Mirae Left Doyun Out of the Meeting

Mirae left Doyun out of the meeting.

There were two reasons, and neither was written in any contract.

First, if Doyun was there, the clause would end up shaped around Doyun. In meetings, this person always proposed the next step, and once a next step existed, people followed it.

Second, Mirae thought she might talk about herself today. She wouldn't do that in front of Doyun.

Strictly speaking, she didn't leave him out. She scheduled the meeting during Doyun's night training hours. The result was the same.

"He's going to be upset if he finds out." Seorin closed the classroom door.

"If he's upset, I'll tell him then."

The two of them sat in the empty classroom. Garam was out, recovering from auditory overload. More precisely, Mirae had let him off.

Mirae wrote a draft clause on the blackboard.

Article 18. A party may change their mind even after approval.

Seorin read the line and objected immediately.

"Until when." Seorin picked up a piece of chalk.

"...that's the problem."

"That's the whole problem." Seorin stood and moved beside the blackboard. "In the basement, Baek Jihun said seventeen seconds. What if he'd changed his mind at sixteen?"

"We stop it," Mirae answered right away.

"If you stop it, he's caught in the piping half out."

Mirae pictured that. Once she pictured it, she understood her own clause could get someone killed.

"Then we set a time limit. Withdrawal only allowed before use starts."

"That's the same as the current clause," Seorin said. "You're the one who wanted to add withdrawal after approval."

"That's right."

"Why do you want to add it."

Mirae had a prepared answer for that question. Before she could give it, an unprepared answer came out first.

"Four years ago, the contract I signed didn't have a withdrawal clause."

Seorin took her hand off the blackboard.

"We agreed not to ask about that."

"You didn't ask. I said it."

"...then go on."

"My father signed that contract. I was eighteen, and I never read it." Mirae said the sentence briefly. "Even if I'd read it, I couldn't have changed it. There was no withdrawal clause."

"Can you change it now?"

"I can't."

Seorin took that answer without offering any comfort. Mirae was grateful for that.

"So you're making this clause because of your own contract?"

"That's part of it."

"Then that's dangerous," Seorin said. "If a clause you made for your own reasons ends up catching someone in the piping down there, that makes it revenge for your contract."

Mirae thought that was a cruel thing to say. Cruel, but not wrong.

"So what do I do."

"Test it."

"Testing needs a person."

"I'll do it," Seorin said, drawing her sword. "I'll hold the anchor, you withdraw it."

"Yu Seorin's stat cost..."

"I can handle three today."

Mirae wrote the number down. Three. Next time she'd need to know how many this person had left.

They ran the mock rule test three times.

The first was a low risk situation. Retrieving an object inside the training ground. The student who approved withdrew five seconds later.

Doyun wasn't there at the time of withdrawal, so Seorin stood in for him. She activated the sword, anchored the object, then released it the instant the withdrawal signal came.

The result was no problem at all. The object fell, and points were lost.

"This one works," Mirae wrote.

The second was medium risk. A person suspended in midair. Withdrawal after approval.

If Seorin released the anchor, the person would fall two meters. It was over a mat.

"I can't release it," Seorin said, sword still active.

"They withdrew."

"Releasing it now means they get hurt. Causing an injury because someone withdrew isn't a right to withdraw."

Mirae wrote down that situation. One candidate condition for withdrawal being unavailable.

The third was high risk. A collapse in progress. Ten seconds after approval, withdrawal.

This time Mirae took the stand-in role. She was the one suspended.

"I'm withdrawing now."

Seorin kept the anchor active. She didn't release it.

"Why aren't you releasing it."

"If I release it now, you fall."

"Then what happens to my right to withdraw?"

"It's gone," Seorin's answer was short.

Mirae heard that answer while still hanging there. Her feet were two meters up, the mat was below, and even so, the sensation of having no ground under her was exact.

After Seorin lowered her down, Mirae spoke.

"When the risk is high, the right to withdraw disappears."

"It doesn't disappear. The cost changes."

"What do you mean?"

"At low risk, withdrawing costs you points. At high risk, withdrawing costs you your body." Seorin sheathed her sword. "Both are still the right to withdraw. The cost is just different."

Mirae went to the blackboard. She rewrote the clause in three lines.

As she wrote, she thought back to her own contract again. That paper from four years ago had no distinction by risk level. It wasn't that the withdrawal clause was missing, it was a form that never accounted for a situation requiring withdrawal in the first place.

Mirae still hadn't decided which was worse, not accounting for something or forbidding it outright.

Article 18. A party may withdraw even after approval.

Low risk. Upon withdrawal, stop immediately. Losses are limited to points and time.

Medium risk. If immediate stopping upon withdrawal creates physical danger, the user continues only until reaching a safe point, then stops.

High risk. Withdrawal is recorded but immediate stopping is deferred. The party is notified of the deferral immediately.

"The last line's the problem," Seorin said. "How is deferral different from ignoring it."

"Notification is what's different."

"What's good about notifying someone and then continuing anyway."

"They can raise an objection later," Mirae said. "If you ignore it, there's no record. If you defer it, there's a record."

Seorin read that sentence three times. Then she added one clause of her own.

"Write down the name of whoever decides the deferral."

"That's the user."

"If the user decides alone, the user will rate the risk in whatever way benefits them," Seorin said. "Someone else should determine the risk."

Mirae added that line. Risk assessment is made by a team member, not the user.

The first application of the draft rule came the next day.

It was a rescue drill, and the subject was an actual student. A second year girl named Jo Harin. During the drill, her foot got caught in the flooring.

Mirae made the risk assessment. Medium.

"Jo Harin," Mirae read aloud, "I need to inform you of the cost. Han Doyun will reopen the foot pulling motion you gave up on. Maximum fifteen seconds. You may lose part of the reason you tried to pull your foot free. And even after approval, you can still withdraw. If you withdraw, immediate stopping may not be possible, in which case we will notify you."

"...I approve," Jo Harin's voice was small.

Doyun raised his left hand. He was about to open it.

"Wait a second."

It was Jo Harin's voice.

"I'm withdrawing."

Doyun's hand stopped. No one asked why.

"Are you all right?" Mirae asked.

"My foot hurts. But losing the reason I tried to pull it out, that... I don't know what that even means," Jo Harin said. "I don't want to lose something I don't understand."

Mirae wrote that sentence down. Reason for withdrawal. Content of the loss not understood.

The rescue was done by safety staff with a cutter. It took fourteen minutes.

For those fourteen minutes, Jo Harin stayed caught in the flooring. She was in pain, cried twice, and apologized once.

Mirae wrote down all three. She especially wrote down the apology. If a rescue where the person withdrew still ended with them apologizing, that meant the clause was still lacking.

Team 7's score was zero. Non participation in the rescue.

"All of it?" Garam asked.

"All of it," Mirae looked at the score sheet. "A withdrawn approval doesn't count as participation." The sheet showed the number zero four times over.

Doyun said nothing. Mirae felt she could guess what he was calculating, and the fact that she could guess worried her.

"Hey," Mirae spoke first. "What are you thinking right now?"

"I was thinking that if I'd opened it, it would've ended in fifteen seconds."

"Thanks for telling me that."

"It's not about thanks. The problem is that the thought occurred to me at all." Doyun looked at his left hand. "When Jo Harin withdrew earlier, I didn't feel relieved. I felt like I'd missed out."

"Then I'll write that down too."

"Write it."

Mirae entered the item into the log. User's internal reaction, voluntary statement. Below it she added one more line. A statement shall not be used as grounds for penalty.

"Why add that line?" Seorin asked.

"If I don't, no one will say anything next time."

Seorin checked the line and signed it. Doyun signed too.

No one brought up the fact that the meeting time had been quietly moved. Mirae decided not to judge whether that was this team's virtue or its flaw.

Jo Harin called Mirae over beside the cutter.

"Excuse me. That clause, the one about notifying if someone withdraws."

"Yes."

"Who made that one?"

"I did."

"Thank you," Jo Harin said. "When I withdrew earlier, I withdrew because I heard that clause existed. If it hadn't, I would've just approved."

Mirae didn't write that down in the log. Instead she wrote it on her own notepad.

Score zero, one withdrawal case. Said she withdrew because the clause existed.

Below that there was one more line. Mirae spent thirty seconds deciding whether to write it.

One of the reasons I made this clause is my own contract. Yu Seorin knows. Doyun and Garam don't.

She wrote it. Only on the notepad.

That evening, Mirae called her father. It had been three weeks.

"Dad. The contract from four years ago. Do you have a copy?"

"Why," her father's voice dropped.

"I need to check one clause."

The other end of the line went quiet. Mirae could tell what expression her father was wearing from the length of that silence.

"Mirae, that's something I..."

"I know there's no withdrawal clause," Mirae said. "I'm not trying to check that. I'm asking if there's an appendix."

"An appendix?" her father asked back.

"A separate document attached to the contract. The one with three seals stamped on it."

A long silence came. Then her father spoke.

"That's a company document. Even I can't see it." The answer came fast, as if it had been prepared.

Mirae hung up and wrote down that sentence. Cannot verify. Need another route.