Chapter 10
The courtroom stirred with unrest.
The judge asked for order several times, but the noise refused to die down.
I pressed down the corners of my mouth, which had begun to lift, and went on with my questioning. “Sir, a lot of time has passed, and yet you still remember the two of them.”
“Yes. Most of the time, when people ask for my contact information, I tell them to reach me by email under the painting. But those two kept insisting on my phone number, saying they were no good with computers. They were such a nuisance, honestly.”
So the acquaintance defendant Jeon Jae-hyeon had mentioned was this shop owner, Mr. Heo.
Jeon Jae-hyeon leaned back and closed his eyes.
“Was there any reason you wrote your email separately under the work?”
“The artist fellow may have given me his business card, but he gave it to me, didn’t he? Not to anyone else.”
“That’s right.”
Because it was personal information.
“As you know, phone numbers can be used for voice phishing. And if someone wanted to, they could even send a smishing text pretending it came from me. On the other hand, even if someone impersonated me through email, that man could call our restaurant and check. It’s also easier for Sim Oh-han to block.”
The spectators nodded.
“So I wrote down the email as a backup. I just wanted to help the artist fellow, even a little.”
He was a stubborn shop owner with a presence that could overwhelm a room.
As soon as the cross-examination ended, I thanked him once more.
Before long, one of the prosecutors began his cross-examination.
Sim Oh-han, seated in the defendant’s chair beside the defense table, swallowed hard.
His hands were trembling again today.
He had taken Uwhang Cheongsimwon, and he’d already been to court several times by now, but he was still this rattled.
I leaned over and whispered, “Sim Oh-han, it’s going to get more interesting now, so pay attention.” Then I focused on the prosecutor’s questions.
“Sir, there doesn’t seem to be any CCTV footage from that time. What happened to it? Did you delete it on purpose?”
“I asked the CCTV company, and they told me the machine I rented was only kept for one month.”
Even after several questions, the prosecutor still wasn’t getting the answer he wanted.
At this rate, he’ll probably snap in frustration.
Just like he had when Sim Oh-han’s first hearing had been held.
And sure enough.
“Hey, witness Heo. Did you conspire with Sim Oh-han’s lawyer? In that case, you could be punished for perjury!”
The shop owner’s face tightened into an expression that plainly said, What kind of bastard is this supposed to be a prosecutor?
“Prosecutor, I brought something along just in case I heard talk like that.”
“Witness, what do you mean, brought something along? You can’t just bring anything into court.”
“Your Honor.”
Ignoring the prosecutor, the shop owner looked straight at the judge.
“Would it be all right if I took something out of my bag for a moment? I already had the bailiff check it earlier.”
“……?”
The judge glanced at the bailiff, then opened the mic.
“Go ahead.”
The bailiff followed the shop owner as he stepped away from the witness stand.
What the shop owner took from his bag was none other than one of Sim Oh-han’s works.
“Oh!”
“That’s the real piece!”
At once, the spectators who saw the painting let out exclamations, and the shop owner, shoulders squared, handed the coated paper to the judge.
“Somebody kept touching it, so I had it laminated at the end of December last year. So I figure there may be fingerprints on it from those two sitting over in the defendant’s seats.”
“……!”
Tap. Tap.
Sim Oh-han jabbed my side.
“L-lawyer-nim.”
“What is it?”
“I-is this part of your strategy too?”
“Of course it is.”
After visiting the shop owner in person and talking through the matter, I’d heard that Jeon Jae-hyeon and Min I-yeong had handled the piece so much that he’d laminated it, and I’d known at once.
It was the sort of thing any lawyer should do, but for Sim Oh-han, who had a history of getting thoroughly outplayed by lawyers, it must have been unfamiliar.
Then is this the right time to let him taste the sweetness of money?
I glanced sidelong at Sim Oh-han, then looked up at the bench where the judge sat.
“Winning lawyers are different. In their level.”
The balance of the verdict had shifted.
“We will now proceed with the questioning of the defendant, Sim Oh-han.”
The Sim Oh-han who had once trembled to pieces began, after a few hearings, to assert his own logic with confidence.
“Defendant Sim Oh-han, when did you begin drawing currency?”
“I was drawing currency before I entered the Department of Painting at Hongseong University.”
“Was there a reason you chose currency out of so many possible subjects?”
“During summer vacation in my sophomore year at Dosung High School, Yoon Ji-woo went on a trip to Japan and gave me 1,000 yen as a souvenir. It was the first time I’d ever seen foreign currency, and…”
“Why do you keep a study notebook?”
“For an artist, a study notebook records the process from the idea stage all the way through creation. If you look beneath the notebook I submitted, I wrote down everything in detail, from how I worked on this part at the time to the touches I considered for my own interpretation.”
“Why go that far?”
“It may look to someone else like I’m simply copying currency, but to me, it’s a work of art.”
Whenever that clear, measured voice rang through the courtroom, the spectators made a rustling sound.
The hyena-like reporters.
“That is all.”
“Prosecutor, do you have any questions?”
Judging from the prosecutor’s half-hearted questioning, the course of the case was steadily flowing toward acquittal.
“Proceed with your closing argument.”
The defendant questioning ended, and it was time for the closing arguments.
The prosecutor and the defense attorney.
Then the defendants, one after another, finished their final statements.
At last, it was Sim Oh-han’s turn.
He unfolded the A4 sheet of paper he had folded into quarters.
“Honorable Judge.”
A clear gleam shone in his eyes.
“I understand that I was indicted by the prosecutor on suspicion of drawing counterfeit money in the currency forgery case. But I am, at most, a poor artist who draws currency. The ‘art of money’ I create…”
He had a rare gift.
But he was poor.
And he had no one to back him.
He did not know that he had been picked for a planted case so the prosecutor could advance his career.
In the present day, when the old injustice of guilt for the poor and innocence for the rich from around October 1988 had still not disappeared, what sentence would be handed down to him?
“With that, I conclude the arguments. Judgment will be rendered on October 23.”
October 23, Chungyangjeol.
The day when fortune was said to come on a date doubled by two odd numbers.
The final verdict in the second trial was handed down.
“The court hereby finds the defendant, Sim Oh-han, not guilty.”
Click. Click.
In front of the main gate of the Seoul Northern District Court.
Court reporters and broadcasters thrust their microphones toward Sim Oh-han.
“Mr. Sim Oh-han, could you look this way?”
“What was the decisive reason the first verdict was overturned?”
“You’ve become known through this courtroom battle even though it was unintentional, and now you’ve earned the title of a rising star of Korean hyperrealism. How do you feel about that?”
“Have you read the column by Mr. Kang Hoon, the leading painter of Korean hyperrealism?”
Unruffled amid the flood of questions, Sim Oh-han opened his mouth.
“First, I’d like to thank Lawyer Cha Do-hyuk, who ran around on my behalf in every direction. The decisive ground for overturning the first verdict was the fact that, when the client who commissioned the work met me…”
Perhaps because he had rehearsed his closing argument so many times.
Sim Oh-han handled the reporters with ease before the cameras.
“…I went through an unexpected ordeal and had a difficult time. But I want to deeply thank Judge Lim Sang-hui, who wrote in the sentencing reasons that there is no law saying a poor man should give up on his dream, and urged me to keep striving.”
After answering all but a few questions laced with strange implications, Sim Oh-han was just about to leave.
“Mr. Sim Oh-han, after most major cases conclude, the defendant usually comes out with the lawyer and stands on the photo line, but I don’t see your counsel anywhere.”
“……?”
“Where did Lawyer Cha Do-hyuk go? Is your lawyer meeting with court officials right now?”
The reporter, adjusting his glasses, sounded as if he suspected something about the lawyer handling the case, Cha Do-hyuk.
The lawyer in a case that had become a hot topic had, frankly, earned the sort of exposure that amounted to the ultimate sales pitch.
But whether Sim Oh-han failed to catch the reporter’s meaning, or had simply picked up a bit of Cha Do-hyuk’s own roguish manner, he made an apologetic face.
“No. Lawyer Cha Do-hyuk went to visit a grave.”
“Pardon?”
“That’s why he isn’t here right now. He even couldn’t make it on the hearing day because of me. Tsk. I’m worried he won’t miss his train.”
* * *
If you take an intercity bus toward the side of Jian Resort, which became famous for horror films, and get off at the transfer stop in the middle, you’ll find the KBC training center.
Beyond the low ridge behind that center, if you climb the back hill and follow the gentle slope, you’ll come to my mother’s grave.
“Hoo. I’m here, Mother.”
My grandmother’s insistence that I not make the dead work too hard meant I could only come on the anniversary of her death.
Still, whenever I visited the grave, it felt as though I had returned to the warm house where my mother had once been alive.
I ran my hand over the closely trimmed grass.
“Nothing much happened while I was away, right? Looks like the grave caretaker came by. He didn’t grumble at you too much, did he?”
He had said he was busy because of Chuseok, but he’d still left the place immaculate.
I spread out a mat and set down a simple offering of fruit, meat, rice cakes, and dried fish, along with the hamburger my mother had liked.
Now it was time to tell her, in detail, everything that had happened over the past year.
“I quit Continent and opened a practice at Goto Mall. There’s a flower shop right across from it, so I bought these flowers there. Aren’t they pretty?”
When I’d said I was going to visit my mother’s grave, the aunt at the shop had tried to pack even more into my arms, but I’d turned her down.
“Min Ho-jun and Choi Jae-woo are saying we should grab a drink today, and I’m thinking about whether to go.”
Even though I said it like that, I’d probably go.
We always held a gathering around the anniversary of my mother’s death every year.
“That bastard Min Ho-jun is ditching me and says he’s getting married next year. He used to say he’d stay single for life.”
I grumbled that you really should never raise a black beast.
“You’d smack me on the back for this, Mother, but I’m not doing it. No matter what you say, it won’t matter. I don’t want to meet her, and there’s no reason for me to, so give up on marriage just this once.”
If I say it like this, Mother would probably tell me that ‘giving up’ is something you say when counting cabbages.
Though by now, it probably sounded like an old saying.
With the sunset at my back, I opened the status window.
Cha Do-hyuk (Lawyer)
Stamina: C+
Intelligence: A-
Grit: S
Morality: A
??? : -
Potential Ability
Psychometry: E(↑)
“Mother, I think I’ll be able to request a retrial soon.”