Thrown In as Bait, the E-Rank Lantern Wakes Up Every Time He Dies novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Boiler Room
Woo-seok sneaks into the gate by the back way, dies under the hot pool, comes back again and reaches the cold room before the raid, where the inspector who hates him is waiting, and the guild master slides the bar.
Gyeol's face went red, and then it went stubborn, the way his mother's used to.
He climbed into the back of the Haetae truck with the other lanterns and didn't look out.
The guild clerk held out his hand.
Woo-seok gave him his lantern pass, and the truck pulled out of the yard.
At 12:30 he was standing in the alley behind the Blue Crane Bathhouse.
From the street the building still looked like a bathhouse.
It had three floors of white tile, and a blue crane was painted on the chimney.
Association tape crossed the front doors, and two guards smoked beside them.
The back alley had no guards, because the back alley wasn't on the Association's map.
At the end of it was a rusted steel door to the boiler room.
Ten years ago he'd kicked that door in, alone, ahead of his crew.
He kicked it again, and it opened just as easily.
Inside, the gate took over.
The boiler room was warm and dark, and the hall beyond it ran on far longer than the building did.
Steam hung in the air at head height.
Woo-seok kept his lamp switched off, settled the fire axe on his back, and went down on his hands and knees.
In smoke a firefighter crawled, because the air was clearest near the floor.
Steam was the same.
Pale shapes drifted past above him, man-sized and eyeless, made of hot fog.
They were looking for light, and he didn't give them any.
He crawled the length of the hall by touch, counting doorframes.
The fourth door opened onto the hot pool hall, a long tiled room with a long pool of steaming water.
The cold room was on the far side.
He couldn't see the edge of the pool.
He switched his lamp on for one second.
The water in front of him split open, and something came out of it with a mouth full of boiling water.
It took him by the arm and pulled him under.
The water was hot enough to take the skin off him, and he died before he could find the bottom.
He woke up on his mattress, shouting again.
[Return. Paid: one year.]
His phone said Wednesday, March 11, 5:52 a.m.
Gyeol was asleep across the room, exactly as before.
In the mirror there were two white streaks over his temple now.
That was two years gone before breakfast.
He didn't go to the yard this time.
He knew how the yard went.
At 12:50 he crawled out of the boiler room for the second time, with his lamp switched off.
At the hot pool he kept to the far wall and counted the tiles under his hand.
Nothing came out of the water.
The hall to the cold room was dark and silent.
Somebody was already sitting on the bench beside the steel door.
"Stop there," a woman's voice said.
She stood up into the gray light from a vent.
She was tall, with black hair in a low knot and a thin scar on her chin.
She wore a navy Association coat with a silver inspector's badge, and she held a short spear.
She didn't carry a lamp.
She hadn't needed one to hear him.
"You're Jeon Woo-seok," she said.
"Have we met?"
"I've read your inquiry file." She didn't lower the spear. "The firefighter."
Nobody had called him that kindly in ten years, and she didn't either.
"Shin Ha-yeon, Gate Inspection, A-rank," she said. "You're inside a sealed gate without a pass."
"Why is an inspector sitting in the dark?"
"Mr. Byun has a permit for thirty seconds in that room. I'm here to see he takes thirty seconds."
"He'll send the lanterns in first," Woo-seok said. "When the thing in the pool gets up, his man bars the door."
"Lanterns are legal. That's what lanterns are for."
"One of them is my nephew."
That stopped her for a moment.
Then she reached into her coat for a pair of cuffs.
"I can arrest you now, or I can arrest you after the permit."
"At 1:38," he said, "Byun is going to say, 'The client wants everything on the floor by the door. Thirty seconds. Bags. Then out.'"
Her hand stayed in her coat.
"That permit is sealed. Not even the lanterns know what's in it."
"Then stand where you can see the bar," he said.
Lights came bobbing down the hall, twelve lanterns in a line.
The first lamp was clipped to a gray hoodie.
Byun walked behind the line with his hunters, and he saw Woo-seok and stopped smiling.
"Inspector, that man is trespassing."
"I know," Ha-yeon said. "He's mine. I'll write him up after the permit."
Woo-seok stepped into the first line beside his nephew.
Gyeol stared at him.
"How did you get in here?"
"The back way."
Byun checked his gold watch, and then he turned to the lanterns.
"The client wants everything on the floor by the door," he said. "Thirty seconds. Bags. Then out."
Ha-yeon looked at her own watch.
It said 1:38.
She looked at Woo-seok, and he saw her believe something she didn't want to believe.
Byun put his gloved hand on the steel bar.
"Lanterns," he said. "First line. Thirty seconds."
The bar slid back.
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