The courtroom of the Namhae District Court was not designed for drama. It was a functional space, all beige walls and fluorescent lights and hard wooden benches that had been polished by decades of anxious backsides. The ceiling was low, the windows were small, and the air conditioning had been broken since the previous summer, leaving the room perpetually stuffy with the smell of old paper and older sweat. It was a place where justice was dispensed in careful, measured doses, never too much, never too fast, never enough to disrupt the delicate balance of power that kept the city functioning.
But on the morning that the witness from Ward Seven was scheduled to testify, the courtroom was transformed. Every bench was filled, every aisle was crowded, every inch of standing room was occupied by people who had come to hear what a dying woman had to say. Journalists from the capital filled the front rows, their notebooks open, their recording devices discreetly positioned. Family members of the dead filled the middle rows, their faces a mixture of grief and anticipation. And at the back of the room, standing against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, was Cho Min-jun, his charcoal suit immaculate, his expression unreadable.
Hana sat in the second row, directly behind the prosecution's table. She had not slept in two days, but the exhaustion had crystallized into something sharper, a hyperawareness that made every detail of the courtroom feel significant. She watched the judge's bench, where Im Sang-ho was reviewing a stack of documents with the patience of a man who had spent thirty years learning that the truth rarely revealed itself quickly. She watched the defense table, where a team of lawyers from Kurosu Pharma's legal department sat in expensive suits, their faces carefully arranged into expressions of polite skepticism. And she watched the witness box, empty for now, waiting for the person who would either confirm or destroy everything they had worked for.
The witness's name was Park Myung-soon. She was eighty-two years old, a resident of Ward Seven at the Way of Peace Nursing Home, and she was dying. The medical report that had been submitted to the court described her condition in clinical language: advanced vascular dementia, chronic internal bleeding, organ function declining at approximately three times the normal rate for a woman her age. In plain terms, the red pills had done their work, and Park Myung-soon had perhaps weeks to live. But before she died, she had something to say, and Judge Im had ruled that her testimony could be taken despite her cognitive impairment, because the alternative was to let her die in silence like all the others.
The prosecution had spent the morning presenting the physical evidence: the toxicology reports from Dr. Yoon, the photographs of the Songdo pharmacy, the pages of Protocol Zero that had been leaked to the press. The defense had countered with procedural objections and expert witnesses who questioned the reliability of the toxicology and the authenticity of the documents. It was a familiar dance, the kind of legal theater that Hana had witnessed a dozen times during her years as a journalist, and it had left the courtroom in a state of suspended uncertainty. The physical evidence was compelling, but it was not enough. What the prosecution needed was a human voice, a living witness who could describe what it felt like to take the red pills and feel your body slowly dissolving from the inside.
Park Myung-soon was wheeled into the courtroom at precisely ten-fifteen. She was a tiny woman, her body shrunken by years of illness until she seemed to weigh no more than a child. Her skin was pale and papery, marked with the distinctive bruising that the red pills caused—dark purple patches that spread across her arms and neck like the shadows of unseen hands. Her eyes, however, were clear and alert, and when she looked around the courtroom, there was no confusion in her gaze. There was recognition. There was memory. There was a lifetime of experience that the dementia had not yet managed to erase.
The courtroom attendant positioned her wheelchair in the witness box and adjusted the microphone so that it was level with her lips. Judge Im leaned forward, his voice gentle. "Mrs. Park, can you understand me?"
"Yes." The voice was thin and reedy, but it was steady. "I can understand you. I can understand everything. The fog comes and goes, but this morning it is gone. This morning I remember."
A murmur ran through the courtroom. The defense attorneys exchanged glances, one of them flipping rapidly through a sheaf of papers. They had expected a confused, unreliable witness. They had not expected this.
The prosecutor, a young woman named Min Soo-jin who had been assigned the case only three weeks earlier, rose from her chair. She had been chosen for her inexperience, Hana suspected—a calculated move by the system to ensure that the prosecution would not be too zealous. But Min had surprised everyone, including Hana, by pursuing the case with a dedication that bordered on obsession. She had spent hours preparing for this moment, and it showed in the steadiness of her voice.
"Mrs. Park, I'm going to ask you some questions about your time at the Way of Peace Nursing Home. Do you remember when you first arrived there?"
"Two years ago. My son brought me. He said it was a good place, a safe place. He said they would take care of me." Park Myung-soon's voice trembled slightly. "He didn't know. He couldn't have known."
"Did you receive any medications while you were at the nursing home?"
"Yes. Every week, on Wednesday afternoons, the men in suits would come. They were very polite. Very clean. They wore gray suits, all of them the same shade, like they had been cut from the same cloth. They brought pills. Red pills. The nurses called them vitamins, but I knew vitamins. I raised three children. I knew what medicine looked like, and I knew what poison looked like. And these pills—these pills were poison."
A defense attorney rose to object, but Judge Im waved him down. "Let the witness speak."
Park Myung-soon continued, her voice growing stronger as she spoke. "After the first pill, my gums began to bleed. After the second, bruises appeared on my arms where no one had touched me. After the third, I woke in the night with blood in my mouth, blood on my pillow, blood everywhere. I told the nurses. They said it was normal. They said it was part of getting old. But I knew. I knew it was the pills."
Min Soo-jin walked slowly toward the witness box. "Mrs. Park, how did you know? How could you be sure?"
"Because I stopped taking them." A thin smile crossed the old woman's face. "I learned to hide them under my tongue. When the nurse turned away, I spat them into my handkerchief. After three weeks without the pills, the bleeding stopped. The bruises faded. My mind cleared. That's when I knew for certain. That's when I started writing everything down."
Hana felt her heart clench. The ledger—the Book of Red Dew—had been written by many hands, but Park Myung-soon's was one of them. This woman had not only survived the red pills; she had documented her survival, and her testimony was the living confirmation of everything the ledger contained.
"Mrs. Park," Min said, "do you know why you were given these pills?"
"Because we were nothing." The words fell into the courtroom like stones into still water. "Because we were old, and sick, and no one would miss us. The men in suits, they didn't see us as people. They saw us as experiments. We were cheaper than rats, they said. Easier to dispose of. One of them—a young one, very handsome, very polite—he said it right in front of me. He didn't think I could understand. But I understood everything."
The courtroom erupted. Journalists scribbled frantically in their notebooks. Family members began to weep, to shout, to call out the names of their dead. Judge Im banged his gavel repeatedly, calling for order, but the noise only increased. And at the back of the room, Cho Min-jun remained motionless, his face a mask of perfect calm.
Hana watched him. She had not taken her eyes off him since the testimony began, and she saw the moment when something shifted behind his expression—a flicker of something that might have been guilt or might have been fear or might have been something else entirely. The old woman's words had struck something in him, some buried memory or unacknowledged truth. He had been the young one, the handsome one, the polite one who said terrible things in front of people he assumed could not understand. And now one of those people was testifying against him, and he was learning, perhaps for the first time, that the invisible were not invisible at all.
"Mrs. Park," Min said when the courtroom had quieted, "can you identify the man who said those words? Is he in this room today?"
Park Myung-soon's eyes swept across the courtroom, passing over the journalists, the families, the lawyers, the judge. They lingered on Hana for a moment, and Hana felt the weight of that gaze like a physical touch. Then they moved on, to the back of the room, to the figure in the charcoal suit standing against the wall.
"That one," Park Myung-soon said, raising a trembling hand to point directly at Cho Min-jun. "That is the man. He wore a gray suit then, not charcoal, but it is the same man. I remember his face. I remember his voice. He said we were cheaper than rats, and then he smiled. He smiled while he said it, as though it were a joke."
Every head in the courtroom turned toward Cho. For a long moment, no one moved. Then two bailiffs began to walk slowly toward the back of the room, their hands resting on their belts. Cho watched them approach with the same calm expression he had worn throughout the trial, and when they reached him, he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender so smooth it seemed rehearsed.
"I will cooperate fully with the court," Cho said, his voice carrying across the silent room. "I have information that will be of interest to the prosecution. Information about Dr. Lee Hiroshi, about Phase Three, about everything. I am prepared to testify."
The courtroom erupted again. Hana stared at Cho, trying to read his expression, trying to understand the calculations that had led him to this moment. He had sent Protocol Zero to her anonymously. He had hinted that Phase Three was already underway. And now he was surrendering in open court, in front of a room full of journalists and victims' families and a judge who had already demonstrated his willingness to challenge the powerful. It was either the most brilliant legal maneuver she had ever seen or the most desperate act of self-preservation.
Judge Im banged his gavel until the room fell silent. "This court will recess for one hour. Bailiffs, take Mr. Cho into custody. I will hear his testimony this afternoon. And Mrs. Park—" He turned to the witness box, his voice softening. "Thank you. You have done a brave thing today. The court is grateful."
Park Myung-soon nodded slowly, the exhaustion of her testimony finally catching up with her. "I am not brave," she said quietly. "I am dying. There is a difference. Brave people do things they are afraid to do. I am not afraid anymore. The pills have taken everything from me except my voice. And now I have used my voice. The rest is up to you."
She was wheeled out of the courtroom, and the crowd began to disperse, buzzing with the energy of a revelation that would be broadcast across the country within hours. Hana remained in her seat, staring at the empty witness box. She thought about Park Myung-soon's words—"we were cheaper than rats, easier to dispose of"—and she thought about the forty-seven people who had died without ever having the chance to testify. The dead could not speak, but the dying could, and Park Myung-soon had spoken for all of them.
Park Jun-ho appeared beside her, his expression grim. "Cho is talking to the bailiffs. He's asking for a deal—full immunity in exchange for testimony against Lee Hiroshi. The prosecutor is considering it."
"Can he do that? Give evidence against his boss and walk away?"
"He can try. Whether it works depends on what he knows and how much the prosecution needs it." Park paused. "But there's something else. While Cho was being taken into custody, he whispered something to one of the bailiffs. He said to tell you that Phase Three is not in the mountains. It's here, in Namhae. It's been here all along."
Hana felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. Phase Three was not in the mountains. Phase Three was here, in the city, under their noses, and they had not seen it. They had been chasing the evidence of past crimes while the future crimes were being planned around them, and the clock was ticking faster than they knew.
The courtroom emptied, and the afternoon sun slanted through the high windows, casting long shadows across the empty benches. Outside, the city of Namhae went about its ordinary business, unaware that the truth had been spoken aloud and that the system was beginning, slowly and reluctantly, to listen. The witness from Ward Seven had done her part. The rest was up to them.
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