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Chapter 8
Contempt and Humiliation
“Eun-ho! Yu Eun-ho!”
The moment Eun-ho stepped out of the interrogation room, Jin-tak came running, flushed with excitement, as if he’d been waiting.
“Did you identify the man on the CCTV?”
“I knew him the second I saw his face! Han Gang-su! The bereaved family member of the late Han So-jeong!”
The reason Jin-tak couldn’t forget Han Gang-su’s face was that he’d become quite familiar with it during Kim Hyeon-bin’s trial.
“Eun-ho, look over there. A lot of monks have come to the courtroom.”
Jin-tak quietly entered the courtroom, took a seat as far back as he could, and spoke to Eun-ho.
The gallery, divided into left and right sections, was oddly split into a victim’s side and a defendant’s side.
On the left, where Eun-ho and Jin-tak sat, the family of the late Han So-jeong shared a grief that had yet to subside, and strangely, the defendant’s side was packed with people who appeared to be Buddhist monks.
“What’s that about? Is it because Assemblyman Kim Su-cheol is Buddhist?”
“Who knows.”
Unlike the curious Jin-tak, Eun-ho felt little interest and answered with a rather cold reaction, as if urging him to focus on the trial.
What caught Eun-ho’s eye was Kim Hyeon-bin, sitting expressionless beside his lawyer.
Dressed in a neat black suit, Kim Hyeon-bin gave off a jarring sense of incongruity. Though no verdict had been reached, he looked utterly out of place in a defendant’s seat where one sits to pay for one’s crimes.
“Ahem. We will now begin the trial for Case No. 231-34. Everyone, please maintain decorum. Prosecution, you may begin.”
An elderly judge with snow-white hair and thin square reading glasses spoke, constantly scanning the documents before him with weary eyes.
“At the time of his arrest at the scene, Kim Hyeon-bin was heavily intoxicated, with a blood alcohol level above 0.1%, and struck an innocent young woman walking along the tree-lined road with his car, cutting her life short in vain.”
The prosecutor who began the statement was a relatively young woman in her late twenties, her hair tied back tightly without a single strand loose, her body stiff with tension, looking somewhat clumsy.
“Hhuuk… our poor So-jeong……”
At the prosecutor’s very first words, the sorrowful cries of the bereaved family, unable to hide their grief, rose up.
“As you can see, the defendant Kim Hyeon-bin has left the victim’s family with unforgettable pain. I sincerely ask that you impose a severe punishment! The prosecution requests a sentence of fifteen years in prison for the defendant, Kim Hyeon-bin. That is all.”
The rookie prosecutor sat back down and let out a sigh of relief that she had made it through safely.
“Defense, you may present your argument.”
“Ah… yes. Before beginning my argument, I would like to offer my deepest apologies to the victim, who passed away in an ‘unavoidable’ accident, and to… uh, the bereaved family.”
Kim Hyeon-bin’s lawyer was elderly like the judge, but had spent a long career in the legal world, and after retiring had founded a large law firm and become well known, even appearing on TV several times.
“Go Tae-sik himself taking the defense. I guess an assemblyman really is something.”
Jin-tak said, looking at attorney Go Tae-sik with a touch of sarcasm.
“What?! ‘Deepest apologies’? What kind of lunatic is this!!”
At Go Tae-sik’s single remark, the courtroom stirred, and Han So-jeong’s family erupted in outrage once more.
It was the judge’s gavel that quieted the courtroom, which had instantly descended into the jeers of the crowd.
Bang― bang― bang
“Order! This is a courtroom!! Counsel, take care not to provoke the bereaved family with remarks unrelated to the case.”
At the judge’s words, attorney Go Tae-sik straightened his navy necktie, answered with a brief nod, and continued his argument.
“Ahem… so, regarding what I called an ‘unavoidable’ accident, please take a look at the scene photograph from the time of the accident.”
When attorney Go Tae-sik gave a nod, a file titled Exhibit 1 opened on the large screen visible to everyone.
But the photo on the screen showed nothing but pitch darkness, as if painted black, without a single light.
“Ahem… as you can see in the photo, the scene at the time of the accident was extremely dark, with no visibility. Um… in other words, our defendant could not avoid Ms. Han So-jeong, who was standing on the road, not the sidewalk, and I earnestly appeal that this was therefore an ‘unavoidable’ accident.”
As attorney Go Tae-sik sat down, he set aside the reading glasses he’d been wearing and furrowed his brow as if tired.
And what broke the silence that fell over the courtroom at that moment was a man who stumbled to his feet and came out to the railing that fenced off the gallery.
“Y-Your Honor! This is absurd… The reservoir road is the only way home, and until the very day before the accident it was a promenade brightly lit by streetlamps. And to say our So-jeong was standing on the road… that’s absurd. It can’t be.”
The middle-aged man, wearing a navy work uniform frayed and grayed in places, was evidently So-jeong’s parent from his phrase “our So-jeong.”
Having barely finished speaking in a trembling voice, he shook as if he might collapse at any moment.
“Prosecution, there was no CCTV or vehicle dashcam footage at the time of the accident, is that correct?”
“…Ah, yes? Yes! No CCTV was installed on the tree-lined road, and the vehicle’s dashcam disappeared at the time of the accident, so… there’s none.”
At the judge’s question, the prosecutor, who had been sitting in a daze like an office worker who had finished her work and was only waiting to leave, jumped in surprise and answered.
“No, Prosecutor! What are you saying? I walked that reservoir road for thirty years, even before the promenade was built. There was definitely CCTV on that road originally! That it suddenly all vanished, Y-Your Honor, something is clearly wrong! Our So-jeong… she’s wronged, it can’t end like this!!”
At the man’s fierce appeal, the sobbing of the woman beside him, who appeared to be So-jeong’s mother, grew more intense until she finally burst into tears.
“Ahem, of course our defendant is deeply remorseful about the drunk driving. But what I’m saying is that, on such a dark road, he could not have avoided a person standing in the roadway even if he hadn’t been drinking.”
“Why would So-jeong be on the road unless she wanted to die! Prosecutor!! Please say something… tell them it isn’t so!!”
The man moved close to the prosecution’s side and pleaded desperately, as if about to climb over the railing, but the rookie prosecutor, with a rigid expression, did not even meet his eyes.
To Eun-ho, watching everything, it was instinctively clear that even the prosecutor’s reaction was not normal.
Bang― bang!
When the man, restrained by approaching security guards, struggled fiercely to break free, the judge, unable to watch any longer, raised the gavel again.
And taking advantage of the momentarily calmed atmosphere, attorney Go Tae-sik rose from his seat again, walked to the center of the courtroom, and began speaking to the judge.
“I’m told that Ms. Han So-jeong, at a young age, gave up even going to college to support her struggling family, and worked part-time jobs day and night.”
Go Tae-sik turned toward So-jeong’s father, who had collapsed, his legs giving out, and approached him.
“At an age when she should have been blossoming in her youth among friends, isn’t it possible that the victim, pained by a reality of nothing but work day and night, wanted to take her own life?”
In Go Tae-sik’s downward gaze there was a hint of contempt, and nothing else, as if the man were simply a nuisance to be dispatched as quickly as possible.
“That, that’s……”
And all that remained for So-jeong’s parents, who couldn’t bring themselves to protest even at this, was humiliation, nothing more.
“That is all.”
As attorney Go Tae-sik returned to his seat, Eun-ho’s gaze remained fixed on Kim Hyeon-bin.
Seeing him bow his head and snicker as if he found the occasion amusing, Eun-ho could only quietly clench his fist.
“Man, it’s brutal, just brutal. That lawyer wouldn’t bleed a drop even if you pricked him with a needle. Like somebody else I know.”
The judge decided to take a short recess before the final verdict, and the spectators came out to the corridor to catch their breath.
Jin-tak, drained by the suffocating courtroom battle, tossed out a light joke.
“Thank you for all your hard work.”
“Doesn’t everything flow according to its natural course? Whatever the outcome, I will pray.”
At the sound of a conversation with an odd undercurrent, Eun-ho pushed himself off the wall he’d been leaning against and turned his head.
Fortunately, since the conversation had started around the corner of the hallway where Jin-tak and Eun-ho stood, they could eavesdrop without being noticed.
“Well, it’s all thanks to the Venerable’s precious helping hand, isn’t it? Heh heh. I’ll arrange a meeting with the Assemblyman.”
The person he was talking with was attorney Go Tae-sik.
And the person standing across from Go Tae-sik was a monk they had seen earlier in the courtroom.
Among the many monks, he had sat in the very front row, radiating an inexplicable dignity, so he had left quite an impression on Eun-ho.
He looked far younger than attorney Go Tae-sik, and with refined features, if not for his shaved head, he had a thoroughly urban appearance that was quite far from a monk’s.
His unusually thick eyebrows and black eyes in particular gave off an extraordinary air.
“Then, until next time.”
Unlike attorney Go Tae-sik, who kept bowing and fawning, the monk finished his farewell in a gentle, mid-low voice and withdrew.
As he came down the corridor toward where Eun-ho and Jin-tak stood, his eyes met Eun-ho’s; he gave a brief palms-together bow, then met Eun-ho’s sharp gaze without avoiding it.
Eun-ho felt a strange sensation, as if everything had been absorbed into those deep black eyes like a black hole.
And in that instant, Eun-ho sensed it.
That this terrible bond was only now beginning.
“Unni, unni! Wake up.”
She tried to pull herself together at the sound of Yeong-ah’s voice shaking her, but her head was too dizzy.
When she barely managed to open her eyes through a splitting headache, a Yeong-ah gone pale as a sheet was looking down at Miso.
