Two Layers of Sound in the Basement

The basement of the dormitory had two layers of sound.

Garam had a habit of counting how many layers of sound there were. The auditorium had nine layers, the cafeteria had six, the library had two. In places with fewer layers, Garam could breathe easy.

The basement had two layers, but it wasn't easy. The second layer moved independently of the first.

Garam confirmed that on the stairs. One layer was the sound of pipes, and beneath it, another layer.

The lower layer wasn't a human sound. But it had rhythm.

"What time is it." Seorin lowered the flashlight.

"Eighteen thirty-seven." Mirae answered. "Three minutes until the meal ticket usage time."

The meal ticket usage record was from yesterday, eighteen forty. Second floor of the student cafeteria. But Team Seven was currently in the dormitory basement.

Mirae's hypothesis went like this. The cafeteria's payment terminal ran through basement wiring to the registrar's server. At the moment of payment, a signal passed through that wiring. The person was upstairs, but the signal passed through below.

"There's no way to verify this hypothesis." Mirae said first. "That's why I wrote it down as a hypothesis."

"Then why did you come." Garam asked.

"Even a hypothesis with no way to verify it can still have its timing checked." Mirae held up her watch. "If it's wrong, we'll know it's wrong."

"Can you hear that signal?" Mirae asked.

"No. I can hear the wiring. Not the signal." Garam said. "But what I heard after yesterday's bell matches this lower layer."

It became eighteen forty.

The lower layer changed. The rhythm slipped once, then fell back into place.

"Now." Garam's hand came half away from the wall.

The four of them stopped. Mirae wrote down the time. Eighteen forty and two seconds.

"Two seconds late." Mirae said. "If yesterday's payment time was exactly forty minutes, then these two seconds are either wiring delay or our watch's margin of error."

"Which of the two is it?"

"I don't know. But if we write down the two seconds, we can compare it next time."

"Garam, what changed?"

"A beat dropped out. And something else filled that gap."

"Which direction." Seorin asked.

Garam pressed his palm to the wall. He moved it to three spots on the wall, and stopped at the third.

"This way." Garam didn't take his hand off the wall.

The passage turned at basement level two. Past the turn was a corridor that wasn't on the map.

Mirae checked the floor plan. "This isn't on the plan. It's drawn as a wall here."

"Is the plan old?" Seorin took the floor plan.

"It's from last year. And to draw something that isn't a wall as a wall, someone has to have fixed it."

The corridor not on the map was twelve steps long. Garam counted the steps. There was recent paint on the wall, and beneath the paint, the original color showed through.

"This wall was painted recently." Mirae took a photo. "It could be from the same time as the plan that drew it as a wall."

"So someone hid this." Seorin said.

"Whether it was hidden or just forgotten, I don't know."

At the end of the corridor there was a door.

It was a metal door, with three locks on it. All three were old, but only the middle one had a clean surface.

It was a lock that had been used recently.

Mirae photographed each of the three locks. Then she shone the flashlight into the keyhole of the middle one.

"There's something red inside the hole."

Garam heard that and looked at Doyun. Doyun said nothing. That meant he hadn't told the team everything about the kitchen earlier.

"Doyun." Garam said. "Did you see that color?"

"...I saw it. Yesterday, on Senior Junseo's key."

"Why didn't you say so."

"I was going to. It just came up too late." Doyun didn't offer an excuse. "I sent the photo to Mirae."

"I got it." Mirae confirmed. "But it didn't go to the whole team."

Mirae wrote that fact down in the ledger. One incident of delayed notice. Team member Han Doyun.

In front of that door, Garam heard it clearly for the first time.

It was an ensemble.

It sounded like four voices. Not voices exactly, but something like the sound four people made when each of them was deciding something. And the four fell into place a beat late.

Garam knew who those four were. Himself, Doyun, Mirae, and Seorin.

More precisely, it was a sound similar to their own. Similar, but late.

"Garam." Doyun looked at him. "What do you hear?"

Garam chose his words. Speaking accurately here was his job for the day.

"I hear four people's sound. It's similar to the four of us. But it's a beat late."

"Why would our sound come from inside the door?"

"I don't know."

"Isn't it an echo?" Doyun stepped half a pace back from the door.

"An echo is the same sound arriving late." Garam said. "This is a different sound arriving late. It's almost like it's imitating ours, or like it was here before ours."

Mirae wrote down both sentences exactly as they were. She didn't reduce them to one.

Doyun put his hand on the door.

Garam watched that motion. It wasn't his left hand. It was his right hand, the hand he used to check locks.

"You need all three to open it." Doyun said.

"I know one of the keys." Mirae said. "The red one."

"That's Senior Junseo's."

"Then there are two left."

Doyun's right hand came down from the lock. Then his left hand went up.

Garam saw Doyun's face at that moment. He could tell what this person was thinking. He knew it by sound. Doyun's breath rose upward.

If someone had tried to open this door and stopped. If someone had stopped locking even one of the three locks. A door is always a place where someone tried to open it and stopped partway.

"Doyun."

"Go ahead."

"Don't open it."

Doyun's hand stopped. Completely.

"I'll tell you why." Garam spoke first. "I know this is a clause you don't have to ask about. But I have to say this."

"I'm listening."

"The sound coming from inside is similar to the four of us." Garam pointed at the door. "If you open it now, we won't be able to tell whether the sound is one you made by opening it, or one that was already there."

Mirae understood that instantly. "Evidence contamination."

"And one more thing." Garam said. "I don't know what this is. I can't even explain well why opening something you don't understand is dangerous. But this sound happened after yesterday's thirteenth bell. If a student gets erased every time the bell rings, then opening this now means opening the door while a person is in the middle of being erased."

Doyun lowered his hand.

Lowering it took time. Garam didn't count that time. Instead, in that span, he listened to what Doyun said.

"My sister's test number is 3304."

"...What?"

"The director told me. She was a participant in the city test three years ago." Doyun looked at his own left hand. "There could be a record from three years ago in here."

Garam heard that sentence and spent three seconds thinking about whether to take back his demand.

Even after three seconds, he didn't take it back.

"Still, don't open it."

"Understood." Doyun's hand dropped to his side.

The answer came fast. Garam found that speed frightening. This person had just given up a lead on his own sister, and it took him less than three seconds to do it.

"Doyun. Are you holding back right now?"

"I'm holding back."

"Then say that you're holding back. Don't say you didn't want to."

Doyun looked at him.

"I'm holding back. I want to open it right now. I'm not not opening it because I think you're right." Doyun said. "I'm not opening it because you told me to stop."

Garam confirmed there was no hitch in that answer. Once he confirmed it, he felt a little cold. That was how much weight his one sentence carried.

Seorin put a seal marker on the door. It was a student council standard seal, and Junseo had given it to her.

"If it's sealed, opening it leaves a record." Seorin said. "Us not opening it is also a record."

Mirae wrote down the sealing time. Eighteen fifty-four.

As the four of them turned to leave, something was pushed out through the gap under the door.

It was paper. A folded piece of paper was pushed out through the gap under the door, and the force pushing it came from inside.

In that moment, Garam heard a sound. Not the sound of paper scraping the floor, but the sound of a hand pushing the paper.

It was a person.

Mirae put on gloves and picked up the paper. She photographed it before unfolding it.

Then she unfolded it.

There were two lines. It was pencil, and the marks were pressed in deep.

Kang Somi

Below that was a date. It was today.

The four of them looked at the paper. No one knocked on the door.

Garam knew why no one knocked. If they knocked, someone inside would answer, and if an answer came, they would have to open it.

"Mirae." Doyun's voice was low. "This is a person."

"I know."

"There's a person in there right now."

"I know." Mirae put the paper in an envelope. "But what that person pushed out to us is a name. Not a request to open the door."

Garam pressed his ear to the door one last time.

The ensemble was still playing. A beat late.

And within it, one had dropped out. One of the four had stopped making sound.

Garam didn't know what that meant. Not knowing, he wrote it down.

Climbing the stairs, the four of them said nothing. At basement level two, Seorin spoke first.

"I'll report the seal to the registrar tomorrow."

"If you report it, the registrar will open it." Mirae said.

"They will. But the record that we didn't open it will exist first."

"What about that person." Garam said. "What about the person inside."

The four of them stopped.

"How many days would it take if we wait for the registrar to open it?" Doyun asked.

"Five days, through the formal process."

"What about that person's meals for five days."

Mirae couldn't answer that question. Instead she took out the meal ticket copy again.

"Yesterday at eighteen forty, one set meal was eaten."

"Then can they come out?" Seorin asked.

"If they can come out, they're not trapped." Mirae said. "If they can come out but only pushed out a piece of paper, that means they're choosing not to come out."

Garam recalled the sound from inside the door once more, from that sentence. One of the four had stopped making sound.

Whether the person not coming out came first, or the sound stopping came first, he couldn't tell.