Into The Thrill

He ended the call with his father, who had told him not to hesitate to contact him if things got tough. Haewon couldn’t rely on his father’s money forever. He didn’t want to experience the confusion and helplessness he had felt when his father had suddenly cut him off. If he had any abilities, he wouldn’t have ended up at Lee Jinyoung’s house, and he wouldn’t have hurt him either.

After packing and cleaning up, time quickly passed. Hyun Woojin had asked him to come by five o'clock, but the clock was already showing five. Haewon took a shower and changed his clothes. Though time was ticking, he didn’t rush.
Haewon put on his coat and gloves. He had thought he hadn’t taken anything Lee Jinyoung had given him, but a scarf had slipped into his luggage. Lee Jinyoung had said it matched Haewon’s skin tone. He wrapped the scarf around his neck and left the officetel.
By now, it was half-past six. The taxi stopped in front of the Central District Prosecutor's Office. He handed over his ID and received a visitor's pass. He found room 1014 and knocked before entering. A woman, who appeared to be an assistant, looked at Haewon and asked.

"How did you come?"
"Is Prosecutor Hyun Woojin here? We were supposed to meet today."
"He stepped out for a moment. Please have a seat and wait."

The office had a small area attached to it, separated into spaces for the investigators, assistants, and the prosecutor. Through the small window in the prosecutor's door, Haewon could see traces of intense work, as if the desk had just been used.
Haewon sat in the chair the woman pointed to. The two assistants and the investigator, despite it being past work hours, were still absorbed in their work.
He sat quietly, waiting for him. After a while, the door opened, and Hyun Woojin entered. Haewon stood up. He saw Hyun Woojin glance at his wristwatch, then look at Haewon. Without saying a word, Hyun Woojin seemed to be pointing out that Haewon was late.

Without speaking, Hyun Woojin walked past Haewon and opened his office door.
"Prosecutor, your guest is here," the assistant said, gesturing toward Haewon.
"Not a guest, but a suspect. Come on in."

Haewon followed him inside. There was a large desk with a chair facing the window and a conference table in front of it. Piles of documents, explaining how busy the job was, stacked high on the desk. The amount seemed so vast that Haewon wondered if they would ever get read.
Hyun Woojin moved a laptop from the side and pulled it toward himself. He gestured for Haewon to sit in the chair in front of the desk. Haewon sat and looked at him.
"I’ve asked a lawyer I know to take care of the statement and the agreement. It’ll take a while."

"How long?"
"Why, do you have an appointment?"
"I was just wondering how long it would take."

"If the case is complicated, it’ll take a few hours, but this one is simple, so it should take an hour or two. I was planning to write the statement in two hours if you had come at five, and go to dinner at seven, but since someone didn’t keep the appointment, I’ll try my best."
He placed his hands on the keyboard and immediately asked without giving Haewon a moment to speak.
"Name."
"……."

"What’s your name?"
"Moon Haewon."
"Okay, Moon Haewon. You’re twenty-eight, pretending to be a college student."

"……."
"Your occupation is a freelance violinist?"
"Yes."

The sound of him typing intermittently broke the silence. He continued asking in a formal tone.
"When did you meet Lee Jinyoung and how?"
"A few weeks ago, in front of S Hotel."

"Why did you go to S Hotel?"
"There was an issue with the officetel, so I stayed there."
"Do you go to a hotel when there’s a problem at home?"

"Yes."
The question seemed more like a personal curiosity rather than something for the statement, but Haewon answered quickly. He wanted to finish as soon as possible. He felt that cooperating with him would make things go faster.
"Then why did you go to Lee Jinyoung’s house from the hotel? Didn’t you have other places to stay, like your parents’ house?"

"I had a fight with my father, so I couldn’t go back home."
"So you ran away to someone’s house you met for the first time?"
His tone was polite and straightforward, excluding emotions, making it hard to tell if the question was relevant to the statement or just personal curiosity.

"I needed a place to stay, and he said it was fine, so I went."
"You told Lee Jinyoung you were a runaway music student. Is that correct?"
"Yes."

"What was the relationship like? Were you dating? Or..."
"……."
"Was it just for sex?"

"We weren’t anything."
"You’re saying you never had sex?"
"Does that matter?"

"In cases like this, sex is very important. It’s the key factor in determining whether it was a planned, passion-driven homicide or just a simple accident."
It was a season where the sun set quickly. Beyond the window, the city lights sparkled in the darkening sky. Hyun Woojin’s back, dressed in a white shirt, and the reflection of Haewon’s face appeared in the window. Haewon stared at his reflection for a moment before turning his gaze back to him. Every time their eyes met, Haewon felt a jolt in his chest.
"I don’t think we had sex."

"Don’t say ‘I think.’ Just say you don’t remember clearly."
"I don’t know what qualifies as sex."
"Should I understand it as you didn’t spread your legs but did everything else?"

"……."
His words, about spreading legs or liking it, were crude, violent, and unrelated to the statement, but he asked matter-of-factly. With a serious expression, it seemed like he was mocking Haewon while pretending to make it easier for someone like Haewon, who wasn’t familiar with legal terms, to understand.
"So, there was no penetration, but you did everything else?"

"Yes."
Every time Haewon answered, Hyun Woojin typed away at the keyboard. The rapid tapping of the keys filled the silence, growing longer than the short responses.
The words—sex, passion, penetration—being recorded as part of the document felt horrifying. Hyun Woojin flipped through a file next to the laptop and asked after turning a page.

"Did you receive any money or valuables from Lee Jinyoung?"
Haewon, who had been looking at the back of the laptop to avoid looking at Hyun Woojin’s face, raised his eyes to look at him.
"Lee Jinyoung testified that you extorted money from him."

"I didn’t extort anything. He gave me the gifts willingly."
If what Lee Jinyoung claimed was extortion, then Haewon was now holding the scarf, which he had received from him, on his lap. Haewon’s hands tightened around the scarf.
"So, it was all given voluntarily by him?"

"I never asked for anything."
"And the watch used in the incident, that was also given voluntarily by Lee Jinyoung, right?"
"Yes."

"Lee Jinyoung’s statement says that you tried to run away with just that watch, and a struggle broke out. Is that true?"
"What did you say?"
Haewon’s eyes widened. Hyun Woojin, seemingly interested in something other than a simple case, kept focusing on his face.

"That’s what it says in Lee Jinyoung’s statement."
"No. I told him I didn’t want it. I said to refund it, that he shouldn’t give things like that to others."
This was a completely different statement from the one Haewon had made the night before. He recalled Hyun Woojin’s assurance that Lee Jinyoung wouldn’t dare show his face again, but he didn’t ask why the story had changed so much overnight. Haewon shook his head, denying Lee Jinyoung’s statement.

"But why did you suddenly start packing to leave that day? Especially since it was the day he gave you the watch."
"……"
I didn’t expect him to frame it that way. To outsiders, it might seem that way. He received a watch as a gift and then packed his bags to leave the house. Haewon was agitated; Lee Jin-young's statement was different from the truth.

"It was too much, the watch and everything. It made me want to leave. I didn’t take the watch."
"According to the documents submitted by Lee Jin-young, you received quite a lot of gifts from him. Weren’t those expensive gifts burdensome before?"
"……"

He had given Haewon many gifts before. Some of them were valuable. None were as expensive as the watch he received that day, but they were still costly.
Haewon often received gifts from the people he met. They tried to win over the unresponsive Haewon with material things. Hence, Haewon was largely indifferent to such onslaughts of gifts. If he received them, he just accepted them; if he liked them, he kept them; if not, he discarded them.
"Wasn't it burdensome before, and only the watch was burdensome?"

"It’s not so much that…"
"……it’s not so much that."
Haewon hesitated, struggling to find the right words. It wasn’t the falseness of the statement that was unjust, but rather the difficulty of explaining his feelings that day. It wasn’t the expense of the gifts that was burdensome, but Lee Jin-young himself.

Hyun Woo-jin didn’t press him but just watched him intently. Haewon felt a gentle pressure to speak freely about everything that came to mind.
"I was just frustrated with the situation."
"You received such an expensive watch as a gift, and you were frustrated?"

"Yes."
No one would believe such a statement. Lee Jin-young's statement was consistent and plausible. In front of Hyun Woo-jin, Haewon’s own statement sounded like childish babbling. Haewon dimly realized that even he thought his own words made no sense.
He had hidden his identity and moved into the home of a man he barely knew, living there for nearly a month, and they had been on the verge of a sexual relationship. He hadn’t refused any of the gifts he was given. He had accepted all his gifts without any hesitation. The scarf he had given him was still on his lap. Suddenly, the watch being burdensome made no sense. Lee Jin-young was painting Haewon out to be something like a «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» gold digger or a con artist. That was the role Haewon was assigned in Lee Jin-young’s statement.

"How exactly was it frustrating?"
"I couldn’t even practice there, and being in that environment was frustrating. It was also burdensome how he kept giving me gifts I didn’t want and demanding emotions from me."
"It was frustrating because you couldn’t practice, and it was frustrating because he was demanding emotions when you felt none. Hmm. You no longer had the will to maintain the relationship."

Hyun Woo-jin seemed to find it incomprehensible. He didn’t believe what Haewon was saying. It seemed he was trying to figure out how to write up the statement in a coherent and logical way based on such an unbelievable story. After thinking for a moment, his hands moved quickly.
"So, you tried to leave the house because of that, and that's why the fight happened."
"He wouldn’t let me go."

"Yes, of course, he wouldn’t let you."
"……"
Only the sound of the keyboard tapping filled the quiet of the office. A clerk knocked and then opened the door, announcing that they were leaving for the day and bidding Hyun Woo-jin goodbye. Hyun Woo-jin kept typing on his laptop, simply nodding his head as a response.

"In the process, there was a physical altercation, and Lee Jin-young tore your clothes and attempted to rape you, but when you wouldn’t stop resisting, he tried to break your fingers, right?"
"Yes."
"Because your fingers are very important to you, right? So, you stabbed Lee Jin-young’s eye with the watch case to avoid injuring your hand?"

"……Yes."
"Because you’re a violinist, naturally."
Haewon's hesitant answer drew a curve on Hyun Woo-jin's lips. It was a clear sneer, as if to say that was more than enough justification.

"Do you have the clothes that Lee Jin-young tore yesterday?"
Haewon nodded. They were still in the trash can.
"We need to keep the injuries on your wrist as evidence of force used, so I’ll take pictures. It’s not serious enough for a medical report."

Hyun Woo-jin stood up and signaled Haewon to do the same. Haewon clumsily got up and cleared away the scarf Lee Jin-young had given him. Hyun Woo-jin swiftly took his hand, rolled up the sleeve, and exposed the wrist. The red marks were stark. Hyun Woo-jin gathered Haewon’s hands, aligning the right wrist with the left, and took out his phone to snap pictures of Haewon’s wrist.
"Your hands are quite beautiful. Do all violinists have hands like this?"
"……"

"Turn them over."
Haewon flipped his wrists together. Hyun Woo-jin rolled up the slipping sleeves and took several more pictures.
"Would this count as evidence to contradict?"

"I take these pictures when I’m bored."
"……"
"Evidence capability, yes. It’s egregious that such beautiful hands were bruised."

With that frivolous remark, Hyun Woo-jin resumed his stoic demeanor and sat down to continue writing the statement.
Haewon wasn’t asked anything else. The assisting clerks had left, and the office was utterly silent.
Focused on his task, Hyun Woo-jin breathed evenly as he worked on the paperwork. Haewon sat in front of him, looking lost. After a while, Hyun Woo-jin printed the completed document and handed it over.

"Read through and if there’s nothing to change, I’ll need a few signatures."
Time had passed considerably without much conversation. It was past seven, nearing eight. Haewon read through the document. It logically and meticulously countered and denied Lee Jin-young’s statements from his perspective. There was nothing to amend.
Haewon stamped where he was instructed on the statement. Hyun Woo-jin handed him a tissue. Haewon wiped the red ink from his right thumb on the tissue. As he gathered the documents, Hyun Woo-jin spoke.

"Lee Jin-young is refusing to settle."
"That’s different from yesterday. You said we had settled, that there was no need to see each other again."
As if holding Hyun Woo-jin to his words of being capable and skilled, Haewon handed him the ink-stained tissue. Hyun Woo-jin stared at the piece of tissue Haewon was holding out. A trash bin was visible, but he handed it to him. Hyun Woo-jin took the crumpled tissue and tossed it into the visible trash bin.

"Lee Jin-young says he needs to see Mun Haewon."
"……"
"Would you go and gently persuade him? Apologize for blinding him and coax him?"

"……"
"If he files a complaint, it becomes complicated. There are many aspects of Mun Haewon’s statement that don’t seem credible."
Having obscured his identity and lived in his house for nearly a month, receiving expensive gifts and on the day he received an expensive watch, he tried to leave his house. The increasing demands were unbearable, and he didn’t have the patience to endure and tolerate his living standards. Unlike Hyun Woo-jin’s deceased fiancée who grew up without hardships, Haewon had almost no resistance to qualitative changes in his environment.

"Anyway, if a lawsuit is filed, an investigation must follow, and it won’t come to me. No matter who handles it, Lee Jin-young’s claims will seem more credible. Mun Haewon could be at a significant disadvantage."
"So what should I do?"
"If you can’t handle it, whine about it once."

"……"
"And it’s over."