Chapter 29
“Since this is a law office, I bought it with practicality in mind. Is it that bad? The shop said it was a multifunctional product.”
I’d thought that, if she was the kind of seasoned ajumma who’d seen everything, we might actually be able to spar back and forth a little.
And just as I expected...
The woman drew a circle with her finger, then opened her mouth.
“It’s black. Even if you dust it often, the dirt will show right away. If it were your home, I wouldn’t say a word because that’s personal taste, but for a business, I’d pass. It’s not like I run a flower shop for no reason.”
I nodded at her words that you needed at least a decent environment to work efficiently.
If Continent Law Firm hadn’t had amenities like massage chairs and a sleeping room, the partners—starting with Attorney Kim—would have risen up in protest, and not just once or twice.
If I’d been part of Continent, I would’ve joined them.
Now it was an impossible thought. Something that would never happen.
“Young lawyer, take this back. When you have time, come with me to look at interior decor items. The Goto Mall shops are fine, too.”
“Since it’s come up, shall we go right now? We can buy the decor and have dinner while we’re at it.”
“Now? Then I might as well close up the stall altogether. Hold on a second—I need to check whether I had any reservations today.”
While the ajumma checked her schedule on her smartphone, I scrawled on an A4 sheet of paper.
There’s something strange inside the bouquet.
Let’s go outside.
When she saw the note, her gaze sharpened as she stared at the soap flowers, as if someone had tossed trash into a pool of lava that had been quiet a moment before.
“Ajumma, let’s leave the stall as it is and step out for a bit. If the food court’s crowded, we can always get it to go.”
“...Should we? I feel like I’d just be inconveniencing you, young lawyer.”
“We’re all just trying to make a living. By the way, is there anything you’d like to eat? If not, how about the spicy braised chicken that opened about a month ago?”
If it’s crowded, we’ll go somewhere else.
* * *
At the spicy braised chicken place in the food court of the express bus terminal, the foot traffic was heavy, but a few tables were still empty here and there.
I guided her to a corner seat that would be good for talking.
“Please sit here, ajumma.”
“Thanks to you, I’m eating in a restaurant for the first time in ages.”
Unless you were a self-employed business owner with a break time, most days meant eating irregularly because you never knew when a customer might show up.
Lawyers have it a little better.
It depended on the firm, but in general, lunch was guaranteed.
Unless a VIP client could only make it then, or there was some special circumstance like a trial.
“Ajumma, should we order a medium spicy braised chicken?”
“And a bottle of soju, too.”
“Soju? I can’t drink, so would you mind having it alone?”
“Oh, right. You still have to work, don’t you?”
The ajumma said she’d drink it neat, so I shouldn’t worry.
The moment the owner of the braised chicken place set down the bottle, I poured soju into her glass.
She downed it in one shot before there was even a chance to exchange another word.
“Haaah. Soju may have gone down in proof, but it’s still bitter. Maybe that’s because it melts this rotten world right off your tongue. One sip and it’s already strong enough to shake your head.”
It wasn’t easy to tell her I couldn’t drink at all, when she was already telling the young lawyer to drink only fine liquor instead of soju.
Her expression had changed the moment I told her there was something strange inside the soap flower bouquet.
“Ajumma, I told you earlier that there was something odd in the bouquet.”
“You did.”
When I explained that the bouquet had been something I’d taken from the restaurant, her face shifted again.
“I was working in the office when I heard a strange noise, so I thought it might be some kind of electromagnetic interference. But no matter what I did, it stayed the same. So I used a detector.”
I was talking about that black device I’d lied about earlier by saying it was an interior decoration item.
“But the detector picked up an abnormal reaction, and I judged that there was a bug inside the soap flowers. The device in my hand was a bug detector, after all.”
“...What?”
The chopsticks she’d raised to grab a piece of braised peanuts stopped in midair.
“To know for sure, I’d have to break off the base of the soap flowers, but I can say with confidence that if it isn’t a bug, then it’s a recorder.”
“Wait a second, young man.”
The ajumma held up her palm.
“You said those soap flowers were something you’d taken from the restaurant earlier. They weren’t something Ye-ji’s father got from his siblings, right? That’s not it, is it?”
It was the kind of plea that clung to the last shred of affection, hoping it wasn’t true.
“Young lawyer, it isn’t, right?”
“......”
Her face had gone as worn and faded as a soap flower brushing against water and dissolving in foam.
I met her desperate eyes squarely.
I didn’t want to offer her a kind lie.
That would have been deceiving her, and she had probably suffered this same kind of thing at the hands of Oh Yoon-sik’s siblings more than once already.
“We’ve confirmed that one of his siblings gave it to Oh Yoon-sik as a present.”
“......”
“The restaurant owner left it behind, and I picked it up because they were about to throw it away.”
After muttering a short curse, the ajumma took another shot of soju.
Fraud doesn’t care whether you’re blood relatives or strangers, rich or poor.
It was like a disease that arrived the moment you let your guard down—so fair, people half-jokingly said it was more equal than the laws of the Republic of Korea.
Thud!
She slammed her glass down as if spitting out her anger.
“I had a feeling. I just knew it.”
“......”
“That soap flower was something Ye-ji’s flower shop sold back when it was in style. That was six years ago, too.”
When soap flowers were all the rage, she’d contacted a supplier that worked with Ye-ji’s flower shop and had them make flowers in mixed colors, like marbled swirls, then sold them as a unique product.
Something original.
“Later on, other places started selling similar soap flowers, too. So I thought they might have come from somewhere else. Even though my family runs a flower shop.”
“......”
“But if the ribbon tied around the bouquet is the one with Ye-ji’s flower shop’s leveling on it, then it came from our place!”
So it really was one of the products she sold.
I’d only been guessing from the psychometry vision and the dust-coated soap flowers.
Given the spending habits of Oh Yoon-sik’s siblings, I had wondered if it might even be one of the bouquets sold by this ajumma herself.
“If I remember the timing right, it was a gift from Ye-ji’s father at his youngest nephew’s middle school graduation.”
I hadn’t known it was a graduation present from six years ago.
They gave it as thanks for signing away the land compensation agreement. That makes this even more disgusting, doesn’t it?
Soap flowers are nice because they’re eco-friendly, reusable, and never wilt.
But they’d tried to scam a man out of his brothers’ compensation money, and to avoid spending a single won, they’d stuffed illegal equipment into dusty soap flowers and sent them off.
By my standards, that was a gross violation of basic decency.
I don’t even want to be in the same room as relatives like that.
“What kind of human does something like that? They take a gift they received and give it back as a gift? And attach a bug—or a recorder—to it?”
The ajumma kept draining her glass one after another. She must have been furious.
“Young lawyer, I don’t get it. Why the hell would something like that be inside a soap flower? Does it change anything legally?”
I didn’t know the reason either.
Illegally recorded files couldn’t be used as evidence in court, and neither could bugs, of course.
Then that meant the siblings had done this because they wanted to hear the bugged or recorded conversation and decide what to do next.
But for all that effort, it’s excessive. It would’ve been better to get Oh Yoon-sik drunk like in this case and grill him then. Why do something so inefficient?
Fraudsters didn’t allocate their schemes according to some energy-efficiency rating for victims’ assets.
Whether the target was rich or poor, they stripped them for everything they could get—chasing the highest possible efficiency to the bitter end.
I couldn’t tell her for sure because I wasn’t certain, but I had no choice except to suspect there was something more to it.
“There’s no debate about it—it’s blatantly illegal. I’m curious, too. I can’t begin to guess what Oh Yoon-sik’s siblings ultimately want.”
To the ajumma, who let out a long sigh, there was still something I could say as her lawyer.
“But ajumma, if we win this case, things will change. Your family relationship will.”
For people who kept getting swarmed by annoying parasites, or who always seemed cursed with one bad break after another, what they needed was a world turned upside down.
A lawsuit handed down by the courts of the Republic of Korea—stronger than blocking a number or cutting off a relationship.
The ajumma worked her mouth for a moment, then downed another glass.
“It really does have to change this time. I was going to tell you earlier at the office if it hadn’t been for the soap flowers.”
“Ah! Did Oh Yoon-sik’s siblings contact you?”
“...How did you know?”
“Fraudsters all think the same way. If the victim won’t step into the trap they’ve set, they keep poking from the side and telling them to come over.”
Like rain soaking through your clothes one drop at a time, they make you fail to even realize it’s fraud. They get you to believe that whatever the scammer says is the very definition of truth.
And if you object, that means I’m right.
“Oh Yoon-bok must’ve called because he got rattled after hitting Oh Ye-ji.”
“Yeah, and because of that, Ye-ji’s father said he might as well quietly make the settlement agreement disappear like you said.”
So Oh Yoon-sik did make an effort?
That surprised me. Then a dry laugh slipped out of the ajumma.
“The problem was, maybe Oh Yoon-ja heard him on the line, because she suddenly flew into a rage, said he was trying to split up siblings, and then threatened to sue for emotional damages before hanging up.”
“You don’t need to worry about that part.”
We were the ones who should have been suing, for crying out loud.
Oh Yoon-sik bore no real fault, and there was a strong chance they wouldn’t be able to present clear evidence proving causation between the harm and the damage they claimed.
“Does Oh Yoon-sik actually want to sue? He probably called you right after hanging up with his siblings and blew up at you, didn’t he?”
“He did. We had it out on the phone. But I want to sue. I can’t live like this anymore.”
Before she could even finish saying she didn’t know how many times she’d said that before, the spicy braised chicken arrived.
I ladled some into the empty bowl and handed it to the ajumma.
“Then let’s start by getting a power of attorney from Oh Yoon-sik.”
“A power of attorney?”
“Yes. You can become the litigation representative for Oh Yoon-sik.”
“......”
Convincing Oh Yoon-sik would still fall entirely on the ajumma, but he hadn’t exactly given up his retirement funds yet, so it was doable.
“Could I really do it?”
“Of course you can. Something like, ‘I can’t live like this anymore. Ye-ji got hurt and came home today, and now you want to hand over the land compensation on top of that? Isn’t my husband the best man in that house?’”
It was a line aimed squarely at Oh Yoon-sik, who wanted to be respected by others.
“B-but what if Ye-ji’s father says he doesn’t want to?”
“Then you use an impossible move.”
“...An impossible move?”
A skill so impossible that even with your guard up, you still couldn’t block the opponent’s attack.
If you had nothing but the impossible move only Lee Kkot-soon could use, it was over.
“Divorce.”
“...!”
I wasn’t saying she had to go through with it. I was telling her to threaten him with it.
“Oh, and I’ll print out a few extra copies of the power of attorney and the divorce petition for you. Oh Yoon-sik might rip them up.”
The ajumma’s mouth dropped open.
“Young lawyer... how do you know Ye-ji’s father so well when you’ve only met him once?”
I can see everything. Through the eye of insight.