NTH 1

Finally, he was here.

Kwon Jeha hid his body at the end of the hallway leading to the cafe’s restroom and glared at a table located far away.

The inside of the cafe was very spacious and bustling with customers, but that did not matter. To the eyes of Kwon Jeha, whose vision was twice that of an ordinary person, the corner seat where his belongings were placed was very clearly visible.

The man who suddenly appeared was wearing a plain black short-sleeved t-shirt, faded jeans, and a black baseball cap. With a slender build, he plopped down in Jeha’s seat without any hesitation or reluctance.

Jeha quietly took out his phone, touched the video recording button, and zoomed in as close as possible on the man’s figure. Although he was wearing a cap, his face was roughly identifiable. Like a vampire living away from the sun, his skin was pale and bloodless, and the size of his face revealed below the cap seemed extremely small for an adult male.

He naturally sipped the iced Americano that Jeha had not even touched, using a straw. Then, he picked up the fork, cut off the edge of the cake, put it in his mouth, and mumbled as he chewed. It seemed to suit his taste better than expected, as Jeha could clearly see the thief’s eyes widening from a distance.

The thief cut the remaining half of the cake with his fork, stabbed it deeply, and then forced the cake into his mouth, opening it wide like a frog’s. Perhaps his mouth was as small as his face, as pieces of cake and cream spilled out from his lips.

The thief swiftly pulled out the straw, then grabbed the large cup with both hands and gulped down the coffee. After that, he hastily shoved the remaining half of the cake into his mouth. Had he been starving for three days? His appearance was somehow so pitiful that Jeha wanted to tell him to eat slowly and that he would go catch him after he finished.

Having noisily devoured his meal, smearing cream on his lips, cheeks, and even his fingers, the thief finally narrowed his eyes and scanned the table. Jeha had placed the latest wireless earphones from a famous brand, a large-capacity power bank, and two university major textbooks on it as bait.

The thief took off the cheap black backpack he was wearing from his shoulder. He swept the items on the table into it with a quick hand movement, closed the backpack’s zipper, hastily drank a few more sips of the Americano, and then stood up from his seat.

No one in the cafe paid him any attention. He slung the backpack over his shoulder and moved with natural steps toward the stairs leading down to the first floor.

Jeha, who had been watching the entire scene from the opposite end, stopped the video recording and strode toward the stairs with large steps. It was worth setting a trap and watching for the past five days. Now it was time to catch that thief red-handed, throw him in the police station, and get back the external hard drive that was stolen last week.

Unlike his somewhat naive and foolish appearance for a thief who had been nonchalantly eating cake, the guy was quite agile when fleeing. By the time Jeha reached the first floor, he was already opening the cafe’s entrance door and heading outside.

In terms of speed, Jeha would undoubtedly have the upper hand. Kwon Jeha could run 100 meters in the 9.5-second range, so it was safe to say there was no one faster than him among ordinary people. However, when he passed through the automatic door that had not even fully opened and got outside, Jeha doubted his own eyes.

The thief was nowhere to be seen on the wide-open boulevard.

Since the building with the cafe was at the edge of a park, there were no particular places to hide nearby. Even when he focused all the strength in his eyes and tracked to his limit, he could not find the crow-like thief in the black t-shirt, black cap, and black backpack.

Wondering if he had jaywalked in the meantime, he diligently searched even the other side of the street, but not even a shadow was visible. It was as if the thief had passed through a manhole cover and disappeared into the ground.

Jeha, who had thought he had finally caught the culprit today, turned back and trudged along, completely dumbfounded.

*

The first time the thief stole Jeha’s belongings was about two weeks before that day, which was mid-August.

Kwon Jeha, a new professor at the prestigious K University in the country, often visited a cafe located in a park in the city center. It used the entire three-story building as a cafe, so the interior was spacious and pleasant. Jeha would often take a seat at a corner table on the second floor and read papers to reference for the new semester’s lectures.

One day, after a brief trip to the restroom, he found that his iced Americano, which he had barely had a few sips of, had vanished without a trace. The culprit had left the printed papers as they were, but had deftly taken only the limited edition fountain pen that was tucked between them. He had even taken the tumbler, still in its shopping bag, which Jeha had just bought that day to use in his office and had not even unwrapped.

Flabbergasted, Jeha let out a hollow laugh.

Kwon Jeha had moved to the United Kingdom when he was young and had lived there all his life until he returned to Korea in January of this year after being appointed as a professor at K University. Therefore, this was also his first time being a victim of theft in Korea.

Seeing that the scale of the damage was not large, it seemed to be an impulsive act rather than a premeditated crime, but while the tumbler or the fountain pen made some sense, taking the iced Americano was ridiculous. To run off with coffee in a situation where the owner of the seat could return at any moment was truly petty and shameless, was it not?

The limited edition fountain pen, which cost several million won, was a bit of a shame, but since there were many other writing instruments to replace it, Jeha did not bother to file a police report. He simply bought another tumbler identical to the stolen one on his way out of the cafe, letting out a self-deprecating laugh at the thought of ending up with a matching couple’s item with the thief.

A week after that, Jeha was robbed a second time in the same spot. This time, damage occurred that he could not ignore like the first time. The thief had stolen his tablet PC and a 1TB external hard drive. Of course, the iced Americano was not left behind either.

The thief must have been carefully observing Jeha’s habit of not putting the items on his table into his bag or carrying them with him when going to the restroom. Furthermore, seeing that he stole the iced Americano again, it was clear that this guy was the same person as the one from a week ago.

At this point, he could not help but get angry. The damage was the damage, but the bigger problem was that the thief had developed a bad habit because he had let it slide once.

Besides, what was most important to Jeha was the external hard drive, more so than the tablet PC. This was because the paper he was writing for a journal publication and all the related materials were on that external hard drive. Compared to the external hard drive, the tablet PC was worth no more than a cup of iced Americano to Kwon Jeha, who had lived his life without ever worrying about money.

Jeha sat in the spot where the external hard drive had disappeared and organized his thoughts. The thief had successfully completed the last two crimes, so he would consider Jeha a pushover and think a third theft was also possible.

If he were to immediately inform the staff or report it to the police and the security at this cafe was strengthened, the thief would get scared and never come near this place again. Then, the external hard drive would be lost forever.

What if he induced a third theft instead? He could film the crime scene to secure evidence and then hand him over to the police as a culprit caught in the act. If the thief had not sold the external hard drive yet, he could get it back, and even if he had already deleted the data and sold it, he could still make him pay for his crime.

Having made up his mind, Jeha went to the cafe every day from the next day on. He carelessly spread out items worth targeting on the table and frequently went in and out of the restroom, giving the thief a chance to steal.

On the fifth day of doing so, the thief finally showed up, but he had ended up losing him. He had tried to catch him on his own somehow, but after being hit three times, he now felt that he had no choice.

Jeha went to the counter and spoke to the tall woman wearing a manager’s name tag on her chest.

“I have been robbed three times already just in this place. Then today, I happened to spot the culprit, but I unfortunately lost him.”

“What? Really?”

“I recorded the scene with a video. Could you please check if this man comes to the cafe often?”

Jeha held out his phone with the video to the manager. The manager furrowed her brow after watching the video.

“Hmm, his face is too blurry, I can’t see it well.”

“He is wearing a cap, but isn’t his face clearly visible?”

“No, just the face part is hard to see, as if it’s been mosaicked.”

Jeha was utterly dumbfounded, but since there was a possibility that this woman had extremely severe astigmatism, he asked again with a calm expression.

“Could you perhaps have the other employees check as well? He stole something important, so I really need to catch him.”

The manager nodded and called the other employees over to show them the video. However, all the other employees just tilted their heads.

“Strangely, only the face isn’t visible.”

“It’s blurry only around the face, as if someone smudged it.”

Jeha was speechless. Why was it that the face that was perfectly clear to him was not visible to others? He had no way of knowing at the moment whether it was because he was a superhuman with senses far superior to those of ordinary people that it was only clearly visible to him.

After getting his phone back, Jeha asked.

“Then, could you please check if his face was captured on the store’s CCTV?”

“It’s difficult to show you the CCTV directly due to the protection of our customers’ portrait rights. Would it be okay if we check and let you know right away?”

“I would appreciate it if you could do that.”

The manager asked for the location of the seat Jeha had been sitting in and went into the office. Jeha tried his best to ignore the blatant stares of the part-time employees and waited for the manager to return to the counter. A moment later, the manager who came back to him had a troubled expression.

“He was captured taking the items, but since the culprit is wearing a baseball cap with a brim, his face is barely visible.”

“Is it like that in all the camera footage?”

“Yes. Because all the CCTVs are angled to film from top to bottom. I’m not sure if his face is small or if the cap is big, but only a tiny bit below his mouth is visible. Are you going to report this to the police?”

As long as the face was not visible, there was likely nothing the police could do, which was a frustrating situation. Jeha struggled to compose his hardened expression.

“That is alright. Thank you for checking.”

Jeha gave the manager a slight nod, turned around, and went up to the second floor.

At his seat where the thief had sat, only a cup with about half of the Americano left and a plate with a messy scatter of cake crumbs remained. Before, he had taken the coffee and all in its disposable cup, but this time it seemed he could not take it because it was a store-use cup.

Jeha, staring blankly at the cup, thought. Since the thief was bare-handed, wouldn’t there surely be fingerprints left here? If I take this cup and fork to the police station as evidence…….

The police would be so very likely to care that much about such a petty theft case. Shaking his head, he placed the dishes on a tray and took them to the return counter.

As he tidied up his seat and came down, he could feel the manager and the employees glancing at him. He ignored their gazes and was walking toward the entrance when someone approached Jeha.

“Excuse me, if you don’t mind, could you please leave your contact information and name? We’ll contact you right away if we find any lost items or if any other instances of damage are reported.”

It was the cafe manager he had spoken with earlier. Jeha shook his head.

“It is fine. I will take care of it myself.”

Jeha turned away after leaving a polite but business-like refusal. Now that he had made an impression on the employees, this cafe was now useless.

Jeha felt quite dejected.

*

“I’m pretty sure I ended up enrolling in this school because of Professor Kwon.”

“What are you talking about? Professor Kwon just came this year, and you’re a sophomore. How could you have known and come here because of the professor?”

“No, there’s such a thing as fate. I got into S University but gave it up and came here.”

“Didn’t you get into the Russian Language and Literature department at S University? You said you came here because you hated how difficult Russian was.”

“Haa, you have a needlessly good memory.”

“Still, I admit that I want to attribute everything to Professor Kwon. Even if you gathered all the professors in the Republic of Korea, you wouldn’t find visuals like that.”

“Just professors? I’d bet my entire fortune that you wouldn’t find one even if you gathered all the students in the country. A person like Professor Kwon should normally be inside an entertainment agency building.”

“My heart hurts too when I make eye contact with the professor during class. And that British English accent! How can a person be so fatally sexy?”

“My wish for the general meeting today is to sit next to or in front of Professor Kwon. Guys, please make my wish come true, huh?”

“No way. If it’s a fair and common-sense general meeting, Professor Kwon should be made to sit alone at a desk in the very front. So that no one can have him all to themselves.”

The chatter of the female students sitting in the English Language and Literature department classroom on the second floor of the College of Humanities was clearly heard by Kwon Jeha, who was in the department office on the floor directly above at the same time.

Damn this hearing. It was a problem, if anything, that as he was reborn through many lives, his five senses gradually developed, making not only his vision but also his hearing reach a superhuman level.

He was now used to controlling his hearing and could block out unwanted sounds, but he could not stop himself from instinctively perking up his ears when a story related to him was faintly heard.

“Professor, are you really going to the general meeting today? The students have been asking a lot if you’re really coming.”

At the assistant’s voice, Jeha, who was standing in front of the copy machine, blocked out the sound coming from afar.

“Aren’t they just worried that an old professor might actually show up where the students are having fun?”

“Oh, what are you saying? Honestly, it might be different for other professors, but it’s definitely not the case for you, professor. As soon as the news spread that you would be attending, the general meeting fees were apparently transferred like crazy through the class reps’ group chat.”

At the assistant’s somewhat excited words, Jeha let out a silent smirk.

Jeha, who entered the classroom for his lecture, called out the students’ names one by one to check attendance.

As he looked at the faces, which, although they were adults, had not yet shed their youthful appearance, he was reminded of that pale thief he had seen at the cafe a few days ago, and Jeha became a little troubled.