But then the image of Kang Hyeonho’s face surfaced — the way his eyes had gone wide when he saw the cake prices, mouth half-open, like the words “This tiny thing costs that much?” were about to tumble right out.
It was obvious he was undervaluing the cakes without having any idea how much labor went into making a single one.
Men who came in with their girlfriends usually made that exact expression behind their girlfriend’s back. Huiwon knew that look well. Either way — it made no sense that the same person was now pretending to like cake.
Huiwon had asked to find out. How was the Earl Grey cream, he’d said. A cream that hadn’t been in any of the cakes. The combination of what had been bought yesterday was simple: a lemon cream cake, a cheesecake, and a chocolate mousse cake. If Hyeonho had asked what Earl Grey cream even was, or asked which cake it had been in, Huiwon might have reconsidered his read on him. But the moment “It was alright” fell from his mouth, Huiwon let out that soft, deflating pfft of a laugh.
It was a scoff. On the inside, he’d been dismissing the value of the cake — yet on the outside, he’d praised one he hadn’t even eaten, polishing up his image.
The way he played at being a good person reminded Huiwon of those people who used to pity him as a child, and it turned his stomach. The insufferable type. Huiwon felt confirmed in what he’d always believed — his read on people was never wrong. From the time he’d started talking until now, turning twenty this year. Eyes sharpened through years of one thing after another — they didn’t get it wrong.
On his way to work, Kang Hyeonho was moving along at a brisk pace when he caught a sideways glance at Tesoro across the street. He’d been noticing it getting busier by the day, and now there was actually a line forming — people queued up to time it with when the pound cake came out, even at this early hour.
People who were only ordering drinks could take them to go without waiting, but since the incident not long ago where he’d pretended to have eaten the cake and ended up humiliated — he’d been reluctant to go back.
Earl Grey, all grey……. Come to think of it, is that a grey-colored cream……? Either way, the image came back to him — the boy, after hearing him say “It was alright,” letting out that pfft of a laugh, saying there was no such cream in those cakes, and turning away.
At the memory, Kang Hyeonho felt his face heat up despite the cold — embarrassed enough to feel it in his cheeks. He gave a full-body shudder, crossed his arms firmly over his chest, and walked past Tesoro at a quick clip.
“These days even the gang guys divide up the labor.”
The team members grumbled after the morning briefing. “Back in the day they just straight-up brawled, that was it.” That came from a senior who’d been working as a detective for a good while. The Violent Crimes Unit, made up of four teams, usually assigned cases in the order they came in, but each team still had a specialty they focused on at the core.
Team 1, Kang Hyeonho’s team: organized crime. Team 2: armed robbery and homicide. Team 3: narcotics, organ trafficking, and the like. But the bad ones never stuck to just assaults when they committed assault, and never stuck to just robbery when they robbed.
The organization Team 1 had been digging into for quite some time turned out to be far larger in scale than expected. It wasn’t the kind of thing that ended with gangs like the old Tiger Faction or the Axe Faction jostling for rank and dividing up the nightlife establishments between them.
Not long ago, word had come in through a transfer suggesting the organization Team 1 had been investigating seemed to also be involved in voice phishing — and then at this morning’s briefing, the possibility was raised that they might be connected to the narcotics case Team 4 was currently working on as well.
According to a tip from a drug offender, the drug supplier was apparently a member of the organization under Team 1’s jurisdiction. For a brief, fleeting moment, Hyeonho got to watch the faces of his already exhausted teammates drain from dark to pale.
Less because those guys are scary and more because the workload just got bigger.
“Hey. Detective Seo.”
Hyeonho called out to Detective Seo, a colleague from Team 4 who was sitting on the bench right outside the station entrance. Detective Seo broke into a wide grin and threw up a hand in response.
“The tip is at least somewhat credible, so…….”
It wasn’t that either of them had done anything wrong, but for Hyeonho and Detective Seo — the junior line — having a comfortable conversation in the office meant enduring some pointed looks from their seniors. Team 4 was on high alert, worried that the credit they’d built up so far might get transferred over to Team 1.
The weather was still cold, and Kang Hyeonho and Detective Seo were busy rubbing their hands together for warmth and thawing out their frozen ears. Still, it felt much more comfortable out here, just the two of them.
“According to the informant, there’s a big birthday party in Itaewon tonight, so…….”
After that, Detective Seo raised his eyebrows with an expression that said “You get it, right?” Kang Hyeonho nodded to show he did.
“What about the supplier? They might not be hitting the stuff themselves, but they’d still show up to a birthday party, right? For sales management purposes.”
Stuff was slang for drugs. Suppliers typically didn’t use themselves, so they rarely showed up at places where drugs were being used — but if the tip was accurate and this was a large-scale drug party, there was a solid chance they’d show up for management purposes. That was why Team 1’s chief had slotted Hyeonho into Team 4’s investigation under the name of cooperative inquiry.
“How would I know.”
Detective Seo replied flatly and started feeding coins into the old red vending machine. He said he couldn’t take the cold anymore and got two coffees out of it, handing the first one to Hyeonho. Hyeonho brought the freshly dispensed vending machine coffee to his lips and immediately grimaced. For Hyeonho, who only drank black, the canned mix coffee was unbearably, cloyingly sweet.
“What time are you heading out?”
“Birthday parties usually start around midnight, so……. I’ll probably leave around 8 PM tonight. Two of the seniors are already there. Staking out near the place from the tip.”
Hyeonho picked up his phone and checked the time. It was just past 11 in the morning.
“Don’t you dare leave without me.”
Hyeonho made sure to drill that into Detective Seo. The team chiefs could keep up the pretense of cooperation with all their nice-sounding words about joint investigations, but at their level — where no one wanted to give up credit — there was no way they’d be sharing information freely. He’d have to make sure he stuck close no matter what.
You better not miss the supplier’s intel!
Hyeonho recalled the team chief’s face, the way he’d been throwing out warnings all through the briefing, and reminded himself of his role. When Team 4 caught the people using drugs at the scene, he had to find out exactly how they’d gotten access to the drugs — and whether the supplier was truly a member of the organization they were tracking.
“I know, I know. It’s not like you can go home tonight anyway, is it?”
Ah, you too? Hey, me too. Hyeonho kept it inside and only thought it, doing a silent impression of Violent Crimes Unit 1’s running joke. He used to inwardly groan when his seniors cracked corny jokes like that, thinking it was such an old-man thing to do — and now here he was, already picking up the same habit without realizing it. This is why you can’t underestimate the power of your environment.
“Heading straight home from the scene tonight?”
“Yeah. You’re following Team 4 today, right?”
Hyeonho had been in the middle of writing up a statement when he spotted Kim Jaeho tossing on his jacket and getting up to leave, and he immediately jumped to his feet. To see him off properly. A sideways glance at the wall clock told him it was just past 5 PM.
“Yes. Heading to Itaewon tonight.”
“Right. Stay safe and…….”
Kim Jaeho rubbed at the corners of his tired eyes, and Hyeonho smiled at him. Jaeho muttered, “Smiling like a little kid…….” and headed out of the station. I wonder if his kid smiles like me. Even so, Hyeonho didn’t let the smile drop.
He watched Kim Jaeho’s retreating figure until he disappeared completely, then headed to the break room and grabbed the first cup of instant ramen within reach from the haphazardly stacked pile. At this point he’d eaten every flavor in there, so it didn’t matter which one he got.
Less than three hours until 8 PM. Hyeonho set the cup ramen on his desk and dove back into the statement.
It was originally the voice phishing case he’d been working on together with Kim Jaeho. Even if Hyeonho, as the youngest, got dragged around for all kinds of odd jobs, Jaeho was now stuck doing by himself what the two of them had been handling together — all because his partner happened to be the junior. Still, Jaeho hadn’t shown a single flicker of annoyance.
That was exactly why Hyeonho had such particular respect for his senior Kim Jaeho. Jaeho was blunt and didn’t let many people in, so opinions on him were sharply divided — but when Hyeonho had been assigned Jaeho as his partner, he’d cheered on the inside.
He was a hard person to approach, but when all-nighter investigations stretched on for days, it wasn’t uncommon for Jaeho to tell Hyeonho to get some sleep and take the wheel himself. And when Hyeonho had first been adjusting to violent crime cases — struggling to the point of throwing up — Jaeho never once looked at him with contempt or said a single unkind word.
In turn, once Hyeonho learned that Jaeho was raising his four-year-old alone, he quietly started helping with small things like daycare pickup and other little tasks, and gradually Jaeho had begun looking out for Hyeonho like he was one of his own.
Hyeonho liked the partnership he had with Kim Jaeho now, and he wanted to build on it and make it something stronger.
Even now, Jaeho was heading straight to a scene to work the investigation, then fighting the clock to make it to the daycare where his son would be waiting — and wanting to be even a small help to him, Hyeonho cut short his dinner break and kept on with the statement.
Period. He lifted his hands from the keyboard and checked the time at the bottom of the monitor — it was a few minutes before 7 PM. Hyeonho shot to his feet, stretched long and fully, and got ready to go hover around Team 4.
His colleague Detective Seo was Team 4 anyway, so trusting that 8 PM departure time was a mistake.
Music that thumped all the way out to the street, people staggering as they walked, neon signs blazing in every direction — from a second-floor café in Itaewon, Hyeonho and the Team 4 detectives looked down at the entrance to a bar across the way, its red neon sign flickering against the night.
