The Textbooks Collected Before Class

Ma Eunha collected the textbooks before class began.

"We won't be using textbooks today. Put them at the front."

Twelve students set their textbooks at the front. The thirteenth desk had no textbook, and Ma Eunha didn't count that seat. Not counting it took effort.

What she set on the desk was a broken object.

A brass case, palm sized, its lid half torn off. Inside were two needles, and neither was moving.

"This is a choice compass. Find out who gave up on what. Forty minutes."

Nine of the twelve students picked up their pens. Picking up a pen for an assignment with nothing to write down was a habit of this class. Most students in the lowest tier had ended up here because they'd done something wrong, and people who've done something wrong tend to want to write things down.

"Aren't we finding out why it broke?" Mirae asked.

"That's part of the answer too."

"Then how many answers are there." Seorin asked.

"I don't know."

The classroom stirred slightly. A professor saying she didn't know wasn't something that happened often at this academy.

"You really don't know?" Mirae checked.

"I don't know all of it," Ma Eunha said. "There's a part I do know. I won't say it."

"Is that a test, or are you hiding something."

"Both."

Ma Eunha walked to the window. Standing there let her see every student's hands while her own face fell half into shadow. She'd used this spot for twelve years.

Team 7 moved first. Seorin picked up the case and checked its weight, Garam pressed an ear to the inside, and Mirae laid out the parts one by one. Doyun wrote down the order in which she laid them out.

Ma Eunha watched that arrangement. Last week Doyun had reached out first. Today he was fourth.

"No sound." Garam said. "None at all. It's dead."

"What are we supposed to find in a dead object." Seorin flipped the case over.

"It's not dead, the afterglow's just gone." Mirae picked up one of the needles. "If it's a compass, it must have been built to point at someone's giving up. If that giving up got taken back, it wouldn't move."

"Taken back."

"It means someone took it."

"Can something be taken?" Doyun asked. It was the first thing he'd said in this class.

"I don't know. So I'll write it down as a hypothesis." Mirae added a question mark.

Ma Eunha looked at that question mark. Last month this student hadn't used question marks. She'd written only conclusions.

Ma Eunha noted the moment that answer came out. Fourteen minutes.

Then Mirae pried open the inner panel of the case.

"Professor, is it all right if I take this apart?"

"The responsibility for any damage is mine."

After she said it, Ma Eunha realized the sentence had been permission. If she hadn't meant to allow it, she would have put the responsibility for damage on the student. For the first time in twelve years, she'd opened the door halfway on her own.

Mirae pried the panel off. There was writing beneath where it had been torn away.

It was an erased signature. Not chemically erased but scraped off, and part of a stroke remained where it had been scraped.

Ma Eunha watched the scene from the window. This was the first time in twelve years a student had torn that panel off.

"There's writing." Mirae said. "It's a signature. Two of them. One's completely erased, and one has the first letter left."

"Can you read it." Seorin asked.

"It starts with an M."

Mirae said the sound aloud, then, without anyone watching, wrote it on her own paper. She didn't say the name. Saying the name would turn it into a statement made before verification.

The classroom went quiet. A few of the twelve students looked toward the window.

Ma Eunha didn't take off her glasses. Taking them off would mean she'd already deferred judgment, and these students didn't know that yet.

"Next."

"Next?" Mirae repeated.

"Keep telling me what you find. Four minutes left."

Mirae looked further into the panel. Then she rubbed something with her fingertip.

"There's powder. White, coarse crystals."

"Chalk." Ma Eunha said.

"Do you know which chalk it is."

"I do."

Mirae didn't ask the next question. Instead she took out a piece of paper from her pocket and transferred some of the powder onto it. Then she went to the chalk box at the front of the classroom.

The chalk box held two kinds. The academy's standard chalk, and the coarse crystal chalk Ma Eunha used personally.

Mirae set the two side by side and compared them with the powder on the paper.

"It's this classroom's." Mirae said. "It's your chalk, professor."

"Is that a conclusion, or an observation."

"An observation. The crystal size and color match." Mirae left the two pieces of chalk where they were. "If it's the same manufacturer, it could exist in other classrooms too. I haven't checked that."

Ma Eunha listened to that last sentence for a long time. Students who say they haven't checked something they haven't checked are rare. It was something she herself hadn't been able to say twelve years ago.

Ma Eunha waited for that sentence. She had three prepared answers. First, denial. Second, explanation. Third, silence.

She chose the third. She always chose the third.

"Forty minutes is up."

"Professor." Mirae didn't back down. "Was this compass in this classroom?"

"I'm giving out the next assignment."

Mirae's hand stopped. Seorin watched that hand, and Garam listened to Ma Eunha's voice.

Ma Eunha noticed her own voice had dropped half a tone. It was the tone that came out when she said dangerous verbs to students. Right now the danger wasn't on the students' side.

"This is a counterexample experiment." She took a second object out from her desk. It was the same kind of compass, and this one wasn't broken. "This one works. Set the two side by side and observe what's different."

"You didn't answer the question." Mirae said.

"I won't answer."

"Why."

Ma Eunha could have answered that question. Twelve years ago, she had attended the design meeting for the archive twice, and signed at the second one. That signature was about the storage method, and the sentence saying the storage targets would become students hadn't been in the minutes at the time.

The meeting had lasted three hours. She had objected twice. The record of her objection was in an appendix to the minutes, and the appendix was never made public. The signature was in the main text.

That was the structure of this whole thing. Objections lived where no one could see, and consent lived where everyone could.

That it hadn't been there was a fact, and that she hadn't checked was also a fact.

If she told them that now, the students would do one of two things. Forgive her, or stop the investigation. Both would delay them from judging for themselves.

She had settled it that way, and had taught for twelve years with it settled. Today, for the first time, that settlement sounded thin.

"Observe. That's today's lesson."

When the two compasses were set side by side, the needle in the working one moved.

It pointed in one direction. Not out the window, but at the floor.

"It's pointing down." Garam said.

"The basement." Seorin said. "This building's basement is a closed area."

"Why was it closed." Doyun asked.

"Failed structural safety rating." Ma Eunha knew that answer, and she also knew it was the answer on paper.

"You mean that's what's written in the documents."

Ma Eunha didn't answer. This student had been someone who signed things without knowing their value last week. Now he was asking with the documents and the facts kept separate.

Just then the noon bell rang.

Ma Eunha wasn't someone who counted the bells. She hadn't counted them in twelve years. Today she counted.

Twelve.

Garam looked up.

"It rang one more time."

Ma Eunha heard that. Then she looked at the compass.

Twelve years ago, in that meeting, someone had said this. Storage makes no sound. Back then she had used those words to reassure herself.

At the same moment as the thirteenth ring, the working needle turned one more notch. The broken compass's needle trembled slightly too, for the first time.

It was the same instant.

Mirae wrote down both of those movements. "Professor, can I record this now?"

"Record it."

"I'll put it in the shared log. The photo of the signature too."

Ma Eunha stopped at that sentence.

"You took a photo."

"I took it when I pried the panel off." Mirae held up her device. "You said the responsibility for damage was yours, so I had to keep the original state on record."

Ma Eunha could have reached out her hand. There was a procedure for a professor to use their authority to retrieve a student's class materials from a device. It would take fifteen minutes.

"Why are you telling me first."

"Because you admitted it was this classroom's chalk." Mirae didn't lower her device. "Telling the person who admitted it first is the procedure."

That was the language of a contract. Ma Eunha understood that language, and she also understood that she'd just been classified as a stakeholder.

"Put it up."

"You're not going to retrieve it?"

"I could." Ma Eunha said. "I won't."

She didn't attach a reason to that sentence. Attaching one would have made it an excuse.

"I'll set one condition." She said that instead. "The shared log belongs to the students. Don't include my viewing access in it."

"Are you saying to leave yourself as a subject of the investigation." Seorin asked.

"Leave it that way."

"That's a disadvantage to you, professor." Mirae said.

"It is a disadvantage." Ma Eunha admitted. "If I set the favorable conditions myself, the students won't be able to trust this investigation later."

Garam spoke for the first time then. "Professor, your voice didn't waver just now."

"What does that mean."

"It means you meant it. But meaning it and saying everything aren't the same thing."

Ma Eunha didn't argue with that. There was nothing to argue.

In the end, she didn't write the result of the counterexample experiment on the board. Writing it would make it look like the correct answer. Instead she left the two compasses on the desk as they were, and said they'd still be there for the next class.

"Can we take them?" Mirae asked.

"Leave them. Being here is the evidence."

When the students had left and she was alone in the classroom, Ma Eunha picked up a piece of chalk.

She hadn't meant to write anything on the board. She was just holding it.

The chalk snapped in half. She was the one who broke it.