Chapter 2
Every time I stepped into a courtroom, the same question rose in my mind.
They said the law existed to clear the falsely accused and ease the victim's suffering, but sometimes it felt more like the old saying: those with money are innocent; those without it are guilty.
It wasn't that I meant to insult the courtroom. Maybe it was just because of the case I had been assigned—the youngest son of the Oh-sung Group.
Oh Yoon-ki, twenty-two years old.
He had plowed into Dongjak Bridge while driving drunk, then gotten tangled up with a broker who traded in epilepsy diagnoses and military-service bribery. Now he was the defendant stirring up the entire country.
And his mouth was sharp enough to keep the fire burning.
At Continent Law Firm, someone on the corporate legal team should have ordered him to keep his mouth shut the moment he stepped in front of the cameras, but he had charged ahead like a spoiled bastard who liked doing the exact opposite of what was sensible.
He was easily obnoxious enough to dominate the main news cycle for four straight days, and, unsurprisingly, Oh-sung Group's stock had gone into a tailspin.
It had been a long time since a family scandal had triggered a volatility interruption.
In any case, Oh-sung Group had decided not to let this look like a family-and-management issue, so instead of assigning the matter to its in-house legal team, it handed the case to Continent Law Firm.
And I, unlucky as ever, had been assigned as second counsel on the matter.
Technically, the second counsel's job ended with drafting consultation records and getting up to speed on the case.
But because the lead attorney, Geuk Ji-ham, was busy, I had even ended up handling the evidence issues.
They had brought in another lawyer, but I was the one carrying the whole load.
No matter how much work I did alone, my salary stayed the same, and I had no idea whether the bonus would ever materialize.
Still, after more than two years, the trial was finally nearing its end.
So this was the day of the final verdict.
Just knowing I would no longer have to listen to the defendant's abuse made my stomach loosen at last.
"Cha."
"Yes."
Geuk Ji-ham, who had finally shown up in court after ages, glanced through the record of the case.
"This doesn't sound like the Cha I know."
"...Pardon?"
"Drunk driving. He could be sentenced to less than a year, which means a suspended sentence is still on the table."
Tap. Tap.
He pointed at a specific section with his finger.
"Attorney Geuk, these days courts tend to apply the Widmark formula, so I figured it would be hard to get Oh Yoon-ki sentenced to less than a year."
"If the victim declines punishment, wouldn't that help with mitigation? Hit and run after injury falls under six months to a year and six months, doesn't it, according to the sentencing guidelines?"
It was a case involving a prior offense of the same kind, and serious injury had resulted.
We'd be lucky if he escaped aggravated punishment. Mitigation?
I swallowed my bewilderment and answered Geuk Ji-ham's question.
"The victim has not stated that they decline punishment."
"Cha. Is this really the first time you've dealt with something like this?"
His long sigh was somehow more chilling than usual today.
"You should have gone back again and again until you got a written statement declining punishment. Use whatever means you had to."
Before the first trial, I had gone to the hospital and delivered the message that we wanted to settle.
If he wanted a job at any Oh-sung affiliate, we would guarantee employment until retirement.
Or he could ask for billions in compensation, and that would have been fine too.
But the victim wanted a strong sentence for a defendant who would not offer a sincere apology.
So I had wished the injured man a swift recovery and never gone back.
"Honestly, you don't sound like Continent's ace in the criminal division at all."
Continent Law Firm—the best law firm in South Korea. Geuk Ji-ham, a lawyer on the corporate side who held Continent shares.
He adjusted the frame of his glasses and stared expressionlessly up at the court emblem.
"You really won't be able to hold your head up in front of the chairman of Oh-sung Group."
His words were flat and sharp, carrying only one meaning.
That he was profoundly disappointed.
God, this is impossible.
From the moment I took the case, my mother's face had kept flickering in my mind—the mother who had died ten years ago in a drunk-driving hit-and-run.
Even though the defendant, Oh Yoon-ki, overlapped with the defendant in my mother's case, I still thought I had done everything I was supposed to do as counsel.
In Geuk Ji-ham's eyes, it probably looked like I had simply failed to protect the defendant's interests.
The court officer announced to the people in the gallery that the trial would begin shortly.
At once, the courtroom fell silent.
Then the judge entered.
Seated on the bench, the judge turned on the microphone.
"On July 10, 2023, the case to be ruled on today is 2023Do1033, violations of the Road Traffic Act, namely drunk driving, and the crime of bribery, specifically bribery in connection with military-service corruption. The appellants are the prosecutor and the defendant. I will now explain the reasoning."
After reciting the long explanation, the final judgment followed.
"The court rules as follows. As for the lower court's judgment on the bribery charge for offering bribes to arrange or solicit all manner of military-service exemptions and related corruption, the decision is reversed and remanded to the Seoul High Court. Both the prosecutor's appeal against the defendant and the defendant's appeal are dismissed."
No guilt on the military corruption charge.
Guilty on drunk driving.
Even that guilty verdict had been carefully watered down by the court.
With a suspended sentence.
"What, they cut him slack just because he's the youngest son of Oh-sung Group?"
"A suspended sentence? I didn't hear that wrong, did I?"
"They reduced the drunk-driving charge too, and found him not guilty of military corruption? Does that even make sense?"
The gallery erupted.
And it was understandable.
Most people had probably expected him to be found guilty not only of drunk driving but of military-service corruption as well.
The wooden doors slid open.
Unlike in an ordinary case, where he would have said something like "good work," Geuk Ji-ham headed for the defendant's bench without a word.
I stood from counsel table and went straight over to Oh Yoon-ki.
"Mr. Oh Yoon-ki, I apologize for securing you a suspended sentence."
It was a verdict beyond what he deserved, but since he hadn't been acquitted, I kept my tone modest.
Then I held out my hand to him in thanks for his patience over all this time.
But after a moment, he only glared at me as if he couldn't even see the hand I had offered.
Embarrassed, I was just about to withdraw it when he twisted his mouth into a sneer.
"Useless bastard."
After that, he unloaded a stream of filthy abuse on me, and nobody stopped him.
Not even my boss, Geuk Ji-ham, and not even Oh Yoon-ki's secretary; if anything, they both looked at me as though I were the one in the wrong.
I was furious.
If I had done no work, maybe I could have understood it. But I had done everything within the bounds of the law, and he had still been given a suspended sentence. Why was he cursing me? I couldn't make sense of it.
No. There probably hadn't needed to be a reason at all.
They just needed someone to take the abuse.
I let the insults wash over me until, at "Did your mother give birth to trash like you and then eat seaweed soup to celebrate?" my hand clenched around my bag.
Oh Yoon-ki, sharp-eyed and vicious as a viper, dropped his voice in an instant and tightened the noose around my throat.
"Getting angry, are you?"
He grabbed my collar and whispered so only I could hear.
"You little bastard, who do you think you are, telling me to pay the judge?"
"...!"
No way. Did he really mean he bought the verdict with money?
Geuk Ji-ham's comment about a suspended sentence hadn't been a joke after all.
Then what was I? Had I been walking around on a rigged board game for two years?
Then why did they even need me?
It wasn't that I had some noble pride.
This was an insult.
To a lawyer defending a defendant in court.
To say he had bought the ruling for the case I had handled with money was to trample my self-respect into the dirt.
It dismissed all my effort as worthless and implied that the best law firm in South Korea had laid the tracks so a judge could be bought with cash.
And I was part of that firm.
Revulsion welled up in me.
I had been at Continent because there had been work to do, but this was something else entirely.
"Why do you look so shocked? You've probably done this at Continent a few times yourself, haven't you? Say something."
At Oh Yoon-ki's sneer, a thought flashed through my mind: What if something like this had happened in my mother's case too?
I had considered the possibility, but I had still believed in the court's fairness.
I had been the fool.
This wasn't a choice I had made for the sake of some stupid mission.
I tore my arm free from Oh Yoon-ki's grasp and went to Geuk Ji-ham.
When I saw Geuk Ji-ham's twitching eyebrow, I almost laughed.
"Cha, what do you think you're doing?"
What was I doing?
I couldn't stomach this anymore.
"I'm resigning."
For once, I rested over the weekend.
Then, as soon as I got to work at Continent Law Firm, I submitted my resignation letter.
I had expected my heart to feel unsettled, but maybe I had been carrying so much from the Oh Yoon-ki case that, instead, I felt strangely relieved.
"I should have quit when they told me to resign after I asked to be reassigned from the drunk-driving case."
Staying had only earned me abuse from my mother.
"This is all the fault of Geuk and the assignment system anyway."
Continent assigned cases from above, like the courts or the prosecution, unless something unusual happened.
And if you refused a case and angered someone higher up, you could be shut out of assignments no matter how much business you brought in, which meant there were plenty of cases where people didn't even receive a base salary.
So whether you were a non-equity partner lawyer or a senior associate, if a client came in carrying a pile of money, you had to put personal feelings aside and defend them, no matter who they were.
But I didn't need to do that anymore.
"If I open my own office, I'll only take the work I want."
Besides, I was so busy that I hadn't had enough time to look for evidence related to my mother's case. This was probably for the best.
"Pack my personal things into an empty box one by one. I can take the monitor I bought with my own money and use it there."
I sorted through my things, then opened the cabinet one last time.
Large envelopes stuffed with case files spilled out in a rush.
"So I really did handle a lot of cases over these three years."
I bent down, picked up the envelopes that had fallen to the floor one by one, and stacked them on the table.
Some of these cases will probably be reviewed and folded into Continent's confidential archive. The Oh-sung Group case too.
Forcing down the knots in my chest, I examined the cabinet carefully.
The important material was probably stored on my external hard drive, so there was nothing else I needed to take with me.
"Did I pack everything?"
I rested a hand on my hip and looked around the office.
The days flashed through my mind—days when I routinely left after midnight because of the crushing workload, days when weekend work had been part of ordinary life.
For a man who had worked himself to the bone, the only thing left behind was the money that would go toward repaying the office loan, but even that felt hopeful.
"This isn't the time for that."
Tok, tok.
"I should text Joo-hyung and Jae-woo that I quit and ask them out for a meal."
Anyway, my future self could handle the bill next month.
I sent the messages and carried the box out.
I pressed the elevator hall button and waited.
"Cha!"
It was Kim Ju-young, the lawyer who had been my senior counsel before Geuk Ji-ham.
He helped me a lot when I first came to Continent.
"See you in court."
"I'll take the win."
That was the extent of our legal-world farewell, and then I left Continent Law Firm behind.
Mission complete.
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