Justice Is Dead (3)
Trust in the judiciary. My ass.
Was any of that sweet little thing even left? It died ages ago. Died, and died again.
I nodded along to the death notices that reached me day after day.
Yeah. This was the news I'd wanted.
I couldn't stop here. Bad Luck had already built a situation in which that man, Lim Cheolwoo, had no choice but to die. Watching him suffer in the waking world and in his dreams alike had been satisfying—but this didn't even count as a start.
The story that had been drifting around the internet like an urban legend was passing beyond suspicion now, hardening into certainty.
What came next was simple. Drive fear into the whole of the judiciary.
Not one or two. If dozens started dropping in a row, even those exalted bastards would have no choice but to shake. Sitting in their chambers, writing verdicts. Walking home after work. The fear of not knowing when, or where, or how they would die. That pressure had to swallow them.
Only then would they move. Put a life on the line and anyone changes. Set a blade against their necks and watch. They'd march on the National Assembly that very day, begging for the law to be rewritten. Human Rights Commission, the rest of it—they'd tell every last one of them to fuck off and start hammering out sentences.
Even the rottenest institution has its extremes. Where there is white, there is black; where there is day, there is night. Somewhere, a real judge still had to exist—someone who would hand down a ruling as if it were a calling. When that judge's voice grew loud, when it rode public opinion and spread, only then could you call it the beginning of change.
Until that day came, I wouldn't stop.
I let my eyes fall shut, then opened them on the ceiling. I couldn't just grab any judge at random and break them. The mood inside the courts mattered, but first opinion on the outside had to take shape. I needed someone who would seize people's attention. Someone who carried a message with them: this time, it's your turn.
I opened NewTube and started digging. Which case would do?
I was scrolling when my hand stopped on a single video.
The moment I clicked, the face on the screen twisted.
The woman who called herself a mother had dumped the child like unwanted luggage and vanished. The eight-year-old left behind was thrown away at that age, like a piece of freight.
Thrown to whom?
To garbage. An aunt and an uncle.
For the single reason that she wouldn't do as she was told, they beat her every day. They beat her until she died. An eight-year-old. And they filmed the beatings.
Some of the footage had been released on the screen. It was mosaicked, and still I couldn't watch it to the end. A small body knelt there, shaking. Even through the mosaic, the fear came through. Beside her, the bastards calling themselves aunt and uncle were grinning. They laughed while they hit her, as if they enjoyed the crying. Enjoyed the terror.
Insane. Psychotic pieces of shit. Were these even human?
Treat a child like that and there was no way she came through it whole. These sick fucks went all the way. They tied her up and beat her until the blood ran dry. In the end, she died.
They even pulled the single stupidest stunt in history and called emergency services themselves. Beat her to death, then claimed it was shock. As if that would hold. A child who didn't even live with her parents, suddenly dead in her aunt's house?
Of course the police found it suspicious and tore into them. There wasn't an unmarked place left on the child's body. The autopsy was unambiguous. Organ damage from external trauma. Ruptured vessels. Hemorrhagic shock. In plain words, she was beaten to death.
I clenched my jaw until my teeth rattled, as if they might crack.
The truly insane part was the sentence they got for all of it. Ten years in prison. That was all.
Beat an eight-year-old every day, tie her down, rupture her organs, and kill her—and ten years?
I'd never trusted them to begin with. But a case like this—shouldn't the sentence at least be real? Was it that hard to punish bastards who weren't even people? So goddamn merciful. Truly.
A famous television program had dug into the case once, and a story had slipped out of it. The aunt's father was loaded, they said. Some well-known businessman out in the provinces.
Of course. That was the Korean judiciary. I could see the whole picture without trying.
My hands shook.
First, I requested information on the judge. The ones who did it could wait. I'd tear every last one of them apart before long.
Judge Lee Dogyu sat on the sofa, watching the television.
News of Lim Cheolwoo's death. They had been classmates, but there wasn't a trace of grief in his eyes.
"A judge goes and kills himself. Good. Serves you right, you pathetic piece of shit."
Just then a little boy came running.
"Dad!"
The crumpled scowl smoothed itself out, as if it had never been.
"Hey. There's my boy."
He scooped the child up high. For this moment alone he smiled wide, like a man who owned the world.
"How's school? Having fun?"
The boy nodded. Ordinary talk passed between father and son, until his eyes stopped on one place. A bruise on the child's arm.
"Jaemin. What's this?"
"I fell."
"Why? Did somebody push you?"
The boy said nothing.
Lee Dogyu's face turned vicious again.
"Lee Jaemin. Tell Daddy the truth. Did you really fall?"
The child hesitated a moment, then came out with it.
"Yeah. But I was messing around with a friend, and I fell."
A son he'd had late, and with difficulty. His breath came short, thick with rage.
"Those rotten little— no. Those brats. They dare lay a hand on my son?"
He couldn't bring himself to spit a real curse in front of the most precious boy in the world. The child was only ever meant to see good things, and hear good words.
"Daddy will scold every one of them. Don't you worry about a thing, Jaemin."
"Really?"
"Of course. Daddy's a judge. A judge is the greatest person in the world."
He picked up his phone at once and called the boy's homeroom teacher. It was ten at night.
After he had torn into the other student's parents, he finally lay down, a little of the heat gone from his gut.
"What could the likes of them ever do to me."
And so, later than usual, he fell asleep.
Suddenly his eyes flew open.
A familiar place. A courtroom. Something was wrong. It wasn't his seat. He belonged in the judge's chair, and yet Lee Dogyu was sitting in the middle of the gallery. Sweat-slick palms resting on his knees, he slowly turned his head.
His breath caught.
The face in the presiding judge's seat was far too familiar.
Lim Cheolwoo.
His own classmate on the bench, gone from the world not long ago. A dead man, without question. And he was turning the pages as if nothing at all were wrong.
Lee Dogyu's mind went white. His fingertips trembled.
What is this……
"Have the defendant brought in."
The hard voice rang. The courtroom doors opened, and the defendant entered.
Hair wild, cheeks caved in, a face like a corpse. An old man who could not possibly be sane. Both eyes were webbed with blood. A dry smile hung at the corner of his mouth.
The prosecutor rose, file in hand.
"Last week, the defendant brutally murdered the victim—an eight-year-old child, Lee Jaemin."
Lee Dogyu's ears went cold.
Jaemin? My son? No.
Every sound dropped out of his head. His heart plunged. A chill crept up from behind his ears.
"Submitting the evidence video."
The screen lit.
A small room, dark and damp. Inside it, a child rigid with fear. His own son. Both eyes were wet with tears, and his hands shook. He seemed to be begging, without a word, to be saved. The defendant stood beside him. The old man came toward the child smiling, tongue flicking, feet stamping, chasing him. The small body darted this way and that until it gave out and fell, and in that instant the old man snatched his arm and began to stomp him without mercy.
The child's screams poured through the speakers and filled the court. A pain that lifted the skin. The small body bent, and was ground into the floor.
Lee Dogyu's eyes went wild. His breath turned ragged. His heart hammered as if it would climb into his throat.
"You son of a bitch!!!"
He lurched to his feet, and the police rushed in to stop him. As they seized his arms and dragged his body down, Lim Cheolwoo's voice rang from the bench above.
"You will be silent."
"Hey! Lim Cheolwoo! Have you lost your mind?! That's my son!! My son, Lee Jaemin!!"
He screamed it, and not one eyebrow in the room so much as twitched.
He threw himself forward again, trying to break free, and one detective lifted an enormous axe.
CRACK!
The sound of it biting into his instep—and blood exploded upward.
"Aaaagh!!"
He thrashed at the pain of flesh tearing, but the police wore no expression. No one was startled. They simply brought the axe down the way one follows procedure, as if it were only natural.
Even through a pain that felt as if it would sever his breath, his eyes stayed on the screen. The child's body had already stopped moving. The defendant had not stopped smiling. He lifted the boy's arm and shook him like a scarecrow, cranked the head from side to side, and swung the corpse around in a puppet show. A rotten laugh tangled through it all.
"He's dancing! Hahaha! Aren't you glad? You can dance too—aren't you glad? I'm happy too! Hahaha!"
Nothing else needed saying. The picture on the screen said all of it. He held the corpse's arm and danced. He snapped the neck and spun it like a toy. He put out his tongue and licked the blood-soaked face. He played with the dead child as if the boy were a doll.
Madness seemed to soak into Lee Dogyu. A scream leaked out of his throat.
Then—
"Pfft!!"
Someone burst out laughing. A real laugh, rising from deep in the gut, as if it had been held down for a long time.
"Puhahahahahahaha!!"
It was Lim Cheolwoo.
Seated in the presiding judge's chair, he watched the video and laughed until he split, clapping like a madman.
"Has this crazy bastard lost his mind?!"
As Lee Dogyu tried to lunge free again, laughter detonated from every side.
"Puhahahahahahaha!!"
"Hahahahahahahaha!!"
The whole courtroom drowned in it. The gallery, the prosecutor, the lawyers, even the clerk. All of them rolled on the floor, laughing. They laughed until they vomited, and when blood burst from their throats they did not stop. When their tears turned to blood and ran, they did not stop. Every one of them was drenched in rapture at the image of the child's corpse shaken in mockery. It was a festival for death.
"You've all gone insane!!"
Lee Dogyu dragged his body, trying to get out of the court, and an axe flashed. The other ankle, this time. The sole of his foot shattered, and the pain drove straight into his brain. His scream rang through the courtroom and vanished under the laughter. Then everyone picked up an axe.
All of them came running, laughing.
"Aaaaaagh—!!"
Axes split his shoulder and chopped his arm to pieces. His legs were cut away. His guts spilled out. His whole body came apart, and still his mind was alive. The eyes fixed in his severed head saw all of it.
They played with the pieces like toys. They batted at one another with the severed arms and swung his intestines like rope. When the blood sprayed, they applauded and cheered, as if it were fireworks. At last an axe came down on his head.
CRACK!
His eyes flew open.
His son was there, deep asleep. The sound of his breathing rose and fell, soft.
"Ah. It was a dream."
He whispered it with a hand pressed to his chest, and a question brushed past in the same breath.
But why am I in Jaemin's room?
Then he saw it. A shadow, standing in a corner of the room.
Lim Cheolwoo.
A gleaming knife in his hand. He looked down at the child and smiled a smile that crawled over the skin. In the next instant he turned his head and sprinted at full speed. Lee Dogyu's gaze followed whether he willed it or not.
A door opened. Beyond it, he saw himself, asleep.
Lim Cheolwoo did not hesitate. He raised the knife high and drove it down like a madman.
The belly. Dozens of times. Hundreds.
The pain arrived in him whole. He collapsed to the floor and screamed. The butchery showed no sign of stopping, and in the end his eyes rolled back until nothing remained but the whites.
If the bastard held his own child so dear, he ought to have known that other people's children were dear too.
At once, I entered the names of the next trash judges into the Status Window.