Case No. 2024-EQ-0201.
A new file appeared on Taekyung's desk two days after the visual-loss case briefing.
Victim: Kim Doyoon, male, 19. First-year college student.
Offender: Cha Myeongjin, male, 42. The victim's biological father.
Taekyung stopped with the first page.
Twelve years.
Kim Doyoon had been beaten by his father from the age of seven to nineteen.
Fourteen police reports. Three led to actual investigations. Zero indictments.
After the Equivalent Retribution Act took effect, Kim Doyoon personally reported the harm to the Equivalence Authority.
Taekyung opened the medical records.
Left eardrum perforation. Age nine.
Right wrist fracture. Age eleven. Refracture at the same site. Age thirteen.
Rib fracture. Age fourteen.
Inferior orbital-wall fracture. Age sixteen.
Left shoulder dislocation. Age seventeen. Progressed to recurrent dislocation.
And psychiatric records tucked between the medical certificates.
Post-traumatic stress disorder. Major depressive disorder. Sleep disorder. Dissociative symptoms.
Taekyung pressed beneath his right eye.
He had to turn twelve years of harm into numbers.
“This case is a little different.”
Jun Kyung said it as he entered Taekyung's office, documents in hand.
“The offender's attorney has already submitted a statement. He claims it was corporal punishment for disciplinary purposes, and that since there was no further assault after the victim became an adult, the harm at the present time is limited.”
Taekyung took the documents and read them.
“Discipline.”
“Yes.”
“Discipline that ruptured a nine-year-old child's eardrum.”
Jun Kyung paused briefly. Then, in his usual gentle tone, he said, “I feel the same way. But under the statutory language, there's still no precedent for the ‘standard for cumulative assessment of continuing harm.’ This case will be the first.”
Taekyung set the documents down.
“If there's no precedent, we can make one.”
The harm assessment took three days.
Taekyung interviewed Kim Doyoon himself.
An interview room. White walls. One desk. Two chairs.
Kim Doyoon had a thin build, his shoulders hunched inward. His left shoulder sagged noticeably lower than his right. The mark of recurrent dislocation.
Taekyung spoke first.
“If you're uncomfortable, tell me. We can stop.”
Kim Doyoon shook his head.
“I'm fine.”
His voice was low. He was too quiet for a nineteen-year-old.
Taekyung began asking questions. He asked about things that didn't appear in the medical records.
“When were you first beaten?”
“I don't remember. After my mom left.”
“How old were you?”
“Five. I think.”
Taekyung's hand stopped. The medical records began at age seven. A two-year gap.
“You started going to the hospital at seven.”
“He didn't take me at first. My dad.”
Taekyung set down his pen.
“There are two years missing from the records.”
Kim Doyoon looked at Taekyung.
“If there's no record, does that mean I can't get it back?”
Taekyung was silent for one second.
“No. I'll create one.”
Harm Assessment Report. Forty-seven pages.
Taekyung assessed fourteen years of harm, not twelve. For the first two years, which had no medical records, he cross-checked Kim Doyoon's testimony with statements from neighbors and past counseling records from the child-protection agency, then confirmed the harm.
Twenty-three categories of physical harm.
Eleven categories of psychological harm.
Six categories of developmental harm. Cognitive-developmental delays, reduced social skills, and lost educational opportunities suffered by a child growing up in an environment of chronic violence.
The sentence Taekyung wrote at the end of the report:
‘The harm in this case is not the sum of individual assaults. The environment itself, sustained for fourteen years, constitutes a single harm. The offender destroyed not only the victim's body, but the person the victim might have become.’
Legal review.
Jun Kyung read the report twice.
His expression was gentle the first time. The second time, it was different. His eyes had changed.
“Assessor.”
“Yes.”
“Does the sentence ‘The offender destroyed the person the victim might have become’ have a legal basis?”
“It's an expansive interpretation of Article 7, Clause 3. The statute says to use the victim's condition at the time the incident occurred as the standard. I'm reading that as the victim's condition when the incident began. Five-year-old Kim Doyoon is the baseline.”
Jun Kyung thought for a moment.
“There is no precedent.”
“I know.”
“I'll pass it.”
Jun Kyung's voice remained gentle. But his grip tightened around the pen.
The day of enforcement.
Enforcement chamber, second basement level of the Equivalence Authority.
Cha Myeongjin sat in the enforcement chair. Both hands were strapped into the restraints.
Hyunwoo was inspecting the enforcement equipment. His gloved hands checked each instrument one by one.
Cha Myeongjin shouted.
“He's my son! Why is it anyone else's business how I raise my own kid?”
Hyunwoo didn't answer. He continued checking the equipment.
“The kid wouldn't listen! I did it all for him!”
Hyunwoo's hands stopped.
He looked at Cha Myeongjin. His face was expressionless. But his eyes were different. They were the eyes he'd had the day he visited Suhyeon.
“I'll read out the enforcement items.”
Hyunwoo read from the documents.
“Hearing impairment corresponding to a perforated left eardrum. A fracture corresponding to the right wrist fracture. Rib fracture. Inferior orbital-wall fracture. Left shoulder dislocation.”
Cha Myeongjin's face turned white.
“And reproduction of the psychological harm corresponding to fourteen years of a chronic environment of fear. The duration will follow the equivalent period calculated by the Equivalence Authority.”
“You—you're insane. You're going to do all that?”
Hyunwoo tightened his gloves.
“We're returning what the victim endured for fourteen years. There will be no deviation.”
The enforcement began.
Taekyung watched the monitor in his office. The enforcement chamber's CCTV feed. The sound was off.
On the screen, Cha Myeongjin was howling. Hyunwoo's hands moved with precision. A surgeon's hands. Hands that knew exactly where to press and how hard to produce a given result. Not a hint of hesitation. That precision was cruel in itself.
The first item. Perforated left eardrum. Cha Myeongjin's body convulsed in the chair. The restraints creaked.
Taekyung remembered item twenty-three in the report. Age nine. Third grade. From that day on, Kim Doyoon could no longer hear his friends' voices through his left ear.
On the screen, Hyunwoo moved on to the next item. He didn't wipe his hands. He didn't stop.
Taekyung didn't turn off the screen. He believed he had to watch the numbers he'd written become reality on a human body. The person who wrote the numbers had no right to look away from their weight.
The door opened.
Jun Kyung entered. He glanced at the monitor once, then looked away.
“Assessor.”
“Yes.”
“The offender's attorney is preparing a constitutional complaint. He claims that ‘cumulative harm assessment’ is unconstitutional.”
“I expected that.”
“Will we win?”
Taekyung looked at the monitor. On the screen, Cha Myeongjin's mouth was open. No sound came through.
“For fourteen years, the child was the one who lost every day.”
Jun Kyung looked at Taekyung.
“This time, the numbers will win.”
That evening.
The reaction online was different from two days earlier.
‘They gave the child abuser all fourteen years at once, lmao. So satisfying.’
‘Who the hell is Yoon Taekyung? I was trashing him two days ago.’
‘Wait, is this guy not on the victim's side or the offender's side? Is he just on the side of the numbers?’
‘For real. A world where numbers are justice.’
Taekyung didn't read the comments.
He opened the next case file.
Case No. 2024-EQ-0215.
Habitual drunk driving.
Three victims.
Taekyung turned the first page.
END OF EPISODE 2.