As soon as the two men reached a public park located near the Kang family's residence, Cha In-Cheol took out a cigarette and pushed it toward Kang Jin-Ho while speaking casually, “Here, have one on me.”

Kang Jin-Ho looked back at the policeman weirdly. "Isn't this a non-smoking area?"

“There's no one around, so who cares?”

“...I'm not sure an officer of the law should say that.”

“If we get caught, I'll pay the fine for both of us, okay? So, just go ahead and smoke.”

Kang Jin-Ho smiled wryly and accepted Cha In-Cheol's cigarette.

Click...

Cha In-Cheol used his own lighter to light up Kang Jin-Ho's cigarette, then pulled out his own to smoke as well. “Nowadays, we gotta find some out-of-sight locations just to get a quick cigarette break. The world has changed a lot, I tell ya.”

Cha In-Cheol felt like an old man unable to adapt to the changing times. However, the world was really changing too fast to keep up. If you told the youngsters that only twenty years ago—one could smoke no problem inside a bus simply by opening a window—no one would believe it.

“It's the same story for investigating crimes, you know? In the past, we used to trust our gut instincts to investigate. If there were someone we found suspicious, we'd arrest that fool and bite his head off. More often than not, that fool would turn out to be the perp, you see. Ah, don't get the wrong idea about me, okay? It's not like I was torturing the suspects or anything. No, I'm just saying our approach was a lot more forceful back then. Something practically unimaginable...