The Prosecutor’s Office’s Proposal Chapter 129

“You don’t have to apologize again. I don’t think you were just saying it to be polite.”

Prosecutor Joo ran his hand through his hair again, looking restless. His gaze, more disheveled than usual, lingered on the floor for a moment before rising back up.

“…Then, next question. Until the conclusion is reached, the work.”

“I will continue.”

“Diligently?”

“Yes.”

“…That’s enough.”

Prosecutor Joo stood up. He grabbed my arm as I rose, trying to support me, but I didn’t lean on him and pushed him away. His two large hands lost their way, wandering in the empty air.

A turbid, dizzying emotion rose like a haze in the depths of his black pupils. A deep sense of bewilderment was visible, but he didn’t seem angry with me.

Looking back, on the day he suggested the collusion, there had been many layers of dark, hateful emotions in his eyes when we faced each other on the rooftop. Back then, I couldn’t even imagine that it was anger directed at the son of the man who killed his father.

Prosecutor Joo slowly withdrew the hand he had left in the air for a while and urged.

“Rest until the fever goes down. Don’t force yourself to come out.”

“…Yes, thank you.”

Prosecutor Joo walked quietly to the entrance and put on his shoes. I shoved my bare feet into the shoes with the heels folded down and tried to follow him out, but I bumped my nose into his back when he stopped suddenly. I thought he might have something to say, but he only turned his head to bid me farewell.

“Rest well.”

“Yes, Prosecutor. The food and the medicine… thank you for everything. I’ll heat up the gukbap for dinner. It’s not that I don’t need it.”

“…Right.”

Just as I had done when seeing Chief Song off, I opened the front door and watched him walk down the stairs. I was deeply saddened by our relationship, which had been twisted in an instant due to yesterday’s events and Oh Jahyeon’s revelation. My heart felt as though it were being shredded, shriveled up until it was worthless, and would eventually vanish entirely.

Prosecutor Joo’s lonely back, which usually seemed so solid, disappeared beyond the corner. He didn’t look back, but he seemed to be conscious of me with his whole body, as he always was.

When I had locked the door and come back in, the same knocking sound from a moment ago was heard again before much time had passed. As soon as I opened the door, a large body pushed me aside and stepped into the entrance before I even had a chance to see who it was. Because I let go of the handle in surprise, the door shut with a loud noise. The air trapped in the room trembled thinly.

When I raised my startled eyes, I made eye contact with Prosecutor Joo. He was breathing heavily, as if he had run up the stairs.

“Why… why can I never control myself when I see your face?”

Prosecutor Joo naturally pushed me against the entrance wall, held me as if trapping me in his arms, and looked down at me.

“I want to kiss you.”

“…”

“…Please, allow me.”

I bit my lower lip, then slowly pulled away, lingering on the pressure embedded in my skin as I barely looked up at him. I was the one who proposed returning to a professional relationship, so I should have refused, but suddenly I thought that this might be our last kiss.

The thought that if I missed this opportunity, I might never be able to kiss him again.

The slim possibility that Lee Gilyoung might be guilty.

I slowly met his eyes first. It felt as though the emotions contained within my eyes were revolving around him.

“Let’s make this the final… greeting for our relationship.”

I drew a line with a trembling voice.

As soon as my answer ended, his thick fingertips caressed my eyebrows and cheeks more affectionately than usual. His neat, well-defined features slowly leaned toward me.

Joo Taeson’s voice, sunken with weight, whispered.

“Let’s not treat it like the last.”

“Then how….”

“Treat it like the first kiss.”

He moved my hands aside, held my waist, and softly overlapped our lips. His hot tongue licked my lower lip, which wouldn’t easily open, several times. It wasn’t his usual rough movement; it was a cautious touch, as if savoring the thin skin.

Enduring the trembling that made me want to run away, I eventually parted my lips slowly. A hot, soft mass of flesh pushed its way inside.

Prosecutor Joo carefully rubbed the inside of my mouth and sucked on my tongue, but he never moved roughly. We exchanged our intimate, secret breaths through our lips. As Prosecutor Joo trapped my tongue in his mouth and sucked slowly, the heat that had been spreading throughout my body began to boil over. The corners of my eyes became wet on their own.

“Ah….”

Whenever he felt I was lacking breath, he would pull his lips away for a moment and graze his lips over my cheeks and neck as if caressing them. Then, when I seemed to have calmed down, he would kiss me softly again. I tried my best to regain my labored breathing in those gaps, but I would quickly lose my composure whenever he blocked my lips again and pushed his hot tongue inside.

His plump lips sucked my wet tongue, drinking my saliva, and his thick flesh rubbed against my tender membranes. Soon, I was out of breath, clinging to the hem of his shirt with my fingertips. I was infinitely short of breath.

Prosecutor Joo didn’t let me go easily as the kiss grew longer. He pushed forward softly yet persistently.

“Hut… mm….”

His hardened length brushed against my pants occasionally, but Prosecutor Joo did nothing more than kiss. Heat occupied my brain. It felt as if my whole body were melting. Every time we rubbed our hot tongues together and swallowed saliva that we couldn’t even tell belonged to whom, I trembled deeply with sorrow.

Before long, his hand moved between my fingers, lacing them together. I awkwardly curled my splayed fingers to barely clasp his large hand, responding to the kiss for a long time.

We stood in the entrance for a long time, kissing. Longer than when we first kissed, without even knowing the time was passing.

Just as Prosecutor Joo had said, not as a final farewell, but as if it were truly our first kiss.

I went to work the next day. The fever hadn’t fully subsided, and it was still uncomfortable to face Prosecutor Joo, but I couldn’t leave the work piling up. While not quite to the extent of Prosecutor Joo, I had quite a perfectionist temperament when working, so I found it difficult to leave tasks unattended for days.

A strained and subtle air flowed between us. Even when we were alone, Prosecutor Joo was more polite to me than usual, and I also kept my distance and treated him with great formality. Naturally, the words we exchanged decreased.

In the end, we returned to an ambiguously professional relationship.

In any case, my father was the official suspect in the case of President Kang Woosung’s murder by an awl. While I felt sorry for Prosecutor Joo, the victim’s son, it was difficult to easily ignore the dark thoughts he must have harbored while deceiving me for so long.

After eating dinner alone in the cafeteria before working overtime, I returned to find Prosecutor Joo staring at me with a bewildered expression. For the first time in a while, our gazes met for a long time.

“Isn’t there no need to go that far?”

Instead of pointing it out or snapping, he asked in a low voice.

Struck to the core, my face turned red like a teenager’s. I felt like a boy caught in his obvious inner thoughts by an adult. To hide my embarrassment, I made an excuse that wouldn’t even work.

“You didn’t say anything even after seeing me leave, so I thought it was fine. I also felt you were being awkward with me lately….”

“It must be that Officer Lee wants to keep a distance from me. Even if we are superior and subordinate, we can still eat together.”

Since he was right, my lips closed on their own.

I wanted to keep a distance from him. At least until my father’s innocence was proven, I didn’t want to make our suddenly awkward relationship any worse. Because of that, my fear grew on one hand. I was so anxious that my father might have really killed Prosecutor Joo’s father that I couldn’t even sleep at night, even with medication.

Because if that happened, I wouldn’t be able to stay by Prosecutor Joo’s side. I didn’t have the courage to endure such enormous guilt as he did.

I don’t know if I should call it courage or shamelessness to occupy the seat next to the son of the person my father killed.

I returned after brushing my teeth, placed my wet toothbrush in the cup, and opened my file. I felt Prosecutor Joo’s gaze touch the side of my face, but I endured it without turning my head. His gaze lingered on me for a long time. While putting on a false attitude of not being conscious of it, I swallowed the desire to look at him to the very end, like a cup of poison.