“-Fucking hell, fucking hell, fucking hell, Lee Seohae!!!!!!!”
“-I seriously love the Seohae character so much what do I do, I think I’ve fallen in love”
“-Jaeyeong... Jaeyeong, I love you...”
“-I’m smacking my head over and over ah holy shit this is insane”
The live discussion boards for were burning white-hot across the board. Manager Hong monitored everything with fervent focus.
“Let’s see, how much are they talking about our girl?”
[Drama/Movie Actor TALK / Is Han Yeoreum really supposed to have this many lines? holy shit]
[Drama/Movie Actor TALK / THIS is the first-love card right here T_T LOOLLL the love triangle is insane]
[Drama/Movie Actor TALK / Hey genre-thriller addicts, watch Unfair Trade before it’s too late, I fucking recomnd it]
[Drama/Movie Actor TALK / The OST for The Day We et is seriously working overti, I’m getting butterflies ♥(〃´૩`〃)♥]
It was occupying the board at nearly the sa level as posts about , the rom-com currently holding the #1 ratings spot.
Rom-com versus cri investigation. If anyone wanted to pick a fight, the rom-com side was overwhelmingly stronger.
On top of that, the other side was already on Episode 9 and had long secured a stable viewer base. A full three weeks ahead.
“This gap... needs to close.”
For so reason, Manager Hong felt like it was possible. Both were still in the sa double-digit rating bracket. He turned back toward the screen.
Kim Yonggeun remained silent in the interrogation room. He looked sowhat uneasy, but the fact that he still held the right to remain silent seed to offer him a sliver of comfort.
“Mr. Kim Yonggeun.”
“...”
“When was the last ti you visited the hoarder house recently? You always said those were personal visits, so they weren’t written into the logs.”
“...”
“Where did you go after work last week? Did you head straight ho?”
Beyond the glass, Lee Seohae silently observed Kim Yonggeun.
Her transparent pupils shimred under the reflection of the glass light. She was watching him with a level of concentration so intense it bordered on terrifying.
Kim Yonggeun’s face, hands, feet.
Each body part appeared in close-up on screen in turn.
“Where do you think the murder site is, Investigator?”
“Generally, it’s often the victim’s ho. Percentage-wise, the perpetrator’s ho about 30 to 40%, the victim’s around 20 to 30%.”
“Right. But ordinary people don’t know. How badly large amounts of blood start to stink over ti. What the sll of a rotting corpse is really like.”
At that sa ti, Gam Seonghwan was gripping the steering wheel, driving sowhere.
“No matter how much preparation and thought went into it beforehand, a first-tir has limits. There’s no practice, right? Is there so academy out there teaching this stuff? Of course not. That’s why no matter how much they try to hide it, they get caught. But murdering six people without getting his tail stepped on....”
The afternoon sunlight touched the side of Gam Seonghwan’s face as he drove. Just then, traffic had backed up ahead because of an accident.
“So you think the victims were killed sowhere else.”
“I feel like the decisive clue is here. I can feel it. Sowhere with few eyes around, easy to dispose of bodies in.... Wait, the location of that land.”
Gam Seonghwan bit down on the inside of his lip.
That land whose greenbelt designation had never been lifted. The very trigger that had set off Gam Seonghwan’s sense of justice.
The cri must have happened there.
The screen shifted. It stood in stark contrast to Gam Seonghwan, alone on the bright road.
Lee Seohae stepped into the dark interrogation room and, as if following a rule, stopped at a asured distance while facing the civil servant.
“Mr. Kim Yonggeun.”
The mont Manager Hong heard Lee Seohae’s voice, a dizzy thrill ran through him.
“This is your last chance to have anything resembling a real conversation in society.”
The interrogation scene that would go down as legend.
It began now.
* * *
“-Isn’t this line count insane???”
“-They keep changing the cara angles just to lock onto Han Yeoreum LMAO the satisfaction is unrealㅜ”
“-THIS is the exact genre piece I’ve been waiting for yes this is it this is exactly it”
“-TT__TT ah Han Yeoreum’s voice is so fucking good it’s giving chills”
“Isn’t this crazy?”
IP 85.152 unconsciously let their mouth fall open.
For five straight minutes, Lee Seohae’s interrogation scene completely crushed Kim Yonggeun beneath her, dominating the sequence solo and delivering the maximum possible catharsis to viewers.
[Unfair Trade Gallery]
[What the hell is this scene????? They should’ve put THIS in the trailer you clueless idiots]
[My heart is pounding so fucking hard, this is exactly what I was looking for]
[The sheer audacity of dumping all of this onto one person LOLOLOL holy shit this is actor abuse]
[How many NGs did this take LOOL I seriously want the making-of, Seohae’s actress must’ve suffered]
[I’m an original fan and I’m so grateful Han Yeoreum took Lee Seohae..]
The gallery was filling with posts at a speed it had never seen before.
Every single one of them was about Han Yeoreum’s acting.
Kim Yonggeun finally opened his mouth.
“You can’t corner soone like this without evidence. Honestly, this is... making uncomfortable. I’ll call a lawyer.”
“What kind of lawyer?”
“You keep calling a murder suspect or whatever, but I’m not saying another word.”
Kim Yonggeun crossed his arms and leaned back against the chair.
Creak.
An uneasy sound rang out.
At the sa ti.
“-Navigation ended.”
Gam Seonghwan, having arrived at the land bought under the civil servant’s relative’s na, looked around.
It was such a vast empty field he had no idea where to even begin searching for evidence.
“-You have left the route. Recalculating.”
But Gam Seonghwan turned the wheel.
If no answer ca on where to begin the investigation, then you started with the people.
That was the principle he lived by.
About twenty minutes away from the purchased land, on the outskirts where old farmland, orchards, worn-down storage sheds, and livestock barns stood, Gam Seonghwan arrived.
“I’d like to ask you sothing.”
Da da dan. A sharp piano-key BGM cut in. Thump—thump. A heavy bassline followed.
“Have you ever seen soone like this around here?”
At Gam Seonghwan’s question, the people shook their heads. Maybe because his appearance had nothing particularly distinctive, no one seed to rember him clearly.
“Ha....”
There wasn’t much ti.
After another fruitless lead, Gam Seonghwan scratched the back of his head with one hand.
But his instincts kept telling him.
This was the place. Right here.
That was when it happened.
“Who are you looking for?”
An old man spoke to Gam Seonghwan.
* * *
“In that case, I recomnd retaining either a violent cris specialist lawyer, or one experienced in public servant ethics law and anti-corruption statutes. Or perhaps soone specializing in administrative litigation and disciplinary action for civil servants.”
Lee Seohae abruptly changed the topic of the conversation.
“Mr. Kim Yonggeun, you weren’t brought in here solely as a suspect in the hoarder house murders. The greenbelt release issue... you know what I’m referring to, don’t you?”
“No, I an, it never got lifted.”
“In terms of the final outco, yes. But there was clearly intentional land trading involved, wasn’t there?”
The unexpected angle struck him directly, and Kim Yonggeun faltered.
Lee Seohae continued the interrogation like a machine translating an extrely long block of text.
Perfectly even. Not a single shake in pace.
“The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission Act is among the most basic rules a public servant is expected to uphold. There’s no way Mr. Kim Yonggeun didn’t know that purchasing land using internal information is subject to criminal punishnt. Up to five years in prison or a fine of up to fifty million won... and violation of the duty of integrity carries disciplinary action separately from criminal sentencing. Since local developnt plans were used, dismissal is almost guaranteed. Because the transaction was carried out under a relative’s na, enhanced punishnt under the Aggravated Punishnt Act is also possible. A civil servant’s iron rice bowl can’t stay iron forever.”
Kim Yonggeun, thanks to years of dealing with complainants, was probably far more used to listening than actually “conversing.”
But familiarity did not an tolerance.
“We’ll exclude the murder suspicion for now, and formally open an investigation into the greenbelt speculation case, where you are the clear pri suspect.”
Lee Seohae cornered Kim Yonggeun.
The fear that his mask as a good person might be ripped away. The disgust of being alone in a place where only society’s irredeemable trash ca. The tension of wanting to refute it, but knowing that another decisive statent like before would leave him no escape.
She drove all of those emotions into him so they could churn violently inside.
“As you know, the quality citizens value most in a public servant is integrity. If word gets out that civil servants rushed to buy land the mont inside information circulated, everyone starts screaming about unfairness. There’ll probably be protestors gathering outside the district office where you work. From what I hear, your reputation was excellent, and your work performance ranked near the top.”
Lee Seohae provoked him without end.
With only a few carefully chosen lines, laced with the implication that everything he had built could collapse in an instant, she pulled him in tighter.
Strength entered Kim Yonggeun’s left hand, the one wrapped around his arm. Gripping his own forearm hard, he barely forced his mouth open.
“...No.... Seriously, isn’t this going too far? Anyone hearing this would think I pocketed hundreds of millions, tens of billions. Change the investigator.”
“I’m the highest-ranking person here.”
Sothing twisted inside Kim Yonggeun.
An investigator younger than him. A domineering tone.
“And people above don’t co down for petty criminals like this.”
Most of all, the repeated way she kept referring to him as a “petty criminal.”
Kim Yonggeun was not a petty criminal.
He had murdered six people in a serial chain and still hadn’t been caught.
The more he killed, the clearer the conviction in his heart had beco.
Of course I’m the protagonist.
No matter how much the world had changed into an era of forensic science, Kim Yonggeun had not co under even the slightest suspicion.
Because he was a good person.
Because good deeds were naturally rewarded soday.
Because that was how things were supposed to work.
The reward a protagonist was ant to eventually receive simply hadn’t arrived yet.
So this life right now was just another trial phase.
One way or another, Kim Yonggeun was an extraordinary man who had single-handedly committed cris even the fiercest police investigators had failed to uncover.
“You’re only trying to pin the hoarder house murders on , so now you’re even grabbing onto irrelevant bullshit. Change the investigator. I’m not letting this slide. I’ll file a formal complaint and sue you properly.”
The urge to “teach Lee Seohae a lesson” boiled inside him.
A faint anger surfaced on the face that had once looked only gentle.
The left side of Kim Yonggeun’s face and the right side of Lee Seohae’s face were shown in alternating cuts.
* * *
“A few years ago, my ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) relative said they got scamd buying land around here, I think. There were a lot of people around here who got stuck with land like that, so it was chaotic for a while. Talking about protests and all.... But when people protested, there was just mountains of trash left behind. No one really cleaned it up properly.”
The cara captured the bleak surroundings.
“And it wasn’t just the protests. People were trying to build houses right on the edge where the greenbelt barely overlapped, putting up fras and all. It was complete chaos.”
A few protest banners about the greenbelt issue were still hanging there, their colors badly faded.
Half-built skeleton structures stood in places, adding to the desolation.
“In the end, it all turned into wasted effort... so people just left the ruined land as it was after digging it all up. What was the district office supposed to do? It was their own land, after all, whatever junk they piled there. But that young man, he was really a good person. Every ti he ca to look around because of the land issue, he’d always clean up so of the trash.”
An unmanaged outer field.
“The air’s good here, and there’s lots of grass too, so he even said he’d rather turn it into a little weekend farm. Said there was no point letting land sit idle.”
Land that was dozens of minutes away from the nearest house by car.
“Who says things like that these days? Later he even said he wanted to move to the countryside soday. He ca by our barn a few tis too, and at my age my back started acting up, so there was one ti I couldn’t work at all.”
Following the old man’s lead, Gam Seonghwan headed toward the barn with him.
Across from it stood a storage shed where sharp farming tools were kept.
“But even then he rolled up both sleeves and helped out, I’m telling you. I was so grateful I tried to pay him for the labor. But instead, he said he needed my help making his vegetable patch fertile, and asked if I could take care of so manure processing for him. Said he wanted to spread it on his own land.”
Gam Seonghwan looked toward the half-open shed door.
“So I told him alright. It was the first ti I’d ever seen soone not angry after getting scamd on land. His character was really admirable.”
“Do you happen to know when his last visit was?”
“Wasn’t that long ago.”
A chilling violin note spread beneath the scene.
“Yesterday.”
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