Watching the Fire from Across the River
I sprawled flat in the dirt. Every inch of my body ached like it had been trampled underfoot.
Face planted in the soil, I lay there gasping for breath.
"Hah… hah…. Hah!"
Am I actually still alive?
Rolling only my eyes to the side, I spotted the cult leader with his face shoved into the ground right next to mine.
The man was sprawled across the floor in a rumpled white dress shirt, completely unconscious and looking utterly undignified — and yet nobody around us seemed to care one bit.
Don't tell me they can't recognize him just because his clothes changed?
Or is everyone just too distracted by the summoning ritual?
……What do I care. If he gets stomped around like that and cracks a rib or breaks his nose, that's his problem…. No, actually — go ahead. Break. Please.
I decided to toss this useless concern aside and check on Ahn Param, who was sprawled out somewhere close by.
"Hah, hah…. Ahn Param."
"……."
"Hey. You… okay there?"
"Khh! Kgh! Cough!…… AAAHH!! Okay?! Do I look okay to you?! I nearly DIED back there!!…… W-waaah, waaaah!"
"Great. Peachy, then."
Now, with just one call to the police from Ahn Param's phone, this whole mess would be over.
'I'll make sure every last one of them rots behind bars.'
Nothing in the world appealed to me more than staying right where I was, face-down on the ground — but I had to move. Fast.
There was no telling how much longer Yoo Jinchae could hold out. First things first….
"Huh? Isn't that… police sirens?"
Sirens rang out all at once through the sudden, restless murmur of the crowd.
"……!"
And it wasn't just one. Multiple sets of sirens were layering over each other as they closed in.
I forgot how exhausted I was and scrambled upright. Off at a relatively close distance, I could see Yoo Jinchae, still flawlessly playing the part of cult leader.
"Please wait just a moment. Once we reinstall the altar—"
Her eyes, busy covertly placating the ones clamoring to press on with the ritual, met mine for a single instant.
In that moment, I watched her eyes fly wide with shock, dart rapidly as she pieced the situation together — and then settle, calm and relieved.
Did Yoo Jinchae call the police?
The sirens swelled louder, and far off in the distance a scatter of tiny dots came into view, drawing closer.
As the outlines of those little dots sharpened, even the people who hadn't registered the sirens began, one by one, to grasp how serious this was.
"What… is that. Isn't that the police?"
"Who! Who the hell called the cops?!"
The pressure and fear tightening around them made people reflexively spin around and try to retreat back into the building — and only then did they finally see it.
The first floor of the building, swallowed whole by flames.
"……Fire?"
"Fire! The building's on fire!!"
"Th-then where do we go?! Where are we supposed to go, damn it!"
Police in front, burning building behind. Caught between a rock and a hard place, the crowd could only stand rooted in place, paralyzed by panic.
……Meanwhile, amid the chaos of that shattered crowd, I stood alone and perfectly at ease, calmly spectating.
So this is what they mean by watching a neighbor's house burn from across the river.
With nothing on me to be caught for, it was only natural that police cars didn't rattle me in the slightest.
After all, I'm the victim here.
Worked out great. No need to file a report either.
I was just toying with the idea of flopping right back down to enjoy the show as they all got hauled off — when I noticed them.
Behind the dozens of parked police cars, several familiar black vans, and one gleaming sedan polished to an obscene shine.
……What now.
And the tall, lean man stepping out of that sedan was even more familiar.
The instant I saw the man scan his surroundings with a light, unhurried sweep, a chill ran down my spine from the nape all the way to my tailbone.
Why is that man here of all places.
"Baek Cheonhyeong? Isn't that Baek Cheonhyeong?"
Ahn Param, who had sworn never to rise from the ground again, smacked my shoulder, his face flushed with excitement.
"Whoa, holy crap, that's my first time seeing an S-rank in person! But…. wait, why would an S-rank come here?"
Exactly. Why IS that man here.
Wasn't he supposed to be the company poltergeist? The rumors say he practically lives at headquarters….
And for some reason, in that moment, a joke Baek Cheonhyeong had made when he came to visit me in the hospital drifted back to me.
"The underground dungeon incident, and now this — you really do…. stumble into an awful lot of coincidences, don't you, Teacher."
……Was that really just a throwaway joke?
What if — just what if — it hadn't been a joke at all, but a warning with teeth? What if the problem was simply that I'd been too dense to catch it?
Could this, too, really be written off as 'a simple mishap'? Would anyone actually believe I'd been kidnapped as a sacrificial offering by a cult?
……I couldn't be sure.
Even if Yoo Jinchae and I both explained the situation together, my track record would make dispelling suspicion twice as hard.
And it would be worse still, given that I couldn't exactly describe my escape truthfully.
What do I do.
Now, just like every other person who'd spotted the police, I was sitting on pins and needles.
Baek Cheonhyeong was, quite officially, my employer.
If he looked at today's mess and concluded that I was unfit to be a kindergarten teacher, I would have no choice but to leave the kindergarten.
……That, and that alone, could never happen.
Protect it at all costs.
My five-hundred-a-month paycheck.
I slammed the brakes on that train of thought and launched into a full mime routine at Yoo Jinchae.
'We're bolting.'
Arms and hands churning through the air, I desperately conveyed my message.
'I'm heading home now!'
'I was never here today.'
'You got that? See you tomorrow, Teacher! Bye now!'
Then I hurried around the burning building in a wide arc and started scrambling up the scrub-covered hill behind it without a second thought.
The only exit facing outward was already crawling with police, Baek Cheonhyeong, and assorted other Hunters.
If I went that way, the odds of getting caught were one hundred percent.
So what else was I supposed to do?
Now that I'd looked, it turned out this building was hemmed in on both sides and the rear by hills, end to end.
Still, the terrain didn't look all that tall, so if I climbed up and came down the other side, there'd be something. A road, at least.
My wallet was in my bag, so I could hail a passing taxi — or ask some passerby for a lift to the nearest bus stop. (Gently, though. No rash moves with strangers.)
I was pushing through the grass, working my way uphill, when someone came scrambling helter-skelter after me.
"Ahh~!! Wait for me!! Teacher!"
……Ahn Param.
"I told you to stay put."
"If I stay put, they're calling my parents! Who do you think I am?"
"Sharper than you look, huh? But thinking it's safe to tag along with me — that part's hilarious. You think I can't call your parents myself?"
At that, Param faltered, visibly — but then he jutted his lips out and muttered.
"……Wouldn't abandoning your follower get your cult-leader credentials revoked?"
All mouth, that one.
After about thirty minutes of climbing the hillside with Param huffing along beside me, a downhill slope came into view.
"Whoa, a road!"
Sure enough, a wide-open road stretched out before us, just as Param said. The two of us began charging down toward it with all the subtle provocation of a pair of wild boars.
The road was quiet enough that a car passed maybe once every ten minutes.
Though apparently something was blocking the way ahead, because the cars that overtook us were, before long, all turning around and heading back the way they'd come.
Param and I crouched hidden in the brush beside the road, waiting for a suitable vehicle.
Another ten minutes or so had slipped by when — exactly like something out of a farce — a taxi pulled to a stop right beside our hiding spot and disgorged a single long-limbed man.
The moment he stepped out, I seized Ahn Param by the forearm and bolted full tilt for the taxi.
-Thunk.
"Whoa?! When'd you two get in?"
The driver turned around to the back seat, flustered.
"Seoul BOND headquarters, please."
"Pardon…?"
"Seoul. BOND. Headquarters. Please."
"Uh…. Yes! Yes, of course, right away. Pulling out now."
Still rattled, the driver grabbed the wheel in a hurry and started punching the destination into his navigation.
"Well, I never…. What are the odds. You're the second Seoul folks today. What's there to see up on this hill, anyway?"
I hadn't let my guard slip for a second — only after confirming the driver actually had us moving could I finally lean back against the seat.
Ahn Param, sitting beside me, let his head drop against the window in copycat exhaustion. His ragged breathing was loud.
"Haa…."
I exhaled a long sigh and glanced out the window on reflex — and in that same instant, I learned exactly who the taxi's previous passenger had been.
…….
The Team Ga leader was staring at me with a blank, hollow look on his face.
Lee Gyeon. It was Lee Gyeon.
With impeccable naturalness, I rotated my head to face straight ahead.
……Wrong person, sir.
The taxi pulled away just seconds before Lee Gyeon's brain finished rebooting.
Yoo Jinchae flung open the staff break room door, still fuming.
Familiar space. Familiar faces.
And yet her ironclad composure was blown away like a breeze the moment she registered a single, specific person.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Quick strides carried her straight toward the man who was, at that very moment, pulling his apron out of his locker and putting it on.
He wore the untroubled face of someone for whom last night had simply never happened.
Unbelievable. The sheer nerve of this man.
"Teacher Hwiyeon! How could you just leave me behind and run off?!"
Na Hwiyeon turned around a full beat late, wearing a blank expression. And then….
'Wow…. just… wow. Look at him. He's smiling.'
You find this situation funny? Why are you smiling?
No — that's not even the point. You went through all of that, and you still dragged yourself in to work?
'Are you made of iron?…… No. No, that's not it. This man is simply possessed by his job!'
At last he opened his mouth, beaming with the benevolent smile of a monk who had transcended the mortal plane.
Naturally, the content was steeped thoroughly in worldly concerns.
"Life's cruel, you know. I got home, and it was already just two hours until my shift."
"That's what you're opening with?!"
"Teacher, that taxi fare came to 200,000 won. The tears, they just kept streaming…."
Yoo Jinchae couldn't even muster a hollow laugh at the sheer absurdity of it.
Na Hwiyeon had emerged dramatically from the burning building, flailed his arms wildly at thin air — and then abruptly vanished, taking Ahn Param with him.
She'd been standing there gaping in disbelief when the police arrived, dispatched both by the emergency request she herself had filed with the company and, separately, by a report placed from the stolen phone of one of the cultists.
And so Yoo Jinchae…. found herself suddenly recast as the sole victim-and-first-reporter — to the point where she'd even come home with a Brave Citizen Award.
What was it they'd said — that these cult freaks had recently branched into illegal voice-phishing scams to secure funding, and the victim count was astronomical?
On top of that, several attempted-abduction cases in Seoul and the greater Gyeonggi area had been traced back to the cult as well.
Through the entire process of giving her statement to the police, Yoo Jinchae had been forced to keep swallowing the three syllables of 'Na Hwiyeon' as they bobbed tantalizingly at the back of her throat.
One look at him said loud and clear: he never wanted a repeat of the underground dungeon circus.
But come on, you absolute fool, you're the VICTIM here…! However much you hate the attention, you're still entitled to your compensation!
It was a small mercy that the captured G-Agency bastards and the cult goons, desperate to shave down their own charges, hadn't breathed a word about the vanished Na Hwiyeon.
"-The sacrifice was only ever meant to be one person!"
……Which meant. Suppressing the urge to beat them all senseless had been its own private ordeal.
But an ordeal she had never seen coming had just been added to the pile.
……The mockery of the Team Ra members who'd happened to be dispatched to the scene — and of Baek Cheonhyeong.
"Team Leader, come back to us. They say your resignation never even went through. Skills haven't rusted a bit, huh."
"How does it feel, single-handedly demolishing an entire religious organization?"
"Oh, don't tell me the real reason you quit was because you wanted to play 'Kind Neighborhood Hero' or…. whatever that is?"
If you knew — if you KNEW what kind of praise and ridicule I endured — you would not be smiling like that…!
And besides — a comrade who'd fought shoulder to shoulder with her through that fanatics' den, only to vanish like the wind before she'd had so much as a chance to vent, to savor the catharsis of everything finally being over…. it stung a little, honestly.
"Wait…. so you two were, together, yesterday?"
Park Edeun, who had been listening in on the strange exchange between her and Na Hwiyeon, tilted his head and asked.
Even Kang Sagwa and Kwon Haeseong were sneaking not-so-subtle glances their way, curiosity written plainly across their faces.
Only then did Yoo Jinchae realize just how worked up she'd let herself get.
'How…. am I supposed to talk my way out of this one?'
Riding the wave of her "oops" feeling, she scrambled to invent a decent excuse — but nothing suitable came to mind. Meanwhile, Na Hwiyeon had already leapt in to smooth things over in her place, faster than anyone else could blink.
In a way she never saw coming.
"We've got our 'Overnight Camp' coming up, remember? I was asking Teacher Jinchae what supplies we still needed, so we met up to shop around for them together. We ended up wandering a bit farther out than we meant to, but then my stomach suddenly started hurting, so I headed home without even telling her, and…."
And yet even Na Hwiyeon's masterclass in excuse-making couldn't draw its usual admiring gasp out of Yoo Jinchae.
……Because something she had completely blanked on had just come flooding back.
The 'Overnight Camp' — nonexistent until last year, then abruptly resurrected on one of the principal's whims. AKA, the grand event where you spend two days and one night bunking down with the kindergarten children!
And the fact that surfaced right on its heels sent a chill down her spine.
'The person in charge of organizing that camp was me…. wasn't it?'