Prologue: Sonyeondeungwa
All characters, events, organizations, and locations appearing in this work are entirely fictional and bear no relation to any real persons or entities.
In the legal world, a person hearing her name for the first time reacted in one of two ways.
“Who is that?”
Or—
“...Ah.”
The first type quickly vanished from the scene. The very fact that they didn’t recognize the name proved they were the sort who wouldn’t last long in this arena.
The second type would follow that single syllable with a brief silence. They offered no further words. That silence was the most precise description of her.
Seo Jihyun.
Twenty-nine years old. Prosecutor in Anti-Corruption Investigation Division 1 at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.
What always accompanied her name was the same set of numbers.
2010. Admission to Daewon Foreign Language High School.
For three straight years, the same two words were printed on every one of her report cards.
First in the entire school.
2013. Graduation from Daewon Foreign Language High School—first in the entire school.
2013. Seoul National University School of Law—admitted as valedictorian.
2015. 60th Judicial Examination—youngest-ever top scorer.
At the time, Seo Jihyun had still been a third-year university student. She was twenty years old.
That record remains unbroken to this day.
That year, the front page of every newspaper carried the same headline.
People called it a miracle. Seo Jihyun herself had never uttered a single word about it.
2017. Seoul National University School of Law graduation—valedictorian of the college. Recipient of the Chief Justice Award.
On graduation day, her classmates hurled their mortarboards into the air with bright laughter.
On the stage, as she received the Chief Justice Award, she never smiled once.
With a pale face untouched by makeup, she simply gazed coolly at the world beyond the camera lenses.
2019. 51st Judicial Research and Training Institute completion—top of the class. Chief Justice Award received for the second time.
Among her peers at the training institute, stories about her split into two versions: those who had studied with her, and those who had not. The overwhelming majority belonged to the latter group.
“Jihyun? I never studied with her.”
“But you were in the same cohort.”
“Exactly. We were the ones chasing after her. We never kept up with her.”
2019. Assigned to the Criminal Division of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office—appointment.
Highest score among all new appointees. No one was surprised.
First year after appointment.
The cases she was first assigned were the usual ones given to rookie prosecutors. The division chief had distributed the workload according to standard practice.
Three weeks later, she appeared before the chief.
“These three cases are related.”
“...What?”
“The account traces all converge at one point. I will submit a consolidated indictment.”
It took the chief two full days to verify her claim on the spot. She was correct. The indictments were processed together.
From that day forward, the chief changed the way he assigned cases to her. He used entirely different standards from those applied to other rookie prosecutors.
Second year after appointment.
Planned real-estate fraud and political-business lobbying gate. Fifteen incumbent National Assembly members arrested and indicted at once. The youngest record in constitutional history.
Inside the prosecution, the case was called “the 2020 nuclear bomb.” That same year, she received a commendation from the Minister of Justice—Outstanding Investigator Award.
She was twenty-four years old.
Third year after appointment—selected for Anti-Corruption Investigation Division 1. The youngest ever.
Rumor had it that the division chief who approved her appointment saw his hand tremble once before signing. When asked why, he answered:
“...I wasn’t sure whether I was even qualified to approve someone like her.”
After that came the arrest and indictment in the Daesan Group third-generation succession corruption case. Participation in the joint task force for overseas fugitive economic criminals. Dispatch to the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office special investigation TF for accounting analysis and fund tracing.
And now—the ongoing investigation into the serial tax evasion case involving paper companies.
Not a single case she had ever touched had resulted in an acquittal.
Almost as frequently discussed as all these records was her family background.
Her grandfather, Seo Hak-soo. Former Prosecutor General during the military regime.
Her father, Seo Tae-jun. Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Her mother, Kim Hee-won. Representative attorney at Law Firm Shinhwa.
In South Korea’s legal community, no one was unaware of what the name House of Seo signified. Some even called them “the Medici family of the Korean legal world.” Jihyun was the eldest daughter of that lineage and its fourth-generation legal professional.
Yet there was a more interesting fact.
She had never once used her family’s connections. To be precise, she had actively avoided them.
During her time at the Judicial Research and Training Institute, rumors spread that her grandfather Seo Hak-soo had privately arranged a dinner with the institute’s director.
Thirty minutes before the meal, Jihyun made a single phone call to her grandfather. The conversation ended in forty-seven seconds. The dinner was canceled.
No one knew what the old man had heard that day. The only detail that circulated was what the veteran jurist supposedly told his secretary afterward.
“...First time I realized my granddaughter was terrifying.”
Inside the prosecution, no one ever described her as “someone who grew up in the shadow of the House of Seo.” Everyone had reached the same conclusion.
She had not grown up in the House of Seo. The House of Seo was following her.
The world, that day and every day before and after, naturally parted before her like the Red Sea.
In Seo Jihyun’s life, there had never been a single failure or defeat.
Screeech—
A sleek black BMW sedan glided to a stop, slicing through the brilliant morning sunlight with its glossy finish.
The car door opened. The first thing to touch the asphalt was a pair of sharp black stiletto heels. Next came perfectly pressed black suit trousers with knife-edge creases that not a single speck of dust dared mar.
In Seo Jihyun’s closet, only monochrome pantsuits existed.
Skirts that revealed her legs, flashy accessories, clothes that blatantly emphasized body lines—everything that could be called an emphasis on “femininity” was, by common consensus, the object of her visceral disgust.
She had once been overheard telling a colleague at a drinking party that such behavior was the vulgar courtship of the weak, who relied on the instincts of a “female” to survive. After that day, the colleague never sat in the same room with her again.
Acting cute with a lisping voice or behaving like an immature child—those were the things she despised most in the world.
Those who begged for sympathy with infantile mannerisms even as adults simply ceased to exist within her field of vision.
Only those who had experienced it firsthand understood what kind of punishment that truly was.
Features so perfect they could stop a person’s breath without any adornment.
Although she possessed a natural beauty whispered about in legal circles as “the greatest beauty in the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office,” to Seo Jihyun that title was nothing more than a useless modifier attached by those of inferior ability who obsessed over appearances.
A white shirt buttoned all the way to the neck and a black suit chosen solely for practicality and intimidation.
That was the sole identity and armor of the human being called Seo Jihyun.
The valet parking attendant from the driver’s side hurried over and accepted her car key.
He offered an awkward smile and a short greeting, but Seo Jihyun did not even spare him a glance. In all her life, no one had ever taught her that she was supposed to respond to such greetings. There had been no reason to teach her.
Once out of the car, Seo Jihyun habitually held a venti-sized iced Americano filled with ice in one hand and slowly lifted her head.
At the end of her gaze rose a massive concrete building.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.
The place in South Korea capable of destroying the greatest number of people in the shortest time. The building where the authority to end a person’s life with a single line in an indictment was concentrated.
Even in this building known as the heart of power in South Korea, Seo Jihyun stood alone.
She took a sip of the coffee, the cold ice rattling inside. Even beneath the midsummer sun, the cup against her fingertips was cool, and that chill was something she knew well.
She was on her way to the pinnacle of this building. More precisely, she was on her way to the day when she herself would become its pinnacle.
The moment Jihyun stepped into the first-floor lobby of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, the flow of people heading to work froze for an instant.
Click.
Click.
Each time she walked—white shirt buttoned tightly to the neck, black suit immaculate—investigators and rookie prosecutors ahead of her began to part to both sides like the miracle of Moses.
“...Hey, over there. It’s Prosecutor Seo Jihyun from Anti-Corruption Division 1.”
“Avert your eyes. I heard she rejected the Planning and Coordination Division documents the second she arrived this morning. The chief who submitted them supposedly smoked three cigarettes in a row in the break room.”
“Three?”
“That man had quit smoking for five years.”
Murmurs like background noise poured out behind her, but Jihyun did not twitch a single eyebrow.
Her pace remained perfectly even, her gaze fixed only on a single point at the security gate ahead.
The surrounding noise was not inaudible to her. It simply held no value worth hearing.
Beep—
Jihyun indifferently swiped her access card across the security gate.
The instant the gate opened, the only thing that flashed with cool silver light in the cold monochrome space was the Jaeger-LeCoultre watch wrapped around her wrist.
The elevator doors opened.
Jihyun did not lean against the rear wall. She simply stood facing forward. The two people already inside—men who appeared to be from other departments—simultaneously fell silent.
One pretended to fiddle with his employee ID; the other flipped the same page of the document file in his hands twice.
Jihyun noticed but offered no reaction.
The button for the eighth floor was already pressed. She had not pressed it. Someone had read her movement in advance and pressed it for her. Jihyun noticed that too, but it likewise held no value worth reacting to.
The elevator rose smoothly.
As it passed the seventh floor, she casually checked her watch.
8:11 a.m. Four minutes ahead of schedule.
The corner of Jihyun’s mouth moved—very slightly, almost imperceptibly.
It was the kind of movement no one else would call a smile, but she herself knew. It was the moment she felt satisfied.
Today was the attendance interrogation for Assemblyman Kim Tae-hyung. Within the hour, she would simultaneously crush both a four-term lawmaker and a former district prosecutors’ office chief who now worked as his defense attorney. Next week she would move on to the person above him. The month after that, the one above that. Higher. Higher still.
Until the day she reached the highest floor of this building, her formula would not change.
The elevator doors opened on the eighth floor.
Jihyun stepped forward. At the end of the corridor, the sign for Anti-Corruption Investigation Division 1 came into view.
Her day was beginning.