The Broken Window Theory
Her very first bukkake experience turned out to be a threesome with the gangster her summer fling had invited. Gu A-rin had climaxed while being raped. She admitted that much herself.
"The even more humiliating part was what happened afterward."
"What things?"
"Do you know the broken windows theory?"
"You prepared hard to become a weather caster. Is this a current events question?"
"Yes."
"The idea that if one part of a window is broken, the whole thing will soon shatter."
"Close enough. If a single piece of trash is dumped under a neighborhood utility pole, people start treating the whole area like a landfill and pile on more garbage."
Once A-rin had been defiled, she began to accept being passed around by groups of men as something natural. But when they crossed a certain line, she finally put her foot down. After long, agonizing deliberation, she sought out the one lawyer she had trusted most during her time at Jung & Han—Suk Ho-pil.
"There's a Jung & Han office right in front of the convenience store. Any particular reason you came all the way to me with this case?"
"Do you have any idea how many female lawyers are jealous of my looks? Besides, the male attorneys at Jung & Han are a pack of filthy old perverts."
"Yeah, that's fair. A lot of the Jung & Han lawyers are divorced men with wandering eyes. Plenty of perverts in the bunch. And the women are rude as hell."
"Attorney Han Seo-yoon might have seemed like an angel to you, Attorney Suk Ho-pil, but to a lowly convenience store part-timer like me, she was a rude bitch who threw money in my face."
"No way."
Ho-pil glanced sideways at Attorney Han Seo-rin. She was Han Seo-yoon's identical twin.
"I can't believe you never noticed my sister's twisted personality. How could she have hidden it so perfectly when you two were even engaged?"
"She treated me well. Maxed-out womanly charms. Unlike you."
"Fuck off. Anyway, Attorney Suk Ho-pil is a total womanizer. Aren't you pushing forty?"
"Class of '89. Not forty yet."
The conversation that had briefly veered off track returned to the main path.
According to Gu A-rin's account, after the initial incident she endured threesomes, foursomes, and eventually found herself surrounded by ten men. They dressed her in schoolgirl cosplay and filmed a full gangbang.
"That video was uploaded to a worldwide porn site called YourFans."
"Such shameless filth. If your face was visible, it would violate laws against distributing obscene material."
"They cleverly blurred my face when they posted it."
"So, intentionally made it blurry. Blur."
"Yes, Attorney."
That was how A-rin had to abandon her dream of becoming a weather caster. With explicit footage of her naked body being sold across the globe on a porn site, that career path was now impossible.
"For the prosecution to take this seriously, we need to draft an airtight complaint."
"Even a dog learns to recite poetry after three years at a temple. Anyone working part-time at a convenience store right in front of Korea's top law firm knows that much."
"True. These days the police are demoralized—special prosecutors this, political pressure that. A lot of them are quitting to become lawyers, and veteran prosecutors with over five years' experience are taking the judicial appointment exam instead."
Complete Prosecution Reform. The slogan for the policy that stripped the prosecution of its investigative powers. Yet the special prosecutors kept those powers and used them to run investigations that suited the ruling regime's tastes. This was why they could never escape being labeled political prosecutors, and why so many were hanging up their robes.
The ones who remained were either stubborn types clinging to their posts for one more season or female prosecutors who lacked the confidence to open their own practices as lawyers.
"And there's one more thing," Han Seo-rin cut in.
"What?"
"A sleeping dragon—an elite Seoul National University law graduate dreaming of reviving the prosecution."
"There's a hero like that?"
"Yes. If it's the prosecutor I know, she'll jump on this aggressively."
"Han Seo-rin. Before we go running to some prosecutor, we should find an incorruptible, mission-driven detective first."
"I know one of those too. Inspector Hong A-yeon at Seoripul Police Station's Women's Division."
"How do you know her?"
One week later. Seoripul Police Station, Women's Division.
"I'm Hong A-yeon. I attended law school with Han Seo-rin."
"Five-time bar exam taker?"
"Yes."
"Whew. At least women don't have to serve in the military, so taking the police exam late isn't the end of the world. You're from '95, right? That makes you only twenty-nine."
"Do you really calculate everyone's age like that while living your life? What an ageist."
"I'm old school, though."
Hong A-yeon and Suk Ho-pil took an instant mutual dislike to each other.
"Alright, this is the complaint I stayed up all night writing with Ms. Gu A-rin for an entire week. I want you to handle the investigation personally."
"Good. Once I bite, I never let go!"
No matter how elite her police exam scores had been, he couldn't bring himself to trust her. Women were born with the civil servant mentality—complacency, shamelessness, armchair pontification.
But a miracle occurred.
Within two weeks, Hong A-yeon had rounded up all ten suspects in emergency arrests and forwarded the case with a recommendation for indictment. The swift action left even the gangsters with powerful backers completely helpless. On top of that, Jang Samuel was hit with additional charges for possession, sale, and manufacture of psychotropic substances. It was a massive win.
"Who's that mission-driven prosecutor you mentioned?"
"She's a deputy chief prosecutor who came from the Judicial Research and Training Institute. Now that I think about it, she's a legend who was in the same cohort as Attorney Suk Ho-pil."
"What? No way. It can't be. Please don't tell me..."
Suk Ho-pil tensed up. That was one name he desperately did not want to hear.
"Prosecutor Kim Min-jung. Don't you know her? She's been on television multiple times."
"Oh. My. God."
Prosecutor Kim Min-jung had been Suk Ho-pil's classmate at the training institute. Before that, back when he was grinding through exam prep in Sillim-dong, they had shared study groups and late-night meal study sessions. She was a noona four years his senior.
"Then aren't you two close? Why are you suddenly sweating?"
"Attorney Han Seo-rin. How exactly do you know Prosecutor Kim Min-jung?"
"She was my mentor. Every lecture I attended from her made me dream bigger about becoming a legal professional. Even after failing the bar exam for the fourth time, I didn't give up. I held onto her famous saying: If you don't give up, there is no defeat."
"What kind of strength does a line that sounds like a cheap self-help book title even provide? You're so simple-minded."
"Watch your mouth. The person in question is standing right next to you."
"Gack!"
It was rare for a sitting prosecutor to visit a private law office. In fact, there was an unwritten rule that it simply wasn't done. Legal professionals deliberately avoided such collusive relationships to preserve their integrity. That was the bare minimum self-respect a member of Korea's legal community was expected to maintain.
Yet here was Prosecutor Kim Min-jung.
"Even if a prosecutor shows up at a tiny law office above a bean sprout soup restaurant, no one would bat an eye."
"Tiny? This place is still thirty pyeong."
"Measure it properly. It'll come out to twenty-three."
"Tsk!"
Suk Ho-pil looked visibly rattled. Why the hell had she come?
"Why are you avoiding me? We were so hot together."
With sticky, heated eyes, Prosecutor Kim Min-jung draped her arm around Ho-pil's shoulder.
"Gack! Ptooey! What the hell are you doing?! This is sexual harassment!"
Suk Ho-pil practically had a seizure.
"Whoa, whoa. Calm down. Let's grab a drink and discuss Ms. Gu A-rin's case properly."
Normally the complainant's lawyer would request a meeting at the prosecutor's office, where the prosecutor would listen to the explanation face-to-face. Yet here Kim Min-jung had come in person.
"You could've at least brought the investigation officers with you."
"No need. They're busy carrying out the directives I already gave them."
"And you're not writing the indictment yourself?"
"I'm a ten-year veteran prosecutor. I have the experience to delegate."
"You'll be promoted to chief prosecutor soon, I suppose."
"Becoming a chief prosecutor isn't some grand achievement. Anyone and their dog can do it these days."
"Sigh. Still completely allergic to humility, I see. Talk with Attorney Han Seo-rin. You're too burdensome for me, noona."
"No way. You're paying for the drinks."
When prosecutors, politicians, reporters, and businessmen play golf, the businessman always covers the green fee. The same principle applied if you simply replaced "businessman" with "lawyer."
"Let's go."
Suk Ho-pil ran the numbers in his head. The math wasn't adding up. Considering Gu A-rin's tragic circumstances, he had accepted the case for one million won plus one hundred thousand in VAT. The success fee was set at twenty percent of any settlement. Criminal cases normally didn't allow success fees, so it depended entirely on the client's goodwill. Some lawyers who didn't receive payment filed civil suits to collect, but that was considered utterly disgraceful behavior. Usually the initial retainer for criminal matters was substantial enough.
"Is it finally time for Ho-pil to get eaten again after so long?"
"Gack!!"
His entire body crawled with phantom itches. Back then he hadn't realized the sexual abuse he suffered at her hands was, in fact, sexual abuse.
"What exactly happened between you two, Prosecutor?"
Han Seo-rin's eyes sparkled with hearts at the prospect of dining with the senior prosecutor she respected so deeply.
On the surface, Prosecutor Kim Min-jung was the very model of a female legal professional. Only those who had experienced her—like Suk Ho-pil—knew the truth: she was a terrifying nymphomaniac with a taste for younger men.
"We dated, you know. We even lived together for a while."
"Correction. We didn't date. We were sex friends, if anything. And it was half-cohabitation at best. It's not like I packed my bags and officially moved into noona's place."
"Wait, what? Oh my. You two were truly debauched."
"Look at this girl. Debaucherous? It was passionate youth, that's all."
Prosecutor Kim Min-jung paused in front of the samgyeopsal restaurant and gazed up at the sky for a moment.
"Stop! No flashback scene! Do not reminisce!!!"
"Back then we burned through our hottest days together. In a cramped one-room apartment with a noisy air conditioner running the whole time."
"Gack! Stop! Halt! Cease the sexual harassment immediately!!!"
Suk Ho-pil looked on the verge of actual tears.
Meanwhile, completely unrelated to her nostalgic memories, the gang rape suspects had retained attorneys from Jung & Han and were preparing to confront Prosecutor Kim Min-jung head-on. Their determination was to break through a sex crime case where the presumption of guilt reigned supreme.
In particular, rumors swirled that a major figure in Jang Samuel's drug distribution network had paid a massive retainer on his behalf.
"All of this information was gathered by me—Park Tae-gi—who studies detective science while dreaming of one day opening my own private detective agency."
Tae-gi sat alone in the now-empty office, faithfully unpacking his lunchbox. He endured it all on passion pay alone, without a single won of overtime compensation.