The expert's hands shook as he flipped the page, voice coming out rough.
"Former prosecutor… Park Joon-ho," he said, swallowing hard. "Went missing ten years ago during a corruption probe against Kang Electronics. Case was closed after a house fire — gas leak, they said. Body was burned beyond recognition but identified through dental records."
The Chief's face went pale, confusion cutting into his voice. "Are you telling me a dead man's DNA is on a crime scene from last week?"
The expert didn't answer, just nodded again. "Yes, sir. It's a complete match. And the timestamp on the DNA extraction puts it no more than forty-eight hours before the murder."
After hearing the name Park Joon-ho, the man who'd died ten years ago, the whole room went quiet.
You could almost feel it — everyone holding back a laugh that wanted to break out.
It sounded too stupid to be real, like a bad joke told at the wrong time.
But no one dared to smile, not with the Chief standing there.
They just stared at their screens, pretending to type, their faces straight while their eyes screamed, "What the hell did we just hear?"
But to Choi, it was itching in his head — something about that name wouldn't leave him alone.
He stepped forward and grabbed the file straight from the expert's hands.
The man didn't even resist; his fingers just let go.
Choi flipped through the pages fast at first, then slower, his eyes scanning every line, every text on report.
The more he read, the deeper the crease on his forehead grew.
"Park Joon-ho…" he murmured under his breath. The name felt like dust in his mouth. "Why does that sound familiar?"
The Chief turned toward him, still stunned. "What the hell is going on here, Choi?"
The Chief blinked a few times, still trying to process what he'd just heard.
He looked at Choi — the man wasn't even looking back, just staring at that file like he saw a ghost.
"What the hell is going on here, Choi?" the Chief finally said, his voice low but rough, the kind that carried across the whole room.
He stepped closer. "You're telling me the DNA we found belongs to a man who's been dead for ten years?"
He could hear the Chief's voice somewhere behind him, asking questions, but it was just noise now.
All Choi could see was that name printed in bold. Park Joon-ho.
He kept reading, like maybe one of those lines would change and tell him it was all a mistake. His gut told him something was wrong — not just wrong, impossible.
His mind was screaming — how could the DNA of a man who died ten years ago show up on a fresh crime scene?
But the report was too precise to doubt. The alleles lined up perfectly across all loci — sixteen out of sixteen markers matched without deviation.
The lab's verification stamp was there, double-signed, the chain of custody untouched.
No contamination, no mix-up, no clerical error.
It wasn't a glitch in the system.
It was a perfect biological match — Park Joon-ho.
He was looking at the photo of Park Joon-ho. A man's face — young, calm, with sharp back eyes.
He looked around twenty-four in the photo. The kind of face that still carried a trace of youth, but the eyes… they were too steady for his age.
The DNA record was not of Hyun Woo. Not even close but it forensic report it was of Park Joon-Ho.
And then it hit him.
That name.
That case.
He looked up slowly, the Chief still watching him.
"Sir…" he said, voice low. "I know this man."
The Chief frowned, his eyebrows pressing together. "What do you mean you know him?"
Choi's eyes stayed on the file, his thumb tracing the corner of the photo. "He was a prosecutor," he said quietly. "Fifteen years ago. The one who went after Kang Electronics."
The Chief's expression changed — a flicker of recognition. "That corruption case?"
"Yeah," Choi nodded. "Park Joon-ho was the lead. He was the only one willing to dig into the chairman himself. And then one night…"
He paused, his voice dropping lower. "He disappeared."
The Chief straightened, his tone growing tense. "You're saying this Park Joon-ho? The one who died in that house fire?"
Choi's jaw tightened. "The same."
He remembered it now.
Park Joon-ho had been a prosecutor then. One of the few who still believed in justice — not the kind you buy with money, but the kind you fight for.
He was chasing a corruption trail that led straight to Kang Dae-hyun, chairman of Kang Electronics.
One day Park disappeared and didn't arrive on the date of hearing. Three days later, they found what was left of him — or at least what they said was him.
The report back then said it was a gas leak. Fire started in the kitchen, spread fast.
By the time the fire department got there, the whole house was gone.
Choi remembered it clearly.
He was new back then — barely a year into the force, still learning how to tie his badge right.
That case was one of his first assignments.
The flames had burned everything — the walls, the floor, even the roof.
But there was something off. Even now, after all these years, he could still picture it in his head — the smell of burnt wood mixed with something else.
Not gas. Something sharper. Something different like a gasoline.
He remembered walking through the scene himself, stepping over the charred floorboards that creaked under his shoes.
The windows were shattered — but the glass was scattered inside, not outside.
If it had really been a gas explosion, the pressure should've blown the shards out, not in.
And the body — it was found sitting on the sofa, right next to the kitchen where the leak supposedly started.
If it was an accident, if Park had really been alive when the gas filled the room, he would've smelled it, coughed, tried to run.
But he didn't move. Didn't even stand up.
That's when Choi noticed something else — just outside the front door, faint but visible under the ash and dirt.
A thin drag mark. A small streak of blood leading away from the steps.