CI 2.6

Son Yeo-il could easily guess what was happening. Turning his head, he saw that Won Hee-yeon had gotten out of the car and was coming toward him.

“Hey there, Attorney. Just wondering if you’re working overtime today.”

An indescribably intimidating aura was emanating from Won Hee-yeon. While his expression was gentle when asking Son Yeo-il the question, when he turned his gaze to scan the client who had been berating Son Yeo-il, the air seemed to chill from his sharp glare.

While he probably did want to check Son Yeo-il’s schedule, the real reason Won Hee-yeon had gotten out of the car was likely to show himself to the man causing a scene just now. In any case, Son Yeo-il responded to Won Hee-yeon’s words as if nothing unusual was happening.

“…Probably.”

“Alright. I’ll call you later. Get back to work.”

After watching Won Hee-yeon walk away with a wave of his hand, Son Yeo-il turned back to the client. How simple-minded this person was—his wild boar-like rampage was gone, and he had suddenly transformed into a gentle lamb.

“Shall we go inside and talk?”

While it was a relief, conducting the consultation with him wasn’t easy. He was overly defensive and repeatedly insisted that he had been wronged. Whenever Son Yeo-il asked questions that seemed even slightly unfavorable to him, he would explode in anger.

“Why do you keep asking about that?”

“I need to establish the facts before I can help you.”

“Can’t you understand what I’m saying? I told you everything already. The way you keep digging, it seems like you don’t believe me either, right?”

“Well…”

“See! You don’t believe me. People like you are always like this. Just because I have tattoos and dress casually, you treat me like trash!”

At those words, Son Yeo-il felt a pang of guilt. There was a reason why Son Yeo-il, quick in both comprehension and judgment, hadn’t been able to easily decide on a direction regarding this simple case.

Speaking purely from a strategic standpoint, apart from moral considerations, denying charges was usually advantageous in criminal cases. A confession would certainly lead to a guilty verdict, but the risks of denying charges merely included giving a bad impression to investigative authorities and hurting the victim’s feelings. In many cases, it wasn’t too late to prostrate oneself and beg for forgiveness after decisive evidence had been revealed.

Nevertheless, the reason why Son Yeo-il didn’t want to accept the client’s vehement denials at face value was because, deep down, Son Yeo-il didn’t believe this man’s words at all.

‘But…he just looks untrustworthy…’

Unable to lie even in his own mind, Son Yeo-il immediately thought this as an excuse, when suddenly he recalled a recent incident. The client who had come to the office the week before last, insisting on motel stakeout work, had also seemed to be talking nonsense, but as it turned out, her husband really had been having an affair.

Furthermore, the fact that this man was pleading his innocence while mentioning his tattoos made Son Yeo-il’s heart waver. Coincidentally, when Son Yeo-il first saw a certain tattooed man, he had thought him a hopeless weirdo and felt self-pity for getting involved, but recently, he’d been thinking that this weirdo might actually be a decent person (though he still couldn’t possibly think of him as anything but a weirdo).

Right. Maybe I’m just too full of prejudice.

Whatever the case, Son Yeo-il was a novice lawyer. With the naive belief that ‘a lawyer must take the client’s side,’ Son Yeo-il decided then and there to try believing the client’s words.

“No, I believe you.”

Answering distinctly as if making a pledge to himself, Son Yeo-il’s clever mind quickly began formulating a ‘denial case investigation response strategy.’

***

“Yeo-il. You need to wake up.”

A gentle voice tapped at Son Yeo-il’s consciousness.

No, I want to sleep more.

Deeply immersed in sweet slumber, Son Yeo-il’s lips twitched with reluctance. Finding this amusing, the owner of the voice trying to wake Son Yeo-il chuckled softly.

Why is he laughing? Hee-yeon always laughs at whatever I do.

Even in his drowsy state, Son Yeo-il knew that the voice and laughter belonged to Won Hee-yeon. However, he didn’t feel any immediate discomfort. After all, he had been enjoying the warmth touching his cheek and shoulder all this while.

Even when a large hand approached his face and began caressing his cheek, Son Yeo-il merely smiled vaguely at the ticklish sensation, with no intention of getting up. Won Hee-yeon’s voice was full of amusement.

“I know. You’re cute…but it’s time to wake up.”

At the mention of time, the diligent Son Yeo-il’s ears perked up.

Wait. Did I forget something? How long have I been sleeping? Why is Hee-yeon watching me sleep?

The moment these questions that should have occurred to him earlier crossed his mind, Son Yeo-il opened his eyes with a start. And he was even more surprised to see Won Hee-yeon’s firm, broad chest right in front of his nose. It seemed he had buried his face in someone else’s chest while sleeping.

“Uh, uhh…”

Reflexively sitting up, Son Yeo-il stammered in bewilderment. His heart chilled at the thought that he might have been rolling around somewhere with someone, but fortunately, this turned out to be the back seat of Won Hee-yeon’s car.

“Don’t you remember? You fell asleep on the way back after lunch. How tired must you have been lately to fall into such a deep sleep so quickly?”

Won Hee-yeon neatly adjusted Son Yeo-il’s disheveled collar and hair with attentive hands. Only after hearing his words did the memory of right before falling asleep come back. After having wild vegetable bibimbap and deodeok gui for lunch with Won Hee-yeon, the moment he got into the car, drowsiness had immediately hit him.

As Won Hee-yeon said, Son Yeo-il had been working overtime for several days. He had already been busy handling all the office paperwork alone, and now he had become even busier putting effort into the new cases he had taken on.

For the past three days, Son Yeo-il had been writing an opinion letter for the scoundrel client and had urged his mother to collect petition letters from acquaintances stating that ‘such an upright young man could never have done such a thing.’ Today, he was scheduled to attend a police interview.

“Ah, that’s a relief…There’s still some time before the interview starts.”

Won Hee-yeon’s car was parked not at the law office but in the Yongju Police Station parking lot. As Son Yeo-il checked his phone and sighed with relief, Won Hee-yeon clicked his tongue sympathetically.

“Of course. As your missus, I woke my husband up with plenty of time to avoid being late. Though I’d have liked to let you sleep much longer. Seriously, why did that pig-faced guy have to cause trouble and make such a precious person suffer?”

“For now…our position is that the client didn’t cause any trouble.”

“Oh my. The way you defend your client, you really do seem like a good lawyer.”

Knowing that Won Hee-yeon’s seemingly sarcastic words were actually praise, Son Yeo-il continued with a small smile.

“And my recent overtime wasn’t because of this case, but because I was reviewing the materials brought by Deaconess Kang.”

While handling a criminal case for the first time was keeping him busy enough, for some reason work was piling up all at once, and the day before yesterday, another one of ‘Yeo-il’s clients’ had visited the office.

A middle-aged woman from the volunteer counseling session. As promised, she had brought all the materials she had collected during her 30 years of marriage and asked Son Yeo-il to handle her divorce lawsuit.

The evidence for divorce grounds seemed sufficient, but as she had mentioned during the initial consultation, her husband had already diverted most of the vast wealth accumulated while running his company throughout their marriage.

It was obvious he would try to hide money more earnestly once the divorce suit was filed, so Son Yeo-il planned on searching through ledgers and accounts to seize every asset they could find.

“Anyway, you’ve been working hard. Manager Kim said that lady brought this much A4 paper on a cart? Surely you don’t have to look through all of it?”

“I already finished looking at all of it. The analysis is almost complete too.”

“What? You’ve already gone through all that?”

Son Yeo-il, encouraged by Won Hee-yeon, straightened his chest and got out of the car. Looking at the client approaching reluctantly from the other side, he steeled his resolve once more.

“You remember what I told you, right? Just follow it well.”

At Son Yeo-il’s final reminder before entering the police station, the client grumbled as if annoyed.

“Do you think I’m an idiot? I remember everything.”

Though the tone was harsh, it meant they understood. Unlike Son Yeo-il, who was visiting such a place for an investigation for the first time, the client, who had lived causing trouble here and there, seemed familiar with the atmosphere of the police station.

Son Yeo-il had expected the client to approach the investigation as he had hoped: politely, respecting the victim’s feelings, while clearly establishing the facts. He was just beginning to gain confidence as a lawyer. He felt he had built a rapport with his client and had prepared a solid opinion, so if the investigation went according to plan, he thought it might be possible to receive a finding of no criminal charges.

Unfortunately, less than an hour after the investigation began, Son Yeo-il’s face began turning pale blue.

W-What is this? How am I supposed to handle this?

Son Yeo-il had thought he knew a fair bit about the types of people who were “psychos” or “human trash.” First of all, Won Hee-yeon, who he hung out with every day lately, was a psycho, and many people he had encountered at law school—mainly Koo Dae-hyun and his friends—were people with personalities he never wanted to associate with again.

But now he realized that his law school classmates were people who at least knew how to maintain appearances, and compared to them, Won Hee-yeon was a person of dignity and common sense. Unfortunately, Son Yeo-il now found himself in a situation where he had to defend garbage of a completely different dimension from the people he had known until now.

What should I do? Should I shoot them with a tranquilizer gun?

The thug client displayed such shameful behavior throughout the investigation that one could hardly bear to watch. When the police officer asked, following standard procedure, “if they had been investigated before this incident,” the client burst out in anger, asking why they were asking about such private matters like that.

The client even spewed nonsense like “Is it wrong to come to an amusement park wearing a skirt?” or “Why would I take a picture of such an ugly woman?”

Each time, Son Yeo-il desperately intervened to repackage his statements, and after requesting a suspension of the investigation, he tried to reason with him, but there was no sign that the client’s attitude would change.

“I mean, it’s not like I said anything wrong. And how wronged must I feel to be acting like this? They’re trying to frame an innocent person at the police station! Huh?”

It was enough to drive one crazy. The eyes of the police officers who had finished the investigation and were having the written statement confirmed were cold. They seemed to have already deemed the defendant human trash.

At this point, the forensic results needed to come out well. The only way to turn the situation around was if no photos were found on the client’s phone. No, if a completely out-of-focus photo that anyone could see was taken by mistake appeared, his innocence would be proven.

“You agreed to voluntarily submit your phone today, right? Please hand it over.”

The police officers prepared the forensic equipment to proceed with the next step. Son Yeo-il was about to quickly answer yes, but the client’s answer was faster.

“I lost my phone.”

“What did you say?”

“Pardon?”

The police officer also asked again in surprise, but it was Son Yeo-il who was more surprised and turned pale. The thug client alone maintained a calm and brazen attitude.

“I left it in a taxi the day before yesterday and bought a new one.”

“What? Does that make any sense?”

“Oh, really! I even have evidence that I lost it!”

The police officers looked like they were ready to blow their top. And rightfully so. Son Yeo-il asked to speak with his client again and dragged him out into the hallway.

“Ah, why are you doing this? Let go of me.”

It was difficult to bring out someone who was plumply built and struggling wildly. Unable to bear it any longer, Son Yeo-il glared at him with sharp eyes. The client, who had been making a lot of noise, flinched for a moment.

“Is it true?”

“W-What?”

“That you lost your phone.”

“It’s true! Are you not believing me right now?”

Son Yeo-il sighed deeply and warned his client word by word.

“The charges you’re facing now are not light, but it’s extremely rare for someone with no prior sexual offense record to be detained for this level of photography charges. But it’s different if you destroy evidence. Evidence destruction is one of the legal grounds for detention.”

“S-So what?”

“You really need to be honest with me. If you try to deceive even me, I have no way to help you.”

After hesitating for a moment, the client seemed to have decided on a course of action and raised his voice angrily.

“Evidence destruction, detention, even you, my lawyer, are treating me like a criminal? I’m already annoyed at being here for no crime, and now I’m being suspected at every turn. I can’t live with this injustice!”

Whether it was an act or not, he genuinely looked wronged. Son Yeo-il’s mind became complicated. Trusting someone was such a headache. Taking a step into the swamp, sharing a burden that someone else was carrying. When he came to his senses, he might find himself entangled in the mud and left alone.

Is it true? That he accidentally took a photo up someone’s skirt and accidentally lost that phone? Is such a thing possible? Sigh…What do I do now? It’s probably better to keep denying it, right?

Beyond what was advantageous or disadvantageous, breaking the client’s stubbornness seemed nearly impossible. Son Yeo-il let out a long sigh.

“I understand for now. The evidence about the lost phone, you really have it, right?”

“O-Of course! My girlfriend saw me lose it too.”

Son Yeo-il returned to his seat and repeatedly apologized to the police officers for the confusion, saying that the phone was really lost and promising to actively cooperate with the investigation from now on. Son Yeo-il’s steps were heavy as he left the police station without properly concluding the matter. Though only a few hours had passed, he felt drained as if years had gone by, but Son Yeo-il tried to remain steadfast despite the circumstances.