The Prosecutor’s Office’s Proposal Chapter 125

I was sick and tired of his response, which kept blaming my foolish judgment. Spurred on by a powerfully surging feeling of disappointment, I gathered the courage to look back at him.

Perhaps because Prosecutor Joo Taeson had kept running after me, rare, lukewarm sweat had beaded on his forehead. I looked up at him as he exhaled somewhat roughly, his face troubled. I wanted to read whatever emotion he was feeling, but I still found it difficult to look into his mind.

My own cheeks, which had been flushed from running with all my might, were also covered in droplets of moisture. I wiped the wetness that soaked my skin with the back of my hand, rubbing it roughly. I couldn’t tell if it was sweat… or tears.

“It hasn’t been long since you changed your mind and decided that Lee Gilyoung might not be the culprit, Prosecutor. Before that, you thought I was the son of the man who killed your father. Why on earth did you ask someone like that to work with you? Are you saying you really didn’t intend to take revenge? How am I supposed to believe your words?”

“I’ve answered that many times already. At the very least, I spoke only the truth to Officer Lee on that point. It’s not like I could have been comfortable with Officer Lee either. But I thought I couldn’t find anyone other than you who would take an interest in this case and look into it like I would. Is that so impossible to understand?”

“Please, stop lying.”

A scream-like voice burst from my mouth.

“Of course, there must have been such reasons. But I asked you several times. Why are you so obsessed with this case? Couldn’t you have thought to tell me then? Of course, it wouldn’t have been easy to confess the truth. But that was something I should have heard from you first, not Oh Jahyeon. At the very least, you should have granted me that much dignity.”

“…”

“Why did you make me hear such important words from Oh Jahyeon? Without knowing anything, I worked like a fool just as you ordered, and even developed feelings for you…. While watching me—the person who even visited your home—what on earth were you thinking?”

I could no longer dismiss the hot moisture covering my face as mere sweat. My cheeks were drenched in sorrowful tears. The temperature heated by pain and misery stained the tip of my nose with sorrow.

“Inwardly, you were mocking me for coming to your home, weren’t you? You intended to toy with me and throw me away. Isn’t that it?”

I felt resentful toward Prosecutor Joo, who just quietly listened to the words I was spilling out incoherently as my emotions overflowed.

With every scathing word I threw at him, he could have told me it wasn’t like that—even once would have been enough.

That, in truth, it wasn’t like that, and that he simply liked me.

If he would just say those words, I, who was starving for affection, wouldn’t be able to turn away from them in the end. But Prosecutor Joo would never say the words I wanted to hear. Prosecutor Joo’s figure blurred, but whenever I blinked, his face welled up in my pupils again.

“Isn’t it that you intended to hurt me in the end, just like everyone else? That’s why you always held me so roughly….”

I could barely clench my lips shut, unable to finish the sentence.

Prosecutor Joo looked down at my face, from which tears were falling in droplets, and let out a faint sigh. His expression was as if he had chosen the opposite path instead of gently coaxing me, the person he had wounded.

His tone, too, finally rose.

“Yes, I couldn’t handle that incident—I even changed my surname because of it. It’s been years spent hating your father, who committed suicide without even standing a proper trial. I wanted to bring him back to life and kill him with my own hands, and at times, I just wanted to forget everything. It’s also true that I looked you up out of curiosity about how a murderer’s son lives. But I wasn’t cowardly enough to think about taking revenge on you.”

“No, you were already cowardly enough. I know it’s a difficult thing to talk about. But after that Saturday when I visited you, you should have told me.”

At the very least, after we shared our bodies, I should have been someone worthy of knowing the truth.

“It was actually harder to talk about it precisely because things happened that way. Can’t you understand? That incident was an unhealable wound for me for my entire life, and it was a matter that was sure to ruin our relationship if I spoke of it.”

“Was there ever a relationship to ruin in the first place?”

“…You’re really going to be like this.”

“…”

“No matter how much the possibility of Lee Gilyoung being innocent has increased, it’s not a conclusion that’s been definitively reached yet. There’s no reason for you to pick at my wounds just because your feelings were hurt, Officer Lee.”

“Even though you picked at my wounds.”

I spat out every word as if pressing down on it and wiped the tears wetting my cheeks with the back of my hand. Prosecutor Joo chewed on his lower lip, then let go and swept back the bangs that had fallen down from running.

“Let’s not do this and go inside to talk.”

“I don’t want to. I’m not going in with the Prosecutor.”

“Lee Chaeha, I intended to tell you someday. Once the case was resolved and it was confirmed that your father was innocent….”

“So if he were guilty, you had no intention of telling me?”

“…To be honest, that’s right. I didn’t want to tell you, for your sake as well as mine. If your father were guilty, do you think you and I would be able to look at each other comfortably? Do you think it would have been easy for you to stay by my side knowing that? Why is it so hard to think about that?”

Objectively speaking, it was a situation I could understand rationally.

But when I imagined what kind of emotions Prosecutor Joo must have felt while looking at the son of the perpetrator all this time, I felt like I would vomit blood. With him in front of me, suffering from all sorts of complex thoughts inside, I was foolishly liking him, getting nervous when I saw his face, and trying my best to make a good impression.

When he scolded me for not being able to do my work, when he made me stay overtime every day and pushed me to my limit, or when he possessed me roughly in bed.

Did Joo Taeson really not have even the slightest desire to punish Lee Chaeha, the son of Lee Gilyoung?

If that were the case, where exactly did the language of Joo Taeson, which I had felt was cruel from time to time, come from?

“If you want to criticize me, go ahead. Whatever you were thinking in your head, at least subconsciously, you were taking revenge on me. Admit it.”

“…You said you liked lies that didn’t hurt, but I see you’re obsessed with honesty now. Then, should I be honest for a change? Before I met you in person, I hated you. It was easy to imagine in my head that I wanted to take revenge on Lee Gilyoung’s son and confirm that you weren’t living properly. Because at that time, I thought you were living well.”

He retorted as if frustrated. I didn’t answer and looked straight up at his face, which was saying he had hated me.

“But you were already unhappy enough. So much so that I didn’t need to torment you.”

“…”

“You should have lived a little better. To make me feel the urge to take revenge.”

“You always say hurtful things like that—to me. You don’t do that to other people.”

“…Yes.”

“Because I am Lee Gilyoung’s son.”

He did not answer. He was affirming it.

From the very beginning, his starting to use informal language was an expression of his desire to look down on the son of Lee Gilyoung. Whether I felt humiliated or distressed by that was a matter that never even entered Prosecutor Joo’s mind.

“That is why I say I can’t trust your words, Prosecutor. Because you could have made it so I couldn’t set foot in the Prosecutor’s Office after this case ended. If you had spread some strange rumors about me….”

“Lee Chaeha…, stop this. That was a risk for me as well. If there was one thing I absolutely should not have done with Lee Chaeha, it was getting entangled with you in that way. If there is a side that could profit from that, isn’t it you, not me?”

“…”

“If I just made up my mind to destroy you, I wouldn’t even need that kind of groundwork. I am a prosecutor, and you are an officer. Do you understand?”

“…Then why did you make such a choice if you don’t even love me? If it’s not revenge, then it must be affection. Isn’t it one or the other? Then this is a matter that I can only think of as revenge.”

“I didn’t want to love you.”

As expected, a cruel answer scratched past me.

“The very decision to suppress my disgust and treat Lee Chaeha as a regular employee at the Prosecutor’s Office was an overwhelming task for me. Because every time I saw your face, I had to recall the day I discovered my father’s corpse hundreds, thousands of times. Don’t you think it was enough just to endure you, who shakes me whenever you appear in my sight, while having my barely healed wounds ripped open?”