You Have Been Defended [EN]: Chapter 72

You Have Been Defended – Episode 72

I stopped walking at the student’s trembling voice.

Kang Min-jae, who was about to open the front door of the classroom, also turned around, seemingly surprised.

A student sitting in the middle of the classroom raised his hand awkwardly and looked at us with trembling eyes.

“Park Jin-cheol failed… It’s because of Lee Hyuk-min.”

The student shouted, squeezing his eyes shut.

The classroom was as silent as a graveyard, and not even the sound of anyone’s breathing could be heard.

I went back to the teacher’s desk and looked at the student.

“That day… Lee Hyuk-min hung Park Jin-cheol’s indoor shoes on a skewer… He hung them outside the window and told him to bring the shoes!”

It was already something I knew from Jin-cheol’s statement, but this moment was quite meaningful.

A dam bursting is due to a massive natural disaster, but it also starts from a small hole accidentally drilled in the dam.

Water flows out of that hole, one drop at a time, widening the hole.

The hole gets bigger and bigger, and the water coming out of it eventually becomes a strong current.

In the end, if it cannot withstand the current, the dam collapses.

I am now witnessing the moment that hole is being drilled.

“I saw it too.”

At that moment, a student with thick, horn-rimmed glasses said quietly.

“Everyone here saw it.”

At the words of the student with messy hair, other students began to murmur slightly.

I couldn’t hear every word being exchanged in small voices, but they were probably asking each other if they should speak up now.

If not now, it might be too late.

Now that a whistleblower has come forward and the situation has been reversed, it is better to quickly side with the whistleblower.

I want to trust the students’ conscience as much as possible, but people, regardless of age, follow the instinct to make themselves as blameless as possible.

There will be students who are still afraid of Lee Hyuk-min’s shadow, even though Lee Hyuk-min has been expelled from school.

However, if they don’t make the right choice now, they will have to spend the remaining year as pathetic human beings who condoned the perpetrator.

That anxiety will move the mouths of students who have to survive in this jungle-like school.

“It was because of Lee Hyuk-min. Lee Hyuk-min… said he would kill me. He threatened that he could make people want to commit suicide.”

“I was in the same class as Lee Hyuk-min in the first grade, and after seeing him transfer the kid he ostracized and all the teachers taking his side… I couldn’t help but think that would happen to me too…”

Students began to speak up, one after another.

I felt like I knew what kind of student Lee Hyuk-min had been and how he had been threatening the students.

Even if he had committed a crime, the fact that the school and his wealthy family were protecting Lee Hyuk-min, and that he was tall and good at sports, would have been enough to exert some influence on the students.

I glanced at the teacher who was standing as still as a mouse.

She was standing in front of the TV stand, looking out the window, desperately ignoring the children’s cries.

From the standpoint of complete justice, it is not only the principal who should leave this school.

All the teachers who condoned all these irregularities, the teachers who favored Lee Hyuk-min just because his father was the superintendent of education and a friend of the principal, deserved to be punished.

But realistically, they would be the same as these students.

They have the job of educators, but before that, they are also office workers who have to survive in private Jangmyeong High School.

If this were a public school, they could just transfer after five years, but if they wanted to survive in this school until retirement, they would have to please their superiors.

So I understand, but…

I don’t like that kind of person.

No, I hate them.

“Lee Hyuk-min is a piece of trash. It was so hard trying to read that bastard’s face. Now this is happening. Good for him.”

“I know, right? He’s such an asshole. I often wondered if he was even human when I saw him bullying Park Jin-cheol.”

In the middle of the noisy exposure, the voices of the students sitting close to the teacher’s desk bounced out.

I looked at the students.

They were just ordinary high school students.

Even though they were cursing Lee Hyuk-min like that, they would have been trying to please him when he was at this school.

They would have tried not to be disliked, and even when the homeroom teacher told them to write down the truth of that day anonymously, they would have written down an already agreed-upon lie.

Even though more than two months had passed since that day, no one would have thought of reporting that it wasn’t true.

“…”

I looked at Jin-cheol’s seat.

He was bowing his head and sobbing quietly.

Jin-cheol’s sobbing could not be heard in this classroom, which had become a commotion of cursing Lee Hyuk-min.

“Kang Byun [Byun is short for Byeonhosa, meaning Attorney].”

“Yes, Attorney.”

“Check if there are any students who can attend the trial and testify, and also secure statements from all the students in the class. I have to go now.”

“Okay. I’ll finish up well and go.”

I left the classroom.

As soon as I got out of the school gate, I felt like I could breathe.

All the moments I had struggled in my previous life were noisy in my head.

All those who could be witnesses kept their mouths shut, trying to read the faces of those in power.

They, too, would have had no choice but to do so in order to survive as members of the Wooshin Group as long as it was still standing, to receive subcontracts from the company, and to maintain a good relationship with the company.

The person who readily came forward to tell the truth ruined the trial by giving false testimony as ordered by Wooshin Group.

Even though they had several years, no one tried to tell the truth.

I understand everything.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but be angry with them.

They were also citizens of this country, they were people, and they certainly had the right to live in a just world.

To create that world, several people disappeared, died, and became disabled, but I and they continued to try to realize justice for those people.

Perhaps those people had a past like the students in Class 5 of the second grade.

Their appearance, which was seen in those students, kept lingering in my head.

* * *

“Attorney, I’m here.”

It was around evening when Kang Min-jae returned to the office.

He said that he had been checking to see if there were any students who could testify in court as I had instructed, and that he had been collecting students’ statements, so time had passed so quickly.

Fortunately, the school said that there were many empty classrooms after the end of the vacation ceremony, so he seemed to have been working at the school and returned.

He selected students who could testify in detail about the day’s events and the evil deeds that Lee Hyuk-min had committed, bought them hamburgers, and recorded their statements.

“I’ll upload the data after I’ve organized it. There are so many subjects that the data is a bit scattered.”

I nodded and fixed my eyes on the news I had been watching before he came.

The two weeks that had been noisy with the exam question scandal had passed, and now the situation had subsided to some extent.

A brief report was coming out that the superintendent of education, the principal, and Kim Hak-seong had a three-way meeting over the exam paper leak.

“Attorney. I’m hungry. What should we have for dinner? That soft tofu stew place was good last time. Should we go there?”

“Sure.”

“Or, there’s a new sundae soup place that opened. How about there?”

“Sure.”

“Ah! No, we were going to go to that Chinese restaurant last time. I gave some advice to the owner’s daughter about her divorce, and she said she would give us sweet and sour pork and stuff like that as a service if we came. Let’s go there. Should we have a glass of ‘baegal’ [a type of Korean hard liquor] too?”

“Sure.”

In fact, the dinner menu was not important to me at all.

I didn’t care if I didn’t eat.

I wasn’t even hungry, and I had been caught up in a sense of futility from the time I left school until now.

It was because I was reminded of the groups of people I had seen in my previous life, when I had lived so fiercely.

I was very happy when the testimony finally came out because it was about saving Jin-cheol, but the words that followed kept reminding me of the past.

People are such beings anyway, so should I risk my life to create a just society for such beings?

I had already asked myself those questions several times in the past.

In the end, the driving force that moved me was anger at the Wooshin Group, which had caused my father’s death.

But I’ve been given a new life like this, and my father is still alive, so should I do that again?

I already have enough money to buy an apartment in a place with high investment value.

So, can’t I just live a normal life like now and enjoy my second life comfortably?

“Attorney. What’s wrong?”

“What.”

“You keep saying ‘sure, sure, sure.’ Don’t you like any of the three menus?”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what’s the problem? On this good day of realizing justice, why are you so depressed?”

“A good day of realizing justice?”

“Yes. That’s right. Of course, maybe justice was realized on the day Lee Hyuk-min was expelled and the principal, his father, and Kim Hak-seong were all caught. Anyway, the kids opened their mouths and apologized.”

I looked at Kang Min-jae.

“Apologized?”

“Ah, you didn’t see it because you left, Attorney. The kids were cursing Lee Hyuk-min and stuff, and then there was a moment of silence. That’s when someone saw Jin-cheol crying.”

“So?”

“The kids all became solemn. And then the kids all went to Jin-cheol and apologized, and some of them were crying. That’s what happened.”

“Jin-cheol?”

“At first, Jin-cheol said he didn’t want to hear the kids’ apologies, but in the end, he accepted all the apologies. His face was all red and he was smiling with tears in his eyes. Ah, I was so proud. You should have seen it, Attorney.”

Kang Min-jae, who was chattering with a beaming smile, seemed to be in a good mood.

“To be honest, I hated the kids at first when I saw them all colluding and writing lies in the anonymous survey. But everyone tries to protect themselves, right? Those kids had no choice but to turn away from Jin-cheol in order to survive there. In fact, it’s the same today. They had already lied, and if they had just stayed still, they would have been pricked by their conscience, but they wouldn’t have been liars, kids who were scared of Lee Hyuk-min, and stuff like that.”

“But?”

“But, since Lee Hyuk-min is gone, they went and apologized without anyone telling them to, and they cried together. When I see that… I think that people may not be inherently bad.”

Kang Min-jae sighed and continued.

“According to you, Attorney, no one told the truth at the time except for those two students, but if they had really had malicious intent, they would have framed those two students for lying rather than confessing in order not to become liars.”

“What is a person who can create such a situation?”

“What else could it be? It’s you and me, Attorney. People who realize justice. Hehehe. Soldiers of justice. Like Power Rangers. You be Red, Attorney. I’ll be Blue. I’ll give up Red.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at his banter.

If I hadn’t died in my previous life.

If I had predicted that Hwang Young-chan would betray me and taken care of him in advance.

If I had been more careful and hadn’t been killed by Wooshin’s hand.

If I could have gone to trial, what would have happened?

If I had eliminated the giant evil that was the Wooshin Group like Lee Hyuk-min, would I have seen the scene that Kang Min-jae saw?

“You still don’t look happy. Ah, you should have seen that situation.”

If I had seen it, would I have been able to smile so happily?

I don’t know.

But one thing is certain, I don’t know because I didn’t see that scene.

“I guess I liked living comfortably like I am now.”

I said, looking at Kang Byun.

“What do you mean by comfortable? Once you get into a case, it’s a headache to use your brain, and you can’t sleep and it’s hard to die.”

When I first came back to this life, I saw the report of Wooshin Group’s Go Sang-jun donating to the House of Angels and my parents, and I instinctively decided to take revenge on Wooshin Group again.

However, as I spent nearly a year away from that thought for that day, there were some enjoyable things, and I was able to easily solve cases that were not difficult for me, who had lived my previous life.

Perhaps what I should have felt while watching the students in that classroom expose Lee Hyuk-min’s evil deeds one by one was not that sense of futility.

In the past, I would have been satisfied with the scene where justice finally came after eliminating the giant evil.

Perhaps the instinct that I, who wanted to continue living a comfortable life, didn’t even know about, made me feel a sense of futility.

“Let’s go to the new sundae soup place.”

“Ah, why? Let’s eat sweet and sour pork and ‘baegal’.”

“I don’t feel like it. Let’s go to the sundae soup place.”

“Ah, you’re really annoying. You know? You’re really annoying.”

“I don’t know.”

Kang Min-jae looked at me as if he was dumbfounded.

Instead of answering, I packed my bag.

I put on my coat and said to him.

“Which way is the sundae soup place? Should we take the car?”

“…If you’re going to leave work now, you should take the car.”