A Name Outside the Answer Box

The old exit sign-in sheet looked like its paper had yellowed, but it still held the warmth fresh off the printer.

At the top was a name, Moon Seyeong. Below it, exit unconfirmed. The date was four years ago. Seojin took a photo before touching the paper. Bora spread open her own file beside her.

"If it gets filled in like this, today's roster could be mixed up too."

Seojin looked at Bora. She wasn't dividing up the papers like a frightened student, but like a student cross checking a wrong answer. She gave Jeongmin the seating chart, Lee Seohyeon a photo of the tuition payment list, and Park Minjae the attendance book.

"Write down what you don't know as unknown, and only underline what's certain."

That was Bora's instruction.

Seojin didn't take the lead away from her. She took the door and the smoke warning light. Doyun stood at the top of the stairs to keep the registered students from going down any further. One wrong move and the loop that brought everyone back to the same floor would switch on again.

The students compared their materials like they were checking exam answers. Someone looked at names, someone at seat numbers, someone at app notification times. It wasn't a professional investigation. It was cross checking tables they saw every single day.

Park Minjae found the first error.

"There's a name, Lee Juho. It's not on our attendance book, but it's marked as a supplement value."

Supplement value.

Eunchae, on the other end of the call, caught the word.

"Open the copy room server. There might be an automatic supplement form in the academy printer settings."

The director spoke right away.

"The server is private information."

Bora shot back.

"Is my name disappearing also private information?"

The director had no answer. Seojin demanded the key from him at the copy room door. He kept the key hidden in his fist, but Dogyeong's camera only caught his hand.

"Forcing it open is illegal."

"Then open it yourself."

The director put the key in.

The copy room was cramped. Two printers, an old server tower, boxes of exam papers. On the printer screen, one document sat waiting. The title was Night Roster_Auto Supplement.

Eunchae read out the path as she looked at the screen.

"It's not the Baekro Academy folder. Seongan City Public Safety Response Agency, closed, evacuation roster, supplement."

The director said he'd "only installed a free safety program."

Seojin wrote that down exactly as he said it. Free safety program. Installer identity needs confirmation.

Dogyeong lifted his camera to shoot the server screen, then stopped. A batch of student names had filled it all at once. He lowered the camera and shot only the label beside a paper box. It was the box the installation USB had come in. The label read Seongan City Public Safety Education Support, for night facility use.

"This isn't just the academy's problem."

"Only the path's been confirmed so far."

"That path is the story."

Seojin said it without looking at Dogyeong.

"Student names can't go out with it."

Instead of zooming in on the screen, Dogyeong shot only the label and the installation date. He didn't hide his frustration. But once again, his hands kept to the terms.

Bora divided the materials back up among the students. Jeongmin found a failed auto transfer mark on the tuition payment sheet, and Lee Seohyeon found a class change mark on the seating chart. Park Minjae wrote down the time his name appeared twice and the time his phone had moved.

"It's kind of like solving a math problem."

Jeongmin said.

"There's an answer, but the working is wrong."

Bora said, "The answer's wrong too."

Seojin didn't put the students' comparison into her report. Instead she wrote down the division of roles. Attendance book, tuition, seating chart, phone logs. That was within the students' reach. Server access and deletion recovery were left to Eunchae.

Eunchae read the file properties.

"The supplement value exists to fill in blanks. If there's a gap in the actual student roster, it pulls in an unconfirmed name from a past evacuation list."

"Why does it pull from a past list?"

"I don't know. The program's description calls it a virtual headcount for evacuation drills."

Virtual headcount.

Seojin wrote the phrase down, and beside it added, actual name call occurred. What they'd called virtual had called out a name in an actual roll call.

The printer moved again. The header on the printout wasn't Baekro Academy.

Seongan City Disaster Evacuation Roster.

Below it were old, familiar names from past incidents. Some marked exit complete, some unconfirmed, some supplement personnel. Bora ran her finger down the supplement personnel column.

Yun Hajun.

The moment Seojin saw the name, her pen stopped cold. Bora spoke first.

"A name alone isn't enough."

Seojin nodded.

"We check part of a birth year, the school at the time, the call log."

Her voice came out a beat late. She didn't write younger brother next to the name Hajun. Supplement personnel, Yun Hajun. Document date, eleven years ago. That was what she wrote.

Eunchae kept reading the server log.

"The base data is from eleven years ago. But the call log was updated to today at 10:50 p.m."

10:50 p.m. The same time night self study attendance began.

Seojin made three columns beside Hajun's name. Base data, today's call, physical confirmation. In the first column she wrote eleven years ago, in the second, today, 10:50 p.m. The third column she left blank.

Looking at the blank column, her hand tried to move on its own again. She deliberately wrote unconfirmed in it instead. Unconfirmed was safer than blank. A blank was something the system filled however it wanted, and something people filled with hope.

Doyun looked at the column and spoke.

"Good."

Seojin didn't answer. It wasn't something to be praised for. She had only kept from turning one name into her brother, for now.

The director didn't know the name Yun Hajun. His face wasn't a liar's face, it was the face of someone whose own academy ledger had suddenly spat out a name from outside it.

"He's not one of our students."

Bora asked immediately.

"Then why is it being called out in our attendance?"

The director didn't answer. Whoever could answer was either behind the staff room door, or somewhere in the server's path.

Doyun called Miran. The ring tone went twice and cut off. He called again and got a busy signal.

"She's avoiding it."

His words were short, but his hand didn't leave the phone.

Bora put her ear to the staff room door. Before Seojin could stop her, she raised a hand.

"I'm not going in. I'm just listening."

Inside the staff room, a speaker switched on.

"Yun Hajun."

Seojin didn't move. To keep from moving, she needed something in her hands. She gripped the edge of the printout. The paper crumpled.

The speaker spoke again.

"Yun Hajun."

Bora looked at Seojin.

"That's a live voice. It doesn't sound like a recording."

Seojin didn't transcribe that right away. Doesn't sound like a recording was a feeling, not a fact. Instead she wrote, staff room speaker, live name call, witness Kim Bora.

Dogyeong raised his camera, then lowered the angle when Seojin's face entered the frame. The file name was Staff Room_Name Call_Pre Verification. Location data was switched off.

A sheet of paper slid out from under the staff room door.

Exit confirmation sheet.

The date was today. The name field was blank. The signature line was blank too. As Seojin reached for it, Bora spoke first.

"There have to be two people who saw it."

Bora's words weren't only for Seojin. The students heard too. Jeongmin came right over and stood beside her, and Lee Seohyeon stepped one pace in from the copy room doorframe. Both of them looked at the paper.

Dogyeong raised his camera, then lowered it again when a student's face entered the frame. Only the paper and three sets of fingertips made it onto the screen. He spoke in a low voice.

"No sharing before verification. Keep the original."

It sounded like something he was confirming to himself.

Jeongmin and Lee Seohyeon stood in front of the copy room door. Both students looked at the paper. Only then did Seojin take out the envelope.

The first stroke on the signature line moved.

Yun.

Ink appeared slowly on the paper, as if someone inside were writing it, but there was no hand under the gap of the door.

Seojin didn't say the name out loud. Beside her, Bora read the time.

11:22 p.m.

The second stroke followed. Ha.

Doyun spoke from the far end of the hallway.

"Students first."

Seojin heard him. This time she didn't push back. She didn't put the confirmation sheet in the envelope, but fixed it under a clear file instead. The signature still wasn't finished.

The voice inside the staff room no longer called out the name. Instead the printer put out one more page. Today's call log. Yun Hajun, 10:50 p.m., status pending.

Seojin looked at that page and still didn't grip the door handle.

"Confirming student exits first."

The words were also aimed at herself.

There was no sound at all from inside the staff room. That made the sound from the students' side seem louder. Below the stairs, Jeongmin confirmed his partner's name, and Lee Seohyeon said her phone battery was at four percent. Small words. But those small words were what fixed the positions of the students still alive right now.

Bora split the materials on the copy room floor into three stacks. The current attendance book, the supplement roster, the actual seating chart. The three stacks didn't overlap. If one name appeared on all three sheets, a green mark, if only two, yellow, if only one, red. With no colored pencils on hand, she marked them with the color of highlighter caps.

"Don't act like a professional."

The director said.

Bora shot right back.

"This is something we do every day. Checking answers."

At that, a few students moved. If they treated it like grading an exam, they could manage it. It wasn't a professional server, it was matching their own names and seats, payment alerts, the parent app.

Park Minjae couldn't turn his own name green. It was on the attendance book, it was on the seating chart, but on the supplement roster it was bundled together with Lee Juho's. He set down his highlighter cap.

"Am I still half over there?"

"Currently yellow."

Bora said.

Seojin wrote down yellow as a provisional status. Yellow was unsettling, but it was better than red. If a provisional status was visible, it could still be fixed.

Eunchae spoke while making a copy of the server.

"There's one more account with access to the Response Agency's closed folder. YHJ_0."

Seojin's hand froze again.

Eunchae added right away.

"It's just an account name. Not confirmation of a person."

"I know."

Seojin said she knew, but the hand writing YHJ_0 on the paper pressed down a little harder. Bora saw the pressure of the pen. She said nothing. Instead she wrote account name beside it for her.

Doyun called Miran a third time. This time the call didn't even ring. It went straight to voicemail. He put the phone back in his pocket and stepped one pace back from the staff room door.

"It's not Miran blocking this. Someone else might be."

"We don't confirm that."

"Right."

Doyun answered briefly. Both of them stopped in the same way. Not confirming. That was the slowest action of this round.

The printer spat out one more page. At the bottom of today's call log was a column labeled personnel awaiting signature. Beside Yun Hajun it read pending, beside Moon Seyeong it read unconfirmed, beside Park Minjae it read reclassified. Bora looked at the three and spoke.

"The names aren't all in the same column."

Seojin underlined that line. It might not be the same phenomenon, but the same classification method. If every name got dragged toward Hajun, the students who were here right now would be erased.

Under the staff room door, the character Yun on the confirmation sheet had started to dry. The character Ha was still wet. The character Jun hadn't appeared yet.

While they waited, the smoke alarm sped up again. Student exit had stopped.

Seojin took her eyes off the confirmation sheet and went toward the stairs. Hajun's name stayed under the door, and the students were still in the hallway. If the order got switched, someone paid the cost.

At the top of the stairs, two students were calling each other by the wrong names. One had heard an old name that had gone into the supplement roster, the other had heard the current class name. Both were calling out for their own friend. Seojin didn't ask which one was real.

"The name on the current attendance book."

Bora said first.

The student said the current name. Her partner said the seat number. A name alone was shaky, but once the seat and the belongings attached to it, the light on the stairs flipped from yellow to green.

Seeing that, Bora marked it on her own chart.

Name plus seat plus belongings.

She made three columns. The students looked at the columns and checked their partners against them. One student had forgotten a name, but remembered her partner's pink mechanical pencil. Another had gotten a seat wrong, but remembered the eraser he'd borrowed that morning. Imperfect memories corrected each other.

Eunchae called out the server's replication rate.

"Seventy two percent. If it cuts off partway, only the path survives."

"Then leave the path, at least."

"The original's in the Response Agency's closed folder. Right now the academy server only has a cache."

The word cache meant nothing to the students. Seojin rewrote it as a temporary copy left behind in the printer. Not to make the technical term understood, but to make visible who was holding what, and what could disappear.

There was the sound of a chair being dragged inside the staff room. Seojin's body reacted before she could think. Doyun didn't grab her wrist, he just stepped in front of her.

"Students."

One word.

Seojin nodded. She put the paper from the copy room into the envelope and got Bora's signature as a witness. The staff room door still hadn't opened. Today's date signature was still in progress, and the student evacuation was still in progress. One of the two had to be finished first.