Justice Is Dead (2)
The dinner was already underway, and Judge Lim Cheolwoo—the man who had presided over Kim Seungjoon's trial not long ago—was seated among them.
"Cheolwoo. It's been too long. Have a drink with me."
His senior tipped the bottle toward him.
"I can't, Senior. I drove here tonight."
The older man's face creased.
"Oh, come on. Call a designated driver, then. Why are you being so stiff? Just one glass. One."
Lim Cheolwoo refused again, discomfort plain on his face, and then once more after that. In the end he took the glass anyway.
"There we go! You can't embarrass the man who's pouring. Come on—everyone, together. Cheers!"
Glasses knocked together, and the room warmed around them. He knocked back one drink, then another, and the world lurched into a spin. Every time someone refilled his glass, his head grew heavy that much faster.
Why am I like this tonight?
He hadn't even had that many, and still his body swayed as if he'd been dropped into a vat of liquor. Heat climbed through him. His mind went soft, then softer, blurring at the edges.
His colleagues, watching a man who was nothing like his usual self, pointed and snickered.
The dinner broke up quickly. Everyone scattered, and Lim Cheolwoo, left alone, pulled out his phone and called for a designated driver. Tonight, of all nights, one would not come. The app was dead. Dial the dispatch number and all he got was a busy-signal recording, or the same flat answer: no drivers available.
He stayed on the line for more than an hour. In the end, no one showed.
The night had turned sharp with a cold that had been creeping in for days. He shivered, lit a cigarette, and looked at the car.
"Eh. What's the worst that could happen."
He muttered it, and then he took the wheel. Maybe it was the alcohol. A strange confidence had settled into him. He turned the key and put his foot on the accelerator.
Some unease he couldn't quite name kept him off the main road he always used. He chose the back streets and pointed the car toward home.
The streetlights smeared and swam in front of him, but there wasn't far left to go.
When he reached the intersection in front of his apartment complex, a little of the tension let go. He pressed a hand to his chest, breathed out, and waited on the light.
In the moment the red began to feel spiteful, his eyelids grew heavy. A nod. Sleep pouring down. He blinked wide without meaning to, trying to shake it off, and his head dropped.
He opened his eyes to a police station. Blank, disbelieving, he looked around.
Lim Cheolwoo was lost. He had no memory at all of when he had come here, or how.
That was when the officer standing in front of him spoke, face empty of expression.
"You're awake."
"Why am I here?"
The officer's brow creased, just slightly.
"Why do you think? You fell asleep waiting at a red light. What were you doing?"
Lim Cheolwoo startled. "I did?"
"Who else would it be? You've been drinking."
"No—I—look, I..."
His wallet was already in the officer's hand. The identity check was finished.
"A judge, of all people... Sir, we'll start with the breathalyzer. You know perfectly well what a refusal gets you. Blow."
His lips had gone bone dry. He blew into the tube, and the number locked in at once.
"Blood alcohol, 0.05. That's a license suspension. A man in your position—why would you do this?"
They took a short statement, and then he was allowed to leave. The officer said it without interest.
"First offense, so you can go home for now. Leave the car. Have it towed, call someone you know—whatever's easier."
The moment he stepped outside, his head went light and far away.
I got caught drunk driving? Me? A judge?
He couldn't believe it. He was reaching for his phone to call an acquaintance at the National Police Agency when a motorcycle shot in from the side and hit him dead on.
"Aaagh!"
It had felt like a graze. The pain tore his leg open anyway. Agony like bone ground to meal dropped him where he stood.
They took him to the hospital, and the diagnosis was a shock. The bones of his left leg had been smashed to pieces.
This is insane. We barely even collided.
He couldn't bring himself to call his family. He called his judicial researcher instead and explained what had happened.
Once the cast was on, he lay in the bed and buried his face in his hands.
It wasn't long before the researcher came running.
"Your Honor, what is this? You were just standing on the sidewalk."
"Tell me about it. When your luck's this rotten, what can you do. The bastard who hit me?"
"They caught him, but... punishing him won't be easy."
"Why not?"
"The perpetrator is thirteen. He qualifies as a law-protected juvenile—an offender under fourteen. And the motorcycle was stolen. False plates."
"He could be lying. Did you run the vehicle?"
"We did. It's an illegal bike. Confirmed."
"This goddamn piece-of-shit law!"
He had never dreamed the law he had proclaimed so righteous would turn on him. Nor that it could be this feeble.
Time passed. The researcher left, and the hospital room was empty.
Lim Cheolwoo closed his eyes. Everything that had happened in so short a span chased its own tail through his head. He could not understand it. As if someone were pulling the strings, it had all snarled at once.
He hadn't been able to tell anyone he was here. Soon enough the court would hear about the drunk driving. At best, a suspension. At worst, dismissal from the bench.
He did not know that this was only the beginning.
I took my eyes off the Curse Kaleidoscope.
This guy was really something. Was luck supposed to matter this much in a life?
Reporters with sharp noses broke the story of Lim Cheolwoo's drunk driving, and they didn't stop there. They dug up the rest of it—that he was the judge who had presided over Kim Seungjoon's trial.
The comment sections filled with nothing but mockery. He had hit rock bottom, and then gone straight through it.
The damage to the court's image made his dismissal all but certain. On top of that, every stock he held cratered.
Unemployed overnight, and his fortune wiped out with the job. That was Lim Cheolwoo.
The curse was nearing its end, but I had no intention of stopping here. The real pain started now. If everything until this moment had been terror in the waking world, then this was the hour he would feel it for real.
The way he always had. As much as the victims' families had wept. As much as their chests had been torn open.
Hurt. Just once.
Lim Cheolwoo was alone on the street, cracking open a bottle of soju. He looked up at the night sky.
A whole life, and none of it meant a thing.
In a single moment of fault, he had lost so much. He beat his own head, furious at the stupidity of a man who had been so proud of how clever he was.
The drink rose in him, and when he closed his eyes for a moment, a new world appeared.
He opened them in a courthouse. The place he knew second only to home. His heart hammered as if he had woken from a long dream.
Was it all a dream?
The corners of his eyes went hot and wet.
The misfortune that had chased its own tail without end—thinking all of it had been fake, he felt light down to the marrow.
A fellow judge came up beside him and tapped his shoulder.
"Well then. Shall we go in, Senior?"
Relief washed over him at the words.
Right. As if I'd fall apart like that. Do you know who I am?
He decided it had been nothing but a nonsense dream on an autumn night, and the corner of his mouth lifted. Smiling brightly, Lim Cheolwoo opened the doors of the grand courtroom.
Inside, the air had sunk into a cold stillness. No flashes going off. No murmur from the press. Everyone was holding their breath, waiting for him.
He took his seat and declared it in a hardened voice.
"This court is now in session."
He moved to arrange the documents and lifted his head.
In that instant, he couldn't breathe.
The name seated in the defendant's chair. Lim Soyeon. His precious daughter. His lips worked.
"W-what...? Soyeon, why are you—"
He looked straight ahead, and his daughter raised her head and looked at him. Nothing was wrong with her face. She was smiling, innocent and bright.
The air went cold.
Everyone in the courtroom turned as one and stared at his face. The moment dozens of eyes drove into him like thorns, Lim Cheolwoo's legs buckled.
The prosecutor began to lay out the charges in a voice that did not bend.
"The defendant, Lim Soyeon, last week gouged out and devoured the liver of the victim—her own mother, Yoon Misuk. She then mutilated the organs, and consumed a portion of them herself."
His mind went white.
"What...? What are you saying..."
In the defendant's seat, Lim Soyeon was still grinning, easy and sly. Clear, shining eyes. Ankles swinging like a child's. As if she had come out for a picnic.
The defense attorney's spine folded. It bent forward and back like a sheet of paper, and his legs and arms refracted in directions they were never meant to go. Down on all fours, he crawled out, twisting like a beast. A long tongue dragged the floor. Spit slicked the boards until they gleamed. His mouth tore wider. His neck snapped left, then right.
"Tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-tk-tk—"
The attorney made nothing but that senseless clicking. Lim Cheolwoo clenched his teeth.
What was smiling in front of him was clearly his own daughter. But that smile did not belong to a pure child. It was the smile of someone who had chewed up his wife—her mother.
The prosecutor turned at once. What he held was not a file. It was a sickle, glossy with blood.
"Filthy Your Honor. Render your verdict."
That was when Lim Soyeon smiled and opened her mouth. The inside of it was dyed black. A shred of red flesh hung between her teeth.
"Dad? You gonna kill me? You gonna kill me? You gonna kill me? You gonna kill me?"
"I'm your one and only daughter. You've always been so good about going easy on those rotten bastards."
"So you've gotta forgive me too. Say not guilty! Say it! Say it! Out of that rotten maw of yours, the way you always do—say not guilty!"
"Dad, you know? Mom's still in the fridge. Mom tastes really good, right? Keh-heh-heh. If you go easy on me, I'll go home and eat Mom again."
"Dad, you gonna kill me? You gonna kill your daughter?"
His lips trembled.
"Wh-what is this..."
Lim Soyeon threw her head back and cackled. It sounded like a demon's wail, chewing a corpse down.
"Mom tastes so fucking good. Keh-heh-heh. Next is your turn, Dad. I'll split your belly, yank your guts out, and eat you up nice and sweet! Keh-heh-heh. What do you think Dad tastes like? Keh-heh-heh."
From one side, the attorney's clicking. From the other, Soyeon's cackling. Together they felt as if they would split his skull.
Keh-heh-heh-heh-heh.
Tk-tk-tk-tk-tk.
They were still howling that mad chorus when the sickle flashed. Lim Soyeon's neck came off. Blood shot up like fireworks and sprayed the courtroom.
The prosecutor, sickle in hand, glared at him.
"Aaaagh—!! What the hell are you doing! You crazy bastard!"
The people in the gallery rose all at once. Arms and legs bent. Jaws stretched long. They crawled out on all fours like beasts, rushed the severed body of Lim Soyeon, and at once tore flesh and swallowed it.
Every time a piece ripped free, the pain passed straight into Lim Cheolwoo.
"Aaaagh!! Stop!!"
His chest tore open. His legs were cut away. He thrashed under a pain like his eyes being gouged out of his head. There wasn't even room to feel the grief of losing his daughter.
Every one of them stared as if they meant to kill him.
Across the floor, in front of the crawling Lim Cheolwoo, his daughter's severed head rolled to a stop. The eyes still sparkled. The blood-soaked lips opened, ravenous.
"So, Dad. What's my sentence gonna be?"
Inside the mouth, a black gob of flesh clicked as it was chewed.
"The daughter you say is the most precious thing in the world tore Mom's belly open and ate her. What do I get for that?"
Keh-heh-heh.
The laughter went on, tearing.
At the same time the monsters in the gallery fell on Lim Cheolwoo all at once. His limbs ripped, and he was howling for them to just kill him when he opened his eyes again, and it was the courtroom.
This time his own mother sat in the defendant's seat.
The moment it's his own family, he stammers and can't do a damn thing. All that time, playing it so cool-headed. Playing it so sweet to the whole world.
I nodded.
One by one, I laid out the profiles of the judges who had lately handed down sentences more pathetic than you'd give a dog.
I'll punish every one of them. And I'll watch. The conduct of these oh-so-exalted persons who claim to enforce the law.
The branches that had to be cut were coming off, one by one.