Chapter 77

Chapter 77. Take the Hammer Blow

Lee Eun-bit worked without weekends.

Still, Saturday nights were about the only time she allowed herself a little breathing room.

Ever since taking on Jo Jin-young's case and earning a considerable amount of money, she'd been even busier after leaving Kwon & Park Law Office.

What made it stranger was that she'd taken on the murder case through a recommendation from the firm's director, a former Chief Justice.

No matter how large Kwon & Park was, a case that big would've been tempting.

So why had they helped Lee Eun-bit go independent after handing it to her?

She should have suspected everything from the beginning.

People had always praised her.

Smart.

Talented.

Excellent at her job.

But Lee Eun-bit had never been particularly good at reading political currents.

Without realizing it, she'd received someone's generosity.

And it hadn't been entirely clean.

Ever since Do Jun-hyeok visited Silver Law Firm, Park Gwang-cheol, currently sitting in detention, had been bothering her thoughts so much that she hadn't been sleeping properly.

During the trial, Lee Eun-bit had focused only on proving Jo Jin-young innocent.

Whether he was truly innocent or not had never been her responsibility to decide.

But now, after taking one step back and comparing Jo Jin-young with Park Gwang-cheol...

She couldn't help questioning things.

Evidence she'd once seen only as proof of innocence had suddenly started changing its face.

Now all of it looked like the expressions of a murderer.

Stop thinking about it.

She finally ended the bath she'd been soaking in for the last thirty minutes and took a can of beer from the refrigerator.

8 PM.

It was time for the new terrestrial episode of 〈Good Pro〉.

Lee Eun-bit had told Do Jun-hyeok to simply keep the storyline identical to the movie version.

The moment she'd said that, in a way, she'd already crossed a river she couldn't return from.

If you pushed someone down a staircase intending to kill them, you were still a murderer even if they survived.

By insisting that the drama follow the movie version, Lee Eun-bit had, in some small way, helped conceal Jo Jin-young again.

A man who might actually have been the killer.

She had merely done her best as a lawyer to achieve what her client wanted.

Lee Eun-bit sat in front of the monitor with her canned beer and watched 〈Good Pro〉.

Kim Serin, the actress enjoying enormous popularity these days, brilliantly defended a murder suspect.

But Lee Eun-bit couldn't focus on the drama.

The more she'd reviewed the investigation records and examined the case while preparing the defense, the easier proving innocence had seemed.

So easy, in fact, that she'd struggled to understand why Prosecutor Lee Ho-seong had indicted Jo Jin-young at all.

At the time, she'd simply decided that it was because she herself was exceptionally skilled.

Then, before she'd even had time to prepare for the possibility of an appeal after winning the acquittal, Park Gwang-cheol was arrested and threw the prosecution into chaos.

The movie version of 〈Good Pro〉 had also portrayed the case with uncanny accuracy.

So at the time, she'd decided that the truth was simply something that could never remain hidden beneath the sky forever.

When Do Jun-hyeok's visit first made her consider the possibility that Jo Jin-young might actually be guilty, the first thing Lee Eun-bit had thought about was her own career.

Back when she'd worked at Kwon & Park, the firm's director had the authority of a former Supreme Court justice behind him, so moving through the legal world had been easier.

But having "gotten a murderer acquitted and released back into society" on her career record wasn't exactly an achievement she could present proudly.

Realizing that she had prioritized her own career over social justice was difficult to accept.

But if she looked at things coldly, something about Jo Jin-young's first trial had been wrong.

No matter how excellent Lee Eun-bit was, she wasn't so brilliant that she could make the entire prosecution look like idiots.

And she'd heard that Park Gwang-cheol's older brother, Park Gwang-ho, had finally been selected as the successor.

Rich conglomerate families fabricating murder cases to settle succession disputes weren't just fantasies that existed in movies.

The director of Kwon & Park had likely sacrificed Lee Eun-bit to protect the firm from someone's dirty money, severing that financial connection before it could become a burden.

And the person who had paid the enormous legal fees for the poor Jo Jin-young...

Was probably that same "someone."

Park Gwang-cheol's older brother.

Park Gwang-ho.

But what would change just because she placed a hand over her suddenly prickling conscience now?

Wasn't believing she could become righteous this late just another kind of arrogance, born from never having truly understood their circumstances?

Just as habit was about to make her choose her career again...

Kim Serin received a not-guilty verdict on the screen.

Her client was overjoyed.

The handsome male prosecutor squeezed his eyes shut in frustration.

So they had decided to keep the storyline where the client really had been falsely accused.

A disgusting sense of relief twisted instinctively in Lee Eun-bit's stomach.

It left a bitter taste.

Later, after Kim Serin drank celebratory liquor with friends from her hometown and headed home alone...

Someone began slowly following the slightly drunken Kim Serin through the night.

Then that person raised a terrifying claw hammer and smashed it into the back of her head.

Kim Serin collapsed.

Fighting against her closing eyes, she forced herself to look at the attacker.

Her own client stood there.

Holding the hammer.

And then came Kim Serin's monologue.

The pain filling my head vanished the instant I recognized my client's face.

His hammer looked like a judge's gavel, personally striking down my stupidity.

Because of my mistake, a murderer had escaped punishment.

With this single blow, I was able to understand my mistake and receive punishment for it at the same time.

In some strange way, I was even grateful to my client.

The episode ended there.

Was Kim Serin dead?

Probably not.

She was the female lead, after all.

Do Jun-hyeok had also said the romance between the prosecutor and Kim Serin was supposed to continue.

A promotional banner for another drama appeared after the episode ended.

But Lee Eun-bit couldn't bring herself to change the channel for a long time.

It was because of Kim Serin's final monologue.

Even covered in blood, Kim Serin still looked far prettier than Lee Eun-bit herself.

Kim Serin had said she was even grateful to her client.

But until the exact moment the client struck Kim Serin down, Lee Eun-bit had still been enjoying secondhand satisfaction from the acquittal.

If anything, she'd even admired Kim Serin for being skilled enough to win an acquittal for someone who was actually guilty.

And yet...

Lee Eun-bit somehow felt that if she were placed in Kim Serin's situation, she too would be grateful to the client.

She had never once thought that getting a murderer acquitted was admirable lawyering.

But while watching Kim Serin take that hammer blow, for the first time, she'd thought it looked admirable.

Lee Eun-bit had been underestimating her own sense of morality.

Reflect.

Take the hammer blow like Kim Serin.

If she continued ignoring Park Gwang-cheol, she'd become nothing more than one of those stereotypical villain lawyers from movies.

It wasn't too late to turn things around.

Lee Eun-bit pulled Do Jun-hyeok's business card from her wallet.

"Wow! Univ! Univ!"

The audience chanted Univ loudly enough to make my ears ring.

That was the group name of the trio I'd selected.

Song Eun-bin.

Kim Sol.

Choi Sarang.

I'd initially suggested using Universe as a temporary group name until we found something more suitable.

But they said using the company name itself wasn't cool at all.

Eventually, we compromised on Univ.

Written in English, it was Univ, Universe without the "erse."

It sounded a little like the name of some university that had forgotten the rest of its title.

But the girls themselves seemed satisfied, so I decided to think positively.

The second competition was being pre-recorded.

Since it was the first stage each agency would present with its new team, everyone had decided to pour some real effort into it.

Coincidentally, that meant filming overlapped exactly with the airtime for 〈Good Pro〉.

I tried to check online reactions to the drama.

But I couldn't.

There was simply too much attention on Univ.

And understandably so.

All three members were singing and dancing over a solid cyberpunk-style instrumental, and every one of them was performing at a high level.

People were already talking about whether Univ might revive the old trend of medium-tempo visual-vocal groups like Da Vinci or C.U.

Maybe because the members themselves had participated directly in building the performance, the stage had turned into something perfectly suited to showing off each person's strengths.

Exactly.

Cyberpunk had done nothing wrong.

The problem only came when you tried to make it so mainstream that none of the original form remained.

How you transformed it was the arranger's job anyway.

The electronic sounds had been refined as much as possible while still recreating the feel of ordinary punk music.

The tempo was fast too, making it perfect for raising the audience's excitement.

"Wow... What the hell is that...?"

The Riven Entertainment producer sitting beside me at the judges' table muttered in disbelief.

Everyone except me had built groups with close to nine members.

Because I'd limited Univ to three, they must have assumed we wouldn't be able to create much of a performance.

But that was a huge misunderstanding.

A miscalculation of Gyeonggi Province proportions.

You didn't need a crowd of people doing identical moves for a stage to look good.

If that were true, every popping dancer in the world would've starved to death years ago.

Did they think I'd suggested cyberpunk for no reason?

All three trainees were excellent dancers.

We'd inserted plenty of street-dance sections throughout the song.

That made the stage brutally demanding physically.

But look at the result.

It worked.

"Ah, unbelievable! Univ, the team with the lowest average individual pre-evaluation score, has just taken first place in the audience stage evaluation!"

Being ranked last beforehand had at least given us the advantage of performing last.

Of course, I hadn't deliberately selected members in the eighties just to exploit that.

You could only use that strategy in the second round anyway.

And even if this had been the very first stage of the night, it would've deserved first place.

"Wow... You made a stage like this in only one week? How is that even possible? Other than Song Eun-bin, aren't the other two ranked in the eighties?"

"That's right."

The manager from Scale Media spoke with genuine admiration.

Exactly.

This was why people needed to open their eyes properly when selecting trainees.

It wasn't like they'd had to evaluate trainees every day.

They'd only needed to do it once last week.

How hard could that possibly be?

If all you were going to do was pick based on previous success stories and preliminary rankings, how were you any different from an ordinary viewer?

If you were going to mindlessly take the highest-ranked trainees, what was even the point of calling yourself a producer?

They should've carefully identified overlooked trainees.

Trainees suited to their own development style.

Trainees who synergized with their company's concept.

Then selected them properly.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

I had just gotten as far as thinking, This is why producers these days... when my eyes met Shin Hyung-geol's.

Once every performance had ended, Shin Hyung-geol slowly walked over to me.

"Looking at that stage, I think five or six members would've been even better. Why insist on only three?"

The fact that he'd come all the way over to ask me personally meant he'd been impressed too.

"More would've been nice, sure. But there weren't any others who could perform at the same level as those three. If I only gather skilled members like this, we can show vocals and performances that go beyond normal idol standards. If everything about them is an advantage, how could people not like them?"

"That's true. But viewers also need the enjoyment of watching people grow. Well, you came first, so I suppose the result itself proves your point. I was simply curious."

So his argument was that if they were too perfect from the start, viewers wouldn't feel attached.

Wrong.

All three Univ trainees already had failure stories carved into their backgrounds.

Every future success they achieved would naturally look like the emotional fruit of growth.

Why would I deliberately show them looking incompetent?

The program was already spoon-feeding me the narrative.

"Even if someone else prepared the table, shouldn't you at least know which dishes taste good?"

"What? Hahahahaha!"

I'll enjoy every bite.

Apparently Shin Hyung-geol liked the joke.

"You really are something. I'll buy dinner tonight. No, at this hour, I suppose it'd be a late-night meal."

At that moment, my phone rang.

I checked the screen.

It was Lee Eun-bit's number, which I'd saved after leaving Silver Law Firm.

"You're getting older too, Chairman. Let's eat at a proper mealtime next time. You have my number."

"Shall we do that, then?"

Shin Hyung-geol lightly patted my shoulder and left the set.

After speaking with Lee Eun-bit, we agreed to meet at her office.

At first, she'd invited me to her home.

But merely approaching a woman's house late at night was enough to get you suspected of being a stalker like Jo Jin-young.

Of course, Jo Jin-young actually was one and I'd be falsely accused.

Still, there was no reason to invite the misunderstanding.

I changed the meeting place to Silver Law Firm, which gave me enough time to drop the members off at their dorm.

"But why am I the only one going with you?"

Serin asked from the passenger seat as we headed toward Seocho.

"Are you tired? Want me to drop you off too?"

"No. I was just curious."

It was late and she looked slightly tired.

But thanks to her broadcast makeup, Serin still looked dazzling.

It wasn't heavy stage makeup either.

Her skin tone had simply been polished naturally.

Ah.

A visual capable of causing traffic accidents.

"There's a lawyer named Lee Eun-bit. You know that pizza restaurant murder case, right? The lawyer everyone's saying is exactly like your character? We're going to meet her."

"Gasp."

The moment I finished speaking, Serin rolled down the window and checked her face in the side mirror.

The strong wind only blew her hair everywhere until it looked like a bird's nest.

We eventually arrived at Silver Law Firm.

Lee Eun-bit had supposedly been lying around at home watching the drama.

Yet she'd changed into a full suit and redone her makeup before coming back.

Serin looked surprised by how much prettier Lee Eun-bit was than she'd expected.

Lee Eun-bit also seemed flustered that Kim Serin, someone she'd only ever seen on television, had suddenly walked into her office.

The Lee Eun-bit from the drama...

And the real-life Kim Serin.

They had finally met.