AR Ch 10 part 2

PR by neji

Meanwhile, there was a group of golf carts coming towards them. All of the men in the carts were holding knives that were the size of one’s forearms. Damn it. Just when they felt like they were screwed, they heard a whipping noise coming from the sky.

“What is that?”

A lot of wind accompanied the answer to the question. Jiwon looked up to see Chief Hong open the door to the helicopter as he shouted out orders. She couldn’t hear what he was saying due to the sound of the propeller, but she got the jist of it. She didn’t know how he managed to get a helicopter, but it looked like he put his career as a police officer on the line.

Jiwon chewed her lips as she looked at the broken recorder and Chairman Wang, who was crawling on the ground. What should she do? Seokju took a glance at her recorder and realized what was going on. He grabbed her and shouted.

“If we don’t kill him now, he’s going to get away due to the lack of evidence!”

Jiwon looked at him and shouted back.

“I know!”

It was the exact thought that had passed through her head.

“Should we just kill him?!”

“No!”

Jiwon firmly shook her head. Seokju seemed to have read her mind because he seemed to return to his senses. She had almost lost her mind and considered it. It wouldn’t matter if this kind of man died a hundred, no, a thousand deaths, but her father would not have approved of this method.

“Even though your wife looks like this, she’s still a police officer!!”

Seokju watched as she pulled out a pair of handcuffs from her bra and sighed. Then he took off his glasses. There was a small camera attached to the frame of the glasses. As soon as Jiwon saw this, she couldn’t hide her joy as her eyes widened.

“Seokju!!! I love you!!!”

He had saved her twice now. Seokju pushed his glasses into her cleavage and frowned.

“Button up your shirt, will you!”

A beautiful face but a nasty personality. She could endure Seokju’s boomer personality just this once. Jiwon puffed her chest out and nodded.

“Okay, later!!”

“Hey, Detective Park!”

Chief Hong landed somewhere close by and ran towards them, almost stumbling in the process. Behind him, Jiwon could see a large group of armed policemen in black coming down from the helicopter. It seemed that he had been worried she’d be killed. The gangsters with knives got out of the golf carts, but when they saw the police barging in, they didn’t seem to know what to do. Jiwon put her whistle in between her lips and walked across the grass.

This was the crucial moment. It didn’t matter who came, whether it was the chief or another superior officer. She wasn’t going to yield.

Fweeeet!

Jiwon kicked the head of the squirming Chairman Wang before twisting his plump arms behind him as she handcuffed his wrists. She recited his Miranda rights and looked up to see Seokju watching her with a bright smile. Jiwon drew him a large heart with both hands.

Dad, are you watching?

I didn’t run away this time. I was by Seokju’s side until the very end.

* * *

Seokju was prosecuted before Chairman Wang. He could not avoid the crimes he had committed while he was in the criminal organization, plotting his revenge. The trial did not last long. Seokju admitted to his guilt.

The prosecutors demanded that he go to prison for five years, and Seokju did not appeal it. Seokju was calm as he stood in front of the judge, bound by rope. He was wearing a blue prison uniform, but to Jiwon’s eyes, he seemed to be feeling very comfortable. Because of this, Jiwon had to hold back her tears as she watched him from the audience.

“Why does a criminal look this good?”

When she saw a smile stretch across his handsome lips, it made her tear up as well.

“Chairman Wang is stuck inside a hospital. I wish he’d just die there.”

“I told you it would be difficult.”

Chairman Wang had been captured, and the camera on the glasses had been turned in as evidence. But as Seokju said, the man was a business tycoon. Whenever Jiwon recalled how Chairman Wang was being treated by the best doctors in the nation, her teeth clenched in anger. He was probably sneering at the police officers who were waiting to resume their investigation right now.

“I knew that, but now that it’s happening right in front of my face, I can’t help but feel angry.”

Jiwon let out a deep sigh. Seokju looked at her through the glass with holes and spoke up in a clear voice.

“The law can’t bring about justice, Jiwon.”

His cruel, piercing words made Jiwon raise her voice in response.

“I didn’t come here for idle chatter, so say some pretty words. To your wife.”

“That’s too awkward for me, so I can’t do that.”

“I’m the idiot for expecting anything from you.”

“Instead, I’ll give you a present.”

“Okay. Gimme.”

When Jiwon blinked and held up her hand, Seokju laughed from behind the glass.

“You need to find it yourself.”

“What are you talking about? Where is it?”

“It’s in a place you will never find.”

“Then how will I find it?”

Seokju stood up and looked down at her.

“You have the key. Good luck.”

“Hey! Where are you going? There’s still some time before the visitation is over!”

Seokju didn’t say anything in response and disappeared. As her shouts rang in the empty room, Jiwon was left all alone.

“Cold bastard. Didn’t he miss me? Seriously…”

She sighed to cool down her feverish face, but it didn’t seem to help.

“But where can the present be? Is he just bullshitting me?”

Jiwon grumbled as the prison guard glared at her. When she returned to her car, she leaned back into her seat and closed her eyes. She didn’t think Seokju’s words were meaningless. He had definitely prepared something, but where could it be?

She gazed at the red sunset before holding up her cellphone and punching in a familiar number.

— Yeah, Jiwon.

She could hear a busy noise in the background as her mother answered the phone.

“Mom, are you at the store?”

— Yeah. I’m at the store. Why? Is something wrong?

“I was just wondering… Is the passcode for our house still the same?”

Her mother remained silent for a moment before she answered in a quiet voice.

“I’ve never changed it. Because I wasn’t sure when you or Seokju would come back.”

Jiwon accelerated in the old police car. Her heart raced as she made her way home.

Beep, beep, beep.

She opened the old door. This was the first time Jiwon was entering this house since she left at the age of twenty. She slowly looked around. A slight groan left her lips.

“…Fuck.”

It was as if time had stopped. The old home appliances were still all in their original spots. All the furniture remained the same. The smell of the house was still just as she remembered it. Jiwon swept her hand across her face and carefully took off her shoes. When she stepped onto the wooden floor, she turned around and kicked her shoes so that they were haphazardly strewn across the foyer. Then she walked over to her bedroom that was next to the bathroom. She threw open the door.

“This ahjumma seriously…”

As expected, Jiwon’s room was the same. She was certain that her lilac bed sheets had been cleaned recently because they smelled good, and there was not a speck of dust in sight. When she even saw the few textbooks and reference books stacked neatly on her table, her nose stung and her eyes watered.

“Huu…”

Jiwon flopped down onto the bed. She had a hunch that Seokju’s peculiar riddle was pointing to this place, so she had blindly come here. However, seeing that her mother came in here and cleaned the room daily, there was no way it could be here.

“……”

Jiwon let out a long sigh and glanced at an old laptop that was sitting on the corner of her desk. Jiwon burst onto her feet and opened the laptop that she had used and abandoned ten years ago.

Click.

Even as she was opening the laptop, she didn’t find it promising. However, when she turned it on, she saw an unfamiliar wallpaper and the icon of a strange folder on the screen. Jiwon’s eyes widened.

“What the…”

With a trembling hand, Jiwon clicked the folder titled ‘Idiot Park Jiwon’. A password window popped up. The hint was ‘FIRSTKISS’.

“August nineteenth… You asshole. You didn’t think I’d remember, did you?”

With damp eyes, Jiwon quickly entered the date of their first kiss. Another password window promptly popped up. The hint was ‘What I want to say to you’.

“…Idiot?”

Jiwon frowned as she quickly typed it in. She received a notification that the password was incorrect.

“Genius?”

That wasn’t it either. After much consideration, she typed in the three words ‘I love you’. But that was a failure as well. Jiwon chewed on her lips as she drew in a deep breath. She thought about how Seokju had come here during a time when her mother was gone. As he opened her laptop in this room that had not changed, what did he think about? Jiwon gulped and slowly typed in her answer.

I miss you.

The window disappeared and the folder was unlocked. The gift he had prepared for her was evidence related to Chairman Wang and the people he worked with. However, her true gift was something else.

“Omo, is that you, Jiwon? Jiwon!”

Jiwon heard the front door open along with her mother’s surprised but joyful voice.

The place she will never find. However, she held the key.

Jiwon covered her face with her hands and cried. He had guided her to the home she thought had been far away. It was annoying, but she really liked it.

* * *

“Yes, Prosecutor-nim. Hello!”

“What is it?”

At first glance, the prosecutor looked like he’d be quite easy to handle, but he was now looking at Jiwon with fierce eyes. Judging from how he was wearing hiking boots at six o’clock on a day off, it didn’t seem like he was your average guy.

“My name is Park Jiwon, and I’m in the Special-Ops Team Two.”

“So?”

“It must have been difficult to be demoted and sent to such a small, rural area, right?”

“Are you joking with me right now?”

She didn’t say this to break the tense mood around them. Seeing as how his eyes were filled with wrath, it seemed that Seokju hadn’t been wrong about him.

“The bastard who made you this way… I came to see you because I know how to tighten the screws on him.”

Wearing his hiking attire, the prosecutor looked at her in disbelief. However, when he took a flesh-colored photo from Jiwon, his expression changed.

“It’s not very honorable for the head prosecutor to be receiving steady sexual entertainment from the mob. Here’s a photo of him with Chairman Wang as well. They make quite a picture, don’t they?”

The prosecutor’s eyes gleamed.

“There have been a lot of corrupt prosecutors on TV lately. Please show us that there are many who aren’t that way.”

Jiwon passed the photos to him and turned around. If not by the teeth, then by the gums. If the Chairman believed the police to be too slow, then she would go to someone else. This was exactly what Seokju wanted. The weather was blindingly sunny. It was the perfect weather to go on a date with Seokju, so she couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed. Jiwon shrugged it off and got inside her old car.

Seokju’s gift wasn’t just one thing. Illegal funds that helped members of the ruling party get elected, corrupted bids for a construction company, even unlawful employment. The more she dug, the more came out. There were so many organizations with ties to the Hanseong faction. Seokju told her that if there were powers that tried to keep Chairman Wang out of prison, they needed to find other powers that would help them. Jiwon thought long and hard about who these people could be, and whenever she approached one, they took the bait.

“The money earned from voice phishing was used to fund the election. I’m not speaking as a policewoman but as a citizen of this country when I say that I cannot endure this any longer.”

“Did you say you were Corporal Park Jiwon? I’ll remember that.”

“You don’t have to remember my name, sir. You are a congressman who was chosen by the people, so all you need to do is your job.”

Jiwon diligently went around. She’d throw a few morsels at the reporters and even shared drinks with them.

“To think that they entered a government-owned company, not only through their father’s influence but through the mob’s influence as well! How can the people who don’t have fathers and terrifying support systems live in such a world, Reporter-nim? Here, let’s drink this in one shot!!”

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. She followed this mantra and got results. Before the winter came, thanks to the hiking prosecutor, Chairman Wang stood trial with a jury of peers. Jiwon attended the entire trial from ten in the morning till two in the morning the following day, and her mother stayed by her side the whole time.

“It’s exhausting, so just head back first, Mom. I’ll tell you when the results are out.”

“No. I need to see this from start to finish with my own eyes.”

Her mother squeezed her hand around hers.

“And then I should tell your father.”

Her mother spoke with a smile on her face.

“That you and Seokju are better than him.”

“…Mom.”

When she told her mother about everything that happened to Seokju, her mother didn’t seem surprised. She merely nodded as if she’d been expecting this. After being charged with twelve felonies, including murder, accepting bribes, and illegal entertainment, Chairman Wang was given the maximum sentence of the death penalty. Seokju said that justice would never be served through the law, but Jiwon felt like she could stand up straight when she met Seokju again. Seokju’s expression probably wouldn’t change, but she knew that he would definitely be happy about the results.

“How do you feel?”

When Jiwon’s mother looked at her with worried eyes, Jiwon smiled.

“I’m fine, Grandma.”

Jiwon’s mother chuckled and looked back and forth between Jiwon’s face and stomach. Jiwon wondered what kind of face Seokju would make when she told him the news. But in order to do that, she needed to get him out of prison first.

* * *

Three months later. Winter. Prison.

“Number 1539. You have a visitor.”

Seokju closed the book he had been reading and stood up. He pulled down his shirt and tidied up before walking out into the corridor. He let out a long sigh. He tried not to get excited, but he couldn’t help it. Three months had passed since Jiwon had last come to visit him.

‘Don’t come so often from now on.’ When he said those words to her, she looked upset, but if she wasn’t a complete idiot, she would know what he was truly thinking. Whenever he saw her, he wanted to smash everything around him and break out. His woman was less than one meter away from him, but he couldn’t even grab her and kiss her. It threw him into a deep despair.

However, Jiwon was an idiot. During the past three months he didn’t see her, he sincerely began to think about breaking out.

“This way.”

Seokju instantly realized something strange was going on. The prison guard was guiding him away from the visitors room and opened another door. The place where he was being led was outdoors. It wasn’t the area where the prisoners could exercise. Instead, it was an area where only the employees of the prison could enter. Seokju was wearing a prisoner’s uniform, but no one seemed to mind, almost as if they were expecting him. He found this all very strange. Suddenly, a black sedan with tinted windows quietly arrived. Seokju stood in the cold wind and sat down on a bench. A man got out of the driver’s seat and rested his piercing gaze on him.

“Shin Seokju?”

The tall man was wearing a long coat. He approached Seokju and held out his hand. Instead of taking the man’s hand, Seokju gave him a long look. The man took back his hand and languidly sat down on the bench next to him. He pulled out a cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it before looking back at him.

“It looks like you want to know who I am.”

“Not really. Weren’t you sitting in the audience during my trial?”

The man nodded in agreement as he puffed on his cigarette.

“What kind of person do you think I am?”

“Seeing as how you can bring a prisoner out into a restricted area, I’d say you’re in a position superior to the prison warden. And you’re even smoking weed in front of a prisoner who needs to be reformed, so I’d guess that you’re very high up.”

During his trial, Seokju had met police officers, prosecutors, and other judicial officials. However, this was the first time he’d met a man like this. The man looked at him with much interest.

“Keep going.”

“Your hands are rough, so you aren’t some pencil pusher who sits at an administrative desk. You seem like someone who runs around in the field. Judging from your expensive, name-brand socks, I’d say you either came from money or your pay is high. I think you have a job where you don’t have to worry about other people’s eyes even though you show your personal belongings so blatantly.”

“So what do you think my job is?”

“A janitor?”

“That’s quite an unexpected answer.”

The man smiled. Seokju looked at him and continued to speak in a stiff tone.

“You’re someone who cleans up after the higher-ups who shit all over the place, aren’t you?”

The man laughed this time. He didn’t seem offended. After flicking his cigarette, the man glanced at Seokju and handed him his card.

“More specifically, rather than a janitor, I’m more like a guard. I watch and make sure that the higher-ups don’t shit all over the place.”

Seokju took the card and glanced down at it.

The full title was clearly written in smaller letters, ‘Korean National Top Secret Service’. 

“We only use our cards for one thing. When we’re scouting.”

“……”