Episode 4: The Problem Cop
‘A DUI checkpoint missing a murder suspect? A body in the car’s trunk?’
It wasn’t reality.
But it felt as vivid as if it were.
And the man in question was standing right in front of Jin-woo.
‘What the hell is this?’
In his nearly seventy years of life, Jin-woo had never experienced anything like this.
His mind spun, unsure how to process it.
Then, something clicked.
The first day he’d returned to the police station.
He’d seen something like this before—a vision of being hit by a trash can.
And it had actually happened.
Officer Kim Jae-hyuk had thrown a trash can at him.
That meant what he’d just seen could also come true.
“Officer Lee Jin-woo, don’t you see the cars piling up behind?!”
Kim Jae-hyuk’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts.
The officer was glaring at Jin-woo with bloodshot eyes.
“What are you doing?! If there’s no issue, let him go!”
Jin-woo’s gaze shifted back to the man.
The man smiled smoothly and said,
“So, can I go?”
“No. Hold on…”
In that moment, Jin-woo thrust his hand through the open car window.
As the man’s face twisted in confusion, Jin-woo flung the door open, grabbed him by the hair, and yanked him out onto the asphalt.
The man let out a scream—“Argh!”—while Kim Jae-hyuk’s eyes widened in shock.
“That… that crazy bastard!”
To go from conducting a DUI check to suddenly dragging someone out by their hair and throwing them to the ground—anyone would think Jin-woo was out of his mind.
But the deed was done.
There was no time to stop him.
And that wasn’t the end of it.
Jin-woo climbed into the car.
“Hey! Grab that punk! Stop him!”
The officers at the checkpoint rushed toward Jin-woo.
In the meantime, he pressed the trunk release button.
He jumped out of the car and ran to the trunk.
Jin-woo didn’t know what the vision that had flashed through his mind meant.
But he wasn’t about to let a murderer slip away and become fodder for the media again.
And he’d been thinking about something else, too.
If he continued as a cop like this, he’d never achieve his goal of revenge.
He was already planning to quit.
So, he figured he’d check the trunk first.
If it paid off, great.
If not, he’d just leave the police force.
“Stop him!”
Kim Jae-hyuk’s sharp voice rang out as Jin-woo reached the trunk.
The rushing officers grabbed Jin-woo’s arms and body.
“Officer Lee, are you insane?! What’s wrong with you?!”
The officers were in a bind.
Two reporters were watching.
Jin-woo was already labeled a pathetic cop, and causing a scene like this would be irreversible.
“Stop it! I said stop!”
The officers tried to restrain him.
Kim Jae-hyuk stormed over and grabbed Jin-woo by the collar, throwing him to the ground.
Jin-woo rolled across the pavement.
Kim Jae-hyuk glared at him like he wanted to kill him.
“What the hell are you doing?!”
“A hand.”
“Go back to the station. Sit there and stay put.”
“A hand! There’s a hand!”
At that moment, one of the officers tapped Kim Jae-hyuk’s arm.
“Sir… you need to see this.”
Kim Jae-hyuk’s gaze shifted to the car’s trunk.
Inside was a burlap sack, and protruding from it was a slender woman’s hand.
“Open it! Hurry!”
The officers frantically untied the sack.
A woman’s body was revealed.
The officers froze, staring wide-eyed at the corpse.
But Kim Jae-hyuk didn’t.
“What are you all gawking at?! Arrest him!”
“Yes, sir!”
The officers rushed toward the man, who tried to flee but was caught after just a few meters.
Once the situation was under control, Kim Jae-hyuk looked back and forth between the body and Jin-woo.
***
Jin-woo had nothing left to do.
The DUI checkpoint was immediately halted, and Kim Jae-hyuk dragged the man to the police station.
The case had been handed over to the main precinct.
It was now 2 a.m.
Jin-woo sat in a corner of the station, holding a cup of instant coffee.
The coffee had gone cold, but he hadn’t taken a single sip.
He was lost in thought.
‘What the hell was that?’
He’d seen something so vivid it felt like reality, and it had actually come true.
‘Did I… see the future?’
That was the only explanation.
It was unscientific and absurd, but there was no other way to make sense of it.
And Jin-woo’s life was already far from normal.
He’d died and woken up in a stranger’s life, after all.
‘If I can really see the future…’
A smile crept onto Jin-woo’s lips.
Countless executives poured fortunes into predicting the future.
They hired geniuses, even visited fortune-tellers.
Yet, they still failed to predict it.
But if he truly had the ability to see the future… that would be insane.
“Hey, Lee Jin-woo.”
Snapping out of his thoughts, Jin-woo saw Team Leader Oh Sung-min standing in front of him.
Oh Sung-min glanced toward the stairs and continued.
“Follow me.”
Jin-woo followed him to the rooftop.
Oh Sung-min lit a cigarette, letting the cool breeze hit him.
“How did you know there was a body in the trunk?”
“Sir?”
“You found it. How did you know?”
He’d learned it through some inexplicable vision.
But he couldn’t say that—it was a question he couldn’t answer logically.
So, he’d prepared a response.
“Police instinct.”
“Huh? Instinct?”
“The driver seemed nervous during the check and kept glancing at the trunk through the rearview mirror. And there was a woman’s bag in the passenger seat…”
Jin-woo rattled off a string of explanations that even he barely understood.
The fact remained: he’d caught a criminal, and there was a body in the trunk.
Team Leader Oh Sung-min smirked.
“You sound like a profiler. Anyway, Kim Jae-hyuk’s going to come after you again.”
“…Sir?”
He’d caught a criminal, and yet Kim Jae-hyuk was going to target him?
“That’s just how he is. He’s a pervert who loves tearing people down. A cruel one.”
Oh Sung-min laughed as if it were amusing.
But for Jin-woo, who had to endure Kim Jae-hyuk’s unwarranted hostility, there was nothing funny about it.
A short while later, Kim Jae-hyuk, back from the precinct, sought out Jin-woo.
“Hey, you punk, are you crazy?! If you knew he was a murderer, you should’ve told us! What’s with you acting alone?! Playing cop all by yourself?!”
“No, sir.”
“What, you wanted to hog the case and get a promotion or something?! Think before you act! What if that guy had a knife?! You trying to get yourself killed?! You’re a complete lunatic!”
His tirade went on for twenty minutes until Oh Sung-min intervened.
“Officer Kim, that’s enough. He caught the criminal, didn’t he? You shouldn’t push a guy with a sense of duty too hard.”
“Sense of duty doesn’t put food on the table!”
“Alright, that’s enough.”
Only then did Kim Jae-hyuk run a hand through his hair and stop, though he didn’t forget to glare at Jin-woo until the end.
Oh Sung-min gestured to Kim Jae-hyuk.
“So, what’d they say at the precinct? Any chance of a commendation?”
“Pfft, with our station’s reputation in the gutter, you think they’d praise us?”
Ever since Jin-woo’s incident of fleeing from thugs became public, the station had been on the precinct chief’s bad side.
“You know catching a murderer by chance won’t get us off the hook.”
Grumbling, Kim Jae-hyuk grabbed a cigarette and headed to the rooftop.
Oh Sung-min looked at Jin-woo with a sympathetic expression.
“Don’t hate Kim too much. He’s a pervert, sure, but a pitiful one.”
“Sir?”
“When he was on the violent crimes team, a close colleague was stabbed to death. So when you ended up in the hospital, he got triggered—maybe PTSD—and went on a rampage, swearing to take down those thugs.”
Jin-woo noticed it now—the shadow always lurking in Kim Jae-hyuk’s fierce eyes.
Oh Sung-min picked up a coffee and continued.
“Anyway, I thought this case might get your disciplinary action dropped, but looks like that’s not happening.”
Jin-woo nodded and sat back down.
The conversation with Oh Sung-min and the scolding from Kim Jae-hyuk weren’t what mattered now.
He needed to think about this ability to see the future.
If it was real—if it wasn’t a one-time thing but an ongoing ability—then a disciplinary action was trivial.
It meant he could achieve his goal of rapid promotion as planned.
Maybe even more than that.
It meant a higher chance of exacting revenge on Jo Hak-ju and Jin Woo-ryung.
But once again, his thoughts were interrupted.
“Drunk disturbance reported at the residential intersection!”
At Officer Park’s words, Jin-woo had to get up.
***
9:40 a.m.
After his shift, Jin-woo returned home, showered, and collapsed onto his bed.
He wanted to think about his ability to see the future, but his stamina couldn’t keep up.
Dealing with drunks had drained every ounce of his energy.
He’d been scratched by a drunk woman and cursed at by a drunk man.
And that wasn’t all.
He’d had to let the woman sleep it off at the station and listen to the man’s endless complaints.
So, he pushed all thoughts aside and just wanted to sleep.
‘Until 1 p.m…’
The day after a night shift was a day off.
Jin-woo set an alarm for 1 p.m. and closed his eyes.
He had somewhere to go today.
He drifted off, and it felt like only a moment had passed.
The phone’s ringtone blared loudly.
‘Already?’
It felt like he’d barely slept—no, like he’d only just closed his eyes.
But it was already 1 p.m.?
His tired eyes could hardly open.
Thinking he needed more sleep, he reached to turn off the alarm and checked the time on his phone.
It wasn’t the alarm.
It was 11 p.m., and the call was from the station.
They’d let him off at 9 a.m., and now they were calling at 11 p.m.—what a bunch of rude bastards.
“Yes, this is Lee Jin-woo.”
- Officer Lee Jin-woo, come in right now.
“Sir?”
- Can you be here by midnight?
“Sir?”
- Get here now! By midnight!
The rude caller hung up without explanation.
Jin-woo scowled and sat up.
*No wonder they say you succeed when life feels like crap.*
As Baek Dong-ha, chairman of Jinbaek Group, no one would’ve dared act so arrogantly toward him.
“Ugh… should I just quit?”
Grumbling, Jin-woo got up, washed up roughly, and headed out.
He considered taking the bus, but his body felt heavy.
He’d take a taxi.
At the station, Team Leader Oh Sung-min was waiting out front.
Jin-woo got out of the taxi and gave a slight bow.
“You’re here too, Team Leader?”
“I haven’t even gone home yet.”
“Still?”
“Being a team leader isn’t a cushy job. Gotta finish the work.”
“So, why’d they call me in?”
“Dunno… go inside and find out.”
Oh Sung-min shrugged and gestured toward the station.
Jin-woo walked in.
“Officer Lee Jin-woo!”
The station chief, who had been ignoring him until now, greeted him warmly.
He even hugged Jin-woo, which was startling.
“Good job!”
“Sir?”
“I said good job!”
There had been reporters at the scene where he caught the murderer yesterday.
The reporters, who had been tailing Jin-woo like stalkers, lit up when he suddenly dragged out the killer.
They snapped photos, shouting about a scoop.
And Oh Sung-min had approached them.
“Curious how Officer Lee Jin-woo caught the criminal?”
He’d repeated what Jin-woo had said on the rooftop.
“Outshines any profiler.”
And that made it into the headlines:
[A Cop Who Outshines Profilers]
[During a DUI Checkpoint, Officer Didn’t Miss the Suspect’s Suspicious Behavior]