The July air hit him like warm water.
Seoul remained offensively alive for a city containing one newly single Kang Min-jae.
Cars moved.
Restaurants glowed.
Someone laughed loudly outside a chicken place.
Two university students walked past sharing earbuds.
A delivery scooter shot through an intersection with the fearless confidence of a man who had made peace with death.
Min-jae shoved both hands into his hoodie pocket despite the heat.
The convenience store was less than ten minutes away.
He constructed his menu while walking.
Ramyun.
Triangle kimbap.
Maybe two.
Those tiny sausages Seo-ah hated because she claimed they tasted like rubber.
Excellent.
Now he could eat as much processed rubber as he wanted.
Chips.
Beer.
Soju.
Several bottles.
Not enough to endanger himself.
Enough to become temporarily philosophical and then fall asleep fully clothed on the sofa.
He passed a bus stop.
A giant digital display changed advertisements.
Cosmetics.
A phone.
Then six boys appeared.
Min-jae slowed.
They couldn't have been older than nineteen or twenty.
Maybe one was twenty-one.
Every one of them looked absurd.
Perfect skin.
Expensive styling disguised as casual clothing.
Intentional hair that probably required forty minutes to appear unintentional.
The words FIRSTLIGHT — DEBUT MINI ALBUM appeared beneath them.
Min-jae instinctively assessed the image.
Centre had strong proportions.
The blond one was probably a visual or lead dancer.
Tall member at the back had slightly weaker expression work.
Company had over-edited the youngest one's jaw.
He caught himself.
"Pathetic."
Then he noticed the logo.
Aurora Entertainment.
Of course.
The boys vanished.
A fried chicken advertisement replaced them.
Min-jae continued walking.
Once, he had spent an entire afternoon practising smiles in a mirror because a trainer told him his eyes looked disconnected from his mouth.
Now he was thirty-one years old, walking beneath advertisements of boys born when he was already trying to become one of them, on his way to purchase instant noodles and enough alcohol to make his recent breakup less irritating.
Outstanding work, Kang Min-jae.
If sixteen-year-old him could see this, he'd probably be horrified.
Twenty-one-year-old him might understand.
Thirty-one-year-old Min-jae mostly found it funny.
His dream hadn't even been stupid.
That was the truly offensive part.
Twelve-year-old Min-jae had looked at the Korean entertainment industry and thought:
This is going to become enormous.
He'd been right beyond anything he could have imagined.
VIA filled stadiums in countries where Korean music had once been a niche curiosity.
MUSE were studied as industry history.
VANT members had become producers, executives, solo artists and occasional tabloid disasters.
Every year brought new groups.
New records.
New markets.
New impossibly talented teenagers.
Min-jae had correctly identified one of the defining cultural industries of his generation.
He simply hadn't been good enough to participate.
The convenience store glowed across the next intersection.
Salvation.
Processed food beneath fluorescent lighting.
A newly installed screen above the entrance displayed FIRSTLIGHT again.
Min-jae squinted at it.
"You people are following me."
One of the members smiled beautifully down at him.
Min-jae smiled back without enthusiasm.
"Enjoy your knees while they last."
The pedestrian light was red.
He stopped.
An older woman stood a few metres away carrying grocery bags.
A teenage boy stared at his phone.
Min-jae waited.
Because he was a responsible citizen.
Because he had survived thirty-one years without doing anything sufficiently stupid to be flattened by traffic.
Because whatever flaws Kang Min-jae possessed, jaywalking into moving vehicles was not among them.
The light changed.
Green.
The pedestrian melody began.
Min-jae stepped onto the crossing.
The older woman crossed from the other side.
The teenager kept staring at his phone.
Min-jae reached perhaps a third of the way across when someone screamed.
Not dramatically.
Just one sharp sound.
His head turned.
A truck was coming through the intersection far too fast.
For a fraction of a second, Min-jae's mind refused to process it.
Big.
White cab.
Delivery truck.
Wrong angle.
Wrong speed.
The driver was fighting the wheel.
A sedan swerved ahead of it.
The truck jerked left.
Min-jae froze.
Then every survival instinct he possessed detonated simultaneously.
He ran.
The truck horn blared.
Min-jae sprinted toward the nearest pavement.
The truck swerved again.
Toward him.
His eyes widened.
"What the fuck?!"
He changed direction.
Shoes slapped asphalt.
Someone shouted.
The truck clipped the sedan.
Metal screamed.
Its rear end swung sideways.
Min-jae ran diagonally away.
The truck began to tilt.
No.
No, no, no—
One side lifted.
The entire vehicle rolled partially onto its side and began sliding through the intersection in a shower of sparks.
Directly toward him.
Min-jae stared.
"No fucking way."
He ran harder.
A human being did not have many opportunities in life to be personally offended by the laws of physics.
This was one.
He lunged toward the opposite pavement.
The truck slid behind him.
For one glorious half-second, its trajectory carried it past.
Min-jae almost laughed.
Made it.
The truck smashed into a traffic-light support.
The support bent.
The rear of the truck rotated.
Min-jae looked back.
The vehicle changed direction.
Again.
Toward him.
His mouth fell open.
"Are you kidding me?!"
He jumped sideways.
People scattered.
The teenager who had been staring at his phone had finally discovered environmental awareness and was running faster than Min-jae would have believed possible.
Min-jae reached the pavement.
Safety.
There.
He planted one hand against a railing and dragged himself around it.
The truck struck the already-bent support.
Its rear corner bounced.
The vehicle tipped further.
For one impossible moment, several tonnes of metal seemed to hang above the road.
Min-jae looked up.
There are times in life when eloquence abandons a person.
"Oh, come on."
The world came down.