Chapter 51
Gam Ji-yoon asked.
“……Is the sky blue?”
“Yes!”
“Dr. Chun, how does the sky look to you right now…?”
“……It’s dark.”
With trembling hands, I placed my palm on Gam Ji-yoon’s tiny head.
In an instant, the world changed.
Mana swirled, and I could feel the flow of energy around me as naturally as breathing.
That’s why I was utterly horrified.
I could sense it. Too naturally.
A sky covered with clouds, and beneath it, a colossal wave of mana surging violently.
Like a vortex.
As if it were about to engulf this entire city.
—
“Uh, wha-wha-what, what is that…?”
I stammered, pointing at the sky. The sight was so overwhelming that it bordered on grotesque.
In the end, I stumbled backward, tripping over Gam Gi-ja’s foot and landing flat on my back.
“Ugh!”
“Whoa there!”
Gam Gi-ja caught me just in time.
“Damn, almost cracked my skull.”
“Why are you suddenly acting like this, Assemblyman?”
The sight of the sky lingered in my vision. I shut my eyes tightly, trying to steady my mind.
“Can’t you see that?”
“Huh?”
“Ah, of course, you wouldn’t…”
“……”
Gam Gi-ja shot me a dubious look as he helped me up, but I hurriedly pulled out my phone and tried to make a call.
[……Your mobile service has been suspended—]
Oh, right. The government had blocked my phone during the political battles to prevent me from making calls.
“Gam Gi-ja, can I borrow your phone?”
“What?”
“Hurry.”
As soon as he handed it over, my fingers swiftly dialed a number. After four years of treating this person like a god, my hands moved on their own before my brain even registered the digits.
The ringtone droned on for a while.
I swallowed dryly, anxiously waiting.
Thankfully—
[Hah… Sneaking away to take a call makes me feel like I’m cheating on someone.]
“Assemblyman Yang!”
[I’m with other assemblymen. What’s going on?]
I had made contact.
—
We arrived at Yang Pan-seok’s house without delay.
To be precise, it was an apartment on the outskirts of Dongducheon that his second daughter had secretly bought for real estate speculation in a redevelopment zone. Yang Pan-seok had caught wind of it and simply took it for himself.
As we parked and got out, Yang Il-ho casually latched onto me.
“Do I get weekend pay for this?”
“I’ll throw in severance pay too.”
“Hiiiing…”
Since no one had brought a car, we had dragged Yang Il-ho out from his lazy day at home and made him our driver.
We took the elevator up to the seventh floor. When we knocked on his door, there was no response.
“Looks like we got here first. Assemblyman Yang is on his way, so let’s wait a bit.”
“Oh… Should we go back to the car?”
“No.”
Click.
Knock knock knock knock.
Beep.
I casually unlocked the door and gestured for them to enter.
“It’s nothing fancy, but come on in.”
“……”
Who else had carried the old man home drunk so many times? Of course, I knew the passcode. It was his granddaughter’s birthday, reversed.
Il-ho and Gam Gi-ja’s wife sat around the dining table, catching up after a long time.
Gam Ji-yoon lay on the luxurious sofa, giggling as she lifted her younger sibling into the air and gently bounced them up and down.
Meanwhile, I quietly limped over to the balcony.
“……”
The world was dark.
The bleak winter sky was filled with ominous, heavy clouds.
I pulled out the borrowed phone and made another call.
“Hey, noona. It’s me. I borrowed a phone. Where are you—”
[Seung-moon!? You little bastard! How many years do you have left!?]
A terrifyingly fast, thick Busan-accented voice shot through the line.
“……Uncle?”
[You…! You little punk, are you only talking like that because you’re on camera? Huh!?]
“Are you with noona? Where are you!?”
[How many years do you have left, damn it!?]
“Ah, where are you right now!?”
I could hear my uncle urgently speaking to someone in the background.
[Where are we right now?]
[We just got onto the Yangyang Expressway.]
[They’re in Yangyang!]
“Where the hell is Yangyang!?”
[Hey, where’s Yangyang?]
[Ah, damn it! Gangwon Province, you idiot!]
[Yeah, Gangwon Province!]
“……For god’s sake.”
I heard Yeo Do-yeon and my aunt’s voices. Seemed like the whole family was rushing up here in a car.
I advised them calmly.
“Turn around. This isn’t safe.”
[You little brat! Tell me how long you have left!]
“Ah, just turn the car around! Now!”
[We’re stuck in traffic! Damn it! Just tell me how many—]
“Ah! Life expectancy isn’t a set number, okay!?”
[Hey! You—!]
“You don’t just have a fixed number of years left! The body ages because cells stop dividing. No one really knows the exact number!”
[……So what’s the estimate?]
I heard a commotion on the other end of the line.
Frowning, I waited with a sour expression. Eventually, my uncle’s exhausted voice returned.
[……Damn it. Your aunt just fainted.]
“Just turn around and go home. Please.”
[……Let’s meet up and… I don’t know. Grab some spicy braised monkfish or something. At our usual spot.]
“That place is in the middle of Seoul. I can’t go there.”
[Oh, right.]
The call abruptly ended.
That was how he always was. Once the conversation was over, my uncle would hang up at the most random moments, earning the frustration of the entire family.
I let out a quiet chuckle.
Even thinking about their little habits made me smile.
For a moment, I stood still, staring at the darkening sky.
“……Hah.”
I wasn’t sure if I did the right thing.
Feeling uneasy, I instinctively reached into my inner pocket for a cigarette.
“Ahjussi…”
A small tug on my pants made me look down.
At some point, Gam Ji-yoon had wandered out onto the balcony and was now clinging to me.
“Don’t be mad…”
“Huh? No, I wasn’t mad. Just talking.”
“Uh-huh…”
She scrunched up her face in disbelief.
It was strangely amusing how her expressions and tone felt just a bit too mature for her age.
“Mom says that all the time too…”
“Uh, well. That’s just how adults are.”
“Ji-yoon will forgive you…”
“……Thanks.”
I patted Gam Ji-yoon’s back and gently ushered her out of the balcony.
Then, leaning against the railing, I awkwardly held a cigarette between my lips.
Smoke curled into the cold air.
Cough! Hahk!
My eyes stung.
“Ugh…! Cough…!”
The sound of the balcony door sliding open came from behind me.
“Why is someone who can’t even smoke properly trying?”
“Ack, Gam Gi-ja. Cough!”
Gam Gi-ja stepped onto the balcony, frowning at me.
“Don’t smoke. It’s bad for you.”
“……Not like I’ll live long anyway.”
“Now, now, don’t say things like that.”
Gam Gi-ja lit his own cigarette and exhaled smoothly.
“Fuuhh… Assemblyman, don’t end up like this when you grow up.”
Though he said it with a playful smirk, it wasn’t entirely a joke.
If there was anyone I knew who had seen the worst of the world, it was Gam Gi-ja (Gam Chul). That was his job, after all—to seek out and report on the darkest corners of society.
“Well, thanks for treating me like a kid.”
“If you’re in your twenties, you’re still a kid.”
Gam Gi-ja chuckled, then suddenly widened his eyes.
“Wait, is it really okay to do this in someone else’s house? A four-term assemblyman’s house, at that?”
“You’ve already lit up, so I don’t think you’re in a position to complain.”
Gam Gi-ja scratched his head awkwardly. I motioned towards a fishing chair on the balcony and replied nonchalantly.
“Assemblyman Yang lives here alone, you know?”
“Yeah?”
“He used to sit in that chair all the time, making me stand while he smoked and lectured me. We’d just stare at the Dongducheon city lights together…”
Gam Gi-ja nodded in understanding.
“So even Assemblyman Yang needed someone to talk to?”
“No, this balcony is just the designated smoking area.”
I chuckled.
“He thought smoking on the balcony was romantic. That’s why he never let anyone move into the eighth floor.”
“……Wait, the eighth floor too?”
“This whole apartment building belongs to Assemblyman Yang.”
“Wow…”
The entire building, from the first to the eighth floor, was Yang Pan-seok’s property.
I spent time chatting idly with Gam Gi-ja, talking about trivial things.
“His family ran massive farms in Honam back in the early 20th century…”
“Aha…”
—
Fifteen minutes later, Yang Pan-seok arrived.
“Geez, the ones with not much time left sure are struggling hard… Had to fight off a dinner meeting to come here.”
– Translation: A bunch of soon-to-be-retired politicians had called an emergency meeting, and he had barely managed to decline.
“Thanks for coming.”
Yang Pan-seok let out a bitter smile as he took off his shoes and stepped inside.
“Blue surpasses the master, huh? You’re the one calling the shots now.”
“We’re both on borrowed time anyway.”
“Just two old men waiting for our turn.”
After exchanging handshakes with everyone present in his usual effortless manner, Yang Pan-seok collapsed onto the sofa.
“Everything’s already settled, so I doubt this is about politics…”
“I’ve lost contact with all the ministers I knew. Is there any unusual activity around Seoul’s perimeter?”
“You turned them all into political corpses yourself, and now you’re asking? The Minister of National Defense and the Martial Law Commander are too afraid to even step into their own offices. You made sure all key positions are filled with acting officials who report to the emergency administration…”
“Then is there no way to find out what’s happening on the front lines?”
“Don’t you have any friendly military contacts?”
“Only in the afterlife.”
“You’ll be meeting them soon enough.”
“Want to bet on who goes first?”
I looked at him with a wry expression, and Yang Pan-seok waved his hand with a chuckle.
“Alright, alright. Enough jokes.”
Then, with his usual quiet smile, he leaned in.
“……Something serious happened, didn’t it?”
“There’s a massive mana vortex swirling in the sky. Right above the Uijeongbu Correctional Headquarters. It’s… huge. Enormous.”
“Then the guilds would’ve already reported it to the Ministry of the Interior.”
“Only Ji-yoon can see it.”
“Well, Gam Ji-yoon always did seem to have some unique abilities beyond the average Pyschic…”
Yang Pan-seok rubbed his chin with a thoughtful hum.
“You’re saying we should evacuate people?”
“It’s a vortex. It doesn’t look good. The mana is condensing into a single point.”
“You think it’s the precursor to a Gate?”
“Or it could just be a natural atmospheric phenomenon, like high and low-pressure systems. Even clouds look like vortices from satellite images, don’t they?”
“So we’re in a ‘maybe it is, maybe it isn’t’ situation.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s… tricky.”
We didn’t need to say it out loud—we both understood the political implications.
If I publicly announced, ‘I don’t know what it is, but a Gate might open in Uijeongbu!’—the millions of refugees concentrated in northern Gyeonggi Province would have to evacuate.
And the only witnesses to this supposed phenomenon?
A little girl and a politician.
Of course, people would accuse me of using a child’s word to spread fear and tighten my grip on power. I was already struggling against false accusations—if this went wrong, I’d be labeled a fraud trying to scam millions.
Yang Pan-seok hit the nail on the head.
“You’re not scared of public backlash. That’s not the issue.”
“I just don’t think they’ll help.”
“That’s fair.”
Evacuating refugees on a large scale required law enforcement and military assistance.
Sure, I could post on social media, ‘A Gate is opening in Uijeongbu!’ and people would flood out of the city.
But just like stampedes at packed stadiums, mass panic would paralyze roads, spark traffic accidents, and trigger economic turmoil.
That’s why such evacuations had to be managed by the police and military.
“If I raise the alarm, do you think the government will cooperate?”
“So that’s why you called me.”
“The situation is urgent. Sorry to trouble you, but Assemblyman Yang, I need you to—”
“Ahh, alright. At this point, what’s there to hesitate about? I’ll get in touch with the local division commanders. If no Gate opens, you better take the heat for me.”
“Thank you, Assemblyman.”
“It’s national duty. Nothing to thank me for.”
I let out a deep breath of relief and glanced at my watch.
From the moment we identified the anomaly to securing an emergency response—1 hour and 47 minutes.
“Hoo…!”
Feeling a sense of accomplishment, I smiled and sank into the sofa. If this wasn’t real politics, then what was?
From the kitchen, Yang Pan-seok was casually tying his necktie while offering dinner to Gam Gi-ja’s family.
“It’s been a while since we all gathered. Why don’t you stay for dinner?”
“Oh, would that be alright…?”
“Didn’t I used to eat at your place too? I got a bunch of premium Korean beef as a New Year’s gift, but my teeth aren’t good enough to enjoy it. You should take care of it for me.”
“Thank you! We’d be honored to have some!”
“But as for me, I’ve got an errand to run for our dear Assemblyman Han Seung-moon. What a sight—an old man like me still getting bossed around. Anyway, have him do the grilling. He’s good at it.”
“Ah! Why me?!”
“You’ve gotten lazy since you got your badge. Losing your edge already…”
I chuckled and pulled out my phone just as an incoming call popped up.
Yeo Do-yeon.
“Hey, noona—”
[“Fk…! Fk…!”]
A chill ran down my spine.
[“Monsters are falling from the sky!”]
