The Prosecutor’s Office’s Proposal Chapter 112

I had braced myself for a harsh scolding, but Prosecutor Joo simply nodded and finally met my eyes. His low voice echoed.

“I know. That’s why I rely on you, Chaeha.”

It was just my name being called, but it felt as if a thin membrane in my chest was about to burst like a water balloon thrown against a wall. His fingertips brushed against my cheek—where I was unable to even breathe—and then pulled away.

“I shouldn’t like you.”

The words, added as if sighing, eventually left a wound.

“Let’s go.”

Every step toward the underground parking lot felt heavy. My heart, which had just been wounded in the same spot again, and his agonizing state of mind were chaotically intertwined.

He walked to the car with me and instructed me in a business-like tone.

“First, let’s start by matching Chief Tak’s DNA with the DNA found on the gloves.”

“To do that, we need a warrant…”

“No, there’s no need for that. We eat together often, so I’ll bring something that Chief Tak discarded.”

“And if it matches?”

“Then… I’ll have to lock him up.”

It was a voice that had composed its emotions no differently than usual. It was a tone as if he were investigating a stranger. I wondered how he could pull himself together so quickly.

“…Are you alright?”

“As if.”

Prosecutor Joo opened the driver’s side door, his lips pressed shut with a darker expression than ever before. I followed him into the passenger seat and fastened my seatbelt. A long, unavoidable sigh flowed from the seat next to me toward my side, but I didn’t bother to acknowledge it.

On the way to the branch office, his cell phone rang. Since it was a call from the National Forensic Service, he switched it to speakerphone and turned up the volume.

“Hello.”

— Investigator Lee Chaeha, this is the National Forensic Service. Prosecutor Joo isn’t answering his phone.

“Yes, he’s on an outside schedule for a moment. He’s right next to me now.”

— Ah, I see. Regarding the gloves found next to the Koryo-in Mr. Kim’s body, the surname analysis results are out. Fortunately, the surname is quite rare, so we can narrow down the suspects significantly. You know that if it were a common surname, we wouldn’t get results, right?

At the mention that the surname was rare, my heart beat for a different reason this time. Because I was afraid that my concerns would eventually turn into reality.

I was deeply unsettled by the series of events where this case was deteriorating into Prosecutor Joo’s personal pain. I was enough of a person to suffer from the cases intertwined with Oh Jahyeon; the abyss kept pulling at Prosecutor Joo’s ankles.

Please, let it not be a Tak. I prayed desperately in my heart and asked in a trembling voice.

“What is the surname?”

The other party’s voice filled the car clearly.

— It’s Tak.

A terrible silence occupied the space where the voice from the other side of the phone had been. Even I, who had no personal connection to Chief Tak, felt cold sweat prickle along my spine. I barely managed to find my voice and replied.

“…Thank you.”

— I will send the report via email.

“Yes.”

After hanging up, I stared ahead without a word. I wanted to be cautious. I was not so ignorant of the emotion of pain that I would rashly open my mouth first.

Prosecutor Joo tensed his hands on the steering wheel, just like earlier when we were sitting across from each other in the meeting room. Thick veins bulged out on the back of his hands, and his mouth was set hard. His fingertips began to tap the steering wheel slowly. His neatly manicured nails turned red when they touched the wheel and white when they pulled away, flickering.

In the end, painful emotions permeated his low voice.

“In the end, a Tak appeared. If Chief Tak is indeed the culprit who abandoned the Koryo-in’s body, he must be related to the previous three deaths.”

He was right. However, uncharacteristic of an investigator, I gave the reaction that Prosecutor Joo might want to hear.

“It might not be the previous three. We don’t have any evidence yet, either.”

“Well…”

However, Prosecutor Joo—the skeptical prosecutor—could not believe my cheap comfort. He was not a person who could be self-deceived in the first place. He was the type who thought logically, followed the flow of thoughts, and even managed his own senses.

Prosecutor Joo let out another deep sigh and muttered as if to himself.

“He bypassed all the previous important crimes and only cleaned up the insignificant body abandonment at the end—I don’t think that’s likely.”

“Oh Jahyeon stabbed the Koryo-in Mr. Kim with a nicotine syringe because he was hot-tempered, so you misunderstood it as a murder. If you only heard the circumstances, Chief Tak must have thought it was a murder case too, so it’s not such an insignificant matter.”

“…That could be. But in the end, as Officer Lee said, whatever the result, I have to let one more person go.”

Death is not the only eternal farewell. Having lost many people, I understood the lonely implications and sadness contained in his words perfectly.

“Even so, because Officer Lee is on my side.”

The car, receiving a red signal, stopped smoothly in front of the stop line.

“Wouldn’t that be alright?”

The voice of the person asking sounded so “not alright” that I wanted to cry on his behalf.

Prosecutor Joo’s gaze flowed down, following my profile as I looked at anonymous passersby without answering. He soon turned his eyes forward like me, and I looked at him again a half-beat later.

His black pupils, where the sunlight hit, burned with agony as hot as spring sunshine. If only I could stop him. From this investigation that would leave only the truth and leave him wounded.

But I had failed to stop Joo Taeson, and it felt like I wouldn’t be able to stop him in the future either.

I bit down on the inside of my mouth and placed my hand on the back of his hand, which was resting on the steering wheel, as an answer. He turned his trembling palm upward and grasped mine in return.

📄🖊️

The opportunity to obtain Chief Tak’s DNA came immediately upon our return to the branch office. Prosecutor Joo and I were both summoned to the Chief Prosecutor’s office.

As soon as Prosecutor Joo closed the door to the interrogation room, he pulled my hand and walked into the hallway. It was in the opposite direction of the Criminal Division 2 Chief’s office. In the cold, deserted hallway, he brought his large palm up to my ear. The cold touch of his cufflinks and the neatly ironed sleeve of his suit jacket brushed against my sensitive earlobe.

“When we go to the Chief Prosecutor’s office, there will be photos. Photos Chief Tak took abroad.”

His whispering voice flowed into my ear, carried by his solid palm. I glanced up at him.

“Abroad?”

“I need to check if they were taken in Russia.”

I rolled my brain for a moment to understand his words, then widened my eyes in surprise.

“Could Russia be the country where Oh Jahyeon’s father sent him for study abroad?”

“Then it makes sense.”

“…It does.”

“Having a drug connection in Russia, and using an awl when killing people. It’s the only way to explain the situation where a Russian connection keeps getting entangled.”

“So, are you viewing it as a possibility that Chief Tak might have committed the murders himself?”

“If it’s true that he went to study in Russia, I have to consider that possibility as well.”

I chewed over his reasoning and nodded slowly. It made sense.

No matter how I thought about it, the method of killing someone with an awl and then sticking another awl found in that house into the body was peculiar. I clearly remembered the profiling of the culprit I had done at the beginning.

The culprit is someone who knows a lot about investigations. There is a possibility of a connection to Russia.

If Chief Tak had studied abroad in Russia, both applied to him.

Prosecutor Joo also pulled his hand away from my ear, as if organizing his thoughts for a moment. His gaze, which looked distressed, fell at an angle. Then, after chewing his lower lip, he gave me instructions on what to do after we returned from the Chief Prosecutor’s office.

“And since it won’t be easy to get a warrant to open Chief Tak’s phone right away, let’s go back to the Chief Prosecutor’s office and review the base station data we’ve secured so far once more. It would be better for Officer Lee and me to double-check. To see if Chief Tak’s phone records appear. If even one appears, let’s look for a burner phone that moves with him.”

The method he mentioned was a representative investigative technique for finding burner phones.

Usually, even if someone possesses a burner phone, they don’t leave the phone they normally use at home. A burner phone is just a phone used for crimes; to maintain daily life, a phone under one’s own name is essential. Even while moving around to plan and execute crimes, people still exchange messages with friends, call family, search for necessary information on the internet, or listen to music.