Three Lines on the Return Form

The return form had three lines: item name, reason for return, receipt confirmation.

Seorin lingered a long time on the second line.

She'd brought the directional calibration gear back still in its box. An unopened box. There were several sentences she could write in the reason for return field. Below specification. No plan to use it. Personal reasons.

Write personal reasons and no one asks further. That was exactly why Seorin didn't write it.

I am returning this because the result would no longer be one I reached by my own judgment.

The administrative staff member read that line and looked at Seorin.

"This... if you write it this way, it gets reported to the director." The clerk's pen stopped.

"It should be reported."

"Why?" The clerk looked back and forth between the box and the form.

"Because the fact that I didn't write it needs to stay on record." Seorin set the box on the counter. "Not writing something doesn't mean it didn't happen."

The decision accuracy assessment was in the afternoon.

The evaluation method was different from the maze. The maze had tested picking a path. This one tested holding to the path you'd picked, all the way through.

The examinee stands before six doors and chooses one. Opening the door reveals a room, and from the room, two paths lead out. You choose one of those. You repeat this nine times.

The trap was at the end. In the ninth room, the proctor tells you your eighth choice was wrong. At that point the examinee can do one of two things: go back and fix it, or continue as is.

Most go back. Because they'd been told they were wrong.

Seorin had looked at the records of twelve seniors who'd taken this exam three years ago. Ten had gone back, two had continued. Of the two, one was now in the academic affairs office, and one had dropped out.

The records kept the reasoning fields for both of them. The one who stayed in academic affairs had written a reason. The one who dropped out had left the reasoning field blank.

The evaluation criterion wasn't going back, and it wasn't continuing either. It was whether you could say why you'd made that choice.

Seorin knew that criterion. She'd been preparing for this exam since three years ago. Because the director was the one who designed it.

First door. Seorin chose the third door.

"Reasoning."

"The floor wear in front of this door is the least. It's the path fewer people have passed through."

"Is that a reason that favors you?"

"I don't know. It's simply what I observed." Seorin opened the door.

The proctor wrote something down. Seorin didn't count the sound of the pen.

From the second door through the seventh, everything went according to plan. In each room, Seorin said aloud which option she was discarding before she chose, and left a reason behind after she chose.

The reason for the fourth room was airflow. The fifth was the paint thickness on the doorframe. The sixth was sound. At the sixth, Seorin realized she was using Garam's method, and wrote that fact into the reasoning field. Borrowed a teammate's observation method.

As she wrote it, she thought it might count against her. She wrote it anyway. Using someone else's method and writing it down as your own was the same kind of thing as the gear she'd returned that morning.

The cost came starting from the third door. Not her wrist this time, her right shoulder. She'd declared eleven times in the maze yesterday, and the cost hadn't fully cleared yet.

Mirae had mentioned it. That Yu Seorin's cost hadn't cleared. At the time, Seorin had answered that it was her own body.

Now, in the eighth room, her shoulder moved half a beat slow. That meant Mirae had been right.

Seorin didn't write that half beat into the reasoning field. Writing it would be grounds to halt the exam. And she decided that choosing not to write it was also her own decision. If she kept that straight, she could later tell Mirae, when asked, that it was something she'd chosen, not something she'd hidden.

Eighth choice. Left.

In the ninth room, the proctor spoke.

"Your eighth choice was wrong. The right side was the correct path." The proctor didn't look up from the form.

Seorin stood in front of the door. The door back hadn't closed yet.

Going back cost her. It was the price of withdrawing a decision she'd already fixed in place. With her shoulder in this state, one time was the limit. And if she went back, the record would show that Yu Seorin heard the proctor's word and changed her judgment.

Going forward as she was would cost her points.

Seorin chose a third option.

"I have a question."

"Go ahead."

"What is the correct path correct for?"

The proctor looked at the form. "The shortest path."

"I never said I was choosing the shortest path." Seorin pointed at the eighth room. "I chose left because the seam in the left wall was open. I left a reason. Please check it."

The proctor flipped through the record. The sentence was there in the eighth reasoning field.

"... It's written down."

"Then my choice wasn't wrong, it was a different standard. I won't go back."

"You'll lose points."

"I'll accept the deduction. I won't withdraw."

For the first time, the proctor looked up from the form. "Student Yu Seorin. Do you know who designed this exam?"

"I do."

"Then you must know what answer they'd want right now."

"I do." Seorin gripped the doorknob. "That's exactly why I won't."

Seorin opened the ninth door and walked out.

The result came thirty minutes later. Shortest path deduction: two points. Reasoning consistency: full marks. Overall rank: first.

A win without any gear. Her second one.

Before checking the scoreboard, Seorin looked inside the sheath. Four marks. Yesterday there had been three.

Today she hadn't withdrawn a single time. And yet the crack had grown.

Seorin filed that fact away as the third thing to remember. In the maze she'd declared nine times and paid the cost eleven times, and the crack had only grown by one mark. Today there had been no withdrawal at all, and it had still grown by one mark.

The numbers didn't add up, twice now. Twice not adding up wasn't coincidence.

Seorin worked out a third possibility. If the condition for the crack growing wasn't withdrawal, then what was it. There was one thing she'd done today that matched what she'd done in the maze. Not following the answer the proctor had already decided on.

It was a hypothesis. Seorin was not someone who wrote hypotheses down as conclusions, so she put a question mark on the paper and folded it away.

She didn't hand the sheath over to the maintenance room.

Before evening, Seorin went to the academic appeals office. She brought the application that had been rejected that morning, again.

"The same application cannot be resubmitted within the same term." The clerk didn't pick up the stamp.

"It isn't the same application." Seorin set down a new form. "This morning's was a request for a new rule. This is a request to interpret an existing rule."

The clerk looked at the form.

Safety contribution clause. School regulation, article forty one. When an examinee preemptively blocks physical danger to another examinee, it is recognized as a separate contribution.

"This clause applies to rescue actions. Exercising the right to refuse isn't a rescue."

"It is a rescue." Seorin took out the demolition crew's confirmation document. "The support structure under the third floor corridor had been cut through. There was no marking. Because Yi Garam refused, Jo Hyeonwoo never stepped on that floor."

"That's how it turned out, as a result, but..." The clerk let the sentence trail off.

"It is a result." Seorin conceded the point. "That's why the clause's preemptive requirement is written separately. Yi Garam stopped on the grounds of a sound that hadn't been confirmed. She was the one who disclosed first that it hadn't been confirmed. It's in the record."

The clerk read Mirae's two line record. Right of refusal exercised, one case, result: lowest score. Confirmed afterward, fall risk real.

"The order is written this way." The clerk tapped the two lines with a finger.

"That order is the reasoning. It's not a record of someone knowing the outcome and pretending they'd done well."

It took two days to pass. Safety contribution, one case. Reflected as two point five points added to team seven's practical score.

The lowest score moved to just above the lowest score. That was all.

As Mirae entered the two point five onto the settlement sheet, she added one more line. Filed solely by Yu Seorin, benefit to the team, no benefit to herself.

"Can I delete this line," Mirae asked.

"Why delete it."

"If it stays on Yu Seorin's record, someone could later use it to call this favoritism toward the team."

"Let them say it." Seorin said. "When that happens, this line becomes the evidence."

Doyun came to find her after hearing the news. Seorin had guessed three things he might say, and all three were forms of thanks.

"Why did you do it?"

That wasn't one of them.

"I didn't do it for you."

"Then what was it."

"I've won twice." Seorin didn't show him the scoreboard. "Academic affairs listens to someone who's won twice. If someone who's never won had filed the same request, it would have been rejected."

"I know that. I'm asking why you spent that power here."

Seorin understood the question exactly. And she answered it exactly.

"If I'd been in that situation yesterday, I wouldn't have stopped. I don't change what I've decided. That's my way, and that way won today too."

"So then?"

"So then, if I hadn't stopped yesterday, someone would have fallen." Seorin touched the sheath once. "For the first time, I have proof that my way isn't always right. If the school doesn't keep that proof on record, I'll forget it eventually."

Doyun tried to say something. Seorin spoke first.

"Don't thank me. It's my record."

"I won't." Doyun said. "Can I write one thing down instead? That you returned the gear today."

"Why write that down."

"So I can look at it next time I get something from the director."

Seorin considered that answer for a long time. Doyun had made the same request last week too. Fixing his own memory in advance.

"Write it. I'll decide the wording."

"Tell me the wording." Doyun picked up his pen.

"Yu Seorin, returned directional calibration gear, unopened." Seorin said it once more. "Don't drop unopened."

"Why does that matter?"

"If I'd opened it, it means I resisted temptation. If I never opened it, it means there was no temptation." Seorin remembered her hand pausing once when she returned the box. "I didn't open it. But I did think about opening it. You don't need to write that part down."

Doyun wrote it down. Seorin checked that he'd written unopened exactly right.

When she got back to the dormitory, a notice was posted on her door.

Successor interview. Today, nineteen hundred hours. Director's office.

There was no congratulatory line. Seorin peeled off the notice, held it in her hand, and folded it twice. The fold lines ran in the same direction as the crack inside the sheath.