Jeong-rok, who had been silently watching this, picked up the dropped business card and left the observation room.
Soon, the muffled sound of voices and the rustle of papers were heard from the interrogation room door.
Noticing someone, Jun-hyeok excused himself to the three people seated before him and quickly stood up.
Coming outside, he silently checked the business card Jeong-rok held out, his eyes narrowing, before he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Damn it, I knew he looked like a bastard from the start,” he muttered, his voice a low growl.
“You know that, right?”
Jeong-rok’s voice was a barely audible murmur, meant only for Jun-hyeok.
“Exactly.”
Jeong-rok leaned in closer, his voice lowered as much as possible, a conspiratorial whisper.
“That’s what’s strange, so I’m telling you to wrap it up.”
He paused, letting the implication hang in the air before adding, “This isn’t a case for Sunyang to be involved in.”
“…Understood.”
Jun-hyeok’s voice was tight with suppressed frustration, but he knew better than to argue with Jeong-rok when he spoke in such a tone.
Jun-hyeok, having finished his terse conversation with Jeong-rok, returned to the interrogation room.
During the short time the detective was away, the three people present exchanged no further words.
Yong-joon remained a picture of anxiety, wringing his hands and casting furtive glances around the sterile room.
The doctor kept glancing at the lawyer, chugging water from a small bottle as if his life depended on it, his nervousness palpable.
The lawyer, in stark contrast, only checked the time occasionally on his expensive watch, not even sparing a glance at the other two, a picture of calm indifference.
Returning to his seat, Jun-hyeok once again put on his most amiable, almost sympathetic, face.
It grated on him to have to conclude the investigation with little to no progress, a bitter pill to swallow.
Yet, he had to act as if nothing had happened before leaving, maintaining the illusion of a diligent investigator so the shrewd lawyer wouldn’t notice the sudden shift in strategy.
“Have you ever seen Ms. Yang Sun-hwa?”
Jun-hyeok asked, his voice soft and non-confrontational, a stark contrast to his earlier frustration.
He waited, letting the question hang in the air, his gaze fixed on Yong-joon.
“Even a brief encounter is fine. Anything would be helpful,” he pressed, his tone almost pleading, designed to evoke a sense of empathy.
His demeanor was so natural, so perfectly crafted, that Jung Yoon, observing from the hidden room, silently admired it.
He knew exactly the voice and face that would work best on a soft-hearted, impressionable person like Yong-joon. Jung Yoon’s gaze naturally turned to the anxious man.
As expected, Yong-joon was looking at Jun-hyeok with less apprehension than at the beginning of the interrogation.
His softened eyes, wide and almost childlike, made the man, who was well past his mid-thirties, seem incredibly vulnerable.
“…H-Help?”
Yong-joon slowly blinked his wide eyes, the single word a mumbled question, as if he was struggling to process the request.
Jun-hyeok, lowering his head to forcibly meet Yong-joon’s gaze, nodded emphatically, his expression a mask of earnestness.
Yong-joon, who had been quietly watching him and fidgeting with his fingers under the table, murmured in an unsure tone, his voice barely a whisper.
“Y-Yong-baek…”
“Yes?”
Jun-hyeok’s brow furrowed deeply as he strained to hear the faint, almost inaudible voice.
Yong-joon, who had been staring at Jun-hyeok, suddenly lowered his head, avoiding direct eye contact.
Yong-joon couldn’t keep his head still, moving it restlessly as he stumbled over more words, a jumbled mess of sounds.
“I, I Yong-baek… Yong-baek is hard…”
An unexpected name, a new lead, emerged from a question asked with little expectation, drawing everyone’s attention in the room.
Jun-hyeok, too, who had thrown out the question as a mere closing remark, widened his eyes and leaned forward, having been indifferent just moments before.
There are always times when a big fish gets caught by chance, and he felt a sudden surge of anticipation, a flicker of hope that this dead-end case might just crack open.
But then, the lawyer’s rigid, mechanical tone cut through the sudden tension, shattering the fragile hope.
“As the attending physician stated, Mr. Jung Yong-joon does not have the intellectual capacity to recall situations in detail. He is certainly not in a state to help others.”
Finally, a faint crack, a subtle ripple of irritation, appeared on the otherwise perfectly composed face of the lawyer who had maintained a relaxed silence throughout the entire interrogation.
However, that didn’t fundamentally change the lawyer’s demeanor.
The lawyer continued to feign cooperation with Jun-hyeok’s questions while subtly adhering to a meticulously crafted method of avoiding any truly useful answers.
In the end, despite Jun-hyeok’s renewed efforts, the police gained nothing substantive from Yong-joon.
Jun-hyeok, who was about to conclude the investigation according to Jeong-rok’s earlier order, now continued the investigation with a renewed vengeance, his pride stung by the lawyer’s blatant stonewalling.
In the observation room, Jeong-rok rubbed his forehead and shook his head, a clear sign of his displeasure at Jun-hyeok’s insubordination.
But it was a reaction that would certainly not be conveyed to Jun-hyeok, who was too consumed by his scratched pride.
Jun-hyeok relentlessly continued to question the lawyer, his questions sharper, his tone more pointed.
It was all useless.
The lawyer, a master of evasion, parried every inquiry with practiced ease.
Eventually, as the investigation passed the three-hour mark, the lawyer, perhaps thinking he had played his part sufficiently, called out to the doctor.
The doctor, who had been dozing with his head bowed, suddenly trembled as if having a seizure and abruptly lifted his head, his eyes wide with alarm.
Gasps and hollow laughs erupted in the observation room, a mix of amusement and exasperation at the doctor’s pathetic state.
Jun-hyeok’s sharp gaze, which had been intently poking the space between his brows with the thumb of his clasped hands, fell upon the startled doctor.
The doctor, visibly embarrassed by the sudden attention, quickly avoided his gaze and fumbled to pack his bag, eager to escape.
“Can we leave now? Mr. Jung Yong-joon seems very tired. Isn’t that right, Yong-joon?”
The lawyer, a gentle, almost benevolent smile playing on his lips, asked Yong-joon, subtly pressing for an exit.
Yong-joon, who had been quietly observing the exchange, flinched as if startled by the sudden call from the lawyer, his eyes darting nervously.
Jun-hyeok’s head tilted slightly, observing Yong-joon’s extremely tense demeanor.
But Yong-joon quickly settled down, merely nodding awkwardly and offering no further verbal response.
He just kept nodding, avoiding Jun-hyeok’s gaze, with an incredibly anxious expression etched on his face.
“H-Have to go. H-Home… Home…”
Yong-joon repeated the same words over and over, like a broken doll capable only of saying he had to go home, his voice laced with desperation.
Eventually, the higher-ups, concerned about Yong-joon’s fragile condition and the escalating tension, ordered the witness investigation to be concluded.
The cold case investigation team also agreed to the directive, as they were planning to end the investigation anyway, and continuing it would be useless if such a situation were to be challenged later on procedural grounds.
The legal battle that would ensue would only complicate matters further.
Jun-hyeok, with a sigh of resignation, handed the concluded statement to the lawyer.
The lawyer quickly skimmed the witness statement, his eyes moving rapidly over the document, and then, without a moment’s hesitation, stamped it on Yong-joon’s behalf.
The doctor, relieved to be done, also signed and dated the co-witness section, his hand trembling slightly.
After the investigation ended anticlimactically, with more questions than answers, they returned to Seoul as if driven out by an invisible force, sitting in their seats with exhausted expressions.
The energy that had filled the interrogation room had completely drained away, replaced by a heavy silence.
Only Han-gyeol calmly flipped through the report, his face thoughtful, seemingly unaffected by the frustrating outcome.
The office was excessively quiet, partly because the adjacent Serious Crimes Team 2 had also gone out on a dispatch, leaving their desks empty.
The ringing of a phone could even be heard somewhere far down the corridor, a distant, almost melancholic sound.
It was Han-gyeol, as expected, who broke the silence that had settled over the cold case team, his voice cutting through the quiet.
“It seems Jung Yong-baek is suspicious, after all, doesn’t he? His sudden disappearance, and then the lawyer cutting off Yong-joon when he mentioned Yong-baek’s name…”
Han-gyeol mused, leaning his face between the monitors, making scissor gestures in the air with both hands, and looked directly at Jeong-rok.
Jeong-rok, who had been leaning back in his chair and gazing at the ceiling, seemed to sense the gaze and only lowered his eyes to meet Han-gyeol’s.
“First, dig deeper into Yang Seon-hwa’s alibi on the day of her death. If nothing comes up, then we can name him as a suspect,” Jeong-rok stated, his voice devoid of emotion, a purely logical directive.
“Just an investigation now…”
Han-gyeol began, a hint of impatience in his voice.
“Let’s be thorough. If we bring him in without solid proof, it’ll just dredge up old issues and make the investigation harder,” Jeong-rok replied in a dry, unyielding tone.
At this, Han-gyeol shut his mouth and turned on his computer, accepting the command without further argument.
Jung Yoon, who had been quietly watching Jeong-rok throughout the exchange, thought he seemed quite normal in these moments.
At least when he was investigating, when his mind was focused on the case, he seemed like a competent, adult detective, devoid of the complex personal emotions that often swirled around him.
Jung Yoon sighed, recalling his own tendency to sometimes give in to indignation, to let his emotions cloud his judgment.
But it was still difficult for him to view the case solely with a detective’s mindset, especially when Jeong-rok, his lover, was involved.
The personal and professional lines often blurred.
Even when Jung Yoon tried to look away, his gaze found Jeong-rok, almost instinctively.
Since Jeong-rok was his lover, if only in appearance and under the veil of their clandestine relationship, Jung Yoon found himself involuntarily looking at him during ordinary, effortless moments, drawn by an invisible thread.
If he hadn’t met me, Jeong-rok would have been perfectly fine.
Still a handsome man, kind to everyone he encountered, and endlessly gentle to someone else, someone deserving of his affection.
The thought that such a man, who would have lived a perfectly normal, contented life, had met his demise because of him brought on a sharp, excruciating pain, a feeling like his limbs were being torn to shreds.
Moisture welled up in Jung Yoon’s sorrowful eyes, blurring his vision, a testament to his inner turmoil. Just as he realized this, Jeong-rok, sensing his prolonged gaze, sharply lifted his head, his eyes piercing.
Startled by the sudden eye contact, Jung Yoon froze, caught red-handed in his emotional reverie.
The moisture that had welled up was instantly sucked back into his pupils, his eyes suddenly dry.
Unable to even think of looking away, he held Jeong-rok’s gaze for a fleeting, intense moment, a silent acknowledgement passing between them.
But as soon as he noticed a sly, knowing smile creeping onto Jeong-rok’s lips, Jung Yoon quickly cleared his throat, breaking the connection, and hid his flushed face behind the monitor like a shield.
He heard the distinct sound of a chair being pulled across the room, the rolling sound of the wheels growing closer.
Jung Yoon, holding his breath, cursed softly under his breath as an intruder’s foot stretched out from under his desk and lightly nudged his toes, a playful, yet annoying, gesture.
He wanted to stomp on the annoying, constantly twitching foot, to send a clear message, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t the right time to provoke him; nothing good would come of it.
He knew Jeong-rok’s playful provocations could quickly escalate into something more personal, and he wasn’t in the mood for it.
Jung Yoon knew what his face looked like.
It was all too clearly reflected in the black monitor screen before him.
From his earlobes to below his cheekbones, his face was flushed a deep, tell-tale red, and trying to argue with Jeong-rok in that state would only lead to his inevitable defeat.
He would lose control, and Jeong-rok would win.
Jung Yoon ignored Jeong-rok’s persistent foot, which wouldn’t leave him alone, and calmly grabbed the mouse.
He opened the case file, as if nothing were wrong, as if his heart wasn’t pounding, and serenely scrolled the mouse wheel, feigning complete absorption in the document.
When Jung Yoon showed no reaction, maintaining his facade of indifference, Jeong-rok finally seemed to lose interest, and his foot eventually withdrew.
Jung Yoon then let out a great sigh of relief, the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding escaping his lips, and rubbed his touched toes on the floor, as if to erase the lingering sensation.
Only after the lingering effects of his eye contact with Jeong-rok and the playful touching of their toes had completely subsided, only when his heartbeat had returned to a semblance of normal, did the crime scene details on the monitor fully sink into his vision, his mind finally able to focus.
It was the second day of the intensive investigation into Jung Yong-baek, a thorough and relentless pursuit of every possible lead.
And then, on the early morning of the third day, the Cold Case Investigation Team received shocking news, a blow that seemed to shatter their last remaining hope.
“Jung Yong-baek’s alibi has been confirmed.”
The words hung in the air, cold and definitive.
The last thread of hope they had so desperately relied upon was futilely severed, leaving them with nothing but dead ends.
“What?”
The disbelief in Jun-hyeok’s voice was palpable, mirroring the collective shock in the room.
While his past whereabouts around the time of Yang Seon-hwa’s death were largely unknown and shrouded in mystery, it was now definitively confirmed through official immigration records that Jung Yong-baek was not in Korea around the estimated date of Yang Seon-hwa’s death.
He had been out of the country, making it impossible for him to have committed the crime.
The alibi was solid, irrefutable.