The Victim's Mask
Two case files sat side by side on Oh Sae-ah's desk.
The investigation into the Park Kyung-chul case had been circling a loan shark named Kim Myung-seok, and it was going nowhere. Beyond the threats pulled from the victim's call records, they had nothing that could put a real hole in the man's alibi. Her team was tearing through everyone around him, but all they were doing was watching the clock run out.
The Kim Sung-jin case, meanwhile, was still grinding through witness interviews, and nothing resembling a result had surfaced. The drug-trafficking angle Sergeant Park had been driving so hard was coming apart without a single named suspect.
Oh Sae-ah pressed her fingers hard against her temple.
Her team was looking at two separate cases. But to her eyes, the whole thing looked like one enormous piece of theater.
A truth she couldn't prove. An intuition no one would believe.
When the stress hit its limit, another part of her brain sent up a reflexive signal — that familiar, physical craving for release.
She thought of Lee Chul-ho. Her sex partner. Her police academy senior. A profiler.
She closed the files on her desk. Then, after a moment's hesitation, she picked up her phone and sent a short message.
Daughter's birthday.
Oh Sae-ah stared down at those two words as if they were a foreign language she had never seen before. In her mind, the Baby on Board sticker on the back of his car surfaced unbidden.
Birthday. Family. An ordinary evening.
They were words that did not exist in her world. Her world was built of nothing but the smell of blood at crime scenes, the formalin of the autopsy room, and the dust of this office.
She didn't reply. She killed the screen and tossed the phone onto the desk.
Instead of the release she had been counting on, a deeper exhaustion settled over her, and under it, a hollow that went further down than fatigue.
She opened Park Kyung-chul's file again. But in her spinning head the letters came apart and scattered, meaningless black stains on the page.
What broke her reverie was Sergeant Park, coming toward her desk with an urgent look on his face.
"...A woman just walked in of her own accord, lawyer in tow. She says she has a decisive tip on the Kim Sung-jin case."
An informant? And she brought a lawyer?
Oh Sae-ah's brow tightened.
"I sat down with her for a minute in the first-floor interview room. What she has to say isn't ordinary."
Oh Sae-ah set Park Kyung-chul's file down.
Walked in on her own. With a lawyer.
Those two facts alone changed the entire weight of the case. A simple eyewitness did not bring counsel. This was the calculated move of someone who either felt her life was in danger, or understood exactly what kind of legal blast radius the information in her hands carried.
Which meant this was not the time to sit hidden behind the observation glass.
Oh Sae-ah stood.
Sergeant Park, still nearby, caught the movement.
"Team Leader?"
She tipped her chin toward the statement recording room and spoke without wasting a word.
"I'll hear this myself."
She headed for the recording room without a second's hesitation. In the short walk down the corridor, she threw dozens of questions at the inside of her own skull and discarded them just as fast. The woman waiting in that room — was she an ally, or an enemy?
The door clicked open under Sergeant Park's hand, and both women inside turned toward the entrance.
A female attorney with a sharp, unyielding face. And beside her, a woman in her twenties who looked terrified.
Oh Sae-ah stepped inside and tipped her chin at Sergeant Park.
"You can wait outside, Sergeant. I'll take it from here."
She pulled out the chair directly across the table — directly in front of the informant — and sat. And at last, she looked a new player in the eye.
She started with the younger woman, the one who looked so afraid, and held her gaze. Then she opened her mouth in a voice that was calm and low.
"Violent Crimes Team 1. Inspector Oh Sae-ah. I understand you have information to share."
The informant started to speak. The lawyer beside her moved first, cutting across her like a shield.
The attorney's voice was sharp, and it did not leave a single gap.
"Yes. First, I would ask that you take note of the following: our client is a victim, and she has come to this table having endured considerable harm in the public interest."
Victim. And harm.
The lawyer had put her weight on those two words on purpose. This was not a simple tip. It was the opening move of a negotiation.
Oh Sae-ah shifted her gaze from the attorney back to the younger woman. She was still frightened, still chewing at her nails. Sae-ah said nothing. She simply looked into her eyes. The real story was hiding somewhere behind those terrified pupils.
The lawyer gave the back of the woman's trembling hand a light tap. It's all right. You can talk now.
The woman swallowed a dry breath and let out a long, shaking exhale. She couldn't meet Oh Sae-ah's eyes. Her gaze locked onto a scratch in the tabletop and stayed there. And at last, a voice as thin as a mosquito's broke the silence.
"A year ago... I went to a club in Jungang-dong, Ansan, with a friend... and that was the first time I met Kim Sung-jin."
"...He bought me a drink... and after I drank it, I don't remember..."
Her voice drowned in a sob. The lawyer rubbed her back, and she managed to go on.
"The next day... when I woke up in a studio apartment I didn't recognize... Kim Sung-jin showed me a video on his phone."
"On it... I was... being gang-raped by a bunch of men..."
Her voice snagged, like someone being strangled. She couldn't finish. She dropped her head onto the table and began to cry the way a child cries — raw, wrecked, past any attempt at dignity. Her thin shoulders shook. She tried to hold it back, but the sound tore out of her anyway, a dam giving way.
The lawyer pulled a tissue with the ease of practice, pressed it into her hand, and rubbed her back in slow circles.
Oh Sae-ah watched it all without a single change of expression.
Were those tears real? Of course they were. That pain was beyond any doubt. But was that pain connected to the truth of who had killed Kim Sung-jin? That, she still couldn't know.
It was a long time before the woman managed to stop crying and lift her head. Her face was bloodless, wrecked with tears and mucus. In a voice scraped raw, she began to tell them about the hell that came after.
"That video was... like a leash around my neck."
"Kim Sung-jin used it to control everything I did. He used the drugs like a weapon... and I lied to my parents about everything and bled them for money. Every last bit of that money... went to that bastard."
"I was... just a machine that made him money."
When the story ended, the only sound left in the recording room was the woman's faint, frayed sobbing.
Dr. Hwang's cynical voice surfaced in her mind, and in this moment it sounded like perfect truth. He's an MZ-generation gangster who sells drugs.Ah, is that right? Well then... nothing much to feel sorry about.
Trash the world would be better off without.
Oh Sae-ah forced the feeling back down as it rose, and when she spoke again her voice was strictly professional.
"I'm sorry for what you went through."
The woman started to lift her head at the condolence. The lawyer moved first.
"Inspector. I would also note that our client's statement constitutes a voluntary confession to the use and purchase of narcotics."
She adjusted her glasses and went on.
"We maintain, however, that every one of these acts was committed under Kim Sung-jin's threats and coercion — not of her own will, but in a state of addiction imposed upon her."
Oh Sae-ah listened without a flicker of expression.
A victim. An informant. And at the same time, a suspect. The lawyer was parking her client in the most legally advantageous position available.
"I'll make a note of that. But questions of law are for a judge to weigh. They're outside our jurisdiction."
"I'm aware."
The lawyer's hand drifted to her briefcase and lingered there. Why she had bothered to put that on the record in this room was obvious. She wanted it stacked into the official file from the first stage of the investigation — an unshakeable record that our client has maintained this position from the start.
Oh Sae-ah looked at the two women in front of her. A terrified victim, and the capable lawyer protecting her.
"I was told you have information regarding Kim Sung-jin's death. What can you tell me?"
The woman glanced at her lawyer, then opened her mouth in a trembling voice.
"Y-yes...."
She had been in withdrawal. In the end she had gone looking for Kim Sung-jin again, and she had been meeting him in that alley — the alley where it happened — to buy more drugs, when a man had appeared out of nowhere. A man with a Chinese accent. He had attacked Kim Sung-jin and fled.
She shook as she spoke, as if the moment were happening again in front of her.
"I was so scared... I just ran. And then... I realized I couldn't leave it like that..."
Oh Sae-ah recorded every word. Her face gave nothing away.
A perfect story. It explained, in a single stroke, why the victim had been there and why the informant herself had been near the scene — a statement with no loose threads at all.
But it was so perfect it was suspicious.
A man with a Chinese accent.
In all the vast stretch of Mujin, where exactly were they supposed to go looking for this man with a Chinese accent? This wasn't a lead. It might well be an enormous smoke screen, thrown up to send the entire investigation into a maze.
Oh Sae-ah set down her pen and looked at the woman without blinking.
Behind the mask of the victim — what was her real face?