## Chapter 0 – But I Am Still Innocent (1)
How did my life end up like this?
Is it my fault?
I lay on the hospital bed, lost in thought. But my surroundings wouldn’t even allow me a moment of contemplation.
The sound of snoring, the TV blaring without consideration for those trying to sleep, and the lewd jokes of an old man chatting all night in a loud voice with a young, vulgar woman who was probably his sugar baby rather than his wife.
Eventually, I decided to get out of bed for some fresh air. My physical condition made it difficult even to stand up straight, but I didn’t want to call a nurse for help.
At first, the nurse had been overly kind, judging me by my face alone. But after she found out why I was hospitalized, she openly despised me.
That’s right. The nurse hadn’t bothered to find out for herself whether I was innocent or guilty. She just listened to the nonsense floating around on YouTube and thought of me as a rapist.
I didn’t want to receive help from someone who wanted to think of me as a rapist.
So, even though taking a single step felt like dying, I walked out of the hospital room on my own.
The nurses who had been gathered near the information desk, chatting happily, fell silent all at once when they saw me walking out of the room.
Just the other day, they hadn’t said a word when a patient who had been in the intensive care unit was trying to walk around on their own.
But I could tell from their eyes what they wanted to say to me.
I had received that same look countless times from strangers who knew nothing about me over the past few years…
“You shouldn’t be moving around.”
The nurse’s perfunctory voice, as if she were just saying it for show, stabbed me in the back of the head along with her hateful glare, but I ignored her and kept walking.
I headed towards the stairs leading to the hospital rooftop. I couldn’t use the elevator. The hospital had forbidden me from using it alone without a valid reason.
They said it was to prepare for the worst, since there were child patients hospitalized as well.
It was an absurd excuse that made me want to vomit, but I no longer argued about such trivial matters.
It wasn’t because I was a pacifist, but because I knew all too well that it was a fight I couldn’t win anyway.
Once I was branded a rapist, everything I said became the words of a rapist. Even legitimate demands protesting unfairness were taken as sexual harassment.
From the moment I was convicted of rape, I had no human rights.
I refused help and struggled up the stairs on my own. When my back was completely soaked with what I couldn’t tell was sweat or blood, I saw the entrance to the rooftop. I squeezed out the last of my strength and crossed the threshold.
The rooftop garden was practically abandoned. Mosquitoes swarmed in the shaded areas beneath the vines that had grown wildly beyond the flower beds.
Thanks to that, not a single person had come up to smoke. It was just me.
Good. I could be alone and quietly lost in thought.
I replayed the memories of that day, which I had already gone over thousands of times. But there was no way I could come up with a way to suddenly reverse my completely ruined life. Only the cold night air seeped into my lungs, which had been damaged by the beating from that bitch’s bodyguards.
A cough burst out. I knelt down and coughed for a long time, then finally looked up at the sky with tears in my eyes from the force of the coughing and asked,
“What did I do so wrong?”
There was no chance of an answer coming, no matter how much I asked. I didn’t believe in God. No, I couldn’t believe in God.
Because the world was vile. Because there was no justice or truth in the world. If something like God really existed in such a world, then that God would be an evil god.
An existence no different from that bitch who had now become a cult leader, rejoicing as they watched those beneath them struggle and suffer…
After catching my breath for a moment, I took out my phone. I knew it was like pouring salt on an open wound. But I turned on YouTube.
As long as the world saw me as a rapist, I couldn’t forget those bitches and live my life nonchalantly. The world wouldn’t let me.
And as long as I still believed in something like justice and truth, I couldn’t help but be interested in the success of those who had sent me to hell.
I didn’t even need to bother searching for those bitches. All I had to do was go to the trending channels and I could see the face of one of them right away.
I only pressed a few buttons and the face of that bitch quickly appeared at the top of the screen.
Yujin.
Platinum blonde hair. A tiny waist and slender ankles, incongruously paired with huge breasts. Her dark fans even gave her the nickname “Cow” because of them.
Befitting her appearance, Yujin, who had become the most popular idol these days, was dancing under the dazzling lights in an even more dazzling stage outfit,
And in the dark audience below the shining stage, her adoring fans were sending her childish praise in voices that sounded like a single gray mass.
It would have been something to just pass over as amazing fandom.
If it had been unrelated to me.
But Yujin’s extreme fans wanted to prove to her how much they loved her, and even though it wouldn’t benefit them in any way, they stubbornly followed me to my home and workplace and terrorized me, so it was never someone else’s problem.
Yujin’s extreme fans didn’t just harass me. They terrorized the people I met as well.
The logic was that since I was found guilty, I was definitely a criminal, and people who were close to such a criminal were also criminals.
It was nonsense, but most of Yujin’s extreme fans were juvenile offenders, so even if they were caught and punished, it was useless. Rather, they would be released with only a light reprimand and immediately become even more extreme in their revenge.
So Yujin should have stepped in to stop them, even for the sake of her fans, but instead, she would occasionally mention me as a sexual harasser on Instagram Live and manipulate her fans into a frenzy.
Even if her extreme fans didn’t know, Yujin clearly knew that I was innocent, but she still put on a pitiful victim act.
A world where such a woman becomes a top star and prospers, while an innocent man sinks deeper and deeper into the abyss.
A world where I, who had fallen so low, had reached a place where there was no bottom left to fall to─
It’s a disgusting world.
I turned off my phone and looked up at the sky again. And I thought again about what I had been thinking about earlier, no, what I had been thinking about thousands, tens of thousands of times a day since the day I was accused of sexual assault.
How did my life end up like this?
What did I do wrong?
But no matter how much I thought about it, the conclusion was the same.
I was not guilty.
I am innocent.
More than ten years ago.
I received a scholarship and entered a prestigious private school. And then, the first exam I took.
Originally, I wasn’t good enough to be in the top 10, but that day I was lucky enough to get a series of questions I knew, and the questions I guessed all turned out to be right, so I was able to achieve the honor of being the top student in the entire school.
Is that my fault?
No.
Absolutely not. I was just trying my best with the thought of doing well on my first exam.
But one of those bitches, Sua, who had her first-ever first place taken away by me.
That bitch was dissatisfied with me and set a trap for me.
No, actually, it wasn’t even a trap.
Sua just asked me if I could move some things into the ’empty’ gymnasium storage room, since I was a ‘girl’ and it would be hard for me to carry heavy things.
It was an easy request, and that bitch looked like she was struggling with the heavy load, so I willingly and with ‘good intentions’ granted her request.
Now I regretted my decision that day to death, but that didn’t change the past.
That day, I took the load from that bitch and went into the gymnasium storage room.
Into the storage room where three women were standing, contrary to what she had said about it being empty…
Into the gymnasium storage room where there was no ‘CCTV’ to prove my innocence…
I had gone in.
And what happened next ruined everything for me.
The next day, those bitches accused me of sexually assaulting them. They testified in court that when we were in the gymnasium storage room, I took advantage of the absence of other men and attacked them.
The evidence?
Of course, there was none. Because I would never do such a thing. Because I was innocent. But just like that, there was no evidence that I wasn’t guilty either.
Because there was no CCTV in the gymnasium storage room.
Still, I was relieved. It was only natural. Because in this country, there is
The principle of presumption of innocence─
The principle that a defendant or suspect is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
It is clearly stated in Article 27, Paragraph 4 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea.
It clearly existed.
But that law was not followed.
Everyone at school openly treated me like a rapist.
The police, who came to my house after receiving a report without a warrant, treated me like a criminal without even listening to me.
Throughout the trial, the public defender was indifferent and mechanically repeated only the words, “Just admit your guilt quickly and settle.”
The memory of that day, when my life was completely ruined, is still vivid in my mind.
The cold night air blows again. I cough again and walk towards the railing. And I look down below the railing.
It’s dark.
Dark like the bottomless pit where demons who have committed extremely heinous sins are punished by God.
It seems like I would be at peace if I threw myself into that dark place.
I wouldn’t have to think about the trial anymore, or the hateful gazes of people who treat me like a criminal, or my ruined future, or my mother who died from overwork trying to earn expensive attorney’s fees.
But instead of throwing myself over the railing, I gripped it tightly and struggled to keep from falling.
Because of the thought that I was a demon…?
Am I a demon who has committed such heinous sins that I deserve to be thrown into the bottomless pit…?
I looked up at the sky again with tears blurring my vision. But those tears were not tears of sadness, but tears made only of my rage.
Is it my fault?
If I had admitted my guilt earlier, my life wouldn’t have been so ruined. I wouldn’t have been able to avoid the rapist label, but I could have eked out the rest of my life in a shabby way.
But unlike the other men who readily admitted their innocence as guilt, I stood up to those bitches with dignity.
I believed that one day my innocence would be revealed. I believed that I would eventually win. I believed in justice and truth.
But this is the result.
There is no justice or truth in this country. Now, when this injured body is healed, I will have to be summoned to court again to be tried for new charges that I did not commit. And this time, it will be difficult to avoid imprisonment.
“I believed in justice, and I believed in truth.”
But, if the price of my belief is this, if it doesn’t matter at all whether I am guilty or not, and if the truth of this world is only how much power I have,
Fine!
I’ll become one!
A demon to fall into the bottomless pit!
