Plane Accident, Part 2
As the plane rolled forward, Senator Phillips felt a childlike excitement bubbling up inside him.
He remembered the days when he had once pestered his parents to take him to the amusement park.
A family trip, huh...
This time, he had planned to do nothing at all and simply rest.
Forget the news. Just spend time with the family.
He was making that promise to himself when a commotion rose behind him. Flight attendants hurried back and forth, and even the co-pilot came running out of the cockpit.
Something had definitely happened.
“I’ll go check.”
One of the guards got to his feet and headed toward the economy cabin.
A moment later, he returned with his report.
“One passenger is throwing a fit, demanding to be let off.”
“What do you mean?”
“He says he heard a strange noise coming from the engine. The attendants and even the co-pilot tried to convince him there was nothing wrong, but he insists on getting off.”
Our flight is returning to the gate. Please remain in your seats and follow the instructions of the cabin crew.
The plane, which had already entered the runway, turned its nose around and began taxiing back to the gate.
Angry shouts and irritated complaints broke out all around the cabin.
“Can’t they just let him off on the runway?” Liana asked in a pout.
Elena frowned as well.
“If one passenger gets off, then everyone has to disembark, and they’ll have to check the luggage, inspect the plane, rebook everyone, go through the whole boarding process all over again.”
“Seriously? How long would that take?”
“At the very least, two hours.”
Liana clicked her tongue in annoyance.
“Then our whole schedule is ruined. We were going straight to Disney World when we landed. Ugh, what the hell!”
Watching his daughters look so put out, Senator Phillips let out a long sigh.
To think our precious family trip was already falling apart from the very start.
He wanted nothing more than to see the face of the bastard who had caused all this.
A short while later, the plane came to a stop.
We have returned to the gate. All passengers, please take your belongings and disembark. The airline will provide further instructions regarding reboarding.
Passengers clutching their carry-ons muttered as they filed down the stairs.
“Damn it!”
“Fucking hell!”
“One guy does this and we all get dragged into it?”
“I’ve seen some crazy bastards in my life, but this takes the cake.”
Senator Phillips also led his family off the plane.
I saw an East Asian man being escorted out by security, his arms restrained. Below him, airport police were already waiting to take him away.
So this was because of him?
Everyone’s pleasant trip had been ruined, not just mine.
The passengers glared at him with sour expressions. A few children burst into tears, and their parents bent down to comfort them.
And yet, instead of showing any remorse, he kept shouting.
“I’m telling you, I really did hear something strange in the engine!”
Unable to take it anymore, Elena shouted at him.
“Apologize!”
“What?”
“Do you have any idea how many people you’ve inconvenienced?”
“What inconvenience did I cause?”
At that, Elena was stunned.
“Can’t you see the children crying? Everyone’s precious trip has been ruined. Can you take responsibility for their time?”
Han Miru replied calmly.
“So if we’d taken off and the engine exploded, would you have taken responsibility for that?”
“W-what did you say?”
I quickly pointed at a Black man nearby.
“It wasn’t just me. That man is the world’s greatest engine expert, and he said something sounded wrong too! Chris! Tell her I’m right!”
“Uh, no...”
Somehow, he had gone from the best in America to the best in the world.
If I keep pushing this, they’re going to think I put him up to it.
Chris couldn’t handle the pressure, so he awkwardly turned his head away as if he hadn’t heard a thing, and I froze in embarrassment.
“Hey! Chris! Sir!”
The passengers cursed at his shameless insistence that he was right all the way to the end.
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Go back to your own country!”
“Why come to America and cause a scene?”
“Fucking yellow monkey!”
“You filthy Chinese bastard!”
“Get the hell back to China!”
No matter how angry you were, spitting out racist abuse only dragged the country’s dignity through the mud.
“Please calm down, everyone.”
When Senator Phillips stepped forward, the economy passengers who recognized him were stunned.
“It’s Senator Phillips!”
“Whoa, it really is.”
“What’s the senator doing here?”
“I never imagined he was on the same flight.”
I looked at Senator Phillips and said, “I’m Korean.”
“Huh?”
“I’m not Chinese. I’m Korean. So if you’re going to throw around racist insults, at least get that straight.”
“……”
Was he a bit slow on the uptake?
Well, that would explain why he caused such a scene and forced the plane to stop.
He was just about to give everyone a sharp rebuke on behalf of the passengers when, at that very moment...
BOOM!
With a deafening blast, flames burst from the left engine.
People stared at the plane in shock. The fire alarm wailed loudly, and the fire trucks waiting on the tarmac came roaring in.
“Put it out, now!”
“This is an emergency!”
“This area is dangerous! Everyone move back inside the airport immediately!”
While the passengers stood there with their mouths hanging open, unable to say a word, the East Asian man who had started the commotion in the first place said calmly, “See? I was right. I told you the engine sounded wrong.”
As soon as the articles broke, the entire United States went up in uproar.
An airplane had exploded in a terrorist attack, and a senator had been killed?
It was the first crisis of its kind since 9/11!
American citizens who saw the reports could barely contain their rage.
Atlanta Airport was one of America’s major hub airports, and one of the busiest in the world.
It handled nearly 300,000 travelers a day.
As soon as the story broke, calls flooded in asking whether the passengers were alive, whether other flights could still take off and land properly, and the airport was thrown into such confusion that its operations nearly ground to a halt.
But before even three minutes had passed, a new wave of articles began pouring out one after another.
CNN, NBC, FOX News, and the others immediately issued corrections.
Footage of the engine blowing on the runway and the fire trucks dousing the flames spread across television and the internet.
The plane had been turned back just before takeoff, and the disaster had been narrowly averted. Once people heard that it wasn’t terrorism, they let out a collective breath of relief.
Sure, the plane’s engine had blown, but thanks to me everyone had gotten out safely.
So did that mean I’d be released on the spot, greeted with applause, and buried under requests to shake hands?
Not a chance.
I was hauled away by security and locked in what looked like an interrogation room.
There was nothing in there except a desk and a chair. One wall was made of glass, though I suspected it was really a one-way mirror.
The people on the other side could probably see everything happening in here.
It was exactly the sort of interrogation room you only ever saw in movies. They searched me before bringing me in and took my smartphone, passport, and wallet.
I guess they were kind enough not to handcuff me, at least.
By now, the press had to be exploding with stories.
I let my memories from my first life surface.
By the law of hack reporters, every country had its share of them.
The reason for the false report was that a reporter who happened to be at the airport chopped the context to pieces and ran a story saying, “Aircraft engine explosion.”
The other outlets copied it without verification, and before long the story had turned into a terrorist attack that blew the plane apart in midair.
Some articles even reported that every passenger had been killed.
The problem was that the false report sent the financial markets into chaos.
At the hint that it might be a terrorist attack, the three major U.S. indices, which had been climbing smoothly, all fell at once, and Bridgeworld Air’s stock plunged more than 30 percent.
Just as they say that when America catches a cold, Korea gets pneumonia, the swing in the U.S. market shook the Korean market too, and brokerage firms went into emergency mode.
Back then, I had been about to eat lunch when I ended up watching CNN with Senior Dongho and the other staff.
Fortunately, once the report was corrected, the market quickly returned to stability, and Bridgeworld Air’s stock rebounded like a fireball, closing only five percent down.
Since it happened on my birthday, and since some of the articles tied it to the so-called “curse of thirteen,” I remembered the flight number perfectly.
And because the airline code was BW, our manager even cracked a dad joke, asking if it stood for “Bond-Warrant Airways.”
That was why I was sitting in this room now.
“Hmm...”
Come to think of it, it was a bit of a shame. If I’d placed the right bets, I could’ve made a tidy profit.
Instead, I had deliberately chosen to board that plane.
To be honest, even if I hadn’t been on it, the result wouldn’t have changed at all. The only difference was whether I was there or not.
And yet I still boarded the flight for one reason: to meet one person.
Right now, that might not matter much. But once I started making even more money, the odds of drawing attention, resistance, and outright attacks would only grow. If that happened, I needed to build allies ahead of time.
Enough that no one would even think of laying a hand on me.