Lookism: What Am I Even Doing?

Chapter 107

(Daniel's POV)

Jay's fingers twisted the knob of the van's radio. Our driver turned up the volume as the static came to a stable halt. A female's voice cracked through before reading out clearly.

"-major accident involving two delivery vans has put traffic at complete halt. Police have shut down Toegye-ro from Chungmuro to Pildong. We have no further details on how or when this accident occurred. All news outlets have been cut off from the area but we'll try out best to send someone out on foot-"

Chungmuro to Pildong. There's where the two major roads that intersected both ends of Teogye before reaching the hotel. I wonder if Jong-su staged something on purpose to make sure we went on undisturbed. If he's willing to stage an accident I wonder if the hotel will be empty too.

He's fully prepared the stage for us while we're riding in silence wondering if we're way in over our heads. Cherry and Doc reassured us before we left. Jong-su knows we aren't at the strength to challenge him head on. He probably sees this little attempt as a child throwing a fuss. So there's no reason to really be afraid. His people have probably been given orders to drive us away, not get rid of us.

Their explanation wasn't enough to reassure any of us yet they seemed completely sure that he wouldn't lay a hand on any of us. While they were talking amongst themselves, I overheard them saying he wouldn't touch important characters yet.

Is that how they saw us? Important characters? The choice of words was a bit poor. We're nothing but small paws on a chess board. Without power, we charge forward from the orders of others, desperate to take down Queens and Kings. Though we'll be lucky if we can take down other pawns like us.

"Damn it...we'll be stuck here all night."

Honk! Honk!

Cars surrounded our left and right, going into a frenzy as they tried to make their way through the traffic. Our van came to a stop and I leaned over to take a look ahead. In the far distance I could see police officers redirecting people from Supyo's intersection. Yellow batons waved wildly in the air, their blasting whistles drowned out by the dozens of vehicles.

"Shit, are those flames?"

Zack pulled a hand on my shoulder to help see past my neck. He strained his head out towards the distance, pointing at something above the cars. I thought it was the lights from the police cars. The yellow light was unsteady, followed by heavy smoke as if something were burning.

Seconds after we noticed the smoke there was a low distance boom. The explosion was still loud enough to rattle the windows. I fell back into my seat in surprise. What the actual hell was happening? Did something actually blow up?

The driver cursed to himself. His hands quickly worked on his seatbelt before stepping out of the car.

"Stay inside! I'm going to see what happened!"

I unbuckled myself and got up from my seat, "What?! No! It could be dangerous!"

Boom!

Sh-shit...I pushed my way out the car. Not caring that the driver told us to stay inside. When I opened the door I could see a large fire in the distance. The accident reported on the radio was too far away for us to see aside from the growing flames. They weren't just growing upwards but they flailed towards the sides. Ready and hungry to consume whatever they could get their hands on.

Smoke fell down from the air sending me into a coughing fit. I put my elbow over my mouth and nose.

"What do we do now! We can't go over there!"