The Gas Explosion Vision
Park Su-hwan recalled the face of the old woman who had followed behind the cart heaped with scrap paper, her expression steeped in sorrow.
Just what kind of story did she carry…
For such a deep shadow to rest on her face.
The boy pulling the cart lingered in his mind as well. Judging by their conversation, their circumstances were far from comfortable—so tight that they had to worry about putting food on the table that very day.
“…How pitiful.”
Night had fallen, yet the heat remained as stifling as midday. Even so, they were out on the streets gathering scrap paper.
They looked as if they were fighting tooth and nail to survive, but the world was not a place where effort alone earned every reward.
Park Su-hwan knew that formula better than anyone, and so they felt all the more pitiable.
I need to check the ledger right away.
Urgency seized him. He wanted to help them in the one way only he could.
Carefully, he turned the pages of the ledger.
“Name. Kim Jeom-rye.”
In an instant the scenery around him transformed into a small room papered with yellowed, faded wallpaper. Park Su-hwan looked about.
Along one wall stood a mother-of-pearl wardrobe darkened by years of use; from the ceiling hung an old round light fixture.
An old house that had clearly stood for decades at the least. He knew at once that this was their home.
“Aigoo…”
Kim Jeom-rye lay weakly beneath a blanket of a single, intensely bold color, moaning and coughing without end.
“Grandma.”
The door burst open and a young girl hurried into the room with quick little steps.
“Oh my. Our Ha-eun, little puppy. You’re here?”
“My head hurts so much.”
“Your head…?”
She opened her eyes wide and asked again.
“Yeah. And… there’s a weird smell in the house. Someone must’ve pooped. My nose hurts too. And my stomach hurts.”
At the word that her granddaughter was unwell, her eyes snapped open.
“It hurts…? And there’s a strange smell?”
“Mm-hm.”
She hurriedly sniffed the air. But the strange odor Ha-eun had spoken of was nowhere to be found.
“My eyes sting so much too…”
Come to think of it, the rims of the girl’s eyes were flushed red. She looked as if she had been rubbing them only moments before.
“Aigoo. Our Ha-eun. Did you catch a cold…? They say even dogs don’t catch summer colds.”
“Then am I a dog?”
“You’re a cute little puppy. Grandma will give you medicine.”
She planted a hand on the floor and forced her body—no longer obedient to her will—to rise. In that instant her vision went black and her whole frame swayed hard.
“Ugh!”
“Grandma!”
Lee Ha-eun seized Kim Jeom-rye’s legs in a desperate grip. Thanks to that, instead of falling, the old woman managed to brace herself against the wardrobe behind her.
“Grandma!”
“I-I’m fine. If it weren’t for my little one, that could’ve been bad.”
She let out a breath of relief and wiped cold sweat with the back of her wrinkled hand. She had nearly been seriously hurt. At her age even a small breeze had to be treated with caution.
“Grandma might be coming down with a cold too… I should take some medicine with our puppy.”
“Really? Then let’s take it together!”
Lee Ha-eun seemed delighted that she would be doing the exact same thing as Grandma; she stomped her feet with excitement.
“You like that? Come on, let’s go take our medicine.”
As the two of them stepped out into the living room, Park Su-hwan followed.
“But Grandma. When is Oppa coming home?”
“He’ll be back later, when the sun goes down.”
“When it gets night? Is he working?”
“…That’s right.”
At her granddaughter’s words, Kim Jeom-rye’s face darkened.
“Tsk. Oppa’s always busy.”
Lee Ha-eun puffed out her cheeks and made a sulky face. Because of it, Kim Jeom-rye felt like a criminal.
As the adult, she ought to be the one going out to work. But with this old, ailing body she could do nothing at all. It was blessing enough if she did not become a burden. In the end her high-school grandson was taking every job he could find to bring money home.
Even if he poured himself into studying alone, time would still fall short… and yet that young one was folding away his dreams and taking hardship upon himself.
The thought of her grandson’s hard struggle brought tears welling up again.
Listening to their conversation, Park Su-hwan grasped the situation at once.
A grandparent-and-grandchild household.
Then the boy who had been pulling the cart earlier—Lee Han-gyeol—was the young head of the family.
There was a reason he had needed to take on a new newspaper-delivery job even while gathering scrap paper.
Kim Jeom-rye’s head spun once more and her stomach began to churn.
“Ugh.”
It felt as if everything she had eaten that morning would come up any second. She clutched the edge of the dining table and bent double.
“Why am I so dizzy…”
“…Grandma!”
Lee Ha-eun’s face crumpled as she hurried to wrap both arms tightly around her grandmother’s waist.
“I’m fine, fine. Looks like I’ve caught a proper cold. I need to take medicine right away. Our puppy should take some too.”
“Okay!”
Lee Ha-eun looked up at Kim Jeom-rye with worried eyes and nodded.
“I’ll get water from the fridge.”
“Cold water will make your stomach hurt worse. Let’s drink warm water. Grandma will heat it up for you.”
Kim Jeom-rye dragged her feet slowly toward the kitchen, laboring for each increasingly short breath. The moment her trembling hand turned the gas-range lever beneath the pot of barley tea—
—Click-click-click!
The cheerful crackle of sparks was only the beginning.
And in an impossibly brief instant, a blue flame swallowed her whole and exploded into a massive wall of fire.
In the same flash that a eardrum-shattering roar and a light that seemed to blind the eyes burst forth—
“Aaaaaaaaaah!!!”
Park Su-hwan opened his eyes with a raw scream that nearly tore his throat open.
“Hah—huff, haah…”
Park Su-hwan looked wildly around. The old house was gone; he was back in the muggy alley.
“Are you all right?”
Lee Han-gyeol peered up at him and asked. Beside the boy stood Kim Jeom-rye.
“Hoo…”
Park Su-hwan steadied his ragged breathing and rose to his feet. He brushed the dust from his clothes and straightened his rumpled collar.
I thought I was going to die of shock.
In a blink the world before his eyes had flared white, then everything had been dyed crimson. When he opened his eyes again he was back in reality.
He had never expected to experience the very heart of an explosion quite like that.
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“If not, maybe we should call 119…”
Lee Han-gyeol fidgeted with his hands as he asked carefully. Park Su-hwan shook his head, making his refusal unmistakable.
“But still…”
“It’s okay. More importantly—can we talk for a moment?”
“Talk?”
“Yeah.”
Park Su-hwan sincerely wanted to save them. A large part of it was that his own unhappy past had overlapped with their situation.
“Ma’am. Forgive me, but would it be all right if I spoke with your grandson alone for just a little while?”
He had seen the future through Kim Jeom-rye, yet he judged that preventing the accident required speaking with Lee Han-gyeol. The boy was the one still capable of rational judgment—and the practical head of the household.
“Ah…”
When Lee Han-gyeol hesitated, Park Su-hwan added in a low voice.
A complete stranger had appeared, collapsed, then opened his eyes again and asked for a private talk. Suspicion and wariness were only natural.
“I’m a shaman.”
Park Su-hwan put on a deliberately grave face.
“I have something to tell you, so just step aside with me for a short talk. If you don’t want to, fine. Just know you’ll be the one regretting it for the rest of your life.”
“…A shaman?”
“That’s right. Park the Water Shaman—here to change your life.”
The seriousness of his expression and tone finally persuaded Lee Han-gyeol to follow him a short distance away. Behind them Kim Jeom-rye watched with worried eyes, but Park Su-hwan paid it no mind.
“First of all, I’m sorry. Your grandmother mustn’t overhear this. I’m afraid of the shock it would give her.”
“Ah—n-no. More than that… what is it she mustn’t hear…?”
Still on guard, Lee Han-gyeol asked carefully.
“Gas-leak explosion—sudden calamity, life ends.”
“Pardon…?”
“Soon. Your house is going to blow sky-high from a gas explosion. And it’ll happen while you’re not there.”
After years of playing the fraudulent shaman, one occupational habit had taken root: the moment the other person looked even a little young, his speech automatically shortened.
Add to that Park Su-hwan’s impatient nature—he hated beating around the bush—and the result was exactly this.
“…?”
Of course Lee Han-gyeol failed to understand a word of it.
“Want me to say it again? You’re all going to die.”
“What kind of curse is that…”
“Your grandmother’s name is Kim Jeom-rye. And your little sister is Lee Ha-eun. Right?”
Watching the boy’s eyes grow steadily wider, Park Su-hwan pressed on.
“The blanket she’s lying under is red with a touch of yellow, and it has a bird pattern on it.”
To seize the boy’s trust as quickly as possible, he recited everything he had seen inside the ledger’s world.
“H-how do you know that!”
Lee Han-gyeol’s eyes flew wide open in shock.
“How do you think? I told you I’m a shaman. Still don’t believe me?”
“Huh…”
“Exactly the day after tomorrow. Eight forty-eight in the evening. A gas explosion is going to hit your house. So the second the sun comes up tomorrow, get a gas inspection done—immediately.”
“A gas inspection? We already had one last month…”
“You already did?”
Park Su-hwan’s brow furrowed.
By his estimate the most likely cause of the explosion at Lee Han-gyeol’s house was an aged hose.
Which meant either gas was leaking from somewhere else, or the previous inspection had been half-assed. One of the two.
“No. You have to do it again. I guarantee it.”
His voice was absolute.
“Ah…”
“What—still don’t believe me? Want me to tell you which hospital your grandmother goes to as well?”
Park Su-hwan cast back through the memories of the ledger world. The medicine envelope that had been lying on the floor… the hospital name written on it had been something like Baram Internal Medicine…
“I-I believe you.”
Honestly, if the man had been a cultist or a con artist he would have demanded money or ordered a gut ritual. He would not have told them to get a gas inspection. On top of that he had named the exact color and pattern of a blanket inside their house.
And then there was that unnameable weight radiating from him. Because of it, Lee Han-gyeol could not help but believe the man truly was a shaman.
“Report that you think gas is leaking. They’ll come out and inspect it again.”
“B-but…”
Young as he was, Lee Han-gyeol had started working early and was not ignorant of the ways of the world. They had already received the free government gas inspection; being told to get another one essentially meant paying out of pocket for a second check.
“That costs money.”
Right now every single won was precious. He could not spend money on something uncertain. Poverty was a reality he felt every second of every minute.
“…”
The blunt honesty left Park Su-hwan speechless.
Right. Of course it does.
He had been so focused on preventing the accident that he had failed to consider the practical problem Lee Han-gyeol faced.
“Is that so…?”
Suddenly he felt he had been inconsiderate. He himself was hardly living well now, yet there had been a time when he had been every bit as desperately poor as this boy.
Because of that, a casually tossed remark could wound Lee Han-gyeol. Park Su-hwan had been on the receiving end of such words himself.
“Hey. Sorry. Then…”
Do I have to give him the money myself?
No other method came readily to mind, and this was the fastest, simplest solution.
But damn it…
The money demon still clung to Park Su-hwan’s body. Yet he could not simply refuse to give the boy money either.
He had swaggered about knowing everything and dragged the kid all the way over here, after all.
I have to take the money… and I still have to receive bokchae.
“Is that so. Hmm…”
After a brief struggle he forced the words out.
“The money… I’ll give it to you. But.”
“No, you don’t have to go that far…”
“Enough. I’m giving you the money. I will. But!”
“Yes?”
“It’s a loan. Not a gift.”
He swallowed hard and continued in a trembling voice. In his entire life he had never given money to another person. He had never even lent any.
“And interest-free. Pay it back whenever you can afford to. Instead, you have to give me bokchae right now.”
“B-bokchae?”
“Yeah. You heard a reading, didn’t you?”
“I never asked for—”
“Quiet. The bokchae is…”
Just then, inside the convenience-store bag dangling from Lee Han-gyeol’s hand, a familiar food item came into view.
“That… is that triangle kimbap?”
Yeah. That’ll do.
“Ah. Yes. For dinner…”
Park Su-hwan felt like a bit of trash, but there was no way he could refuse bokchae.
I don’t want three straight nights of nightmares about dying in a gas explosion!
“…It looks pretty tasty.”