You Have Been Defended [EN]: Chapter 482

You Have Been Defended – Episode 482

#482

“Did you ever confide in Jung Ji-min about your conflict with Professor Im Hyun-il?”

The previous questions were aimed at understanding why Choi Jae-hoon rejected Im Hyun-il’s offer.

But what’s really important is how much Jung Ji-min knows about the conflict with Im Hyun-il.

“Well, honestly, I can’t understand half of what that guy says, so I’m not sure if I can explain it properly. I think he probably rambled on about this and that, knowing I was too ignorant to understand.”

“So you don’t know the specifics of his conflict with Professor Im Hyun-il?”

Jung Ji-min crossed his arms and remained silent for a long time, as if searching his memories.

I checked the time while waiting for his answer.

It’s already been 45 minutes.

Kang Min-jae should be arriving around now.

I checked my phone and, sure enough, there was a text message from Kang Min-jae.

[Stuck on the Olympic Expressway ㅠ In front of the Wonhyo Bridge ㅠ]

The message was sent 15 minutes ago.

If he was in front of the Wonhyo Bridge at that time, it would take about 20 minutes to get here.

He said he’d be 30 minutes late, but that’s nonsense.

Whether Kang Min-jae can attend depends on the quality of Jung Ji-min’s answers.

“Im Hyun-il scheduled surgeries like crazy. He made him work without any time to prepare his personal papers. It was really tough. Before, he would come home, eat, sleep, and hang out, but after Im Hyun-il came, he would come home and fall asleep without even changing his clothes. He was one of the most physically fit people I knew, but even he couldn’t handle it.”

It’s the same story Yoon Se-yeon investigated: that Im Hyun-il made him work like a dog.

Why did Im Hyun-il try to make Choi Jae-hoon quit?

If Im Hyun-il was thinking of making Choi Jae-hoon resign on his own, it would have been before he told him about the organ trafficking business.

If it was after he was rejected, he wouldn’t have waited for him to quit on his own and would have just killed him.

Therefore, it seems that the reason Im Hyun-il harassed Choi Jae-hoon was simply because of personal animosity.

The question here is, then he should have reported to the higher-ups that Choi Jae-hoon was not a suitable person and completely excluded him from the organ trafficking business from the beginning.

If that had happened, Choi Jae-hoon would not have died and would have been harassed until now.

But in the end, Choi Jae-hoon died, which means that Im Hyun-il proposed that he join the organ trafficking business and was also rejected.

I don’t understand this part.

He bothered to harass Choi Jae-hoon, whom he didn’t like, and even suggested that he join the organ trafficking business?

Isn’t that too inefficient?

‘Did he just want to kill Choi Jae-hoon because he hated him so much?’

Well, if that were the case, it would make sense.

But what if Choi Jae-hoon had said he would participate in the business?

Moreover, Wooshin seems to have marked Choi Jae-hoon as a suitable person for the organ trafficking business and had been watching him even before Im Hyun-il came to the main hospital.

Therefore, Im Hyun-il would have also expected Choi Jae-hoon to accept the offer.

But he still makes the offer?

Was he planning to frame Choi Jae-hoon by saying that he would do it even if he said he wouldn’t, and then kill him?

‘No, that’s strange too.’

I don’t know if Im Hyun-il made the offer, or if a high-ranking hospital official related to the business called him separately.

But Wooshin, as I know him, is likely not to trust Im Hyun-il completely.

So he must have made the offer in a place where related people were together.

If Choi Jae-hoon hadn’t refused, Im Hyun-il would have had no choice but to carry out even secret missions with him.

It’s too foolish to take such a risk just to kill Choi Jae-hoon.

“What else was it like besides making him suffer so much? Did you hear that he was verbally abused by Im Hyun-il, or that he was treated unfairly, or anything like that?”

“Um, well… I heard that he reacted hysterically to every mistake… that he overreacted to trivial things. But that doesn’t mean that Choi Jae-hoon said anything rough or ill-mannered to me. As for unfair things… I don’t think there’s anything other than making him work like a dog. But that work was so subtle. If you’re going to harass someone openly, you’d make them do things that a newbie would do, or humiliate them. But it wasn’t like that. That’s why he was going crazy.”

It’s true that Im Hyun-il burdened Choi Jae-hoon, but it doesn’t seem like he crossed the line.

In fact, even if he did harass him, wasn’t it just reacting sensitively and burdening him with a lot of work?

Even if Choi Jae-hoon officially protested about this, he could have excused himself by saying, ‘It’s a matter of dealing with life, so I was trying to instill a sense of alertness, and I gave you a lot of work because you’re so good at it.’

Even if he couldn’t believe Im Hyun-il’s words and reported to the higher-ups, the hospital could have dismissed it by saying, ‘We recognized your talent and gave you hard training.’

Could it be…

Could that really be it?

“That guy said that he wanted to protest, but it was so subtle that he had nothing to say. Im Hyun-il seems to have praised Choi Jae-hoon a lot in front of others. Other professors said that Choi Jae-hoon was Im Hyun-il’s favorite disciple. Who would take his side if he said he was being harassed in that situation?”

It seems like that’s right.

Im Hyun-il didn’t harass Choi Jae-hoon because he hated him, but he really trained him hard.

He was going to put him through a hard time, and he wanted to test how far Choi Jae-hoon could endure, since he had to proceed without any noise even if problems arose.

The fact that he reacted sensitively to even minor mistakes in the operating room was also because they had to operate on ‘customers,’ and he was afraid that he might embarrass Go Sang-joon if he made a mistake.

“I see. What else?”

“I don’t know much else. That’s all I know about Im Hyun-il… Oh, there’s one more thing.”

“What is it?”

“It’s not what he told me. It’s what I overheard him talking on the phone.”

“What kind of phone call was it?”

“I woke up to the sound of the phone call at that time, so I don’t know from the beginning. I heard it from the middle, and he was arguing, saying how could you make me do such a surgery. I remember it because he, who was always groveling to the professor, was arguing like that.”

“When was that, by any chance?”

“It wasn’t long ago either. It was a few days before Choi Jae-hoon died. I don’t remember exactly.”

“Do you remember what time that phone call was?”

“It was around one or two o’clock… between two and three o’clock.”

It’s not difficult to find out when that phone call was.

I can ask Heo Min-woo to pull up the call list and see if he talked to Im Hyun-il during that time.

“You said he argued, saying how could you make him do such a surgery.”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t he say what kind of surgery it was?”

“Um… I don’t know about that. He just said, what do you think of me, and even if it’s like this, it’s not right. Anyway, he hung up the phone and started tapping on his laptop? But when I heard that sound, it was strangely like white noise, so I fell asleep again.”

It seems that the surgery was related to organ trafficking.

Seeing that reaction, Im Hyun-il must have decided to silence Choi Jae-hoon.

What could it be?

Did he even test him?

He might have been trying to see how far Choi Jae-hoon would follow his instructions without complaint with that surgery.

For example, he put him in a surgery to remove organs from a patient who was not brain dead.

If he shuts his mouth and does what he’s told here, he’ll be included in the business, and if he says he can’t do the surgery, he’ll be killed.

Instead of officially saying, ‘We’re doing an organ trafficking business, and you seem to be suitable, so let’s do it together. We’ll give you money and fame,’ he might have suggested it in that way.

“Is that all?”

“Um… Ah! And he told me that day, do you know what I gave up because of you, so you must never leave. I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I asked him what he meant, but he said I didn’t need to know the details, so I just said okay. He used to say a lot of strange things anyway.”

Now the puzzle is roughly pieced together.

So how should I approach this?

It’s still too early to design a full strategy because I haven’t checked all the blog posts, but I don’t think I should just let the Choi Jae-hoon case go.

I need to make a move with this case.

I have to prepare thoroughly to completely dismantle Wooshin’s operation, and I’ve been taking a long time for that reason.

But when I think about it, the more I postpone it, the more victims will continue to be created.

“Do you have any more questions?”

“If you know anything else about your relationship with Im Hyun-il, anything is fine.”

“I don’t know much about that. The rest were just stories about how he made mistakes about what he had to do. But he mixed English in with it, so how could I understand it? Honestly, I think he said it comfortably because he knew I couldn’t understand it.”

“Didn’t Jung Ji-min continue to be verbally abused and assaulted by Choi Jae-hoon? Didn’t you ever think about leaving that as evidence? Installing CCTV [closed-circuit television] at home, or recording it.”

“I didn’t do CCTV because it seemed like too much. I recorded a lot of phone calls.”

Jung Ji-min opened his phone and showed me the recording list.

“There are so many. I even set up automatic recording. I was going to use it if I sued that bastard, but he died, so… it’s useless.”

Jung Ji-min replied bitterly.

“Among the recordings you made, is there anything about Choi Jae-hoon talking about the hospital?”

“I don’t think there’s anything like that. He usually talks about that at home… But you never know, so I’ll look for it. But there are so many, I don’t know when I’ll be able to see them all…”

“If you send it to us, we can check it.”

“Oh, I can’t do that.”

Jung Ji-min hid his phone behind his back and was wary of me.

Does he have anything to hide?

Is there something he can’t tell me, or is he hiding something?

“I’ve told you everything about Choi Jae-hoon, but anyway, uh? Why, uh? There are embarrassing things too. I’m a host, but I’m a little embarrassed about that.”

“…I see.”

“I’ll listen to it and see if there’s anything I can get out of it. But… as you can see, there are so many call logs, and it seems like it will take dozens of hours to listen to them. As you know, I’m a person whose time is money.”

“If you need a fee, please feel free to tell me.”

Jung Ji-min’s face lit up in an instant.

“Then I’ll do it roughly and contact you after I’ve thought about how much I should get. But you know you have to give me a down payment, right? If I give it to you later and you say you don’t need it, so you don’t have to give me money, I’m the only one who suffers.”

“That won’t happen, but if you’re worried, I’ll write a contract.”

“Okay. Anyway, is today’s talk over?”

He asked, stretching as if he was tired.

I nodded.

It was tiring to talk to Jung Ji-min, but I got quite a lot out of it.

Im Hyun-il may not have had any ill feelings towards Choi Jae-hoon.

Rather, he might have been trying to train Choi Jae-hoon.

And, he gave Choi Jae-hoon, who had endured the training well, the ‘opportunity’ to participate in the organ trafficking business, but he was so obsessed with Jung Ji-min that he might have refused because he thought Jung Ji-min would leave if he killed someone.

“I’ll contact you if I have any more questions.”

“Yes, please do. But then will we meet at a hotel like this again?”

“Probably.”

“Awesome. Then call me often.”

I was about to get up because I wanted to leave this place quickly, but I heard the doorbell.

I was about to leave anyway, so I opened the door as it was, and Kang Min-jae was standing in front of it.

“Lawyer! Am I too late? You didn’t tell me not to come separately, so I came anyway… Ah, this must be Jung Ji-min. Hello.”

“Uh… Ah, yes. Hello.”

Jung Ji-min answered in a small voice from behind me, as if he had followed me.

When I suddenly turned around, he was making a strange expression.

I don’t know how to express it, but should I say he looks very shy?

“I was supposed to come with you, but there was an accident [traffic accident], so I came now. I’m late to say hello. Lawyer, are you done talking?”

“Oh, I’m just about to leave.”

“Ah, I see… Well, there’s nothing I can do. Jung Ji-min, then we’ll be going. Thank you for talking to us today.”

“Yes… Ah! Excuse me, lawyer.”

Jung Ji-min approached a little closer in an unfamiliar voice.

And he looked up at Kang Min-jae and asked carefully.

“Can I get a business card from the lawyer?”

“Ah, a business card. Just a moment.”

Kang Min-jae handed Jung Ji-min a crisp business card, and Jung Ji-min accepted it preciously.

“Our lawyer didn’t give you a business card?”

“No, I received it, but I wanted to receive the lawyer’s business card too…”

“Haha, yes?”

“Can I contact this lawyer about the call history?”

Jung Ji-min asked me.

Kang Min-jae looked at me with a puzzled expression, and I answered because I thought I knew Jung Ji-min’s intentions.

“Do as you please. I’ll be going now.”

As I closed the door and walked down the hallway lined with rooms, Kang Min-jae nudged my arm with his elbow and said.

“Lawyer, you were very scary to Jung Ji-min, weren’t you?”

“Me? Why do you think so?”

“That’s why he said he’d contact me. He didn’t want to contact you because you were unfriendly.”

I admit that I wasn’t friendly, but the reason Jung Ji-min wants to contact Kang Min-jae isn’t that.

But I didn’t want to let him know, so I nodded.

“I guess so.”

“Anyway, that’s the problem with you, lawyer. What are you going to do without me?”

That’s what I’m saying.