The Marriage Certificate
The face that had silenced every word of admiration from Kwak Dong-cheol was unmistakable.
That was the reason he had suspected her and sent her on errands.
If his mother had known he suspected her, the way she had been restless would have looked even stranger.
She released the tension coiled in her body and quietly studied the man’s photo.
In the opulent, grand wedding hall, the man and woman standing arm in arm formed a couple that seemed perfectly matched, radiant and balanced.
Yet why was this man suspected of having killed his wife?
Yeon-jae slid the second document across the table.
The lady she had met today had visited a mysterious building together with a host.
That place had to be the ceramics exhibition where Sa Hee-eon was said to be.
With money like that, of course he would have been a specialist.
She scribbled “Art auction venue” on the request form and decided to let her head cool down.
When she turned on her tablet, the video she had paused last night resumed playing.
It was a daily vlog of a wealthy, peaceful life spent with a large dog, set in an overseas home.
Calm music, ordinary routines, and natural conversations between husband and wife delivered an oddly satisfying sense of vicarious living.
Could I ever live like that?
Just live my whole life vicariously like this—it would be fine, wouldn’t it?
The defendant’s crime was of poor character, and no restitution had been made. Imprisonment is inevitable. The defendant is sentenced to 18 months in prison.
She closed her eyes and opened them again.
When she tried to lie down to sleep, the judge’s voice still lingered in her ears like a nightmare.
In South Korea, criminal-record checks were illegal, so in theory she could have found a job if she had simply wanted one.
But she had no desire to do so.
She had already given up on a retrial.
She had no intention of living boldly with the stigma of being a criminal.
That was why she had started to take an interest in Echo Research, which probed the backs of those who were too proud to be honest.
At first she had spotted a flyer posted on the bathroom wall near the detention center and gone to a nearby PC café to learn about Echo Research.
Using a common open-source tool, she had hacked into the poorly constructed server and discovered a remarkably interesting situation.
The moment she connected, a green signal appeared on the monitor, and phone calls began flooding in at the PC café.
That was when she had felt it intuitively: this was the place she was meant to be.
After that, she never hesitated again.
Her personality had changed from being merely sharp to something far darker thanks to the hellish life in the detention center.
Before that, she had believed kindness would return to kindness and honesty would never betray.
Foolishly, she had thought that simply being good would be enough.
She had never imagined that the things she had struggled to obtain like a madwoman would be taken from her in an instant.
She had barely scraped by with a scholarship and dreamed of earning a little extra living expenses, and yet her life had been destroyed.
More precisely, it had been “them” who had ruined her.
They had used a naive, innocent young woman in her early twenties to cover their own crimes and bury them beneath the surface of society.
The charges were nothing short of absurd and fabricated: child sexual exploitation and theft.
She had secured the job through a professional tutoring broker.
A first-year high-school student—something about the boy had bothered her—but the pay was decent.
In any case, she was the best match for the profile the parents wanted.
Yet the moment she had set down her bag after coming home late, ten detectives had burst into the villa’s basement apartment, and before she could even put her things down, she was handcuffed.
“What kind of nonsense is this?! I haven’t done anything!”
Her scream tore out of her like a reflex.
She didn’t even know what she had said; the sudden turn of events had simply overwhelmed her.
Child sexual exploitation?! Theft?!
It had never happened to her—not once had she hurt anyone, or turned away from someone on the verge of death.
The vow to protect her moral code, even when she had nothing else, had been shattered by someone else.
The cold bite of the handcuffs had sent shock through her body; her pupils shrank and convulsions racked her.
Taken to the interrogation room, whose sign still read “Investigation Area,” she found it far narrower than the media had shown—two cramped cameras instead of a special mirror.
On one side stood a two-person sofa, and in her panic she sat on it instead of a chair and tried to catch her breath.
It was infuriating.
Dragged in roughly and told it was not a coercive interrogation, and they hadn’t even let her read the arrest warrant they had shown her.
Once she had regained her senses, she had protested violently, but they had remained completely unfazed.
Instead, nodding reassuringly, they repeated the same questions as if soothing her.
With the charges repeated, her mind went blank.
She had never received such money, nor had she known where to obtain it.
If she had been able to get that kind of money, she would never have put in the effort for four years of scholarships.
She wouldn’t even have started taking high-paying tutoring lessons.
It was only a deposit made to her mother-in-law’s account in the name of a holiday bonus.
It had been the first time in her life she had been that afraid.
Yeon-jae clutched her hands tightly in response to the cold gaze fixed on her.
Her nails had dug into her skin, leaving deep red marks, yet she felt no pain.
That was impossible.
Her eyes widened in shock.
She chewed on Seong-jun’s name, but the suddenness of the mention made it impossible to recall who he was at once.
Then it came to her—the man who had called and said he had a tutoring job for her.
His voice had been quick and businesslike, unremarkable.
That was him. “This is Seong-jun. I’m calling about the tutoring position.”
The evidence they produced was nauseating.
The woman in the raw pornography could not possibly be her—though the face looked identical, it was not.
No. It was absolutely not her.
They ignored her protests as if they were talking to a wall.
After twenty-four hours of the same questions and answers, they had pushed her to the brink of exhaustion.
Someone knocked on the interrogation room door and entered.