The Title He Always Chose First

Yeonwoo was someone who decided on the title first.

Ghost Freshman. A desk for a student who doesn't exist, on the third floor.

Once you decide the title, the article writes itself. Two photos, one witness quote, and a final paragraph that ends in a question mark. Views around eight hundred. Club activity records needed for the dissolution review started at three hundred, so that was enough.

The Choice Aftertone club had two members. Yeonwoo, and a third year who'd only put his name on the roster. The dissolution review was next month. If they failed the review, thirty boxes of archive material would go to the academy warehouse. In the warehouse, it would be discarded within three years.

He'd taken the photos the night before. The classroom at the back of the third floor hadn't been locked.

The door opened ten minutes before Yeonwoo posted to the board.

"Im Yeonwoo." Miray called his name first.

Four of them came in. Yeonwoo knew all four. The bottom placement class, Group 7. One conditional stamp, one weapons tournament win, four clauses, and the one who heard sounds.

A title candidate came to him immediately. Group 7 tries to hide a ghost.

"Take the article down." Miray pointed at his terminal screen.

"Why?" Yeonwoo didn't turn the terminal away. "I got a tip, I took the photo myself, and that classroom wasn't even locked."

"Evidence contamination."

"Contamination?" Yeonwoo made air quotes with his hands. "I just took a photo. I didn't touch anything."

"Posting the photo is the contamination." Miray said it like a clause. "If you post it, people go to that classroom. Eighteen people walked that hallway yesterday. If you post today, a hundred will go."

Yeonwoo knew that math was right. Knowing it, he answered anyway.

"Then just report it to the academy. Did you report it?"

Miray didn't answer.

"You didn't report it." Yeonwoo said. "Because the academy is erasing that name. Right?"

Yeonwoo threw out that sentence and watched the reaction. Throwing possible stories into a blank space to draw out a reaction was his method. He'd prepared three, and this was the second.

The four of them had different expressions. Seorin didn't change. Miray gripped her pen. Doyun stepped half a pace forward. Garam looked at the ceiling instead of at Yeonwoo.

Yeonwoo read all of it. Reading was his job.

"I'll change the title. The academy erases students. That's stronger."

"That hasn't been confirmed yet." Miray said.

"Unconfirmed doesn't mean it can't be an article. You just put a question mark on it."

"An article with a question mark doesn't get read as a question mark."

Yeonwoo stopped for a moment at that sentence. Not because he had no comeback. Because he'd heard that same sentence last year.

Last year Yeonwoo had written an article about a lab accident. He'd put a question mark in the title. Was the cause of the accident equipment failure? he'd written, and the real cause had been student error. That student withdrew from school two months later.

To be precise, it wasn't even error. The student had followed the regulations exactly, and the regulations themselves were outdated. But because the article had questioned equipment failure, people looked at the equipment, and once the equipment turned out to be fine, the only answer left was the person.

Yeonwoo knew he'd made that sequence himself. Where you put the question mark decides who gets suspected next.

Yeonwoo had posted a correction. The correction got forty one views. The original had passed two thousand.

He'd removed that student's name from the correction. The original never mentioned it in the first place, so there was nothing to remove. That made it worse. Even without a name, everyone in the department knew who it was.

"Can I ask about an article?" Doyun said then. "You're the one who wrote the lab accident article last year, right?"

Yeonwoo's hand stopped.

"What about it."

"The correction is still on the board. Below the original." Doyun said. "Usually corrections get taken down."

"...I didn't take it down."

"Why not?"

Yeonwoo chose his answer. His habit of stripping out qualifiers when he was serious surfaced.

"If I take it down, it becomes like it never happened."

Garam lowered his gaze from the ceiling then.

"No offbeat, just now."

"What does that mean?"

"It means he's sincere." Miray translated. "That's Garam's sense. It's not evidence."

Yeonwoo didn't like the way the three of them operated. He knew exactly why he didn't like it. These kids drew a line between what they know and what they don't when they speak. Yeonwoo wasn't good at that.

"I'll set a condition." Yeonwoo said.

"Go ahead." Miray raised her pen.

"I'll hold the article. In exchange, put me in the investigation too." Yeonwoo took out a form. A club membership form. "To be precise, our club becomes the preservation manager for this investigation."

"Preservation?" Miray asked back.

"Keeping the originals. Photos, timestamps, witness statements." Yeonwoo pushed the paper across. "I get access rights, and you get a clause that I show you before I publish anything."

Miray read the paper.

"What's the point of publication."

"After the victim's identity is confirmed." Yeonwoo said. "And once confirmed, we ask that person first whether they want anonymity."

Seorin spoke for the first time. "Where did you learn that clause."

"Last year."

The four of them went quiet.

"Can I ask what happened last year?" Doyun asked.

"I wrote one article wrong."

"That's all?"

"One person withdrew from school." Yeonwoo said that sentence short. Saying it short was the most he could manage today. "Whether it was because of my article or not was never confirmed. But I don't want to use unconfirmed as a shield."

Miray's pen stopped. Then it moved again. Yeonwoo watched his own sentence turn into a clause.

Miray wrote two more lines of conditions on the membership form. One was the copy location for preserved material. The other was immediate loss of access rights upon violation.

"If you sign this, we have one condition too." Miray said. "Open your club's archive room. The lost property list."

"Why lost property?"

"If there's a student being erased, that student's belongings will still be there."

Yeonwoo understood the logic immediately. And he also understood that he'd had that list for three years and never once thought of it that way.

"...We have it. The original list."

The archive room used to be the old print room. Boxes were stacked to the wall, and Yeonwoo pulled one out.

The original lost property list. Thirty one years' worth.

"Why does this go back so far?" Doyun looked at the year printed on the side of the box.

"Our club was originally lost property storage. The rumors got attached later."

Garam put his hand on one of the boxes then. And didn't open it.

"There's a sound here."

"A sound?"

"No, to be precise, there isn't. The other boxes make a paper sound. This one's metal."

"Can we open it?" Yeonwoo asked.

"Photo first." Miray lifted her terminal. "Leave a record of the order we open it in too."

Yeonwoo found the procedure tedious. Tedious, but if one tedious procedure like this had existed last year, that student might not have withdrawn.

Yeonwoo opened the box. An envelope was tucked between the lists.

Inside the envelope was a graduation badge. It was old, the plating worn off.

The name field was scratched out. The scratch marks matched the ones on the inside of the professor's compass.

"I saw the same thing yesterday." Miray said. "Inside the professor's compass."

"You mean the same person scratched it?"

"I mean the same method. I don't know if it's the same person."

Miray photographed the badge. She didn't touch it.

"Yeonwoo. Is there a return record for this envelope?"

Yeonwoo checked the list. There was a return card attached to the envelope.

A return time was written on it.

"...This is from last week."

"Last week when?"

Yeonwoo held the card up to the window light. His hand trembled a little, and he raised his voice to hide the trembling.

"Tuesday. Twelve oh two."

"Does it say who returned it too?" Seorin asked.

Yeonwoo looked at the back of the card. There was a field for the returner.

It was empty.

"Does a return time ever get written without a returner listed?"

"No." Yeonwoo said. "I've used this card for three years. The receiving clerk writes the time. I'm the receiving clerk."

"Did you write it?"

Yeonwoo looked at his own handwriting. Tuesday, twelve oh two. It was his handwriting.

"...I don't remember."

Garam lifted his head. It was the same minute as when the thirteenth bell had rung, right after the noon bell ended.

Garam then brought his face close to the envelope without touching it.

"This badge, there's one more sound."

"A metal sound?"

"No. Not like a human voice." Garam searched for the word. "It's the sound of someone holding it for a long time recently. There's a hand sound left on it."

"Isn't that evidence too?" Yeonwoo asked.

"No. It's my sense." Garam stepped back. "But if someone held it, there might be fingerprints left."

Miray wrote that sentence down. One more verifiable item added.

Yeonwoo could have turned that fact into a title. A badge from thirty one years ago, returned last week. It was a good title.

He opened his terminal. And pressed save as draft.

"I'm not publishing it." Yeonwoo said. "Instead, I'll register this as Preservation Item One."

Miray wrote the registration number in the group's log. Preservation One, managed by Im Yeonwoo, copy locations at two sites.

"Why keep copies in two places?" Yeonwoo asked.

"Because with one place, that person decides when to take it out."

Yeonwoo understood that meant they didn't trust him. Knowing that, he didn't feel bad about it. Last year, no one had told him they didn't trust him. They'd simply not read what he wrote.

"Can I ask one thing?" Yeonwoo looked at the four of them. "Why are you investigating this? It has nothing to do with your grades, right?"

"Nothing to do with it." Miray said.

"Then why."

Garam answered. "I heard it. So I have to check."

"Is that a reason?"

"It is for me." Garam pressed his palm to the box. "I'm recording it now to make it a reason for other people too."

Yeonwoo tried to turn that sentence into a title. It wouldn't turn into one. Good sentences usually don't make good titles.