You Have Been Defended [EN]: Chapter 121

The paramedics who arrived on the roof quickly assessed the situation, asked a few routine questions, and departed, their sirens fading into the night.

The narrow alleyway amplified the siren’s wail, drawing curious neighbors from their homes in pajamas, their voices a low murmur of speculation.

Given that they could hear him speaking loudly on the phone from the first floor, they must have also overheard his desperate shouts about dying on the roof, echoing throughout the neighborhood.

I guided Kim Jung-woo to sit on the weathered wooden platform on the roof and draped my coat around his shoulders for warmth.

Kim Jung-woo, his face still swollen and bruised from the earlier altercation, simply sighed, lost in his thoughts.

It wasn’t long before Choi Jong-hyun, clad only in an undershirt, came rushing onto the roof, his breath ragged.

“…Jung-woo-ya,” he called out, his voice thick with concern.

Choi Jong-hyun approached Kim Jung-woo cautiously, his face etched with worry.

He hadn’t even paused to put on slippers; his feet were bare against the cold rooftop.

“What… what happened?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

Choi Jong-hyun continued to approach Kim Jung-woo slowly, his eyes searching for answers.

Having only just managed to stop crying, Kim Jung-woo began to sob anew at the sight of Choi Jong-hyun.

Choi Jong-hyun, still looking dazed and bewildered, wrapped his arms around Kim Jung-woo in a comforting embrace.

“Hey, you… you… what is this, you bastard! What is this!” he exclaimed, his voice a mixture of relief and anger.

The two men clung to each other, their shared emotions spilling out in tears.

“I’m sorry, Senior,” Kim Jung-woo mumbled, his words muffled against Choi Jong-hyun’s chest. “Sniff.”

Choi Jong-hyun alternated between scolding and comforting him, his words tumbling out in a jumbled stream of emotion.

Even though it had ended without tragedy, the shock was palpable. I couldn’t help but wonder what he must have felt in that alternate timeline when he believed Kim Jung-woo was dead.

I had met Choi Jong-hyun after those wounds had begun to heal, so I could only imagine the depth of his despair during those years. But seeing him now, I understood why he had been so broken.

“Attorney Cha, thank you,” Choi Jong-hyun said, helping Kim Jung-woo to his feet.

I offered a faint smile.

“It’s nothing.”

“…No, it’s me who should be saying that. If I hadn’t listened to Attorney Cha until the end, I would have truly lost Jung-woo. If that had happened… I don’t even want to think about it. Jung-woo is alive because of Attorney Cha. Really, if it weren’t for Attorney Cha…”

He grasped for words, stringing them together in a heartfelt expression of gratitude.

The night air was growing colder.

I urged them to stop dwelling on it and go back inside to the warmth of their home.

“It’s already 8 o’clock.”

Even though the Iljung Ilbo [a fictional newspaper company] building wasn’t far from here, it was time to start preparing for the workday.

One might think, ‘Do I really have to go to work on a day like this?’

But to keep the promise he had made to Kim Jung-woo, Choi Jong-hyun knew he had to go to work.

* * *

“Is Jung-woo late today?”

A reporter seated across from Kim Jung-woo’s desk spoke up, breaking the morning silence.

Choi Jong-hyun tilted his head, a puzzled expression on his face.

“Yeah, he didn’t mention being late, did he? His laptop is on, so maybe he just stepped away for a moment?”

Choi Jong-hyun glanced at Kim Jung-woo’s unoccupied seat.

Then Yoon Se-yeon, who was sitting nearby, shook her head.

“I turned on the office lights when I came in this morning, and the laptop was already on then. And I haven’t seen him at all.”

“Really?”

Yoon Se-yeon added, her fingers flying across the keyboard as she walked past.

“He’s usually punctual. What’s wrong? He didn’t request a day off either.”

“Should I call him?”

At Choi Jong-hyun’s worried question, Yoon Se-yeon paused her work and looked up.

Choi Jong-hyun hesitated for a moment, then shook his head and reached for his phone.

“I’ll do it.”

The experienced reporter who had first noticed Kim Jung-woo’s absence nodded casually and opened a word processing program.

He focused on transforming the information he had gathered the previous day into a compelling article, barely registering Choi Jong-hyun’s muttered, “This guy isn’t answering his phone?”

And so, 10 o’clock and then 11 o’clock came and went.

Kim Jung-woo remained out of contact.

Choi Jong-hyun, who had been anxiously watching the clock, approached the head of the social affairs department.

“Chief, did Jung-woo take a day off?”

“A day off? No, he didn’t,” the chief replied, shaking his head as if hearing the question for the first time.

“Didn’t he even mention possibly needing a half-day off today?”

“No. Kim Jung-woo still hasn’t arrived? I have something I need him to do.”

The chief rose from his seat and scanned the area towards Kim Jung-woo’s desk, located at the end of the partition.

“He doesn’t have his bag either?”

“Something might have happened. I’ll try calling him again.”

“If he’s going to be late, he should at least let us know he’s taking a half-day. Just disappearing like this…”

“He’s not usually like that. I’ll give him a stern talking-to when he gets here, so please just mark it as a half-day for now.”

“You’re too protective of Kim Jung-woo,” the chief said, snapping at Choi Jong-hyun, but he seemed to concede the point.

Without further complaint, he simply told him to have Kim Jung-woo come see him when he arrived and then walked away.

Choi Jong-hyun returned to his desk and dialed Kim Jung-woo’s number again.

It was 11:30.

Almost lunchtime.

“Hello, is this Jung-woo?”

Finally, Choi Jong-hyun’s voice echoed through the office, signaling that the call had connected.

Noticing that his voice was unusually loud, the reporters nearby turned to look at him.

Those who were unintentionally eavesdropping expected to hear him scolding Kim Jung-woo for being late, but instead, they heard an unexpected voice on the other end.

Dazed, Choi Jong-hyun stood frozen in place, repeating “Yes?” like a parrot.

“Reporter Choi, what’s wrong? What happened?” the head of the social affairs department asked, approaching Choi Jong-hyun.

But Choi Jong-hyun didn’t seem to hear him and quickly shouted into the phone, “Why would a perfectly healthy guy suddenly jump off the roof? That doesn’t make any sense! Is he alive? Does he still have a pulse? Yes?”

Choi Jong-hyun’s words were alarming.

Some of the reporters who were still in the office, despite it being lunchtime, were startled and stared at Choi Jong-hyun.

“I asked if he’s alive! Is he still breathing!” Choi Jong-hyun screamed, his voice filled with desperation.

His voice echoed through the office and into the hallway outside.

Yoon Se-yeon gasped and covered her mouth, her eyes wide with shock.

Although she couldn’t hear the voice on the other end of the phone, it wasn’t difficult for anyone to guess what had happened.

“Senior, what’s wrong?” Yoon Se-yeon asked, her voice trembling.

But Choi Jong-hyun didn’t seem to hear her and continued to shout into the phone.

“I, I have to see it with my own eyes. That can’t be. There’s no way Jung-woo would have committed suicide… Which hospital is it? I’m going there now. Wait for me!”

As soon as the word “suicide” was uttered, the reporters began to murmur amongst themselves.

Kim Jung-woo had jumped off the roof and died.

The chief also seemed to be in a state of panic, standing next to Choi Jong-hyun, at a loss for words, and repeatedly asking what was happening.

“When was he found? When was he taken to the hospital! Why am I only finding out about this now…” Choi Jong-hyun shouted, veins bulging on his temples.

His face flushed a dark red.

“That can’t be, that can’t be…” Choi Jong-hyun stammered, unable to continue speaking.

“Seongjin Hospital… Are you talking about Seongjin Hospital in Jangsangu [likely a district in the city]? I’ll go there right now. It’ll take about 40 minutes!”

With those words, Choi Jong-hyun hung up the phone and bolted out of the office.

Yoon Se-yeon, the chief, and the other reporters exchanged uneasy glances.

They couldn’t bring themselves to say out loud whether Kim Jung-woo had truly committed suicide.

But the chief was the first to regain his composure.

“Didn’t Jung-woo live near here? Why Seongjin Hospital…”

“I don’t know…” a reporter cautiously voiced his doubts.

Yoon Se-yeon gasped and repeated the same words, “No way, no way.”

The phone rang inside the office, but the room, which had frozen in shock, remained as quiet as a mouse.

At that moment, the door to the editor-in-chief’s private office burst open.

It was the editor-in-chief himself.

“Aren’t you answering the phone?” he demanded.

At the editor-in-chief’s sharp words, the owner of the ringing phone hurriedly picked up the receiver.

From that moment on, the frozen office slowly began to return to a semblance of normalcy.

The editor-in-chief strode towards the social affairs department.

Stopping in front of the chief’s desk, who still appeared to be in a state of panic, he asked, “What’s going on?”

“Editor-in-chief, reporter Kim Jung-woo…”

“Kim Jung-woo? You mean the intern reporter in your department?” the editor-in-chief clarified.

The chief nodded frantically.

“What about him?”

“…He committed suicide.”

At those words, the editor-in-chief frowned.

“Where did you get that information?”

The chief briefly recounted the events of the morning.

The editor-in-chief bit his lip.

“Choi Jong-hyun went to the hospital?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I see.”

The editor-in-chief knew better than anyone that Kim Jung-woo was attached to Choi Jong-hyun like glue.

He had been struck by the way he followed him around like a duckling following its mother.

From the moment he had sensed Choi Jong-hyun’s rebellious tendencies and began monitoring him closely, the editor-in-chief had noticed that a bond beyond that of workplace senior and junior had formed between the two.

The fact that Kim Jung-woo had the opposite personality to Choi Jong-hyun was a blessing in disguise.

If he had openly threatened Choi Jong-hyun, a reporter who could jump ship at any moment, not to investigate Woo-shin and Lee Jung-chan, there was no telling when and how he would expose the truth.

The only recourse was indirect pressure disguised as advice.

But Kim Jung-woo was different.

He was fundamentally timid.

He was not someone who could stand up against the giant corporation that was Iljung Ilbo.

Unlike Choi Jong-hyun, he wasn’t the type to even dream of exposing anything.

And he wasn’t someone who could tell Choi Jong-hyun what situation he was in.

Knowing Choi Jong-hyun’s personality, there was no way he wouldn’t know what would happen if he told him.

Moreover, as a result of investigating Kim Jung-woo, he was suffering from severe depression, had major problems in his family, and was even in difficult financial circumstances.

Kim Jung-woo was sure to tremble even at the slightest threat.

So the editor-in-chief set Kim Jung-woo as the target of his threats.

And since Choi Jong-hyun cherished Kim Jung-woo like a younger brother, he thought he might even share the investigated content with Kim Jung-woo.

‘But Kim Jung-woo didn’t move the way I thought he would…’

The editor-in-chief returned to his private office and slumped down in his chair.

Some time had passed since he threatened to inflict all kinds of disadvantages and actually made him afraid by giving him disadvantages.

Even so, Kim Jung-woo had never reported once on what Choi Jong-hyun was digging into.

‘He even committed suicide.’

He was suffering from severe depression, so it wasn’t that surprising, but he was worried that he might have said something unnecessary and died.

The editor-in-chief hesitated for a moment before picking up the phone.

“Come in.”

A moment later, the head of the social affairs department opened the office door and entered.

“Has Choi Jong-hyun called?”

“I just spoke with him.”

“What happened? Did he really commit suicide?”

“Yes. The body was found three hours ago. The police seem to think it’s suicide, but they’re planning to investigate further…”

“The suicide note?”

“The police investigation isn’t over yet, so I don’t know if there’s a suicide note or not.”

“No, what the hell happened… Have you contacted his family?”

“Well, I can’t get in touch with his family, so Choi is going to find a funeral home and post an obituary.”

The editor-in-chief closed his eyes as if devastated.

The chief also had a gloomy expression.

He wanted to ask if there was anything else, but in this situation, he didn’t know what clues he might provide if he brought it up.

The editor-in-chief decided to save his words.

“Keep me updated on reporter Kim Jung-woo. We need to find out what the company can do to help.”

“I understand.”

After the chief left the office, the editor-in-chief rubbed his forehead.

Reporter Kim Jung-woo was not a celebrity, and even if they investigated his home after his suicide, there would be a bit of a gap [meaning it wouldn’t be a major scandal].

The editor-in-chief tapped the desk distractedly and picked up his cell phone.

“Yes, it’s me. Editor-in-chief. Reporter Kim Jung-woo committed suicide today. I’ll come up and report in detail now.”