Chapter 11

Chapter 11. Three-Legged Race

You’re saying a major conglomerate planned all this?

Harok was still turning Hong Yunjung’s words over in his mind as he walked when his phone rang.

It was Han Munyeon, head of the National Police Agency’s Drug and Organized Crime Investigation Division.

Harok had tried to meet him during the day.

“Reporter Baek, I heard you were looking for me?”

“Yes, Hyung. I had a few things I wanted to ask you.”

The two agreed to have dinner together that evening.

Han Munyeon’s appearance alone was enough to intimidate most people.

He had trained in taekwondo, judo, hapkido, and several other martial arts. If you added together all his ranks across the different disciplines, he had a combined total of twenty dans.

That was why people called him Twenty-Dan Combined.

After spending quite a while exchanging small talk, Harok casually brought up the real subject.

“When are you planning to break it?”

“Break what?”

“What do you think? The celebrity drug case.”

Han Munyeon merely smiled, as though he wasn’t going to fall for such a simple bluff.

“Is there such a case?”

So you’re going to play dumb?

“It’s not just Beastie Kids, right? I heard there’s also a hospital director and the head of a venture company involved.”

As he spoke, Harok casually dropped a few real names.

They were, of course, names that had been reported in his previous life.

Once again, Harok’s abnormal memory proved useful.

He still remembered every name that had appeared in the articles back then.

The moment actual names came out, Han Munyeon’s expression changed.

“Where did you hear that?”

Now that Harok had shown he already knew something, Han Munyeon’s iron defense slowly began to crack.

“But even if you keep your mouth shut, Hyung, it won’t do much good.”

“Why?”

“Because I can approach this from somewhere else too.”

“Then do that. Why do you keep digging at me?”

Harok pulled his chair closer and leaned toward Han Munyeon.

“Hyung, it’s not like we’ve only known each other for a year or two.”

“Exactly three years.”

“Heh, I guess that’s true. Anyway, it’s tiring for me to poke around everywhere else. It’s easiest if the information comes directly from you.”

Han Munyeon still refused to say anything.

“I heard celebrities and even members of the social elite were using everything from cocaine to ecstasy at Pebble Beach, that luxury club in Gangnam.”

Once Harok named the exact location, Han Munyeon finally spoke.

“This is under secret investigation. How the hell do you know details like that?”

“Hyung, I’m Baek Harok.”

The confidence in his voice was overwhelming.

He had just used his own name to establish his credibility.

Right.

This was Baek Harok.

A reporter whose appearance at any police station in Seoul could make everyone from the station chief to the division heads sit up straight.

After Harok pressed a few more times, Han Munyeon finally gave in.

“...I’m only telling you this because you’re Reporter Baek, but this is troublesome. When are you publishing?”

“It’ll be out soon. I only asked you to confirm what I already knew.”

“Hmm...”

“Don’t worry. Nothing will blow back on you.”

What had begun as a reporting interview disguised as drinks continued much later than expected.

Harok didn’t get home until midnight.

Before going to sleep, he reviewed everything he had heard from Han Munyeon and wrote it all down in his reporter’s notebook.

Then he sent Yubin a message.

[Harok: You asleep?]

[Yubin: Nope.]

[Harok: Meeting tomorrow about the celebrity drug story.]

[Yubin: Where?]

[Harok: If you’re at Mapo Police Station, let’s meet somewhere nearby.]

[Yubin: Let’s go!!]

The next afternoon, Harok and Yubin met at a coffee shop near Mapo Police Station.

“Did you finish your reporting?”

“I did.”

“Nothing happened while you were interviewing Chief Kim Jongcheol?”

“Why wouldn’t something happen...?”

Yubin began explaining what had happened when she interviewed Kim Jongcheol.

Two days earlier.

“Chief?”

Kim Jongcheol was too busy staring at Seol Yubin’s cleavage to focus on the conversation.

He wasn’t paying attention at all.

Since he was a police officer Harok knew, Yubin had tried to treat him politely.

But he had gone far beyond the limits of her patience.

Yubin leaned forward until her eyes met Kim Jongcheol’s gaze.

Kim Jongcheol had been grinning happily, but the moment their eyes met, he flinched in surprise.

It certainly wasn’t his first time sneaking glances at a female reporter’s body.

But it was the first time a female reporter had reacted the way Yubin did.

“Could you stop staring at my chest and focus on the conversation?”

“Ah, no, that’s not... Haha.”

“You still managed to rise all the way to this position while looking at reporters like that?”

Yubin’s criticism was far harsher than he expected, and even a sly old fox like Kim Jongcheol was briefly thrown off.

“Come on, Reporter Seol, I’m sorry. You’re just so beautiful...”

“If I’m beautiful, then look at my face. Why are you looking at my chest?”

Yubin continued to scold him sternly.

Thanks to that, control of the conversation shifted entirely to her.

Suppressed by her momentum, Kim Jongcheol began freely talking about the drug investigation.

“Seoul’s Metropolitan Investigation Unit arrested a few lower-level couriers. And one of them mentioned that guy you were talking about earlier...”

“Ahn Seungju. Benon from Beastie Kids.”

“Right. His name came up. From what I know, they quietly called him in and ran a test.”

“The result isn’t out yet?”

“It probably is by now... Want me to check?”

“I’d appreciate that.”

The interview ended successfully.

Mostly successfully.

“Reporter Seol, don’t be too angry about what happened earlier. I only acted that way because you remind me of my daughter.”

The classic excuse of creeps everywhere.

You remind me of my daughter.

What kind of father looked at his daughter’s body like that?

“Chief, do you have a daughter?”

“Of course. She’s more beautiful than anyone in the world...”

“You’re not close, are you?”

He couldn’t answer that immediately.

In fact, Kim Jongcheol had been distant from his daughter for more than ten years.

“You probably aren’t. If I were your daughter, I don’t think I’d be close to a father like you either.”

“That really happened?”

“Yes. If he acts like that one more time, I really am going to cut it off.”

Harok clicked his tongue in disbelief.

In truth, Harok had never been able to reconcile the Yubin he remembered as a police beat chief in his previous life with the Yubin standing in front of him now.

How had this slightly scatterbrained Yubin ever become the leader of the crime reporting team?

It was something he had wondered about ever since regressing.

But after hearing that she had verbally crushed a seasoned narcotics chief like Kim Jongcheol, that mystery was starting to clear up.

Showing that kind of backbone in front of a source was not easy.

When it came to reporting in the social affairs department, the journalist was usually at a disadvantage.

The person holding the information held all the power.

That was why reporters often had to flatter and humor their sources.

It was also why they sometimes drank whatever was handed to them until they were completely wasted.

“What about the Metropolitan Investigation Unit?”

“The investigator there was pretty tight-lipped.”

“You couldn’t break through?”

Pat, pat.

Yubin smiled brightly and tapped her bag with one hand.

“Back when I was a trainee, one of the conscripted police officers there confessed that he liked me. I got some help from him.”

“You wore makeup when you did your rounds?”

Harok asked, genuinely confused.

“When would I have had time to put on makeup? People always tell me I look prettier without it.”

“Or maybe you’re just bad at makeup?”

“Ugh...”

“Okay, okay. Keep going with the conscripted officer story.”

In his previous life, Harok had been famous for being extremely strict with his juniors.

He had especially pushed Yubin’s training class hard.

As a result, that entire class had nicknamed him that bastard.

But Harok was now mentally ten years older.

Maybe because of that extra experience, he had become much more relaxed.

Yubin seemed slightly surprised by the change.

“You joke like this too, Senior?”

“If that upset you, I’m sorry.”

He apologized?

Yubin stared at him strangely.

This wasn’t the Harok she remembered.

Is he really treating me like a human being now that I’m done with training?

In the journalism world, new reporters used to be called apprentices.

There was a self-mocking joke that they were called that because seniors worked them like dogs.

Most media companies eventually replaced apprentice with trainee.

Then reporters joked that the first syllable of trainee stood for the Chinese character meaning beast.

The point was the same either way.

Whether they were called apprentices or trainees, new reporters in journalism were not treated like human beings.

“No, I’m not upset. I actually like seeing this side of you.”

“Huh?”

“I always thought you were just a senior who yelled at juniors and made their lives miserable.”

“I wasn’t that bad, was I?”

“What are you talking about? Our class even gave you the nickname bas...”

Yubin suddenly stopped herself, startled.

Harok already knew they had called him that bastard.

Once, he had called one of Yubin’s classmates and seen That Bastard clearly displayed as his contact name.

“That bastard?”

“Ah... I’m sorry.”

Harok looked uncomfortable, but what could he do?

His juniors had given him the nickname.

“You don’t need to apologize. If I acted like a bastard, that’s on me.”

Yubin was so embarrassed she could barely lift her head.

“Forget it. Let’s keep talking about work. Go on with the conscripted officer.”

After repeatedly bowing her head, Yubin cautiously continued.

“I asked him to get me some trash from the unit that investigated the drug case.”

“And he agreed just like that?”

“Yes. He seemed very happy about it.”

Of course he had.

The woman he liked had asked him for a favor.

Opportunities like that didn’t come often.

“He brought me a lot of discarded investigation documents. He said he searched every trash can in the Metropolitan Investigation Unit.”

Harok felt jealous.

Back when Harok had searched police station trash cans, he had needed to flatter the cleaning ladies endlessly.

Only after finally getting permission could he personally dig through the trash and search for documents.

Yubin had obtained all of that without lifting a finger.

At times like this, being a woman did come with certain advantages.

“It wasn’t free, right?”

“He said he’s being discharged soon and asked me to date him.”

“Are you going to?”

“Are you crazy? I don’t date younger men.”

Rustle, rustle.

Yubin pulled a bundle of what looked like discarded documents from her bag.

“This is it.”

Flip, flip, flip.

Harok immediately took the documents and began going through them.

They were intermediate drafts of interrogation records that had been discarded during the writing process.

Benon’s real name, Ahn Seungju, was clearly written in them.

His drug test had come back positive.

The documents even described when he had started using drugs.

“This alone is enough for an article.”

“I’m planning to pitch it tomorrow morning.”

Harok nodded, then pulled his reporter’s notebook from his back pocket.

“I met Han Munyeon, head of the Drug and Organized Crime Investigation Division at headquarters. He told me quite a bit.”

“Oh, toss that over to me.”

“Write it down.”

“What?”

Yubin stared at him in disbelief.

“You said you wanted me to toss it over.”

“You didn’t record it?”

“I don’t record interviews. I write things down.”

Harok was very old-fashioned in that regard.

Even in his previous life, when everyone else was taking photos and recording interviews on smartphones, Harok had stubbornly continued carrying a reporter’s notebook.

“Everyone records these days... At the very least, you should’ve typed it into a laptop.”

“What? That’s not how I report.”

"..."

Yubin looked at him like she was staring at some ancient fossil from decades ago.

“Then open the notebook where you wrote everything down.”

“Why?”

“So I can take pictures.”

Harok clicked his tongue.

Are all young reporters like this now?

Back in his day, if a senior dictated something, you wrote it all down yourself and typed it later.

Yubin carefully photographed each page of the reporter’s notebook one by one.

“So now we only need to cross-check everything one more time?”

“I’m going to do that after I finish writing the article tomorrow.”

That was the standard strategy when preparing an exclusive.

You wrote the entire article first.

Then, at the very end, you contacted the relevant sources for confirmation or rebuttal.

That usually resulted in a line near the end such as:

[Meanwhile, XXX stated that...]

Technically, it gave the other side a chance to respond.

In reality, it was often more about protecting the reporter from criticism.

Still, most reporters worked this way.

They almost had to.

If you listened to every rebuttal before writing, the article could become a complete mess and lose its central angle.

That was why reporters often stopped listening entirely if a source’s rebuttal interfered with the article’s main angle.

Of course, when both sides were making equally strong claims, this led to accusations of bias.

Ignore the rebuttal, and people called you biased.

Include too much of it, and the article lost all impact.

For journalists who had to pitch and write stories every single day, it was a trap with no clean answer.

“You’ve learned everything. You can descend the mountain now.”

“Master, I still have a long way to go. Please continue whipping me into shape.”

Yubin bent at the waist with her hands clasped in a martial arts salute.

“Then bring me a whip. I’ll whip you properly.”

Harok was making a joke out of the literal meaning of the phrase whip into shape.

“Senior, are you into SM?”

“Huh?”

“A whip is kind of sexual, isn’t it?”

What the hell is she talking about?

Yubin was staring directly at him as she said it.

Caught off guard, Harok’s face turned red.

“Quit talking nonsense and focus on structuring the article properly. A story like this can turn into a lawsuit over one tiny mistake, so be careful.”

“Yes, sir.”