Through the tinted glass, Kang-joon watched the city fly by. At a bus stop, a massive digital billboard that had featured his face—part of a fan-funded "Road to Starlight" ad—suddenly flickered and went dark. It was replaced by a generic advertisement for a luxury watch.
"You're remarkably calm for a kid whose life just caught fire," Detective Han said, glancing at Kang-joon in the rearview mirror. "Usually, they cry. Or they start telling me who their father is."
"Crying does not alter the metadata of a video," Kang-joon replied, his voice a flat, steady line. "And I have no father to call. I am simply calculating the probability of a dashcam recovery from 2019 still being viable."
He wasn't calm. Inside, the System was a chaotic mess of red windows and error codes.
[System Error: Timeline Divergence!]
[Event: 'Gangnam Hit-and-Run' was not present in Loops 1-96.]
[Host's Mental Integrity: 42% (Decreasing)]
