The Blank Signature Line

On the day he was released, what Yun Taegyeong got back was a wristwatch, a wrinkled work uniform, and a receipt for his mother's funeral expenses.

On the back of the receipt, someone had written a date in ballpoint pen. On that date he had been in court, and his mother had been at the funeral home. What connected the two places was a single line of a lie. "Balance confirmed."

Taegyeong sat on the cold bench at the bus stop outside the prison gate and opened the court judgment. The company had gone bankrupt, wages had gone unpaid, and business partners had absorbed the losses. The judgment spent pages on management's directives and the accounting manipulation. But on the last page, in the confirmation column of the funds verification sheet, was Yun Taegyeong's name.

He didn't look at that name for long. Looking too long bred excuses.

That day too, the team leader had said everyone else had already signed off, so all he had to do was confirm the balance. He hadn't seen the original account records, but he hadn't said he hadn't seen them. It was the end of the month, payments to his father's factory were stuck, and word of a promotion to associate had been going around. Just get through this once was the cheapest thing anyone could say.

The bus arrival chime sounded.

At the same moment, his phone buzzed with a notification.

Taegyeong looked up. There was no bus. Instead there was the approval room under fluorescent lights. Three copies of the funds verification sheet and a blue approval folder sat on the desk. The wall clock read 9:55 a.m.

Twelve years earlier.

His fingertips moved first. He looked at the bottom right of the document. Recipient account, transaction number, confirmation column. Still blank.

"Associate Yun."

Choi Minsu, sitting across from him, spoke up. Minsu still had the face of someone less than a year into the job. His tie knot was crooked, and he held the office phone he'd brought from the team leader's room. "The team leader wants this up in ten minutes. He says the bank's waiting too."

Taegyeong flipped the paper over. On the back was the day's cash balance sheet. The numbers were cleaner than he remembered. That made them more dangerous. The balance sheet had the money. The actual account did not. What was missing was a single line, one transfer.

In his first life, he'd looked at this paper and felt reassured. He'd believed that if the numbers were printed, someone must have checked them. But it wasn't the one who believed that took the blame. It was the one who signed his name in the confirmation column.

"Who's waiting at the bank?"

Minsu blinked. "What?"

"The name of the person in charge. The loan extension officer, or the factoring officer."

"Manager Choi's supposed to be on the phone with them."

Taegyeong nodded. That meant no answer. When someone said the bank was waiting, it usually meant the bank wasn't waiting at all. It was the kind of sentence people used when they were borrowing the bank's name to steal time inside the company.

The phone rang. Minsu straightened his back the moment he picked up.

"Yes, sir. Associate Yun is right now... yes."

Minsu covered the receiver with his palm and looked at Taegyeong. "He wants it sent up now. The managing director is in the conference room too."

Taegyeong picked up his pen. A flicker of relief crossed Minsu's face, brief. He probably thought that once this document went up, the pressure on him would end. That wasn't Minsu's fault. The newest hire usually learned the escape route before he learned the paperwork.

Taegyeong did not write his name in the confirmation column.

Instead he wrote:

"Approval withheld pending confirmation of original account balance and recipient."

The tip of the pen pressed into the paper. It was a short sentence. But with that one sentence, he pushed away this month's peace, the team leader's trust, and any chance of promotion to associate, all at once.

Minsu set down the receiver. "Associate Yun, this could get the deal cut off."

"If it gets cut off, we write down why."

"It's just... everyone wants this handled fast right now."

"There's nothing here saying who confirmed it."

Taegyeong tapped the bottom of the balance sheet with his finger. There were stamps from the preparer and the reviewer, but no name from anyone who had seen the original. The approval chain had three lines, and responsibility was floating in midair.

Minsu looked down at the paper. He was the one who'd relayed the team leader's order, not the one who'd said he'd confirm it himself. After a long moment, he asked carefully.

"So what should I tell him?"

In his first life, Taegyeong would have said I'll handle it. That phrase both took on the work and, later, quietly buried the blame alone.

"Tell him I requested confirmation of the original. Don't say you confirmed anything."

Minsu's lips tightened, then relaxed. "Understood."

He picked up the phone again. While Minsu chose his words for the team leader, Taegyeong opened the approval system. The mouse felt strangely light in his hand. In his first life he'd opened this screen hundreds of times, but he'd always left the comment field blank. A blank field looked like a record that nothing had happened, and later it became a passage where no one had to take responsibility.

Taegyeong entered the transaction number and the last four digits of the recipient account. Then he wrote: "No supporting documentation for cash inflow attached. Requesting inquiry into original account." Before he hit send, he deleted the wording once and rewrote it. Too long, and it became an excuse. Too short, and someone else would fill in the rest to suit themselves.

Send.

A timestamp appeared on the right side of the screen. 09:58.

That timestamp hadn't existed in his first life.

The door to the team leader's office opened. Choi Seongho walked out from the end of the hallway. His jacket hung over his arm, his phone pressed to his ear. When he saw Taegyeong, he pointed toward the conference room without ending the call.

Taegyeong stood, folder in hand. Minsu murmured behind him.

"Associate Yun, what if the bank really does raise an issue?"

"Then there'll be a record that the bank raised an issue."

That answer hadn't come from courage. It had come from fear. This time, a document had to exist before anyone's voice did.

At the shared printer in the hallway, an inventory sheet fed out page by page. Next to the top item, red text was stamped. Yunseong Precision delivery, shortage expected.

Taegyeong stopped at the sight of it. In his first life, he remembered the date that client had stopped calling, after he'd walked out of the approval room. But memory didn't show him today's order sheet. Only the fact that the client hadn't hung up yet defined the scope of what he could do right now.

At the conference room door, the team leader held out his hand.

"The document."

Taegyeong didn't hand over the folder. Instead he showed the screen with the open comment field.

"Confirming the original account comes first."

The team leader's face hardened. "Associate Yun, are you saying we stop the deal?"

"No. I'm saying I won't put my name on it without confirmation."

Someone dragged a chair beyond the door. Taegyeong listened to the sound and decided that this time, he wouldn't say he was trying to save the company. What he had to stop today wasn't the company's bankruptcy.

It was the way his name would end up on record.

The team leader put his phone in his pocket. With the device gone from his ear, his voice dropped.

"The original was confirmed by Finance HQ. It's not the treasury team's job to hold this up."

"Then attach the Finance HQ confirmer's name."

"Are you trying to pin this on me now?"

Taegyeong glanced at the gap in the conference room door. Someone inside was turning pages. The sound of paper moving was always faster than the sound of responsibility. He held up the tablet screen. The comment field still showed the transaction number and the timestamp of the inquiry request.

"I'm not pinning anything on anyone. I'm saying we should write down who's confirming this. I can't write that I saw an account I never saw."

The team leader's hand paused over the folder. "If you won't write it, I can just have Minsu write it."

Minsu looked up from beside the printer. His face had gone pale. He held the paper in his hands, but he hadn't read the numbers on it. Taegyeong didn't pass him the folder.

"Minsu only relayed the message. He's never seen the original either."

"How would you know that?"

"If someone has seen it, they can write their name down right now."

The air at the end of the hallway went still for a moment. The team leader had been about to open the conference room door, but he stopped and looked at Taegyeong instead. He could get angry. But anger wouldn't fill in the blank on the document.

"What's gotten into you today?"

That question had no past attached to it. So Taegyeong didn't answer with the past.

"There's something I need to confirm today."

Instead of sighing, the team leader gave a short laugh. "Confirm. Fine. Then you confirm it. If the deal stalls before eleven, you're the one explaining it to the client."

He shoved the folder aside and walked into the conference room. As the door closed, the paper sign reading "Emergency Liquidity Review Meeting" swayed. Liquidity had already stalled. What was urgent was who would get cut first.

Minsu came over to Taegyeong. "I printed out the client's inventory sheet. Is it... okay for me to look at this?"

"If it's for work, you should look at it. Just don't send the original file outside."

Minsu hesitated, then handed over the sheet from the printer. Yunseong Precision's order was scheduled for shipment tomorrow. The shortage warning had gone up three hours ago. In the memory of his first life, that client had canceled their advance payment in the afternoon, and Hallim Living had used that cancellation as cover to hide a bigger cash hole. But on today's order sheet, the cancel button hadn't been pressed.

Taegyeong wrote down the extension number next to the client contact's name. Memory couldn't tell him whether the call would go through. It could only tell him that nothing would change if he didn't make it.

"Minsu, can you check the log on who modified this inventory sheet?"

"Only the team leader and production management have that access... I can only view it."

"Then stay someone who only viewed it. But save the print timestamp on the messenger app."

Minsu didn't answer. But he took a photo of the timestamp in the top right corner of the printout with his phone. He didn't ask who he was sending it to. He was choosing his own way of holding his ground.

Taegyeong opened the document again. The last four digits of the recipient account and the last four digits on the balance sheet didn't match. In his first life, he hadn't noticed that discrepancy until the afternoon. Seeing it now didn't bring the money back. But it meant he could stop someone from turning a wrong account into a right one before it was too late.

He dialed the bank's main number. It rang three times. The representative asked for a corporate ID and identity verification to connect him to the account manager. Taegyeong had neither a company phone line nor inquiry access. He wrote that fact down. "10:07, no inquiry access. Need confirmation from an official contact."

Even after the call ended, nothing on the screen had been resolved. But it wasn't blank anymore.

Inside the conference room, the team leader's voice rose. Someone said, "Associate Yun is holding this up." Taegyeong walked past the idle printer and back to his desk. Before dialing the client, he touched the pocket where a loss ledger would have been, out of habit. There was no pocket on his uniform. There was no ledger either.

What remained was a transaction number, and one order that hadn't been canceled yet.