Turning the Enemy Commander into an Ally (3)
Gomi-jin was the same age as Park Da-hyun—twenty—but her round face made her look, at best, like a first-year high school student. She had even gotten a wavy perm and dressed in a solid-colored shirt, yet the effort only made her seem like a child playing at being an adult. It wasn’t just her face. The eyes that met mine trembled like those of a seven-year-old who had just lost her mother. From where I sat, I could see the straw she had been chewing on; it was crumpled and wrinkled beyond recognition. If I could have, I would have taken away the iced Americano she was drinking and ordered her a chamomile tea instead—something better for calming the nerves.
Scrape.
“You’re Gomi-jin, correct?”
I pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. She looked at me with the terrified eyes of a herbivore facing a predator.
“Yes.”
That was all she said before dropping her head toward her mug and chewing on the straw again. It was as if she were desperately trying to prove that the coffee mattered more to her than I did. Then again, she had only just graduated high school. Sitting across from someone who clearly viewed her as an enemy couldn’t have been familiar territory. On top of that, she had committed the serious offense of selling out a classmate for money. The fact that she had shown up at all was almost commendable.
I hadn’t hidden my identity when I arranged this meeting. She knew I was the managing partner of Law Firm Seungbaek and the head of QS Group’s audit team. She had even grilled me about my background, as if suspecting a voice-phishing scam. There was no point in concealing information that would appear with a single search. I had hoped the revelation might make her a little nervous beforehand, and she was exceeding my expectations. The way she kept glancing sideways, as if searching for an escape route, was almost comical. I wasn’t that frightening. In truth, I had little interest in Gomi-jin herself. What profit would I gain from crushing a girl like her? The reason I had cleared my schedule to meet her was to use her as bait to hook the much larger fish trailing behind her.
The people who had paid Gomi-jin to fabricate the school-violence exposé against Park Da-hyun—if my guess was right—were prize catches I couldn’t afford to miss. To land them, however, the bait had to stay firmly on the hook. Her current defensive posture, ready to bolt at any moment, wouldn’t do. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to harbor any particular grudge against me; she was simply intimidated by my social standing. I would have to handle her carefully. If she played her role well, I was even willing to intervene in the criminal charges the premonition document had outlined for her.
“You look like you’ve finished your coffee.”
She seemed surprised by how gentle my first words were after confirming her identity. Gomi-jin glanced between her mug and me, flustered, before answering.
“Huh? Oh. Yes, I suppose so.”
“I’m going to order another drink. Would you like one as well?”
“N-no, I’m fine. They say too much caffeine isn’t good for you.”
Her thin lips had turned blue and were trembling. Even I had to admit more caffeine probably wasn’t wise.
“I’ll get you something healthy. Drink it.”
“What? Oh… okay.”
* * *
A short while later, with two cups of chamomile tea between us, Gomi-jin finally looked capable of holding a conversation. The trembling in her eyes and lips had subsided, and the bluish tint had left her lips. After taking a sip, she seemed to realize I wasn’t so bad after all. A faint smile appeared as she greeted me.
“Thank you. I’ll enjoy it.”
“You’re welcome.”
“But you didn’t ask to meet just to buy me tea, did you? If you’re a lawyer and the head of QS Group’s audit team, this must be about that incident, right?”
“That’s correct. It concerns your friend, Park Da-hyun.”
She flinched. Her hand, reaching for the teacup, froze midair. She had expected the topic, but not the word I had deliberately inserted.
“Friend? Da-hyun and me?”
“Why? Even after graduation, is there still bad blood? Does calling her a friend sound strange when she’s the classmate you accused of assaulting you in high school?”
“N-no, that’s not it.”
Of course it wasn’t. Before coming here, I had spoken with Park Da-hyun’s agency and confirmed that Gomi-jin and Park Da-hyun had attended the same school but never had time to become friends.
“Gomi-jin, you barely saw Park Da-hyun at school during your high school years, didn’t you?”
My words struck home. Her fingers loosened from the teacup handle, and her head drooped.
“…Yes.”
That was why Park Da-hyun’s agency, Top Entertainment, had been unable to respond aggressively. Park Da-hyun had been a trainee since her first year of high school and spent nearly every day at the practice room instead of attending classes. Releasing her attendance records would instantly prove Gomi-jin’s accusations false. But doing so would create an even bigger problem for Park Da-hyun and Top Entertainment: the revelation that she had barely attended high school at all, which could lead to accusations of academic fraud. The agency had been stuck between a rock and a hard place, so when I offered to help, they had looked ready to bow in gratitude.
Gomi-jin, now looking up at me again, seemed ready to open up.
“On your SNS, you wrote that Park Da-hyun repeatedly assaulted and extorted you, even though you barely saw her.”
“I deleted that!”
“Even if you deleted it, the articles and screenshots are everywhere. It doesn’t matter. You seem to acknowledge that the content wasn’t true, so why did you post it?”
Gomi-jin closed her eyes deeply, as if resigned, then opened them.
“Honestly, I was jealous. A girl who barely showed up at school would suddenly appear and have all the boys lining up, calling her a goddess. Meanwhile, I had passed Top Entertainment’s audition on my first try and was already living as a trainee.”
“So you slandered Park Da-hyun out of jealousy once she became successful?”
“…Yes.”
If she was going to tell the truth, why hold back halfway?
“I don’t think it was only jealousy.”
“What do you mean?”
“You must have known the kind of backlash this post would cause. Earlier, you looked quite anxious about what you’d done. Jealousy alone doesn’t explain going this far, does it?”
“I’ll only say this much. If you need it, I’m willing to post an apology saying I made everything up because I was blinded by jealousy.”
This girl… even if she had only just graduated high school, did she really think this was something that could be settled with an apology in front of a teacher?
“This won’t end with a single apology. I told you I’m a lawyer. What you did clearly constitutes defamation through the dissemination of false information.”
“What? So you’re saying I’ll go to prison?”
“You’ll obviously face criminal punishment, and you’ll also have to compensate Park Da-hyun for the economic damages she’s suffered because of the rumors. Considering her income, that amount is far beyond what you could possibly handle. Even a rough estimate puts it in the hundreds of millions, at minimum.”
Gomi-jin’s eyes, which had been steadying over the chamomile tea, began to tremble violently again. This time, however, she wasn’t trying to avoid me—she looked as if she wanted to cling to me.
“Hundreds of millions? There’s no way I could come up with that kind of money. What am I supposed to do?”
“If you cooperate with me from now on, I’ll mediate between you and Park Da-hyun to resolve this as smoothly as possible. I can even lend you some money. I’m quite wealthy, after all.”
“Cooperate? Tell me what you need. I’ll do anything.”
* * *
Now it was time for the truth to come out. I pulled up the premonition document once more and asked Gomi-jin with certainty.
“The post claiming Park Da-hyun assaulted you—was someone else behind it? As a lawyer, I say this often: you have to be completely honest if you want my help.”
Gomi-jin nodded vigorously, her eyes pleading for salvation.
“Yes.”
Good. I had already suspected as much before arriving. There was no doubt this exposé had targeted not Park Da-hyun personally, but QS Group. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have happened right after she was chosen as our promotional model and our image commercial had aired. The group most desperate to bring down QS was, of course, JB Group. Among them, the person I suspected first was the one who had suffered a humiliating defeat at my hands in the QS Resort land-sale fraud case—JB Group’s eldest son, Jang Gang-tae.
Given his reckless personality and the hostility he and QS shared, he was more than capable of something like this. I gave Gomi-jin a small, reassuring smile, then pulled up a photo of Jang Gang-tae on my phone and showed it to her.
“Was it this person?”
To my surprise, she shook her head.
“No. It was someone else.”
Gomi-jin, who needed my goodwill, had no reason to lie at this moment. Her calm gaze at the photo didn’t suggest she was protecting anyone.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded with conviction.
“Yes. It wasn’t him. He didn’t look as intimidating, and his hairstyle was completely different. The person who told me to post that article was also wearing glasses.”
Hairstyle and glasses could be changed, but if the overall impression was different, it really wasn’t Jang Gang-tae. Then who was it?