The Prosecutor’s Office’s Proposal Chapter 55

“What else. If there’s a crime, indict him and strip him of his uniform. It wouldn’t be bad if other charges emerge, either. Since police officers are out if they get caught driving under the influence, a case like that is good, too. You can handle the cooking, Prosecutor Yoon. You’re good at that sort of thing.”

“I can handle the cooking, sure… but it bothers me that you, Prosecutor Joo, are making a request like this.”

“I’m just ordering a dish that is your specialty, Prosecutor Yoon; why does that bother you?”

Prosecutor Yoon, who had finished reading the materials on Baek Youngjun’s past disciplinary records, put the file down. He leaned his body forward at an angle, trying to read my expression.

“Just how exactly did this man offend you, Prosecutor Joo, that you came all the way up to my office personally? We haven’t even exchanged greetings more than a few times in the last year, have we?”

I rubbed my lips with my fingertips, thinking of Baek Youngjun, whom I had encountered at the Danhyeon Police Station. Lee Chaeha seemed to think I hadn’t seen because I was ahead of him, but I had seen everything—the way Lee Chaeha had pushed him away, and the look of utter disgust on his face.

So, there was no way I couldn’t know that this guy, Baek Youngjun, was the one who had started the rumors. It was hard enough for Lee Chaeha to not get along with other staff at the Prosecutor’s Office; I couldn’t even imagine what it must have been like at the restrictive Police Academy. Moreover, he was much younger then.

The biggest problem was that after that, I was so consumed by the desire to handle Baek Youngjun that I couldn’t get any sleep.

“That’s not the end of it. There’s one more person. This is the real favor.”

“Who?”

“A man named Hong Seongho who runs a laundry business. It’s not a small shop, but a laundry company that handles corporate contracts. It’s quite large in scale, so he has several employees under him. Dig through this person’s company until something comes up. Corporate and economic cases are your specialty, Prosecutor Yoon.”

This was the ‘bad deed’ of the day I had hinted at to Lee Chaeha. To rake Lee Chaeha’s uncle over the coals until the dust flew on a rainy day.

I had looked into him briefly, but Hong Seongho was a man covered in black soot. Immediately after becoming Lee Chaeha’s legal guardian, he had touched Lee Gilyoung’s Jeonse deposit. It was obvious whose pocket that 200 million won deposit had gone into, and right after that, the laundry business had expanded in scale.

This time, Prosecutor Yoon was momentarily taken aback by my villainy.

“Prosecutor Joo, you despise targeted investigations. Why are you doing something you never do?”

“Aren’t there exceptions to everything sometimes?”

“I don’t like targeted investigations.”

“Nonsense. If you hated targeted investigations so much, why were you so good at your job in the Special Investigation Department? If you hadn’t slipped from the line you were holding onto, you’d still be in the Special Investigation Department tearing people apart.”

“Honestly, the nerve of this bastard’s mouth…”

“Someday, Prosecutor Yoon, you’ll have something you need to ask of me, too. I’ll help you without a word of complaint then.”

“Alright. Should I even fabricate charges that don’t exist?”

I shook my head at his absurd comment. I had known him for a long time, but he was a man in whom you couldn’t find an ounce of professional ethics.

“No. You shouldn’t create crimes that don’t exist just like that. And since you know that if I’m the one asking, it means there are charges to be found. They are bastards with a bad nature.”

“I don’t know what crimes they committed, but they must have been marked by you, Prosecutor Joo, quite severely.”

As I stood up, Prosecutor Yoon spoke.

“I went to the charnel house last week for Soyeon and saw the flowers you left.”

“It was Soyeon’s memorial day. They say they’re fraternal twins, but the two siblings look nothing alike.”

Yoon Gyuho was the twin brother of the late Yoon Soyeon, and the three of us were colleagues from the Judicial Research and Training Institute. For a long time, he had resented me. This was because my appearance—urging her to endure while recording the department head’s abuse in her diary and phone messages—was laid bare. I was the only person Prosecutor Yoon had confided in before she died.

So, I had intended to endure it even if Prosecutor Yoon Gyuho blamed me until the day he died, but three years later, he forgave me. It was one of the few salvations I had received. Even I couldn’t forgive myself. That was the reason why, even though I didn’t professionally respect him, I couldn’t cut the ties that connected us.

“It’s not like I’ve only brought flowers once or twice, so why are you acting like you’ve just noticed now?”

The other man’s expression distorted visibly. Prosecutor Yoon Gyuho let out a heavy sigh.

“As time passes, I sometimes feel grateful toward you, Prosecutor Joo, but as soon as we have a conversation, that feeling melts away like snow. You didn’t seem to have this kind of personality when I saw you at the training institute.”

“That was before I became a prosecutor. …And before Soyeon became that way.”

I glanced at the photo of Prosecutor Yoon Soyeon placed on Prosecutor Yoon Gyuho’s bookshelf. Her bright smile felt colder than the winter wind hitting the windowpane.

“Well, I’ll be going now.”

Before he could add anything more, I said my goodbyes and left the office. I had thought my chest would feel a bit lighter after handing over the Baek Youngjun and laundry cases, but unexpectedly, the area around my solar plexus still felt heavy.

“…Making me clean up after others. And I thought he’d been living perfectly well.”

It would have been much better if Lee Chaeha had lived a comfortable life, as I had imagined when looking at his admission application. Lee Chaeha’s face, looking at his monitor with an expression as if he were about to vanish at any moment, came to mind. He was probably biting his lip, focused intently, watching countless numbers without stretching his legs once or being lazy.

When that happens, I sometimes want to place my hand on his white cheek and press my lips against Lee Chaeha’s. Just to confirm what it feels like to touch the soft flesh. Because I am curious about the body heat his tongue holds. Simple curiosity to see if he would respond to me.

“You’re gradually going crazy.”

I don’t know exactly when I started having these delusions, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to control. Especially whenever Lee Chaeha’s gaze or reactions confuse me, it’s hard to suppress the impulse to check his intentions one by one.

I let out a sigh and bought two sets of lunch boxes outside the Prosecutor’s Office. I returned to the office around 7:00 PM.

Under the fluorescent light, Lee Chaeha was looking at the monitor in the same posture as when I left an hour ago. That sincere attitude, regardless of whether someone was watching or not, shook me every time. Whether I came back in three hours or four, Lee Chaeha would have been sitting in that same position.

“Have you seen a lot?”

“For now, there is no record of calls with a burner phone. I don’t see anything to be gained from the miner’s mobile phone call logs. I have just received and started viewing the call records for the base station near the site where the Koryo-in’s body was discarded.”

“Eat something before you do that.”

“Thank you. I will look while I eat.”

“You’re slow at eating as it is, so when are you planning to eat while looking at that? Eat quickly, then do it.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Lee Chaeha put down the blue thimble that covered his fingertip, stretched lightly, and stood up. Because of that, his shirt popped out from his dress pants, but he returned it to its place with careful hands.

I placed the shopping bag with the lunch boxes on his desk and returned to my seat. Lee Chaeha asked.

“I was thinking of going to buy coffee now; should I buy one for you too, Prosecutor?”

“Sure. An iced Americano.”

“Yes, I’ll be right back.”

Lee Chaeha, who was sensitive to the cold, grabbed his coat even though he was just going down to the first floor of the same building, and left the office.

I waited for a long time to eat the lunch box together when Lee Chaeha returned, and my eyes accidentally landed on the thimble sitting on his desk. The bright blue thimble I had given him.

Suddenly, an uncontrollable impulse reared its head, and before I knew it, I stood up from my seat. As if drawn by magnetism, I slowly moved my steps toward Lee Chaeha’s seat.

I put the thimble Lee Chaeha had been using just a moment ago onto my finger. I had given him one a size smaller than what I used, so it hugged my finger quite tightly. It had only been two months since he started using it, but seeing how much paper he must have turned in that time, the tip of the thimble was already turning black.

I stared quietly at my hand.

“…There’s no way his body heat would remain.”

Even so, I repeatedly moved the thimble from my thumb to my index finger and then back to my thumb for no reason. I imagined Lee Chaeha’s smooth fingernails and his fingers stretching out without curves that would have filled the empty space of the thimble. I also thought of the white cigarette that often sat between those fingers and his lips sucking on its tip. Even his wounded face, crying while getting angry at me yesterday, overlapped in my mind.

I bit my lower lip gently.

“I’ve been staring at Lee Chaeha for too long, too.”