I let my head fall into my hands. I knew the name from the firm's whispers. She was a ruthless, aggressive prosecutor known for crushing rookie public defenders just to pad her conviction rate. She didn't care about justice; she cared about statistics. She wouldn't offer a plea deal for a repeat offender like Ji-Won. She would push for the maximum jail sentence just to make an example out of her.
I grabbed a red pen, uncapping it with my teeth. I started underlining sentences, desperately trying to find a hole in the witness statements. A contradiction. A timeline error. Anything.
Nothing.
The convenience store clerk was positive it was her. The time of the theft, 11:14 PM, was exactly when Ji-Won had no alibi. The stolen amount, 500,000 won, was exactly the amount Ji-Won needed to pay her overdue rent, according to a threatening text message the police found on her phone.
Motive. Opportunity. Physical evidence. The holy trinity of a guaranteed guilty verdict.
My vision blurred. A sharp, pulsing pain stabbed directly behind my right eye. I dropped the pen, watching it roll off the table, and pressed the heels of my hands deep into my eye sockets. My chest felt agonizingly tight, the air in the tiny room suddenly turning thin and unbreathable.
Panic clawed at my throat.
If I go into court tomorrow and lose this without putting up a fight, Senior Choi will fire me for incompetence. If I fight and get humiliated by Prosecutor Han, I'll be the laughingstock of the firm and then get fired.
Either way, my career was over before it even started.
I thought about my mother, working double shifts, her hands cracked and bleeding from washing dishes at the seafood restaurant down in Busan just to help pay my ridiculous law school tuition. I thought about the three agonizing years I spent locked in a windowless study room, eating nothing but convenience store triangles, memorizing tens of thousands of legal precedents just to pass the Bar Exam.
Was this it? Was this the grand finale? Just another disposable failure in a rigged, broken system?
"Think," I hissed to the empty room, my voice cracking. "There has to be something."
I picked up the CCTV photo again. My fingers trembled slightly. I stared at the blurry, pixelated figure in the black hoodie. I stared so hard my eyes watered, burning from lack of sleep.
I was begging the photo to speak to me. To show me a hidden truth.
There's nothing.
Then, the ringing started.
It wasn't my phone. It wasn't the neighbor's television through the thin walls. It was inside my head. A high-pitched, metallic whine, like the sound of a microphone feeding back, growing louder and louder until it made my teeth ache in my gums.
I gasped, dropping the glossy photo. I clutched the sides of my head, losing my balance and falling sideways onto the hard floor.
"Ah...!"
The pain was blinding. A white-hot spike driving straight through my skull, splitting my mind in half. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to scream, but my throat seized up in paralysis. Every muscle in my body locked tight.
My vision went entirely black. The world fell away.
Then, a sound cut through the darkness. It was crisp. Mechanical. Like a heavy steel vault door clicking perfectly into place.
Ding.
The agonizing pain vanished. Instantly. It didn't fade; it just ceased to exist, replaced by a strange, icy, unnatural clarity. I lay on the floor, panting heavily, my chest heaving up and down, a cold sweat soaking through my cheap dress shirt.
Slowly, terrified of what I might see, I opened my eyes.
The dim, yellow light of my apartment was gone. Instead, suspended in the air about two feet directly in front of my face, was a glowing blue translucent panel. It looked like high-tech glass, but it was floating in thin air.
I scrambled backward, kicking the leg of my folding table, pressing my back flat against the peeling wallpaper. The panel didn't stay behind; it followed my gaze, staying perfectly centered in my vision no matter where I looked.
Words began to type themselves across the glowing surface in crisp, bright white letters.
[System Initializing…]
[Host Confirmed: Jin Tae-Rin]
[Profession: Lawyer]
[Sync Complete.]
"What... what is this?" I breathed out. My voice was a terrified whisper. Am I hallucinating? Did the stress finally break my brain? Am I having a stroke?
I slowly raised a trembling hand, reaching out to touch the screen. My fingers passed right through the blue light. It cast no shadow. It wasn't physical. It was being projected directly into my retinas. Into my mind.
The screen blinked. The text wiped away smoothly, instantly replaced by a new, urgent notification.
[Case Accepted] – New legal case detected.
I swallowed hard. I looked down at the scattered case files on my table. As I looked at them, the blue light from the system seemed to scan the papers. A laser-thin line swept over the police report, the witness statements, and the CCTV photos.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
The text on the floating screen shifted again, updating in real-time.
[Analyzing Case File: State vs. Lee Ji-Won]
[Charge: Petty Theft]
[Victory Probability Calculating…]
I held my breath. I didn't know if I was going insane, or if this was some kind of miracle. But if this thing was real—whatever it was—maybe it saw something I missed in my exhausted state. Maybe it was an analytical engine. Maybe it could tell me how to win tomorrow. A legal loophole. A technicality in the police report. Anything to save Ji-Won, and to save myself.
A small loading bar appeared beneath the text. It filled rapidly.
Please, I prayed to a god I hadn't spoken to in years. Please give me something.
The loading bar hit one hundred percent. The numbers locked into place. I stared at the glowing blue text in the quiet dark of my room, feeling the last remaining drop of hope drain from my body.
[Victory Probability: 0%]