Prosecutor Kim Seo-Jin - Chapter 66

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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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My Side? (1)
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“The young star of Criminal Division 2 has arrived.”
As I entered, Chief Prosecutor Ji Se-heon opened his mouth with genuine pleasure.
The other prosecutors chuckled in response.
“I acknowledge it.”
“They say even a rat hole gets sunlight eventually, and Prosecutor Kim was our sunlight. Ha ha ha!”
“When I think about how we used to get cursed for not earning our keep, it brings tears to my eyes….”
“But you’re still not earning your keep now, are you?”
“Hey, fact violence is grounds for arrest. Didn’t you know?”
Until now, Criminal Division 2 had been the chaff.
The cases we mainly handled were corpses discovered on mountains where identification was nearly impossible.
Murder was certain, but with nothing to show for it, we had to call for case closure.
It wasn’t that we never caught perpetrators.
But when we did, they were always big fish.
They’d bring dozens of lawyers down from Seoul and slip away like loaches.
We’d miss them, again and again.
The words falling from the judge’s lips were always acquittal or suspended sentence.
People had even started asking, “Are they getting paid to let them go?”
But this time was different.
I had grabbed the Police Chief by the collar.
I dragged in the suspect the police had missed, trampling him underfoot.
Moreover, everyone involved—from victim to criminal—was garbage.
The media had shone a spotlight on this case, and I’d even heard rumors they were planning a special feature.
Thanks to that, the atmosphere had completely shifted.
“This shouldn’t be written off as mere luck, should it?”
“If luck continues, it becomes skill. I acknowledge it.”
“But isn’t it strange? Usually at times like this, people have the drive but hold back out of fear of getting scolded, right?”
“What else? He’s just crazy.”
“Sigh… I should have been a little crazy too.”
“You can’t afford to be crazy. I acknowledge it. It’s a difference in skill.”
Then Chief Prosecutor Ji Se-heon spoke up.
“How did you manage it? The fact that you brought a warrant means you were confident, right?”
“Ah, that?”
I couldn’t honestly say, “I have an ability called psychometry.”
If I’d said something like that, they’d just mock me and curse me out.
So I brought out the story I’d prepared.
“The Hardware Store Owner said something like this: ‘He had a good build, and… ah, his hair was strange, like he was wearing a wig.’ So I checked every wig shop in Chuncheon. That’s when I heard that a certain soldier had bought a wig back in September of last year.”
Seo Jin continued speaking, his finger tracing the map beneath the table.
“And we focused on how the perpetrator planned a perfect crime—an airtight alibi.”
“….”
“The military base was conducting training here. By car, it’s less than twenty minutes to the crime scene.”
Seo Jin’s voice carried on for quite some time.
And when he finished speaking.
Chief Prosecutor Ji Se-heon narrowed his eyes toward the other prosecutors.
“You hear that? Gave up holidays, worked the scene after hours. That’s how you catch criminals. Learn from this, you bastards.”
Receiving such praise in front of senior colleagues was genuinely embarrassing.
And soon came the backhanded remarks.
“From now on, we’ll call you Prosecutor Seo Jin.”
“How could anyone live with themselves if they couldn’t catch criminals….”
Of course, it was said in jest.
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At that moment, at the Dongnam District Prosecutor’s Office.
Lee Jae-seung, Chief Prosecutor of Criminal Division 1 in Dongnam County, looked ahead.
A slovenly-looking man stood before him.
“Your name is Kim Yun-hwan?”
“Yes.”
Chief Prosecutor Lee Jae-seung nodded and flipped through the documents with a serious expression.
Watching this, Kim Yun-hwan thought to himself.
‘Now he’s going to ask about my father.’
There was one question that followed him everywhere after becoming a prosecutor.
“Your father is Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun, isn’t he?”
After that, everything—his assignments, his life—became smooth sailing.
The weight of the name Kim Young-jun was one of his greatest weapons.
Kim Yun-hwan turned his gaze toward the window, waiting for Chief Prosecutor Lee Jae-seung’s predictable question.
In the distance, the sea was visible.
The weather was so fine it sparkled.
‘Not bad. I’ll think of this as a vacation.’
My father would never abandon me for long.
After I lay low for a while and pretend to come to my senses, he’d transfer me back to Seoul.
Along with a decent position.
‘Father has always been that way.’
He’d scold me while pulling strings for me.
A few beatings hurt, but that was all there was to it.
No parent is stronger than their child, and this time would be no different.
‘The sea…. In summer, plenty of pretty girls come here too.’
Dongnam County has more prosecutors than its size warrants.
That’s why it’s famous for having little work.
As long as it doesn’t reach my father’s ears, this place is paradise.
Kim Yun-hwan had been thinking about enjoying himself here.
But then.
“Seo Jin is a relative of yours?”
An unexpected name had popped up.
Not asking about his father, but about Seo Jin….
Kim Yun-hwan found himself asking back without thinking.
“…Seo Jin?”
“Yeah, aren’t you cousins with Seo Jin?”
Kim Yun-hwan stood dazed at the unexpected question.
Then he nodded.
“That’s correct. Prosecutor Seo Jin is my younger cousin.”
“So that’s how it is?”
The atmosphere was developing differently than expected.
He should have been groveling while mentioning his father’s name.
‘Why suddenly Seo Jin?’
Chief Prosecutor Lee Jae-seung spoke with an expectant gleam in his eyes.
“Then can I have hope?”
This place was Dongnam County, the prosecution office of the exiled.
Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun kept his distance from the people at this office.
Getting too close would only invite misunderstandings.
So Chief Prosecutor Lee Jae-seung had no interest in Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun either.
His thoughts were fixed on one thing alone.
‘That bastard Lee Myung-soo escaped because of Seo Jin, didn’t he?’
Chief Prosecutor Lee Jae-seung also wanted to escape this place by meeting a lottery-like subordinate.
But then Kim Yun-hwan had arrived.
‘His father is Kim Young-jun, and his relative is Seo Jin.’
Plant beans and beans grow; plant red beans and red beans grow.
Even rotten fish are still fish, and a tiger would never give birth to a cat.
That’s what Chief Prosecutor Lee Jae-seung thought.
And he continued speaking as he unfolded the newspaper.
“As soon as Seo Jin went to Chuncheon, he cleared a case. The Police Chief, the Violent Crimes Team Leader, sex trafficking operations, and the serial killer—all swept away at once.”
Kim Yun-hwan’s eyes shifted toward the newspaper.
The face of the Police Chief bowing his head was visible.
The name ‘Prosecutor Seo Jin’ was also written in the article text.
‘Damn it.’
Kim Yun-hwan could guess why the Chief Prosecutor had unfolded the newspaper.
‘You try it too.’
And his prediction proved correct.
Lee Jae-seung placed a document on the desk and spoke.
“This is our unsolved cases list. You focus on just this.”
“…!”
“Seo Jin started here too.”
Kim Yun-hwan swallowed hard and took the document in hand.
With trembling fingers, I flipped through page after page.
A curse escaped unbidden.
‘Damn it….’
Why were these cases unsolved?
Because even with hundreds of police officers mobilized and every inch combed through, no answers emerged—only questions remained.
‘How the hell am I supposed to handle this!’
Then Lee Jae-seung gently gripped Kim Yun-hwan’s shoulder and spoke softly.
“You can do it, right? There’s no younger brother better than his older brother, is there?”
One could tell from the gleam in Lee Jae-seung’s eyes.
A man like this would torment you terribly if you failed to meet his expectations.
He would dismiss me as inferior to Seo Jin.
‘Damn it, I thought this was a vacation and I stepped in shit.’
It was all Seo Jin’s fault.
Kim Yun-hwan clenched his teeth.
‘Seo Jin!’
Kim Yun-hwan furrowed his brow and headed to his office.
As I burst through the door, the investigator and administrative officer greeted me.
“Hello, I’m Lim Jung-taek.”
Lim Jung-taek, who had worked with Seo Jin, was now assigned as my investigator.
Since Seo Jin had transferred to the District Prosecutor’s Office, his assigned prosecutor position had opened up, so the reassignment was natural.
The administrative officer was in the same situation.
Though both greeted me courteously, I merely nodded in response.
I settled into my desk, emanating a cold atmosphere.
There was no time for pleasantries and smiles right now.
‘Unsolved cases….’
This field was small and rumors spread fast.
And if I failed….
“There is a younger brother better than his older brother.”
Lee Jae-seung was the type to spread such news around.
And if that news reached my father….
‘I can’t let that happen.’
I didn’t want to disappoint my father.
I couldn’t allow him to hear that I was inferior to Seo Jin.
‘Let me see what I can do.’
Kim Yun-hwan began flipping through the documents with practiced efficiency.
Murder, murder, murder….
Despite a conviction rate approaching one hundred percent, there were far too many homicides, and the files were crammed with unsolved cases.
No matter how I examined them, there seemed to be no solution.
‘Seo Jin managed it….’
Where would a prosecutor handling thousands upon thousands of cases find the time to concentrate on cold cases?
‘I can do it.’
If I could pull it off, I’d receive the same recognition as Seo Jin.
‘When you think about it, all he did was work hard and stumble backward into catching a rat, right?’
That’s what Kim Yun-hwan told himself.
And.
‘If there’s no perpetrator, I can just create one.’
He was entertaining a thought he shouldn’t have.
After all, if someone deserved to disappear from society, no one would complain about locking them away in prison.
Even if caught, I could slip away by blaming investigative error or the police.
‘I’m not saying I’d do it from the start. But if, truly if, I can’t solve it….’
As these twisted thoughts spiraled endlessly upward, Kim Yun-hwan’s gaze froze on a single document.
‘Huh? This one… might actually work?’
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Seo Jin was leaving the Chief Prosecutor’s Office and heading toward his workspace.
Receiving an embarrassingly excessive amount of praise was its own kind of ordeal.
It wasn’t easy to acknowledge everyone who gave me a thumbs up each time we passed.
Then my phone vibrated.
The caller was Investigator Lim Jung-taek.
“Yes, Investigator.”
-Are you enjoying life in Chuncheon?
“Not really. I miss you, Investigator. Haha.”
Seo Jin answered the call with genuine warmth.
Our time together had been brief, but he’d proven to be quite a capable person.
But then.
-Sigh….
A heavy sigh came through the receiver.
“…What’s wrong?”
-Prosecutor Kim Yun-hwan is your cousin, correct?
Kim Yun-hwan had been transferred to Dongnam County.
I knew that much, but the investigator calling was Lim Jung-taek.
This was interesting.
“Yes, but what about it?”
“Good grief, he comes in and immediately starts making a fuss about solving cold cases.”
I let out a hollow laugh.
Lee Jae-seung and Kim Yun-hwan had met.
A meeting of two pieces of filth.
I could see exactly what was happening.
But then.
“Do you remember? That case three years ago where a serial killer systematically murdered middle school girls.”
I remembered it.
A horrific case that started in Dongnam County and swept across all of Gangwon Province.
Six girls had been killed, and later it became so confusing whether the perpetrator was a single person or if copycat crimes had occurred.
“He’s asking for the case files to solve that one. I think he believes he’s the prosecutor. Honestly, he has no idea how hard you worked running around trying to catch that killer.”
Lim Jung-taek’s complaints continued for quite some time.
And when the call ended, I stopped in my tracks and fell into thought.
‘Kim Yun-hwan?’
Kim Yun-hwan lacked ability.
But his drive for success, bordering on sociopathic, was a carbon copy of Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun.
A man with no skill and no effort, yet desperate only for success.
‘But he’s obsessing over unsolved cases?’
Something felt ominous.
‘Is he trying to pin it on an innocent person?’
It shouldn’t be possible, but I couldn’t dismiss it as mere speculation.
His suppressed emotions were abnormal.
I stopped walking and turned around.
I needed to examine the case directly.
And moments later, I entered the records room and pulled out the case files to review them.
“-Murdered by strangulation.”
“-All discovered at playgrounds.”
“-Wearing school uniforms at the time of discovery. Semen test: negative.”
There was no evidence.
Being middle school students, there were no identifiable grudges either.
‘And he’s going to investigate by pointing to this?’
My earlier suspicions seemed to be becoming reality.
‘No matter how insane the bastard is….’
But if—and this was a big if—my concerns turned out to be true….
‘I could expose him.’
That was when it happened.
Buzz.
My phone vibrated.
The caller was Jo Woo-jae, the right-hand man of Prosecutor General Kim Young-jun.
As I brought the phone to my ear, my gaze turned cold.
“Yes, this is Seo Jin.”
A low voice filtered through the phone.
-Let’s have a drink.

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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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