Idol of the Heavenly One - vanish into fiction

At the sound of the explosion, I reflexively raised my arms to shield my face. My ears rang, leaving me in a strange silence as if the world had been cut off. Strangely though, I felt no heat. Soon after, the noise of people murmuring rushed back into my ears.

“…….”

Lowering my arms, I looked ahead. It seemed something had gone off inside a trash bin tucked in the corner of the station. The metal bin and the vending machine beside it were both blackened from the blast. The acrid smell of burning metal spread through the air, and a few passengers nearby coughed as they covered their noses and mouths.

Fortunately, because of Baek Jae-heon’s sudden appearance, the crowd had rushed out in an instant. The space inside was no longer cramped, and it looked like no one had been injured. Should I call that luck?

“Is anyone hurt?!”

The police upstairs must have heard the sound too, because they came running into the station. Their boots shook the metal stairs as they descended. The passengers, still shaken with fear, turned toward them with visible relief. The officers checked for injuries and, preparing for the chance of another blast, pulled a fire extinguisher from the hydrant and sprayed the trash bin.

White smoke poured out from the rotating lid. Sprinkler droplets glittered under the lights before vanishing into the haze. As the white mist thinned, the frightened crowd slowly began to calm down and trickle back inside. Some people pulled out their phones and started filming while whispering to each other.

I exhaled deeply in relief. Thank goodness. The explosion had not been large, and the police nearby had responded quickly.

I stayed by the corner near the blasted bin, waiting for the flow of people on the stairs to die down before going up. Pulling out my phone, I saw five missed calls from Baek Jae-heon, along with messages and calls from my manager and the members.

Ah… what excuse should I give? That I went to meet a friend for a moment? That I happened to be at the station when a trash bin exploded? All of it sounded ridiculous. I shoved my phone back into my pocket and lifted my head to see if the crowd was thinning.

“Did you see Jae-heon oppa just now? He was so handsome.”

“If only his manager hadn’t dragged him away, I could’ve seen him up close!”

“Such a shame! But at least we got to hear YEARZ’s new song today.”

The two girls looked like middle schoolers. Their makeup was clumsy, their faces still babyish, and I could not help but feel a pang in my chest. Even kids like this could have been caught in danger. The thought made my heart go cold, reminding me of the great fire from my past life. This time it had only been a small explosion, and that was a blessing.

Just then, one of the officers lifted something with a pair of metal tongs and spoke.

“This didn’t explode because of the trash bin.”

“What was it then?”

Dangling from the tongs was the scorched, misshapen shell of a battery.

“There are signs of a short circuit in the vending machine. The heat must have spread to the bin beside it, and one of the spare batteries inside went into thermal runaway.”

“So the vending machine wiring caused it?”

“Right. And since it was a rotating bin, air kept flowing in, which only fed the fire. That’s why it went ‘boom’ like that.”

The officer showed the charred wiring from the vending machine. The burnt insulation gave off a strong rubbery stench.

“If there’s one thing to be grateful for, it’s that this happened with a rotating bin. If it had been one of those old manual lids, the blast would have been much worse.”

I did not fully understand the explanation, but I got the gist of it. A small electrical fire had spread to the trash bin, and as people unknowingly tossed in garbage, they were also feeding it oxygen. Eventually, the battery had exploded.

So in my past life, had the vending machine been the cause as well? It was possible. This time, the police had been stationed here in advance, and thanks to their quick use of the extinguisher, the fire had not spread.

But something still bothered me. Could this really have escalated into such a massive fire in my past life? With sprinklers installed in the station, a small blaze like this should have been easily contained.