Chapter 16: Chapter Sixteen: Something Huge Has Happened

Hamamatsu Base, pilot dormitory.

“Kenji, I’m done washing, you go now.” Fujihiro Shoji stepped out of the dormitory bathroom.

He plopped onto the bed, towel drying his hair, idly scrolling through videos on YTB with nothing else to do.

Normally, when not flying, Fujihiro Shoji’s favorite pastime was scrolling YTB.

Out of his love for YTB videos, he’d even created an account specifically to upload his own high-difficulty flight maneuvers.

Hamamatsu Base didn’t stop him—it encouraged him to post videos.

Because his videos helped attract young people to enlist.

So as long as his videos didn’t involve secrets, Hamamatsu Base left him alone.

On YTB’s Japanese channel, Fujihiro Shoji was a minor celebrity, nicknamed “God of Flight.”

“Huh?”

While scrolling, Fujihiro Shoji was drawn to a video titled “Archive—NH137.”

NH137??

That’s today’s hijacking incident.

What drew Fujihiro Shoji wasn’t the video title.

“This video is the world’s only full recording of the events before and after NH137’s incident.”

Fujihiro Shoji read the video description.

The NH137 incident had exploded across Japan today.

Thus, many YTB videos had been uploaded capturing NH137.

These videos all had flashy titles, but Fujihiro Shoji had watched them—all were just recordings of the plane skidding.

No need to think.

The uploaders must have been people at the airport.

Fujihiro Shoji usually opened these videos, watched a few seconds, then closed them.

Come on—he’d watched the full skid from the air, with his unique overhead view, far clearer than these angles.

But this video was different.

It specifically highlighted “before and after the incident.”

No other video description dared write that.

Curious, Fujihiro Shoji clicked into the video page and scrolled down to the comments.

He had a habit of checking comments before watching videos.

What he saw made him gasp—his curiosity surged.

“This video… how was it filmed?”

“I can’t take it anymore—I’m starting to doubt, maybe NH137’s incident wasn’t an accident.”

“Is this a movie?”

“!!!∑(Дノ)ノ OMG! Can someone tell me if this is a movie made by some studio based on NH137?”

“Upstairs, I can tell you for sure—it’s a real-time recording, because making a movie takes too long.”

“Kamikawa’s piloting skills are insane!”

“The camera angles in this video—could the uploader be one of the 231 people on board? But that doesn’t seem right either.”

…

Fujihiro Shoji was stunned.

Every comment was exaggerated, awestruck.

And the video had only been up for half an hour—over a hundred shares, 768 comments already.

“Could this video really record the full events before and after NH137’s incident?”

Curious, Fujihiro Shoji clicked to play.

“What the hell!!”

“My god!!”

“I fucking can’t!!”

As the video played, Fujihiro Shoji kept shouting—no one would’ve thought he wasn’t insane.

The video truly matched its description.

It recorded the entire NH137 incident—in excruciating detail!

So detailed… that it showed exactly what the crows looked like, the brutal impact, how the captain died unexpectedly, how the first officer was injured, the plane’s high-altitude crisis, cabin conditions, what passengers experienced, their changing expressions, cockpit scenes—all captured.

Instantly,

Fujihiro Shoji made his judgment.

This was absolutely not a fake video or a movie—it was real footage of NH137.

The people in the video were the 231 aboard NH137.

Meanwhile,

Watching the crows hit the plane, Fujihiro Shoji was horrified.

The footage was extremely bloody and brutal—he could clearly feel how massive the threat the crows posed to NH137.

“How was this filmed?” Fujihiro Shoji muttered, stunned and suspicious.

The crows flying in the video clearly weren’t filmed from the cockpit—they were filmed… from the air.

Or rather,

It was an up-close aerial recording of the crows’ flight.

The angle was like a drone hovering in the sky, perfectly capturing the crows—and their collision with the plane—complete god’s-eye view.

Similar angles appeared multiple times in the video.

Besides the crow collision, there were shots of the plane banking sharply upward, reaching extreme altitude, left wing icing, descending along high-altitude air currents.

All used god’s-eye angles.

Meaning, the entire flight was filmed from outside the aircraft.

What was used to film this?

Who filmed it?

As Fujihiro Shoji watched, intense doubt arose in him.

NH137’s incident occurred at over 6,500 meters altitude.

At that height, drones couldn’t reach.

The footage showed zero shakiness from strong winds—smooth throughout—ruling out drone use.

Current drones still couldn’t withstand high-altitude turbulence.

So it could only be someone flying a plane to film it.

But—

Flying a plane to film it? Completely impossible!

Others might not know, but Fujihiro Shoji knew for sure: after NH137’s incident, he flew to escort it—and saw no other aircraft near NH137.

Satellite filming? Absolutely impossible.

The angles were multi-directional; satellites in space could only offer top-down views, never multi-angle.

So…

How was this video filmed?

And who filmed it…

Compared to how it was filmed, Fujihiro Shoji cared more about who filmed it.

The more he watched, the more he was awestruck.

How could this person track NH137 from takeoff to the incident to landing?

It was as if the filmer was a prophet, anticipating NH137’s incident and pre-recorded its entire journey.

Wait!

Anticipating NH137’s incident??

Something crucial struck Fujihiro Shoji—he went pale.

He didn’t believe the filmer randomly chose to follow a plane, happened to pick NH137, and just happened to witness a global news event.

The proof was in the video.

One scene showed NH137 before the incident—the camera cut to the crows…

At that moment, the crows were still far away, and NH137 hadn’t even taken off—they weren’t on the same flight path, impossible to predict a collision.

Impossible to predict—but the filmer had clearly recorded the crows in advance.

This alone proved:

The filmer knew for certain the crows would hit the plane.

So how did he know?

“Could the crow collision have been deliberate?!” Fujihiro Shoji muttered, voicing a chilling theory.

He didn’t believe in prophets or fortune-tellers.

Science had theories: humans couldn’t foresee the future out of nowhere—only through reasoning.

In short, by gathering information, calculating, and deducing what would happen next.

However, NH137 could not possibly predict a bird strike.

Purely foreknowledge from nothing.

This point cannot be explained by science; only ghost and deity theories can account for it.

As an intellectual with higher education, Fujihira Shoji did not believe in ghost and deity theories.

He firmly believed that science was supreme!

There were no ghosts in the world.

All folk legends of supernatural phenomena suspected to involve ghosts or deities had long been proven by scientists to be natural phenomena, with logical and evidential basis.

Moreover, if ghosts or deities truly existed, why had none ever appeared to this day?

As for whether the airplane and crow in the video were special effects...

Fujihira Shoji was no fool.

Although he could not produce movie special effects, he understood one thing: special effects took a great deal of time to create.

In just half a day, it was impossible to achieve such realistic crow and airplane special effects.

Since it was neither foreknowledge of the future nor special effects,

there was only one possibility.

The crow hitting the airplane was deliberate!!

Someone was guiding the airplane to take off and forcing the crow to strike it.

“Hiss!” At this thought, Fujihira Shoji’s scalp prickled.

If it truly was deliberate, the NH137 incident would not be an accident.

It would be an extremely heinous murder case.

A single act of murder killing 231 people!

No!

He had to report this immediately.

Fujihira Shoji hurriedly stood up and put on his clothes.

If NH137 was not an accident, the killer was still at large and might strike again.

Quickly dress.

Putting on his shoes, Fujihira Shoji picked up his phone.

Suddenly.

Out of the corner of his eye, Fujihira Shoji froze, his hand holding the phone still, staring fixedly at the video on the screen.

“This!”