I Was Reborn at My Engagement Party, So I Proposed to Someone Else novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Smoke

Ji-an walked down the last flight of stairs in her socks.

Nobody stopped her. The firefighters were busy, and the neighbours were watching the fire.

Then, one by one, they were watching her.

The grandmother in the quilted vest. The old man in the flat cap. A young policeman holding back the crowd with his arms out.

She crossed the road through the red and blue lights to the grey car at the curb.

She knocked on the driver's window.

For a moment nothing happened.

Then it slid down, and Jae-hyuk looked up at her.

He had taken his glasses off. He was cleaning them on his sweater.

"Ji-an," he said. "My God. Are you all right? I was driving past and saw the smoke."

"At two in the morning."

"I couldn't sleep." He put the glasses back on. "Terrible. These old houses. The wiring's ancient."

"You watched it."

"I was worried about you."

"You turned your headlights off so nobody would see you," she said. "And you watched it burn."

He smiled at her.

"You're in shock," he said kindly. "You're not well. Someone should take you home."

Up on the stairs, there was shouting.

Three of Tae-gyeom's men were coming down through the crowd. Between them, with his arms twisted behind his back and his red windbreaker torn half off, was the foreman.

They had caught him going down the back of the hill through the yards, the same way they'd come up.

A police officer met them at the bottom and snapped handcuffs on him.

The foreman was swearing and spitting. His gold tooth flashed in the firelight.

Then he saw the grey car.

He saw Jae-hyuk in it.

Something went across his face, the look of a man realizing he's the only one who's going to prison.

"Director Yoon!" he bellowed.

Every head on that street turned.

"You said nobody'd be home!" the foreman shouted. "You said Kwon's people would be gone! You said it'd be the empty houses and the old woman would just get scared!"

"I don't know this man," Jae-hyuk said, to nobody.

"You paid me! Twenty million a house! You paid me at the car wash in Mapo!"

The police officer holding the foreman looked at the grey car.

He said something into the radio on his shoulder.

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