Mirae Read the Contract Once More

On the morning of the consecutive rescue drill, Mirae read the contract once more.

There were sixteen clauses now. Twelve through sixteen had been written by Team 7.

The seventeenth clause draft hadn't been approved yet. It included the user's own cost as a subject of disclosure. Since Doyun had mentioned his left hand yesterday, adding it would pass now.

Mirae didn't put that clause on today's agenda. The reason was time. Clause approval took forty minutes, and the match was in the morning.

Later, she would admit that wasn't the real reason.

The first round went as planned.

Detection eleven seconds, disclosure fourteen seconds, approval nine seconds. Mirae counted the seconds, and all three beat the target.

They rescued two dummies in two minutes forty seconds. Every procedure was followed.

In the second round, Garam passed on detection. He spoke at the forty second mark.

"Can't do this one. Seorin, take the lower channel."

Mirae wrote that sentence down with the timestamp. Advance disclosure, one case.

The second round passed too. Three minutes five seconds. Five seconds over, penalty deducted.

The time limit for the third round was posted.

Two minutes.

"As expected," Mirae said, checking the board. "We followed every procedure in the first round."

"So we did well and it made things harder for us?" Garam asked.

"That's how it's designed."

"Isn't that a bad thing?"

"It's not bad," Mirae said. "If we can do it in two minutes, that becomes proof that two minutes is enough. That's what the other side wants too."

The structure for the third round was different from before. It had a trap built in, and the type of trap had been disclosed.

Reversal type. A device that returns an avoidance path the target has given up on and applies it back onto the target.

"This is aimed at Doyun," Mirae said immediately.

"Just me?"

"Your ability reopens choices someone else gave up on. This does the opposite. It applies what a student gave up on back onto that same student."

Moon Sea took the microphone at that point. It was a mandatory disclosure.

"Trap information is disclosed in advance. It can be avoided. There is one way to avoid it. Do not enter this zone."

"Then what about the dummy," Doyun asked.

"One dummy is located in that zone."

"Why did you choose this trap," Seorin asked.

"To see whether Team 7's procedures protect people, or protect the user."

It was an honest answer. Mirae thought that honesty was the most dangerous part of today.

The design was clear. Enter, and the trap activates. Don't enter, and one dummy goes unrescued.

Mirae calculated the two minutes. Two of the three dummies were in a safe zone. To save all three, someone would have to enter the reversal zone.

"We only save two."

"Then Team 2 wins," Seorin said.

"They win. But the losing team's provision still goes to review."

Mirae finally understood why Seorin had written that clause. It was so that in a moment like this, they could choose to lose.

"Doyun, don't go in."

"Got it."

The start signal sounded.

Two dummies came out at fifty seconds. They were in the safe zone, handled by Seorin and Garam.

One minute ten seconds remaining. One dummy left. In the reversal zone.

Doyun stood outside that zone. Mirae saw him, and he didn't go in.

It should have ended there.

That was when the structure moved.

It wasn't a designed collapse. The reversal zone's device had activated, but there was no one inside it.

The device searched for a target. It grabbed the nearest person.

That was Doyun.

He was two meters outside the zone boundary, but the device pulled him in. The floor tilted, Doyun slipped, and debris came down over him.

"Han Doyun!"

Mirae ran. Seorin ran too.

The debris was in three pieces. Doyun was underneath it, still breathing.

The problem came after that.

The reversal device had activated. The avoidance path Doyun had given up on had been applied to him.

Doyun's eyes were open. Open, but he wasn't moving.

"Doyun!" Seorin called to him.

"...can't get out."

"Are you pinned somewhere?"

"Not pinned." Doyun's voice sounded strange. "There's no way out."

Mirae understood that sentence. It took her one second to understand it.

The reversal device had applied to Doyun the avoidance path he'd given up on. Earlier, he had decided not to enter that zone. Deciding not to enter meant he had never made an exit path.

The device had reversed that decision. Right now, he had no path to leave by.

"Han Doyun." Mirae dropped to her knees. "Can you see a way out?"

"Can't see one."

"Can you crawl out?"

"...how do you crawl."

That was the answer. This person had lost the very concept of a way out.

Forty seconds remained.

Mirae calculated three things at once.

First, the arrival time of the safety personnel. Three minutes. The debris could settle further in that time.

Second, whether Doyun's own ability could open something for himself. It couldn't. His ability only opened what other people had given up on.

Third. There was a third.

Mirae looked at that third thing for three seconds.

Four years ago, Mirae had given up on a path. Because of a contract her father had signed in her place, she had closed off a path where she wouldn't bear someone else's cost for them.

That wasn't exactly what was written down. The contract only stated three years of service at a designated institution.

It was Mirae herself who had closed off the path. A life where she didn't carry other people's share. She had closed that off at eighteen, and after closing it, she had spent every day since calculating other people's costs.

That abandonment was still inside her.

Doyun's ability opened what other people had given up on. Mirae wasn't Doyun. She couldn't open it.

There was one way she could.

Erden style magic only stabilizes when the user has a real alternative they genuinely gave up on. Mirae had no ability to cast magic, but she had the fuel.

Fuel needed a circuit. The circuit was the contract.

The point where the four signatures on Team 7's contract overlapped. Light had come from there before. Ma Eunha had called it a common stabilizing effect.

Mirae took out her own contract seal. It was the small metal seal issued to student contractors, registered to Team 7's contract.

And she hung her own abandonment on the seal.

She needed approval first. Clause thirteen. Cost must be disclosed verbally before use.

Mirae didn't disclose it.

Clause fifteen. A veto could be exercised even on an unconfirmed sensation. Garam was right there.

Mirae didn't call for Garam.

Thirty seconds left. Disclosure and approval would take twenty seconds, and within those twenty seconds Seorin would object. Seorin would run a risk assessment, and if the risk came back high, it wouldn't be a delay, it would be a halt.

Mirae ran that calculation in three seconds.

And she knew, even as she did it, that she was calculating the way Doyun did.

She knew, and did it anyway.

There was something more accurate she also knew. The calculation that Seorin would object was a guess. She hadn't asked, so it was unconfirmed.

Skipping procedure on the basis of an unconfirmed guess. That was the exact kind of thing Mirae had blocked off in the contract more than anything else.

Garam looked at Mirae then. Two meters away, and Garam was the one who heard sounds.

"Mirae."

Mirae didn't answer.

"What are you about to do..."

The seal grew hot.

What had been closed off four years ago opened again, and from that opened place, something came to Mirae.

It was fear. Doyun's fear.

The sensation of there being no way out. A state with no concept of it at all. That came halfway across into Mirae's body.

Once it crossed halfway, Doyun's share became half.

Once it became half, Doyun moved.

"...Mirae?"

"Crawl out."

"How, "

"You know now."

Doyun crawled. He pushed an arm through the debris, pulled his shoulder free, dragged his legs. It took fourteen seconds.

Mirae held onto the seal the whole time. The hand holding it was burning, and cracks spread across the seal's surface.

The moment Doyun got out, the end signal sounded.

And another sound rang out after it.

A veto violation alarm. The academy system sounds it when it detects unapproved use of a registered contract. Because Team 7's contract was permanently registered, it went off immediately.

It was an all member alarm. All four of them.

Moon Sea took the microphone.

"Match suspended."

"There were still ten seconds, "

"Suspended," Moon Sea said. "Team 2 forfeits the confirmed win and remains as an on site witness."

As she walked toward the judges' stand, she said one more sentence.

"Last year, I didn't do this."

Mirae heard that sitting where she was. The seal had split open in her hand.

The crack ran in four directions.

Seorin sat down in front of her. Mirae had expected Seorin's first sentence to be why didn't you ask.

"Park Mirae."

"...Yes." Mirae was still cupping the seal.

"What did you just open." Seorin wasn't looking at the seal. She was looking at Mirae's face.

Mirae realized the question was different from what she'd expected. Seorin wasn't asking why. She was asking what.

"One of my paths."

"Which path."

"...A life where I don't carry someone else's cost for them."

Seorin's expression didn't change at that answer. Instead, there was something she did.

"Han Doyun, can you stand?"

"Yeah." Doyun braced an arm against the ground.

"Then sit over there. Lee Garam, stay beside him." Seorin positioned the three of them. "Take a photo of Mirae's seal. In its cracked state. Before anyone touches it."

Garam took the photo. Mirae recognized the sequence. It was the sequence she always ran herself.

"Why are you doing that right now," Mirae asked.

"Because you can't."

"...It's my violation."

"It's your violation. That's exactly why someone else has to make the record," Seorin said. "If you make the record of your own violation, later they'll say you wrote it in your own favor."

Hearing that, Mirae's eyes went hot for the first time. They went hot because Seorin hadn't offered comfort.

Doyun tried to say something then. Mirae heard the first syllable, and she already knew what he was going to say.

"Don't say it."

"...Say what."

"Don't say I told you to."

Doyun closed his mouth. Mirae also knew he'd already had that sentence ready.

Garam asked one last thing.

"Mirae. What do you hear right now?"

"...What do you mean."

"Your voice has two layers in it," Garam said. "The same kind as Doyun's."