Became a Rapist 1

## Chapter 1 – But Still, I Am Innocent (2)

All four women who falsely accused me of sexual assault have now become celebrities with popularity, power, money, and authority.

Yujin became a top idol, gaining popularity.

Minhee became a world champion in women’s mixed martial arts, gaining power.

Jiyoung became the CEO of the most promising startup in the country, gaining money.

Sua received an international peace prize and is now the youngest member of the National Assembly, gaining authority.

However, all of that is just their facade. I know their ugly reality.

Yujin is hailed as a genius idol, but most of her songs are plagiarized, and so are her performances. She has no artistic talent to boast about. Her popularity is solely due to her alluring looks, big breasts, and ass.

Minhee is now a world champion, but everyone in the MMA core fan base knows that her rise to the top was filled with match-fixing and controversial decisions. Moreover, she’s a drug user. And in her childhood, she even ruined her biggest rival’s knee, forcing her to retire.

Jiyoung’s company engages in excessive PR, but it doesn’t have any significant technology. Or rather, it’s questionable whether it has any technology at all. From the start, Jiyoung had no entrepreneurial spirit. Her goal is to inflate the company’s size through stock manipulation and accounting fraud, then sell it and flee overseas.

And the worst of them all was Sua. She embezzles donations meant for the poor, exploits brainwashed church members until they die, and steals the achievements of other religious figures, passing them off as her own to gain international fame. As if that weren’t enough, she’s now trying to devour the entire country.

Since the trial, I’ve been constantly monitoring them to prove my innocence. Therefore, it wasn’t that difficult to track their movements.

Their individual schedules were kept strictly secret, but if I could find the time when they all gathered in one place and then trace their movements backward, I could deduce their destination.

However, only someone as desperate as I was to prove my innocence would spend so much time and effort on such a task, so I was probably the only one who knew that they were gathering today.

What was puzzling, though, was the location of the gathering. Instead of renting out the entire top floor of a luxury hotel, as they could easily afford, they were strangely trying to meet in a bleak, abandoned building on the outskirts of the city.

It was suspicious, but the more suspicious it was, the more of an opportunity it was for me. It was proof that they were plotting something again.

I fiddled with the knife in my pocket and entered the building. As I did, I carefully surveyed my surroundings.

Even after looking again, it wasn’t a place where they would hold a gathering. After all, the last time they gathered, it was in a glamorous and decadent party venue filled with drugs and strippers.

Feeling strange, I walked around, carefully observing my surroundings, when something caught my eye.

It was a briefcase. Inside a cabinet. But perhaps because of the unusually strong night wind, the cabinet door was open, revealing the bag that would have otherwise been hidden.

It was an old bag, as if it had been discarded along with the abandoned building, and it was carelessly placed inside the dusty, dirty cabinet like trash, but something about it caught my eye.

As if it were fate, I had no basis for it, and it wasn’t even the right time, but I couldn’t resist the strange urge to examine it.

Anyway, they wouldn’t be arriving here for a while, and I didn’t have anything else to do while waiting for them.

After double-checking that no one was around, I cautiously approached the briefcase. Then, I lifted it up, but

Clang! It made a sound but didn’t come out. It was chained to the inside of the cabinet.

I paused and froze. Whatever this was, it must be valuable enough for the four of them to secretly gather and come to find it.

But there might be some kind of device attached to it, so continuing to mess with it here would be foolish.

However, I had only recently escaped from the hospital in my broken state, and this might be my last chance to meet those bitches who were rising higher and higher, in contrast to my fall from grace.

So, if this was really that valuable to them, I would use it as a hostage to confront them and get them to admit, even if it was a lie, that I was innocent.

Fiddling with the lock on the chain connected to the briefcase, I tried the password 3421 on a whim.

3421 was the password that the stupid bitch Minhee had been using since she was a child and had never changed. It was one of the things I learned while desperately gathering all sorts of information about them to prove my innocence.

In the past, I was a little ashamed of gathering even such trivial information, as if I were stalking them, but now I was grateful to my tenacious past self. Because the lock actually opened.

They would be arriving soon, so there was no time to hesitate.

I immediately took out the object inside the briefcase.

“A rock?…”

However, it had two horn-like protrusions like antennae, and its surface shimmered, so it wasn’t an ordinary rock, but rather a precious jewel.

But why would they leave such a jewel in a place like this?

What the hell is th─

Bang!

An unbelievable sound rang out. Even though it was a deserted night, and even though it was inside an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city, so there was no one around to hear the gunshot, a gunshot in this country?

Did I mishear? Was it a traffic accident somewhere? As I wondered, something even more unbelievable caught my eye.

It was my heart, pierced by a bullet. I hadn’t felt the pain yet. I subconsciously reached into my pocket and pulled out the knife.

But compared to the gun that shot me, it was a useless tool. Just a 3,000 won utility knife I bought at a convenience store on the way here. And in fact, I wasn’t even going to stab them with that knife.

I just wanted to hear that one simple phrase—that I was innocent, that I had never sexually harassed anyone—and that’s why I came all the way here…

Even though nothing would change my ruined life even if I did, even though I had vowed to become a devil, I realized only after a hole was pierced in my heart that I had been trying to remain human until the very end.

I’m angry.

More at myself for trying to remain human than at the bitch who shot me.

The pain was slowly creeping in, but I stood up straight and endured it.

I was going to die soon, but I wanted to stand tall in front of them, even if it was just for the last moment of my death.

I wanted to wash away the humiliation of kneeling before them and begging for forgiveness, even though I was innocent.

“Long time no see? Did you come to sexually harass us again?”

Yujin mocked me.

I couldn’t say anything because I felt like I would spew out a mouthful of blood if I answered, so I just glared at her.

“Did you come to whine about your innocence again? You’re so tiresome, you really are. Why couldn’t you just admit it?”

Minhee looked at me as if asking why, as if feeling sorry for me.

But it was by no means a comforting word. It was the voice of someone far above looking down on someone at the bottom. Minhee was just pretending to comfort me, giving me an even more extreme sense of humiliation than ordinary mockery.

Suddenly, all the strength drained from my body. Stumbling, I leaned my back against the cabinet where the briefcase had been, to avoid falling to the ground. Then, I glared at those two bitches.

I couldn’t believe it. Their attitude, as if they really believed that I had sexually harassed them.

“Sexual assaulter eventually commits suicide without repenting. Found in an abandoned building near the hospital. Presumed to have been engaging in lewd acts until just before death.”

Jiyoung, who had been ignoring me and just tapping on her phone, looked up and said.

As I glared at Jiyoung as if asking what she meant, she smiled brightly at me and showed me a text message on her phone.

It was a text message being sent to internet “reckas” (gossipmongers) and internet news outlets.

I opened my mouth as I realized what it meant. I was going to pour out curses at Jiyoung. But all I could let out of my mouth was my red blood.

The despair rooted in my pierced heart absorbed my blood and grew even larger.

Even after I die, I will only be remembered as a sexual assaulter.

I lived as a sexual assaulter, and I died as a sexual assaulter.

That will be the conclusion of my life so far.

As if my despairing face was amusing, Jiyoung smiled again. Now it was a refreshing smile, beyond just bright. A smile that was overly acidic, like a sour lemon.

“That’s the headline for tomorrow’s article. The views won’t be very high, though. A ‘Han-nam’ (Korean slang for a pathetic Korean man) committing suicide isn’t an interesting news story.”

Enraged, I rushed at Jiyoung, but I couldn’t even take a few steps before falling forward. The pain I had been holding back rushed in all at once.

No, I could endure the pain if it was just pain. I had endured much worse pain than this until now. But my body wouldn’t move anymore.

The knife I had been tightly gripping was dropped to the floor.

“What a cowardly bastard, bringing a knife.”

Minhee mocked me, took a boxing stance, and threw a few light punches into the air. As expected of someone who had recently become a world champion in a global tournament, her form was indeed sharp.

But I knew. Her sins. Her sins, which were definitely guilty, unlike my own.

Minhee was by no means an undefeated, flawless fighter. There was a match in her childhood that she barely won through cheating and bias.

And yet, you’re calling me cowardly? You?

Minhee, who had been walking slowly, crouched down in front of me.

I tried to lift my head and glare at Minhee, but even that didn’t work properly. She originally had firm, muscular thighs befitting a fighter, and now that she was wearing short biker shorts, her thighs looked even more prominent, and I could only barely see Minhee’s crotch bulging out in front of me because she was crouching down.

Minhee chuckled and tapped my head, which was lying face down on the floor, with her fist.

“Don’t bother us anymore and just die quickly. I’m so sick of Han-nams stalking us.”

Yujin added a word as well. She didn’t even bother to look properly at my dying face. She was just checking if the manicure on her nails was properly applied.

However, Sua, who had actually shot me, wasn’t even looking at me.

I squeezed out the last of my strength at their attitude of treating me like a bug. I pushed off the floor and stood up straight.

“Ooh.”

Minhee clapped and mocked me as if I had great tenacity.

Standing up straight, I looked at their faces in turn. As soon as I did, I realized the terrible truth.

Those bitches have been lying for over a decade, and as a result, they now believe that their lies are the truth!

Now I understood why they hadn’t even pretended to listen to my words of injustice. Things like lies and truth were never important to them in the first place.

Having realized the terrible truth, I tried to maintain the posture of standing straight and looking down at them, but in the end, I fell back onto the dirty ground.

Dust rose up and swirled to where they were standing. Only then did Sua turn her head and look at me. With a contemptuous look, as if looking at a cockroach.

“But what are you holding onto—”

Yujin asked.

At that moment, Sua’s attitude, which had been indifferent to me even after shooting me, suddenly changed.

Sua suddenly stopped what she was doing, and bit down on her teeth as tightly as she gripped the pistol she was holding, and rushed at me.

Sua shouted as she struck my dying head on the ground with the handle of her pistol.

“Put it down! Put it down!”

The last moment before death.

I saw my blood seeping into the stone I was unconsciously gripping tightly.

*

Kneeling and burying my head on the ground, I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, those four were still standing in front of me.

However, unlike before, I was now looking down at them.

My head, which hadn’t fully woken up yet, was dazed. I turned my head and looked at the window. The sun was setting. Just a moment ago, it had been dawn.

Thinking, “What’s going on?” I turned my head again and looked at them.

Their faces were younger. Just like back then, when they were falsely accusing innocent me of sexual assault in the courtroom.

Instinctively, I immediately understood the situation.

I was now in the gym warehouse the day before I was reported as a sexual assaulter without any guilt, and before I went to the police station to be investigated, I came to beg them to withdraw the charges.

I didn’t know why, but I had returned to the past. Or maybe not. Maybe I had just died and fallen into a place I didn’t know whether it was hell or heaven, and was caught in a fantasy…

But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter even if it was a fantasy.

The reason why I was found guilty even though there was no evidence was not only because of their popularity, power, money, and authority.

It was because I admitted to my guilt.

My non-existent guilt.

At that time, I thought that’s what I had to do.

I was young, and as young as I was, I was weak, so I didn’t know why they hated me so much, but I thought that if I begged for forgiveness, they would accept my forgiveness.

But that wasn’t forgiveness. That was cowardice.

It was the cowardice that ruined my entire life afterward.

But it’s different now.

Having returned to the past, I didn’t know the location where the martial arts secrets were hidden, or the timing when the coins would skyrocket, or even the lottery numbers.

After the accusation, my life was only tied to the trial, and I couldn’t get out of it.

However, despite that, what I knew for sure was—

The lives of these four bitches in front of me now.

The brilliant success that those bitches achieved.

And the ugly sins hidden within their brilliant success.

“You’re not going to admit it?”

Yujin said to me with a contemptuous look.

“Hey! Do you want to die! You touched us!”

Minhee said, swinging her fist as if she was going to hit me.

“The evidence is already all there. It’s no use making excuses. Admitting it is the only way to get a lighter sentence.”

Jiyoung said, coldly pressuring me.

“Don’t be like that… He came to apologize. Let’s forgive him if he apologizes.”

And Sua was saying to me with a voice and face that couldn’t be more gentle.

As if she was genuinely concerned about me and was forcibly soothing her angry friends.

But I knew now. That she was the one who reported me, and that those words were just to coax me into admitting it.

I knew it all too well because I had been deceived by that gentle voice and apologized back then.

I looked at those four again. I clenched my fists tightly. But I didn’t intend to beat them with those fists right now.

I was going to take the best revenge for me, and the most heinous revenge for those bitches.

Compared to that, even an ordinary death would be a blessing for them.