Silence crept between them like a watchful beast. The lights of the city streamed past, faceless. Seo-yeon permitted herself to think of the possibilities—courtrooms, televised denials, men with too-many-influential-friends attempting to silence inconvenient facts with money and power. She was not naïve. Hwang was not naïve. The truth, just parce it was gathered and irrefutable, would compel hands. The problem was whether the hands would be the correct ones.
Her thoughts strayed for an instant—hazardous ground—back to that night she'd originally inserted herself within Joon-woo's sphere. She'd been young then, angry in a white-hot, untargeted manner. She'd worked a job that was too lucrative and required too much deference and stayed too long. She'd seen things done to people who couldn't defend themselves. She had discovered, then, that the world's heartlessness was predicated on individuals such as herself deciding to turn away.
No longer.
