The Prosecutor’s Office’s Proposal Chapter 168

I answered as nonchalantly as possible, employing a technique I had polished my entire life.

“My aunt is right next to me.”

— …I see. Are you at home after work?

The moment Prosecutor Joo asked this in a formal tone, Song Haneul snatched the phone and ended the call. Having powered it off completely, he waved the blood-stained tip of the knife and pointed it at me.

“You were giving him a hint, weren’t you?”

“I wasn’t. I was just making up an excuse.”

“Fuck….”

Song Haneul nervously ran his hands through his hair, threw my phone to the ground as if slamming it, and crushed it under his foot. The screen shattered wretchedly, but I watched calmly without reacting, careful not to provoke him.

During my time in the police force, I had been stabbed with a knife and injured by a syringe wielded by a drug addict. Even when my maternal uncle or the kids in my class who bullied me treated me like a rat—slapping my cheeks and punching my stomach—I endured it without screaming once, all for the sake of my pride.

The misfortunes I thought would never be of help in my life, and Prosecutor Joo Taeson, who would surely have understood the signal I sent, were supporting me as I threatened to collapse.

Song Haneul, on the other hand, seemed agitated.

“You son of a bitch, fuck.”

He muttered curses and poked me with the tip of the knife.

“Hey, walk to the end.”

It seemed Song Haneul’s emotions had become so intense that he wouldn’t mind if the knife dug into me a little more, so I walked silently to the roof railing. A small, discarded-looking step stool was placed in front of the railing. I stopped after getting close enough for my toes to touch the stool.

“Chief, doing this won’t change anything.”

“…Shut up. What do you know?”

“I certainly don’t know how difficult things were for you. But I do know that stopping here is the only way to prevent things from reaching their worst. Isn’t that the same for you, Chief?”

I slowly turned only my face to glance back at Chief Song. Aside from the faint light creeping in from outside, the roof was blanketed in deep darkness, making it hard to even see my feet. Because there was no lighting, we could barely identify each other’s silhouettes, yet Song Haneul’s expression looked strangely vivid.

Chief Song looked like a completely different person. He had the face of someone driven to the edge of a cliff, someone capable of anything.

I had seen the faces of countless people who had committed murder with that same expression. In police interrogation rooms, in prosecutor’s offices. Many people, instead of taking revenge on the ones they really should have, chose an easy target, killed them, and sat in steel chairs with their hoodie pulled over their heads.

The tip of the knife now pointed to the ground beneath my feet.

“Get up on the stool.”

“…I’ll get up on the stool, but please tell me your story, Chief.”

“What story?”

“Why you’re doing this.”

“I’m an investigator, too. Don’t even think about pulling some shitty negotiation.”

Sparks flew from the opponent’s eyes, which I could barely see in the darkness.

“I’m not trying to negotiate. You and I have worked together for six months. We were close. At the very least, I want to know the reason why you’re doing this.”

“Reason? What reason. After hearing what Joo Taeson spewed earlier, you still don’t know why I’m doing this? Get up. Before I kill you.”

Meaning to show I wouldn’t resist, I slowly raised both hands to chest height and stepped onto the stool. The railing, which had reached my waist, now sat near my hips. It was high enough that if he pushed, I could fall. Moreover, the roof was eight stories high. The horrific scenes of falling deaths I had witnessed in the past played through my mind like a film strip.

Chief Song paced in front of the stool for a moment, keeping the knife aimed at me. He wanted to talk. There is no one who listens to a criminal’s words with as much interest as a detective or an investigator. Chief Song surely knew that better than anyone.

Pacing back and forth as if impatient, Chief Song finally opened his mouth.

“How did it look to you?”

“What?”

“Tak Sungwoong and Oh Jahyeon.”

“…How does it look from your perspective, Chief?”

Relying on the faint light emitted by the city, I tried to gauge Song Haneul’s true intentions. Seeing him bite his lower lip as if impatient and blink his eyes rapidly, he looked incredibly unstable.

It wasn’t just Prosecutor Joo and me who knew how to wear masks. Underneath Song Haneul’s kind and calm face, a human being, terrified and trembling, yet filled with rage, was cowering in hiding.

“Fuck, don’t change the subject! In Officer Lee’s eyes, what were Tak Sungwoong and Oh Jahyeon like?”

Song Haneul repeatedly brought up his parents’ names. Without using any honorifics or titles, just their names.

I secretly infiltrated his mind and slowly began to speak.

“They seem to mistake themselves for being in the middle of the love of the century, but they were just selfish humans. If they really loved each other that much, shouldn’t they have given up the father’s inheritance and lived while raising the child they had together?”

Watching his reaction, I continued.

“I find their Romeo and Juliet act pathetic and disgusting. They don’t even take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.”

With every word, with every sentence I finished, Song Haneul’s gaze wavered. It felt as though the arrow I had ignited with my conjecture had pierced exactly through the center of the bullseye.

If that was the case, Song Haneul would want to talk to me. No one had ever listened to his side of the story before.

Song Haneul distorted his face and spat out as if grinding his teeth.

“Those dog-like humans.”

This time, I didn’t respond. If I tried to empathize too much, I risked provoking his animosity.

While I maintained silence like a sentry, Song Haneul continued to pace in front of me, still pointing the knife at me. It looked like words he wanted to say were pushing up his throat, and he was debating whether to continue or stop.

The sound of police sirens, which had been heard from afar, began to get closer to the Danhyeon Branch Office. I wished it were the sound of them coming for me. Since I had given the hint, Prosecutor Joo would have certainly reported it to the police.

Where could he have guessed the location was? The apartment? The official residence?

Could he have actually thought of the Prosecutor’s Office as the crime scene?

The next voice from Song Haneul was even more agitated than before.

“It wasn’t enough that they made their child grow up in an orphanage, but every time they did something, they made me clean up their mess, over and over again. It’s insane, am I their servant or what?”

“…Was it the Spring Flower Orphanage?”

“Yeah, that place. They’d drop by occasionally, provide snacks as if they were sponsoring the kids, and donate a little money, acting like they’d fulfilled their duties as parents. Then they’d call me, saying they killed someone and demanding I handle the body, or badger me relentlessly to leak information from the prosecutor’s office. I’m just an investigator, for fuck’s sake, I’m not someone who can do something like a prosecutor.”

“…”

“You two didn’t even let me participate in the investigation properly, did you? Don’t you think? That ‘1225’ you and Joo Taeson were always yapping about—that’s me. I carried it around while cleaning up after those people. If you had told me that fact, would you have let me join in?”

“The very fact that parents would drag their child into a crime makes no sense.”

“Everything has been a mess since then, fuck. When they called me to handle the body, I should have said I couldn’t do it and ran away. …Back then, I felt like if I didn’t do as I was told, those people would look down on me completely. Just like they had my whole life.”

“Was it Chief Tak’s idea for you to become an investigator, too?”

“Yeah. I, fuck…, when they told me to take the civil service exam for the prosecutor’s office, I thought they did it because they wanted me by their side. I thought they wanted to see my face and live together, even if it was late, since I was their child. It was a pathetic delusion. I didn’t even know I was going to end up as a spy-mole.”

“Chief, I understand the feeling of betrayal, but doing this will only hurt you more. Don’t commit an even bigger crime because of that feeling of betrayal. You won’t serve much time for abandonment of a corpse. You know that. It doesn’t have to be like this…”

At that moment, rough, raw emotion burst from his lips.

“Doesn’t have to be like this, my ass! Once Oh Jahyeon’s name is completely removed from the old man’s will, do you think those two will compensate me for anything? What about my life? While those two were acting like the protagonists of a tragedy and playing at love, what can compensate me for my life that was ruined?”

His gaze and the thoughts in his head were in a state more insane than I had guessed. It seemed he had judged that his life was over.