Judgment Day, Post No. 24
SHOCK! Idol Park, Who Left His Group Over School Bullying Scandal, Found Dead in Apparent Suicide!
The moment the Judgment Seat appeared, the media began churning out articles by the dozen.
Jang Seonwoong of KMS responded with his usual lightning-fast instincts.
He's finally here!
Another opportunity to print money had landed in his lap. The instant the Judgment Seat revealed himself, every broadcasting company's stock shot up in a frenzy of towering green candles. Jang Seonwoong had been holding KMS shares, and he'd pocketed a tidy fortune. His only regret was selling too early — he'd unloaded everything at the daily limit of thirty percent, only to watch the price double anyway.
Let's see how high it climbs this time.
After announcing the crackdown on drunk driving, the Judgment Seat had gone quiet for a week. The once-soaring stocks had, naturally, crashed right back down — and Jang Seonwoong had swept them all up, certain the Judgment Seat would reappear without fail.
Just focus a little longer. Then I flip my whole life.
When KMS had exclusively broadcast the Judgment Seat's message, the network had nearly shattered its all-time viewership record. That achievement had earned him the full weight of the company's expectations. If he could pull it off just once more, both the stock price and his own market value would skyrocket together.
Come on. Just one message. Please.
The Seat had sent his message through the media during the drunk-driving affair, so the odds were good he'd do the same again. But to make that happen, Jang Seonwoong would have to read the Judgment Seat's intentions and write articles as favorable as humanly possible.
Time to have a word with the director.
KMS needed to become the Judgment Seat's friendly press. That, after all, was the surest road to exploding the network's revenue.
Public opinion welcomed the Judgment Seat's arrival with open arms. School bullying had been reaching a fever pitch, and the Judgment Seat had appeared at the most opportune moment imaginable.
Public sentiment was friendly toward the Judgment Seat — despite the fact that eighteen people were now dead. That alone showed just how toxic attitudes toward school bullying had become across society.
Still, not everyone cheered.
Dissenting voices existed, but they were a minority. The intellectuals, too, had begun speaking up in earnest this time, unlike during the drunk-driving affair — and while they split between support and opposition, unlike the general public, the opposition outnumbered the rest.
In particular, a professor at a certain university — hailed as the nation's greatest thinker and showered with unconditional adoration — summed up the entire affair in a single line.
A famous novelist and film critic replied to it with an ominous remark of his own.
Both posts drew floods of likes and spread across countless communities. The people who read them moved past simple approval or condemnation and launched into debates over the philosophy underneath it all.
The Hunter Crime Investigation Division was quiet. The hunters who'd heard the news sat gathered in the conference room, faces grim. The thing they'd feared had finally come to pass.
"No negotiating with him. No way to counter him either."
Kim Woocheol let out a long sigh. A phone that had been silent for a while now rang without pause — so relentlessly that the mere sound of it was starting to give him a nervous twitch.
"What did the Bureau Director say?"
Park Gwangdo asked. In the two weeks since sd1234 had surfaced, upper management had done nearly everything within their power: funding was a given, and they'd even persuaded the media and the government to lay a negotiation table on the table for him.
"The National Assembly's in an uproar. Ugh."
The Director was a hunter himself, and he understood exactly how absurd the Judgment Seat's ability was. Naturally, he could accept that no progress was being made. The National Assembly was another story. The moment it became clear that the Punishment Enhancement Act had changed nothing, the pressure came down hard.
"What do we do now, sir?"
"Do what? Nothing to do but build protective custody facilities, round up the bullying perpetrators, and start a fresh investigation."
"And the brain-dead victims?"
"Can't rule that out either. Round-the-clock monitoring, medical teams and healers stationed on site. We could keep them alive."
It was a monumentally inefficient plan, but there was no alternative.
"What about pushing the government to announce another enhancement law?"
Kang Yeji asked.
"Absolutely not. If he gets one this time, he'll keep forcing us to rewrite the law forever. That's no fundamental solution. And the fact that he never showed up at the negotiation table — that's fatal."
Experience had taught him that criminals of this breed always carried a creed of their own and invariably tried to broadcast it. In fact, sd1234 had once contacted KMS directly. Every expectation had been completely shattered.
"So we have no choice but to track down sd1234 ourselves."
The fabricated drunk-driving case had closed automatically the moment he'd stopped killing. It was a failure. The investigation was back at square one — a maze with no exit.
"Start with the juvenile detention center. If he needs to see a face before he kills, he might have visited the facility."
The juvenile detention center wasn't a place just anyone could walk into. Checking its visitor logs might yield a lead.
"With respect, I believe the victims supplied him the information."
Seo Gichan, who had been listening in silence, spoke up. His eyes were fixed on his laptop.
"The victims?"
"I can't say for certain, but I checked the boys who died inside the detention center, and one of them had deafened a classmate through school bullying."
"And?"
"When I searched for related posts, one result came up. A thread that made the best-of board on Judgment Day over at MegaSquare."
"Show us."
The hunters crowded around his laptop — but Seo Gichan shook his head.
"It's been switched to a private post now. I never actually read it — I only confirmed it through the search results. But I think this is where we should start digging."
"File an investigation request with the board admins, then go find the kids who got bullied and verify everything. Move."
Kim Woocheol issued his orders without missing a beat.
Lee Hocheon had checked the public sentiment and was now scrolling through the Judgment Day board. Since the news broke, posts had been multiplying at a rapid pace — but what he read wasn't the public threads. Only the private ones. At his request, the administrators had screened out every post that could stand as evidence of a crime and locked them away as private, mostly cases with clear proof or witnesses and formal judicial verdicts already rendered.
Lee Hocheon was picking out the perpetrators he would kill tomorrow.
What's this?
One post stood out.
My son was beaten so badly that I believe he died from it.
— Post No. 24
Normally the administrators never screened posts like this. Speculative threads were almost always false, and one careless mistake carried a very real risk of an innocent person being killed. If this one had been locked away anyway, there had to be a reason.
My son suddenly complained of pain in his chest, and then he died. The hospital said his internal organs were damaged, but they couldn't determine the cause. After he died, I was going through his diary — that's how I learned it was because of the beatings.
Part of the son's diary had been made public.
I want to graduate already. No matter how much it hurts, I don't think I'd ever kill myself. Just hold on a little longer. I can do this. Only three more months.
There was another entry.
And in this one, the perpetrator's name was written in full.
When Choi Jinwoo hits me, the pain is unbearable. It feels like my insides are being twisted apart. There's not a single mark on me, but it hurts so much I feel like I'm losing my mind. Should I tell a teacher? No — I look completely fine from the outside. It won't work.
It was hard to grasp at first glance. Getting beaten leaves marks — that's what wounds are — and yet the victim claimed he looked unharmed. The boy's mother had found that so bizarre that she'd left the matter to the police, the post explained.
I showed them the diary and the police opened an investigation, but it ended with no charges. It wrapped up so fast it left me stunned. Even with the diary sitting there as hard evidence...
A diary can serve as evidence.
With the perpetrator's name explicitly stated and a consistent narrative backed by clear facts, it could absolutely stand as proof. The police would have known that too — and they had still closed the case at breakneck speed.
Something's rotten here.
What followed was a mother's plea after losing her son. She said she'd quit her job to uncover the truth behind her boy's unjust death, only to find she couldn't get anywhere near the perpetrator at all.
Post No. 24. Please look into the perpetrator's identity.
For now, Lee Hocheon sent a message to the administrators.
Kang Doyun, a working prosecutor of thirty-six, stepped out of his office — because a message had arrived for him.
This should be interesting.
The corner of Kang Doyun's mouth curled upward. Once again, the Judgment Seat was about to shake South Korea to its foundations. Post No. 24 on Judgment Day — a bomb that no one but the Judgment Seat himself should ever dare touch.
Kang Doyun had graduated law school at twenty-seven and made prosecutor, only to be blindsided by a reality nothing like the one he'd imagined. The prosecution was not some bastion of justice, and neither was the law. He had come to understand, quickly, that the law stood on the side of power. His dream of becoming a prosecutor and delivering social justice had been shattered to pieces.
At first he'd charged in with the audacity of youth, vowing to reform the prosecution from within — and all he'd received in return was defeat and wounds that cut to the bone. And so, within three years, he had become a true prosecutor. One who smirked with contempt, wielded power, and looked down on the weak. An ordinary prosecutor. His seniors thumped him on the shoulder and told him that was simply how things worked.
He'd believed justice had left his heart for good. When you attached yourself to power, everything became easy.
But when that being appeared, he realized it wasn't so.
The so-called Judgment Seat. He had executed criminals without mercy, and in less than a week he'd moved the government and rewritten the law itself.
Kang Doyun had shuddered, again and again. The work he had wanted to do. The power he had craved so desperately. The things he'd failed to achieve even after becoming a prosecutor — this man was doing them. The ember long extinguished in his heart roared back to life.
What must I do to help him? How do I use this position I hold now?
Every single day, Kang Doyun analyzed the Judgment Seat's crimes and his behavior. And then he had created the board called Judgment Day. He'd noticed what the man needed: the identities of criminals. Just as expected, contact came from the Judgment Seat, and the realization that he could work alongside him raised goosebumps all over again.
The Seat had requested a criminal's records, and Kang Doyun had used his position as prosecutor to provide them. Looking up records unrelated to his own caseload was illegal — but that didn't matter. He could always cobble together a plausible excuse.
Out on the terrace, Kang Doyun began typing his reply.
Choi Jinwoo, the perpetrator of Post No. 24. Doubts had nagged at him the moment he first read the post, so he'd pulled the records in advance. The boy was extremely dangerous.
The Judgment Seat's reply had come back. What judgment would he render? Kang Doyun felt his heart pounding.
For now, he passed along only the bare facts.
Just as expected, he asked for the reason.
"Hoo."
Kang Doyun exhaled deeply and began tapping at his phone.
Impossible. There wasn't a soul in South Korea who wouldn't know the name Choi Seongcheol. More likely, hearing the name alone simply hadn't told him what he was dealing with.
Hunter name: Asura. Ranked second in South Korea, head of the hunter guild Sura. The man they called living power itself was Choi Jinwoo's father.
What will you do?
The reply was slow in coming. And with every second of delay, Kang Doyun's heart beat faster. An S-Rank hunter was a being of an entirely different dimension from the A-Rank the Judgment Seat had already killed. Nothing short of a god — or a superhuman fit to stand beside one. They were already treated as strategic deterrents beyond the reach of the state, and no one could touch them.
He waited for the Judgment Seat's answer, hope burning in his chest.
And the answer that finally came exceeded every expectation he'd dared to hold.