The Crowded Three Minute Drill Field

The three minute drill field was crowded.

Garam knew it from the entrance. All eight upper teams were in the stands, and since this was an open challenge, students had come. About a hundred of them.

A hundred people were not a hundred layers. When people multiply, the layers pile together instead. Piled sound presses in from behind.

Garam did not turn on his hearing aid. Turning it on meant amplifying.

Three days ago, Mirae had suggested timing his judgment speed. They agreed to measure it ten times, and by yesterday they had done it four.

The four results were these. Four seconds in a quiet practice room. Seven seconds with five people around. Fourteen seconds with twenty people. Fifty people, measurement failed.

Mirae had written it down as measurement failed. Garam had asked her to choose that phrase. If she wrote that he couldn't hear it, he felt like he wouldn't be able to hear it next time either.

Today there were a hundred. A number not on the chart.

"Garam, you okay?" Doyun asked.

"I'm fine." Garam put the hearing aid in his pocket.

It was a lie. More precisely, it wasn't a lie yet. Before it started, he had been fine.

The drill was to rescue two dummies within three minutes. The structure was more complex than yesterday's, and the collapse was staged to progress in stages.

Mirae had rearranged the sequence. Detection ten seconds, cost notice fifteen seconds, approval ten seconds, usage up to twenty seconds, follow up confirmation twenty seconds. A total of one minute fifteen seconds.

"We have a margin of one minute forty five seconds," Mirae said. "Structure movement time falls within that."

"Tight," Seorin said, reading the sequence sheet twice.

"Tight. But doable."

The start signal.

Sound came.

What Garam had expected was the structure's sound. Collapse sounds, metal sounds, the joints of the dummies.

That wasn't what came.

It was the sound of a hundred people's choices in the stands.

A hundred people were each deciding something right now. Where to look, who to cheer for, what to eat once the drill ended. Small things.

A hundred small things were not small.

Garam lost five seconds right there.

Losing them didn't mean doing nothing. For five seconds he tried to check the hundred sounds one by one. Checking one brought the next, and what he had checked left no trace in his memory.

It was like catching rain with a bucket. The bucket wasn't the problem. The rain was.

Five seconds later he checked where he was standing. He was in front of the structure, and Doyun was saying something.

"Garam! Detection!"

"...huh."

"Where's the dummy?"

Garam tried to listen. He tried to pick out the sound from inside the structure. Picking things out was his job, and today, for the first time, he couldn't do it.

"Right side."

He said it. Without certainty.

More precisely, something had sounded from the right. He couldn't tell if it was the dummy or some student's footstep in the stands.

Mirae went to the right. There was a dummy.

It was correct. Garam didn't know whether being right was chance or perception.

"The second one?"

To hear the second one, he had to go deeper than the first. Garam closed his eyes.

Closing them made it worse. When sight disappeared, hearing became everything, and when it became everything, all hundred people came flooding in.

"Garam."

"...wait."

"One minute forty seconds left."

Garam decided then. Not to say it.

If he said he was overloaded now, the drill would stop. If it stopped, the upper team would win. If they won, it would be recorded that the procedure only worked within a margin of time.

For three days Mirae had tested the clause three times. She had gotten a zero score over the Jo Harin case. Seorin had given up a rematch.

All of that was riding on these three minutes today.

Garam did that calculation in three seconds. Doing a calculation in three seconds was Doyun's way, and today, for the first time, Garam had done it.

The result of the calculation was this. If he said he couldn't hear, everything the three of them had done over three days would be gone.

There was an item missing from that calculation. If he said something wrong, Doyun would use his ability on the wrong spot.

It wasn't a mistake. After seeing that item, he had decided the first one was bigger.

"Lower left," Garam said.

He was wrong. He said it knowing it could be wrong.

Doyun and Seorin went to the left. There was no dummy.

"It's not here!"

"One minute ten seconds."

Garam tried to listen again. This time he pressed his palm to the structure. Pressing meant it could come through vibration too.

The vibration came. And along with it, the footsteps of a hundred people came too.

"Garam, where!"

Garam couldn't answer.

While he couldn't answer, Doyun moved.

"I'll open it."

Garam heard those words. He heard them, but his response was late.

Garam could understand Doyun's logic. If he didn't know where the dummy was, he could open up wherever the person who set up the structure had meant to place the dummy and then gave up on. Opening the installer's abandoned choice would reveal the location.

There was no witness. There was no approval either.

"I'll give notice," Doyun said quickly. "Target structure, time ten seconds, no witness. Requesting approval."

Mirae answered immediately. "Hold."

"Forty seconds left."

"It's on hold."

"Mirae."

"Garam needs to make the judgment," Mirae said. "The risk assessment isn't done by the user, it's done by a teammate. That's our clause."

The three of them looked at Garam.

Garam felt that gaze as sound. It was the sound of the three of them waiting for him.

He had to say something. Whether to make the call or say he couldn't.

He opened his mouth and no sentence came out. When overload hit, verbs disappeared. Today it wasn't only verbs that disappeared.

"Garam!"

Doyun's left hand rose.

Garam tried to raise his palm. His arm was heavy. It took two seconds.

Within those two seconds, Doyun's hand touched the structure.

And then Seorin struck Doyun's wrist.

Not with a sword. With her hand, and hard. Doyun's hand bounced off the structure.

"Stop," Seorin said.

Doyun looked at Seorin. He was holding his struck wrist and said nothing.

The lower left of the structure caved in right then. It was the spot Doyun had been about to touch.

Garam heard that sound. This time he heard it clearly. A sound that had already collapsed was easy to pick out.

The end signal rang. Three minutes exceeded. One dummy. And the supervisor wrote something down.

"Branch team seven. Physical intervention occurred between teammates. Confirming the reason for Yu Seorin's deduction."

"I acknowledge it," Seorin said, lowering her hand.

"Under regulation article twenty two, physical control of a teammate during a drill that is not for safety reasons is subject to severe disciplinary action. Was it for safety reasons?"

Seorin answered that question precisely.

"It was not for safety reasons. I prevented a breach of contract."

"Not a violation of academy regulations, but an internal team contract?"

"That's correct."

"Yu Seorin, I'm informing you of the objection procedure." The supervisor held out a form. "You can file for correction on safety grounds."

"I won't," Seorin said, not taking the form.

"The reason is close to a safety matter. The structure actually collapsed."

"I found out it collapsed after I struck him," Seorin said. "If I justify my action with the result, then next time I'll strike after seeing the result."

The supervisor withdrew the form.

"Then it's a deduction."

"I'll accept it." Seorin didn't file an objection.

Garam listened to that exchange while sitting. Not sitting, but having sunk down.

The floor of the drill field was cold, and the sound of the hundred still came. Only now he could tell the difference. The sound from the stands and the sound from his team were different.

Mirae sat down in front of him.

"Garam."

"...sorry." Garam's voice cracked.

"Save that for later. Just one thing now," Mirae said. "Since when?"

Garam chose his answer. Today was his turn to say it exactly.

"Since five seconds in."

Mirae's hand stopped.

"For the whole three minutes?"

"The whole time."

"Then the right side and the lower left were..."

"I half heard the right side. I didn't know about the lower left," Garam said. "I didn't know, and I said it anyway."

Mirae wrote that sentence down. Her writing hand trembled a little.

"Why did you say it?"

"If I said I didn't know, it would end right there." Garam looked at the floor. "Mirae worked three days on this, Seorin gave up a rematch, Doyun took a zero. I didn't want it to end because I couldn't hear."

Doyun sat down beside him.

"Garam. Earlier I read your silence as approval."

"...yeah."

"The clause says there has to be approval to open it. Without it, I can't open it," Doyun said. "But since you weren't saying anything, I read it as you not objecting."

"That's different."

"It is different."

Garam understood that difference in his body today. Reading the silence of someone who couldn't speak as permission was completely different from the consent of someone who could speak.

"Let me say one thing," Garam said. His voice was small, but he didn't swallow the ends of his sentences. "It's not that I couldn't hear. I heard too much."

The three of them looked at him.

"I'm saying that for the first time. For three years I said I couldn't hear. That was easy."

"Why was it easy?" Mirae asked.

"If I say I can't hear, people just let it go. If I say I hear too much, they ask what I'm hearing." Garam said. "Then I'd have to talk about other people's feelings."

Mirae wrote down that answer. Seorin stood beside them.

"Lee Garam."

"Yeah."

"The reason I struck Doyun today wasn't because of your signal," Seorin said. "You couldn't raise your hand, so I raised it in your place. That means I used your authority."

"Thank you."

"You can't say thank you," Seorin cut in. "If I keep raising it in your place, you become someone who doesn't need to raise it at all."

Garam listened to that sentence for a long time. Seorin was reporting the good thing she had done as a problem.

"Then what should I do."

"I took the deduction. That's the price. I paid it," Seorin said. "Next time you raise your hand. If you think you won't be able to, say so before it starts."

Garam accepted that condition. Accepting it, he counted what he had lost today.

The team's score, Seorin's deduction, one notch of Doyun's trust.

All three were the price of his silence. For three years silence had always been free, but on this team, it came with a price.