Chapter 61. The Perpetrator's Tears
"There are still plenty of tips I haven't revealed yet. But there aren't enough reporters here. Shouldn't there be at least a hundred?"
-Commander Do! Just tell us too ㅜㅜ
-I'm going to start a newspaper right now.
-I'll keep posting everything online, so please ㅜㅜ
From Sang-do, I had obtained the truth about the drunk-driving driver swap.
From Ha-do, I had obtained the dashcam footage everyone believed had been burned and destroyed.
I checked the final video stored on Ha-do's Black Cloud account.
It was undeniable evidence.
So the title of today's broadcast was:
[The Shocking Reason Do Jun-hyeok Couldn't Hide His Horror at a New Tip About Turb!!!]
Until now, whenever tips came in, Serin and I screened them first and then distributed the information to reporters so articles would be published.
Naturally, a group chat full of reporters had formed.
But apparently, reporters also liked monopolizing information.
They were using that messenger room almost like some secret Freemason meeting.
Other reporters didn't even know it existed.
How irritating.
I said I would reveal the new tip as soon as one hundred reporters joined.
The last time I'd checked, there had only been around ten.
Of course, it was good when ordinary internet users posted things in communities.
But first, I wanted to maximize the power of the press.
Anyone interested enough would keep spreading the articles online afterward anyway.
If I increased the reporter count from ten to one hundred, I could generate roughly ten times the attention.
And so the number of reporters in the room continued rising.
Ten became twenty.
Twenty became forty.
"Why did it stop in the seventies? I don't care whether they're entertainment reporters, social-affairs reporters, or political reporters. Invite every journalist you've ever shared a drink with. We're wasting time. If we don't reach one hundred, I'm just going to reveal everything in this room right now."
I told them it was an astonishing personal scandal involving Turb's CEO.
The room quickly reached one hundred people.
I immediately began explaining the drunk-driving driver swap.
The people in the dashcam recording were indeed Ha-do and Turb's CEO, just as the rumor said.
Ha-do could be heard nervously telling him to slow down.
Turb's CEO cursed at him and said it was fine because they were driving through an empty outskirts area.
Then, at insane speed, they hit someone.
Just as I'd been told, the car crashed into a ditch.
For a while, the video captured only groans from Turb's CEO and Ha-do.
Then came the sound of a door opening.
About a minute later, someone shook the dashcam.
That was where the recording ended.
By the time the video finished, the chat room had grown to a hundred and twenty reporters.
Then every last one of them went silent.
None of them had time to look at their phones anymore.
The copy of the video I'd uploaded to the reporter chat room was soon reposted directly onto internet newspaper Nutube channels.
It immediately became a major issue.
Everyone had enough sense to censor the actual moment the victim was struck.
Naturally, Turb's CEO denied being the man in the video.
Nobody believed him.
The moment the footage became a major topic, Fever Music's Lee Jeong-yeol called me.
He said Turb's CEO suspected him because of me and demanded that I immediately go live and clear his name.
I had a strong feeling the call was being recorded.
So I played innocent.
"What? But weren't you the one who gave me Kang Ha-do's phone last time...? If it wasn't you, CEO, then who else could I possibly have heard this from?"
Lee Jeong-yeol completely lost his mind.
He must've been furious that neither Turb's CEO nor anyone else believed him.
Well, if either Turb's CEO or Lee Jeong-yeol had simply paid off Ha-do's car loan even once...
If just one of them had acted like a decent person for a single moment...
None of this would've happened.
Turb Entertainment took a direct hit.
Even while getting beaten from every direction, they threatened to sue me.
But no lawsuit papers actually arrived.
No investigation was opened against me either.
Their only actions were calling my phone to curse at me and expelling Seo Hae-won.
But kicking her out was practically meaningless.
Turb's Division 4 was already unable to continue normal activities.
"Seems like there aren't many people insulting Serin anymore. Still, shouldn't we at least properly show that she really didn't do anything?"
Dae-hun asked.
He was right.
I had publicly promised to prove that Serin had never committed school violence.
Otherwise, I'd close the company.
At this point, nobody would complain if I quietly withdrew that declaration.
The bullying allegations already looked mostly resolved.
But mostly resolved wasn't the same as completely resolved.
We had only buried the issue temporarily.
If something similar appeared later, people would inevitably drag the school-bullying rumors back out.
I called Serin into the office.
Originally, while handling the exposés through livestreams, I'd planned to quote someone who could objectively testify about Serin's school years.
Her homeroom teacher, for example.
Or maybe a school counselor.
That was why I'd asked Jin-hee to investigate the facts.
But there was one person who could give the most convincing testimony of all.
And Serin herself could bring that person out.
The person at the center of the entire controversy.
Seo Hae-won.
"You called me, CEO?"
"Yeah, Serin. Sit here for a second."
I pulled over a chair and sat across from her.
"You're probably the person who's had the biggest fight with a friend recently. How do you feel?"
I started with a joke.
Serin smiled.
"There were so many unfair rumors that it was hard. But you handled everything well, so I feel relieved now."
"Hae-won got kicked out of the company. Still, you used to be friends. Doesn't that bother you at all?"
Serin said that, more than Hae-won's delinquent friends, she was probably the person who knew the full extent of what Hae-won had done.
After all, she'd practically watched over Hae-won throughout all three years of high school.
Of course she resented her.
And naturally, some old affection still remained too.
But none of that meant Hae-won shouldn't face punishment.
"I think I only ever pretended to stop her so I could feel better about myself. In the end, didn't I still let it happen?"
There was probably nobody who knew the situation who thought Serin had simply stood by and ignored it.
After we explained the rumor about Serin extorting money because her family was poor, the student who had received the practice clarinet from Serin had come forward and verified her identity.
She also described her feelings at the time.
Serin had bought her a clarinet without ever bragging about it, so she'd naturally assumed Serin came from a rich family.
For several days afterward, she'd followed Serin around, carried things for her, and exaggeratedly agreed with everything she said because she wanted to show gratitude.
But Serin had rejected all of it so coldly that she'd ended up thinking Serin was arrogant and unpleasant.
I could understand.
Who would ever look at a girl as refined as Serin and assume she was poor?
At this point, fans practically viewed Serin as an angel without wings.
"Let me be honest about what I personally want first."
I began the real conversation.
"Serin, I want you to meet Seo Hae-won and persuade her to confess honestly. That's the cleanest way to completely clear your name. That's what I want most. But you also want Hae-won to realize what she did wrong, don't you? For her own sake too."
"I do."
"What do you think? Can you meet her?"
Serin thought for a while.
Then she nodded.
The very next day after Do Jun-hyeok's suggestion, Serin contacted Hae-won for the first time in a long while.
Hae-won started swearing the instant she answered the phone.
Serin didn't react.
She simply arranged a meeting.
"What do you want?"
The moment they met, Hae-won asked coldly without even looking at Serin's face.
"It's been a long time since we've seen each other. You don't even want to say hello?"
"Doesn't really feel like it's been that long. Maybe because I've been suffering because of you until yesterday."
The two had fought bitterly throughout all three years of high school.
Serin began trainee life after finishing her second year, so she could have avoided Hae-won during their third year.
But in terms of time, they had still been tangled together for years.
The same was true for Hae-won.
She had hated even looking at Serin throughout high school.
Even more than three years after graduation, all her memories of Serin remained unpleasant.
"I used to bother you all the time, remember? Back in middle school, I begged you every day to buy me tteokbokki at that snack shop."
"Pfft. How long ago was that?"
The sudden childhood memory made Hae-won laugh before she could stop herself.
Then she immediately hardened her expression and turned away.
Hearing Serin's voice made it painfully clear that the two had once truly been close.
"I came to persuade you. I want you to admit what you did in high school and reflect on it."
"Even without me regretting anything, everyone's already busy tearing me apart. They were so excited they even tore into you. You got really famous because of that web drama, so I guess that made it even more fun for them."
"The whole thing spread because you told people I was poor and extorted money from other students."
Serin pointed it out in the calmest voice she could manage.
Hae-won gave her an unexpected answer.
"I didn't bother explaining it, but I wasn't the one who spread that story."
At this point, Hae-won was being attacked from every direction anyway.
Explaining that one particular rumor wouldn't have changed much.
If anything, denying only that rumor would've looked like she was admitting every other accusation.
Hae-won said she had never understood why being poor was something embarrassing.
She herself had never been poor.
So back in high school, she might have casually mentioned Serin's financial situation once to her friends.
At most, one or two girls she regularly smoked with would've known.
Apparently, those people had joined the current controversy and spread it further.
Serin knew Hae-won fairly well.
This wasn't the kind of situation where Hae-won would invent an unnecessarily complicated lie.
Seo Hae-won really hadn't gone out of her way to attack Serin.
"Then... I misunderstood you? You didn't actually do anything to me this time?"
"The company responded. I also watched people attack you and stayed quiet. Honestly, I even rooted for them a little. I'm only saying I wasn't the person who started that rumor about you extorting money. Since we're talking about it."
Serin had tried to remain calm through everything.
But when she'd started suspecting that Hae-won was personally responsible for the rumor, it had hurt far more than she'd expected.
Until then, she had mostly felt anger toward Hae-won.
But the moment it began to feel like a direct betrayal, why did only the happy memories from middle school keep returning?
Now, six years after their first year of high school, the thought that she and Hae-won had truly crossed a river they could never return from had made Serin deeply miserable.
So now, her head was filled with only one emotion.
Relief.
Eventually, tears appeared in Serin's eyes.
"I'm sorry. I didn't even know... I guess I thought too badly of you..."
"You crazy bitch! Why are you crying?! What the hell are you apologizing for? I'm the one who did something wrong!"
Apparently, a victim's tears were even more powerful when they were contagious than when they were used as evidence.
Hae-won scolded Serin.
Yet her own eyes reddened.
"Then you're apologizing, right?"
Serin abruptly stopped crying and launched the surprise attack.
Hae-won stared at her in disbelief.
But after crying together, much of her hostility had already softened.
Seeing Hae-won's eyes, Serin became confident that they could finally talk properly.
"You really are an actress. That crying performance was ridiculous."
"It hasn't been that long since we graduated. You probably remember most of the people you hit or bullied. Let's go apologize to them. And post an apology online too. If nothing else, do it for me."
"Why the hell would I do it for your face? You're the traitor who promised we'd debut together and then became successful first!"
Hae-won had actually been the one who joined the major agency Turb first.
Serin entered Universe a month or two later.
Of course, by then their relationship had already deteriorated beyond repair.
After that, Serin and Hae-won finally began unloading six years' worth of things they'd never said.
The most interesting part was how Hae-won had first begun associating with bad friends.
At the beginning, she hadn't realized they were bad people.
By the time she understood, she'd already grown close enough that cutting them off felt difficult.
In other words, Hae-won's first act of school violence had begun as simple bystander behavior.
At the time, Serin criticized Hae-won for continuing to hang around them.
Hae-won had already been trapped between wanting to leave and not wanting to abandon her friends.
Serin's criticism had felt incredibly unfair.
Eventually, that sense of unfairness turned into rebellion.
School violence.
Standing by and allowing it.
Of course everyone knew those things were wrong.
But it was easy for Serin to stand one step outside the group and condemn it.
Actually cutting off every close friend at once was far harder.
After they finished talking for a while, Hae-won suddenly stood.
"And even without you, I was already reflecting on what I did, okay? I just froze because everything exploded at once. Even if you hadn't come here to persuade me, I was planning to meet those people and apologize."
"Really?"
"Yes. I can live just fine without someone like you. And I'll tell you this now so you don't get your hopes up. I am not going to say even one word explaining that you never committed school violence."
Hae-won said it firmly.
Serin still remembered one of Hae-won's old habits.
Whenever Hae-won lied, her voice became louder.
"So take care of your own problem yourself. I'm leaving. Live well. Become some great actress or an ambassador against school violence for all I care."
Without looking back, Hae-won walked out of the cafe.
Serin took a moment to calm her emotions.
Then she called Do Jun-hyeok.
"Yeah, Serin. How did it go?"
Serin answered.
"Yes. She said she'll clear things up for me."
