Chapter 14: Under Oath
The morning Daeho was due to testify, I stood outside my grandfather’s apartment and waited for the elevator. I had left early enough to avoid rushing, but I kept checking the time anyway.
Han arrived with a folder against her chest. She looked at my hand resting lightly against the wall.
“Are you all right to go in?”
“My ribs are better than they were.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“I know.”
The elevator opened. I stepped inside, and she followed without asking again.
At the courthouse, we reviewed my statement one last time. I had described Daeho standing over me, the blows I remembered, Sora’s voice, and the check he dropped onto my dress. There were places where my account stopped because my memory stopped.
“You can say you don’t know,” Han told me.
“I’m afraid it will sound like I’m hiding something.”
“It’s what you told me at the hospital. Don’t change it for him.”
Across the room, Daeho entered with his attorney. He looked at me briefly, then took a seat. I wondered whether he had rehearsed seeing me here, alive and able to answer him. I had rehearsed seeing him. It had not helped.
When I was called, I gave my name as Seo Yuna. The questions began with the evening in our home. I told the court that Sora accused me of taking documents from Daeho’s study, that I denied it, and that Daeho demanded an apology. I remembered saying I would not apologize for something I had not done.
“Did you see what happened throughout the assault?” I was asked.
“No. There were moments when I couldn’t keep track of him or even look up.”
“How do you know eight ribs were broken?”
“The hospital scans showed eight fractures. I didn’t know the number while I was on the floor.”
My voice held until I described Sora saying she was satisfied. Then I needed a breath. No one hurried me.
Daeho’s attorney asked why I had not called for an ambulance myself before calling Han.
“I could barely reach my phone,” I said. “I called the person I trusted to help me get out.”
He asked about the cashier’s check. I said Daeho had called it a million dollars per rib. Han had documented it; I had not deposited it or agreed that it settled anything.
“And you were aware of your substantial inheritance by then?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you had concealed your name from your husband.”
“I married under my grandmother’s surname. That did not give him a reason to hurt me.”
I wanted to say more. I wanted to ask why my name mattered only after he learned what it could be worth. But I had come to give an account, not the speech I sometimes made alone when I could not sleep.
The clinician who had examined me testified about the scans, the eight fractures, and the injuries recorded with my consent. She did not claim that a scan could identify the person who caused them. She explained what she had observed and what I had reported that night.
Daeho’s attorney asked whether the fractures could have come from a fall.
“She answered that the imaging alone could not tell the court how they happened,” Han told me during the break. “That was an honest answer.”
“I heard it.”
I had also heard the attorney ask whether my account had influenced the clinician’s notes. Of course it had. A patient had to tell a doctor what had happened. I remembered forcing words out between breaths while a nurse waited beside me. Daeho now wanted that ordinary act to count against me.
Ms. Choi came in after the break. Before she took her seat, she glanced toward the back of the room, where her independent adviser sat. Han had told me Choi was willing to describe what she heard. She had not authorized us to share the message from Sora on her phone, and we had not submitted it.
Choi said she had been outside the room during the confrontation. She heard Daeho demand an apology, heard me deny taking anything, and heard Sora say she was satisfied. When Choi later saw me on the floor, I was speaking into my phone.
“Could you see what happened while you heard those voices?” Daeho’s attorney asked.
“No.”
“Then you cannot say Mr. Kwon struck his wife.”
“I can say what I heard and what I saw afterward.”
Her hands were clasped so tightly that I could see her knuckles from my seat. She did not mention the message. She did not pretend to have witnessed what she had not. The questions still cost her something. Daeho’s household had paid her wages and provided her room; she would have to go back to an uncertain life when she left this one.
Park testified next. He described his warning to Daeho that the available access records did not support Sora’s claim and that the report needed checking. The preserved thread showed a reply from Daeho’s account. Park also identified the instruction sent three minutes later telling him to have the security liaison stop seeking corroboration and pulling study access records that night.
“I forwarded it,” Park said. “The liaison acknowledged the pause.”
Daeho’s attorney asked whether Park had been the only person with access to the mailbox and whether a pause meant the checks would never resume. Park could not answer for every person who might have used Daeho’s account. He said he had understood the instruction to apply that night, when the accusation was being made.
“Did you tell anyone to destroy records?” the attorney asked.
“No.”
“Then you’re offering your interpretation of a temporary instruction.”
“I’m telling you what I sent and what came back.”
Park looked worn when he stepped down. I knew Daeho’s company was examining his handling of correspondence. His own attorney would deal with that threat, not me. I could not promise him a job or thank him in a way that made the risk disappear. I could only hope the court had listened to the limits he gave as closely as it listened to the records.
Daeho took his seat to testify late in the afternoon. His proposed account had called the assault fabricated. Under questioning, he said we had argued about Sora’s missing documents and that I had fallen during the argument. He denied striking me.
“Why did you give her eight million dollars?” he was asked.
“I wanted the dispute to end. I wasn’t calculating injuries.”
“You did not call for medical help?”
“I didn’t know she needed it.”
I looked at the table. For days after the hospital, I had needed to steady myself before getting out of a chair. He had seen me on the marble floor and walked upstairs.
The preserved messages were put to him. This time, Daeho said he had sent the reply to Park. He said the access logs were incomplete and he did not want an employee treating Sora like a thief. He also acknowledged sending the instruction to pause the security checks.
“I meant until I could handle the matter myself,” he said.
“You knew the available logs did not support the accusation?”
“I knew Park thought they didn’t.”
“And you stopped him from checking further that night?”
“I stopped him from turning a family disagreement into an investigation.”
Later, he was asked about his written offers. One had required me to withdraw my assault account and refrain from contradicting Sora. Another had offered to withdraw his public suggestions about company files if I ceased trying to establish his responsibility.
“I was trying to keep a private matter private,” he said.
I remembered the first offer arriving while I was still struggling to sleep without pain. He could say what he had meant by it. The words he had sent were there for everyone to read.
Sora’s questioning concerned the accusation that had begun the night. She said she had feared a file was missing from Daeho’s study. Asked to identify it, she described the kind of material she believed should have been there, but offered no household inventory or record showing it had been there that day.
The contractor’s records showed a missing-file notice drafted from text supplied through her account by 4:41 that afternoon. Sora called it a precaution. She said her concern became firmer later.
Then came the photograph she had supplied as showing me near the study on the assault night. The repair company’s original and service record placed the image nine days earlier. The added date was absent from the original but appeared on a copy uploaded through an account associated with a device registered to Sora.
“Did you add the date?” she was asked.
“No.”
“Do you know who did?”
“No.”
She suggested someone else could have used the device. No one in the room could establish otherwise from the portal record alone. But the dated photograph could no longer place me there that night.
By the time testimony ended, I was tired enough to be grateful for the silence in the hall. The court had not decided the assault matter. Our divorce remained pending too. Han and I walked outside without speaking until the air reached us.
The next afternoon, Haneul sent me a process notice. The independent committee had confirmed that no award would proceed on Daeho’s bid as submitted. The unresolved disclosure history and submission-trail discrepancies were its stated reasons. The ordinary corrective-review route remained available.
The minutes again recorded my exclusion. I had not seen the restricted bid, spoken privately to its reviewers, or voted. The committee had made no finding about our home.
My grandfather read the notice at the kitchen table.
“Does it feel like a victory?”
“It feels like they did their job.”
He folded the paper and slid it back to me.
May you like
That evening, I walked the short length of his hallway twice before my ribs told me to stop. My phone lit up in my hand. Han had forwarded two court notifications. The decisions in the assault matter and the divorce petition had both been released.
I sat down on the nearest chair. I could see the documents attached beneath her message, but I had not opened them yet.
