Two Years
Ji Hye-in hadn't even washed. Her face was bare of makeup. She began to take off her clothes.
What she'd worn on the outside was modest enough. Underneath, there was nothing but a tiny, obscenely cut thong and a strapless scrap of a bra.
A legal battle was unfolding over the fact that he had struck a vital point — the neck.
Two lawyers in their fifties, one a former military judge advocate and the other a former prosecutor, had teamed up to defend Yoo Kang-soo. They kept pulling the finer points into the light — that he had been in fear for his life, that his opponent was a professional with a knife, a foreigner whose identity still had not been properly established — all of it to drive home that Kang-soo's actions had been an unavoidable struggle to survive.
Kang-soo himself had studied law. He'd dropped out after only a year because he couldn't afford the tuition, but he'd been a strong enough student to gain admission to the law department of a prestigious private university. With that same sharp mind, he had spent a full twenty-one years as a military police investigator. He knew military criminal law inside and out, and civilian criminal law just as thoroughly. Which was why he had fully expected that the outcome of this trial would not come easily.
At the final hearing, the prosecutor requested a sentence of four years. The moment those words left the prosecutor's mouth, Kang-soo squeezed his eyes shut.
Four years for killing a man was, in truth, a short sentence. But Kang-soo had never intended to kill anyone, and he did not believe his actions even rose to the level of reckless intent. The video of the fight, however, proved his innocence and his guilt at the same time.
It was clearly the deceased who had come at him first with a knife, chasing him down. But the moment Kang-soo, after trying to defend himself the entire way, delivered that decisive blow — it was far too graphic.
He had already worked out a strategy with his lawyers. If I can just get out in three years, that'll be more than enough. He clasped his hands together and squeezed them tight.
Then came the moment of the final verdict.
The judge began by stating that it appeared nearly certain the deceased victim, who had no prior acquaintance with Kang-soo whatsoever, had attempted to carry out a contracted act of violence with a knife. But he went on at length to explain that Kang-soo, who had trained in martial arts for years and received various specialized military training, could well have avoided the attack or fled without killing the victim.
These were the usual recitations a judge read through before delivering the sentence. What mattered was the last thing to come out of his mouth — the term itself.
When those words left the judge's lips, Kang-soo tightly gripped the hand of the lawyer beside him. Even at the lowest possible sentence, he had been certain it would not come in under three years.
But the judge added that Kang-soo was a first-time offender with no criminal record whatsoever, and that his twenty-one years of military service to the nation had been taken into account in determining the sentence.
When the trial ended, Kang-soo was so genuinely happy he wanted to dance. The prosecutor had asked for four years — and it had been cut exactly in half.
The problem was whether the prosecution would appeal. If the case went to the High Court, there was zero chance the sentence would drop below two years. It would almost certainly go up. The window to file an appeal was exactly one week. Kang-soo and his lawyers had no intention of filing one, of course.
Several months had already passed. Two years was only a little longer than the military service young men did these days. Kang-soo had already served twenty-one years. Hell, it's just two more years in the army. His heart swelled with hope.
He did feel a little sorry for the dead man. The truth was, he could have subdued him with a different technique — not a Killing Strike. It was also an undeniable fact that Kang-soo had gotten more heated because the victim had talked about crippling his son's legs. When the man had brought up his son and his wife... the truth was, Kang-soo had genuinely wanted to wring his neck and kill him. That was a fact only Kang-soo himself knew.
After the trial, he embraced the lawyers who had helped him like older brothers, holding them tight. But he still had to wait and hope the prosecution wouldn't appeal. He knew full well that the best thing he could do right now was get the sentence confirmed as soon as possible and wait for those two years to pass.
And a week passed.
The prosecution hadn't really come down hard on him during the trial, either. They knew. They knew Kang-soo had been wronged. Someone had hired a knife fighter whose identity they still didn't know, and a man had nearly been killed. The only difference was that the intended victim happened to be a martial arts master — he'd counterattacked, and a single strike of his hand had killed the knife fighter instantly.
In the end, the prosecution did not appeal. Kang-soo's two-year sentence was confirmed, and he became a convicted inmate. He was being transferred immediately from the detention center to prison.
Perhaps because of his long military career, life in the detention center hadn't been particularly hard. He'd used his commissary money to buy this and that to eat, and he'd even put on two kilos. His belly, however, had gone in, and muscle was packing onto his body in earnest.
He'd been doing push-ups throughout the day, usually a thousand in total. A hundred at a time, ten sets — a thousand push-ups a day. Kang-soo had already been a big man, and now his body was growing as hulking and densely muscled as a bodybuilder's.
As he transferred to prison, Kang-soo said his goodbyes one by one to the cellmates he'd grown reasonably close to over the past few months in the detention center. They were all violent offenders, but perhaps because they were still unconvicted detainees, they'd spent those months exchanging well-wishes with one another.
Kang-soo was transferred to a provincial prison. The principle was the same as in military prisons — inmates with similar offenses were housed together. He was, after all, guilty of assault resulting in death. There was no way around sharing a cell with violent offenders.
After arriving at the prison, undergoing a physical examination, and completing a full day's worth of intake procedures, Kang-soo was assigned a cell — the room where, like it or not, he would spend a little under two years living with the men inside. The moment he stepped through the door, he bowed his head in greeting.
"I'd appreciate it if we could get along. My name is Yoo Kang-soo."
But not a single person returned it. Everyone was watching the face of a well-built man in his mid-to-late thirties sitting in the middle of the room.
"New guy... let's see a proper welcome."
Kang-soo genuinely wanted to keep his head down. But he wasn't ignorant of the fact that in a world of men, there were rules that belonged to men alone. The cell was about the same size as the one in the detention center, but two more men had been packed in — ten people including Kang-soo, all in one room.
A man who looked clearly younger than him, mid-to-late thirties, was speaking while looking at Kang-soo. Kang-soo had fully expected this. Tattoos ran all the way up the man's neck.
Kang-soo spoke in a very low voice, looking at the younger man. Short hair. A thick, solid build. A darkly tanned face. Anyone could see Kang-soo was a man with real physical power.
At Kang-soo's words, the man in his mid-to-late thirties stood up. Aside from that one man, everyone else looked scrawny and weak. There were plenty of men in their forties and fifties, but they all seemed to be taking their cues from the guy in his thirties.
Kang-soo could tell at a glance that the man in his thirties was no ordinary inmate. Standing up, he looked at least four inches taller than Kang-soo, who stood around five-foot-nine, and his shoulders were massively broad.
"You've got some balls... Never heard of the Yongmun Five-Way Gang, have you?"
The man in his thirties wasn't intimidated in the slightest. He even smiled faintly as he talked down to Kang-soo again.
Kang-soo knew perfectly well that if he lost here, the rest of his prison life would be miserable. He could not afford to back down. There was no need to show mercy to bad men. He'd made his own mistakes and ended up in prison, and the others probably all had their excuses too — but the fact remained that good, decent people rarely ended up behind bars.
"This son of a bitch... no fear at all..."
A foot came flying at him with terrifying speed.