Ignorance is a bliss/Tyunning

Incheon, 17 stops

it has been a week since Taehyun's panic attack, the messages, the hallucinations. he's getting more and more paranoid, restless. barely sleeping 2 hours a night. he had his phone checked at a professional technician, but the man told him that no messages were deleted from his phone, and there was definitely no one hacking it.

"I'll just buy a new one, thank you"

he knows it's just him and his lack of sleep feeding into his paranoia, but even when he goes home from work, it feels like someone's watching him. 

 it's the sleep  he thinks.

it's the lack of sleep that makes him forget trivial things like forgetting to buy milk at the grocery store, which has never happened before because Taehyun is a calculated guy with a neat list of necessity items. it's the lack of sleep that causes him to have sharp headaches that never seem to stop even when he takes several painkillers to fight them.

"Taehyun!" a yell makes the young paralegal jump from his seat. "are you even listening to me?!"

"yes, Sir. you were saying something about checking for our client's family background?" Taehyun recalled Mr. Kim leading with that at the start of the meeting and took a confident guess, hoping that he was right.

"according to his file, he has no biological kids. something about him having low sperm motility makes it impossible to reproduce. but we would need his full medical sheets to conform that."

Taehyun nodded along, although feeling like he will fall asleep at any minute. he had took a few vitamins and drank a bunch of energy drinks before going to work, but nothing seemed to work as well as having a full night sleep, which starting to seem like a impossible thing for him.

"what about his wife?" Taehyun asked.

"she had a son from her first marriage, and he's our client's step son. however, the police have contacted him and he said he will not testify."

"does he even have a choice?"

Mr. Kim closed the file, a sign for Taehyun that they were going into a more complicated part of their conversation.

"in general, he can be forced by the court to do his duties as a crucial part of the case. however, it's a bit tricky in this case."

"why?" 

"he is not, legally, our client's step son" Mr. Kim said. "even though our client was married to his mother, he wanted no connection with him and refuse sighing the legal forms tying them together as a functioning family."

"I see..... But in those cases the court can still demand him to be a part of the case."

Mr. Kim Hums.

"yes, but. it's a gray area. the Judge can do that but it's not the most ethical move, and the case is already fragile enough without getting into complex laws. it might be for the best, considering that the son is an unpredictable person, in a way that might be more harmful to the case than we think."

"what do you mean?"

"I met him, he's a..... unique person. I guess."

"In what way?"

Mr. Kim smiles, and gets up from his chair.

"Do you always ask so many questions?" He strikes Taehyun with something so many people have asked before.

An exceptionally curious child, they said. It seems as if Taehyun's curiosity brings him more harm than good in most cases. But it's just who is he.

"Go home Taehyun-Shii. It's late." Mr.Kim says and goes back to his desk. In his hand there is an extra file mixed with the others, and Taehyun does not recognize that one.