The Vengeful Twin
"I saw the job posting and came."
"Y-you're... you're the woman from the bean sprout hangover soup place this afternoon..."
Park Tae-gi barely managed to stammer out a reply on behalf of Suk Ho-pil, who was too stunned to speak.
"What? Never seen a gorgeous female lawyer like me before?"
"Nope."
Park Tae-gi answered for him again. It was a confident reply. After all, a beautiful female lawyer was basically a unicorn—an imaginary creature.
I saw plenty of them at the big firms.
Suk Ho-pil muttered to himself. It was true. Attractive, young, and talented new lawyers were always snapped up by the major firms. Ever since law school replaced the old bar exam system, it had become harder to distinguish real skill, so visuals became the deciding factor. Even before the judicial exam disappeared, performance at the Judicial Research and Training Institute had been the true measure of a lawyer, regardless of undergraduate pedigree. But once law school admissions were based solely on the LSAT, the bar exam results became too vague to properly evaluate candidates. Firms started selecting based on which prestigious law school someone graduated from, yet many hires still turned out to be disappointments or had terrible personalities. Over time, the big firms found it increasingly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.
So they started hiring based on faces and family background. Even during the old judicial exam days they looked at backgrounds, but it's gotten much worse now.
"I'm Han Seo-rin. I graduated from a women's law school and passed the bar exam this time."
"What?!"
Suk Ho-pil nearly fell out of his chair. He almost slid right off it and fainted.
"I knew you'd be surprised. Yes, I'm Han Seo-yoon's older twin sister, Han Seo-rin."
"Y-you're... the Han Seo-rin that lawyer Han Gu-tae supposedly abandoned?"
An unexpected entrance still needed plausibility. The twin sister of his former fiancée Han Seo-yoon—the one whose mother had been infertile and conceived them through artificial insemination, making them fraternal twins. Unlike Han Seo-yoon, who passed the bar on her first try, he'd heard Han Seo-rin had failed four times.
"On the fifth attempt. I barely scraped by right before becoming a five-striker. But I gave up on being Lawyer Han Gu-tae's daughter. Before they could throw me away, I threw them away first."
Once again, as Suk Ho-pil remained tight-lipped, Park Tae-gi stepped in to explain.
Korean law school graduates can only take the bar exam five times. Anyone who fails on the fifth attempt is labeled a "five-striker" and can never become a legal professional again.
"You launched into a whole dramatic speech without even being asked. I like this kind of fast development."
"But who are you?"
"I'm Park Tae-gi... it's a long story..."
This time Park Tae-gi was the one who wouldn't shut up. He rambled on about how Suk Ho-pil had cleared him of false charges, so out of gratitude he was working for low pay, blah blah blah.
"You're the first person I've met who talks more than I do."
"Gack! Yar."
Suk Ho-pil calmed himself down and asked, "Why are you here?"
"I told you earlier. I came because I saw the lawyer job posting."
"You never said that."
"Does that really matter right now?"
"I want to know the real reason you applied to our law firm. The truth behind all this."
"Revenge."
"Revenge?"
"Yes, obviously revenge."
Suk Ho-pil let out a sigh. "This isn't a comic or a movie. It's not one of those stories where someone avenges their father in the food service industry or whatever."
"First, I turned down the offer from the big firm Jung & Han. That was revenge number one."
"And the second lesson—I mean, second act of revenge?"
"Defending the man of my twin sister Han Seo-yoon, that ultimate villain who ruined my life. That's revenge number two."
"Then what's the final third lesson—I mean, third act of revenge?"
"What else? I'll put Law Firm Sukphil on the right track and battle Jung & Han in court."
"You might as well say let's grow our firm until it rivals the nation's top firm, Jung & Han. That would be more realistic."
"Then let's do exactly that! Mr. Representative Lawyer."
Representative. Lawyer.
A shiver ran through Suk Ho-pil's entire body. He glanced at Park Tae-gi.
"What? The job posting clearly said Representative Lawyer Suk Ho-pil. Come on, even the owner of a hole-in-the-wall shop is called 'representative.' Don't get too excited about it."
"Right, right. Of course."
Still, the distinction between junior and senior, the way he'd been overly bound by titles and positions inside a big firm... Looking at it now, nearly every law firm in Seocho-dong had its own representative lawyer. Even if they weren't lords of a great castle, they were at least lords of their own territory. There was no shame in it. One should take pride in it and respect all those representative lawyers.
"What would my duties be?"
"The pay is shit. You okay with that? Base salary of two million won, plus a cut of whatever cases you bring in."
"I'd be grateful. I barely avoided becoming a five-striker, after all."
"Speaking of which, the judicial exam system needs to come back. Someone passed on their eighth try. These days, if you fail you have to find another path."
"M-Mr. Lawyer. Let's avoid sensitive topics, please. No political talk!!!"
Park Tae-gi cut in from the side.
"Yeah, I'm not political. Actually, I respect people who prepared for the exam for a long time. It takes real willpower to endure something that difficult. Anyway, let's drop that subject..."
Suk Ho-pil spread both arms wide in welcome. The daughter of the representative lawyer from the big firm that had abandoned him—and the twin sister of the cold-hearted ex-fiancée who had broken their engagement—had just joined his team. There couldn't be a more dramatic story than this.
"Lawyer Han Seo-rin, you should've come sooner. We just finished cleaning and arranging the furniture. The two of us worked our asses off."
Park Tae-gi grumbled.
"I actually came at three o'clock, but it looked like you were still working so I waited at Starbucks."
"Ah, I see... Wait, you did what?!"
Park Tae-gi was dumbfounded. This woman clearly knew how to milk every advantage.
No wonder she only passed the bar on her fifth try.
Suk Ho-pil felt a slight doubt about Han Seo-rin's abilities. Still, there weren't exactly a flood of lawyers willing to work for such low wages, so he immediately drew up the employment contract.
"Just sign here, Mr. Rice Farmer."
"Huh? What did you just call me, Park Tae-gi? Rice farmer?"
"I said lawyer."
"Your pronunciation was unclear."
"I'll be more careful."
"Even if I'm younger than you, don't forget the gap between a lawyer and administrative staff is like heaven and earth."
"Yes, yes... By the way, should we get the ages sorted out?"
"Do I look that much younger?"
"On the outside... yes."
"Let's calculate. If someone graduated law school, became a five-striker, and barely passed the bar in 2024..."
"Let's see... class of '94? That would make you born in '95. You're only a year younger than me, but you look much younger. Baby face, huh?"
"Wait, so you're born in '94, Tae-gi? Wow, I thought you were at least born in '88."
"Yar, yar."
Park Tae-gi's irritation flared up immediately. In 2024 he was still proudly in his twenties, at least by full years lived.
"The legal world is full of older people. When you think about it, even Han Seo-yoon wasn't that young."
That was why she'd been so desperate to get married. She hadn't wanted to hit her thirties without a husband.
"I'll be in your care from now on."
"We're the ones who should say that. Let's go get a late dinner."
"Yessir! Yar yar!!!"
Park Tae-gi, the eternal thirty-year-old at heart, looked positively delighted. The man really seemed to live to eat.
###
"It must have been a hard offer to turn down. They're family, after all."
Suk Ho-pil clinked his beer glass and threw out a direct question.
"Starting salary in the hundreds of millions. The guaranteed path to success that comes with joining Korea's best-treated firm, Jung & Han. I turned all of that down."
Han Seo-rin's eyes sharpened as she took a swig of beer. Since they'd come inside and she'd taken off her cardigan, she was now wearing the same off-the-shoulder top that had shown her shoulders so clearly at the sundae soup restaurant. Her smooth, porcelain skin probably felt similar to her fraternal twin Han Seo-yoon's.
When I sucked on Seo-yoon's pink nipples, it felt like the whole world was mine.
Studies showed humans thought about sex every three seconds. For a moment he was lost in the memory of caressing Han Seo-yoon's upper body. When you sucked on her nipples, the pink buds would harden like pebbles. Right after that she would always say, "Go lower, oppa. Suck on mine."
While Suk Ho-pil was lost in memories of oral pleasure, Park Tae-gi grew irritated on his behalf.
"The question was why you rejected Jung & Han—specifically, why you turned down the offer from Seo-rin's father, Lawyer Han Gu-tae. You should answer the core of the question instead of dodging it."
"Hmm... because they ignored me."
"Ignored you?"
"That's right, Tae-gi. Every time I failed the bar exam, they humiliated me and looked down on me. Especially Han Seo-yoon with all her fake kindness and acting. That bitch."
Suddenly, Suk Ho-pil became curious about Han Seo-yoon's current situation.
"What's Seo-yoon doing these days? Now that the cherry blossoms have fallen, it feels even more bittersweet."
"Bittersweet? She's getting married soon to her new fiancé."
"What? Already?"
It was absurd. The sexual harassment scandal at the firm had become public in the winter. And now, just a few months later, she was getting married? To a new man?
"Seo-yoon's always been sensitive about her age as a woman. She already suffered so much after law school—taking the bar and working as a junior lawyer."
"We should have had the ceremony sooner. That's partly my fault."
"Hmm... you'd be shocked if you knew the inside story."
"What inside story?"
Suk Ho-pil was puzzled. What kind of conspiracy could there be when he'd been kicked out of the firm for his own mistake?
"I was busy preparing for the exam so I was living apart from the family, but even I thought something was strange."
"What was?"
"Weren't you two still dating until March of this year? 2024?"
"Yes. Until I got kicked out for my mistake."
"It's strange. Really strange."
"What is?"