And just as the internet was reaching peak implosion — teetering on the beautiful, chaotic edge of its own collective meltdown — another news dropped.
Not regular news.
Not your standard, run-of-the-mill, pour yourself a coffee and scroll through it kind of news.
No.
This was a force of nature.
Now. Let me paint you a picture.
Imagine all of this — every single thing that had been building, every headline, every scandal, every comment section war, every mic drop and lip sync disaster and mysterious disappearing act — imagine all of that as pressure. Rising, climbing, building on itself, layer after layer after layer, getting hotter and tighter and more unbearable by the second, two sweaty bodies tangled in the vertical tan—
WRONG.
BAD AUTHOR.
I THOUGHT WE AGREED. WHOLESOME. WE ARE BEING WHOLESOME. WHAT IS HAPPENING. WHO LET YOU WRITE THAT.
...
Sorry. Don't mind that. I do be absolutely unhinged sometimes. It do be like that.
Anyway.
Back to a significantly more wholesome analogy. Let's try this again with dignity. What little remains of it.
A volcano.
Picture a volcano.
Now, when a volcano starts letting out smoke, one of two things happens. Option one — absolutely nothing. The volcano was simply letting out gas. It farted, essentially. Mildly unpleasant, mildly polluting, ultimately harmless. Everyone wrinkles their nose and moves on with their lives.
Option two?
Run.
Because what comes after the smoke isn't more smoke. What comes next is boiling, unstoppable, all-consuming lava — pouring down the sides of everything, obliterating whatever is unfortunate enough to be in its path, leaving nothing but scorched earth and the distant memory of things that used to exist.
You know the movie Dante's Peak?
...Of course you don't. Most of you reading this weren't even a thought yet when that movie came out, and I will not be taking questions about what that says about my age. The point is — go watch it. It's on somewhere. Find it.
Because that movie — which, for the record, traumatized me for a considerable portion of my childhood and made me deeply suspicious of picturesque mountain towns for years — is exactly the energy of what was about to happen.
This wasn't the volcano farting.
This was Dante's Peak.
And the lava? Was already moving.
****
Kitty.
His and her royal highness. The one. The only. Graduate of Slayington University, Bachelor's Degree in Throwing Shade, Minor in Catfights, Magna Cum Laude, with honors.
Currently? Lounging poolside like the main character of a very expensive music video. Unbothered. Radiant. Existing at a frequency that lesser mortals simply cannot access. The vibe was immaculate. The fit was doing everything it was supposed to do and then some. The energy was giving — and this is the most precise way to describe it — I'm not a whore, but I'm absolutely not a virgin either. Somewhere deliciously in between. Unapologetically so.
The sun was shining. The water was sparkling. Kitty was feeling pretty.
Life, for one brief and beautiful moment, was good.
And then the phone started pinging.
Once. Twice. Three times.
And then it just. Didn't. Stop.
"Bitch, this better be—" Kitty muttered, already preparing the hands, already calculating exactly who was about to catch these acrylics, as he reached over with the energy of someone deeply inconvenienced by the audacity of notifications existing.
He picked up the phone.
Read the tweet.
His eyes went wide.
He squinted. Re-read it. Slowly. Carefully. Word by word, just to make absolutely sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him.
His eyes went wide again.
A beat of complete, uncharacteristic silence.
Then Kitty set the phone down with great deliberateness. Reached for his throat spray. Applied it with the focused preparation of an opera singer about to perform the concert of their life. Cleared his throat once. Twice.
Straightened up.
And screamed.
Not a startled scream. Not a quick shriek. A full, committed, from-the-diaphragm, window-rattling, neighborhood-alerting, dramatically sustained SCREAM — the kind that had range, had projection, had intention behind it, the kind they simply do not teach outside of very specific performing arts programs.
The poolside went silent.
Every head turned. Simultaneously. Completely.
Ryu, who had been mid-swing in what appeared to be a very serious pool noodle battle against Corsair, froze. Completely. Pool noodle raised. Water dripping. Eyes wide.
"What happened?!" he asked, the concern immediate and genuine.
"BITCH, what the HELL was that—" Aqua's head had appeared from somewhere, eyes wide, hand on chest. "I thought you were getting MURDERED. I was about to call someone—"
Kitty tilted his head. And with the calm, composed energy of someone who had just delivered a masterclass —
"Was it giving scream queen?"
He struck a pose. Effortless. Automatic. Like breathing.
Javi looked at him for a long moment.
"...Not gonna lie," Javi said slowly, with the reluctant respect of a certified judge, "you ate that."
"Purrr—"
And Kitty literally, actually, purred. Low and satisfied, like a cat who had gotten into the cream and felt absolutely zero guilt about it. The acrylics came together in a slow, deliberate, deeply dramatic clap.
The poolside remained frozen around him, watching.
As they should.
"Umm..." Pink said, from somewhere nearby, with the patient energy of someone who had been waiting. "Bitch. Aren't you forgetting something?"
Kitty tilted his head. Appeared to think about this. Genuinely. For approximately half a second.
"Hmm... naur, I don't think I did."
"OKAY FIRST OF ALL," Aqua said, with a passion that came from somewhere deep and personal, "STOP with the Aussie accent. You are RUINING it for me. The only person on this planet with the RIGHT to speak in an Aussie accent is the person who is ACTUALLY from Australia — that is MIKA, and MIKA alone—"
Which, to be fair, was entirely true. Aqua had always had a thing for accents. Mika's Australian lilt did something to him that he had never been able to fully explain and had long since stopped trying to. But honestly? It wasn't just Mika. It was anyone with an accent. Lili's French lilt included. Aqua was simply built that way. An accent connoisseur. A man of culture and very specific appreciations.
"AND SECOND OF ALL," Aqua continued, on a roll now, fully committed, "you cannot screech like an actual banshee and just LEAVE US HANGING. That is not a service. That is not a signal. That is CRUEL."
"Excuse me?" Kitty looked genuinely, personally offended. "I gave you all the signal that there was something worth seeing. What more do you want from me? Do I have to spoon feed everyone everything? Are you not adults? Is independence not a concept that's available to you? I am not your mother."
The poolside opened its mouth to respond —
"GUYS."
Leo. Bursting through the door at a full sprint, blinking against the daylight like a man who had not expected to be outside right now and was making an exception purely due to the severity of the situation. Leo, who was supposed to be gaming. Leo, who treated outdoor excursions during gaming hours as a personal affront.
The fact that Leo was running outside voluntarily said everything.
"Check Z. Right now."
"Wait, what happened—" Corsair started.
"LESS ASKING. MORE LOOKING. MOVE."
And that was that.
Because here was the thing — Kitty's Oscar-worthy, window-rattling, banshee scream had already raised the alarm. But Leo abandoning his PC mid-session and physically sprinting into natural lighting? That was a different category of urgent entirely. That was a five-alarm situation. That was unprecedented.
So everyone checked Z.
And then everything became crystal clear.
The poolside went quiet in that specific way that only happens when multiple people are processing the same information simultaneously and none of them have found words yet.
"Ohhhh," Monarch said slowly, nodding with the measured energy of a man watching puzzle pieces click into place. "Okay. NOW Kitty's scream makes complete sense."
"Oh my God," Ahn Jae said. Just that. Eyes wide. The full sentence apparently beyond reach right now.
Kang Ian stared at his screen. Something moved across his face — shock, first, genuine and unguarded. And then, slowly, like sunrise —
A smirk.
"Mother..." a beat "...fucker." Low. Satisfied. The smirk settling in like it had found its permanent address. "Justice. Is. Served."
"Oh wow," Isaac said, and his voice had dropped into something quiet and reverent, the way it did when he felt something genuinely and deeply. "God really is good."
"AMEN to that," Bobby nodded, with full conviction.
"You RIGHT!" Pink's hand shot straight into the air, eyes bright, the energy of a full gospel revival suddenly descending upon the poolside. "GOD IS GOOD! HALLELUYER—"
Meanwhile, Kitty had already returned to his natural state. Phone down. Chin up. Existing at maximum capacity.
"See?" he said, with the serene satisfaction of someone who had always known exactly what they were doing. "I'm so kind. And pretty. I am, genuinely, THE bitch."
"Yes," Javi said, in a tone that was approximately eighty percent sarcasm and twenty percent something that might have been reluctant fondness. "You go, girl. Give us nothing."
It sailed directly over Kitty's head.
Clean. Without turbulence. Not even close.
Because Kitty was simply built different. Immune to sarcasm the way some people are immune to motion sickness — not through effort, not through practice, just constitutionally, fundamentally, and perhaps mercifully unbothered.
It was, honestly, a gift.
****
And there it was.
Lo and behold.
The wrath of God, descending upon the wicked with the precision, timing, and absolutely cinematic presentation that only the universe — when it is truly, genuinely, personally invested in justice — can deliver.
The tweet was simple.
Deceptively, devastatingly, beautifully simple.
@airportgremlin(OP)
"Guys. I think I know where Kang Seo-yul went..."
One sentence.
Below it — a single photograph.
Kang Seo-yul. Fresh off a flight. JFK International Airport. On the ground. Hands pinned behind his back. Multiple officers in the process of making themselves very comfortable on top of him. His face — and this is important, this is the detail that made the whole thing — ultra red. The particular shade of red that only comes from a combination of fury, humiliation, and the dawning realization that absolutely nothing is going to go your way today.
Mouth open. Mid-shout. Whatever was coming out of it was clearly not polite.
Eyes wild.
And yes.
The spit.
Fully airborne. Documented. Immortalized forever in what was, objectively, one of the most unflattering photographs ever taken of a human being in the modern era.
He looked, and there is truly no more precise or diplomatic way to say this, like a rabid dog.
A very expensive, very well-dressed, completely unraveling rabid dog — caught mid-bark on the floor of one of the busiest international airports in the world, surrounded by law enforcement, with absolutely nowhere to go and absolutely no amount of family money that was going to fix this particular moment.
It was, truly, a sight to behold.
Art, almost. If you squinted.
The internet was going to eat this photograph for the next six to eight business days minimum, and everyone who saw it knew it instantly.
Kang Seo-yul had left the Golden Disk Awards thinking he was making an exit.
He had not made an exit.
He had made a beginning.
****
PS- Guys THE @airportgremlin is making their comeback! Those who's been with me since the very beginning, definitely knows. 🤭