The Man at the Terminal
“I’ve got way too much stuff to carry.”
With a groan, I finally made it home. The place looked different from the way it had at dawn, but nothing in particular stood out to me. I stacked the boxes beside the front door—they’d have to go to the law office I was about to open—then collapsed into a chair for a moment to catch my breath.
“Phew. The mission said it had been completed, didn’t it?”
Since I still had time before dinner with my friends, I pulled up the window that had said the mission was complete a little earlier.
Mission complete.
Would you like to receive the reward? [Y/N]
“Of course I’m taking it.”
When I pressed Y, a single photograph fluttered down through the air as if it had slipped through a tear in space.
◈ Estimated to be from the 1960s
◈ The event, time, and location it points to are still unclear
A black-and-white aerial view of Seoul, apparently taken sometime in the 1960s.
What it pointed to—whether an event, a time, or a place—was still unclear.
It would probably come into focus once I gathered more evidence.
I ran my fingers over the evidence I’d gained the day I resigned.
Once enough evidence for a retrial had been stacked up, the threads would eventually cross. Waiting until then was the sensible thing to do.
But I had no intention of sitting still that long, so I opened my laptop.
I’ll write everything down one by one in advance, then narrow it all out.
The moment I decided to tackle it the way I handled every case I took on, a new alert flashed across the screen.
The status window has been unlocked.
“Huh?”
What was this now?
Before I’d even finished wondering, the window unfolded.
“My stamina’s only C?”
Even when work was at its busiest, I still swam at dawn, so I’d always thought my stamina was one thing I could be confident about. Apparently, I’d been wrong.
I was working more than 230 hours a month. No wonder my body was getting ground to pieces.
I nodded to myself, thinking I really had done the right thing by leaving Continent Law Firm, and then my eyes landed on the potential ability.
Psychometry.
In movies about psychometry, it was that mysterious ability that let you touch an object and see information about its owner—the past, the events tied to it, the emotions left behind. If that was really the power I had, it would be an almost cheating-level advantage in solving my mother’s case.
“But I had an ability like that? Why didn’t I know until now?”
Maybe it was just too low-grade, since the ability was only F.
Now that I knew it existed, all I had to do was level it up.
“Then how am I supposed to level it up?”
Like in the movie.
I set the evidence photo the system had given me in the palm of my hand and focused.
Through the crackling static, the blurred silhouette of a young man rose in my mind.
—A young woman.
Then the image cut out.
“What was that? Just now?”
Psychometry experience increases.
So that’s how it worked.
Then a new line appeared in the air.
Mission Assigned
📍 Location: Seoul Express Bus Terminal
🎁 Reward: Evidence
By September 1, 2023, find the person who visits the Seoul Express Bus Terminal and take on the case.
If you succeed: evidence.
If you fail: the system disappears.
※ You’ll be able to recognize the person at a glance.
“What?”
It was absurd.
How many people come through the terminal in a single day? And I’m supposed to find one person out of all of them?
My head started to spin.
Am I supposed to come to the terminal every day and ask each person, one by one, whether they want a free consultation with a lawyer?
It wasn’t as if I were out recruiting converts.
There was no way that would work.
And if I was going to do that, I might as well open an office nearby.
Normally, I would show up every weekday at 9 a.m. and visit the basement shopping arcade under Seoul Express Bus Terminal, heading toward the Banpo Station side where the foot traffic was thinnest.
Where was that?
My law office.
It didn’t have a sign. Instead, I’d drawn a lawyer’s badge in black marker on the frosted glass door.
Anyone seeing it would probably wonder why a law office was tucked away inside a basement shopping mall.
But it was close to the Seoul Central District Court and the Supreme Court.
And when you factored in Gangnam location and rent, this was already the limit.
The limit, at least, for the place where I was carrying out my mission.
“Still another dead end today? I’ve been living in this mall for two weeks, and I still don’t have a lead.”
It had already been two weeks since I’d spent my days holding out from the moment the mall’s first lights came on until they went out, sleeping at night on a folding cot.
The mission had said I’d recognize the person at a glance, but even after wandering the terminal all day, I still had nothing to show for it.
“There isn’t another method that seems promising, either.”
While I ate a simple cup of ramen, I opened the blog I’d set up a few weeks earlier on my smartphone.
Cha Do-hyuk Law Office
About
Korea University Law School, Class of 2008.
Passed the 54th Bar Examination.
Completed Judicial Research and Training Institute, Class 46.
Former public-interest legal officer.
Former senior attorney on the High-Level Criminal and Corporate/Legal Affairs Team at Continent Law Firm, South Korea’s top law firm.
We welcome difficult cases.
Friend requests only came from advertising bloggers, and not a single person had clicked the heart button.
No comments, either.
There are no comments, and only one day is left before the mission deadline. This is bad.
I’d made the page because I thought it might help if a client simply came to the terminal, but it had been a complete bust.
Over the past month, I had tried every method I could think of.
I contacted clients I’d met through Continent Law Firm and arranged to meet them at the terminal.
Awkward as it was, I even did legal consultations on Instagram Live.
I made daily rounds around the terminal as well, but I still couldn’t find the person the mission was talking about.
“There aren’t enough clues. Why is it only the location? If it even gave me a gender or age range, I’d be grateful.”
Click.
The clock on the table pointed to 2:00 p.m.
Had it really gotten this late already?
“Maybe I should take another pass through the mall.”
I stood up and put on my Zegna jacket.
It was a luxury jacket that looked completely out of place in my shabby office, but it was the perfect thing if I wanted to call up my mother’s faint traces from memory.
After all, it was the suit she’d bought me ten years ago, when she’d made a special effort before my third-round bar exam interview.
In a way, it had become the last thing she left me.
“Hmm. Maybe I should try the Line 3 side this time.”
The instant I opened the glass door, the scent of flowers stabbed into my nose.
The underground mall under the terminal was divided into districts by trade, and my office sat in the section clustered with flower shops.
There were flowers laid out on the stalls, and even the shops themselves were filled with carefully tended plants, so the basement arcade didn’t feel entirely bleak.
“Hey, lawyer!”
The moment I crossed the arcade, someone called out to me.
It was the owner of Yeji’s Flower Shop across the way.
She’d permed her hair before, but now she wore it neatly tied back.
I walked over to the auntie sitting in a plastic chair beside the stall.
“Where are you off to?”
“Just going to walk around the mall for a bit.”
“Is that so? Want me to call you if someone comes by?”
“Ah, I’d appreciate that.”
I handed her the fresh stack of business cards I’d printed and started walking again.
She’s a warmhearted person.
Back when I handed out rice cakes for the opening, she had been wary, wondering why a lawyer was setting up shop here in the first place, but after I helped her with a matter, she opened up almost immediately.
Compared with the other shop owners who hadn’t even bothered to answer me, that was practically overflowing with kindness.
Then again, this was still a place where people lived and worked.
Either way, I quickly scanned the people moving through the arcade.
Not here either. Tomorrow is the mission’s last day, and this is getting serious.
Today was August 31.
Even though it was the middle of a weekday, the Line 3 side was packed so tightly it looked like an army of ants swarming a fallen candy.
Why are there so many people?
In case the person I was looking for was among them, I started nosing around too, one more ant in the swarm.
“Wow! Looks like the baby idol came to take a proof shot!”
“Wow, she looks even prettier in person. I really hope she debuts.”
From what I could gather, fans of an idol trainee from a survival show had come to see a subway ad, and the trainee herself had shown up to take a photo with the ad board, bringing the whole area to a standstill.
It looked like there was no one I needed here, so I was about to move on when even more people started crowding in.
This is going to be hard to move through.
Fortunately, someone who looked like staff was directing the flow of foot traffic, so I kept moving slowly, but my nerves kept tightening by the second.
Then, all of a sudden, a commotion broke out on one side.
“I said I’m in a hurry! Move!”
“Ack!”
“Hey, mister, if you hit someone, you should apologize.”
“Exactly. What do you think you’re doing, bumping into people and walking off?”
“Sorry, kids, but I’m really busy!”
“Who here isn’t busy?”
Whatever had happened, even the idol trainee and the fans taking photos turned their heads toward the noise.
“……!”
Above the head of the man arguing with the fans, an exclamation mark floated there like he was some game NPC.
The person the mission was pointing to was him.
I twisted sharply toward the uproar.
“You should apologize before someone calls 911!”
“...What?”
By the time I reached him, pushing my way through while repeating, “Just a second, excuse me,” like a copied-and-pasted line, the face of the shabby man in his early thirties had turned bright red.
“Damn it, why the hell do I have to come all the way here and deal with this crap?”
“What is he talking about? He came to the terminal himself.”
“Mister, apologize!”
“Fine, I apologize!”
Then the man whipped around, and a bad feeling flashed through me.
Looks like he’s trying to leave. That won’t do.
As he shoved at the fans surrounding him, trying to force his way out, one sentence was enough.
“I’m this gentleman’s attorney. What seems to be the problem?”