* * *
The location was the same as before, a parking lot behind a commercial building. It wasn’t a place people frequented, making it ideal for a secretive meeting.
“You seem to have developed a taste for meeting me in the dead of night, but unfortunately, Prosecutor, you’re not my type.”
Lee Woohyun furrowed his brow at Hajin’s provocation.
“Don’t worry. Even if I were gay, I wouldn’t confess to someone like you.”
After saying this, Hajin snickered. No matter how he thought about it, there was no reason for the prosecutor to summon him today.
Yet the prosecutor had threatened that he would regret it if they didn’t meet today, as if he had some new information. So Hajin’s words weren’t coming out nicely.
“Why did you call me here?”
Lee Woohyun’s face crumpled. Though displeased that a younger man was treating a prosecutor with such disrespect, Woohyun suppressed his anger and continued calmly.
“As you know, the evidence regarding embezzlement, tax evasion, and bribery is perfect to the point where I don’t need to investigate further. So I was thinking of just putting together some documents and sending them off.”
Hajin twitched his eyebrow.
“If the evidence is perfect, you should just submit it. I don’t understand why you called me here.”
“How could a prosecutor who eats government rice do that? Even if the evidence is perfect, if several people testify to the contrary, the trial must reconsider. Moreover, since the method of collecting evidence wasn’t exactly clean…”
As he rambled on about things they both already knew, time steadily passed. Hajin, who had been keeping his mouth shut until now, couldn’t take it anymore and cut off Woohyun’s words.
“So what’s your point?”
At the curtly dropped question, Lee Woohyun hesitated before speaking gravely.
“I’ve started examining each piece of evidence that could have legal validity one by one.”
“There shouldn’t have been any problematic parts, right?”
“Yes. There wasn’t any material that could be problematic, but during the investigation, I heard something interesting. Do you know Assistant Manager Kang Sojeong from the secretary’s office?”
Hajin had thought that being called here was a bluff, pretending to have something important, but when a real person was mentioned, his expression turned serious.
“I know her well. Did Assistant Manager Kang participate in Secretary Kim’s crimes?”
Hajin asked in a worried tone. Woohyun couldn’t answer immediately due to the sudden change in atmosphere, then opened his mouth after a pause.
“It’s not that she participated in the crime, but she mentioned something interesting in passing.”
“What kind of story?”
Woohyun seemed to be contemplating deeply as he rubbed his chin. Hajin didn’t rush him and waited for him to speak. It was because he had a feeling that something important was about to be revealed. However, Woohyun’s next words still concealed the core while elaborating on peripheral facts.
“Actually, I thought it was strange from the beginning. In typical corporate battles for the CEO position, once someone takes the position first, they usually focus more on securing their place rather than crushing their opponent, isn’t that the norm?”
Hajin nodded in agreement with his words.
“But Director Kim Cheolwoo acted as if he was hiding something. When Director Kim handed over your embezzlement documents to me, I didn’t think much of it, but he kept bringing up Chairman Seo’s death case, which wasn’t even my jurisdiction. Of course, since I was already suspicious of CEO Seo, it might have made me more suspicious, but even considering that, it smelled like he was hiding something.”
Hajin didn’t show it openly, but inwardly he was startled. He had only thought of the prosecutor as having ambition for success, not as someone with good instincts and intelligence. But…
‘It’s impressive that he noticed this…’
Hajin’s final resort, which he had been keeping in case of such a situation, was video evidence. From the beginning, it didn’t make sense for Chairman Seo to fall after being pushed by Yoon Juwon, who was extremely frail.
Thus, ironically, the video evidence proving Yoon Juwon’s crime could become the lifeline to free him from false accusations.
However, one strange thing was that Prosecutor Lee Woohyun didn’t even know about the existence of this video.
A mask-like smile spread across Hajin’s face.
“Prosecutor Lee, I don’t understand the point of this conversation…”
“Ah, I’m rambling because I don’t have exact evidence yet and don’t fully understand the situation. But still…”
Woohyun trailed off and looked straight at Hajin. Confidence was glimpsed in Woohyun’s slightly upturned corner of the mouth.
“It’s a matter that CEO Seo might be interested in, and I need help to investigate properly, so I’m telling you this. What do you think? Are you interested?”
“It’s intriguing.”
Hajin smiled gently.
“Let me hear everything first. So what did Assistant Manager Kang say?”
“So you’ll consider it if I show all my cards. Good. I’ll tell you.”
After that, Woohyun’s lengthy explanation followed. To summarize his words: on the day of the incident, a few hours before Yoon Juwon entered Chairman Seo’s room, Chairman Seo had complained of chest pain, so the secretary’s office urgently added a hospital schedule.
Sensing something, Woohyun returned to the prosecutor’s office and examined the case records. He found it suspicious that despite investigating a victim’s daily schedule being most important in a murder case, Assistant Manager Kang’s testimony was missing, and the CCTV footage for just that day had disappeared.
After finishing his explanation, Woohyun asked a final question.
“What do you think, CEO?”
“I’m definitely more interested now.”
Hajin was tempted to grab Woohyun’s extended hand and hand over the video, but it was still too early to let his guard down.
“So what’s your investigation plan going forward?”
After contemplating for a moment, Woohyun carefully opened his mouth.
“Before that, there’s something I’d like to ask. I understand the police investigated Chairman Seo’s death as a murder case, and you cooperated as well.”
“Isn’t that natural? Although he was my stepfather, we were close enough that he was going to pass the company to me.”
“Then why did you oppose the autopsy?”
Hajin’s eyes widened. It was an unexpected question. Initially, he had opposed the autopsy because he still thought Yoon Juwon was the culprit at that time. Since he was hiding the video, he judged that without an autopsy, it would be difficult to find evidence that Juwon might have left.
Hajin calmly attached a plausible reason.
“You already know why, so why ask? I’m an adopted son of the Seo family. Most of the external directors of Fashion Group H are blood relatives. If I permitted an autopsy without clear evidence, just thinking about what the Seo family elders would say is horrifying.”
Hajin shuddered and made an exaggerated gesture.
‘As if you were afraid of the elders. You must have had something to hide.’
Woohyun muttered inwardly and asked his final question.
“And your thoughts haven’t changed?”
If Hajin backed out here as well, Woohyun planned to proceed with the investigation with him as a suspect.
“Of course not. I opposed the autopsy earlier when I hadn’t heard that the Chairman had complained of chest pain, but now there’s evidence that someone deliberately omitted testimony and framed Yoon Juwon. Why would I refuse? I’ll write a consent form.”
When a satisfactory answer came, Woohyun thought, ‘That’s more like it,’ and was pleased that his instinct had been right.
“May I go now?”
“Yes, I won’t see you out.”
And so ended the clandestine meeting in the parking lot behind the commercial building at dawn.
After confirming that the prosecutor had gotten out of the car, Hyunwoo rushed over and got into the driver’s seat.
“What did he say?”
“…Well, nothing much.”
“Nothing much, but it took this long?”
Hyunwoo narrowed his eyes and looked at Hajin. Until meeting with the prosecutor, his heart had been pounding, wondering if another new incident had occurred, but Hajin’s expression didn’t look bad.
“Why? Afraid we might have kissed in the dead of night?”
“Crazy… You like Yoon Juwon but aren’t gay, right? Wait… have you gone all gay now?”
Hyunwoo acted as if he would jump out of the car immediately, with a thoroughly guarded expression. Hajin threw his head back and laughed at such a Hyunwoo.
“Haha, don’t worry. Even if I were to eat all the men in the world, I wouldn’t eat you.”
“Cut the nonsense, there’s really no new problem, right?”
Hyunwoo’s tone suggested he feared more trouble.
“Well, something did happen, but it’s good news for us, so there’s nothing to worry about…”
Hajin paused briefly and looked out the window. His gaze seemed as if he was watching the prosecutor’s shadow disappearing into the darkness.
“That prosecutor, he’s smarter and better than I thought, so it might be good to trust him, you know?”
“What are you talking about? Did you really kiss him or what?”
“Haha, I did feel like giving him a good one. Thanks to him, things are looking quite favorable.”
Always so full of himself. Hyunwoo sighed.
Ask about what, why, how, and the answer would just come back like a broken record, irrelevant to the question. So Hyunwoo didn’t ask anything and just started the engine.
“Since there’s nothing serious, we don’t need to call a meeting, right? Should we go home?”
“Well…”
The way he vaguely murmured and seemed lost in thought made it seem like Hajin had some other scheme.
“Did you get kicked out by Juwon or something?”
At Hyunwoo’s sarcastic remark, Hajin snickered.
“Do you know where Secretary Kim is now?”
“I checked just a moment ago. They say he’s at Madam Song’s place.”
“Let’s go see how pretty Madam Song has become.”
“…Sure.”
Seo Hajin, please don’t do everything you want, please… While muttering inwardly, Hyunwoo dutifully turned the steering wheel, thinking, ‘Surely no one will end up dead, right?’
