Episode 22
Lee Seon-dong stared back at me with a dazed look in his eyes.
“Depending on what sentence Lee Hoo receives, there may be a chance for exemption. If he gets a suspended sentence, it’ll take two years before he can be exempted. If the sentence is any heavier than that, it’ll be at least seven years.”
If he were sentenced to death or life imprisonment, the minimum would be twenty years from the initial registration date.
“Hhheh heh heh. So the only way is to wait for time to pass?”
He sank to the floor and laughed like a man who had lost his mind.
“No. In cases like this, the family that gets dragged into it usually goes through some simple procedure or cosmetic surgery. They change the shape of their eyebrows, or get double-eyelid surgery, anything to look a little different.”
Sometimes the entire family even changed their names and emigrated.
“You really are saying something absurd, aren’t you?”
“Please think it over carefully. One victim suffered injuries requiring eight weeks of treatment, and another died by suicide. The victims have no intention of settling.”
“……”
“Let’s say the judge uses discretionary mitigation. Even then, it’s hard to get a suspended sentence. If he receives the minimum penalty, he’ll be registered on the alert list for at least seven years.”
Silence swallowed the interview room.
“……”
Lee Seon-dong had shouted that he wasn’t the culprit, but he had still been arrested in the lobby on the first floor of his company, because the police said there was a risk of destroying evidence and fleeing.
The man who had cried that he was so ashamed he couldn’t go back to work wouldn’t be able to endure seven years of invisible scrutiny.
He’s a shut-in, and it’s not like his family is short on money, so he probably won’t even step outside. He’ll rot in his room like some pathetic hermit.
He stared at the ceiling for a long time, then closed his eyes.
“...Attorney Cha, your way of comforting people is really something else. That’ll be all for today. Please leave.”
“Understood.”
I handed him a tissue and gathered my papers.
Maybe.
Today might be the last time I saw him.
The extended detention period the prosecution had granted by one round would soon expire, and if Lee Seon-dong was cleared of all charges, there would be no reason for him to meet me, a lawyer, again.
“You’ve had a rough time.”
As soon as I got home, I lay down for a minute. But when I opened my eyes again, the room was pitch-black.
“...What time is it?”
The smartphone said it was 4:45 a.m.
In fifteen minutes, my morning alarm would go off.
“I really did sleep like the dead.”
I stretched, then opened my email site.
It had been half a year since I escaped Continent Law Firm, but this damn habit still showed no sign of changing.
While I’m at it, I might as well sort through my email. There are more spam messages than free consultation requests. I shouldn’t have put my address on the blog for no reason.
I scratched my head hard.
Ding-ding!
As if it had been waiting for me to get up, the system’s alert sounded.
A mission has been completed.
Would you like to receive the reward? [Y/N]
“It’s already complete? Then Prosecutor Kim must have filed the no-charge disposition yesterday.”
I hit Y at once.
Just like before, a photograph cut through the air and dropped before me.
“What in the world is this?”
A half-body shot of an unidentified person, their face blacked out, with both hands crossed over their chest.
“A ceremony? Did they win gold at the Olympics or something?”
Or maybe it’s a message from a performance artist saying they’re not bound by anything at all?
I studied it for a long time. There was one thing that immediately caught my eye.
There was dirt caught under the fingernails.
The wrinkled left hand, which looked like it belonged to someone at least middle-aged, had an index finger so short it was almost missing a knuckle.
“Definitely not an ordinary person. Looks like it was injured, or maybe it’s a deformity.”
Tap. Tap.
“If only the fingerprints were visible, I could ask Prosecutor Kim to look into it. What a shame.”
...Fingerprints?
The decisive clue that had led me to arrest Lee Hoo flashed through my mind.
The time I had used Psychometry on the culprit’s clothes, which I’d found in a trash bin.
“Right. I can read the past, can’t I?”
I had even used it as evidence in the case, turning my guess into certainty.
I had forgotten because I’d just woken up, but that didn’t change the fact.
“I’m still only D-rank, so I can only see ten seconds, but that’s enough.”
Along with the photograph I had received as the first reward, it was a chance to uncover more clues.
If it turned out to be the wrong scene, I could just rank up to D and use the ability again.
Since I hadn’t used my ability for today yet, I placed the photograph on my palm and focused.
“Hah!”
Crackle!
Spotlights flooded down on a middle-aged man standing on a stage.
— Waaaah!
Cheering and applause burst out all at once.
— Ah...
His shoulders shook, then he clutched his chest with both hands.
Just like in the photo.
— Why are there so many people here today?
The man with a ponytail looked around at the crowd.
Then, suddenly, it stopped.
“So he’s the owner of the hand in the photograph.”
The hand in the vision looked nothing like the one I’d been examining.
“Not the time to get distracted.”
Before the memory faded, I opened the folder labeled Mom in the center of my desktop and clicked the mission file.
Under the first case, I added the image from the second scanned photograph and wrote down everything I’d inferred.
“Occupation unknown, but someone used to being under the spotlight. Entertainment industry, sports, or the like.”
He clasps both hands over his heart when he’s moved.
“If his index finger was injured and surgically repaired, there should be medical records. The same goes for a congenital deformity.”
In the case of something congenital, though...
Testosterone is said to give a man a stronger masculine appearance.
Also, if I referred to a paper published recently in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, the probability that he was a psychopath was high.
But I absolutely shouldn’t jump to conclusions.
Beep.
Beep. Transfer.
At around 9:00 a.m. on Monday, December 4, in front of the ticket gate at Express Bus Terminal Station on Line 7, a fare dodger was pointing a finger at a station employee and arguing.
“He was quiet for a while, and now he’s at it again.”
“Looks like the rich bastard came back to cause trouble.”
The shop owners in the arcade were whispering about the man who’d become a local nuisance.
Looks like he’s pretty well known around here.
“Why am I the only one getting caught? That guy in hiking clothes didn’t pay either! This is discrimination. I’m the one being wronged here!”
“That gentleman didn’t fare-dodge. He got on the wrong train direction.”
“You think I’ve only ridden the subway once or twice?! Look at that guy’s face!”
Schrödinger’s excuses were always fascinating no matter how many times I heard them.
A person who shouted brazenly that they hadn’t done anything wrong would clam up the moment evidence was presented.
And in the end, they’d belittle the victim, claim the victim must have had problems too, and then go right back to committing the same crime.
Even in court, I’d never get tired of hearing excuses.
In any case, I decided I had to remember the celebrity’s face and walked toward the office. From far away, the owner of Yeji's Flower Shop waved at me.
“Lawyer boy!”
“Good morning, ma’am.”
“You’re looking bright today. Did something good happen?”
“I think it’s because I slept well over the weekend.”
“I thought you had some kind of special appointment.”
The owner, who opened the shop from the early morning, pressed her lips together and looked around.
“Boy, do you have plans for tonight?”
“No, though is something wrong?”
“I was thinking of treating you to a meal. I was grateful for what happened that day.”
I’d told her several times that it was fine, but it seemed the weight of it still lingered on her mind.
And judging by her face, it seems like there’s something she wants to ask me about privately too.
Most of the time, when someone looked like that, it was a family problem.
An inheritance dispute, or one of the family’s sore spots had started causing trouble.
I wanted to push away the ominous feeling, but that was never easy when your job was being a lawyer.
“But ma’am, isn’t evening when business is at its best?”
“True, but at lunchtime you’re working, aren’t you? From what I can see, unless you’ve got something special, you’re in your office. Eating cup noodles.”
She had been in business for a long time, so her eye for things was sharp.
Sometimes people came after work because they hadn’t had time, but the busiest time for a lawyer’s office was during the day on weekdays.
“It’d feel wrong to ask a man who’s working that hard to come out for lunch. It’s not hard to give you some rice and side dishes, though.”
So that’s why she’d been giving me side dishes at lunch all this time.
I felt a little embarrassed.
“I always eat them well. Sometimes they taste just like my mother’s side dishes.”
“Well, I do know only a small number of side dishes, but I’m not bad at them!”
“They’re delicious. I mean that sincerely.”
Someone who woke before dawn every day of the year to sort the flowers that arrived, and still did the housework on top of that, cleared her throat awkwardly and blushed.
“Ma’am, when should I come by the flower shop?”
“...How am I supposed to thank you?”
“I’m the one who’s grateful.”
“Then let’s meet at nine! I’ll close thirty minutes early today.”
“All right. I’ll see you then.”
If I posted a recent analysis of the trial on my blog and ate a snack or two, time would pass in no time.
Before that...
“Oh, right, ma’am! Is there a flower that a minor student would like? Something I can take with me right away?”
That evening.
I closed the office right as the auntie was tidying up her street stall.
I should at least help close up, since she always took care of me. Big flowerpots would be hard for her to carry anyway.
She looked like a neat woman in her fifties at a glance, but the shop owner was well over sixty.
But then...
“Huh?”
When it was time for the last round of business, Yeji's Flower Shop was already closed early.
“What the... Did I get the time wrong?”
Even after checking my smartphone, it was only 8:24 p.m.
Times like this, a lawyer’s instincts were useful.
Did something happen to the auntie?
There was no way that a professional like her would close up shop all of a sudden, and if she had, she’d have called to let me know she had an unavoidable problem and had to cancel our appointment.
She’s not even picking up her phone.
“...I should ask the owner of Blooming Flower Shop, shouldn’t I?”
The owner of Blooming Flower Shop wasn’t especially close to me, but she had worked with the owner of Yeji's Flower Shop for years, so she knew practically everything.
And she’s the neighborhood gossip too.
Just then, the owner came out of Blooming Flower Shop.
“Lawyer boy?”
“Ma’am, I stopped by the flower shop, but the door was already closed.”
“Something happened at home.”
The owner frowned.
So something had happened at home. Worse than this morning, even.
“Is she all right?”
“I’ll know once I get home. Haa...”
“Please go quickly, then. If it’s serious, call me.”
“Mm-hm. I’m sorry I had to cancel on you without being able to tell you, since we’d made plans. The order couldn’t be canceled, there were too many flowers coming in, and everything suddenly got so hectic I didn’t know what to do.”
“It’s fine. Family comes first. Go on.”
“...Thank you, boy.”
The owner headed for the arcade entrance with her phone ringing loudly in her hand.
At that point, I could have just taken the Line 7 subway home.
“Maybe I should grab a convenience store lunch box before I go. By this hour, the ones near my place will probably all be sold out. I’ll stop by the convenience store near the terminal and eat it at the office.”
As I headed for the opposite arcade entrance, where the convenience store was, text floated through the air.
A mission has been assigned.
Sub Mission
Prevent the incident that will occur at Lee Kkot-soon's home at 10:00 p.m. on December 4, 2023.
Success: Enter the main mission.
Failure: System destruction.
The date and time were tight, but...
Who the hell is Lee Kkot-soon?
I’d never heard the name before.
And there wasn’t a single person I could think of who fit it.
And yet the thought that I was supposed to stop an incident at some place belonging to Lee Kkot-soon sent my frustration boiling up.
If the system had a physical form, I would have wanted to chew it to pieces and burn it to ash.
“Wait a second.”
Home?
Today?
No way the owner of Yeji's Flower Shop was...
Auntie Lee Kkot-soon!!!!!