You Have Been Defended [EN]: Chapter 86

“You’re right on time. Or rather, why are you here in the morning instead of the afternoon? I didn’t even get any sleep.”

We went to the karaoke bar where the National Intelligence Service (NIS) was staying early in the morning.

The NIS agent, scratching his greasy hair, gestured for us to come in quickly.

I didn’t expect him to have cleaned, but surprisingly, the karaoke bar hadn’t changed a bit from a week ago.

No, it would be more accurate to say it had gotten even dirtier.

“Can’t you clean up a bit? It’s really disgusting.”

Kang Min-jae, who stepped on a bowl of *jajangmyeon* [black bean noodles] left outside while entering the karaoke bar, couldn’t stand it any longer and spoke up.

The NIS agent ignored him and snorted.

“How am I supposed to clean this?”

“Hire a cleaning service! A move-out cleaning service!”

“You’d need a *special* cleaning service for this place.”

When I added that, the NIS agent chuckled.

“You know your stuff. The move-out cleaning service took one look at the estimate and said they couldn’t do it.”

“But why are you staying in a karaoke bar, Mr. NIS agent?”

Kang Min-jae was startled every time he stepped on the trash scattered on the floor.

I knew he was from a wealthy family, but he was like a young master.

“I use so much electricity that I can’t afford the bill with household electricity. Plus, the rent here is really cheap. Look, no one even walks around here; how could it be profitable?”

“I guess so. Karaoke bars are kind of off-putting if the sign isn’t lit up.”

“At first, I thought about remodeling a bit, but it’s a waste of money. Anyway, I need a lot of rooms, and this place happens to have a lot of rooms. It’s great.”

“Why do you need so many rooms?”

“Because I have a lot of equipment. Anyway, come on in. I cleaned up a bit because you were so horrified last time.”

When the NIS agent opened the door to the VIP room, Kang Min-jae cautiously stepped in, seemingly with some expectations.

Then he looked around.

“*This* is what you call cleaned up?”

“There’s enough space for three to sit, right?”

He confidently pointed to the sofa attached to the wall.

The long karaoke sofa seemed too cluttered with trash to even seat one person when we saw it last time, but as he said, there was enough space for three to squeeze in.

“I’ve adjusted the brightness and restored the image quality, but I don’t know if it’s up to your standards. I’ll be here, so if there’s anything you want to see brighter, just let me know. I’ll adjust it for you.”

The NIS agent found a video file in a corner of the desktop covered with folders and played it.

“Oh, it’s definitely better, really.”

Kang Min-jae exclaimed as soon as the first scene appeared.

The parts that looked blurry because they were taken in a dark place became clearly visible.

In addition, the places that seemed to have frame breaks were smoothly corrected.

“This is play, this is rewind, this is fast forward. Fast play, slow play, pause.”

The NIS agent quickly explained how to use it and then sat down on the sofa full of trash, after roughly spreading a blanket over it.

“It’s a bit weird for three guys to sit around watching porn.”

He mumbled, seemingly embarrassed, and then lay down.

I don’t think that blanket has been washed either.

I might catch a contagious disease if I stay here too long.

It’s best to check the video quickly and get out of here.

“Just now, at 4 minutes 53 seconds. Is that the balcony window?”

“Ah, it is.”

I had already watched the video several times, so I roughly knew which scenes appeared at which minutes.

Above all, after entrusting the video to the NIS agent, I had made a note of the sections to focus on.

The part we focused on was the balcony door that seemed to appear intermittently.

The balcony had a large window, so we thought the cameraman might be reflected.

“But you can’t see it in detail. It just looks like a black shadow. Fortunately, the silhouette is somewhat specific.”

“Judging by the size of the camera reflected in the window, it looks like it was filmed with a DSLR [digital single-lens reflex camera]. The camera is quite large.”

“Ah! Speaking of DSLR, I remembered. That video was filmed with a Panatec DSLR. It seems to be a brand new model that came out this year. The maximum video recording time for that model is 23 minutes and 59 seconds. So that video also ends at 23 minutes and 59 seconds.”

“Panatec, well, everyone carries that camera around.”

“That’s right. People who like photography carry around even the newest models. That series has sold at least 20,000 units in Korea alone. The cameras that reporters carry around are all Panatec.”

“The original quality is too poor for a DSLR; did they intentionally blur it?”

“Yes. It seems like they lowered the overall quality while encoding.”

The size of the shadow is very large compared to a DSLR.

It seems like a large man.

“I don’t know how long of a lens they used, but roughly matching the proportions, he must be very tall.”

“It seems like more than that. Looking at the body and lens length, there’s a slight vertical compression distortion in the balcony window? Considering that, he must be over 180cm [5’11”] for sure. I think he’s over 190cm [6’3″]. Not a tall, skinny type, but a sturdy build.”

The NIS agent squeezed in between me and Kang Min-jae and settled in properly.

Then he captured the scene he had been watching intently.

“The camera keeps moving up and down here, so it looks very shaky. It’s near the bed where Jung Young-joon and the women are gathered. If that’s a hotel, I was hoping there might be a hotel logo printed on the bed.”

Kang Min-jae said, pressing the pause button.

The NIS agent nodded and zoomed in on the bed area.

The bedding was already completely disheveled, but even if not the bedding, there might be amenities left on the console around it.

“The cameraman is shaking because he’s excited and dancing to the music.”

In the middle, the cameraman’s shouts of ‘Hooray!’ could be heard, so he certainly seemed excited.

“Do you know how to do voice analysis?”

“I don’t know how to do that. Are you asking because of the man’s shouts just now? You won’t be able to find him even if you do voice analysis.”

“Why?”

“He slightly distorted his voice. Without being obvious. That’s why the background music that’s playing sometimes sounds flat and drops slightly. That’s not noise; it’s because he put a voice filter on every part where his voice enters.”

“It would be better to mute it; why did he bother to include the sound?”

“If you mute it in the middle, people lose interest. That’s why if you look at Hollywood star sex videos, there are many videos that repeatedly play the sounds of the act. Because the sound they’ve extracted is short compared to the length of the video. They do it on purpose because viewers get annoyed if the sound is empty in the middle.”

“Wow, there can be such calculations. How meticulous, those bad guys.”

“And as it goes on, the cameraman doesn’t shout and stays quiet? Maybe someone warned him. Told him not to include the sound.”

While the NIS agent was excitedly explaining, Kang Min-jae had a puzzled expression for a moment.

The NIS agent, noticing his gaze, turned his head, suddenly concerned.

“What is it?”

“You’re very knowledgeable about porn.”

“No… What are you talking about, man?”

If they wanted this video to be consumed as porn rather than just an exposé, it makes sense that they didn’t mute it, as the NIS agent said.

And that means there was a calculation to really drag Jung Young-joon’s image through the mud.

Wasn’t the intention to make him look like someone who enjoys perverted acts, rather than just the protagonist in an exposé?

The perpetrator put a lot of effort into this one video.

“Ah, okay. I’ve zoomed in. This is the limit.”

While grumbling, the NIS agent continued to work busily, zooming in on the area around the bed and displaying it on the screen.

I thought it was likely a lodging facility because of the plain white bedding, but I’m starting to think it might not be.

If it were a room of this size in a hotel, there would usually be a master lighting button next to the bed, but I couldn’t find one.

Above all, the cordless phone placed under the stand was not the type used in hotels.

It’s a household cordless phone.

“Can’t we check the screen of that cordless phone?”

“That’s a bit much. It doesn’t show up even if I zoom in more.”

It would be nice if we could check the screen, but it’s a shame.

“Skip through the scenes.”

We continued to work by stopping and zooming in on parts that seemed to have clues, but there were no particular clues.

Right now, we are considering the Yangjin Group as suspects and examining the situation, so I wanted to find any traces of them, but it was impossible.

In the first place, they would have put a lot of effort into making sure their traces were not visible even before filming the video.

“Go to 23 minutes. Near the end of the original video, it seemed like he was signaling to the people on the bed; I need to check that part.”

“A hand? Did a hand come out?”

Kang Min-jae asked.

I nodded and replied.

“It passed quickly, so I was unsure, but I think it’s right.”

“Was there something like that? Hmm, but even if it’s a hand, unless there’s a huge scar or tattoo, it’ll be hard to get anything. As I said before, I can’t increase the quality enough to see fingerprints. Tae-shik told me that you quit being a prosecutor and opened your own practice. Now that you’re not a prosecutor, you can’t even check fingerprints.”

“Stop talking and do it. We need to see something.”

“Yes. I’ll shut up. Um, around here?”

“Play it slowly from there. As slowly as possible.”

The direction of the lens, which was filming the bed where Jung Young-joon and the women were gathered, was about to point downwards as if trying to end the filming.

The cameraman’s hand came into the frame and disappeared.

In the original, the quality was so bad that it just looked like a hand without any features, but looking at it like this….

It’s not like we didn’t get anything.

“That white, long thing on the fourth finger. That looks like a ring.”

I said, watching the video that was playing so slowly that it was no exaggeration to say it was like flipping through a series of photos.

“Oh? It does. It’s the last part, so I didn’t see it properly because I was touching it until right before the lawyer came. I’m sorry. But don’t cut the 200,000 won [approximately $150 USD].”

“Zoom in on the ring.”

“Yes.”

“Definitely restore the quality of that ring in detail.”

“Yes, yes. I understand.”

Unlike his insincere answer, the NIS agent started working quite intently.

It seemed to require more work than zooming in on the area around the bedding earlier, so he divided the video frame and turned it around, focusing on it for a long time.

“Ah, this is really the best I can do. This is the end.”

The NIS agent said, stretching his body on the back of the sofa.

Me and Kang Min-jae turned our gaze towards the screen.

“It looks like a couple ring [matching rings worn by partners]. The location of the ring is also exactly where a couple ring would be. It’s not a design that a man would wear alone as an accessory.”

Kang Min-jae said.

It was a great help to me, who can’t distinguish between couple rings and accessory rings.

“It looks like it’s lettered?”

Kang Min-jae pointed to the dark patterns surrounding the ring with the mouse pointer.

“Mr. NIS agent, can’t you make the quality better? It might be lettered with a name.”

“I can’t. This is really the limit.”

The NIS agent shook his head and made a gesture of fainting.

Kang Min-jae clicked his tongue as if he was disappointed.

“Hmm… Let’s see. If the pattern isn’t uniform, it’s 100% lettering, and here, here, here. If the pattern is large, these three places seem to be capitalized. But it seems a bit long to be a name.”

“It seems so.”

Something flashed through my mind as I nodded in agreement with his words.

“Maybe it’s someone with a long name. A long surname like Namgoong, Jegal, Dokgo [relatively uncommon Korean surnames], or a name with more than three letters.”

“Oh? That could be it. Ah, and the jewel in the middle, or cubic zirconia. It looks blue.”

“Is it strange if it’s blue?”

“It’s not common for couple rings. And considering it also has lettering… This looks like a custom design?”