You Have Been Defended [EN]: Chapter 117

You Have Been Defended – Episode 117

Was I dozing off?

When I came to my senses, a blue light was streaming in through the curtains of the veranda.

It looked like the sun was about to rise.

What woke me was the loud ringing of the phone in the bedroom.

“Ugh, the phone’s ringing. Answer it…”

Choi Jong-hyun’s voice, still heavy with sleep, came from inside the room.

But Kim Jung-woo was sound asleep, not even thinking of opening his eyes, and was snoring away.

“Ah, just answer the phone…”

Choi Jong-hyun urged Kim Jung-woo a little more in a sleepy voice.

“Aish, this guy. The phone’s ringing! Who is it, X? …X is calling? Just answer it.”

After Choi Jong-hyun’s grumbling voice, the phone stopped ringing before long.

I got up from the sofa and went to the bedroom.

Perhaps he was completely awake because of the phone, Choi Jong-hyun was holding Kim Jung-woo’s cell phone with a dazed face.

It seemed he had hung up the phone instead of Kim Jung-woo, who wasn’t even thinking of getting up.

I gestured for him to come out without saying a word.

“Let’s go wash up.”

Choi Jong-hyun drank a cup of water and went into the bathroom.

In the meantime, I closed the bedroom door where Kim Jung-woo was sound asleep and put the medicine packet I had picked up from the trash can on the table.

And I brought the black bag that Kim Jung-woo had put outside the front door into the house.

When I opened it, there was a bag of jerky and three empty bottles of soju [a Korean distilled spirit] inside.

Completely empty.

“He’s perfectly fine, depression my ass. Byeon, you’ve got the wrong guy.”

Choi Jong-hyun said as he approached me.

Since yesterday, whenever Kim Jung-woo left his seat for a moment, he would say, ‘He’s perfectly fine, right?’ and mock me for losing my touch.

Choi Jong-hyun put a towel around his neck and picked up the crumpled pack of cigarettes on the table.

“Why? Do you have something to say?”

He asked as he headed to the veranda.

I nodded.

It seemed like Kim Jung-woo was still snoring, but he could wake up in the middle and hear our conversation.

I went out to the veranda with him.

He put the ashtray prepared there in the middle of us and said.

“What is it?”

“Reporter Kim Jung-woo is a very serious depression patient.”

He stopped in surprise as he lit a cigarette and looked at me.

“…Do you have any evidence?”

I put down the medicine packet I was holding.

“This is the medicine Kim Jung-woo took after Choi Jong-hyun fell asleep.”

“Stilnox [a brand name for zolpidem, a sedative], Indenol [a beta-blocker, often used to treat anxiety]… No, wait. There are eight medicine packets? Did he take both after I went to bed?”

“Yes.”

“Are you saying he took 80mg of Stilnox? Isn’t that an overdose of the daily recommended dose?”

When I nodded, Choi Jong-hyun touched his forehead.

He seemed to be recalling what he knew about zolpidem.

After being lost in thought for a while, he finished lighting his cigarette.

“The hospital doesn’t prescribe more than 10mg.”

“He probably got more prescribed from another hospital without insurance. It’s a serious addiction.”

Choi Jong-hyun sighed deeply.

But the problem wasn’t just that.

“The side effects seem to be considerable.”

“Side effects?”

“He got up in his sleep and went to the convenience store. And he went into the study…”

I held out the black bag in front of Choi Jong-hyun.

“He drank three bottles by himself. Then he went to the bedroom and slept. Side effects appear in a state where you can’t recognize them yourself, so you don’t care about the situation… But seeing him come to Choi’s house and do this, it seems like it’s been a while.”

Taking 80mg of zolpidem is a really serious addiction.

At first, he would have taken only 10mg, and as the period of use became longer, he would have developed a tolerance and not seen any effect.

That’s how he would have increased it by one or two pills until he took eight pills like this.

“Even if we concede a hundred times that it may not be a side effect. But even if it’s not a side effect, he seems to have severe depression and alcohol addiction.”

That’s a serious matter in itself.

“Ha, what is this…”

Choi Jong-hyun shook his head as if he was confused.

“When you went to Mokpo [a city in South Jeolla Province, South Korea] for coverage, how long were you planning to stay there?”

“Mokpo? Well, I was planning to stay there until I got the coverage. No matter how long it took.”

“If the coverage continued to fail, you wouldn’t have stayed there for years.”

“…No, why does this guy keep saying it’s failing?”

Choi Jong-hyun looked at me nervously.

“Ha, well. It was the first week I went down to Mokpo. If there were no results by the following week, I would have gone back up.”

Kim Jung-woo’s suicide was while he was staying in Mokpo.

Choi Jong-hyun said that he would have given up and returned to Seoul a week after the day I contacted him.

In the previous life, he heard about Kim Jung-woo’s death and canceled all his schedules and hurriedly came to Seoul.

At least, something will happen within a week at the latest.

“I think we just need to watch for another week.”

Choi Jong-hyun fiddled with the medicine packet and bit his lip.

“You said he was your most cherished junior, but you didn’t even know he was having such a hard time.”

He looked around in a daze as if he was feeling complicated and drooped his shoulders.

After being lost in thought for a while, smoking silently, he raised his head as if he had suddenly remembered something.

“Byeon.”

“Yes.”

“Anyway, among the things you’ve said so far, it was right that Jung-woo was suffering from severe depression. Then, let’s assume that the other things are also true. Then, is it also true that the higher-ups are putting pressure on Jung-woo with me?”

“I have consistently said it was true. You didn’t believe me, Reporter Choi.”

As my words, which he didn’t want to believe at all, turned out to be true one by one, he became very uneasy.

It was understandable enough.

If his junior had been under constant pressure because of his beliefs.

And if that junior didn’t even show it, he would naturally feel uncomfortable.

Just like I was worried about Oh’s safety after I made enemies with the prosecution.

Even if Oh was a veteran investigator who had been in the prosecution for a long time, so he was relieved that even the chief prosecutor couldn’t treat him carelessly, Kim Jung-woo wasn’t.

“I need to check. Who on earth…”

“That thing you’re holding. Is that Reporter Kim Jung-woo’s cell phone?”

Choi Jong-hyun turned his gaze along my gaze towards his hand.

And he picked up the cell phone.

“Ah, the phone was ringing so loudly, but he couldn’t come to his senses. I hung up instead, but I just brought it out because I was worried that the phone would keep ringing loudly. He’s sleeping so soundly.”

“Let’s take a look.”

“Yes?”

“I know it’s not a very desirable action, but anyway, there might be something related to Kim Jung-woo’s situation in the cell phone.”

Choi Jong-hyun didn’t seem to like it, but he eventually handed the cell phone to me.

Fortunately, there was no lock on the cell phone, so it seemed like there would be no big problem in checking it.

“Come to think of it, the person who called earlier was saved as X. I wonder if he saved it as X to mean don’t answer.”

At his words, I went to the call list.

There were numerous incoming and outgoing call records, but several calls came from ‘X’ every dawn.

Kim Jung-woo almost always cut off or rejected calls from this person.

“I wonder who it is that he saved as X.”

“There are texts he exchanged with this person.”

I said, checking the text message box.

[Why aren’t you answering the phone?]

[You son of a bitch, you have a child, why aren’t you answering the phone when your mother is having a hard time]

[Do you want to see your mother die?]

[I miss you, my son…]

[You bastard, you’re just like your father, just die, just go out and die, get hit by a car and die]

[Jung-woo… let’s die together, Mom]

“……”

Choi Jong-hyun and I, who had checked the text messages, couldn’t say anything.

What was saved as ‘X’ on Kim Jung-woo’s cell phone was none other than his mother.

We couldn’t find any other conversations besides the six text messages we checked, but that alone made it clear.

“It seems like he has a complicated family history.”

Choi Jong-hyun snatched the cell phone from me and scanned through the received text message box.

Then, as if something was bothering him, he pressed one of them and started reading it in detail.

[Reporter Kim. Have you thought about what I said?]

[If you leave Choi Jong-hyun alone, that bastard will really die. You should stop him.]

[You don’t listen to my words at all. How long are you going to be a rookie reporter? Aren’t you annoyed that you keep getting passed over for promotion because of Choi Jong-hyun?]

[All you have to do is share with me what Choi Jong-hyun is digging up, is that so difficult? If you can’t stop him, just do that. Then you’ll be a regular reporter right away next March. Think wisely.]

[Everyone knows that Choi Jong-hyun is obsessed with Woo-shin and Lee Jung-chan. If you frame Choi Jong-hyun for something and fire him, that’s it. Anyway, the higher-ups will support the reasons. Choi Jong-hyun is already out of favor. But I want to solve it peacefully. Jung-woo, just suffer a little.]

[Take the test a hundred times. Will you get promoted? Do you think you can even get a decent job transfer somewhere else? Don’t you know that newspaper companies share the personal information of reporters who have been kicked out of this industry?]

The texts had been coming periodically from last year until recently.

It meant that Kim Jung-woo had been threatened for almost a year.

Choi Jong-hyun’s hands were trembling.

His neck and the tips of his ears turned bright red, and he was breathing roughly.

He seemed to be feeling extreme anger.

“Reporter Choi.”

“This fucking bastard…”

I checked the sender’s saved name at the end of the text message.

It was the editor-in-chief.

He, who was already having a hard time with his family affairs, had been threatened by the editor-in-chief for a long time.

I also learned for the first time this time that he was still a rookie reporter.

And that he had continued to fail to get promoted.