Half the Lights at Four in the Morning

At four in the morning, the training ground lights only run at half.

Doyun had been using that hour for three days now. Three days ago was the day after the contract had gone into effect, the same day the upper team issued their open challenge.

Mirae wanted to measure Garam's judgment time ten times within the next week. Ten measurements would produce data. Data would let them revise the clause.

Doyun's math ran different. Ten measurements would take a week, and the three minute drill was the day after tomorrow.

There was no way to fix the clause by the day after tomorrow. So the person would have to get faster instead.

Down in that half light, Doyun ran the three minute timer eighteen times.

He'd written out everything that had to happen inside three minutes, in order. Detection, twenty seconds. Cost notice, twenty seconds. Approval request, ten seconds. Approval wait, ten seconds. Usage, thirty three seconds maximum. Follow up check, thirty seconds. Total: two minutes three seconds.

On paper it worked. Things that worked on paper always worked.

The problem was the ten second approval wait. That ten seconds wasn't his to cut. It was the time it took Mirae to calculate and Garam to listen.

What he could cut was his own share. Detection from twenty seconds to ten. Follow up check from thirty seconds to fifteen. That left twenty five seconds over.

Twenty five seconds left over meant the team had that much more room to breathe. Doyun liked that math. Liking it was the dangerous part of this calculation.

On the eighteenth run, his left hand went hot.

He hadn't used the ability, and it went hot anyway. Not one line. Two.

Doyun didn't take off the glove. If he took it off, he'd have to count.

Last week he'd written three lines in his notebook. First day, a few seconds. Re-implementation, about ten minutes. Basement, six hours.

Today he needed a fourth line. No usage, two lines, fifteen minutes.

The fourth line was a different kind from the first three. Those three came after usage. This one came without any usage at all.

Doyun didn't write it down. Writing it made it four lines, and four lines fixed a direction.

Instead he ran his hand under cold water. Fifteen minutes, and the heat went down. It didn't come back up, and Doyun filed that away as solved.

After that he went to the equipment room at the training ground. There was structural gear for the next drill.

One of the four fixed clamps was loose. Doyun fixed it. It took forty minutes, and it wasn't his team's equipment.

It belonged to the upper team.

Mirae found him at seven in the morning.

"What time did you sleep last night?" Mirae skipped the greeting.

"...Two."

"If you slept at two, you shouldn't be here right now." Mirae leaned against the equipment room doorframe. "I checked the training ground access log. Three fifty."

"Why are you checking the access log."

"It's a shared team item."

Doyun hadn't known that. If he said he didn't know, that meant he hadn't read it, and if he hadn't read it, Mirae would explain the contract to him again.

"Operating cost," Doyun said first.

"What is?"

"Early morning training. There's time I have to cut to hit three minutes." Doyun set the clamp down. "That's operating cost. I'm not billing the team for it."

Mirae didn't take that answer right away. Instead she looked at the clamp.

"This isn't ours."

"No."

"Why'd you fix it?" Mirae picked it up.

"It was loose. If that team uses it in the next drill, someone gets hurt."

"Then you report it. There's a maintenance request form."

"Reporting it takes two days."

"It takes two days," Mirae admitted. "And if you spend forty minutes fixing it, that team ends up owing you something. When something's owed, they give us something next time. Did you factor that in?"

Doyun hadn't factored it in. If he had, he might not have fixed it.

"No."

"That's the problem," Mirae said, setting the clamp down.

Mirae opened the ledger. There was a recovery cost line.

"This box is empty."

"Which."

"Last week's basement structure. Seventeen seconds used, and the recovery cost box is empty." Mirae pointed at it. "Every other line is filled in. Cost notice, approval, termination, loss confirmation. Only recovery is missing."

"Recovery's my own body." Doyun pushed the ledger away.

"Your body is also a team resource."

"That's a little"

"Clause thirteen." Mirae read it aloud. "Costs must be disclosed verbally before use. Target, duration, what the other party will lose. Three items."

"Then what I lose isn't in the clause at all."

Mirae's hand stopped.

That was true. The three items in the clause only covered what the other party would lose. What the user lost wasn't written anywhere.

"...It's not."

"If it's not there, it's not a failure to disclose."

"Read that way, no, it's not," Mirae admitted, then picked her pen back up. "But that's the clause being incomplete. It's not you being honest."

"What's the difference."

"An incomplete clause gets fixed. An honest person doesn't need fixing," Mirae said. "Right now you're the one who needs fixing."

Doyun had no answer to that distinction.

"I'm adding a clause."

"Now?" Doyun asked.

"If I don't do it now, this conversation ends in your favor."

Mirae wrote a new line. Article seventeen. The user's own costs are also subject to disclosure.

Then she stopped.

"I can't add this right now. It needs approval from the whole team."

"Then add it later."

"I will. But I'm asking now." Mirae set the pen down. "Are you hurting right now?"

Doyun could answer that two ways.

Saying no would be a lie. Saying yes meant he'd have to sit out the next drill.

The three minute drill was the day after tomorrow. The upper team had issued the open challenge, and Team 7 had agreed to it.

"I'm fine." Doyun put his left hand in his pocket.

Mirae wrote that down. Doyun watched her write it.

"You're writing it?"

"I am. If it turns out not to be fine, this line becomes the evidence."

That afternoon Doyun checked all the team's equipment as well. He recalculated the angle on Seorin's fixed rebar, changed the battery on Garam's hearing aid, and zeroed Mirae's measuring instrument.

Nobody had asked him to.

Seorin looked at the angle chart while taking the rebar.

"This is different from my calculation." Seorin held the chart up to the window.

"This angle's safer."

"I know it's safer. But if you keep making something better than mine, I stop doing the math."

Doyun hadn't expected that sentence.

"That's a little unreasonable. Just use the good one."

"That's fine this once. If it happens ten times, my hands forget how to calculate it." Seorin handed the chart back. "I'll recalculate. Keep your chart on the side."

"What's the difference."

"Mine stays with me."

Mirae asked something different while taking the measuring instrument.

"How long did zeroing this take?"

"Twenty minutes."

"It takes me five." Mirae checked the instrument. "I've used this machine for three years."

"...Then why didn't you do it?"

"I didn't get to it yesterday. No time," Mirae said. "You spent twenty minutes to save me five. That's a loss."

Garam asked something while taking the hearing aid.

"Why are you doing this?" Garam didn't take the aid.

"I had time to spare anyway." Doyun held it out.

"I changed this battery yesterday." Garam looked at it. "You put in another new one."

Doyun had no sentence to answer that with.

"Doyun. Wait a second."

Garam stood in front of him and said nothing for ten seconds. Doyun knew what those ten seconds were. Listening time.

"What."

"There's one more thing in your voice."

"...What is."

"Fear. It's not yours." Garam said. "That guy on the first day, Gangjun, right. It matches what I heard in his voice."

Doyun's hand went to his left glove.

"His fear is layered over your voice. Two layers."

"That's... something that happened back then. It's passed."

"Passed things don't sound like that." Garam said. "I'm hearing it right now."

"Do you know what that means?"

"No." Garam answered that fast. "But a sound with two layers doesn't disappear until one of them drops out."

"What happens when it drops out."

"I don't decide which one drops."

That was the first sentence that scared Doyun. Garam hadn't said it to scare him. She'd just stated exactly what she didn't understand.

"Garam. Are you going to tell Mirae?"

Garam looked at him. There was a beat where she weighed whether that question was a request or a check.

"I will."

"...Okay."

"But not today." Garam said. "If I tell her, Mirae turns it into a clause. Once it's a clause, you're out of the next drill. That's something you have to decide."

"Is this you cutting me a break?"

"It is." Garam admitted it. "I know cutting you a break is a bad thing. It's the same kind of thing as me staying quiet last week."

The training ground lights switched over to full at that hour. Evening training had started, and the upper team's students came in.

Someone was checking the fixed clamp.

"Who fixed this?" someone said, shaking it.

Nobody answered. Doyun didn't either.

Not answering wasn't modesty this time. If he answered, the debt Mirae had talked about would become real.

Garam looked at him. In that look, Doyun understood exactly what he'd just confirmed about himself.

That staying silent was starting to feel comfortable.

That night Doyun opened his notebook. He opened it to write the fourth line.

He didn't write it. Instead he wrote something else. A draft of a letter to his sister.

Sis. Is there anything you didn't want to do this week?

Writing the same question in a second letter felt like it lacked sincerity. Doyun crossed it out and wrote again.

Sis. My hand's been hurting lately. It hurts even though I didn't use the ability.

He looked at that line for a long time after writing it.

If he told her this, she'd worry. If she worried, the fifth box in her next letter would be empty again. Last time, two lines about something she didn't want to do had gone in there instead.

Doyun crossed that line out.

After crossing it out, he understood what he'd just done. It was the same kind of thing as not telling the team. A failure to disclose, given the name of doing it for someone else's sake.

He wrote it a third time.

Sis. My hand's been hurting lately. I've been pretending it doesn't. I crossed this out twice because I thought writing it would make you worry.

He wrote that far and put it in the envelope. After sealing it, he looked at his left hand.

The two lines were lukewarm.