The Missing Piece
Beep— beep— beep—. The blare of the car alarm screamed through the air, triggered by a massive impact.
“Wh-what the hell?”
Even the Chief Prosecutor, who had been lounging in his smug composure, was caught off guard. Through the rear windshield of the car he turned to look, and there was Yoon Jeong-woo.
“How the hell did that bastard get here…?”
No police escort, no reporters—just one man, bare-handed, come to stop a Chief Prosecutor in broad daylight.
As if to declare that War on the Rule of Law would end right here, right now.
“Son of a—! This car is built like a tank!”
Yoon Jeong-woo was swinging a crowbar, mercilessly battering the trunk. At the commotion behind him, the men who had been trailing the Chief Prosecutor's car piled out in a rush. They were CS Holdings' gangsters.
“Hey, you little—!”
BANG!
Just before everything exploded into chaos, a bullet tore through the air. The one who had fired a warning shot into the sky was—
“Everyone, freeze. Cooperate with the investigation.”
The rookie cop. Myeong Je-ha.
A heavy drum-and-bass line pulsed beneath the scene like a pounding heartbeat. A taut, breath-held standoff stretched on.
Gun raised in an outstretched hand, Myeong Je-ha swept his gaze across the crowd like a warning aimed at everyone at once.
People shuffled out of their stopped cars, mumbling among themselves—the traffic blockade had frozen them in place. If any more attention gathered here, things would go badly fast.
Thud-thud-thud-thud—. The music accelerated.
“Step on it!”
“Sir? But—but there's someone right in front of—”
“I said drive!”
The Chief Prosecutor bellowed. The driver hesitated, then threw caution to the wind and floored the accelerator.
But Myeong Je-ha, planted squarely in the car's path, did not flinch.
He stood firm, eyes solid as bedrock, as if the prospect of being run down meant nothing to him.
CRASH—! The sound of Myeong Je-ha colliding with the car rang out.
He clung to the windshield, his neatly combed hair whipping in the wind.
With a crash of cymbals, a picture-perfect action sequence kicked into gear.
Myeong Je-ha smashed the side mirror with his fist. Screech—! The panicked driver's tires scraped deafeningly against the asphalt.
While the car swerved, Yoon Jeong-woo came sprinting back, crowbar in hand. This time his target wasn't the trunk. He was aiming for the glass of the back door.
“Officer! Of! The! Law! Says! Cooperate! Dammit!”
“Drive! Run those lunatics over, dead or alive!”
The Chief Prosecutor's dignified mask had slipped clean off. The driver's hands trembled violently under Myeong Je-ha's glare, burning through the windshield at him.
His forehead was split and bleeding, but Myeong Je-ha never once closed his eyes.
'…Ah….'
In my head, the analysis of the figure before me was stacking up at lightning speed.
Rage at the rotten establishment. A desperation that screamed it had to be now or never. The agony of the child victim case. A revulsion so total it wanted to kill everything in its path.
And with each of those emotions, I went back over my Seoryeong's every action, reexamining her line by line.
'My Seoryeong would, here, most likely….'
But there was one thing—one single thing—missing. Something that hovered just out of reach, slipping through my fingers the moment I thought I had it.
Somewhere along the way, Yoon Jeong-woo had scooped up the pistol barely clinging to Myeong Je-ha's grip.
Then—BANG! One shot into a tire. And BANG again—another into the trunk.
And with that, the trunk popped open with a clunk—the one that had seemed like it would stay sealed forever.
The moment the Chief Prosecutor's corruption was laid bare to the world.
“You… you filthy gutter rat. You think you can handle this? A civilian waving a gun around in the middle of the day?”
Through the shattered glass, the Chief Prosecutor sneered from the leather seat of his luxury sedan.
His confidence that the law could be bent to crush anyone, anytime, remained fully intact.
“Handle it?”
Clunk. Yoon Jeong-woo, walking toward the trunk, said,
“That's your job now.”
50,000-won bills swirled into the air. Yellow paper embroidered itself across the blue sky.
The people stuck at the blockade swarmed forward like hungry ghosts. And then, all the noise of the world fell away.
In slow motion, the camera followed the scrambling hands snatching at the money raining down.
The Prosecutor's entourage stared blankly at the spectacle.
Yoon Jeong-woo, undeterred, kept hurling the election slush funds into the air like a man possessed.
Weee-oooong— weee-ooong—.
In the distance, sirens. The detectives moving with Yoon Jeong-woo had finally arrived.
Myeong Je-ha, still hanging off the windshield, at last let the strength drain slowly from his body.
Yoon Jeong-woo, who had been watching him, came running.
“Huh? Hey—!”
Ding— dong— daeng— dong—.
The instant Myeong Je-ha collapsed to the ground, the faint chime of the school bell rang out from the elementary school nearby, signaling the end of classes.
Only then did the light in Myeong Je-ha's fallen eyes change.
The fierce glare faded at last, softening into something like relief—as if to say: it's over.
“Ah, hell. I forgot to grab the handcuffs.”
Yoon Jeong-woo fished the cuffs out of Myeong Je-ha's jacket and walked back toward the Chief Prosecutor.
Still sprawled on the pavement, Myeong Je-ha let out a wry little laugh. The tension in the audience broke, and they laughed with him.
But I couldn't laugh.
Because the moment I looked at Myeong Je-ha's face through the screen, the hazy silhouette of my Seoryeong snapped into sharp focus.
Then, a beat late, the journalist on Yoon Jeong-woo's side came sprinting in, and the shutter clicked. I clenched my fist, brimming with certainty.
'…I found it.'
I scrambled out of the theater. Hands trembling, I called Geum Bit-gang. The ringtone lasted barely a beat.
Alone in the empty theater corridor, I stamped my feet and blurted it out.
“Professor! Professor, it's me. I found it. I found what was missing.”
At long last, I'd found it.
The thing my Seoryeong had been lacking.
A village isolated by undeveloped roads, rotting from within. The pitiful people crushed under the heel of the powerful inside it—none of that belonged to Gimyodam alone.
In War on the Rule of Law too, the people living where the light never reached were spent like offerings to those in power, whenever it suited them.
The distant past and the present day had finally locked together, tooth into groove.
“They weren't anything to each other. Jeong-an and Seoryeong—they weren't family, they weren't teacher and disciple, they truly weren't anything at all, and yet….”
My heart hammered in my chest. The hand clutching my phone was shaking.
“Jeong-an protected Seoryeong and cared for her all those long years. Whittling away her own life to do it. Seoryeong must have been carrying the weight of that—right here, in her heart.”
Through the receiver, Geum Bit-gang stayed silent, as if waiting for me to finish.
“And then, traveling alongside Myeong-do, there would have been feelings she awakened for the first time….”
The Gimyodam scenario I had memorized unfolded across my mind.
The barren wife who, unable to bear a child of her own, granted her servants recognition and dignity. The villagers who learned to write their three-syllable names from the village tutor, hoping to repay a kindness. The leader of the traveling performers who looked after an orphaned girl. The countless people she'd exchanged a word or two with, passing back and forth.
All of those people, living on together—in the world that Myeong-do and his lord longed for. And the will to build it….
“Responsibility.”
Myeong Je-ha had shown me a fragment of Seoryeong's soul.
For a rookie cop to pick the wrong side is the kind of thing that can end with you stripping off the uniform for good. An entire life poured into becoming a police officer, snapped at the root.
And the man on the other side was an authority figure who treated even his gangster thugs like disposable dogs.
He could have had Myeong Je-ha—no longer a cop, just an ordinary civilian—killed without breaking a sweat.
His job, his very life. The rookie cop had moved with all of it on the line, clutching nothing but a half-melted candy in his hand.
To protect the world. To shield people from danger. Because I'm the only one who can. Because I know it has to be me.
Exactly like—
“What my Seoryeong was missing… was responsibility.”
Like Seoryeong herself.
“—Well, well.”
A soft laugh drifted through the phone.
“—That didn't take you long at all.”
The basics of a genius actress! You have succeeded in breathing life into a character made of one flesh with your role.
Reward
◈ AnalysisC+ → B
◈ DeliveryC → C+
◈ ArtistryD → D+
◈ SkillSole Protagonist D → D+
At last, she was complete.
My Seoryeong—at one hundred percent.