Dear Lawyer | Jikook ff

38 - In preparation (ii)

Chen Zhang shook his head. "I didn't."

He looked extremely sincere. It was a pity that during questionings, Jimin didn't care a whit for expressions. He merely swept a cursory gaze over it, calmly saying, "Keep going."

At times without anything to rely on, people would usually try to clutch hold of a thread of trust, letting themselves feel more at ease. But he couldn't catch hold of anything from Jimin at all. Unable to glean the other's thoughts, he involuntarily began to panic. "I really didn't know." 

"Yeah, I heard you. You can keep going." Jimin smiled.

"Really." Chen Zhang emphasised again, visibly defeated. But he had to go on. "The timing of their appearance made me think that the so-called help should occur during Mr. Juan's party. Also, since I was a diving instructor, I guessed that the incident should most probably be related to diving. So when I got to Yaba Island, I kept feeling uneasy, afraid that something was going to go wrong during the dive."

"That day, the other instructors took two guests on their dive, but when it came to my allocation, there was an odd one out and I had to take three." Chen Zhang said, "Frankly, I was already in a state where anything would seem suspicious to me. So when I saw something a little bit different from the others, my heart was all tensed up..."

He wasn't innately a bad person. Despite agreeing to help under duress, he still subconsciously wanted to stop anything from happening. Thus, he intended to tell the coordinator handling the groupings that he couldn't take three people; it would be safer to allocate the extra person to another instructor more skilled than him, that he could only handle two like the other instructors, or even only one.

Humans were just that contradictory. He obviously needed the money, and had caved, agreeing to help because of money. But when it came down to it, he would still rather bring one less person and get less money, to avoid disturbing the calm.

"But the coordinator told me that the groupings weren't up to him. The list of instructors was given to the guests, and they discussed it among themselves and made their choice. It was ill-advised to go against what they wanted," Chen Zhang said.

"Did you seek confirmation on this later?" Jimin asked.

"Yeah. In fact, Chief Kane came to me to take a statement after the diving accident," Chen Zhang said, a little embarrassed. "But I didn't say anything too specific to him at that time. Actually, I was spooked by everything when I was at Yaba Island. Anyone I looked at would seem like one of those who approached me. I didn't believe what the coordinator said, of course. I checked with the guests when I saw them later, and they did in fact pick the instructors themselves."

"The lawyer who had gotten into an accident because he wore the wrong diving suit, Jason Charles, said that he had patronised Hardymont Club a few times. He didn't really like the instructor assigned to him at that time, finding him tiresome as he was always nagging at him to get into shape. There was once afterwards when that instructor wasn't around and I substituted in, leaving him a good impression of me. Maybe because I'm not very chatty. Only, I didn't really have much of an impression of Lawyer Charles..."

However, this didn't stop Jason Charles from picking him without any deliberation when seeing him on the list.

As for Seo-jun, Chen Zhang could understand why. After all, Seo-jun was a regular at Hardymont and Chen Zhang had always accompanied his dives in the past.

George Manson was probably the only one who didn't give any reason. He simply dismissed Chen Zhang's question with a perfunctory statement: "No particular reason. I picked whichever looked good to me at random from the list."