The Lawyer Who Reads Tomorrow - Chapter 104
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 104
I should cut him off here.
“Representative Yoon Sang-do.”
I approached Yoon Sang-do, who had frozen as if he hadn’t expected such a firm rejection.
His face was already horribly contorted.
His bloodshot eyes, with tears streaming down, turned toward me.
“Let’s sit down first and speak calmly.”
“Wh-what… are you…?”
Yoon Sang-do’s lips trembled.
Now his swirling emotions were directed at me, sharp with hostility.
“…Ah, could it be? Is that it? Roh Tae-sung, you.”
He ground his teeth.
This was someone who had even knelt down as if he had decided to let go of everything when he came here.
In his glaring eyes as he gripped his worn pants tightly, there was despair deeper than anger.
“Was that it? You were planning to get rid of me, Sung-woo’s Mother and Sung-woo, all of us.”
When humans are continuously exposed to bad situations, they inevitably become defensive.
In fact, I had experienced such things quite often.
I had already spent more than ten years as a judge.
Watching countless people collapse due to circumstances wasn’t particularly unusual.
“How could that be?”
I answered on behalf of Roh Tae-sung, whose face had turned red from rising blood pressure.
Yoon Sang-do turned his wet gaze to glare at me.
“Then it’s you. It’s you.”
He raised one arm and roughly wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
His swollen skin turned even redder.
“I recognized you from when you shamelessly came to our showroom.”
He raised his voice in anger.
“Lee Jin-seop, yes. He told me everything. That you came to our showroom knowing everything.”
“It seems the message was delivered immediately.”
“Yes! Is that what matters? What matters is that you came to blackmail me!”
Blackmail.
If anything, wasn’t it Yoon Sang-do who had come here intoxicated with anger and forgotten his original purpose who was doing the blackmailing?
“I merely purchased a piece of furniture there.”
When I spoke as if trying to calm him, Yoon Sang-do burst out shouting.
“That’s exactly what I mean! You were trying to blackmail me, us!”
“Yes. That’s the problem. ‘Us.'”
His hands, which had been trembling with anger, stopped.
Yoon Sang-do, his face pale, froze without saying anything as if gauging how much I knew.
“It seems the Representative’s kindness became poison.”
“…What are you…?”
“Don’t you already know?”
Yoon Sang-do’s face contorted severely.
“I came to meet my friend, Roh Tae-sung. Not to meet some ignorant, green… lawyer like you!”
“If you had been honest from the beginning.”
“…What, what?”
“Representative Roh Tae-sung would probably have helped you, Yoon Sang-do.”
I pointed to the documents neatly arranged on the table.
“Representative Roh Tae-sung already knew that your situation was quite difficult.”
It was true.
Roh Tae-sung already knew how difficult things were for his old friend Yoon Sang-do.
When Yoon Sang-do’s wife developed a rare disease, Roh Tae-sung had helped him both financially and emotionally.
When Biga Furniture began to fail, it was Roh Tae-sung who had paid for all the wedding expenses of his son Yoon Sung-woo.
“Yet you, Yoon Sang-do, tried to steal even his father’s legacy that Representative Roh Tae-sung had been researching for so long.”
“…”
“You even filed a patent application.”
I handed him the materials I had obtained from the Patent Law Firm.
Yoon Sang-do’s eyes shook incessantly.
“You didn’t think it would remain hidden forever, did you?”
“…”
While Roh Tae-sung silently kept his mouth shut and controlled his emotions, tears flowed endlessly from Yoon Sang-do’s eyes.
“You, you don’t know…”
“You’re right. I don’t know since I’ve never lived your life.”
I withdrew my gaze from Yoon Sang-do and looked at Roh Tae-sung as if seeking permission.
“Representative.”
Roh Tae-sung is soft-hearted.
They resembled each other enough that I could tell he was Noh Hae-min’s father without being told.
However, no matter how soft-hearted his personality might be, Roh Tae-sung had built unwavering consumer trust as the representative of Wooa Furniture for all those years.
That’s not something just anyone can do.
It also meant he was someone who had experienced all kinds of hardships.
“…Alright.”
Permission came from him.
I now approached Yoon Sang-do, who was standing awkwardly in front of the sofa.
“What, what is it.”
Then I picked up Lee Jin-seop’s internal email usage records from before his resignation among the documents on the table and handed them to him.
“This is…”
“It’s exactly what you see.”
“…”
“Sometimes people make mistakes.”
Though whether it was a mistake or not isn’t really my concern.
Surprisingly, Lee Jin-seop used his internal email account as is to leak files to external email.
I don’t know if he wasn’t that thorough of a person, or if he really didn’t know.
Thanks to that, I didn’t waste time.
“…Lee Jin-seop…”
“Why are you acting surprised now.”
There were three accounts he particularly frequently sent emails to using his internal email account.
Yoon Sang-do bit his lips while looking at the document that clearly listed the three email accounts with attached files.
“…I don’t know.”
“You couldn’t possibly not know.”
While I can’t know the email contents, the leak path of the attached files is clearly shown.
Moreover, all the files Lee Jin-seop attached and sent were trade secrets that Roh Tae-sung’s direct Wooa Furniture employees managed separately through the internal network.
“So, so what if he did. What Lee Jin-seop sent, with just these file names…!”
“Representative Yoon Sang-do.”
So now Yoon Sang-do also had to face reality.
What Roh Tae-sung had been providing all this time was truly compassion for an old friend.
“If this case escalates and goes to investigation, it can be quickly confirmed through forensics.”
“…”
“So there’s no point in denying it now.”
I kindly pointed to the three accounts Lee Jin-seop had sent to.
“One is Lee Jin-seop’s own external email account.”
“…”
“One belongs to Representative Yoon Sang-do.”
“…That’s…”
“And the last one is.”
“…”
Now Yoon Sang-do looked up at me silently.
“Some design company.”
“Ah…”
Well, the account itself belonged to an unremarkable company.
Yoon Sang-do sighed and slumped down on the sofa.
“Stop, stop it. Stop…”
“It’s a design company account. I’ve confirmed it’s a paper company with no substance.”
“…”
Yoon Sang-do covered his face with both hands.
He must have been desperate too.
Yoon Sang-do was being used.
By whom?
I barely managed to hold back a sigh that was about to escape.
“To be honest, the real identity of this paper company was quite difficult to find.”
“…”
“So now you can stop suffering alone.”
Yoon Sang-do received investment through the paper company.
And the reason Yoon Sang-do tried to achieve results even by stealing Roh Tae-sung’s designs was ultimately pressure from the investment company.
Something like guilt throbbed and pressed down on my heart.
So in the end, the cause of this incident was.
[…It’s partly my fault too.]
…It was me.
* * *
“You sent it to these three email addresses?”
“Yeah. That’s what the log shows.”
Noh Hae-min said while organizing the log records.
The materials that Lee Jin-seop leaked were quite extensive.
Contracts, CAD files, design mockups, and so on.
They were mostly files that Roh Tae-sung’s design team managed as trade secrets.
“But if you trace the records back, the first one to start exchanging emails with Lee Jin-seop was this design company.”
“…Before Lee Jin-seop started exchanging emails with Yoon Sang-do?”
“Yeah. So to summarize… this design company and Lee Jin-seop maintained contact first, and then Yoon Sang-do appeared as a reference later.”
…Well, this is surprising the more I learn about it.
“Judging by the subject lines, it seems like…”
It’s understandable that the color drained from Noh Hae-min’s face.
When you put together these emails and their subject lines, ultimately, Lee Jin-seop was there before Yoon Sang-do.
“…Father’s company employee betrayed us first…”
I redirected his attention before Noh Hae-min could become even more serious.
“This company doesn’t actually exist, right?”
Moreover, it was a paper company.
Manager Yoon Ha-young, who had spent some time confirming this, nodded her head.
“Yes. We recovered and confirmed a few files that Lee Jin-seop had sent through Woo-ah Furniture’s IT team.”
“Yes.”
Yoon Ha-young pointed to the monitor.
As she scrolled through the screen, a table showing discrepancies between the contract names and account information was revealed.
“That design company from the beginning only has an account… I mean, only the email domain is confirmed, but there’s no actual entity.”
“And?”
“There’s no phone number either, and the representative’s name is John Baker, but the name seems too careless. When I looked into it, the representative’s photo also looks like it was created by AI. Also, there’s no portfolio or employees.”
A chuckle escaped me.
“The contract information shown in the recovered files is also under a different name, not the design company’s name…”
“And the account information is also inconsistent?”
“That’s right.”
So, as we expected, this design company seems to be a paper company established for some purpose.
“…Is there a good reason for that…”
Someone intentionally set up multiple shell companies to hide investment traces.
While this occasionally happened, wouldn’t it be too much trouble to go through all this hassle just for Yoon Sang-do’s single Viga Furniture?
“Does Viga Furniture look like an attractive property to investors?”
At my sudden question, Manager Yoon Ha-young fell into thought for a moment.
“Well… they did win an award at the International Furniture Exhibition recently, and thanks to that, Viga Furniture’s external evaluation seems to have improved.”
“What about before that?”
“To be honest, it was on a downward trend.”
Manager Yoon Ha-young continued while extracting and analyzing several pieces of data.
“Sales had dropped so much that it would be embarrassing to call Woo-ah Furniture, which was a competitor, a competitor anymore.”
They invested using a paper company just to acquire such a Viga Furniture?
There was something inconsistent about this.
“There seems to be some other reason.”
“…I think so too.”
Manager Yoon Ha-young finished speaking and organized the conversation we just had to produce a new report. To finish work so promptly like this.
“Is it possible to check other companies connected to that design company and paper company?”
“Ah, yes. I think…”
Manager Yoon Ha-young smiled.
What’s this, I have a bad feeling.
Whenever she smiled like that, it was usually when she was about to dump work on someone, wasn’t it?
“…Wasn’t our homepage administrator specialized in that kind of thing?”
I knew it.
The fact that 404, who manages our homepage, was a hacker was actually a secret.
I had only explained to Noh Hae-min and Manager Yoon Ha-young that he was just someone who knew a bit about coding.
But somehow…
“I think it would be better to leave tracking these paper companies to the administrator.”
She’s even driving the nail in.
Well, she was right.
There was almost no way for ordinary people like us to find the actual entity that was deliberately hidden.
[404]: Yeah but Young Master is kinda busy these days lol
I didn’t expect this response either.
[404]: But if our lawyer Sung Tae-hyun
[404]: expresses his respect to Young Master with all his heart~, I might be able to help
[ME]: It’s fine if it’s difficult.
I could find someone else through Lee Seol-rok anyway.
However, 404, who had claimed to be busy, suddenly grabbed onto me as if he had nothing to do.
[404]: Ah why lololol
[404]: Is lawyer Sung Tae-hyun sulking?? Ah lol I really am busy though
[404]: If lawyer Sung Tae-hyun really says he needs the adorable Young Master’s abilities
[ME]: I need them.
[404]: lol okay I’ll help
[404]: Payment first
And a few days later, what 404 discovered was quite a shocking fact.
[404]: You seemed in a hurry so I searched through what’s available first lol
[404]: Loretta Partners
[404]: It’s just speculation but lol I think this is probably the main body?
Loretta.
Loretta Partners.
“….”
I lost my words for a moment and stared at 404’s chat window.
Loretta.
Loretta Partners.
That was….
Because it was the company established by Choi Yoon-ki’s ex-girlfriend.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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