kang Jin-Ho tilted his head. “Relieved of his duties, you say?”
“Y-yes. Of course, that won’t be all. As this incident has damaged the LAPD’s reputation, we will find all the relevant parties and sue them and make them pay the appropriate price.”
“Hmm…?” Kang Jin-Ho relaxedly rested his chin on his hand. “And?”
“The… instructors and immediate superiors of the officer in question will either receive appropriate punishment or also lose their jobs. And with this incident as a kick-off point, we will launch a drive to re-educate and re-train the entire LAPD staff.”
Kang Jin-Ho furrowed his brow in dissatisfaction, his gaze drifting toward the ceiling.
McCain noticed that and hurriedly spoke up. “T-this is the best we can do under the circumstances, sir! Taking things further than this will force us to reveal why we’re doing this. That means we must reveal the people involved in the incident as well.”
McCain was saying that, since no one here wanted Kang Jin-Ho’s name to be brought up in the media, he should be satisfied with this level of punishment.
While he continued to stare at the ceiling, Choi Yeon-Ha turned to him and asked, “What did this uncle say?”
…And when Kang Jin-Ho explained what McCain said, Choi Yeon-Ha deeply scowled.
“Why is everything so bloody complicated?”
Kang Jin-Ho tilted his head. “Sorry?”
“Forget all that! Can’t I just punch that stupid cop in the face, just once? No, wait. My punch won’t even leave a mark on his face, so… Mister Jin-Ho, you hit him for me, okay? Please?”
“…”
If I do that, he might die, you know…?
1. The raw does not make it clear if Reese is speaking in Korean or is talking to Choi Yeon-Ha through an interpreter. TLed as is. ☜