Fifth Vital [EN]: Chapter 377

378. Waited for the Moment

“I couldn’t even be there for my parents’ deathbeds.”

Yoo Hyuk-jin closed his eyes for a moment, thinking of his deceased parents.

“…….”

Having heard such an incredible story, Tae-kyung couldn’t easily open his mouth. He didn’t even know how to comfort him, still living in such pain.

Even the word ‘comfort’ felt like it would inflict a wound.

Losing not only his only sibling but also his parents, it was hard to even fathom how he had endured until now, what his state of mind must have been.

Only now did he understand why Yoo Hyuk-jin had said he wanted to die so much.

Spending a long time in prison, he must have lived solely to avenge Cha Tae-chul. But now that the plan had fallen apart, he must have felt that his reason for living had also collapsed.

“There’s decisive evidence, isn’t there?”

Tae-kyung, who had been thinking about various things after hearing Yoo Hyuk-jin’s story, asked, recalling the recorder.

“Didn’t you think about using the recorder containing the conversation your sibling had with Cha Tae-chul?”

“I thought about that at first too. As I said before, the police who received the diary I gave as evidence were bribed with money and treated me like a crazy person, saying they never received it in the first place.”

Because the Chairman had a hand in everything, Yoo Hyuk-jin deliberately didn’t mention the recorder.

“Looking back, I think it was my sibling who helped me find the recorder after I lost it the day my mother collapsed and was taken to the emergency room.”

If he had mentioned the recorder anywhere at that time, Cha Tae-chul and the Chairman would have been frantically searching for it.

“At that time, the moment I was arrested by the police without killing Cha Tae-chul, I lost my will to live. So I refused the public defender and didn’t say anything in court.”

Police officers, detectives, lawyers, and prosecutors are supposed to help those who are wronged and in need under the name of justice. But Yoo Hyuk-jin, who had been burned by those who sold justice for money, could no longer trust them.

Not all police officers, detectives, and lawyers are like that, but he, who had already tasted frustration several times, had no strength left to resist.

“After experiencing it myself, I realized that these things don’t only happen in movies. People without money or connections have no choice but to cry even when they’re wronged. Maybe even now, there are people like me crying silently somewhere.”

He felt sorry for his parents, but since there was no reason to live anyway, he thought it wouldn’t be bad to go to prison and turn his back on the world.

“At that time, my parents and I were too exhausted mentally and physically, and I just hated the world. I felt like letting my life go as it may, but I never thought both my father and mother would pass away. I haven’t even been able to visit the columbarium [a place for storing cremated remains] where my parents’ remains are, let alone be there for their deathbeds.”

“So, this escape wasn’t planned from the beginning?”

Tae-kyung thought Yoo Hyuk-jin had been planning the escape and revenge for a long time.

Anyway, he was caught without escaping the ventilation shaft, but considering Oh Chang-gyu and how meticulously he had prepared, it didn’t seem like it was planned in a short period.

“It hasn’t been that long. I think it’s been a little over two years.”

“Isn’t that a long time to plan?”

“Is it? I don’t feel like it’s been that long because time went by so fast while I was preparing for this.”

“Then why did you think about revenge again, and how did you end up working with Mr. Oh?”

“I thought the Director would be curious about that. It’s not that I thought about revenge again. I gave up because I was facing reality, but I always had the thought that I had to avenge Cha Tae-chul someday and see him collapse with my own eyes.”

Then one day, a random person came to visit, someone he had never met before.

“I didn’t have anyone who would come to visit me. My relatives had cut ties with me because I didn’t take good care of my parents, and the only person who came even when I told him not to was Chang-gyu, so I thought Chang-gyu had come that day too.”

The man, who was of similar age, introduced himself as Cha Tae-chul’s driver when Yoo Hyuk-jin asked who he was. Hearing that, he got up from his seat and got angry.

“I was angry, thinking Cha Tae-chul had sent him.”

“Why would a driver you’ve never seen before come to see you?”

“The driver said he came to see me because he wanted to meet me.”

He said he was someone who had become Cha Tae-chul’s driver after that incident.

He knew the faces of the people who came and went to the Chairman’s house, but he didn’t know the driver because he had joined later.

The driver, who had gone to great lengths to find Yoo Hyuk-jin, said he had something to ask.

“The driver said to me, ‘I heard from someone who has worked for a long time, is what Cha Tae-chul did really true? Is what happened to your sibling true?'”

He didn’t know why he was suddenly asking such a question, but Yoo Hyuk-jin told him with a serious expression, risking his life, that it was true.

Then the driver showed him several photos stored in his phone and said.

‘Do you see this? The person in this photo is me. These are the scars from being beaten by Cha Tae-chul.’

The driver said he had been subjected to frequent verbal abuse and assault by Cha Tae-chul and had recently quit his job because he couldn’t stand the constant abuse of power.

Hearing that, Yoo Hyuk-jin wasn’t surprised because he knew Cha Tae-chul’s true nature. He thought he was capable of anything.

After that, the driver shared the information he had learned one by one.

Cha Tae-chul was living like a puppet, doing whatever his father told him to do, and he didn’t have much will to live.

In fact, he had attempted self-harm several times and had been hospitalized in a mental ward, but he hid the fact by telling people around him that he had gone abroad.

Also, although it wasn’t known externally, the company led by Chairman Cha and his son Cha Tae-chul was in a slightly bad situation.

And the Cha family was thinking of marriage as a breakthrough, and they were trying to stabilize the company by marrying the daughter of Yeraeng Corporation.

It was a typical chaebol [a large South Korean business conglomerate]-style marriage where people with money pursued mutual benefits through arranged marriages.

Cha Tae-chul was very afraid of his father, so he was putting in a lot of effort into the other family.

“I was listening to the driver’s words up to this point, but I didn’t understand why this person had come to see me, whether it was strange of me or not.”

“I don’t know if this is the right thing to say, but wasn’t it because Yoo Hyuk-jin also had a bad experience with Cha Tae-chul, so he wanted to vent his feelings out of a sense of kinship?”

“I thought the same thing as the Director and told the driver that. I asked if he came to see someone in prison just to vent. But that wasn’t it.”

As Yoo Hyuk-jin was telling him to stop and leave, saying he didn’t want to listen to his complaints, the driver told him something unbelievable.

‘I’ll tell you the best revenge you can take on Cha Tae-chul right now. There’s a saying, isn’t there? People don’t change. But that son of a bitch changed.’

Cha Tae-chul, who had been ignoring people, abusing his power, and committing violence and verbal abuse, began to change when he met the youngest daughter of Yeraeng Corporation.

Although it started as a strategic and planned meeting, the woman was quite a good person.

The woman was more innocent, brighter, and more beautiful than he thought, and she approached him by looking at the human Cha Tae-chul, not the arranged marriage partner.

Cha Tae-chul was moved by the woman’s appearance and fell in love with her.

Of course, this changed appearance was only visible to that woman.

It wasn’t a look of reflecting on his past and regretting and atoning for it.

‘Cha Tae-chul once told me when he was drunk that there was only one person he had ever had real feelings for in his life, but it didn’t work out with that person. Sometimes that woman appears in his dreams, but not as he remembers her. Then, the moment he saw the daughter of Yeraeng Corporation, his dead heart started beating again. It sounds like bullshit, but as a result of what I saw next to him, he was sincere with that woman.’

Then Cha Tae-chul even said that his goal in life now was to marry that woman.

‘Cha Tae-chul is someone who doesn’t have any fear of dying anyway. Giving a guy who wants to die what he wants isn’t revenge.’

The driver’s words were, in a nutshell, to take away what was most precious to Cha Tae-chul and bring him down.

It wasn’t wrong. People get hurt when what they think is most precious is ruined.

Especially Cha Tae-chul, who has to get what he wants, whether it’s a person or an object, since he was young.

The driver’s words were quite credible.

Then he said he wanted to take revenge on that bastard himself, but the driver said he was afraid of Cha Tae-chul.

‘I’ve been traumatized by his verbal abuse and violence, so it’s been hard for me to even look at him properly for a while. And I don’t know how this will sound, but unlike Yoo Hyuk-jin, I have a lot to lose.’

The driver, who had a young child, also said that he was worried that his wife and child might be harmed if he stood up against Cha Tae-chul.

Yoo Hyuk-jin, who had lost his family, understood his words well, and the information about Cha Tae-chul that he had given him was also helpful.

It was definitely an interesting story, and his anger towards Cha Tae-chul was still there. But as a prisoner, there was no way to do anything to that bastard right now.

In fact, Yoo Hyuk-jin’s mind and body were more exhausted than before after his mother passed away in the hospital.

‘Take a look at this.’

But the photo in the driver’s phone that he inadvertently held out ignited a fire in Yoo Hyuk-jin’s heart.

‘I’ve never seen Cha Tae-chul make this kind of expression before. He becomes a different person when he’s next to this woman.’

The photo that the driver had secretly taken was a photo of Cha Tae-chul with a woman. But when you look at that photo, Yoo Hyuk-jin’s expression changed like crumpled paper.

‘……!’

The woman in the photo looked similar to his dead younger sibling.

At that moment, Yoo Hyuk-jin recalled the words the driver had said a little while ago.

He had a person he liked, but it didn’t work out with that person, and when he saw the daughter of Yeraeng Corporation, that feeling came back.

He could instinctively tell that Cha Tae-chul’s words were about his sibling.

And the fact that he had feelings for a woman who looked like his sibling again was chilling in itself. Moreover, he couldn’t help but be outraged by the fact that he still couldn’t forget his sibling after doing such a terrible thing.

“How could he do that…….”

Tae-kyung, who had been listening to the story, was also surprised and couldn’t continue speaking.

“Just the fact that that bastard was thinking about my sibling was disgusting and uncomfortable.”

He felt sorry for his sibling, who couldn’t rest even in death, and he couldn’t stand it. That’s when he started planning his escape in earnest.

When he told Oh Chang-gyu, who occasionally came to check on him, all the facts, he said he would help.

Yoo Hyuk-jin strongly opposed, saying that it was enough for him to ruin his life alone. But Oh Chang-gyu continued to insist, and he didn’t stop him because he needed someone to help him from the outside.

When he said he was going to pretend to be sick and leave through the hospital, Oh Chang-gyu said he would become a hospital employee. And to avoid suspicion, he even went to the trouble of obtaining related certifications.

“You could have come out earlier, but why now?”

Tae-kyung, who had been listening to the story, asked. He was curious as to why he had come out of prison now, even though he had plenty of time.

“I was waiting for the right moment. When I heard the news from the driver, it hadn’t been long since that bastard had met the woman. I was waiting for the right time to see him fall deeper and get closer to the woman more sincerely.”

Oh Chang-gyu continued to collect information about Cha Tae-chul from the outside, and two months before coming to the hospital, he received news that Cha Tae-chul’s family would officially announce the marriage.

From then on, Oh Chang-gyu started looking for a hospital, and he looked around several hospitals that were recruiting employees at the time.

Among them, he decided on our hospital, which was old and closest to Yeon-son Prison.

The reason why Lee Ji-guk, who was a doctor at the prison medical office, was able to come to our hospital to treat his injuries was also because it was close.

Also, the prisoners’ fight was also done by prisoners who owed Yoo Hyuk-jin a favor at his request.

From the beginning, he had planned to make it natural for Lee Ji-guk to come to our hospital.

Lastly, Yoo Hyuk-jin obtained newspapers from inside the prison every day to check and confirm the news about Cha Tae-chul.

The reason why he cried while looking at the newspaper the day before he left the prison was a kind of show to arouse interest and sympathy from the inmates in the same room.

That’s how he was able to come to the hospital under a thorough plan.

“This is the whole story of me.”

Yoo Hyuk-jin, who had confessed all the truth, recalled the past and paused for a moment before starting to speak with difficulty.

“Director, even after hearing all this, do you still think you’ll help me…….”

His eyes towards Tae-kyung lacked confidence.

“Has that thought not changed?”