Prosecutor Kim Seo-Jin - Chapter 140

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Keeping My Mouth Shut (3)
Kim Jae-hoon’s face contorted in an instant.
D.R.3 Publishing—a place Kim Jae-hoon knew all too well.
He’d received pocket money from them, purchased a building with their help, and in return, he’d covered for them.
Collusion, plain and simple.
The consequences would be devastating.
“Damn it.”
Kim Jae-hoon growled low, his teeth clenched.
The usual composed expression he wore had vanished without a trace.
Even as the situation unfolded, the news anchor on screen continued speaking.
-D.R.3 Publishing employees strongly resisted, claiming freedom of expression, but Prosecutor Seo Jin stated there would be no compromise with those guilty of corruption….
The screen showed investigators forcing their way inside.
It was absolute chaos.
Breaking things, fighting, pulling people back—a scene of war.
But at the edge of the frame, Seo Jin was visible.
While they fought and struggled, he casually smashed through a window and entered.
-Prosecutor Seo Jin has secured the publishing company’s accounting ledgers, tax authority reports, CCTV footage, and the cell phones of company executives….
Kim Jae-hoon’s fists clenched involuntarily.
His contact information was certainly stored in those phones.
As Kim Jae-hoon’s pupils trembled with anxiety, the anchor’s urgent voice was drawing to a close.
-The prosecution also announced plans to conduct seizure and search operations on the publishing company’s accounting firm and the relevant tax office.
Kim Jae-hoon felt a chill of doubt.
‘Why all of a sudden?’
Seizure and search of the accounting firm and tax office following the publishing company.
Such actions by the prosecution carried two possible meanings.
-Either they were uprooting the entire operation.
-Or they were showing the public how diligently they were investigating.
And in this situation, it was clearly the former—uprooting everything.
If there had been a scandal connected to the publishing company, one might have dismissed it as a ‘prosecution spectacle.’
But this wasn’t a spectacle.
Without any warning whatsoever, they’d suddenly targeted the publishing company and were tearing into it.
Moreover.
‘Why did the prosecution act independently without alerting the police?’
Reaching this conclusion, Kim Jae-hoon swallowed hard, and his pupils began to shake uncontrollably.
The fact that the prosecution had conducted indiscriminate seizures without police assistance meant….
‘Damn it.’
Kim Jae-hoon understood exactly where Seo Jin’s blade was pointed.
‘…At me.’
Kim Jae-hoon quickly grabbed his phone.
He needed to contact Anna Roux.
Kim Jae-hoon had no idea that Anna Roux had gone underground.
That’s why he believed he could contact high-ranking officials through Anna Roux’s connections—people powerful enough to stop Seo Jin.
It was while Kim Jae-hoon was frantically searching through his contact list.
“One bowl of ox bone soup, please. And a bottle of soju first.”
A familiar voice came from the front.
Kim Jae-hoon’s movements froze.
He squinted his eyes and slowly looked ahead.
“…!”
Seo Jin was sitting there.
After receiving the soju bottle from the shop owner, Seo Jin spoke calmly to Kim Jae-hoon as if nothing had happened.
“The tax accountant handling the publishing company’s tax affairs is in Gangnam-gu. I should eat before the search and seizure, after all.”
“….”
“I came after hearing you were here. So don’t ask how I knew. You know the reason—I filed the arrest warrant right away. Ah, there’s no greater humiliation than being interrogated by fellow police officers.”
“….”
“I’ll eat and then go in, so have a drink with me.”
As Seo Jin tilted the bottle, the liquor streamed into the empty glass.
Kim Jae-hoon couldn’t utter a single word.
He could only stare rigidly at the glass being filled.
The moment the glass filled seemed to move in slow motion for Kim Jae-hoon.
In that brief span, he was reflecting on his entire life.
How had it come to this?
What had gone wrong?
Everything began with greed.
The desire to escape poverty and those who exploited that desire.
Himself, unable to turn away from the money thrown at him.
And just as all the glasses brimmed, Seo Jin set down the bottle and spoke.
“You’re a police officer. Let’s finish it cleanly.”
At Seo Jin’s words, Kim Jae-hoon drained the glass completely.
He set the glass down with a sharp clink and made his decision.
He would say nothing.
He would invoke his right to silence and protect their organization.
That way, when he got out after a few years, he wouldn’t fall into the abyss of poverty.
Greed had not ended.
Prison was just a moment, but life was long.
“Yes. Let’s go.”
*
*
*
“I’d like to ask you frankly. How many people in politics are connected to those who took bribes from the publishing company?”
“….”
“Only I’ll be caught. Those people won’t even get a scratch, right?”
We were in an interrogation room at Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.
Kim Jae-hoon, a police sergeant, maintained his aggrieved demeanor throughout, stubbornly insisting on the old adage: money talks, poverty walks.
“That’s how the world works, isn’t it? A guy who took tens of billions sleeps with his feet up! But someone like me who took a few billion will be searching for an empty cell in the detention center.”
“….”
“Because you’re worried about the political ramifications if you touch those people, you’re just grabbing some defenseless cop to wrap this up, aren’t you?”
I had no intention of listening to more whining.
I shook my head and opened my mouth.
“You don’t need to worry about our investigation. You know who Anna Roux is, don’t you?”
“I don’t.”
“The publishing house’s representative is just a figurehead, but Anna Roux—an illegal immigrant woman—is the actual boss, isn’t she? We have evidence she’s been taking bribes for a long time. You’re telling me you don’t know?”
“Yes, I don’t know.”
“A foreigner—an illegal immigrant at that—is sucking the blood of our citizens to survive. Yet a person paid with taxpayer money….”
Kim Jae-hoon, a police inspector, let out an incredulous chuckle and spoke.
“Prosecutor, I’ve told you repeatedly. I don’t know anything. That’s enough. When my lawyer arrives, talk to them.”
I could read Kim Jae-hoon’s mind.
His tightly sealed lips and hardened gaze showed he intended to take everything on himself and go to prison.
But I wasn’t impatient.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
It didn’t matter whether Kim Jae-hoon opened his mouth or not.
Kim Jae-hoon seemed to think he was quite an important figure.
But unfortunately, Kim Jae-hoon was merely their puppet.
And to me, he was nothing but bait to corner Anna Roux.
This interrogation itself was a show for their benefit.
Over ten hours of interrogation.
They must be dying to know what conversation is happening in here.
‘Then….’
The lawyer who would arrive soon.
There was a very high probability that this lawyer was also in bed with them.
Shortly after, the lawyer entered.
A business card on the table.
Kim Sung-won, a lawyer from JG Law Office.
I glanced at the card and sent a secret message to Jang Ji-hyuk.
-Please check what cases this person and this law office have handled so far.
Jang Ji-hyuk was a prosecutor from the police academy who had joined hands with me to investigate the loan shark boss.
He was the shadow operating behind me, the one who would seize their throats.
I set my phone down on the chair and looked at the lawyer.
Everything I said from now on would be conveyed directly to them through this lawyer.
So I thought carefully.
How could I make them feel the gravity of the situation? How could I make them realize that simply hiding their tails wouldn’t solve the problem? How could I force them to show their faces and bare their teeth?
A chain of questions, each one leading to the next.
After the lengthy interrogation concluded, Inspector Kim Jae-hoon was transferred to the Detention Center.
I dangled an appetizing bait before the lawyer gathering his briefcase.
“Who is the Chairman?”
At the abrupt question, the lawyer’s gaze snapped toward me.
“…Excuse me?”
A scene I had witnessed before through psychometry.
The man who had entered disguised as a Delivery Person had said it.
“The Boss told me he wouldn’t report this to the Chairman. You understand what that means, right?”
The words exchanged between Anna Roux and that man.
If I hadn’t been observing the situation at that moment, if I hadn’t heard it directly from them, it would have been absolutely impossible to know—yet I uttered it casually, as though it were nothing.
“It seems impressive. The fact that you mobilized a steel briefcase and even a delivery company just to extract one woman…. Oh, you don’t know, do you? Just pretend you didn’t hear what I said. I was just curious and asking.”
If my words reached their ears now, they would certainly conclude there was an internal informant.
They were a massive dot organization that appeared to have no connecting links.
Therefore, the higher one climbed toward the apex, the stronger the bonds of mutual interest would be.
But they, too, were human.
None of them truly trusted one another.
If I severed that weak link, they would crumble.
And I saw the lawyer’s eyes flicker for an instant.
*
*
*
At that very moment.
A darkened room concealed by curtains.
A man was taking a phone call.
“Understood. Please continue your hard work.”
The man ended the call.
A sigh escaped his lips.
‘Anna Roux….’
The man’s conversation partner was the lawyer who had just been in the Interrogation Room.
And what the lawyer had said was shocking.
It was information that would be nearly impossible for Seo Jin to know without hearing it directly from Anna Roux.
‘I thought it was merely a ploy to drag us out….’
The man had seen CCTV footage from days ago of Anna Roux and Seo Jin passing each other.
He had assumed it was just a trivial strategy of Seo Jin trying to follow a lead, nothing more—but now it was different.
The man, who had been lost in thought for a moment, picked up the phone.
“Call in a cleaner. Something to clean up is Anna Roux. No, a blade is too crude. Do it in a refined way. Even if it’s not certain, that’s fine. It will serve as a warning—to that prosecutor bastard too.”
The man set down the phone.
Then he rose from his chair and walked toward the window.
As he slightly parted the curtain, Seoul’s night skyline came into full view.
The man gazed down at the night cityscape, his voice tinged with bitterness as he murmured.
“They say a person’s life has seasons of flame and seasons of ash, don’t they? Will you become ash today? Or will you continue living in your season of flame?”
*
*
*
“That’s interesting.”
Seo Jin sat across from Jang Ji-hyuk, a prosecutor.
Jang Ji-hyuk had brought the lawyer’s background, and Seo Jin shook his head in disbelief.
Most of the cases the lawyer had handled so far involved disputes between local business owners or organized crime syndicates.
Jang Ji-hyuk also sensed something was off.
“Right? It’s a case that could ruin someone’s life if handled poorly, yet he hired an incomprehensible lawyer. That’s why I looked into what JG Law Office is. But it’s a place with no major accomplishments. They’re not even specialists in cases like this.”
A police superintendent would know plenty of lawyers he could work with.
Yet at a moment when a single word could tilt one’s entire life, he entrusted his case to a place no one had ever heard of.
Even ordinary people scramble desperately to find the best lawyer possible, so this made no sense.
My suspicion that the lawyer was connected to those criminals had solidified into certainty.
‘Then….’
What I had said had actually reached those criminals’ ears.
I slowly lifted my gaze toward Jang Ji-hyuk.
“Please investigate how the lawyers at this office accumulated their wealth.”
“You smell something?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Then I’ll verify this. What about you?”
“I’ll continue tracking that woman, Anna Roux, like I mentioned before.”
“Contact me immediately if anything comes up.”
While Jang Ji-hyuk was smiling pleasantly, my phone vibrated.
The caller was the bodyguard who had been watching Anna Roux.
When he was doing surveillance outside Anna Roux’s apartment, he seemed quite exhausted, but recently he’s grown to enjoy it and sounds delighted.
He jokes that taking photos of Anna Roux meeting men and going to various places is just like working at an errand service.
This call would likely be another report about where Anna Roux went with some man.
Thinking this, I brought the phone to my ear.
“Yes, this is Kim Seo-jin….”
-Sir, there’s a fire!
“…What?”
The bodyguard’s voice continued urgently.
-That woman came out in a hurry while on a call! And she went into a two-story karaoke room in a residential area, and there’s a fire. She couldn’t get out! The fire trucks haven’t arrived yet…. Oh, they’re here now!
*
*
*
-…A fire has broken out in a three-story commercial building! The fire started in a karaoke room on the second floor of the building. This establishment has been operating illegally without proper permits, and lacks basic safety equipment such as sprinklers….
The reporter’s voice continued.
-…The entire building was constructed with urethane foam, which accelerated the fire’s spread. While we need to conduct further investigation into where the fire started and its cause, we’re currently estimating it was a fire caused by electrical short-circuiting.
By the time I arrived, the building was already reduced to ashes.
A bodyguard stood beside me as I stared at the building with bewildered eyes.
“What about Anna Roux?”
“…She’s alive. Fortunately, miraculously so.”
The bodyguard exhaled a complicated sigh before speaking.
He relayed that a firefighter had carried her out unconscious and that she had been transported to the hospital.
I clenched my teeth and lifted my head.
Then I looked at the building where smoke still lingered.
‘What on earth….’
If I estimate the cause of the fire, it would be electrical short-circuiting.
The moment Anna Roux entered, fire suddenly broke out.
Something doesn’t connect.
‘Anna Roux is one of their targets for elimination. Could it really be a short circuit? Or arson? But why would they bother with arson?’
If they had wanted to ensure Anna Roux’s death, they wouldn’t have gone through such a troublesome method.
As I had anticipated while monitoring Anna Roux, sending a few thugs would be more certain.
‘Could it be a coincidence? Am I overthinking this?’
I decided to move closer using the fire as cover to investigate further.
I pushed through the onlookers and moved forward.
When my shoulder brushed against this person and that person, the world suddenly drained into black and white.
*
*
*
A man pretending to be drunk stood at the counter.
He placed down a fifty-thousand-won bill and opened his mouth to the owner.
“Could you get me three packs of cigarettes? Keep the change.”
The owner left eagerly.
But the moment the owner disappeared, the man who had asked for cigarettes pulled a pack from his pocket.
He put a cigarette in his mouth, looked around, and chuckled.
“No CCTV, no way I’ll get caught. Perfect day for arson.”
*
*
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Thus the brief psychometry ended.
My gaze slowly turned to the side.
A man with a cigarette in his mouth, watching the fire.
The same man I had seen in the psychometry.
I grabbed his shoulder.
“Hey?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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