Chapter 31

Chapter 31. A House on Fire

There's an old saying that a tree with many branches never has a quiet day.

The old sayings really are never wrong.

Even in this tiny company with barely any employees, problems keep exploding one after another.

"This is the cover? Are you seriously looking at this properly? You're telling me this is the finished version? Not a rough sketch for the design request?"

"Um... Is something wrong with it?"

They said the album-cover design for Blue Moon's new song, 〈N.Dolphin〉, had just been completed.

But when I actually saw the cover with my own eyes, it was hard to believe anyone could call this a finished product.

What came back as the "finished cover" looked worse than the crayon scribbles I'd made on wallpaper before I was old enough for school.

Even those wall scribbles I'd never gotten to finish because my parents scolded me were better than this.

"What's with this blue background? Why are all the pixels around the members' outlines broken? Did you use the paint-bucket tool in Paint or something?"

"The pixels are broken? Where?"

And that wasn't even the only problem.

The members were lined up in a row, smiling brightly in white dresses that didn't suit them at all, against a single dark-blue background that I couldn't even tell was supposed to represent the sea.

Then, on top of that, the words N.Dolphin - Blue Moon were written in a font that looked like it had been downloaded from some free website.

It was the final blow.

"I don't think I see any broken pixels..."

Was he trying to pour oil on a fire?

That tiny objection from the PR employee made my blood boil.

Fine. Maybe I'd exaggerated a little about the pixels.

But one thing was certain.

They didn't look like they were taking this new-song project seriously.

Even Oh Su, who had opposed renewing Blue Moon's contract so strongly, had personally driven the members to the studio for the album-cover photos.

Yet the PR team had produced a cover design that even some cheap nightclub-tour promotion office would probably reject.

Well, maybe they simply didn't know.

They had made albums before, but they had probably never bought one out of genuine fandom.

Did they even understand how carefully fans treasured an album after buying it?

An album cover wasn't just a phone case meant to keep scratches off the album.

It was merchandise in its own right.

They had probably gone through several days of planning, meetings with an outside designer, internal discussions, and draft reviews to reach this result.

And this was what came out of it.

Ah, fuck.

I was speechless...

There was nothing to think about.

This design was getting rejected.

I'd thought Team Leader Min was someone who did his job properly, but apparently it was the exact opposite.

I quietly returned to the office and checked the cover design that had been sent through the company email two or three more times.

No matter how I looked at it, I couldn't find a single good point.

We would have to restart the cover work from the very beginning.

Would there be enough time?

Even if there wasn't, we'd have to make enough time.

"Haaaa..."

I let out a long breath to calm myself down first, and Dae-hun came over.

"Something happen?"

"Hey, you. The PR team is taking a dump in the middle of the office and you can't smell it? ...We need to start by finding a new album-cover designer."

Maybe he could feel the depth of my anger, because Dae-hun didn't add a single word.

He quietly left the office.

He was probably going to tear into the PR team.

Things had mostly settled down now, but until recently Dae-hun had been dragged back and forth between the police and prosecutors quite a bit.

As his superior, there had been plenty of exhausting work for me too, but everyone had their own role.

I couldn't keep storming around the PR office when I was a team leader myself.

Bzzzt.

Just then, a text message arrived.

Recording the new song, dance practice, concept images, the album cover, the photo book...

We had already sent materials to the Japanese agency as well, so calls came in from time to time and I couldn't simply ignore that side either.

In other words, it had already been ten days since we'd finished discussing the new song, but I couldn't exactly say they had been a peaceful ten days.

[Web Message]

[Would you like to see the future?]

[Choice 1. Yes]

[Choice 2. No]

[If there is no response for five minutes, Choice 1 will be selected automatically.]

My dear spam message.

Always a joy to see.

Every time one of these arrived, the next few days tended to become exhausting.

But what I gained from them was beyond imagination.

In the past, I wouldn't even have been allowed to bring up the first syllable of "new song," much less walk into the PR office.

If the spam messages had raised my standing enough that I could enter for a moment and even yell at people, then calling them medicine was an understatement.

They were an all-purpose cure.

An elixir of immortality.

I typed 1 and sent it.

A very red-looking photograph arrived.

[Title: 8/10]

[Photo Taken: 2022.10.10. 18:59]

Today was October 10.

So the photo was from only a few hours in the future.

The information inside it was as follows.

Two cars were parked along one side of an alley, and beside them stood a broken No Parking sign, pushed aside in a pitiful state.

The alley wasn't particularly wide, yet a huge number of people had gathered there with their phones raised.

They were filming something.

The fire raging in the building right beside the two parked cars.

The first floor was a cafe.

The second floor was a space whose purpose I couldn't tell.

It looked like a private residence.

The cafe entrance was completely blackened, and thick, ink-black smoke was billowing frighteningly from both the cafe interior and the windows of the second-floor home.

The smoke blocked most of the view, but I could make out a sign reading "Mareunnae-ro" and a green road sign with "Myeong-dong" written in large letters.

That should be enough to narrow down the location.

Why had I suddenly been sent such a literally hot photograph when I was already suffering because of that horrible design?

Could our members somehow get caught up in this fire?

Probably not.

They had no reason to go to Myeong-dong today.

Even if they wanted to visit a cafe for a change of mood, there were cafes everywhere near the company.

Why would they go all the way there?

The album cover looked terrible enough that even Dae-hun would understand the problem, so he could deal with that properly.

For now, I needed to identify the exact location of this burning building.

Before it actually started burning.

I had no idea how many times I circled the Euljiro area.

Mareunnae-ro was a fairly wide road stretching from Euljiro toward Jung-gu Office.

The alley in the photograph, on the other hand, was much narrower.

The Mareunnae-ro sign was probably there because the alley connected to that road.

But there were far too many such alleys.

Getting only a photograph was more inconvenient than I'd expected.

Some people might say I should just be grateful to receive photos from the future at all.

But human greed has no end.

Imagine if this had been a video.

Even a tiny shift in camera angle during playback would reveal so much more information.

If it had been a video, I probably would've found the cafe long ago and already drunk three Americanos.

I searched road-view websites, looked up cafes, and drove all over the area.

Why did Euljiro have so many atmospheric cafes hidden in every corner of every alley?

Some places were so obscure that I couldn't even tell whether they'd closed down or were still operating.

Even after trying almost every method I could think of, I still couldn't find it.

So in the end, I went alley by alley on foot.

Then, almost miraculously, I found the exact place from the photograph.

The surrounding scenery was the same.

A private home above the first-floor cafe.

Even the small villa building across the road matched.

It still wasn't six o'clock yet.

"Why doesn't this place show up when I search for it?"

There had been a cafe sign clearly visible in the photograph.

Yet no search results came up.

I went inside, ordered an Americano, and asked the employee.

He explained that the cafe had only opened recently, so they hadn't registered it on the major sites yet.

Delivery apps were complicated these days, so they planned to handle everything step by step.

Hearing that made my head go blank.

Of all places, the building destined to catch fire had to be a newly opened business.

I'd already burned about a thousand calories trying to find it.

Then, once I let myself think about the owner's situation, all I could do was sigh.

"Would you like a stamp on a coupon?"

The employee held up a business-card-sized coupon numbered from one to ten.

Was there actually something important for me here?

Except for not being registered online, it looked like a perfectly normal cafe.

It even had loyalty coupons.

I accepted one from the employee.

I treated it like a small ritual, wishing the cafe would stay safe until I managed to collect all ten stamps.

I still didn't know what connection between this cafe and me had caused the spam message to send me the fire photo.

But once I prevented the fire damage, I could think about that more calmly.

Even apart from that, a fire of that size could injure a lot of people.

Now that I knew in advance, I couldn't pretend I hadn't seen it.

Why would the fire start?

Since the place had recently been renovated, maybe its fire-prevention measures were inadequate.

Or maybe they'd damaged a gas line while cutting and tearing out the old interior.

Or who knew?

Maybe an employee who was bad at making drinks would suddenly pull out a flamethrower and carefully set the whole cafe on fire.

For now, I sniffed the air inside.

I couldn't smell gas.

Even if there had been a gas smell, I probably wouldn't have noticed it.

The new construction materials gave off a strong odor, and more than anything, the smell of coffee was overwhelming.

I took my Americano and sat where I could get the clearest view behind the counter.

Directly behind it were only a sink for washing dishes, coffee drippers, and drink dispensers.

Beyond those, however, was a small bakery area where bread was baked.

At the moment, that bakery was my prime suspect.

"No, no. It's fine. Really, it's fine. I can reinforce it by the end of today. Of course. That's what I should do."

I heard a man speaking on the phone from a booth table in one corner of the cafe.

He was sitting alone at what looked like a six-person table.

At first glance, he seemed like what people these days called a cagong-jok, someone who studied in cafes.

No, he wasn't studying.

Should I call him a cail-jok, someone who worked in cafes instead?

He had several things lined up in front of his laptop and was taking notes while busily handling phone calls.

Even after watching the place for a while, I couldn't think of any likely source of the fire besides the bakery.

Then, as 18:59 drew close, a thought suddenly occurred to me.

What if the fire started on the second floor?

"Excuse me! How do you get up to the second floor?"

"What? The second floor is a private home... You can only get there by the metal stairs behind the building."

The second floor?

Or the bakery?

I forced myself to think calmly.

In the photograph, the cafe entrance had been badly scorched.

One of the large front windows was completely shattered, and the portion of the interior visible through it had turned pitch-black.

The second floor, however, was still actively burning.

That meant the fire had probably started on the first floor and spread upward afterward.

Wait.

18:59 wasn't necessarily the exact moment the fire started, was it?

It could be starting right now.

I hurriedly turned toward the bakery.

At that exact moment, a deafening explosion came from behind me instead.

Customers screamed.

The large front window shattered with a crash.

"I've told you thousands of times not to park here!"

Both cars outside were already burning.

Beyond them stood an elderly man holding a gasoline can, glaring furiously into the cafe.

"Aaaah!"

"Run!"

The panicked employee awkwardly tried to guide everyone out.

The cafe had only one route to the outside.

Unfortunately, the entrance was blocked like a fortress by the burning cars.

The fearless old man squeezed through the gap between them and entered the cafe.

Then he began pouring gasoline around the cafe entrance too.

I rushed him immediately and restrained him.

But by then the spreading flames suddenly flared up right in front of me.

Startled, the old man dropped the gasoline can.

The can had already caught fire.

Gasoline slowly leaked from it and began flowing toward the counter.

"Where's the fire extinguisher?"

I forced myself to ask calmly.

My calmness seemed to steady the employee too, and he ran into the bakery and brought out a small extinguisher.

"Someone call 119. Use that extinguisher on the fire near the entrance. We need to get the people out first."

"R-Right! Yes!"

While I held the old man down, the employee poured all his strength into putting out the flames around the entrance.

Whenever the fire weakened, customers escaped one by one.

Just when I thought almost everyone had gotten out, I spotted the man who'd been working earlier.

He was inside the booth, struggling with the door.

"You! Why aren't you getting out?"

"The door won't open...!"

I let go of the old man and headed toward him.

Freed from my grip, the old man ran toward the exit.

I reached the sliding door the man was pulling at and checked it.

The upper metal rail had been completely bent.

A broken light fixture lay nearby.

Apparently, it had fallen and struck the rail at exactly the wrong angle.

"Get back!"

When I shouted, the man inside screamed and hid in the corner.

When an object refuses to listen, violence is the answer.

I kicked the door three or four times.

The rail itself finally tore free from the frame.

After that dramatic reunion with the trapped man, I grabbed him and dragged him straight toward the outside.

We dodged the heat and flames as best we could.

In the end, I hoisted the young man onto my back and rushed through the entrance.

At that exact moment, a sudden burst of fire surged between us and the outside, painting my entire vision red.