warning: you are going to read a chapter with 12, 846 words in it.

 “Next station; Namchang-Dong,”

The door to the train slide from both ways to each other, closing the entrance as the audio system keeps ordering people to stay behind the yellow line for safety precautions. The train is packed like sardines in a tin, radiating the heat from all the bodies into the air above them, making the train that was cool and refreshing seconds ago—by the help of the air conditioners—turns into a place of heat and sweats. Lots of murmurs are heard in the train, from the voice of adults talking to each other to the sound of little kids squealing. Within ten minutes the train arrives at the next station. School kids drop off and more people enter the train, but less packed than before. The audio system announced the next station, which most of the people boarding the train intends to go.

Her eyes are closed tight as she tries to tune out the noise around her. Despite her small frame, she manages to get a seat by the door, and she is folding her arms to her chest, crossing one leg over another, she ducks her head to ignore all the people around her. Her hands are tightly clutching her briefcase, in case of any unwanted snatching. Although in her briefcase has nothing but papers, the papers are still important to her. Her job depends on the papers she is bringing. Last night she went to sleep early and woke up fresh for her job, now when she is closing her eyes to tune out the noise; she gets a headache instead of comfort. For some reason, her brain thinks that she is going to sleep again and forbid her from doing it. Groaning, she opens her eyes and pulls up her face to roll her neck, easing out the pain from ducking her head. Sounds of her neck bone cracking are heard in her ears, giving her the satisfaction from it. She heaves a sigh before her eyes scan her surroundings. A man is standing before her, wearing an oversized suit. With his briefcase between his armpits, his other hand is typing something on his phone. He seems to be in his late forties, his beard gives out hints of white hairs and his face has wrinkles, overall, he is just a normal working employee boarding the train to go to his office.

She turns to her left and sees a woman is standing beside her; a small glass wall is the only thing that separates them away. She scans the woman, who is fairly skinny, wearing a white turtleneck sweater beneath her knee-length brown coat and black slacks. She looks at the woman up and down, she knows what she is doing is rude but she couldn't help on not noticing how the woman is placing her hand on below her stomach as if she is supporting something. Her other hand is clutching the yellow colored pole above the glass wall. The train is moving fast and sometimes shakes a bit thus making the woman's grip on the pole tighter to balance her body.

“Excuse me,” she calls out to the woman.

The woman turns to her with a questioning look on her face, waiting for her to voice out.

She gives the woman a small smile as her eyes move down to her hand, “This may sound rude, but are you pregnant, perhaps?”

The woman glances down at her stomach and returns back to her gaze with a smile lit up her face, “Yes, I am,”

She gasps lightly before standing up from the seat in a rush, pushing the man in front of her to the back—the man groans and glares at her in return—she moves away from the seat and offers the pregnant woman the seat with an apologetic smile on her face. “I’m sorry for being ignorant towards you, here, have my seat,”

The woman waves at her while shaking her head, saying, “It is fine, my station is the next stop; we’re almost here already,”

What the woman says makes her feel guiltier instead of feeling calm—is what the woman intended to do. She makes an apologetic face and clasped her hands together, “I’m really sorry!”

The audio system announces the name of the station as the train slowly stops; a few minutes are needed before the door slides opened, letting the people get off the train. She sees that everyone is pushing each other to get off the train in a hurry. She quickly stands beside the pregnant woman.

“Let me guide you out,” she says to the woman, in which the woman agrees to it and let her holds her arm as she guides her out of the train. “People, people, stop pushing each other, there’s a pregnant lady here,”

Instead of listening to her words, the people glance at her and murmurs with an annoyed tone in their voices.

“What’s with her?”

“Who does she think she is?”

“Other people also want to get off the train,”

She ignores the murmurs that are mocking her and continues to guide the pregnant woman out of the train. She doesn’t let go of the woman’s arm until they are in front of the stairs.

“Thank you, young lady,” the woman thanks her with a warm smile on her face.

She smiles back, “That’s nothing but a thing needed to do for you, you deserve to be treated nicely when you are carrying a new life in you now,”

The woman smiles warmly at her and says her goodbye before climbing up the stairs while she is still in front of the stairs. Her station isn’t Namchang-Dong; her actual station is the next one. The train has already left and she has no other choice but to wait for another train to come. She goes to sit in the waiting seat and crosses her leg. Her phone vibrates in the pocket of her pants. She fishes out her phone and answers the call right away.

“Hello,” she greets the caller and leans on the wall behind her.

“Eunji, where are you now?” the caller asks with a demanding tone.

She glances at the digital screen above her head and sighs when she sees the next train is coming in ten minutes, “I’m waiting for a train,” she answers finally.

The caller hums before saying, “Well, you should get here fast, something came up, and it’s good,”

“What? Somebody found new evidence regarding this case?” she asks impatiently, her grip on her briefcase tightens.

“No, a new case came up, although now that you say that, my news doesn’t sound very good,” the caller says, making her chuckle lightly.

She cups her chin and looks up at the screen, “What’s the case about?”

“This is big,” The caller informs, “It’s regarding an idol from a hot boy group,”

As the caller tells her about the case, the small box on the screen beside the timings shows a performance by BTS, it’s their new hit song. They are dancing accurately and furiously in the video, following the rhythm of hip-hop and pop of the song.

“Well, I’ll tell you more when you get here, so bye,” the caller ends the call without letting any say from her, which she doesn’t mind as she is already engrossed in the video.

Her eyes are looking for a certain someone in the video; her heartbeat is fast inside her chest. When he appears on the screen, singing to the song and make angry faces, she smiles. She smiles at how he looks more matured now; his face gives small hints of maturity. His hair is long and pulled into a man bun and he is wearing a black wife beater—looking very hot and smoky. She never knew that he can look so hot with black hair. She has always thought that colorful hair suits him the most since she never saw his hair black.

The things she hoped for them both happened. His group gains more fame while she achieves her dream of becoming a prosecutor. She realizes that she made a good choice of leaving him. Her being with him at the time will cause a scandal about BTS. She knows that there are stalkers who follow BTS everywhere. It was their luck that nobody found out about their night together. She doesn’t want BTS to receive hatred from their own fans because of her when they are still growing into the music industry. Despite with K-Pop is growing much bigger with more boy groups that intend to surpass them, their fame is still big and their fandom is growing by the seconds since they never stop producing good songs.

The train arrives in front of her and the door slides opened, letting people out. She gets up from the seat and clings her briefcase on her arm, walking towards the entrance. There are no unoccupied seats so she has to stand in front of two young women who seem to be in their freshman year of college, judging by their fashion. The college fashions. Plus, they are wearing student identification cards around their neck. Both of them have their phones in their hands, each thumb scrolling on the screen.

She slips her left hand into her pants’ pocket while the other hand is in the safety band on the pole. Her grip on the band tightens when the train shakes slightly—she almost falls onto the young women in front of her. Her gaze is straight on the glass in front of her, her reflection is on the glass wall. Her hair is falling from her hair tie to the front of her face, blocking her view to see the reflection of her face. She blows her hair but it doesn’t help much so she ignores the weird feeling of getting her hair on her face. She glances at the females in front of her before she closes her eyes to patiently wait for the next station.

***

SHE scans her identification card on the scanner and enters the chamber filled with three desks, one of them is hers. She goes straight to her desk that is placed in front of the window and throws her briefcase on the table as she slumps into her leather comfy chair. She breathes out a sigh and palms her side cheek with her elbow on the arm of the chair.

“Haru, where is the new case you’re talking about?” she asks the newbie in front of her who is typing on his laptop.

He pushes his round glasses on the bridge of his nose and pulls out a brown file from his drawer. He stands up and places the file on her desk. “I’ve checked the details of this case and it is big,”

“That’s the same thing you told me on the phone, stop beating around the bush, Haru,” she groans, getting annoyed by the boy.

Haru heaves a sigh before sitting on the edge of her desk, his palm is next to his thigh, “It’s about an idol who is accused of getting a fan pregnant and does not want to take responsibility for the child,”

This piques her interest; she straightens in her seat and pulls the chair closer to her desk. She takes the file from her desk and pulls out the white papers inside it. She reads the paper and goes to the next page. The second page shocks her. She looks upon the paper to Haru, who is staring down at her under his glasses.

“Is this true?” she asks, not believing the paper in front of her.

“It is, this case is sent from the chief department, but what we don’t know is who is telling the truth,”

She nods her head and goes back to reading the paper. She reads that this idol has gotten this fan pregnant by force and he will not take any responsibility on the baby with an excuse that he never touched the girl nor he ever saw her face or knew her name.

“Does this girl have a lawyer?” she asks, putting down the paper.

“She does, this is the lawyer’s card,” Haru gives her the name card and she grabs it quickly to read the name.

“So Han, under JUSTICE, this is a big company, who is this girl?”

“This pregnant girl is the daughter of JUSTICE’s chairman; she is not just anybody,”

She is reading the paper as she says, “From the look of it, this case does not seem like a , right?”

“We don’t know that for sure, Eunji,” Haru states, matter-of-factly, “From my point of view, this girl is accusing this idol to take responsibility for the child so that she can own him,”

“Huh,” Eunji sniggers at Haru, “Aren’t you just biased towards this girl, just because she’s the daughter of the chairman,”

“Eunji, don’t let your feminism feelings be in the way of your job,” Haru warns her with a glare.

She turns away from him and crosses her arms over her chest as she stares at the window, “I’m not,”

“Good, because if that boy is innocent, you’ll be putting charges on an innocent defendant,”

“Don’t you think I know that?” she clucks her tongue in annoyance and turns to face him back, “Have you found any evidence to help Mr. Kim?”

Haru let his head down and shakes his head at her, “Not yet, but, should we do this? What if he really did pilfer the company’s money?”

She glares at him, “I know what I’m seeing, Haru. This man is clearly accused of the crime, plus, the lawyer is also not convincing, don’t you think?”

He sighs and shakes his head before saying, “You’re a prosecutor, Eunji, not a lawyer. You put charges on defendants, not defending them,”

“Exactly, but he’s not the defendant I want to put charges on, the one I want to put charges on is the plaintiff!”

“You’re such a busybody,” Haru clucks his tongue before sitting back in his seat to continue back to doing his work.

“Oi, who do you think you’re clucking your tongue to, huh?”

“Eunji, don’t forget your trial is in twenty minutes,” a woman’s voice interrupts her barks at Haru.

She turns to the source of the voice and bobs her head in an understanding gesture, “Yes, yes, Mrs. Queen,”

The woman rolls her eyes and says, “Stop calling me that,”

“How can I stop when all you do is keep bossing me around?” she gazes at the woman she calls queen with a pout.

“Then you should start acting like a real prosecutor if you want me to stop bossing you around,” the woman says back, pointing her index finger towards Eunji.

Haru lets out a small laugh, pushing his glasses back—he always does this when he thinks he’s going to say something cool— “You know she can’t do that, Aery, that’s her natural personality and that’s what keeps this austere chamber alive,”

Aery clucks her tongue and glares at Haru, “And you Haru, stop pushing back your glasses when you think you’re going to say something cool, that’s not cool,”

Haru seems to be caught off guard when he stiff for a second before he smirks and chuckles lowly, “Aery, Aery,” he shakes his head, “You always get on my nerves, how do you do that?”

“There he goes again, acting cool,” Aery rolls her eyes and crosses her arms over her chest as she leans back into her chair, “Stop that newbie, it makes me sick,”

Eunji smiles watching the small bickering between her colleagues, then she gets up, slamming the desk with her palms—making a loud snap. Both Haru and Aery turn to her with wide eyes and a frown on their face.

She grabs her briefcase and swings it to her right shoulder, “I’m going to work, kids, so stop bickering,” she smirks after that, thinking what she just said is cool and intimidating.

Cringe expression creeps onto their faces as they watch her walking from her desk towards the door to the outside. Even her walking is sickening—it’s like she has limped problem. She turns around before opening the door, facing them with a smug face on.

“Mommy’s going to save a person, wish mommy luck, little ones,” she proudly commands, glancing from Aery to Haru.

Haru sniggers and has his left arm over his chest while his other hand pushes back his glasses, “Eunji, honey, who do you think you’re talking to? Daddy is quite mad now and thinks Mommy needs some spanking, right, little Aery?”

“Haru, you have a baby face, calling yourself Daddy is ludicrously disgusting,” Aery snaps back while Eunji is already laughing at her accurate criticism—Haru does have a baby face, his skin is milky white and soft, his eyes are innocently round and his lips are pinkish small.

Haru immediately pushes out his lower lip and sits back in his chair vexingly. Eunji shakes her head and says ‘PEACE’ loudly before she exits the room and heads straight to the courtroom where the trial is held.

She stops by the locker and put on her robe before she enters the courtroom. She sits at her place and begins proofreading her papers and practicing her counterattack in her mind. The judge enters the courtroom and sits at his place, followed by the defendant who is accompanied by a police officer.

The trial begins with the judge’s permission to start.

***

“Second trial ends now,” the judge gavels, bringing attention towards him, “We will continue this next time,”

After that, the juries stand up from their seat and exeunt the courtroom. The defendant is guided to the back with the officer walking behind him. Eunji glances at the facial expression of the defendant’s, grim and lost—as if he knows that he will not win. His lawyer is also not convincing, with that weak evidence, she also can sense that he is going to lose. She can’t help him either, her job is to go against him, although she can see him clearly being accused, her job is her job, this is the risk she must take when she decided to become a prosecutor.

She packs her stuff up and heaves a deep sigh as she walks out of the courtroom. She goes to the vending machine and buys a cup of coffee. While waiting for the machine to brew the coffee, she takes out her phone and checks her e-mails that are mostly from applications she joins, asking her to upgrade her account to premium. She starts deleting the emails she considers as junks until she sees an e-mail from an entertainment company. She taps the mail and reads the content. The company wants to have a talk with her concerning her new case related to the company’s artist. She taps the number phone attached to the mail and calls the number.

Her coffee is done and the call links through. She takes her coffee and sips her coffee before greeting, “Hello, this is Jung Eunji, I received your e-mail,”

***

SHE pays the taxi driver and gets off the vehicle. The taxi drives away as she stands in front of the building with letter words ‘BIG HIT ENTERTAINMENT’. She starts to remember her working years in this building when she was the manager of BTS. She wonders if the staff will remember her, surely the chairman won’t remember her as she never meets the person. She was hired by the director of the building.

She enters the building with confidence and tells the receptionist that she is meeting with the chairman.

“May I know what this is about?” the receptionist asks with a polite and mannerly tone.

She smiles, “This is private, and you should call your chairman and tell him Jung Eunji is here,”

The receptionist drops his polite smile and his eyes twitch a bit to roll his eyes to her. She knows that the receptionist is annoyed by her. But what can she do? She cannot trust this man to tell him who she is since words will get out easily about the chairman meeting with a prosecutor. She cannot risk the possibility of this company’s image getting ripped even before the trial starts.

He holds up the telephone’s handset and dials the number one which she thinks is the number of speed dialing the chairman’s room number. He bobs his head when the call links through, “Hello sir, Jung Eunji is here,”

She waits in front of the counter with the height of her collarbone. She watches him saying yes to the big boss while bowing his head. Both of his hands are holding the handset tightly as he puts down the handset when the call is ended by the chairman. She looks at him with her right eyebrow raised.

“The chairman’s room is at level seven,” the receptionist takes out a white card and gives it to her, “Please leave your identification card here and fill your attendance in this book,”

She takes the card and slips it into her pocket as she pulls out her own pen to write down her name, her number, and her signature. After that, she thanks the receptionist before walking towards the elevator.

The elevator door slides opened and she gets off. The first thing she sees is a woman behind her desk is typing on her laptop. When the woman notices her presence, she stands up and confirms, “Ms. Jung Eunji?”

“Yes, that’s me,” she gives the woman a small smile.

The woman politely returns her smile with her own before she bows her head in respect, “The chairman is expecting you,” she goes to knock on the door and opens the door when the chairman gives his permission.

After the woman tells the chairman about his guest, Eunji enters the room and closes the door before walking to the chairman who is sitting in his comfy big chair with his hands clasped together. She bows her head in respect and introduces herself, “Jung Eunji,”

The chairman smiles as he stands up from his seat, “Ms. Jung, thank you for coming, come, let’s sit there,” he strolls past her and sits at the conversation area where there are long chairs and two sets of one seated chairs.

He goes to sit in the one of the one seated chair while she sits in the long chair. She places her briefcase beside her legs and turns to the chairman. The chairman stares at her for a split second before he smiles crookedly and clasps his hands together as he hunches his body forward in the seat.

“You see, Ms. Jung, my artist is accused of this crime,” he begins with a low tone of voice, “Innocently,”

She smiles in return, “I cannot just decide who is telling the truth by only hearing from one side of story, sir,”

“Well, I suppose you would want to meet him?” he leans back in his chair.

She nods her head, “Yes please,”

The chairman picks up the handset from the telephone and dials a number, a few seconds pass before he speaks into the phone, “Ivan, do you have time for me?”

“Okay, stay where you are, a woman will come to you,” he then places the handset back and turns to her to say, “He’s in the practice room number four, I’m sorry that I can’t accompany you there, I have a meeting coming in later,” he smiles apologetically at her.

She shakes her and says, “It is fine, sir, thank you for calling me,”

Both of them stand up, facing each other in the midst of the space. She her hand to him, “It was nice meeting you,”

“Back to you,” he takes her hand and shakes it before letting her go.

She bends down and picks up her briefcase before bowing her head to him to exit the room. She goes straight to the elevator and presses the button. Then she remembers that she does not know where the practice room number four is so she turns around and asks the PA by the door. After that, she enters the elevator and presses the button number three.

She walks out of the elevator to find the practice room and when she sees it; she turns on the doorknob and pushes the door open. Her eyes catch the sight of a boy in a white hoodie sitting on the couch with his head down.

“Ivan?”

The boy turns his head to her and nods his head. She smiles before coming in and close the door.

***

SHE exits the room and heaves a sigh before starting to walk towards the elevator. She gets into the elevator and presses the ground button before she busies herself with her phone. Her hand fishes out her earphones and she puts them on. Her thumb taps on the playlist she made and presses shuffle. Her back rests on the wall of the elevator as she waits for it to arrive at the ground level.

The elevator stops at level two and the door slides opened, revealing boys in black clothes conversing with each other loudly. Her heart stops when she sees them and when they turn their heads to her, their eyes widen. One of them takes a footstep in and approaches her.

“Eunji?” he asks in disbelief.

All of them start getting into the elevator, filling the elevator as they surround her small body in the corner of the elevator. Each of them is smiling widely while staring at her. They cannot believe that the one girl they’ve been wondering where she went is standing before them.

“Jin,” she breaks the silence with her cracked voice as she smiles happily at him.

Jin goes to pull her into his arms and hugs her tightly to his chest as he hides his face in her hair, “I missed you so much, Eunji, where have you been?”

She smiles on his chest while her arms move to hug him back by the waist, “How are you? Have you improved your cooking?”

Jin pulls back from her and makes a face at her before he proudly says, “I can become a chef now,”

She breaks into a small laugh and turns her face to the others, “Namjoon, how can you be so skinny? I told you your puffy cheeks are fine, you look cute,”

Namjoon scoffs, “That’s the thing, I don’t wanna look cute, I wanna look hot,”

She scoffs back, “You look like a zombie now if you ask me,”

“Come here, you little—“ he pulls her into a hug and pats her back.

Jungkook then comes in when Namjoon pulls away from her, “Eunji,” he calls her with a cute smile on his face.

“Jungkook, you’ve grown taller!” her palm is above her head, measuring her height on him; she is at his chin.

“I’ve always been taller than you,” he rolls his eyes and she grins at him.

She calls out to Jimin who is standing behind Jungkook, shortly. “Jimin, you’re still the same!”

“Hey, hey, whatever it is, I am still taller than you,” he says to her defensively.

She shakes her head in defeat with a smile and turns to Yoongi, “What about you, Yoongi? How’s your photography going on?”

“I just bought a new camera,” he answers her with a wide smile.

“Good for you!”

Her eyes wander around to find more but that is it, there are only five of them in the elevator. Jin catches her looking for the other two so he quickly tells her about the other two. “Taehyung and Hoseok are in the practice room, still practicing,”

“Oh,” her heart drops a little but she recovers when Namjoon speaks up.

“Hey, do you have time? How about we catch up about your disappearance at a beef restaurant?”

She pulls her earphones away and checks the time on her phone, it is already six in the evening and her stomach grumbles lowly in hunger. She looks up and bobs her head at him, “Sure! Where do we go so that you guys can eat peacefully without your fans' interruption?”

“We know a place,” Jimin smirks at her.

***

“Taehyung and Hoseok are going to be here in thirty minutes,” Jungkook says, putting back his phone inside his pocket, “They don’t know that you’re here,”

“Cool,” she says as she looks around in the spacious room. This is not just any random beef restaurant; this is a private one where only people with lots of money could afford to eat here. This restaurant provides privacy for their customers so it won’t be a problem for BTS to eat here with her. They could eat in peace without having to worry about fans taking pictures of them and create a scandal about her.

“So, what’s new with you now?” Jin asks her and she gets all of their attention.

She places her hands in between her mid thighs as she hunches her body back and forth, “Well, I’m a prosecutor now,”

“You’re what?—“Namjoon freaks out with his eyes wide opened.

“So the reason why you quit being our manager is because of this?” It is Jimin’s turn to talk, “You went to study to become a prosecutor?”

She bobs her head, “Yes, I quit because I wanted to study to become a prosecutor,”

“I’m sorry that I suddenly left without telling you guys,” she adds.

“What? There’s no reason for you to be sorry, you were doing what you wanna do, we can’t have you to not do that because of us,” Yoongi says, calming her nerves with his soothing tone.

“Thanks, Yoongi,” she smiles at him.

Jungkook gapes at her, “Wow, you’re a prosecutor now, that’s really cool, you know,”

She chuckles at him, “Well it has been a hectic week for me now,”

“Why is that?”

“Sorry but I don’t have any trust in you to tell the defendant’s crime,” she says with a grin.

The boys glare at her and yell, “That’s not fair!”

She sticks out her tongue and continues laughing, “Whatever, I need a drink to release my stress,”

“Cool, we have a free day tomorrow, so let’s get drunk!” Yoongi says and calls the waitress to order beers.

The beers arrive in expensive