One Page With Only Doyun's Name

The draft evaluation was one page, and only Doyun's name was on it.

On Taeho's desk, alongside that draft, there were two other stacks of documents. One was the underground structure report, and the other was Baek Jihoon's application to cancel his withdrawal. The cancellation application already had a stamp on it.

Doyun checked that stamp first. The person staying enrolled was confirmed. That was the most important part of today.

One successful rescue. Time used: seventeen seconds. No loss. Ability control rating: high.

"Any objections." Taeho set the draft down without sliding it over.

Doyun read the paper. Ability control rating high. That one line would lift the freeze on the scholarship review. One million two hundred seventy thousand won would come back.

"What does this evaluation measure." Doyun asked without picking up the paper.

"The results of the student's ability use." Taeho pointed at the item number.

"Seventeen seconds wasn't something I decided."

Taeho's pen stopped. "Who decided it."

"Baek Jihoon did. He calculated it himself."

"That's a statement item from the subject. Not an evaluation item."

"Then the item is wrong."

"You're contesting the format right now."

"Yes."

"Students who contest the format usually got a low score." Taeho turned the draft with his fingertip. "You just received the highest rating."

"That's exactly why it's right to speak up now. If you speak up after getting a low score, nobody listens."

Taeho set the stopwatch on the desk. It meant this man was starting to time him.

"Explain."

Doyun hadn't prepared anything. What had been prepared was in Mirae and Seorin's hands.

The three of them had talked about this in the dorm hallway last night. Doyun had said they should just accept the evaluation. If the freeze lifted, there would be a next semester. Mirae had objected, and Seorin had neither objected nor agreed.

Seorin had said this. If you accept it, I won't file an objection. But whatever you receive next time, I won't verify it for you.

That sentence had stayed with him all night.

The door opened and the two of them came in. Mirae had a chart in her hand.

"This is a contribution breakdown chart." Mirae set the chart on the desk.

The chart had five lines.

Cost notification and partial consent procedure design, Park Mirae. Verification of intent, Lee Garam. Termination time management, Yu Seorin. Reopening execution, Han Doyun. Authorization and site access, Ma Eunha.

Doyun was bothered by the professor's name being on the last line. Mirae had said it had to be included. If they were recorded as having entered the basement without authorization, the whole team would be logged as trespassing.

"This is a chart the students made." Taeho turned the chart toward himself. "Students don't have evaluation authority."

"We didn't evaluate anything." Mirae pointed at the chart. "We only wrote down observed facts. Each item has a time and a signature."

"Han Doyun's item is the only one that's singular."

"It was singular." Mirae didn't erase that cell.

Taeho looked at the chart for a long time. Doyun couldn't read the direction of that silence.

There was a spot on the chart where a sixth line had been erased. Doyun recognized that spot. Yesterday Mirae had entered Baek Jihoon's name there and then erased it. She'd said that if you list the subject as a contributor, that person could later be blamed for their own rescue.

"Yu Seorin." Taeho asked. "Your item is termination time management. Why was this necessary."

"Han Doyun has a habit of being late on the termination signal." Seorin said this without looking at Doyun. "In the first reproduction test, he went one second over. It's in the record."

"So you made sure he didn't see the stopwatch himself."

"I made sure he couldn't see it. If he sees it, he makes his own judgment."

Taeho wrote that sentence not in the margin but in the body of the form.

"Lee Garam's item is verification of intent." Taeho continued. "Is this a measurable act."

Doyun answered.

"It's measurable." Doyun said. "Look at last week's additional practice record. And yesterday's underground record too."

Taeho laid the two records side by side. One was the lowest score, the other a successful rescue.

"That practice record is the lowest score."

"That lowest score is the evidence." Doyun said the sentence slowly. While speaking, he made sure his voice didn't speed up. "Lee Garam stopped me that day. I missed the target and lost points. Afterward, it was confirmed that the floor I'd been about to step on had been severed."

"That's hindsight reasoning."

"Yes. So let me talk about the part that isn't about the result." Doyun thought back to last week's basement. "Yesterday underground, Lee Garam said the two sounds from Baek Jihoon didn't match. Because of that, I went back and got the subject's consent again. If I hadn't, I would have just opened it."

"And if you had opened it."

"It would have been use without consent. A second violation."

"Baek Jihoon came out alive."

"He came out alive." Doyun acknowledged the sentence. "On the first day too, a person came out alive. And that person forgot his own way back."

Taeho didn't say the name. Doyun didn't either. Both of them had seen the empty column where Gangjun's reason for forfeiture should have been.

Taeho didn't write down that answer. Instead he asked.

"Student, you're lowering your own rating right now. Do you understand that."

"I understand."

"The scholarship freeze will stay in place."

"I understand."

"Then why are you doing this."

Doyun made three possible sentences to answer that question. Two of the three sounded good.

He said the third.

"Last week the director offered me a track. On the back of the form, it said a teammate stopping me counted as experimental interference. I refused it."

Taeho's hand stopped.

"But this evaluation has the same structure." Doyun said. "If only my name is on this, next time I won't write down the name of the person who stopped me. After the first time, it gets easier."

Taeho turned off the stopwatch.

"What about the student's name." Mirae asked. "Han Doyun's item still remains too. Reopening execution."

"It remains."

"Then you just need to grade that item."

Taeho flipped the evaluation form over. The back was blank.

"The existing format has no joint item."

"Can you make one." Seorin didn't back down.

"I can make one. If I do, it becomes my discretionary judgment, and discretionary judgment is subject to open verification at the end of the semester." Taeho picked up his pen. "If I get it wrong, my evaluation credibility drops."

"So you won't make one." Mirae asked.

"I will." Taeho said. "But there's a condition."

"Go ahead."

"This item will be openly verified at the end of the semester. If verification determines this item was used as a means to avoid a low grade, it will be deleted retroactively." Taeho looked at the four of them. "At that point, your other scores will also be recalculated. They could end up lower than now."

Mirae asked immediately. "What's the scope of the recalculation."

"All practicals for this semester."

"Then all four of us need to sign." Mirae looked at Seorin and Garam. "This isn't a condition one person gets to decide."

Seorin signed first. Garam pressed his palm flat on the desk, then signed.

Instead of answering, Taeho started writing.

"It's a provisional item. What's it called."

The four of them looked at each other. Mirae started to say something and stopped. Seorin stopped too.

Doyun spoke.

"The choice left behind."

"What does that mean."

"The things that could have been opened but weren't." Doyun said. "I could have used up to thirty three seconds and stopped at seventeen. Lee Garam told me to stop even without being certain. Yu Seorin didn't give me the stopwatch."

Taeho wrote down the name.

"Provisional item, the choice left behind. Whether it counts toward the grade will be decided after verification at the end of this semester."

"So there's no score for it now." Mirae confirmed.

"None. It only shows a marker." Taeho turned the screen to show them.

The item was entered into the evaluation system that afternoon.

A new line appeared in the records of all four members of Team 7. The choice left behind. The value column was empty, and in its place was a gray marker.

A gray marker gets attached to items the system doesn't know how to process. Mirae confirmed that. In the academic system, gray didn't mean provisional, it meant unclassified.

"If it's unclassified, who classifies it later?" Garam asked.

"Whoever gets assigned to classify it, their judgment is what it becomes." Mirae said. "So we need to build up evidence by the end of the semester."

"How do we build up evidence."

"We keep writing down what we stopped. And what we lost by stopping, alongside it." Mirae was already making a new page. "If you don't write down what you lost, it just becomes bragging."

Garam looked at that screen for a long time.

"My name's on there too."

"Of course it is." Doyun pointed at the screen.

"I docked points that time." Garam's voice was low.

"That docking became the item."

Garam didn't take his eyes off the screen. Then he pressed his palm flat on the desk.

"Can I screenshot this?"

"Why?"

"For next time, when I have to stop someone again." Garam picked up his terminal.

Doyun realized that request was the same kind he had made to Seorin last week.

A post went up on the upper track bulletin board right after that.

The title was short. Inquiry regarding new item for lowest ranked class.

The body was two lines. Wondering why a scoreless item shows up in the record. If the marker later becomes a score, what happens to our rankings?

Mirae screenshotted the post. "This is the start of it."

The result of the scholarship recovery review came out that evening. Freeze maintained. There were two lines in the reason column.

Individual ability rating not entered. Joint item pending end of semester verification.

Doyun folded the notice and put it in his pocket. He pressed the fold twice.

After folding it, he looked at his left hand. The line that had been hot yesterday had cooled by night. But it had taken six hours to cool, and that was different from the few seconds on the first day.

He wrote that time down on paper. Not in the team's shared ledger, but in his own notebook.

After writing it, he looked at it for a long time. Six hours. A few seconds on the first day, about ten minutes in the reproduction room, six hours yesterday.

The three numbers were trending in one direction. Doyun didn't give that direction a name.