The Right to Question Beyond the Glass Wall
The wall of the Hearing Room had been transparent from the very beginning.
The real question was who had the power to make that wall go dark.
A long corridor stretched outside the temporary Hearing Room inside the emergency wing. Waiting chairs lined the corridor wall, each holding a bag of medicine and a written statement. These were the people who had just been pushed out of the priority bracelet queue.
Kim Do-sik sat with his prescription bag resting on his knees. The woman carrying her child on her back adjusted the bandage on the child's ankle, while the workshop assistant cradled a paper cup with the tips of his fingers.
I sat on a chair at the far end of the corridor.
I couldn't go inside.
Cha Yu-ri stood beside me, her arms crossed.
"Patients aren't allowed inside the Hearing Room."
"I can walk, though."
"Do you know that makes you sound like the person who can walk the least?"
She looked down at my feet.
Silent Thunder lay flat beneath the chair. Its handle rested right in front of my ankles, its black head pointing toward the threshold of the Hearing Room. It wasn't swinging, nor was it rumbling.
Even so, the people walking up and down the corridor detoured around it.
As if it were a threshold itself.
Inside, Lee Na-gyeong stood tall. Her Association Inspector badge gleamed coldly beyond the glass wall. Seated across from her was Oh Min-hyeok's legal representative.
A gray suit, thin-rimmed glasses, and a smile thinner than paper.
He glanced at the seats reserved for the victims and gestured.
Two of the representative's assistants were already seated in the front row. It was the closest spot to where the victims should have been sitting. They had their laptops open, pretending not to look at the people in the corridor.
One of the assistant's flipped a sign in his hand.
It was similar to the bracelet price tag from earlier. The neater the handwriting, the filthier the hidden meaning behind it.
Kim Do-sik saw the sign and shrank back slightly. Even though he had received his medicine, he was already preparing to be pushed aside again. That irritated me even more.
The representative spoke.
"Please tint the glass so the people waiting in the corridor cannot see inside. This is for the protection of the victims."
He claimed it was for protection.
But his fingertips were laughing.
The staff member beside the Hearing Room tapped a terminal. The transparent glass wall clouded over with a gray tint. The shapes of the mouths inside were still visible, but their expressions vanished. The victims sitting in the corridor lowered their heads in unison.
Once again, they wore the faces of those cast aside.
Right then, Lee Na-gyeong set her documents down.
"Remove the tint."
The staff member hesitated.
"But there was a request for victim protection..."
Lee Na-gyeong didn't even look at him.
"I have never received a request to strip the victims of their right to see inside."
She tapped the terminal herself.
The glass wall cleared up.
The faded expressions returned. The representative's paper-thin smile was laid bare. The people in the corridor saw his gestures and the look in his eyes directly, not through a screen. They saw exactly what kind of face the man who claimed to protect them was making.
The corners of the representative's mouth twitched and stiffened for a brief second.
"Inspector. Procedurally, the representative's right to question must also be guaranteed."
"You have the right to question."
Lee Na-gyeong turned on the electronic display board above the glass wall.
"You do not have the right to insult."
The representative tapped the table twice with his pen.
Tap.
Tap.
The child in the corridor flinched at the sound.
Cha Yu-ri's eyes darted toward the child. She took her hand off my shoulder and started to walk over, then paused. She looked back at me, as if checking to make sure I wouldn't move.
Without raising my hand, I lightly pressed down on Silent Thunder's handle with the tip of my foot.
It was my way of showing her I would stay put.
Only then did Cha Yu-ri step beside the child. It wasn't for treatment; she was just taking a position. Simply by standing between the child and the glass wall, the tapping of the pen sounded less sharp.
The representative threw out his first question.
"Mr. Kim Do-sik. Hunter Kang Tae-san did not possess on-site command authority at the time. Why did you follow his instructions?"
Kim Do-sik's hands froze over his medicine bag.
The staff member inside was about to call his name, but Kim Do-sik couldn't bring himself to stand up immediately. A man who had been pushed back in the medicine queue just hours ago was now being pushed back again by a question.
I gripped the armrests of my chair.
From a distance, Cha Yu-ri spoke with her eyes.
Don't move.
It was her eyes, not her mouth, this time. That made it even clearer.
Lee Na-gyeong switched on the microphone facing the corridor.
"You may answer from the corridor. Moving to the witness stand is optional."
At those words, Kim Do-sik lifted his head for the first time.
"I didn't follow instructions."
His voice was quiet, but it carried past the glass wall.
"That man stood in front, and I, who was behind him, survived. That is all."
The representative's eyes narrowed behind his glasses.
"So you are saying Hunter Kang Tae-san took it upon himself to act as a shield."
"No."
Kim Do-sik set his medicine bag down.
"To call it 'taking it upon himself'... we all realized it far too late."
The air in the corridor shifted.
The child's mother cautiously raised her hand.
"May I speak as well?"
Lee Na-gyeong nodded.
"State your name first. And speak only as much as necessary."
"My name is O Seon-hui. My child was on the floor back then. I thought Hunter Kang Tae-san had stepped in front of us, but looking back, he was blocking what was coming from behind."
The representative hastily tried to cut her off.
"Speculation from witnesses is—"
"Exceeding the scope of questioning."
Lee Na-gyeong's voice cut in first.
A short sentence was added below the display board.
But this time, before the display board could even update, the way the people in the corridor looked at one another changed. Those who had been hanging their heads just moments ago began waiting for their turn.
Just then, the representative's assistant tried to pull the front-row chairs back. Two laptops and a stack of documents were blocking the front row. If Kim Do-sik wanted to enter, he would have to detour around them.
Silent Thunder let out a low rumble beneath my chair.
Thud.
The vibration was subtle. Yet, the locking wheels on the legs of the front-row chairs all released at once. Before the assistant could even push them, the two chairs slid back half a step. They didn't tip over. They simply cleared the narrow path that had been blocked between the victims' seats and the glass wall.
The assistant froze.
I lifted my foot.
"I didn't push them."
Standing beside the child, Cha Yu-ri replied.
"The chairs must have just found their proper places."
From the end of the corridor, Han Mi-rae stifled a laugh.
"If those chairs were for VIPs, I would have bought them. Guess I don't need to buy them today."
"Mi-rae."
At Cha Yu-ri's low warning, Han Mi-rae immediately raised her hands in surrender.
"Right, keeping quiet. Though I'll make sure to check the rental fee for those assistant seats."
Lee Na-gyeong glanced at the shifted chairs and the opened path. Then she addressed the representative.
"Move the assistant seats to the back. We do not permit arrangements that block the victims' path."
The representative couldn't even muster a paper-thin smile anymore.
At that moment, Yun Seo-ah appeared at the end of the corridor.
She stopped at the threshold. She didn't look at me. Instead, she stared at the open path between the inside of the glass wall and the people in the corridor.
"Please register me as a witness on standby as well."
Lee Na-gyeong asked.
"Are you registering as a victim or a witness?"
Yun Seo-ah caught her breath for a second.
"A witness. I will not stand in front of the victims."
It was a brief statement. Yet, those words freed up another chair in the corridor. She didn't walk to the front row. She stood by the wall.
I started to look at her, then decided against it.
Cha Yu-ri walked back and stood in front of me.
"Good job."
"I told you, I didn't do anything."
"Exactly. Today as well."
She checked to see if my hands had let go of the armrests.
"That's why people were able to speak for themselves."
The wall of the Hearing Room was transparent.
This time, everyone could see who was smiling, who was flinching, and who was lifting their head beyond the wall.
The representative shifted his target.
"Hunter Yun Seo-ah. At the time, did anyone within the party raise objections regarding Hunter Kang Tae-san's placement at the front?"
Yun Seo-ah's hands stiffened slightly.
The question seemed aimed at me like a blade, but it was actually pointing at her. The representative knew. If Yun Seo-ah remained silent, it would look like I had volunteered to be at the front. If she spoke, her past would be exposed.
Yun Seo-ah didn't look at me.
"There were none."
The corridor fell silent.
She immediately continued.
"Because I didn't raise any."
The representative's pen stopped.
"That could be interpreted as an admission of responsibility."
"Don't interpret it. Just record it."
Her voice was quiet, but she didn't back down.
"I took it for granted that Hunter Kang Tae-san would stand at the front. I didn't look to see who pushed him, nor did I look to see who hid behind him. Therefore, that question should be directed at me, not Hunter Kang Tae-san."
Cha Yu-ri's hand rested briefly on my shoulder. It wasn't a gesture telling me to shut up. It was telling me that now was not my turn to speak.
I kept my mouth shut.
That silence was strangely difficult. Sometimes, not interrupting while someone confessed their faults was harder than taking dozens of hits inside a black gate.
Kim Do-sik raised his head.
"Then, may we speak as well?"
Lee Na-gyeong replied.
"Take turns. However, no one shall speak on behalf of another."
With those words, the chairs in the corridor no longer looked like waiting seats. They looked like witness stands, each waiting for its turn.
Han Mi-rae walked over to my side and spoke in a very low voice.
"It would go faster if you went in and said something."
"And then?"
"It would drown out their voices."
She wasn't smiling.
"But today, going slow is the right way."
I took my foot off Silent Thunder's handle. The hammer didn't move. Even so, the path remained open.
The staff member in charge of the tinting device backed away cautiously. He didn't touch the terminal like before. Instead, he stuck a small piece of paper over the switch next to the glass wall.
The handwriting was crooked, but the people in the corridor stared at that paper for a long time. Sometimes, a single crookedly written line felt far more trustworthy than a perfectly printed sign.
Looking at that paper, I realized something. What shattered today wasn't the glass. It was the hand that decided who could hide whose face. And that hand would never reach for the glass wall again.
The glass wall wasn't a barrier to block people.
It was a window that kept their words from escaping.