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# Chapter 4. Episode 2. Surprise Guest (1)
When I was young, I grew up without anyone taking care of me.
It isn’t easy to cherish someone as dearly as family, even if they aren’t actually your family and even if you aren’t related by blood.
At the time, I thought risking your life for someone else was simply out of the question.
There was no one around me who treated me that way.
I had even been abandoned by my own parents.
So was there really anyone at the orphanage who would think well of me?
Of course not. Reality had never been kind to a young child like me.
That was why I thought,
I want to become an adult as soon as possible.
I want to live entirely by my own strength.
But there was an incident that made me realize I had been wrong.
No, to be precise, it wasn’t an incident. It was an accident.
Flames blazing as though they were about to devour everything in their path.
Amid the scorching heat and thick smoke, I experienced the fear of death at a young age.
I had no attachment to life.
Because I believed the world had abandoned me.
Should I just die like this?
It felt like things would be easier if I did.
I closed my eyes.
I couldn’t see anything.
Just as I was about to give up on everything,
“Kid!”
A voice forced my closed eyelids open.
For a moment, I was left speechless by the scene unfolding before my eyes.
Inside the burning orphanage that was on the verge of collapsing,
someone was holding out a hand to me while forcing a smile.
“It’s okay. Don’t be scared.”
That person said those words to me.
I knew.
No matter how thick the protective gloves were, gripping a heavy steel beam that had been heated to an unbearable temperature was insane.
Even so, the nameless man stubbornly held on with all his strength.
All because of one reason.
He wanted to save me.
It must have been unbearably difficult and painful, yet the man never stopped smiling.
“I’ll save you. No matter what happens, I promise…”
I didn’t know his name or even his surname.
But that man was risking his life to save me.
My mother, my father, and even the people at the orphanage.
They had all abandoned me, yet that firefighter had not.
The man stretched out the hand he had left toward me.
His wrist, covered in burn marks, looked more beautiful and noble than any hand in the world.
That hand rescued me.
It saved me.
And I thought,
Someday, I would definitely become a person like that man.
“……”
I slowly opened my eyes.
The familiar ceiling was the first thing I saw.
I slightly turned my head and looked for the smartphone I had left nearby.
“I’m not going to be late.”
There was still plenty of time before I had to leave for work.
Up we go.
Maybe it was because I had dreamed about the past for the first time in a long while.
My body felt unusually heavy today.
The small studio apartment I lived in was only about seven pyeong, and there wasn’t a single photograph inside.
Not even the ordinary family photos everyone else had.
Well, that was only natural.
I didn’t have a family in the first place.
I had once considered putting a photo I had taken with my coworkers into a tabletop frame, but I quickly gave up on the idea.
Perhaps because of that, my home sometimes felt rather bleak.
After getting up, washing, and finishing my preparations for work, I heard the television I had left on in advance playing in the background.
“Today, we have the pleasure of welcoming Min Yesul, who has starred in two movies that have each surpassed ten million viewers! Hello, Yesul!”
“Hello, I’m Min Yesul.”
“The movie you appeared in this time also surpassed ten million viewers as of yesterday. How do you feel about that?”
“I worked really hard while filming it. So I’m very happy that I feel like I’ve received an even greater reward than that. I think this miracle was possible thanks to all my fans.”
I found myself staring blankly at Yesul as she smiled brightly on the screen.
Why would someone like her say she was interested in someone like me?
Could Grandfather Choi Seong-chun have somehow arranged something?
Knowing his personality, it wouldn’t surprise me.
I had continued trying to find traces of Grandfather, but the result remained the same.
I was the only person who remembered him.
I had even briefly considered going to a psychiatric hospital.
Maybe I was so exhausted that I had been seeing things that weren’t there.
But even if that were the case, for three whole years?
Captain Kim had even met Grandfather several times.
I don’t know. I should just go to work.
I was about to turn off the television when I stared at Yesul for a while before picking up my smartphone.
The chat messages between Yesul and me came into view.
Every single one had been sent by Yesul first.
Should I send her something first this time?
I happened to have something worth congratulating her about, after all.
I wasn’t the type to exchange messages with people very often, so I spent some time thinking about what I should say and how I should say it.
In times like this,
Simple is best.
I typed only:
Congratulations on surpassing ten million viewers.
It took quite a bit of courage to press the send button.
I even wondered what I would do if I sent it and she ignored me.
Ah, whatever!
Tap.
With a brief touch, the message was sent instantly.
I was just about to put my smartphone back into my pocket when—
Ding!
“Huh? A reply… already?”
It hadn’t even been thirty seconds since I sent it.
I immediately checked the reply.
[I'm so happy that you congratulated me, Bit-chan!!! ㅜㅜ]
[Today is going to become a very special day for me. Thank you!]
The duck character emoticon appeared again.
I had once heard during a lecture that even a single word or small action from us could drastically affect another person’s mood.
But I never expected Yesul to be this happy over something so small.
If I’d known this would happen, I should have started messaging her sooner.
I really am a bad man.
* * *
I was riding my bicycle and waiting for the traffic light directly in front of the fire station where I worked to turn green.
A little boy who was standing beside me, waiting to cross the street, suddenly began staring intently at me.
Then he tugged on his mother’s skirt.
“Mom! It’s that man!”
That man?
I wondered if he might be the little boy I had rescued before, so I looked at him more carefully.
But he wasn’t the same child.
I had never met this boy before.
Yet he was acting as though he knew me.
His mother shushed him.
What was that about?
As soon as the light turned green, the boy’s mother slightly bowed her head toward me in apology and hurried across the crosswalk with her son.
I didn’t have a chance to ask.
Strange.
I tilted my head once before belatedly realizing that the green light had begun flashing, so I hurriedly started pedaling.
The strange phenomena continued even inside the fire station.
The moment Senior Yoon saw me, he gave me a meaningful smile.
“You’re here, our fire station’s star.”
“Me?”
My heart nearly dropped.
Because there was something I was worried about.
The fact that Yesul had confessed to me.
I was suddenly afraid that it might have been reported in an article and spread widely among the public.
I knew that for female celebrities, every single scandal article could cause serious damage to their image.
I was more worried that Yesul might have gotten into trouble because of me.
“Senior… did you see an article?”
“Not an article. I saw it in a video.”
“What? A-a video?”
When had they filmed it?
When I had met Yesul separately at the café?
There had been no one around except the café owner.
Then who?
My thoughts became increasingly complicated.
Meanwhile, Senior Yoon gave me an even more suspicious smile and poked me repeatedly with his elbow.
“You rascal. If something like that happened, you should’ve told us sooner. I didn’t know anything about it and almost scolded you for being late that day.”
Late?
I had met Yesul separately after work.
That had nothing to do with being late.
“Senior, what video did you see?”
“What? You didn’t know about it either?”
Senior Yoon showed me a video on his smartphone.
The video uploaded online covered something completely different from what I had been worried about.
It wasn’t footage of me secretly meeting Yesul.
It was a recording of me catching the child with both hands after he fell while hanging from the building.
“This got picked up by the AkaTube algorithm yesterday and the views are through the roof. Look. It’s already at five hundred thousand.”
I had no idea who had filmed and uploaded it, but the moment I rescued the child had been captured incredibly vividly.
A glimpse of Yesul could also be seen beside me.
However, perhaps because the video quality was poor, none of the commenters realized that she was Yesul.
The focus was entirely on me.
“Because of this video…”
“Huh? What?”
“No, I was waiting for the light earlier. Then some kid I didn’t know pointed at me and shouted, ‘It’s that man!’ I was wondering why.”
“Ah. That kid must have seen this video too. These days, kids watch AkaTube more often than we do.”
Senior Yoon was right.
Looking through the comments, I saw people saying that the young man should be given an award.
There were also occasional comments lecturing me that I shouldn’t have caught the child in such a dangerous manner.
I knew that too.
But the child was falling right in front of me.
In that situation, there was no other option except catching him.
Senior Yoon slapped me on the back and said,
“Anyway, you did a good job. At this rate, aren’t you going to become a nationwide celebrity? I saw the news this morning saying Yesul starred in a ten-million-viewer movie. You might end up becoming even more famous than her.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I was just joking. Come on! Let’s get to work.”
“Where’s Captain Kim?”
Captain Kim, who was usually around, was nowhere to be seen.
Senior Yoon shrugged his shoulders.
“He apparently took an emergency day off because he had plans with his wife today.”
“What kind of plans?”
“He said they were going on a family trip with the kids. Apparently, they’d already postponed it for six months because of one thing or another. He said if he didn’t go today, his angelic wife might turn into a demon, so he forced himself to make time.”
It was a joke that wasn’t even funny.
He was a firefighter, after all.
Making time was genuinely difficult.
Just as Senior Yoon said, I started checking the equipment in advance in preparation for emergency dispatches and was about to begin work when,
I was suddenly called to the office.
“Bit-chan, can you come upstairs for a moment?”
“Yes, understood.”
Wondering what was going on, I quickly climbed the stairs.
One of the firefighters picked up the receiver and held it out to me.
“Take it.”
“Who is it?”
“You’ll know as soon as you answer.”
“……?”
I had no idea what was going on.
Still, it was definitely a call for me.
As soon as I took the receiver, I spoke.
“Yes, this is Lee Bit-chan speaking.”
“Is this Lee Bit-chan?”
It was an unfamiliar woman’s voice.
“Yes. This is Lee Bit-chan.”
“Hello. I’m Kim Oh-hyun, a reporter from BLT News Production Department 1.”
A reporter was calling me?
Before I could even ask why, the reporter who had introduced herself as Kim Oh-hyun continued speaking.
“You rescued a child recently, didn’t you? We’d like to film an interview with you for our ‘Hot Topic’ segment. Would that be possible?”
I never dreamed I would get an opportunity to appear on television myself.