BITM Ch16

Since opening the clinic, his father had never once visited. His arrival could mean only one thing: there was something important to discuss.

“By the way, who is that man?”

Lee Seolhwa whispered the question.

“He’s… my father.”

Only then did she realize how closely Han Sungwon’s slow and stiff manner of speaking resembled Han Naeyung’s.

“Go on inside quickly.”

“Then I’ll leave it to you.”

She nodded reassuringly, signaling that everything would be fine.

When Han Naeyung entered the examination room, Nari was sniffing around, trying to catch Han Sungwon’s scent. The older man, however, was too busy inspecting the medicine shelves, only releasing his clasped hands after he was done.

“Please, have a seat.”

Han Naeyung gestured toward his medical chair.

“No, I can’t take the doctor’s seat for myself.”

Settling into the chair reserved for clients, Han Sungwon motioned for his son to take his usual place. As Han Naeyung walked around the treatment table and sat down, Nari predictably leapt up onto his lap.

“Is that… your dog?”

“No, it belongs to another client. Would you like some tea?”

“There’s no need for such formalities. Relax.”

After that brief exchange, a few seconds of silence filled the room. Despite their familial bond, an awkward atmosphere lingered between them, suffocating the space. Han Naeyung had to force his gaze not to drift downward.

“Naeyung.”

“Yes.”

“Is there nothing you want to say to me?”

“…”

Han Naeyung looked at his father with calm eyes, his lips tightly shut.

“Silence always holds many meanings. Sometimes, it’s better than speaking needlessly. But let me tell you something, Naeyung: words, when used as weapons, can be far more powerful than silence. A victim staying quiet doesn’t solve a case.”

“Father…”

It was a title he rarely used, one he had found difficult to utter even after being adopted. For a long time, he had addressed him as “Your Honor,” and even the first syllable of “Father” felt like it burned his tongue.

In the beginning, he resented him. He despised the judge who invoked the law but didn’t punish those people severely enough.

His father had watched him, thrashing and convulsing, without averting his eyes even once. Only after seeing the blood-like tears falling from his father’s eyes did he stop blaming the man who had adopted him.

“You stopped reaching out, so I decided not to intrude either. That’s why I told your mother not to come. I know seeing me must be unbearable for you.”

“It’s not…”

No, never. Han Naeyung wanted to deny it vehemently, but his father raised a hand to silence him.

“You once told me that seeing my face made it all come rushing back, that it was unbearable.”

“That was…”

A statement he had made when he was only ten years old.

“I’m not blaming you. I know you’ve done your best as our son. It was my selfishness that led me to adopt you. If I’d found another good home for you, you might have lived a more peaceful life. That failure is on me.”

“I… received more love than I deserved.”

For someone like him, that family had been more than he could ever have hoped for.

“Which is why… no matter what happens to you, as your father, I will do everything in my power to support you.”

It was a heavy, loaded statement. Han Naeyung met his father’s penetrating gaze, feeling as if the man could see right through him.

The bottles of formalin in the cabinet, the Nuri Church, Jang Joontae—all the secrets he had buried felt as though they were being laid bare. Guilt coiled tightly around him like a snake.

Everything he had done and everything he was planning to do would betray his parents’ trust.

The scales teetered between his hatred and his guilt. He told himself, as he always had: as long as he wasn’t caught, it would be fine. Perfect crimes existed. Over and over, he repeated the words to himself, sitting before the former judge who had once presided over justice.

Suddenly, his father placed the fedora back on his head. Looking at the gloves covering his son’s hands, he spoke again.

“After all the pain you’ve endured, who could blame you? That ugly thing, it reminds me of the dog you used to have.”

With those words, his father left the room. Han Naeyung couldn’t bring himself to stop him. He just sat there until the door finally clicked shut.

Nari, restless, whimpered and licked his chin. Slowly, Han Naeyung lowered his hands, stroking the dog’s head. He clenched his teeth to stifle the sobs threatening to escape.

His parents had done nothing wrong. Jaemin, who had followed a stranger, and the parents who had taken him in—none of them bore any blame.

The fault lay with him and those monsters.

His parents had adopted and raised a child who was already broken. The pitiful whines of the dog made him glance at the creature. It reminded him of the white-coated Jindo his father had brought home on a therapist’s recommendation.

Born missing one leg, that dog had looked just like Nari. Its round eyes were the only difference. Despite its handicap, it had always bounded joyfully to greet people.

Defying the veterinarian’s prognosis of a short life, the Jindo lived until Han Naeyung’s second year in university. It passed away the year after he entered veterinary school, and since then, he had never been able to own another pet.

Its absence had introduced a sorrow he couldn’t bear. The pain was as excruciating as losing Jaemin all over again.

There had been a time when he dreamed of living an ordinary life. But after the Jindo’s death, he had countless dreams of Jaemin falling. The anger that grew within him became a deep-rooted part of his heart, impossible to weed out.

Why did you do it? Why did you do that to us?

Even when he screamed those words that day, Lee Kyungchul had given him no answer.

If you can’t speak, your tongue is worthless. That’s why he wanted to cut it out—exactly how they had hurt Jaemin. But it was too late. He was always too late.

Too late for everything. For meeting you, too…

Han Naeyung closed his eyes tightly at the sound of knocking, then opened them again. Lee Seolhwa’s voice informing him of a guest seemed distant. He habitually nodded in response, opening a drawer with sluggish movements to grab a piece of candy. Peeling off the crinkling wrapper, he trapped the candy in his mouth, rolling it around.

It’s already too late, the clinking candy seemed to whisper.

Even though he knew better, why did he still crave the feeling of their presence?

The sweetness of the candy was almost heartbreaking.

* * *

“Prosecutor Jin, have you heard the results of the third trial?”

“Not yet.”

Lee Inyeong flashed a V-sign with her fingers as she handed over the ruling document.

– Verdict of the 11th Criminal Division –

Defendant:
Lee XX (Born 1975, Male), self-employed

Case:
20XX-Kohap-3XX
a. Murder
b. Threats

Sentence:
The defendant is sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment.

There was no need to read the criminal facts. It was the ruling for the murder of a mistress by her lover’s lover.

“This must’ve hit Jang Law Firm hard,” Lee Inyeong said, making a playful punching gesture.

Jang Law Firm was renowned for its 60% civil case win rate and known as one of the country’s top firms in terms of capital, connections, and organizational strength. Although its criminal litigation success rate was lower, it was still a force to be reckoned with. It employed a considerable number of retired prosecutors.

The biggest concern with such a firm was always “preferential treatment for former officials.” They had previously managed to turn a blatant murder case into a suspicious death using these connections.

“Listen, Prosecutor. If we hadn’t attended the second trial, this wouldn’t have been possible.”

“That’s not true.”

“Don’t you remember? Please grant us more time, Your Honor, more time,” she imitated the pleading tone of the prosecutor during the trial, grinning mischievously.

“Prosecutor, you were so cool last year when you were still attending trials,” Lee Inyeong said wistfully as she gazed at Jin.

“Even though you’re buried in paperwork, you’re still pretty cool now,” Jin replied.

“Pfft, can’t argue with that, can I?”

“Aww, you young folks are being unfair,” chimed in Seon Wookjae, mimicking holding a microphone. It was rare to find a free moment during the day, but they had managed to steal 10 minutes before lunch.

A prosecutor handles an average of six to seven cases per day, deciding whether to indict or dismiss them. While it was their job, for those affected, it was a pivotal moment that could change their lives forever.

Even Jin thought the workload was excessive. Their senior, the chief prosecutor, had to review double the number of cases, leaving room for inevitable errors. Yet, no such excuses were accepted in this line of work. Compared to a few years ago, when daily case counts reached ten, things had improved somewhat.

After lunch, the head of the case department visited the prosecutor’s office. Jin scanned the report they brought.

It was an unidentified body discovered in a forest within the jurisdiction. Covered loosely with fallen leaves, the cause of death was unknown, requiring a determination of whether it was homicide or suicide.

Jin prepared the autopsy directive and handed it to the department head, then checked the time. Turning to Lee Inyeong, he spoke.

“Clerk, please give me a copy of the CCTV footage. I’ll review it myself.”

“Which footage?”

With countless CCTV recordings to sift through, her question was expected.

“The footage from the Ogeori case.”

“Ah, that one. Prosecutor, it’s under the documents to your left.”

Jin rummaged through the papers and found a USB drive. The CCTV footage had already been excluded as evidence due to a lack of significant findings, but something about it nagged at him. He felt a strong intuition that it couldn’t be overlooked.

Opening the most recent file, Jin began reviewing the footage. Since Ogeori wasn’t densely populated, the footage focused on timeframes with noticeable activity. The surveillance cameras had been operational since the incident, but whether they had captured anything significant was uncertain.

As Jin monotonously scrolled through the video, he absentmindedly sipped his coffee, his eyes fixed on the monitor. There was nothing unusual in the 300-meter radius around the crime scene.

It wasn’t until early Sunday morning that Jin pressed the spacebar abruptly.

What was that? Thinking he might have seen wrong, he rewound the footage.

The timestamp showed it was Sunday, around 6 a.m.

In the footage, a man partially obscured his face with a scarf. Despite this, his appearance was striking enough to catch the camera’s attention.

“Han… doctor,” Jin murmured.

Seeing Han Naeyung in the footage stirred something in him. Was this what it felt like to spot someone you know on TV? No, even when familiar figures like the deputy prosecutor appeared on television, he felt nothing.

Jin stared intently at the building Han Naeyung had exited.

Nuri Church.

Emerging from the church, Han Naeyung walked briskly down a path that led toward his veterinary clinic.

Jin reviewed the recordings to verify the church’s schedule. On Sundays, services were held at 5 a.m., 11 a.m., 4 p.m., and 7 p.m. Han Naeyung attended one service that morning and didn’t appear again that day.

Jin smirked faintly as he opened another file. This one captured Han Naeyung heading to the church just before the 11 a.m. service, blending into the crowd as they exited around noon.

“Devout, aren’t they?”

Jin paused the footage, furrowing his brow.

It was the man who had followed Han Naeyung out of the church, handing him what appeared to be a drink and engaging him in conversation. Han Naeyung’s face was turned away from the camera, obscured from view. After a brief three-minute exchange, Han Naeyung turned first, burying his face into his scarf and walking briskly toward the hill—uncharacteristically fast.

Jin’s interest piqued. Resting his chin on his hand, he watched as Han Naeyung tossed the can into a trash bin along the alleyway and bent over as if retching. Jin felt a pang at the back of his head.

For a while, Han Naeyung remained hunched over before slowly disappearing down the hill. His gait seemed heavy, as though he were struggling.

A notification pinged on Jin’s phone at that exact moment. Silencing the alarm, Jin hesitated, fingers hovering over the mouse. The image of Han Naeyung, retching in front of the trash bin, lingered in his mind.

He had almost forgotten—Han Naeyung allowed Jin closer than anyone else but was otherwise obsessive about cleanliness.

Still staring at the paused screen, Jin grabbed his coat. As he adjusted it, Seon Wookjae straightened his tie and asked, “Prosecutor, shall we get going?”

“Yes, let’s.”

With a soft click, Jin finally shut down the footage.

Even in the car en route to the hospital, Jin was deep in thought, unable to shake Han Naeyung’s image from his mind. If his obsessive tendencies had worsened to the point of nausea, it didn’t make sense for him to attend crowded church services.

“What’s on your mind?” asked Seon Wookjae, casting a sidelong glance.

“Chief, you’re Christian, right?”

“Yeah, my wife’s a devout believer, so I kind of got dragged into it.”

“Imagine if you had OCD—how would you manage going to church?”

Jin proposed the scenario as if it were part of a case. It was a habit of his to construct hypothetical situations to explore possibilities, even outside work.

“Well, I’d probably lean into it more,” Wookjae mused. “I’d pray harder for God to cure me of the disorder.”

“That’s a fair point,” Jin admitted with a small nod.

“But why the sudden interest in this? Doesn’t seem case-related.”

“It’s… personal,” Jin said, a rare smile softening his features.

Wookjae raised a brow. “You’ve been looking pretty chipper lately. New girlfriend?”

“Guess you’ll find out,” Jin deflected, a faint smile tugging at his lips as he gazed at the looming hospital building.

* * *

Han Naeyung. It was always him.

Jin hadn’t realized until now just how comfortable he’d grown in the thought of being the only one allowed close to Han Naeyung. His obsessive tendencies were inconvenient, sure, but Jin didn’t mind. If anything, the idea of being an exception to Naeyung’s otherwise rigid boundaries felt oddly gratifying.

But seeing him retching like that—that bothered him.

“Shouldn’t have eaten such a big lunch,” Jin muttered, shaking off his thoughts.

“You want me to wait outside?” Wookjae offered.

“No, let’s go.”

The pair entered the hospital morgue, greeted by police officers and the medical examiner. After exchanging pleasantries and handing over the necessary paperwork, they headed into the autopsy room.

The smell of decomposition was thick in the air, clinging to everything. Jin fought the urge to wrinkle his nose. The decedent had been left in the elements for far too long; even the frigid winter couldn’t fully stave off the effects of decay.

“Let’s begin,” the examiner announced.

He started with a thorough external examination, noting the “V”-shaped laceration on the back of the victim’s head.

“This appears to have been inflicted by a sharp, pointed object,” he said. “Not blunt-force trauma from a hammer, but likely something akin to a skewer.”

Jin leaned in to inspect the wound. It was clean and precise, consistent with the examiner’s assessment.

The medical examiner then pried open the victim’s mouth. He frowned.

“The tongue is missing.”

“What do you mean, missing?” Jin asked.

“It wasn’t there to begin with—or it was deliberately removed. This cut is too clean to be the work of an animal. It’s as if it was sliced out with surgical precision.”

Jin’s frown deepened.

The examiner continued his evaluation, noting five dental crowns that were remarkably well-preserved. “Despite the extensive decomposition, the dental work is in excellent condition. We’ll need to examine the skull further to confirm the cause of death.”

As the examiner prepared to make an incision along the chest, one of the officers suddenly gagged, barely containing his nausea.

“Step out if you need to,” Jin said without looking up.

The officer bolted for the door, clutching his mouth.

The morgue’s door clicked shut behind him, leaving the air heavy with the scent of decay and tension.

The forensic pathologist meticulously examined each organ with a knife and scissors, confirming there were no abnormalities. The sound of the electric saw cutting through the skull was chilling. There were five fractures on the right rear side of the skull.

“These injuries weren’t caused by a fall. Something like a poker was used to stab them.”

“Couldn’t a hiking stick cause a similar wound?” Jin added to the pathologist’s opinion.

“That’s possible. Additionally, there’s no evidence of blood flowing down the esophagus. It’s confirmed that the tongue was cut postmortem, and the cause of death is the skull fractures.”

As expected, the fatal injury was the wound to the head. Furthermore, the fact that the tongue had been cut after death aligned with the Ogeori case. Jin clicked his tongue while looking at the corpse, its organs exposed. There were still no clear connections.

“Are there any missing persons reports matching this body?” Jin asked a police officer after finishing his conversation with the forensic pathologist.

“No, sir. The identity is still unknown.”

“Take dental impressions and collaborate with dentists within a 10 km radius to check medical records. Also, search the vicinity of where the body was found for any sticks or blunt objects that might be the weapon. Once the identity is established, investigate the people around them as well. It could be a crime motivated by revenge.”

“Understood,” the officer replied in a hoarse voice, jotting down Jin’s orders in a notebook.

The smell inside was horrendous, worsened by the vomit left earlier mixing with the corpse. While the pathologist meticulously sewed the organs back into the body, muffled gagging sounds could be heard here and there.

The autopsy took two hours to complete. Those present quickly exited the morgue, almost stumbling out. Jin popped a piece of candy into his mouth.

“Prosecutor, can I have one too?” Seon Wookjae, pale and visibly shaken, held out his hand. Jin handed him a banana-flavored candy.

“Don’t you have any other flavors?”

“Pick something other than strawberry.”

“Then pineapple…”

Jin rummaged through his pocket and pulled out all the candy. There was no pineapple flavor, so he gave Seon Wookjae grape instead. Crunching the candy between his teeth, Seon Wookjae exhaled a sigh of relief, as if coming back to life.

Once inside the car, Seon Wookjae sniffed his clothes, grimacing. The stench of the corpse had clung to them. Opening the window, he increased the car’s speed to clear out the smell.

“The severed tongue matches the Ogeori case, doesn’t it? Do you think the two cases are related? The Ogeori case is recent, but that body seemed to have been there for at least four months.”

“We’ll find out if there’s a connection,” Jin said, smoking a cigarette while still sucking on the candy.

“Prosecutor, doesn’t that make the cigarette taste weird?”

Jin inhaled deeply and exhaled the smoke. “I don’t mind it.”

“Really?” Seon Wookjae lit a cigarette of his own.

Jin tapped the ashes into a portable ashtray but paused when the glowing tip of the cigarette fell off, forcing him to relight it. Holding the cigarette in his hand, Jin frowned—not because of the cigarette, but because he’d finally realized what had been bothering him.

Throwing away the can he was handed.

That wasn’t something Han Naeyung would normally do.

* * *

“Excuse me, Doctor?”

A young man, looking like a college student, peeked into the room. Han Naeyung inhaled sharply, struggling to focus as his vision wavered. Memories from his past, triggered by his father’s visit, surged up to his throat.

Clutching his chest, Han Naeyung couldn’t catch his breath.

“Are you okay?”

Trying to stand while gripping the examination table, he slipped, causing books to crash to the floor. The hand the young man extended in concern seemed to darken, turning into a mold-ridden grotesque apparition. Han Naeyung recoiled as if faced with a looming specter.

Get out. Please, just leave…!

He clamped a hand over his mouth, pounding his chest. Alarmed, the young man quickly ran out of the clinic, cradling his dog. Naari’s frantic barking and the young man calling for Lee Seolhwa echoed through the building.

Upon seeing Han Naeyung’s condition, Lee Seolhwa hurriedly put on gloves.

“Mr. Jeon Young, I’m afraid our doctor isn’t feeling well. I’m sorry, but you’ll need to reschedule your pet’s checkup.”

Lee Seolhwa helped Han Naeyung onto a small couch.

“The exam was nearly done, but he suddenly started having convulsions. Should I call an ambulance?”

“No, I’ll be fine in a bit. I’m sorry for startling you. There’s no charge for today, so please, take your leave.”

As she ushered out the concerned client, Han Naeyung lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, his breathing labored. His face was ashen, almost blue. Retrieving a plastic bag, Lee Seolhwa gently placed it over his mouth.

“You’d been doing better for a while…” she muttered softly, sighing as she spoke.

“Doctor, take deep breaths in and out slowly,” she said.

The plastic bag inflated and deflated rapidly. Tears streamed from Han Naeyung’s bloodshot eyes. Lee Seolhwa placed a damp cloth on his forehead before stepping back.

His pale, skeletal hands gripped the plastic bag nervously. Watching him, she recalled their first meeting during his interview.

“If there’s one condition I’d like to request… it’s that no one touches me.”

“Oh my, why would I have any reason to touch you? Unless you’re telling me not to fall in love with you in a roundabout way.”

“I have severe mysophobia.”