The Newspaper in Her Hands

The anchor's voice spilled from the television.

About time.

Listening to the anchor, Yeon-woo fired off ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠messages through his messenger app. The recipients were the speakers Han Hae-un had carefully selected — reporters starving for a scoop.

Tap. Tap-tap—

Yeon-woo smirked at O Seung-hwan's instant reply.

"Working hard in the public interest, huh…"

It was the kind of line a man would cook up to keep an anonymous tipster — a golden goose laying exclusive scoops — thoroughly flattered. Still, it wasn't wrong. Yeon-woo really was working in the public interest.

Replies poured in from the other reporters' tip channels as well — gratitude mixed with promises to follow instructions to the letter. Yeon-woo had given them a rough outline of the ongoing prosecution investigation, handed over several pieces of credible internal evidence, and even bundled the recent wave of community backlash into a ready-made direction for the articles. The reporters, practically vibrating with excitement, started writing at once.

Yeon-woo clicked open one of the articles.

"Hmm. Followed the guidelines nicely."

The piece dug sharply into the real incident that had been buried when An Jun-ho was framed on drug charges — built, of course, on the information Yeon-woo had provided.

The moment the articles dropped, the entire country flipped upside down.

The drug use and distribution charges against Jeong Tae-seon — a veteran actor recognized across every age group — would have been shocking enough on their own. But the claim that he had been covering for conglomerates, secretly dosing innocent actors and fabricating cases, sounded like something out of a noir film. Even people who had long grown numb to celebrity drug scandals found themselves paying attention.

"See? I told you. Every time something big happens, they just detonate a celebrity drug scandal to bury it."

The man shook his head at the woman's words.

"Honestly, I always thought those conspiracy theories floating around the internet were pure garbage. How is this actually real? Though, I mean — the celebrities did do drugs, right?"

"No, they didn't. An Jun-ho never touched drugs. Jeong Tae-seon invited him to a party, spiked his drink, and the next day the cops stormed his house and arrested him. That's what the articles say."

The story was so cinematic the man looked openly skeptical.

"Come on, that's a stretch. The reporter just wrote a novel, didn't they?"

"You clearly didn't actually read the articles. They published the transaction records and chat captures pulled straight off Jeong Tae-seon's phone."

"For real?"

As more and more evidence continued to surface, the story dominated every internet community — and offline, whenever people gathered, it was all anyone talked about. The whole of South Korea had been completely overturned.

Yeon-woo sat in his studio, scanning reactions across multiple communities on his computer.

The other communities were no different.

Reading through the posts, Yeon-woo nodded with a satisfied smile.

"Good. It didn't get buried — it's flowing exactly the way I steered it."

Meanwhile, at the Seoul Northern District Prosecutors' Office, Jeong Tae-seon sat blankly in the interrogation room, his face saying he still had no idea how things had come to this.

Damn it… What the hell do I do? Was I just used and thrown away? Should I just spill everything I know and try to cut my sentence?

From the moment of his arrest, Jeong Tae-seon had called every powerful contact saved in his phone. Every single one of them refused to pick up, as if they had all agreed in advance. Even when he dialed Hwang-geum — the man who had been giving him orders — all he got was a mechanical voice saying the number no longer existed.

Trapped in a maze with no exit, Jeong Tae-seon was wracking his brain when the interrogation room door opened. His head snapped up on reflex.

It wasn't Prosecutor Kwon, the one assigned to his case.

A woman he had never seen before strode in, walked right up to him, and leaned in close.

"W-who…?"

She put her mouth to his ear and whispered.

"The 'Hwang-geum' you know is already dead. Run your mouth and you'll spend the rest of your life in prison begging them to just kill you. So go in quietly. You're good at reading the room — you understand exactly what I'm saying, right?"

Having said her piece, the woman stared at the wide-eyed Jeong Tae-seon with cold eyes, then turned on her heel and walked out.

And from the darkened observation room next door, Han Hae-un had watched the entire exchange.

Just as Team Leader said — someone came for Jeong Tae-seon. Makes sense, when you think about it. Of course Baeksol's tentacles reach inside the prosecution too.

The woman who had just come and gone was a prosecutor he only vaguely recognized by face. She wasn't even assigned to the same Criminal Division 3, and Hae-un had only recently been transferred to Seoul — he couldn't possibly know every face yet.

"Hmm. I'll figure them out one by one. What about that poor prosecutor who grabbed a rotten rope without realizing it? She's already been caught."

Yeon-woo's voice came through the wireless earpiece in Hae-un's ear. Yeon-woo was watching everything through the miniature camera installed in Hae-un's necktie.

"What do you mean, what about her? That just means more work for you, Han Hae-un."

"Aigoo, at this rate I'm going to die of overwork."

"Quit the theatrics. Back in the day your workload was three times what it is now."

Hae-un smirked, understanding perfectly that Yeon-woo's "back in the day" meant their past life.

Still… take one of them out and another one crawls out of the woodwork. Baeksol's people breed like cockroaches — they're everywhere.

An Jun-ho's mother had been out in the fields, preparing the ground for planting corn. When she came back, she found a woman lingering in front of the house. Looking closer, it was Jeong — the village chief's wife.

Jeong, who had been waiting at An Jun-ho's front gate, spotted his mother approaching and clapped her hands together.

"Aigoo! Sister! Where on earth have you been?!"

"You're going to burst my eardrums. What's all this fuss about? Planting season's almost here, so I went out to check on the corn field."

"You wouldn't even answer your phone. I came running all this way because of you. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Here — take this. Congratulations, really."

"Congratulations?"

The woman pressed a newspaper into her hands and, as if she had somewhere urgent to be, dashed off again.

An Jun-ho's mother tilted her head, watching Jeong's retreating back — then looked down at the newspaper in her hands.

And her legs gave out. She sank to the ground right there.

An Jun-ho had enlisted on the same day Yeon-woo left for LA for a talk show. Four months of military service had already passed.

On his first leave, An Jun-ho got off at Chuncheon Terminal, transferred to a village bus, and rode deep into the countryside.

Hiss—

"Thank you."

The rear door opened and An Jun-ho stepped down.

"Haa… Civilian air just tastes different. Sweet. Did someone sprinkle sugar on the atmosphere?"

It was the same Gangwon Province, the same mountain valley — but being this close to home made even the air feel sweeter.

He walked the winding road toward home, and then he saw it: nestled among the gray cement walls, the one house with the red brick fence that stood out from everything else.

He broke into a joyful run — and then he found his mother, slumped on the ground in front of the gate.

His heart dropped like a stone.

"M-Mom!"

He had planned a booming military salute the moment he saw her. Instead his mind went blank, and he sprinted with everything he had.

At the familiar voice, his mother — still sitting on the ground — lifted her head.

"Ju-Jun-ho!"

"Mom! Why are you on the ground?! Are you hurt?"

He rushed over, checking her over frantically — and then he noticed the newspaper clenched tightly in her hands.

Ever since his case, she had gotten rid of the television, stopped reading the newspaper, and shut herself off from the world entirely. He tilted his head, puzzled.

Then his mother looked up at him, her eyes filling with tears.

"Aigooo… My poor baby…"

"Mom…"

Since that incident, she would sometimes get overwhelmed and hold onto him and cry. But this was his first leave — a happy day. He couldn't let the mood fall apart like this.

"I'm home on leave and you're not even cooking me something good? Your son's starving."

He tried to change the subject, force the atmosphere to shift — but what came out of his mother's mouth was nothing he expected.

She struck her own chest as she spoke.

"Aigoo. The world finally knows about my son. Jun-ho — they finally know you're innocent. You hear me?"

"…Huh? What are you talking about all of a sudden?"

Through her tears, his mother wordlessly held out the newspaper.

An Jun-ho's eyes went wide as he read the front-page headline.

"Th-this is…"