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Side Story 12

6. Decision

'That' suddenly appeared without any warning.

On a certain day in April, only a stone's throw away from May's doorstep, an American emergency call center was blessed with a strange phone call.

- "Hello. I'm a tourist currently travelling through the desert."

It was not uncommon to hear about tourists getting lost. Since that was the case, the call centre operator figured that this call was from yet another poor stranded soul searching for a way out from the middle of the vast desert.

"Did you run into an accident, sir?"

- "No, it's not actually that."

"In that case, did something else happen to you, sir?"

- "No, no. I'm not calling you because I ran into a problem, but I'm calling to report something that I'm seeing right now."

The call center agent got ready to connect the call to the emergency dispatch service while replying in a calm voice to make sure that the caller wouldn't start panicking over the phone.

"Is it something urgent? Should I dispatch the emergency personnel to your location?"

- "Urgent... is it? Honestly, I also don't know how to explain the current situation to you."

The caller's voice indicated that he was feeling really hesitant over something here, so just in case, the agent decided to confirm the caller's identity first.

As it turned out, the caller was actually a college professor, and judging from his family circumstances, or the past records of lodging emergency calls, he didn't seem to be the sort to make prank calls for fun.

"Sir, you need to describe the situation so we can dispatch the right kind of response personnel to the scene."

- "..."

"Can you explain to me in detail what you see?"

It was at that point that the agent heard the caller take deep breaths over the phone's speaker.

- "Something is about to shatter. There are lots of cracks."

There was a building in a desert about to topple over? The agent tilted his head this way and that before asking again.

"Where are these cracks exactly, sir?"

- "Well, that's the darnedest thing...."

The voice of the caller hesitated for a long time again as if he still couldn't believe what he saw, but eventually it did come out of the phone.

- "The sky... the sky is breaking up!"

***

April.

This was the time when pretty much all students would find themselves with barely any free time, but for Jin-Woo facing mid-term exams and the track competition literally around the corner, it proved to be a great deal more hectic than usual.

As he was studying deep into the night, his little sister, Jin-Ah, entered his room while carrying a tray of sliced Korean melon.

"Oppa, Mom says you should eat these while studying."

Jin-Woo was concentrating on the textbooks below the desk lamp's light, and raised his head to greet her.

"What about Dad?"

"Dad is on night shift duty from this week again."

Jin-Woo received the plate with melon slices neatly arranged on top and nodded his head. But then, he reached out to snatch his sister's ponytail just as she was about to sneak out of his room.