Chapter 28
As the long meeting ended, Woo-kyung loosened his tie.
He came down the stairs with a document file tucked under his arm, feeling a heavy fatigue settle on his shoulders.
Just today alone, three cases and two evidence adoptions.
This wasn’t a large law firm; it was a structure where they had to improvise a solution every time something happened.
There was no system to speak of.
He let out a low laugh, exhaling a self-deprecating sigh.
The firm’s operations were always tight.
They could only stay afloat by picking up cases that made money; the rest were handled with temporary stopgap measures.
Even in such an environment, there was one reason he endured.
Because there was someone who delivered results in the end.
Especially the cases Lee Yeon supported were always neatly wrapped up.
Whether it was organizing evidence or preparing statements, there was nothing to fault.
Frankly, without her, this office would have a hard time functioning.
Woo-kyung thought this and let out a short, “pfft,” laughing briefly.
‘If only she had a lawyer’s license, she would have been a truly great partner.’
As a pointless regret brushed past him, a bitter smile crept onto Woo-kyung’s lips.
Holding these various thoughts, he pushed open the office door.
But something felt off.
Only neatly organized documents sat alone on the desk, and Lee Yeon’s seat was empty.
“Where did she go?”
As Woo-kyung looked around, an employee approached from the hallway.
“Attorney Cha, are you looking for Manager Yu?”
“Where did she go?”
“She went out to meet a client about ten minutes ago.”
“A client?”
Woo-kyung’s neat brow furrowed.
“Yes. The client contacted us saying it was urgent. Manager Yu said she would go right out.”
“What case is it?”
The employee hesitated for a moment before continuing.
“It’s a pro bono legal consultation case. Attorney Song was originally handling it but dropped it midway. Manager Yu said she felt sorry for them and would help them directly.”
“Felt sorry?”
“Yes. I heard the husband has a history of domestic violence. So it might be… a bit dangerous, but she insisted she had to go.”
Woo-kyung’s eyes turned cold as his fingertips stopped on the table.
“So you sent her to a place like that alone?”
At his deeply lowered voice, the employee flinched.
“Well, she usually goes alone for those kinds of things…”
“There’s no ‘usually’.”
Woo-kyung cut them off sharply, sounding exasperated.
“A scene like that is dangerous no matter who’s there.”
“I’m sorry, we didn’t know she would leave so urgently either.”
“The address.”
“Pardon?”
“The address. What’s the client’s address?”
With a flustered face, the employee hurriedly turned on the computer and found the memo file.
“Here it is.”
A piece of paper was handed to him.
As soon as Woo-kyung scanned the address with his eyes, he checked his wristwatch.
“Attorney Cha, are you going yourself?”
“Who else would go?”
He was already picking up his jacket.
He could no longer hear the employee’s words.
Clutching the documents, Woo-kyung left the office without a moment’s hesitation.
At the end of the hallway, the elevator doors opened and he stepped inside roughly.
As the doors closed, a strange sense of foreboding was spreading in Woo-kyung’s eyes.
The premonition that she was somewhere in danger right now.
It wasn’t just a simple gut feeling.
In all the cases he had seen so far, that intuition had never been wrong, not even once.
***
Following the address written on the memo using her map app, Lee Yeon stepped into an alley lined with old brick walls.
The night air was damp, and the flickering light of a broken street lamp sporadically pierced the darkness.
Why does it feel so sinister?
It was a neighborhood even shabbier than the redevelopment area where Lee Yeon had lived.
Walking carefully step by step, Lee Yeon recalled the face of the woman who had visited her office a few days ago.
From the moment they first met, something about her was memorable.
Her excessively thin frame, the rough calluses on every finger, the caution embedded in every word she spoke.
She asked for help for her husband.
She said her husband, who worked at a manual labor site, had made a mistake while drunk.
He had injured a co-worker at the construction site.
Because of that, they were faced with enormous medical bills, and eventually, while being hounded by debt collectors, he recently got entangled in a lawsuit with someone he had a dispute with.
‘Attorney, my husband isn’t a bad person. He just… did it because he was having such a hard time.’
Lee Yeon couldn’t easily respond to that one statement.
Under normal circumstances, she would have politely declined.
Their firm usually didn’t handle such cases.
Cases involving financially unstable individuals didn’t make financial sense, and the firm itself didn’t encourage accepting them.
But strangely, that day, the woman’s face stayed on her mind.
Lee Yeon checked the documents in her bag once more.
“…This should be the right address.”
After wandering for over thirty minutes, she finally stopped in front of a half-collapsing house at the end of a small alley.
The window frames were rusted, and the gate creaked on one side.
Summoning her courage, Lee Yeon knocked on the door.
“Hello… I’m from the Jeongyul Law Firm. Is anyone home?”
Even after knocking louder, only silence answered. There was no response from inside.
“Are you there?”
Lee Yeon knocked again. But there was still no movement.
Puzzled, she grabbed the loosely hanging doorknob and pulled it hard; the old door creaked and opened relatively easily.
Just as Lee Yeon was about to step through the open doorway, the sound of something breaking came from inside.
*Crash!*
The sharp sound of breaking glass echoed from inside the house.
Lee Yeon’s heart sank.
She hurried inside; the air was thick with a musty smell of mold and alcohol.
In the middle of the room, several liquor bottles lay toppled, and shards of a broken plate were scattered on the floor.
In front of them, a man who seemed drunk stood holding an empty bottle. Before him, a woman was crouching, her face pale.
“Stop it!”
Lee Yeon stepped forward, raising her voice.
The drunk man looked at Lee Yeon with bleary eyes. Suddenly, a scene from her distant memories superimposed itself.
The expression, frowning indifferently with alcohol-glazed eyes, the low sigh that escaped over his shoulder. It looked so much like him.
Like her own father.
Lee Yeon felt her heart strangely shaken for no reason.
Memories of the past she didn’t want to recall began to seep up murkily.
Along with the faint warmth of her childhood, the cold memories she wanted to erase came rushing back all at once.
Perhaps because of that, even though she wanted to look away, she kept finding her eyes tracing the man’s profile.
Meanwhile, the man, reeking of alcohol, staggered and turned his head towards Lee Yeon. His darkly flushed eyes scanned Lee Yeon up and down.
“Who… who are you, butting in?!”
Lee Yeon didn’t step back; instead, she took another step closer, positioning herself in front of the woman.
“You can’t solve problems like this. Please put that down first.”
Wrapping her arms around the woman’s shoulders protectively, she spoke in a low but firm voice.
“Hey! Give that woman here!”
“Please calm down. I’m from the Jeongyul Law Firm.”
“What? Jeongyul? I don’t know, don’t care! It’s all useless. Give her here and get lost!”
The woman, her body trembling violently, clung to Lee Yeon as if depending on her.
“You know that violence can’t be justified for any reason, right? So even now—”
But the man’s hand swung through the air.
“Move! Last warning. If you don’t move…!”
Lee Yeon briefly squeezed her eyes shut.
This situation, what should I do?
Instantly, the name that flashed through her mind was Woo-kyung. What would he have done?
Would he have calmly calculated the opponent’s weakness, or would he have taken control of the situation with one sharp remark? Thinking of the resolute decisiveness hidden behind his always composed expression made her heart beat strangely.
But Woo-kyung wasn’t here now. That fact made Lee Yeon even more acutely tense. Biting her lip tightly, she tried to overlay onto herself the judgment she believed he would have possessed.
That’s when it happened.
The sound of rough, ragged breathing reached her ears. Lee Yeon opened her eyes in surprise.
“Are you okay?”
The person standing at the doorway was Woo-kyung.
His figure, panting and breathing heavily, was different from his usual cool composure. His shoulders heaved with each rough breath, and his eyes flashed intensely.
In that moment, Lee Yeon’s face trembled with a mix of surprise and relief.
