Chapter 28
As soon as he opened the door to the Deputy Prosecutor’s office, he expected something like a golf club or golf ball to come flying.
“Well, well—Seo ○○ is here! You’re a real star now.”
However, Deputy Prosecutor Baek Yong-jae welcomed Muyoung with applause.
“You know what they call you on the news? Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, Seo ○○. They’re doing that pointless thing of hiding your name, but the rumor has spread among the press corps covering the prosecutor’s office, right?”
The sound of applause was loud, as if welcoming a national athlete who had enhanced the country’s prestige. However, while his mouth was smiling broadly, his eyes were half-rolled.
“I’m sorry, Deputy. I was reckless.”
Feeling a chill, Muyoung bowed his head first.
“Oh? Sorryyy? Is that the greeting you’re going around with these days?”
“……”
He had intended to report when the case had taken some shape, but the timing had gone wrong. In any case, the incident with Yoon Jun-young was a painful mistake.
“I think there was something off on the day I was interrogating Yoon Jun-young, and that seems to have been the cause.”
“So you’re admitting that what they’re saying on the news is true?”
“No. I mean that I must have provoked someone other than Yoon Jun-young. I should have been more careful, but it was my oversight for not fully grasping the situation.”
As if to say “What does that mean?”, Deputy Baek, sitting in the main seat of the sofa, raised his eyebrows while gripping the armrest.
“Are you saying there’s someone behind this?”
“As soon as Yoon Jun-young died, the news broke immediately. Given that it wasn’t just a brief news item but an exclusive including an interview with a lawyer, it means someone must have tipped them off.”
Everything was too smooth. From the police to the media.
“The strangest thing was the content of the suicide note. That person is not the type to die talking about guilt and responsibility.”
The police announced it as suicide without a shadow of doubt, and the media reported one-sided news criticizing the prosecution, then released the suicide note as if it were a follow-up.
Even before the funeral altar was set up, they were already talking as if the three-day funeral was over.
“There must be someone behind this. Either they killed him directly or drove him to his death.”
“Look at you, not even intimidated when things have come to this. You’re just reckless by nature, reckless.”
Deputy Baek clicked his tongue and gestured with his chin for Muyoung, who had been standing by the door, to sit down.
“I think there’s a very high probability that the person behind this case is the same person who put the corpse in my car.”
Sitting down, Muyoung placed his arms on his knees and interlocked his fingers. He spoke with unprecedented caution and conviction.
“Do you think such a person will stop with this?”
“……”
“If not, you can demote me or behead me, I don’t care.”
“What am I supposed to do with your head? Use it as a golf ball after chopping it off? Kick it around like a soccer ball?”
Talking about beheading and then using the head as a soccer ball… As expected from someone skilled in verbal attacks, his ideas were quite unique.
Muyoung unconsciously frowned as he imagined his own head rolling around on a grass field.
Lee Do-hyung’s words that he was the type to be indifferent even to his own death were half right and half wrong. Muyoung wanted to die gracefully if he had to die.
“If this goes wrong, I’ll write my resignation.”
“Bullshit. Do you have somewhere else to go?”
“I’ll do public defense work if I have to.”
“You idiot, do you think they’ll take just anyone for public defense? As if you could do it.”
Deputy Baek snorted and clenched his fist. He seemed deep in thought as he slowly tapped the top of the sofa armrest: thump, thump, thump.
He was usually straightforward about work matters, but now he looked quite tangled up. As Muyoung was trying to suppress his unease and gauge the Deputy’s state of mind:
“You’re going to keep pursuing that rape and manslaughter case?”
“Yes.”
“Huh…”
After pondering for a moment, Deputy Baek looked at Muyoung as if to say it was regrettable but couldn’t be helped.
“I expected this wouldn’t be easy, but it’s grown bigger than I thought.”
In a resigned tone, he raised his index finger to point at the ceiling.
“Special orders came down from the Chief Prosecutor this morning.”
Direct orders from above were unlikely to be good news for Muyoung. Sure enough, the worst news followed.
“That rape and manslaughter case you’re holding, it’s been dropped. As of now, wrap it up as ‘no right of prosecution.'”
“Deputy!”
“So what are you going to do? You’re about to be finished.”
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A few minutes after receiving a call from the security team about a visitor, there was a knock on the research lab door.
Normally, she would have just said, “Come in” while sitting in her chair, but feeling uneasy, she had to stand up.
When she asked who it was and heard “Your brother” as the answer, she was puzzled for a moment. Then she remembered that she had blocked her mother’s and sister’s phone numbers due to their persistent calls.
Come to think of it, contact with her brother had also become infrequent at some point. Although they weren’t particularly close, they used to stick together quite often when they were young.
After he became a college student and finished his military service, they barely saw each other except during holidays. For nearly a year, all she got was a bowing emoticon saying thanks when she sent him pocket money.
Why would Jae-yeol come all the way here? He had never visited on his own before. Could it be that their mother sent him? Along with suspicion, she felt a strange sense of disappointment.
Not knowing what face to put on to greet her brother, Jae-in opened the lab door.
Her brother, who had grown so big she wondered when he had gotten so tall, greeted her first.
“Noona, long time no see.”
“…..”
Both his greeting voice and his downward gaze were extremely awkward.
As she just stared at his face, which seemed both welcoming and unwelcoming, Jae-yeol scratched the corner of his mouth and forced a smile.
“I came so suddenly, it’s a bit weird, right?”
“…Come in.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Entering the lab, Jae-yeol slowly looked around the room. A desk and chair by the window, bookshelves reaching the ceiling packed with professional books. It was no different from any other university professor’s office. He turned his gaze from the three-seater sofa on the wall and sat down at the round table.
“I brought macarons.”
He put down a shopping bag on the table. When Jae-in remained silent, he started rambling while unwrapping the package.
“You like sweet things, right? There’s a new dessert shop in front of the school, and girls line up like crazy. I tried it once before, and it was delicious. I thought the cheese one was pretty good, but for you, strawberry?”
Jae-yeol held out a box of macarons with vibrant pastel colors and smiled awkwardly. It was his effort to somehow break the awkward atmosphere.
“What would you like to drink?”
“Oh, uh, that, I brought that too.”
He opened his bag and took out bottles of drinks one by one.
“What would you like to drink, Noona?”
Various types of drinks, about six or seven, filled the table, seemingly picked up one by one from a convenience store. He had brought a lot, as if he thought he might be turned away at the door without even being offered water.
“Why so many? Is someone else coming?”
“I just bought them as I went… There were buy-one-get-one-free deals…”
Finally, Jae-in let out a small laugh. Only then did Jae-yeol wipe his sweaty hands on his pants and smile sheepishly.
Jae-in chose milk tea from the drinks Jae-yeol had brought and sat down opposite him.
“Give me the strawberry one.”
“As expected. I knew you’d like strawberry.”
Jae-yeol took out a pinkish macaron from the mint-colored box and handed it to her.
“It’s delicious.”
“Yeah. Small but worth the price, right?”
Jae-in nodded and chewed the macaron into small pieces before swallowing. The sweetness filled her mouth. Expecting bitter news to follow the macaron that was sweet enough to make her tongue tingle, she opened her mouth.
“Did Mom send you?”
“Well, kind of…”
“She must be very angry. To send even you, who’s studying, to me.”
“Since you weren’t answering calls or texts, she was cursing you as an ungrateful bitch of the century. She was having a fit, holding her head and lying down.”
Just like that, she had become an ungrateful bitch who didn’t know the kindness of being raised. This was Jae-in’s reality. The kind of existence where doing well ten times meant nothing if you failed once, immediately labeled as a bad girl.
“I can imagine it clearly.”
Jae-in no longer hid her dejection. It had always been like this and would continue to be so; she was tired of getting hurt every single time.
“But my thoughts are a bit different.”
Jae-yeol said to Jae-in, who was looking down at the table with an expressionless face. What do you mean, she raised her eyes to see Jae-yeol with a triumphant expression.
“You did well, Noona. You did really well.”
“…What?”
“I’ve wanted to turn this damn household upside down for a long time, you know? Noona, you didn’t know?”
Jae-in blinked her surprised eyes slowly. She had no idea. For her, their mother was someone who only treated her as a child when needed, but for Jae-yeol, the youngest son, she was a relatively devoted parent.
“Our Noona is arrogant and rude, unable to take care of herself at her age, and that’s all Mom’s doing. And Mom is also ridiculous. She can’t solve things herself but keeps pestering you… Honestly, it’s… I shouldn’t say this, but… it’s disappointing.”
“…..”
“Dad’s not any better. He goes around bragging that his younger daughter is a doctor, but at home, he turns a blind eye when Noona and Mom treat you badly. He’s afraid of getting involved himself.”
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Thank you for reading! ♡
