The Court of Public Opinion
The Crime Investigation Division had descended into panic. They had gathered drunk drivers into a single location and surveilled them through the night — and still, four people had died.
None of them had shown a single symptom before dying.
No one strangled themselves. No one clutched their chest.
A preliminary autopsy concluded that their cerebral vessels had been blocked in their sleep, killing the victims before they could even register what was happening.
"Brain death... So a heart attack too — he did that as well?"
Kang Yeji, who hadn't slept a wink, muttered to herself, her face gaunt with exhaustion.
She had been right there beside Seo Arin, watching her sleep, and still had failed to prevent her death.
The guilt had settled over her like a lead weight. The girl's face — the one that had said she wanted to live — kept surfacing in her mind.
"Since the victims wouldn't die, he likely switched methods. Something we can't counter. Brain death, plain and simple."
Seo Gichan spoke with icy calm. He never wavered, no matter the situation.
Only now, it was a little harder than usual. It genuinely felt like they were up against a god, and a creeping sense of futility was settling over him.
"That son of a bitch. When I catch him, I'll tear him apart limb from limb. Who does he think he is? Son of a—!"
CRASH!
Park Gwangdo slammed his fist into the floor, rage boiling over. The entire building shuddered as if an earthquake had struck.
"I don't think this is a problem we can solve on our own."
Captain Kim Woocheol spoke with a grim face.
Thirty-nine people were already dead, and the killer was slipping further and further beyond their reach. Twenty years he'd spent in this line of work, solving countless crimes — and now, no path forward revealed itself.
At this point, he even doubted whether the man was an awakened one at all. None of the abilities confirmed for S-ranks could commit crimes the way this creature did.
"Even if we wanted to give up, there's nowhere to hand this off. We're the leading experts in this field. It has to be us."
Seo Gichan rose to his feet and began reviewing the reports that had come in that day.
"I know, but..."
Until yesterday, Kim Woocheol had believed they could catch him. They'd blocked the deaths, and they'd discovered his information-gathering had limits.
But today, that belief had been shattered to pieces.
"Are you going to sit there moping all day? We've got work to do."
Seo Gichan pulled out several reports and handed them to Kim Woocheol.
"The civilians were strangled to death — suicide, the old pattern. The people under our protection died of brain death. Nine in total. What this confirms is that he can choose how his victims die. Killing them by different methods each time was probably meant to confuse us."
"Or he was announcing that he has other methods at his disposal."
Kim Woocheol nodded in agreement. Watching the two of them, Kang Yeji stood and came over. Park Gwangdo took off his sunglasses and checked the reports as well.
"Not a single person came within one kilometer of the victims while they were under our protection. Which means he can kill people without any regard for time or place."
"But that makes no sense. No ability like that can exist. He's not God."
Park Gwangdo simply could not wrap his head around it. How could anyone make people kill themselves without even laying eyes on them?
"What if... he's a hunter inside the Crime Investigation Division?"
Kang Yeji raised the possibility of an internal informant this time. But Kim Woocheol shook his head.
"Not possible. I've got every hunter connected to this case tracked with my skill. Not one of them made contact with the civilian drunk drivers."
The civilian drunk drivers had died in Seoul, Gyeonggi, and North Jeolla. Not a single hunter had gone down to North Jeolla.
"Then how in God's name did he kill the civilians? I thought he relied on the internet."
"He must have found them himself. sd1234's dependence on internet information was thoroughly proven these past two days. Not a single celebrity with an unpublished criminal record has died."
Kang Yeji had tracked down celebrities and politicians with drunk driving histories that had never surfaced online, and put them under protection. There had been quite a few of them — and not one had died.
Seo Arin, by contrast — a celebrity whose record was fully public — had met her end.
"But if he found them himself, the timeline doesn't work physically."
Park Gwangdo looked at the times of death for the civilians. If the killer had traveled to each victim personally, the deaths should have been arranged sequentially. Travel time would demand it.
"That's..."
Kang Yeji faltered too. The person who died in Seoul and the person who died in North Jeolla had died at nearly the same hour.
"What if he can set the time of death?"
Seo Gichan proposed a single hypothesis. If it were true, everything fell neatly into place.
"Even if he could set the time of death, it still doesn't add up."
Kim Woocheol wore an expression half-surrendered. The hunters turned to him, wanting to know why.
"Every civilian victim died in their car. Even if he can set the time of death, there's no way to know what the victims would be doing at that hour."
"Ah..."
A collective breath escaped the hunters.
Even if he'd decided someone would die at 2:30, there was no way to know what that person would be doing at 2:30 — not unless he was watching them constantly.
And yet sd1234 had killed victims across the country at the precise moment each one was driving under the influence.
"Phew. Catching him right away seems out of the question. We need to prepare for a long war. And to do that, first we have to stop new victims from appearing."
"How?"
"He wants something, doesn't he? We give it to him."
Kim Woocheol's expression was deeply conflicted.
**
Last night, Lee Hocheon had weighed countless methods for killing the drunk drivers.
First, finding them required physical movement. But moving from place to place exposed his position over time. If he killed someone in Seoul at two o'clock and someone in North Jeolla at five, the three hours spent traveling between Seoul and North Jeolla would give him away.
To avoid that, he could have designed the deaths to occur while they slept, as he'd done at the checkpoint. But that method couldn't prove the victims were actually drunk drivers — there'd be no evidence they had driven after drinking. Worse, their blood alcohol concentration could dilute over the hours of sleep.
And killing them the instant they got behind the wheel would guarantee an accident. They might floor the accelerator as they died; the wheel might wrench sideways. He needed the criminals dead without collateral damage.
After long deliberation, the answer he arrived at was this: die upon waking.
Waking up in a car meant it was parked. Short of unusual circumstances, no one wakes up while driving — the act itself makes it impossible.
Moreover, this method largely solved the problem of timing as well. The drive home might take a while; people frequently slept it off in their cars. And finally, waking meant the victim was preparing to leave the vehicle.
Ordinarily, a person had to open the door to sit up. Dying with the door open meant the body would be discovered quickly by people nearby — which also prevented blood alcohol concentration from diluting before an autopsy.
The method he'd settled on after long deliberation had been an unqualified success. Every result had unfolded exactly as intended.
And yet Lee Hocheon was far from satisfied.
'Even with people dying like this, they got behind the wheel without the slightest hesitation.'
He'd expected the Republic of Korea to tremble in fear. Not even close. Watching them drive drunk, he saw no trace of terror, no flicker of guilt.
Not me. I'm different. I won't die.
That was what their faces said — brimming with a confidence that had no foundation whatsoever.
'Not enough. Still not enough.'
Ten kills available today. A pitifully small number for instilling fear.
If one included everyone the National Police Agency's crackdowns failed to catch, the number of drunk drivers per day exceeded three hundred.
But time could solve that. His mana kept growing — at this rate, in three months he would be able to kill a hundred per day.
'The problem is I can't keep finding them like this.'
Finding and killing a mere five had taken half a day. As the numbers grew, doing it alone would become impossible.
'I need help.'
He needed people who would find the drunk drivers — no, the criminals — and bring them to his attention.
**
That afternoon, news of Seo Arin's death spread across the nation.
The media focused on her character, airing footage of her volunteering and donating rather than dwelling on her achievements as a singer.
The government had initially declared it would not release the culprit's information — then reversed that policy within a single day. They intended to use Seo Arin's death to turn public opinion.
With the nation's idol dead, the shockwave was enormous.
Drunk driving had been the sole stain on her record — and even that, a single incident committed by a thoughtless twenty-year-old. In the five years since, she had spread Korean culture across the globe and become a model of good influence.
Public opinion, until now split down the middle, swung to her side in an instant, and her fans took to the streets in protest. They were numerous enough to fill Gwanghwamun to capacity.
The media immediately fanned out to interview them.
"Why did you come out to protest?"
"I believe it's wrong to kill people unconditionally over past mistakes. I'm here to mourn Seo Arin and to stop his killings."
Some gave reasoned answers. Others did not.
"I've driven drunk too. I'm a father of two, I work hard, I live honestly. So am I supposed to die too? What about my kids?"
Then came the violence. Someone mounted the stage carrying a container of fuel and attempted to set himself alight.
"I've driven drunk twice, you hear me? StopDeath1234, you son of a bitch. Try killing me too. Go on, kill me! Can't do it? Fine then. I'll die for you instead."
Police rushed forward to restrain him. But suddenly the man clutched his chest, let out a strangled groan, and collapsed.
The officers scrambled to perform CPR, but it was already too late. He was dead.
"Did he just die?"
"Don't tell me the Judgment Seat came here."
"The Judgment Seat killed him."
The crowd descended into chaos. As word spread that the Judgment Seat had done it, some quietly slipped away toward home — while others climbed onto the stage and shouted.
"You bastard! Kill me too! Come on, kill me too! I've driven drunk!"
The police tried to hold him back, but the man was an awakened one — too quick and too strong to pin down. He roared at the sky.
"Kill me too, then... aaagh... gaaah..."
He, too, suddenly clutched his chest and died.
Two corpses later, the protest site had become absolute bedlam.
"It's the Judgment Seat!"
"He's watching us right now!"
In the end, hunters were deployed and the protest was forcibly dispersed. And the entire nation, watching it unfold, voiced their own thoughts.
**
Watching the protests, Lee Hocheon had mercilessly killed those who confessed their own drunk driving of their own accord.
Then he coolly observed the public's reaction. Public opinion had flipped faster than a turned palm, and he smiled bitterly.
'So when emotions get involved, even the same crime earns an indulgence?'
Among the celebrities he'd killed two days prior, there had been a case just like Seo Arin's. A man in his forties, he had driven drunk and then spent the rest of his life doing volunteer work.
But when that man died, no one had staged protests like this. If anything, public opinion back then had sided with the Judgment Seat.
The only difference between that man and Seo Arin was popularity.
'Well, it is this kind of society. The one who should die lives, and the one who should live dies.'
Lee Hocheon concluded that killing Seo Arin had been absolutely the right call.
Then he drafted his next kill list.