Fifth Vital [EN]: Chapter 375

The tug-of-war between the person trying to close the door and the person trying to open it was in full swing.

‘……!’

In that instant, Yoo Hyukjin’s eyes narrowed sharply as he happened to glance at the wall behind Oh Changgyu.

‘Open the door.’

‘I told you, I have nothing to say.’

Oh Changgyu was flustered by Yoo Hyukjin’s chilling voice, but he still showed no intention of opening the door. Rather, he was desperately trying to keep it closed.

‘Open the door when I’m asking nicely.’

‘I really don’t know anything. I don’t know!’

What on earth had he seen to make Yoo Hyukjin so enraged?

‘Can’t you open it right now!’

As the two continued to struggle at the front door, Yoo Hyukjin kicked Oh Changgyu in the shin.

‘Ugh!’

Unable to withstand the pain, Oh Changgyu grabbed his leg and collapsed, and Yoo Hyukjin seized the opportunity to enter the house.

Without even taking off his shoes, he walked towards the opposite wall like a man possessed.

Soon after, he stopped in front of the wall, his gaze darting back and forth.

In the small studio apartment, various writings were scattered haphazardly, all centered around his younger sister, Hyun Jin.

-Hyun Jin, Go Sungeun, and Cha Taecheol.

-Cha Taecheol and Go Sungeun live well.

-Hyun Jin’s parents are helping with Cha Taecheol’s family affairs, and her brother works at Cha Taecheol’s father’s company.

-Hyun Jin and her friend were helping Cha Taecheol and Go Sungeun with their work.

-That day, her friend was sick and didn’t come to school, so Hyun Jin headed to the office alone.

-Hyun Jin, who was always cheerful and smiling, became strange from the next day? No, from that day on?

-She seemed like someone being chased, looked terrified, and became rapidly silent.

-Cha Taecheol is a bit strange. The way he looks at Hyun Jin has never been normal.

-Did Cha Taecheol like Hyun Jin?

-The night she stayed at our house, Hyun Jin suffered from nightmares all night and was in pain.

-After that, Cha Taecheol visited Hyun Jin more often. What’s going on? What happened between the two, no, the three of them?

The writing, covering one entire wall, appeared to be an obsessive record about Hyun Jin.

As his eyes darted quickly from one place to another, reading the various sentences, a short phrase caught Yoo Hyukjin’s attention.

-Hyun Jin didn’t commit suicide. She’s not the type to commit suicide. She was made to commit suicide. If so, those bastards……?

‘Hey! You bastard!’

Looking at the writing, Yoo Hyukjin approached Oh Changgyu, grabbed him by the collar, and shook him.

‘What the hell are you doing? Were you stalking my sister? Are you a stalker?’

‘N-No, it’s not like that.’

Oh Changgyu said, with a look of injustice and fear, as he looked at the furious Yoo Hyukjin.

‘It’s not me!’

‘Then what is all this?’

‘That, that’s…….’

‘What is it?!’

‘……!’

‘You’re not going to talk? Fine. Let’s go to the police station right now.’

‘Please don’t.’

Yoo Hyukjin, not hearing any of his words, tried to drag Oh Changgyu away, but Oh Changgyu changed his attitude.

‘I-I’ll talk.’

‘If you don’t tell me everything straight, I’ll kill you. Got it?’

‘……Yes. I’ll tell you everything straight.’

‘Explain everything you wrote on the wall from now on.’

‘I’ve liked Hyun Jin for a long time. I wanted to confess, but I didn’t have the courage. Hyun Jin was popular. I didn’t think someone like me could even confess. There were quite a few other guys who liked Hyun Jin, but they all couldn’t even think about confessing because of Cha Taecheol.’

‘Cha Taecheol? Why him?’

‘He’s good-looking, has a good family, and has a lot of money at a young age. Since such a guy was around Hyun Jin, they must have felt they had no chance. I think Cha Taecheol sometimes bought them meals and coffee because Hyun Jin and her friend were helping him with work. But one day, Hyun Jin was alone. I asked her about her friend who was always with her, and she said she couldn’t come because she wasn’t feeling well.’

Hearing that, Oh Changgyu said he suddenly felt a surge of courage.

He thought that if it was now, he could confess, and even if he was rejected, he wouldn’t regret it.

‘I thought it would be a rejection, but I wanted to convey my feelings at least once. But Hyun Jin said she had to go to work today, and Cha Taecheol came to pick her up. And that night, I got a call from Hyun Jin in the early morning.’

Listening to the story, Yoo Hyukjin seemed to know when that was.

His sister sometimes stayed up all night at school because of studying and drawing.

Even when she came home after working hard, she never complained and was always cheerful. But his parents had told him over the phone that his sister had been acting strange since right before he returned from the overseas branch. The time Oh Changgyu was talking about was exactly then.

‘I got a call and went to the coffee shop where Hyun Jin was, but she was very strange.’

‘What do you mean strange?’

‘She had been crying so much that her eyes were bloodshot and swollen, and unlike her usual neat appearance, she looked disheveled.’

That day, Yoo Hyun Jin didn’t have any bruises or signs of being hit, but she felt like someone who had been beaten.

Yoo Hyun Jin, who said she had lost her wallet and couldn’t contact her sick friend or family, suddenly lost consciousness.

Oh Changgyu was embarrassed and surprised, but above all, Hyun Jin was his priority, so he picked her up and headed to the nearby emergency room.

‘I was rushing to the hospital, and Hyun Jin briefly regained consciousness in the taxi. When I told her the hospital was just a little further, she said absolutely not and that she didn’t want to go to the hospital.’

‘So you brought her here to your house?’

‘Yes. But there was nothing to worry about or anything strange at all. I laid Hyun Jin on the blanket, and I sat on the desk chair and watched over her.’

Yoo Hyukjin could instinctively tell that Oh Changgyu wasn’t lying.

‘Not long after Hyun Jin fell asleep, she started having nightmares and talking in her sleep, so I thought I couldn’t let it go on like this and woke her up. But when she woke up, her reaction was a bit strange.’

Waking up from a nightmare where she was crying and begging to be saved, Yoo Hyun Jin saw Oh Changgyu, became terrified, and screamed.

At that sight, Oh Changgyu didn’t approach her any further and calmly reassured her from a distance that everything was okay.

After that, Yoo Hyun Jin regained her senses, recognized Oh Changgyu, apologized, and cried endlessly.

At that time, her crying was so desperate and sorrowful that Oh Changgyu said he still felt like he could hear it in his ears.

‘And as soon as it was dawn, she took a shower, apologized, and left the house. I thought she had something going on, but I didn’t want to be rude by asking, so I didn’t ask on purpose and avoided her at school.’

Oh Changgyu liked Yoo Hyun Jin with a pure heart and didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.

‘You don’t know what happened to Hyun Jin that day either?’

‘I didn’t know until then.’

A few days later, Yoo Hyun Jin came to Oh Changgyu’s house without any contact.

‘She suddenly came and thanked me for that day.’

Oh Changgyu asked Yoo Hyun Jin if she was okay, and she said she was okay, and he thought it was fortunate that she seemed really okay. But she was never okay.

‘And a few days later, I received a call that Hyun Jin had died. I couldn’t believe it at all when I heard that she had taken her own life, not an accident. From then on, I stopped going to school and started writing down suspicious things on the wall, and that’s how it turned out.’

‘I can ask why you didn’t come to the funeral even though you liked Hyun Jin so much?’

At Yoo Hyukjin’s question, Oh Changgyu lowered his gaze and said.

‘I’m sorry… I felt sorry. I felt sorry for Hyun Jin. If I had asked more at that time, if I had reached out my hand, I wondered if Hyun Jin would have made such a choice, and I couldn’t bear to see her on her last journey because of the guilt.’

‘I see. Looking at the writing on the wall, it seems like you’re suspecting Cha Taecheol and his friend, is that right?’

‘It’s not suspicion.’

‘What!?’

‘I wish it had ended with suspicion, but it wasn’t suspicion.’

‘……!’

To Yoo Hyukjin, who was wondering what he meant, Oh Changgyu took out a diary and a small recorder from the desk drawer and said clearly.

‘This is Hyun Jin’s.’

It was her belongings that she had left at his house on the second day Yoo Hyun Jin had come to thank him for his help.

‘I went to the bathroom, and I think Hyun Jin put this in the desk drawer at that time. I accidentally found it yesterday while looking for another charger because my charger broke.’

‘Have you seen this too?’

Oh Changgyu nodded silently.

‘What did Hyun Jin write here?’

‘I think it would be better for you to see it yourself, *hyeong-nim* [older brother/term of respect].’

Without even asking, Yoo Hyukjin could instinctively tell that there was a bad story written in this diary.

He had been curious about the reason for his sister’s sudden departure, whether he opened his eyes or closed them. But now that the reason was said to be inside, he couldn’t easily open the diary.

‘Ha!’

After a long time of contemplation, Yoo Hyukjin finally opened the Pandora’s box left by his sister.

He thought there must be a reason why his sister left this behind, so he thought he had to check everything, no matter what story was inside.

After a while, Yoo Hyukjin’s pupils widened as he read through the diary, his breathing became rough, and the hand that turned the pages trembled like an aspen.

‘……!’

The truth he faced was hell and pain itself.

Yoo Hyukjin’s one and only sister, Yoo Hyun Jin, had suffered unspeakable acts at the hands of Cha Taecheol and his friend Go Sungeun.

The incident happened in Cha Taecheol’s office on the day her friend was sick and she was working alone.

There was a fact that her parents, her sister, and Yoo Hyukjin didn’t know, and that was that Cha Taecheol, the chairman’s son, wasn’t normal. It wasn’t a physical problem, but a mental one.

His life, destined to inherit the company, grew up under his father’s oppression and harsh teachings from a young age.

If he didn’t like something even a little bit, he was beaten and scolded with insults. His mother tried to stop him several times, but it was not enough to stop his fiery father.

He was so afraid of his father that he would pretend to die if his father told him to die, and he gradually developed a twisted personality.

Like his father, he thoroughly divided people by wealth and didn’t even treat poor people like human beings. He hid it inside and lived with a mask, pretending to be a gentle and normal person on the outside.

If there was something he wanted, he had to have it, whether it was a person or an object, and if he couldn’t, he had to solve it with money to get what he wanted.

In fact, Cha Taecheol had liked Yoo Hyun Jin since he was young.

As she grew more and more beautiful, he wanted to have her and possess her.

Such normal feelings when liking the opposite sex gradually became tainted and turned into a wrong desire to pluck and possess a pretty flower.

However, he was suppressing that feeling.

Because she was the daughter of the housekeeper his mother liked, and Yoo Hyukjin was working at his father’s company.

Nevertheless, he wanted to keep Yoo Hyun Jin by his side and watch her, so he approached her under the pretext of work and watched her closely.

One day, Cha Taecheol learned that Yoo Hyun Jin had come to school without her friend and naturally headed to the office with her, talking about work.

That day, too, Yoo Hyun Jin accompanied him because it was originally a day with a schedule related to work.

Above all, she didn’t know Cha Taecheol’s true nature and had never seen such a side of him, so she didn’t even have a hint of suspicion.

With only the two of them left in the office, Cha Taecheol couldn’t control his suppressed emotions and committed a crime with his wrong lust.