You Have Been Defended [EN]: Chapter 63

“The weather is so nice. Hmm, hmm~ Sunny sunny day~”

Kang Min-jae, behind the wheel, sang with a hum.

The navigation system flashed, re-routing because the car had taken a different path, but Kang Min-jae treated it like background music.

Anyway, Jusan-gu, the meeting place, wasn’t too far, and they had left early, so it didn’t really matter, but…

“Let’s keep it down.”

“Sunny sunny… Yes. Ah, we took a different route. Sorry.”

Ever since I told him to stay out of the case, he’d been wearing only drab-colored shirts, but today was different.

Seeing him in a bright shirt, leather jacket, and sunglasses, I was speechless.

“Kang.”

“Yes?”

“Are you secretly going on vacation without me? Where are you going? Lucky you.”

“Huh? I’m not going anywhere.”

“You look like you could head to the airport right now. Why don’t you set the navigation to Incheon Airport, even now? It’s not too late.”

“Ah, this? Hehe, I thought you might say that, so I brought a suit too.”

Adjusting his sunglasses, Kang Min-jae pointed to the back seat.

A suitcase was neatly placed in the back seat.

“It would have been nice if you’d worn that from the start.”

“I went shopping after work yesterday, and I just really wanted to wear it.”

He must have been in a really good mood.

I shook my head.

Pulling down the sun visor, I crossed my arms and closed my eyes, and my agitated mind seemed to calm down a little.

I had only closed my eyes for a moment, but we had already arrived in front of Han-joon’s high school.

We were supposed to meet Han-joon’s mother at a cafe near the school.

“Go in first. I’ll change my clothes…”

Kang Min-jae said, reaching into the back seat.

I clicked my tongue.

“Anyone would think you’re a pervert, Kang.”

“Ugh, I buttoned it wrong.”

He grumbled, quickly fastening his shirt buttons.

I don’t know why Kang Min-jae seems to be resembling Tae-sik more and more.

As I went into the cafe, ordered coffee, and waited, I noticed a middle-aged woman looking around near the entrance.

When Kang Min-jae stood up, she recognized him and approached us.

“Are you Attorney Cha Joo-han?”

“Ah, hello. I’m Cha Joo-han, and this friend here is Attorney Kang Min-jae, who called you yesterday.”

Kang Min-jae took out two business cards and handed them to her, and she nodded, putting the cards in her wallet.

After ordering tea for her and a moment of silence, Kang Min-jae began.

“We could have come to your neighborhood.”

“No, it’s okay. I have to pick up my son after school anyway, so this is more convenient.”

“Ah, do you pick up your son yourself?”

Han-joon’s mother sighed deeply at Kang Min-jae’s question.

After taking a small sip of the steaming tea, she said, “I’m worried about him.”

Kang Min-jae looked saddened by those words.

She was always driving him to and from school, worried that her son, who had already experienced school violence, might get into an accident on his way to or from school.

It was a similar situation to Jin-cheol’s parents hiring a tattooed uncle [a person with visible tattoos, often perceived as intimidating, to act as a bodyguard].

“Is Han-joon adjusting well to the new school?”

“Yes. Fortunately, there don’t seem to be many bad kids… and he seems to have made friends.”

“That’s a relief.”

“…On his first day of school, he said something I know is terrible, but he said he was relieved that there was already a kid being bullied in his class.”

Her face was filled with pity.

“Han-joon must have been deeply hurt at Jangmyeong High School. Do you think the wounds have healed a bit, in your opinion?”

“…I don’t think so. He’s still getting psychiatric treatment, and he cries every time.”

The mother’s words sounded quite calm, but it felt like she had already been hurt so much that she had become numb.

It had been over a year since that incident, but he still hadn’t overcome the trauma.

“I understand the attorneys want to ask about Lee Hyuk-min, right?”

Han-joon’s mother sighed and changed the subject.

“Yes. I briefly mentioned it over the phone, but we are representing a student who was a victim of school violence by Lee Hyuk-min. I heard that Lee Hyuk-min had done the same thing before, so I was wondering if we could hear more details about the incident.”

At Kang Min-jae’s words, Han-joon’s mother squeezed her eyes shut.

“That devilish kid is bullying another student again, really… it’s really terrible.”

We briefly told her about Jin-cheol’s situation.

Unlike Kim Dae-seong, whom we had met earlier, we needed to hear a more detailed story from her.

Of course, it didn’t seem like she was trying to hide what Han-joon had gone through from us.

But if she knew the situation of a student who had suffered the same harm, there might be some more helpful information.

“He fell from the second floor?”

Han-joon’s mother covered her mouth, startled by the story.

“Yes. He was hospitalized for two months because of that.”

“What did the school say?”

“They said he was playing around and his slipper flew off, and he ran to catch it and fell.”

“Ha, that’s ridiculous. What parent would believe that?”

Once again, I felt like I was reconfirming that the school’s position was just a flimsy excuse that no one would believe.

She clicked her tongue and continued.

“Is the child okay? He must have been very shocked to have such an accident…”

“At first, he showed a lot of violent tendencies, but he’s getting better now.”

“That’s a relief. The trauma must be great… Our son, Lee Hyuk-min, tried to run him over with a motorcycle more than once, and ever since then, he gets seizures just seeing a motorcycle…”

Kang Min-jae’s eyes widened.

“He tried to run him over with a motorcycle?”

“Yes. There are a few of them in a group, and they call him out at night and make him stand far in front of the motorcycle and run towards him like they’re going to run him over. Then, when they think they’re going to hit him, they swerve, and the kid is so surprised that he collapses. They did this several times. If he tried to go somewhere else, they would beat him up and make him stand there. Really, just thinking about it makes me shudder…”

Han-joon’s mother swallowed her trembling voice and touched her forehead.

Even if they never intended to hit Han-joon from the beginning, the fact that the motorcycle was coming towards him was threatening enough.

If they had made a mistake, something really bad would have happened.

“He’s really a devilish child.”

Kang Min-jae said, grinding his teeth.

Other than that, most of the stories she told overlapped with Jin-cheol’s.

Assault, extortion, blatant bullying and disregard.

When he went into the toilet stall, they would laugh at him, saying, ‘Ah, that dirty bastard shitting at school,’ and pour mop water inside.

“Didn’t the school say anything else about the student’s fall that you’re representing?”

She asked with a hollow laugh.

The laugh contained the certainty that they wouldn’t have done anything, of course.

“I went to the school with the victim’s guardian and demanded that they properly investigate the incident.”

“They’re very humble and apologetic, saying they’ll investigate, right?”

The mother said as if she knew everything.

“Don’t expect that. They’ll say they investigated and there was no problem. Then they’ll eventually drive the child to be a liar. They’ll say, ‘Isn’t it possible that our child is lying because he has a dislike for Lee Hyuk-min?'”

“Did they say that so openly?”

Kang Min-jae asked, filled with astonishment.

“No. The attitude is consistently humble. They say it in a roundabout way, pretending to be very sorry, but that’s what they mean. They say, ‘Isn’t our child slandering Lee Hyuk-min? Lee Hyuk-min usually behaves well, and when we asked the classmates, there was no bullying problem in the class, and when we called Lee Hyuk-min himself, he said he didn’t know anything about it.’ Those are the kinds of things the teachers at Jangmyeong High School say.”
Han-joon’s mother, who was speaking in an increasingly agitated voice, drank her cold tea to moisten her throat.

Her hand, lifting the teacup, was trembling.

“Was there a reason why you decided to transfer Han-joon?”

“First of all, the police didn’t investigate properly either. I don’t know if they were in cahoots with the school or what. They said it was a little difficult because there was no evidence of what happened to our son. Even if I showed them that he was beaten, they said they couldn’t know if it was Lee Hyuk-min who did it. Lee Hyuk-min is so meticulous, he only beat him where there are no CCTVs [closed-circuit television cameras]. So the police, I don’t know if they tried to secure evidence, but no evidence came out.”

School Violence Committee, police.

Everything that a typical parent could do didn’t work properly.

Moreover, the attitude of the police was more than I thought.

“And secondly. I heard that Lee Hyuk-min’s father is the superintendent of education. So the school must have been groveling. On top of that, Lee Hyuk-min’s father is from Jangmyeong High School, and the principal of that school is also from Jangmyeong High School. I saw that they went to school together. They’re friends, the two of them.”

The connection between the principal and Lee Hyuk-min’s father was information we didn’t know either.

Even if Lee Hyuk-min’s father was just the superintendent of education, the school would be groveling, but if the principal was also a friend, it was virtually impossible to cover up the problem.

Lee Hyuk-min’s father would have given many favors to Jangmyeong High School, which is his friend’s school, his alma mater, and the school his son attends.

The principal has to pay the price.

By perfectly preserving Lee Hyuk-min’s student record, by deleting all the disgrace from Lee Hyuk-min’s school days.

“At that point, I thought it was no use no matter how much I made a fuss. And if a meaningful investigation result comes out from the police or the School Violence Committee is held, they have to suspend Lee Hyuk-min so that the victimized student can attend school well, but that was a situation where they couldn’t take such measures. So our son has to continue to take classes in the same class as Lee Hyuk-min.”

That’s right.

Suspending Lee Hyuk-min is a disciplinary action, so from the school’s point of view, which has to keep Lee Hyuk-min’s student record clean, there is nothing they can do for Han-joon.

So, like Kim Dae-seong said, Han-joon’s parents seemed to have chosen the method of not sending him to school until the transfer.

“In the end, there was no way, so I transferred my child. The parents are incompetent… I made my child suffer because I couldn’t use more power than Lee Hyuk-min’s parents…”

Tears welled up in her eyes.

But she wiped away the tears with the tissue next to her and cleared her throat.

“I hope that the student that the attorneys are in charge of doesn’t become like our child. Unable to do anything without medicine, such… I hope it doesn’t go to that situation.”

She sighed deeply, looking out the window.

“But that family seems to have some money. They even hired a lawyer. Our family took out a loan for our child’s education and lived in that area, so we couldn’t even do that…”

She regained her composure, but eventually dropped her head and shed tears.

Kang Min-jae brought the insufficient tissues and comforted her.

“We will do everything we can to make sure Lee Hyuk-min is punished. Ah, and may I submit the parts of the conversation with you as evidence or use them in court?”

At my question, she nodded her head vigorously.

“Of course. Of course. If I can let everyone know that Lee Hyuk-min bullied our Han-joon so much, that our Han-joon is living like that because of him… I would be even more grateful. If you need a witness, I will testify. Please make sure Lee Hyuk-min pays for his sins.”

She said, looking straight at us with bloodshot eyes.

“Oh, it’s already past four o’clock. Han-joon will be finishing school soon. I have to go pick him up.”

The mother said urgently, packing her bag.

It was as if she had an obsession that she couldn’t be even a little late.

Perhaps it was because she was so anxious that her son might be bullied even in that short time.

“Yes, ma’am. Please go ahead.”

We watched her hurriedly get into the driver’s seat in the parking lot beyond the glass window.

“Lee Hyuk-min, that’s a real devilish bastard.”

Kang Min-jae said, downing the coffee in front of him in one shot.

I nodded.

Thinking back to my days as a prosecutor, the children of politicians and business leaders who caused accidents often grew up like that.

In their childhood, there was no one to correct their wrongdoings, only people to cover them up.