Chapter 99. Make the Souvenir a Big One
Those cold-blooded Americans.
They threw an unconscious patient straight into a holding cell.
When I groaned and forced myself upright, several enormous police officers barged in and started shouting at the top of their lungs.
With terrifying expressions, too.
An ordinary person might have been frightened.
I, on the other hand, couldn't understand a single thing they were yelling.
I looked past them toward a clock in the distance.
Only ten minutes had passed since the crash.
They probably still thought I was some kind of terrorist.
Who could've explained anything to them?
Not in ten minutes.
I figured the police wouldn't actually hit me, so I decided to wait quietly for them to calm down.
Then—
SMACK!
A palm like a steel plate slammed into my back.
It belonged to one of the police officers.
I nearly passed out again.
"Hey! I'm pure man!"
A servant of the people was beating someone.
An innocent person, at that.
"Oh, yeah? You're pure? What are you, milk?"
Apparently, I'd only made him angrier.
I was preparing myself to quietly receive the next Buddha's Palm when the police station door suddenly flew open.
Park Gwang-cheol rushed inside.
"Where is Mr. Do Jun-hyeok? Oh, my God! Release him immediately. He's innocent."
"He is?"
"Yes. It seems my car suddenly accelerated on its own."
The police officer scoffed and said there was no way a Weimarch would suddenly accelerate by itself.
And a Starius having airbags that didn't deploy made sense?
"Then let me speak with him for a moment."
Park Gwang-cheol moved past the officers and approached me.
"What happened?"
He asked while glancing nervously at the other intimidating people inside the holding cell.
He looked like some sheltered young master seeing a holding cell for the first time.
I understood that feeling.
Because the sheltered young master seeing a real holding cell for the first time was actually me.
"Go back right now and check whether the Starius airbags deployed or not. Once you've confirmed it, I'll give you the keys to my Starius. Tell them to continue filming with that."
"What? Why all of a sudden?"
"The Starius airbags don't deploy. But do you think they'd listen if I said that a hundred or a thousand times? That's why I crashed into it. And if they start demanding compensation from me later, it'll be a pain, so hurry up and give them my car!"
When I spoke urgently, Gwang-cheol nodded.
"Even if we solve the destroyed Starius problem and keep the filming schedule moving with your Starius, what about my Weimarch?"
"That... please let it slide."
"I'm joking. Are you feeling all right?"
Thanks to the Weimarch's bed-like airbags, I'd fallen asleep as if I'd been knocked unconscious.
No, I'd been knocked unconscious as if I'd fallen asleep.
Or maybe I'd simply been knocked unconscious in the normal way.
Either way, my body seemed fine.
After Park Gwang-cheol left, the police started shouting at me again.
I suppose I should've been grateful they weren't cracking my skull open with a baton.
Still, my ears hurt enough that it was almost the same kind of suffering.
One thing did make me feel better.
No matter how hard I thought about it, there really hadn't been any other way to stop that literal Furious Drive.
This had been the smartest option available.
The police kept yelling things like who I had been targeting and whether Kim Jung-woon had sent me.
Then a message arrived.
[Congratulations! Upgrade successful!]
[Starting with the next message, sender information will be displayed.]
See?
Complete success.
But sender information?
Was I finally going to get closer to the secret behind these spam messages?
What kind of sender information could possibly appear?
I passed the time trying to imagine what the next message would look like.
Then someone opened the police station door again, and a whole group rushed inside.
"Innocent! Mr. Do Jun-hyeok is innocent! He's a pure man!"
Park Gwang-cheol came charging in, out of breath.
The film crew was behind him.
He said he'd already explained everything to them.
After checking the crushed Starius, they discovered that not a single airbag had deployed.
Even though I'd had the sensor adjusted to be more sensitive.
The hood was destroyed.
The windshield was shattered.
But the airbags had remained perfectly still, as though they'd gone into hibernation.
Gwang-cheol also told them I'd provided the keys to my own Starius so they could continue filming.
But the director refused to push ahead.
There was no guarantee an accident would actually happen during filming, but apparently seeing the horribly wrecked Starius had weakened his resolve.
So they decided to choose a different vehicle sponsor.
I recommended Volkswagon, Nexus, and, out of patriotism, Hyuna Motors.
"That was horrifying. I have no idea what would've happened if we'd gotten into that vehicle without knowing."
Brandon Parker, who had come with them, spoke.
Then he thanked me.
He'd apparently been told that I'd gone so far as to prove the defect myself to warn them about the vehicle he was supposed to ride in.
Of course he couldn't just ignore that.
"You must've been in danger too. Thank you very much for throwing yourself into danger to help us."
"No, no. It's fine."
"He didn't just throw himself into danger. He threw my Weimarch in with him."
While Brandon Parker, Park Gwang-cheol, and I were talking, Shalon joined us.
"But how did you know to do something about it? We reported the defect this time, but before that, nobody knew anything. Mr. Park did tell me you'd had the vehicle inspected."
Every time an incident ended, I always got stuck in this awkward situation where explaining myself became difficult.
"There was a safety concern, so I used a little talent. We didn't actually find the problem during the inspection, but I still had a strong feeling. So I took a chance and crashed into it."
"Ah..."
Shalon trailed off as though the explanation wasn't nearly enough.
Park Gwang-cheol, however, seemed different.
It was more like...
He'd stopped expecting explanations that made sense in the first place.
"Hey, Do. You hurt anywhere?"
Revick, who had come in behind them, asked.
I'd already moved my body around a little because I was worried.
Aside from my lower back feeling slightly stiff, there didn't seem to be any major problem.
"You did lose consciousness, so once the questioning is done, let's go to the hospital. Naturally, I'll handle the vehicle too. Anyway, this could've turned into a major accident. Let me thank you properly."
"It's nothing."
Park Gwang-cheol bowed.
Shalon and Revick copied him.
Then Revick spoke.
"Anyway, I almost got screwed too. I'd already finished working on the song. If the movie had been canceled because of this, the OST would've gone with it. I poured a lot into that track. Saving people's lives is obviously important, but I should repay you for saving my song too. Anything you want?"
I was the only one who knew the accident was definitely going to happen.
