Prosecutor Kim Seo-Jin - Chapter 206

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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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Growing Wings (5)
Kim Eun-beom swallowed hard. But he kept his mouth shut. There was no way to predict how he’d die if he spilled everything.
“Never mind. There are plenty of others who’ll talk without you.”
“…?”
I turned my body. Then I opened my mouth to Jang Seok-min’s subordinates, who were waiting in the wings.
“Take them.”
Jang Seok-min’s subordinates—former thugs. Vicious men who’d expanded their influence overseas.
They rushed into the abandoned warehouse with baseball bats and wooden clubs in hand.
The men gathered inside the warehouse had no chance against the sudden assault.
“What, what is this?”
“Ugh!”
“Stop hitting!”
“Damn it!”
“Aaaaagh!”
I could see their shadows cast on the floor as sparks erupted from the oil drum.
Those trying to escape were caught and beaten mercilessly with wooden clubs.
My gaze turned back to Kim Eun-beom.
His pupils trembled uncontrollably.
He’d met many police officers over the years, but never ones who worked with such brutal efficiency.
They were really beating them as if they meant to kill.
Screams continued to echo.
“Aaaaagh!”
I pulled a cigarette from Kim Eun-beom’s pocket. Then I placed it between his lips, lit it kindly, and opened my mouth.
“You know those guys aren’t police, right?”
“Y-you’re a prosecutor. A prosecutor can’t do this!”
“You’re human, aren’t you? Don’t you know humans shouldn’t do things like that? I’ve been rolling around in this world for years, but you’re the first trash I’ve ever seen. Kidnapping your girlfriend, selling her off.”
“I-I’ll report this. That a prosecutor beat someone!”
I laughed and shook my head.
“Go ahead. But who do you think the world will believe—you or me?”
The answer was obvious. No one would believe the word of Kim Eun-beom, who’d sold out his own girlfriend.
Just as Kim Eun-beom squeezed his eyes shut, the warehouse suddenly fell silent.
The situation had been resolved.
Jang Seok-min’s subordinates dragged the men by their hair.
As Kim Eun-beom’s pupils filled with terror, I turned my body.
And I headed toward the warehouse where the situation had been settled.
Cigarette butts lay scattered on the floor, and soju bottles rolled about.
The image of them laughing and chattering seemed to linger before my eyes.
I crushed a cigarette butt underfoot and headed toward the space being used as an office.
I opened the door and looked inside—a woman lay collapsed.
I knelt on one knee and examined her face.
Dark bruises covered her body. Her lips were split open, painful scabs crusted over them.
But whether from the drugs or shock, she remained unconscious, only writhing in pain.
‘Thank God….’
I couldn’t be certain, but it didn’t appear she’d been sexually assaulted.
Her clothes were wrinkled and covered in dust, but the buttons on her blouse remained intact.
I exhaled heavily as I finished examining the missing person and rose to my feet.
Then I walked back out of the warehouse and stood before the men who’d been dragged out.
‘Damn….’
Looking at their faces, a sigh escaped me involuntarily.
All of them had youthful features.
At most in their mid-twenties, they trembled with fear in their boyish faces.
“We, we don’t know anything. We just did what we were told. Please, just this once. From now on….”
“Jin Gyeong-sik. That’s right? The one who bullied a friend in middle school until he committed suicide.”
“…What?”
He blinked his eyes.
He couldn’t understand how I knew his name.
My gaze shifted to the side.
“And Kim Dong-man? Dropped out of high school, got drunk at bars, assaulted and confined people at nearby tables.”
“…!”
“And Park Jung-hyun. Been running a prostitution ring since high school, now trafficking people?”
All of them had been in the same juvenile detention center as Kim Eun-beom.
Those who’d walked free without severe punishment because they were minors.
Bastards who took the law as a joke.
“But here’s the problem. You’re all adults now.”
“…!”
“Article 289 of the Criminal Act states this: Anyone who traffics a person for the purpose of labor exploitation, sexual exploitation, or organ harvesting shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than 15 years.”
“…!”
“But you have to listen to the entire law in this country. If you kidnapped someone and didn’t just sell them quietly but beat or killed them, that’s imprisonment for not more than 25 years.”
“…!”
“I’ll make sure you breathe fresh air after you’re forty. And if possible, I’ll have you sentenced to life imprisonment.”
Their eyes widened in horror.
To someone in their early twenties, the number forty loomed impossibly large.
They couldn’t even imagine themselves at forty.
It felt like an eternity.
And now, life imprisonment.
My voice continued, cruel and relentless in their ears.
“That much, I promise you.”
“We didn’t hit her! We didn’t kill her! We’ll do better! We’ll really live righteously from now on!”
Their voices rang out desperately.
But the lower my voice became, the more their desperation grew.
“I’m sorry, but I’m someone who believes people don’t change….”
“No, that’s not true! Really!”
“Fine then. I’ll give just one of you a break. Whoever talks first, whoever confesses first.”
Of course, I had no intention of keeping that promise.
But they all started babbling without restraint, falling over each other to speak.
If they’d kept their mouths shut, the case might have ended with just the kidnapping of one of Kim Eun-beom’s girlfriends. But their loose tongues unraveled every crime, layer by layer.
*
*
*
“Damn it!”
The next day, at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.
Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo walked down the hallway with a twisted expression.
“Where the hell is Seo Jin?”
At those words, a prosecutor behind him scurried forward and took his place beside him. Then, bowing obsequiously, he answered.
“He hasn’t arrived yet, sir.”
Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo twisted his wrist to check the time.
It was 10 a.m. The sun was high in the sky, and he still hadn’t shown up.
“That lunatic—tell him to come straight to my office when he arrives.”
“Yes, sir.”
Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo was planning to find fault with Seo Jin the moment he arrived.
Thinking about last night, when he’d rushed all the way to Pocheon and conducted dog training under the moonlight—it was unforgivable.
And there was another reason Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo’s nerves were on edge.
The briefing scheduled for 1 p.m. today.
He had to publicize the missing female college student case and deliver a hollow story.
‘Damn it.’
He was about to become a scapegoat before the entire nation.
‘God, I’m losing my mind.’
The problem was that Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo himself couldn’t be certain of the truth in this case.
Did the perpetrator actually exist?
Or had the female college students simply run away as a group?
In a situation where everything was suspicious, his mind was filled with confusion.
*
*
*
Excluding Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo, the members of the Serial Missing Persons Special Task Force were smoking in the outdoor smoking area.
“You know about today’s briefing, right? Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun called in the reporters thinking he’d caught the culprit. We thought it’d be a celebration, but it turned into a funeral.”
“This is insane. That stupid stunt yesterday was Seo Jin’s doing, wasn’t it?”
“That bastard’s always like this. Playing detective, poking his nose here and there. How many people suffer because of him? If he’s going to act like that, he should quit being a prosecutor and become a cop instead.”
Prosecutor Jang Ji-hyuk stepped up beside them.
With a cigarette in his mouth, Prosecutor Jang Ji-hyuk glanced at them and opened his mouth to speak.
“Seo Jin hasn’t interfered with anyone’s work, and he completes his own duties throughout the night. Shouldn’t we be praising him for his diligence instead?”
“What?”
“Isn’t it strange to be talking behind a junior prosecutor’s back in the smoking room?”
“You bastard!”
The prosecutors glared at Jang Ji-hyuk as if they wanted to kill him.
But Jang Ji-hyuk didn’t back down. Instead, he smirked.
“Come on, don’t just talk—if you don’t like it, throw a punch. We’re going to exile anyway, so why don’t we go together? We can fish, eat sashimi. Oh, I’ll buy the sashimi.”
Jang Ji-hyuk was needling Kim Yun-hwan relentlessly.
Exile seemed almost certain at this point.
The prosecutors, their faces twisted in anger, flicked their cigarette butts into the ashtray and brushed past him.
“Keep your head down while you’re still here.”
“No way. Since I’m leaving anyway, I’m going to set off a bomb.”
With those words, Jang Ji-hyuk’s eyes transformed. He stared at his senior prosecutors as if he would devour them, whispering in a low voice.
“So be careful. You don’t want to get hit by shrapnel and die.”
“…!”
The prosecutors bit their lips. But that was all. They left the room muttering something about avoiding filth.
Jang Ji-hyuk lit a cigarette and exhaled smoke along with a sigh.
‘What is he doing?’
Word had spread throughout the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office that Seo Jin hadn’t come to work yet.
Since Seo Jin never arrived late, Jang Ji-hyuk’s eyes were tinged with worry.
*
*
*
12:50 PM.
Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo adjusted his appearance in the mirror.
It was time to face the reporters.
Curses kept slipping from Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo’s lips.
Just then, a prosecutor opened the door and poked his head in.
“Chief Prosecutor, it’s time.”
Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo crumpled the investigation results statement on the table in his grip and turned his body.
“Let’s go. Let’s go get humiliated.”
Just as he was about to step outside, his phone vibrated with a sharp buzz.
The caller was Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun.
Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo hurriedly brought the phone to his ear.
“Yes, Prosecutor General.”
-I felt sorry for calling the reporters on my own, so I’ve been thinking about how to keep you from being embarrassed, how to make people say you did well. And I found a way.
Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun’s voice came through the receiver in an unhurried tone.
Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo nodded, waiting for what would come next.
“Please tell me.”
-Make this case sound as serious as possible. Tell them the prosecution didn’t miss the mark—there’s a dangerous criminal operating out there.
“…!”
When a serial killer prowls the streets, people don’t curse the investigative agencies.
Crushed beneath the weight of terror, they simply wait for the perpetrator to be caught as quickly as possible.
—That’s all it takes.
Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo’s eyes gleamed.
An escape route seemed to materialize before me. And it felt as though I had taken a step closer to the Prosecutor General’s inner circle.
“Thank you!”
Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo ended the call with vigor. Then I hurled the statement I’d been holding back onto the table with force and opened my mouth.
“Hey, bring me a pen.”
The plan was to revise the statement—to paint the perpetrator as ruthlessly as possible, packaging him as something formidable.
*
*
*
“Recently, human trafficking targeting women in their twenties has been occurring frequently across the nation.”
In the briefing room, Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo, standing before the journalists, had deliberately chosen the broader term “women in their twenties” instead of “college student,” and selected “human trafficking” instead of “missing persons.”
Because I knew that was more sensational and effective.
Moreover, I had dragged in an unrelated case and sprinkled MSG on the narrative.
“A few days ago, discovered in Jeju….”
There was a corpse that had washed ashore in the waters off Jeju.
It was identified as a woman in her early thirties, and it had nothing to do with this case.
But Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo connected the incidents and manufactured fear.
“The Prosecutor’s Office will mobilize all investigative personnel to arrest the perpetrator as soon as possible….”
The briefing lasted about ten minutes, and the journalists tapped away at their keyboards with tense expressions.
Observing their faces, Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo exulted inwardly.
‘Perfect.’
Now I was escaping the scapegoat role.
There was the task of catching the perpetrator, but that didn’t matter.
‘Catching the perpetrator is the police’s job.’
I just needed to criticize the police’s incompetence appropriately.
Then the one being cursed would be the police.
Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo had no intention of breaking a sweat—just reaping the rewards.
“I’ll take questions.”
The journalists raised their hands in unison, eager and alert.
*
*
*
“Ah, have it uploaded.”
Congressman Baek Ki-ho instructed his Chief of Staff with a pleased smile.
The moment the Prosecutor’s Office briefing ended, articles blaming the government’s incompetence would flood the portal websites in an instant.
Women trembling in anxiety—and the president sleeps soundly?
A resolve that if he became president, he would double the number of CCTVs across the nation to ensure such crimes never occurred again.
“The article has been published, sir.”
Congressman Baek Ki-ho opened his mouth upon hearing the Chief of Staff’s report.
“Where exactly was the location of the last missing person case? I need to visit the scene with reporters in tow. Get it arranged.”
Congressman Baek Ki-ho picked up his jacket and turned his gaze toward the television.
Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo appeared on the screen.
“When I become president, I’ll have to get that fellow promoted.”
But something seemed off about the figure on the screen.
As Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo was fielding questions from reporters, someone hurried up and whispered something in his ear.
Chief Prosecutor Lee Seok-woo’s face contorted in anguish in an instant.
And from his lips came words no one wanted to hear.
-W-we’ve… apprehended the suspects.

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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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