Six O'Clock Siren
The exposé was a long one.
She had been in the same middle school class as Seo Arin, and had been tormented through those years. Extortion, mostly. And violence.
The author attached dozens of photographs as evidence.
Graduation albums proving she attended the same school as Seo Arin, and photos of herself bleeding or covered in bruises from the girl's beatings.
When I heard Seo Arin was dead, it felt incredible. Truly incredible. But then people started mourning her — holding protests, of all things. I couldn't accept it. Someone like that, someone who crushed another person's entire life, should not be remembered kindly even in death.
That was why she had come forward.
Because Arin was dead now — because she would never have to suffer retaliation for speaking out.
She closed the post with a single line of thanks to the Judgment Seat.
The post spread like wildfire, and became the epicenter of a national controversy.
Having watched the government's policy announcement, Lee Hocheon quietly organized his thoughts.
Thirty years.
It didn't sit well with him, but considering the political reality, the government had made a genuinely radical move.
That's enough, for now.
There was no longer any reason to go after drunk drivers.
If the government's policy failed, he could step back in then. What mattered was that change had been forced into existence.
I'll stop for a while.
For a full week, South Korea had been electrified, raw with shock. It needed time to cool. Constant stimulation did nothing but numb people.
I should contact them first.
He stepped outside to reach the administrator of Judgment Day. It bothered him that a call lasting one minute required hours of travel. He would need to find a solution for that, too.
As he headed for the parking lot, he suddenly noticed how unnaturally light his body felt. He had quit his daily exercise routine after awakening — there was no point, since working out didn't even raise a sweat anymore.
Is my body still growing stronger?
His mana increased with every passing day. Only enough to kill exactly one more person — but perhaps even that trickle was affecting his physical form.
Worth testing.
Hocheon drove toward the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province. There, he contacted the administrator of Judgment Day and told him that no one would die tomorrow.
The next day, South Korea was on tenterhooks.
Would the Judgment Seat have killed the drunk drivers or not? Every killing so far had taken place at night, and every morning had been plastered with coverage of it.
Once nine o'clock passed, the articles came flooding in. Because it was true — no one had died.
Positive public opinion poured out. The Judgment Seat's own conduct — delivering justice and then halting the killings — played its part, but Seo Arin's school violence scandal had an enormous effect as well.
As school violence rose to the national forefront, public opinion began actively calling for the Judgment Seat. Given the structure of South Korean society, it was extremely difficult for the police to root out bullying at its source. Evidence was hard to find, and the Juvenile Act made punishment far from simple. Because the law was designed around rehabilitation rather than retribution, most juvenile offenders were let off with probation or community service — a reality that routinely sent victims and the general public into fits of fury.
"Turn on the TV."
It was nine o'clock in the evening. The Hunter Crime Investigation Division had gathered in front of the screen.
KMS came up immediately.
The broadcast ended with an offer to talk. Kim Woocheol had asked the government to air it live the moment the day passed without a killing. The Management Bureau had made the first move — before the next murder could occur.
"Will he reach out?" Kim Yeji asked.
"Chances are good. The fact that he stopped killing tells us he's someone you can talk to," Seo Gichan said, pushing up his glasses.
The government was offering to give him what he wanted; unless he was a homicidal psychopath beyond reason, the odds of him ignoring the offer were slim.
"If he does contact us, are we actually going to meet his demands?"
"We do exactly what we did with drunk driving. Tell him the relevant laws will be enacted, and buy time," Kim Woocheol said, arms crossed. The goal was simply to draw him out. "If all he does is make a phone call, we can pinpoint his location easily enough. We can drag the negotiation table out as long as we need and reel him in."
"What if the phone isn't connected to a cell tower? Then it's hard to trace, isn't it?"
"We've got his voice, don't we?"
Kang Yeji nodded. The Division had a hunter capable of locating a person from voice alone. It would take time, but the accuracy was extremely high.
"I hope he calls."
"Even if he doesn't, he won't find it easy to commit his next crime. The government extended its hand first," Seo Gichan said. If he ignored the government's offer and killed anyway, public opinion would turn against him — and his actions would lose all pretense of justification.
"Now we can finally see a path forward," Park Kwangdo said, eyes on the TV. He had been half-crazy with frustration these past weeks, and it felt like air was finally reaching his lungs.
"Not yet, we can't. Let's just wait," Kim Woocheol said calmly — and waited for the call that never came.
A week passed. The fever that had gripped South Korea slowly subsided. The Judgment Seat never appeared at the negotiation table, nor took any action at all.
School violence, however, remained a burning issue — because a horrifying case had just exploded into the open.
A father whose son had taken his own life after being bullied posted on MegaSquare, then ended his own life.
The fault is mine. I was too busy making money to look after my child. I tried to kill the ones who did it and then die myself. But I couldn't bring myself to do even that. I am a worthless father who cannot even avenge his own son. I am putting everything down now, and going to him. I pray only that my death makes this known to the world. Please, I beg you — punish those devils. Make certain they pay.
— Kim
Kim publicly exposed the perpetrators' identities before jumping to his death. Public opinion ignited with rage, and the police launched an immediate investigation. Seven perpetrators in total — every one of them a middle schooler.
When it became clear that even two suicides would end in light punishment, the public began looking for one man.
Which was to say: the government could act, and was choosing not to. The truth was that countless competing interests were tangled around the issue — public optics, human rights organizations, power struggles between political parties. To cut through all of them and force a bill through, the country would need another shocking incident. Something like what the Judgment Seat had already given it once before.
Lee Hocheon had spent the week in silence. The government's offer of negotiation was tempting, but he had declined it. Power came before law; law followed only after power had been demonstrated first.
Seventeen people I can kill right now.
It was time to move again.
His next target: school violence. The living steal a victim's life while the dead are left to live on with it — in a sense, a crime even worse than drunk driving. The victim suffers for the rest of their days, while the punishment amounts to almost nothing. He could have chosen a different category of crime, but there was no reason to. Every arrow in the public consciousness was pointing at school violence.
Who do I start with?
The billionaire father's suicide case — the one dominating the news — was the perfect fit. Seven perpetrators in total, their identities already laid bare for the whole country to see. The only problem was proof: confirming that they had actually committed the bullying. With drunk driving, the facts had been unambiguous. This was different. One careless mistake, and he could kill an innocent person.
Start with the ones whose guilt is established.
He could afford to wait until the police investigation concluded. If school bullies started dying tomorrow, the public would be waiting for it with bated breath.
Hocheon had asked the administrator of Judgment Day for photographs of the criminals. Almost immediately, the man sent over pictures of students in school uniforms. Five in all. In one of the posts on Judgment Day, a victim described losing hearing in one ear from the abuse he'd suffered. The perpetrators who had done it were all locked up in a juvenile detention center now.
He had begun trusting Hocheon after the government announced its drunk driving crackdown — because the killings had stopped, exactly as Hocheon said they would. He would need more rigorous verification, but that could wait until tomorrow.
One absurd fact had surfaced while Hocheon researched school violence: victims had no way of learning how their abusers were punished. Juvenile protective cases issued no written rulings. Unless the perpetrators' side disclosed it themselves in pursuit of a settlement, or the presiding prosecutor volunteered the information, no victim could ever find out what sentence their tormentors had received — through any channel.
Fortunately, the administrator of Judgment Day had the capability to close that gap. He had said he could not reveal his own identity, only that he worked in a related field. As proof, he had accurately dug up the criminal records Hocheon demanded.
Most likely someone on the government side.
Pulling identity records normally required access to the police, the prosecution, or a military investigative agency. It made him slightly uneasy, but the man showed no sign of trying to dig anything up in return.
Proceed.
He applied his skill to the perpetrators in the photographs, and to the public figures already exposed for school violence. Seventeen in total.
WEEEEEE—!
The piercing wail of the siren tore Kim Heesu from his sleep. The morning wake-up call, announcing six a.m.
Gotta get the lights on, fast.
He scrambled out of bed and bolted for the light switch. He was dead last in the room's hierarchy, and as long as he got the lights on in time, his day wouldn't be a living hell.
Click.
The fluorescent tubes flickered to life, and the room swam into view. Six boys in total, himself included. The other five were still asleep.
"What the...?"
Their poses were terribly, terribly wrong.
Both arms raised, hands wrapped around their own throats — and every single one of them identical, as if they'd been pressed from the same mold.
A chill raced down his spine. Cold sweat broke across his skin.
"The... the Judgment Seat?"
He remembered what the others had been saying just a week ago. What if we get judged too? And then, laughing through it: As if he even knows we're in here.
They had said it, grinning — the five of them who'd burst a cripple's eardrum to earn their place in this room.
"AAAAAAAH!"
Kim Heesu screamed and bolted for the door.