Chapter 54
‘Could Choi Jae-woo be connected to the man behind Jo Ji-han?’
My mother had cherished Choi Jae-woo so much. He knew how desperately I had been clinging to the case of her death—so why would he stab me in the back like this?
It didn’t make sense.
I wanted to believe in the years Choi Jae-woo and I had spent bickering our way through life. The Choi Jae-woo I knew had been just as furious as I was when my mother’s verdict was handed down.
My heartbeat pounded in my ears, and I shuddered.
Still, I clenched my hand.
If Choi Jae-woo really betrayed me, I’d be able to tell. As long as I have this hand.
And until I could get something that belonged to him, all I had to do was keep watching.
We’d known each other long enough that I’d know the instant he lied.
“Wow. Not even a hello back?”
“…Choi Jae-woo.”
He hadn’t blinked once, but then suddenly the corners of his eyes lifted.
“Why else would I come to court? For the sightseeing, obviously.”
“…….”
“What, did some elite and some criminal get booked in as a package deal? The smell of formalin and protein-cleaning detergent is killing me, for real.”
The way he was joking around with exaggerated ease told me he was hiding something.
He was a joker, and he was smart; whenever he had something to conceal, it always showed.
Just like now.
With my blood pressure already through the roof, I grabbed him by the collar.
Fifty-fifty.
“Choi Jae-woo, what, have you been living in the operating room lately? Your nose looks completely broken.”
“Cha Do-hyuk, let go of me, damn it!”
Someone nearby kept glancing at us, but I ignored them.
Dragging him along, I headed for the emergency exit.
“Aigoo! The lawyer’s hitting the doctor! Heart rate up, blood pressure rising, respiration increased, nervous system stimulation!”
“Cut the crap.”
As soon as we reached the stairs, I let go of his collar. Whether he coughed or not, I needed an answer.
“Why are you here?”
“…Ah, my throat.”
“Choi Jae-woo.”
“You’ve got a temper. You told me about Ye-ji’s flower shop last time, remember? You said your mom’s sister had one.”
He shrugged.
“So if it’s a family thing, how could I not come check it out?”
“Choi Jae-woo!”
He actually glared back at me, eyes red as if I were the one in the wrong.
“Cha Do-hyuk, you’re seriously too much.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If something happened to Ye-ji’s niece, you should’ve told me too. If it’s industrial accident-related, a doctor’s opinion makes things way cleaner, you know?”
Since when was she your niece?
He was showing off about how useful a Korea University Hospital doctor’s opinion would be, and it was infuriatingly obnoxious.
“When you get mixed up with Soo-young, you become the biggest tightwad in the world. Look at your face—stiff as a board. You really gonna hoard everything and do it all yourself?”
“…What?”
“Lone-wolf bastard. Grudge holder. Thinks he’s the only one who matters.”
He muttered it under his breath, just loud enough for me to hear, and my blood pressure shot up all over again.
Don’t be rattled. He does this kind of thing all the time.
Stay calm until I figured out what he was hiding.
I took a breath and stared at the shameless idiot in front of me.
“Unless it’s an orthopedic opinion, why would I ask for a urologist’s input?”
“No, but if you’d told me, I could’ve gotten my Korea University Hospital orthopedic buddy to drop a perfectly streamlined opinion, couldn’t I?”
As if.
Doctors saw all kinds of plaintiffs and defendants in cases. I almost wanted to say that if he just wanted to see Kim Yo-gi again, I might actually understand. Her cheerful, upbeat personality was probably close to Choi Jae-woo’s ideal type.
Though Kim Yo-gi probably wouldn’t care about him even a tiny bit.
“You! That look—are you looking down on urology?”
“There you go dodging the question again.”
“…You caught me.”
Choi Jae-woo laughed foolishly.
I grabbed the back of his neck and murmured in a low voice.
“I’ve told you before. Lawyers have a duty of confidentiality.”
“No, last time I asked you about erectile dysfunction.”
“…I didn’t tell you the facts of the case. I only asked for a medical opinion.”
“Man, you really make it impossible to talk. Typical lawyer.”
I was about to say that had nothing to do with being a lawyer, but when I saw him grumbling away, I shut my mouth.
I’m the older one here. I should put up with it.
If I snapped at him once more, Choi Jae-woo would sulk for real.
If I’d questioned him about witnesses and industrial accidents and then asked a medical question, he probably would’ve stood up from the gallery on the spot.
He’d come here because he wanted to be helpful, even if it was only a little.
I swallowed the soft feeling in my chest and watched him brush at his clothes.
“Choi Jae-woo, did you eat lunch?”
“Not yet.”
“It’s after two. What have you been doing that you haven’t eaten?”
“Watching the hearing! Why else?”
“Before that?”
He said that for the first time in days he’d had a day off, so he’d spent the whole thing gaming.
“Wait. Don’t tell me—since last night?”
“The battle that dominates the battlefield is obviously the mid lane.”
Right after saying that, he even mimed a knife-wielding prosecutor character.
He’s thirty-five years old. The world is truly ending.
“Don’t start thinking weird things again. What are you going to eat?”
“I’ve got a menu recommendation from the West District Prosecutors’ Office lunch czar blogger. Gochujang pork and makguksu. Or a Chinese place.”
“What’s a lunch czar?”
“What first-year prosecutors do.”
Prosecutors usually ate lunch by department, and the rookie assigned as lunch czar had to check the menu and headcount with the prosecutors in the department early every morning.
If the chief prosecutor had downed some ten-ten juice the night before, you had to have the instincts to choose hangover soup and know which place tasted good if you wanted to be liked.
“They really do all sorts of things.”
“That neighborhood runs on academy class year.”
“You probably couldn’t have lasted there, Do-hyuk. Too much for your nerves.”
“Maybe.”
For a moment, I even imagined a different past from the one I had now.
If I’d dropped out of high school and taken the GED.
If I’d skipped Korea University altogether and started preparing for the bar exam right away.
If I’d passed sooner and been appointed as a judge or prosecutor earlier.
Maybe the ruling in my mother’s case would have been different.
That was the sort of impossible thing I sometimes wondered about.
“Ooh, so it did cross your mind.”
“…….”
Choi Jae-woo started down the stairs.
“Cha Do-hyuk as the lunch czar. In that case, it has to be meat. You’ve got to grease up your insides if you want to write smoothly, right?”
“…You really are something.”
“There are doctors with cheap vocab too. It’s all about background, right?”
I can’t exactly beat up someone who’s not normal.
I let out a long sigh and followed him down.
“Choi Jae-woo.”
“Yeah?”
“How long are you going to keep wearing that mask?”
“Yeah, good point. Now that I’m busted, I do want to take it off, but I don’t see a trash can.”
“Give it to me. I’ll put it in my bag.”
“Here.”
He tossed the mask back to me.
“Ah, I feel alive again.”
“So do I.”
I felt a little more at ease.
“Was I that suffocating? You should’ve said something sooner.”
“Who was the one grabbing my weak point and twisting?”
“Yeah, you really went for it.”
* * *
“You think I’m just going to let you leave and live a good life?!
“Driver, he’s a little sick, but he’s harmless. Please take him to the main building of Korea University Hospital.”
“Hey! Cha Do-hyuk!”
“Go get some medicine!”
I stuffed the troublemaker who’d been insisting on following me to the office into a taxi and sent him away.
“Has he lost his mind, wanting to die young like that? What kind of doctor doesn’t take care of his own health?!”
He didn’t look like someone who’d just taken a quick nap before coming to court. His eyes were bloodshot, and he staggered every time he walked.
He’d always been skinny, but he wasn’t the kind to topple over just because someone nudged him.
Today, though, he looked like a total corpse.
Ignoring the vibration thrashing in my pants pocket, I bought some shaved ice and headed into the underground shopping arcade near Goto Station.
I wasn’t sure whether Oh Ye-ji had already told her mother about the first-trial ruling, but as the attorney of record, I needed to inform her myself.
Just then, a customer was leaving Ye-ji’s flower shop.
Her mother finished serving them and waved at me.
“Do-hyuk!”
“…Auntie.”
Other people had mothers who came to pick them up. Why didn’t I?
It was a feeling vivid enough to take me right back to elementary school, when I used to scratch letters into the dirt with a stick and wonder why nobody was coming for me.
I still wasn’t used to it.
“What, still awkward? Should I call you Mister Hoe?”
“I’m fine, really.”
This is all Oh Ye-ji’s fault.
Ever since Auntie had caught me being Mister Hoe, I’d jumped from “young lawyer” straight to “Do-hyuk.”
If I say “Do-hyuk” feels a little too familiar, she says she’ll call me Hoe, so what can I do?
Even Auntie’s version was a hard pass on the “Hoe.”
I sat in the chair beside the stall and ate my shaved ice.
“Ye-ji said Mister Hoe sent her a chat message, but she still hadn’t opened it.”
“After hearing the sentence in court, I had another appointment.”
“Too busy to even check your phone?”
“Yes.”
“Is that so?”
Her sly smile said, It’s a woman.
“It’s not what you’re thinking, Auntie.”
“Anyone from Yuria Entertainment gets my full support.”
“There are a lot of good people there.”
Very good people, full of energy.
“Aha! Got it. Still, tell me before you get married, okay? Even if I can’t sit in the family seats, I’d like to at least eat a meal while looking at the bride.”
I had no intention of dating, and even less of getting married.
Still, I nodded.
So this is that attack everyone talks about.
“Auntie, you heard the ruling, right?”
“Mm-hmm. Partial victory, right? They said the company officially shared the first-trial result. The Indonesian concert company contacted them right away, didn’t they?”
“That’s good.”
When Ye-ji had work to do, she bothered me with fewer chats.
“Right? That’s why—how about dinner tonight, as a celebration?”
“Sounds good. Shall we meet at nine?”
“I’m closing at eight-thirty, like last time. See you then.”
“Understood.”
After I finished the glutinous-rice yubgwa I’d been given as service, I thought, Maybe I should read Choi Jae-woo’s mask first.
There was still time to collect the mission reward after that.
* * *
As soon as I got back to the office, I turned on the air conditioner.
It was a sad thing to suspect someone close to me, but the gaze aimed at Jo Ji-han had been pointing toward him, so I couldn’t help it.
No.
Was I mistaken?
No, the problem was that I hadn’t been able to think around the issue from enough angles in my haste.
“The person who wrote the court review comment on the stone-plate community was part of the legal world.”
Unless there were special circumstances, judges and prosecutors couldn’t be sitting in the gallery during working hours. The same went for law firm attorneys.
If they did attend under special circumstances, the bench would usually give a subtle warning, and sharp attorneys wouldn’t fail to notice it.
Then that meant it was a private attorney.
“The person sitting in the gallery looked much younger. If I call them a baby-faced type, maybe mid-to-late twenties.”
If they’d graduated from law school, they had to be a fresh, sexy-smelling newbie.
“A rookie usually doesn’t open their own office.”
Law school taught the theory, but there was still a gulf between the classroom and the field.
That was why, when they got jobs, most people went to large firms or prestigious former-judge firms to build experience.
“I thought the person handling Twice merchandise wouldn’t have helped Jo Ji-han. No matter how much it was ‘his will.’”
I paused.
“Why did I think that? There’s no reason they couldn’t.”
Even if I liked a girl group myself.
“If they were the type to tremble at the thought of being discarded by someone like Jo Ji-han after one word from a superior, they might have acted while feeling guilty.”
Besides, just because today’s visitor had shown up for the first hearing didn’t prove they were the legal-world person who wrote that post on the stone-plate community.
“What matters is that I can find all of them.”
I opened my phone, sent an inquiry to the private investigator about the commenter, and left a chat message for Oh Ye-ji.
“Could you look into who came to court today with the Twice merchandise doll? If you identify them, could you lend me the fan letter or whatever it is for just a moment? I won’t read the contents.”
If that didn’t work,
after the recess ended, I planned to use psychometry on the seat that woman had occupied.
Immediately, the number 1 disappeared.
-?
-I’ll talk to the company and post something in the fan chat.
-But Mister Hoe, is it real that you went hours without reading the chat?!
“I worked, and now I’m going back to work.”
-Broooon!
I ignored the long, groaning emoji and closed my phone.
“Set it to silent mode.”
I took the mask out of my bag.
All while praying that the one Chida was talking about wasn’t Choi Jae-woo.
“Hah!”