“Mom. They’re asking what year you were born.”
The boy precisely opened and closed his lips. The woman gathered her hands in front of her chest and moved them quickly in various shapes.
“She says 1974.”
The boy said bluntly. I nodded slightly. I turned the page of the documents. She sold tteokbokki and odeng on the street. She violated the Road Traffic Act and the Food Sanitation Act. She, who made eye contact with me, urgently pulled out several crumpled bills from her pocket and waved them. She had prepared the fine. I stared at the bills clutched in her wrinkled hand for a while, then said to the boy,
“Can you come forward for a moment.”
I moved away from the microphone and said quietly to the stenographer,
“Don’t record this.”
At my words, the boy approached without hesitation. A clear image formed on my retina, which doesn’t wear glasses in court. Right before my eyes, I met the kid’s rebellious gaze. He seemed not to know how to avoid eye contact. A small laugh flowed out. Did I also look at Judge Tak Jae-hyun with these eyes?
“Do you think your mom will continue doing business?”
The boy couldn’t answer. But I could understand the meaning contained in that silence. They’re stories that don’t exist in the tens of thousands of pages of records always piled before me.
“I’m thinking of suspending the sentence for the fine. It means if there are no incidents for a certain period, you don’t have to pay the fine. But I’m worried if you’re thinking of continuing the business.”
“She used to run a restaurant…. But she was kicked out of the building because of redevelopment. I do sports… I think Mom pushed herself because of my training camp fees. I’ll talk to Mom properly.”
The silence was brief. I pronounced quickly. So she, persistently watching my lip movements, couldn’t understand.
“I suspend the sentence for a fine of 30,000 won.”
Then I gathered both hands in front of my chest. This time, I spoke words that only she could understand in this courtroom. Because it was inappropriate as words from a judge to a defendant.
[Happy birthday. Be careful going home.]
Sign language was a mysterious language. At my skilled sign language, the mother and son’s eyes widened round. Soon I erased my expression and called the next defendant.
Mom said my sign language was like a butterfly. If it had been under cherry blossoms on a spring day, those words might have suited it a little. Mom said it while cleaning up the overturned drinking table on the wooden bench, with bruises on her face. The kimchi juice was stained so red it wouldn’t wipe off.
I shot back asking if she meant like an insect. Mom was wrong. My sign language was never graceful like a butterfly. Unless it was an insect desperately and shamefully rubbing its wings. At my words, Mom just laughed. I hated Mom’s silence.
When I was young, our house ran a small corner store. Mom sat leisurely on a shabby wooden bench looking at the sky, fanning herself. If not for the swaying skirt hem, I would have thought time had stopped.
Father came home once every ten days to gamble. Each time he came, far from earning money, he turned over the cash box and took everything down to the last ten-won coin. We couldn’t even give change.
Anyway, the four-pyeong store didn’t do well. The ladies did their shopping at the big mart at the five-way intersection.
Instead, men came. Mom sold snacks, cigarettes, and alcohol, and sometimes sold other things too. The men liked Mom’s silence.
Only after entering middle school did I properly understand those things. The men who entered the small room attached to the store all said to me with base, glistening eyes. That I looked just like Mom. It was an insult engraved under my eyelids for only me to see forever.
I was scared and afraid I might live like Mom.
***
The trial adjourned at noon. I ate triangle kimbap for lunch. Not just because the cafeteria was closed. I like triangle kimbap. I like all convenience store food. Actually, rather than liking it, “familiar” would be more accurate. Like I couldn’t throw away my old car, I couldn’t throw away my old eating habits either.
After finishing my meal early, I headed to the courthouse annex. There was a parking lot used only by judges at the chief judge level or above. From there, I could see the Korean red pines. Snow-covered Korean red pines in winter are a sight you can’t see even with money. Chief Judge Tak Jae-hyun would see this view every day.
Footprints were engraved on the snow no one had walked on. I gained this fortune for taking on a trial during recess. The somewhat resentful feeling disappeared like melting snow.
I was sitting on a bench looking at the Korean red pines for a while. A commotion broke out from the east building. The sound of flashing cameras, reporters clamoring.
It was obvious. Only two trials were scheduled at the courthouse today. In the courtroom right next door, a sitting National Assembly member and a major corporation chairman were being tried for violations of the Political Funds Act. With one wall between, people for whom a fine of tens of thousands of won was burdensome and people who claimed there was no quid pro quo even for hundreds of millions coexisted.
Just then, voices grew closer. When I raised my head, two men were walking over. Im Ji-seok and Judge Park Sang-yeong. Sang-yeong was my university senior and judicial training institute classmate. In the legal world, there exists a hierarchy comparable to an ancient caste system, and he was in the highest ranks. His father was an S University Law School professor. If you were a bar exam student, you had at least one of the criminal procedure law textbooks he wrote in your bag.
“Hey, are you supernaturally blessed? Unlike my friends who became lawyers or prosecutors, judges seem to age particularly fast, so I thought it must be the job, but looking at you, that’s not it.”
Ji-seok gave me an eye greeting. When I nodded briefly, Sang-yeong took interest.
“So you’re the one who stabbed Researcher Im in the side.”
Sang-yeong said indifferently. Ji-seok couldn’t say anything.
“Researcher Im. Don’t get close to this guy. Won’t help your career.”
I liked Sang-yeong’s honesty. At least he didn’t hide that he was a snob.
“Hyo-kyung was the youngest passer in our cohort. A paper he wrote in college changed one of the most malicious provisions in our country’s labor law. My father still talks about you.”
I just blinked, unable to understand what kind of insult he wanted to give me.
“Youngest bar exam passer while enrolled in law school. Graduated second in judicial training. But why did someone like that only roam remote mountain areas and barely make it here now? What kind of considerable power would it take to shove a judge into a remote area and completely cut off his prospects? Our classmates all wondered about that.”
It was absurd. He was thoroughly mistaken. He inflated my self-chosen regional service as if there were some formidable obstructive force.
“But I know.”
Sang-yeong said meaningfully.
“Who is it?”
Ji-seok bit that absurd bait.
“Songrim.”
Ji-seok asked back in surprise.
“You mean Songrim Law Firm?”
He seemed genuinely surprised. It was strange not to be surprised at such nonsense. What was Songrim that they would obstruct someone like me?
“That’s right. Our country’s best law firm, Songrim! People think the Supreme Court makes the rules of the legal market, but no. What actually makes the rules of our match is Songrim.”
“Wasn’t that what the National Assembly does?”
When I said sarcastically, Sang-yeong laughed as if unaffected.
“Hyo-kyung-ah, I’m really curious. Why of all times were you transferred to the Central District Court now? You be careful. They say before a star completely goes out, there’s a moment when it flickers bright once. What was that called again. Anyway. You be careful. Watch yourself.”
Before stars die, they emit the most powerful gamma rays, which are called the star’s last words. I said while looking at the shameless face that personally handed me my obituary.
“You should have become a lawyer first. With such skill in sophistry, you’re wasting your talent.”
“I will.”
“…When?”
“A few more years, then when I become a presiding judge? In this ultra-competitive era where over a thousand new lawyers are born every year, I need to arm myself with the powerful weapon of being a former judge before leaving.”
I snorted.
“Sunbae. Songrim has no interest in where I am or what I’m doing. They probably don’t even know I came here.”
“I thought so too. Until I saw Hyun-wook here just now.”
My face, which had been dismissing all his words as jokes from our college days, completely stiffened.
“Jung… Hyun-wook?”
“That’s right. I saw lawyer Jung Hyun-wook, the precious only son of Songrim’s representative. He came to see you.”
“He must have come… because of a trial.”
I was noticeably flustered. Ji-seok chimed in.
“I heard Songrim is handling the political funds violation case.”
“Oh that? You people are still slow with news. Songrim withdrew from that. Even if both sides aren’t suing each other, how could Songrim defend both defendants indicted in the same case? Especially when their interests conflict.”
It was natural that I, who had only returned to the secular world a few days ago, was slow with rumors, but it seemed to be the first Ji-seok was hearing of it too.
