Free Web NovelThat day, the boy Jeongwoo was called the so-called “crazy knifeman.” A prosecutor who would slice up anyone who got caught in his path.
Nothing worked on Jeongwoo. Bribes, threats—none of it meant anything in front of him.
There was only one thing Jeongwoo wanted.
“Hey, you bastard! You think you’re the only prosecutor or what? Huh? You think you’re the only prosecutor?!”
“Yeah. Looks like I’m the only prosecutor here.”
It was a war against the rule of law.
“Pack your bags right now! You’re being reassigned to the provinces—”
“Hey, old man. You really don’t get the situation, do you? You know what this is? It’s a double ledger. A double ledger. I go to the provinces. You take off your uniform. Wanna try it?”
Now came the famous scene everyone already knew. That timing—the one that spawned hundreds of reaction clips from a single face.
‘Myeong Jeha should be appearing any second now....’
Myeong Jeha’s total screen time was barely over ten minutes. And yet, in <War with the Law>, he was burned into the public’s memory as a near co-lead.
As if summoned by the thought, Myeong Jeha appeared.
“Oh—.”
People’s eyes are all the same. The moment Myeong Jeha showed up, the theater rippled with a small wave of gasps.
This wasn’t someone making noise at the theater.
‘Like how everyone jumps together at a scare in a horror movie... when Myeong Jeha’s face comes on, everyone admires him together....’
Myeong Jeha was carrying out traffic control ordered from above, an abuse of authority. Neatly dressed in his police uniform, he stared at a luxury sedan with an openly displeased gaze.
“Look at that. No red light and it’s fucking flying through. Damn, the higher-ups really do have it good. Don’t you think?”
Even at the senior officer’s comment beside him, Myeong Jeha answered curtly, displeased.
“Good? Not really.”
Beyond the sedan gliding leisurely down the empty road, Myeong Jeha’s rebellious stare lingered.
The reason Jeongwoo, after becoming a prosecutor, could be called a crazy knifeman was thanks to the “double ledger” he’d gotten his hands on during <War with the Law>.
Jeongwoo’s father, who had survived by running errands in the underworld, had taken the fall for a crime and spent many long years in prison.
Taking pity on him, the kitchen ladies and uncles had slipped the ledger out just before a search and seizure and handed it to Jeongwoo.
Inside were visitation records. Who met whom, where, and when.
The home of a poor boy with no guardian was safe. Because no one ever thought to search it, the double ledger became a secret weapon.
With it, he took quite a few small-time heads. Now it was time for the blade to point upward.
* * *
“That bastard... he’s getting way too wild.”
At a high-end Japanese restaurant, a high-ranking figure poured liquor into a pristine white cup, his eyes glinting obscenely.
Everyone knew that “that bastard” meant Jeongwoo. The man who had given Jeongwoo the goal of becoming a prosecutor had, before anyone realized it, become a chief prosecutor.
Which meant his words were the law.
Now, somehow, they had to kill Jeongwoo and bury the evidence.
“Chief Prosecutor! Don’t worry about that guy—focus on the bigger picture!”
Someone spoke up with exaggerated cheer, trying to lighten the mood.
As if they’d all been given a mission to relieve the chief prosecutor’s anger on the spot, everyone joined in.
“Shall we talk about the next election?”
“Oh, right. Can’t let some lowlife distract us from something that important.”
The topic shifted quickly—to money laundering for election funds.
After <War with the Law>, they had come to hold all the power in the world.
The gang members they didn’t arrest, the ones they turned a blind eye to, soon became their loyal dogs.
Tok-. Tak-.
Above a small garden pond, bamboo tilted back and forth like a seesaw. Clear water trickled down, as if neatly washing away today’s dark story.
Their world was leisurely, as though flaunting the lofty wealth no one would dare covet.
The dark night passed quickly, and morning broke.
[Brave and Strong Children’s Education with the Police]
In an auditorium hung with a huge banner, the detective who had suggested talking about the election with the chief prosecutor the night before stood in uniform, gripping a microphone.
“We police officers always work hard! Day and night! For the safety of all you children—.”
Standing off to one side of the auditorium, Myeong Jeha watched him with an indifferent expression.
“Mister, mister!”
After the session ended, one of the elementary school kids called ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) out to him. Myeong Jeha bent down to lower himself to the child’s eye level.
The child giggled shyly and held out a fist.
“This!”
From the small hand came a candy, half-melted inside its wrapper from being held back so long.
“Thank you!”
Grinning brightly, the child ran back to their friends, laughing.
Myeong Jeha clenched the candy tightly in one hand. He had never done anything deserving of thanks like this.
‘Something... feels like I almost get it, but not quite....’
I kept my eyes fixed on the screen.
After finishing his shift and heading home with a tired face, Myeong Jeha was suddenly grabbed hard on the arm by someone.
“Hey. Talk to me for a second.”
“Who are you?”
Myeong Jeha asked, his expression guarded.
“I’m Prosecutor Yoon Jeongwoo. If you don’t come with me, I’ll start yelling right here. Officer! Help me!”
“...What the hell is this....”
With that bizarre threat, Myeong Jeha found himself seated inside a nearby parked car in an instant.
Yoon Jeongwoo handed him a tablet PC and gave a brief explanation as images scrolled by.
“Politicians need a shitload of campaign money. But they don’t have any, right? So where do you think it comes from.”
“...Are you talking about illegal funds?”
“Quick thinker. Okay. There’s this sports gambling site run by former Cheongsan Faction, now CS Holdings. Except it’s a fucking ghost company. A paper company. They dump the dogshit money they make into it. The cash runs around like crazy.”
In other words, money laundering.
At Jeongwoo’s fingertips, an image flashed by of a CS Holdings underling rushing through a CCTV blind spot.
“But where do you think the final stop is. Dig a little, and it all pours into a donation foundation run by a relative of our dear Chief Prosecutor.”
“....”
“So here’s the question. How many of those gangster fucks running that gambling site do you think went to politicians saying, ‘Please watch our backs’?”
Myeong Jeha couldn’t answer right away and hesitated.
He couldn’t make a clear judgment yet, but he could tell he’d stepped onto a board so massive it was almost unbearable.
In a tug-of-war between a sitting chief prosecutor and a mere rookie cop, the loser was obvious.
“Hey. You remember the elementary school kid case last month. The redevelopment area.”
Jeongwoo leaned closer to Myeong Jeha, who was holding the tablet PC. The screen changed.
On it appeared materials about a violent crime against a young girl—no longer even covered heavily in the news.
“That bastard got three years in prison today. Five years suspended.”
“Does that make any sense?”
“Yeah. It does. Your higher-ups buried it real nice.”
Yoon Jeongwoo took back the tablet PC from Myeong Jeha’s hands.
His now-empty hand had nothing left to grasp.
As if recalling the feel of the candy the child had given him earlier, Myeong Jeha’s fingers trembled slightly.
“Those CS Holdings gangsters. Those paper-company gangsters. Those shitty politicians. They’re gonna keep doing their dogshit steadily, nonstop.”
A smile spread across Yoon Jeongwoo’s face as he looked at Myeong Jeha.
The background checks were already finished.
Before coming to find him, Yoon Jeongwoo had obtained a photo of Myeong Jeha glaring at the chief prosecutor’s sedan.
“You just gonna sit there and watch that?”
Myeong Jeha, who had been hanging his head, slowly straightened his posture.
It was a movement filled with resolve.
“...What do I need to do?”
Suspicious music played as narration came in.
—Guys committing crimes for the first time don’t start big. It’s a kind of psychological warfare. There’s a reason a needle thief becomes a cow thief. There’s always something they did before. Put the missing case record files on a USB.
Myeong Jeha, who’d skipped lunch with his colleagues citing fatigue, casually plugged a USB into the PC beside him.
—One more thing. Some people commit crimes because they need money, but you can also tell just by watching how they live whether someone’s bound to fuck up. You know the types who look at the higher-ups and go, ‘Man, I’m jealous’? Something’s busted in their brains—they’re fried on dopamine. Those guys.
The owner of the neighboring PC was a cop who had been handling traffic control with Myeong Jeha.
Myeong Jeha’s hands moved quickly.
On the desk, the candy wrapper the elementary school kid had given him was still there.
* * *
The drama barreled toward its climax. The evidence Prosecutor Yoon Jeongwoo presented was rock solid.
With the internal whistleblower, Myeong Jeha, the board was perfect.
Yoon Jeongwoo had even joined hands with detectives.
“Hah... well, well.”
But the chief prosecutor, phone in hand, remained relaxed. Cooperation between prosecution and police might be one thing, but there was no way he’d fall to a single prosecutor and a bunch of lowly detectives.
He made a call to somewhere.
“Push it.”
With a single call, the chief prosecutor was trying to cover everything back up. He was a man with absolute power—someone who could even control a single car on the road.
“Have the car ready.”
Checking the clock on the wall, he ordered his secretary. It was time to move the slush funds.
The chief prosecutor’s lackeys, knowing his power, kept their mouths shut even in handcuffs.
Corrupt cops in black clothes moved in lockstep to arrest Prosecutor Yoon Jeongwoo.
Their synchronized footsteps echoed through the corridor.
The detectives who had joined hands with Jeongwoo were also driven into a corner. Even though they needed to stop the chief prosecutor, an order came down to dissolve the team.
“Hey! What are you doing? Pack your stuff—you’re being reassigned!”
“Chief!”
Inside the Anti-Corruption Investigation Unit office, the digital clock changed. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
The red numbers glowing against the black background looked like a warning.
It was a hair-trigger situation. They had to stop the chief prosecutor’s movement. Even the reporter who’d been Jeongwoo’s strong ally was unreachable.
“Fuck, why aren’t you answering?!”
Yoon Jeongwoo called frantically.
There was no time. If they missed this moment, the chief prosecutor’s footing would grow even firmer, and everything would go up in smoke.
The ticking of the clock sounded maddeningly loud.
Tick-tock-tick-tock-.
In the meantime, the chief prosecutor had already departed.
“Tsk....”
It was a bit of a hassle, but stuffing the slush funds into the trunk of the car he was riding in was the best choice to avoid having them seized by the state.
No one could block the chief prosecutor’s path.
There had never been a red light in his life.
The car carrying him ignored the glowing red signal and sped forward. Nothing could stop him.
Bump!
That was when it happened. The back seat where the chief prosecutor sat shook violently. The driver stammered an excuse.
“I—I’m sorry. A police car in front suddenly stopped—”
Knock knock-.
A sound tapped on the front seat window. When it was opened just a crack, a polite voice slipped through.
“Please cooperate with the investigation. We’ve received a report regarding election-related slush funds.”
“What the fuck, you bastard? Do you know who’s sitting back there right now?”
The driver snapped. But the owner of the polite voice didn’t flinch or back down.
“Open the trunk.”
“Hah....”
Of all the ridiculous people to meet. The chief prosecutor muttered. One phone call was all it’d take to strip this guy of his uniform, and yet he had some nerve.
Just as he leisurely crossed his legs to adjust his posture—
Bang! Bang! Bang!!!
The back seat shook even more violently.
