When Death Calls - BTS / Kim Namjoon Fanfic

Chapter 18

“Still going to advocate your innocence Mr Kang?” Detective Park sounded solemn, hoping to catch the befuddled artist off guard.

They had searched the victim’s house thoroughly, going through it with a fine tooth and comb. Apart from the diary, the apartment had yielded a bunch of poisoned arrows along with keys to the car which matched the one captured on the CCTV footage. The most solid discovery, however, had been the gun.

The same gun which had put a bullet in Lee In Ha’s back.

The victim, identified as Bak Sun Tae, had indeed been the perpetrator targeting Namjoon. And now he was dead.

“Look, I keep trying to tell you but you don’t seem to be paying attention. Mr Bak was my manager, yes, but he was fired two years ago!”

The detectives were now seated in one of the many luxuriously furnished offices of YJ, with a shaken Ji Kang before them. His panic was palpable and his eyes kept travelling to the door, hoping to escape this extremely problematical situation.

“And you claim to have had no contact with him ever since?” Lee asked, unmoved by the artist’s obvious discomfort.

Ji Kang shook his head vigorously. “None at all. I didn’t even know he was still in the city until you informed me of his, uh, unfortunate end.”

Park leaned forward, a conspiratorial look on his face. “Care to enlighten us regarding the details surrounding his dismissal?”

Ji Kang’s shoulders drooped as he realized he couldn’t avoid the direct question. “It was after the scandal broke out. The scandal about me having misbehaved with fans.” He had tried to leave that reprehensible part of his past behind, but somehow he couldn’t manage to wrench himself free of it.

Park inclined his head, nodding for him to continue. “It was a stupid mistake, I know that now. We were leaving a pub and I was heavily intoxicated. Some fans recognized me and tried to strike up a conversation. I wasn’t in my right mind and ended up making a fool of myself.” Ji Kang looked ashamed as he went on.

“Later, my manager told me that someone had recorded this incident, and had tried to blackmail him with it. But Bak assured me that he would take care of it.”

“And did he? Take care of it?” Lee asked.

A bitter look crossed the artist’s face. “For a while. There was no mention of it anywhere and I thought it had died down. But then Lee In Ha somehow caught a hold of the video and exposed me.”

The detectives looked up in surprise. Lee In Ha again.

“Lee In Ha from ILLUMINAI?” Park asked him.

He nodded. “The one and only. Back then, she was in charge of my publicity. I’ll admit I wasn’t exactly courteous with her. But her absolute disregard of protocol was shocking,” he said “to the extent that even her editor-in-chief didn’t know until after she dropped the bomb. I thought that maybe she had been at the pub too and had recorded the incident, waiting for the right time to reveal it.”

“So you’re saying that she did it without anyone’s knowledge?” Park asked. Lee In Ha was proving to be a major thorn in his side.

Ji Kang nodded, wiping the sweat off his brow. “Do you think there’s a possibility that she was the one who was blackmailing your manager? And that she exposed you because he failed to pay up?” Park prodded.

Ji Kang’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

“You see Mr Kang, in Mr Bak’s diary we found records of him having made weekly payments to an unnamed person for three weeks. Right up to the revelation of your scandal, from what I can see.”