The One to Leave Behind

The one slot for the person to leave behind looked like it was waiting for the director's name.

The students looked there first. The director had hidden the roster, cut students outside the insurance registration, and tried to leave Bora behind according to the card. Someone said in a small voice.

"Just write the director's name."

Another student picked it up right away.

"Right. He cut us."

The director's face went white.

Seojin didn't scold the students. She knew why that choice had come up. Write one name and the stairs might open. It gets easier if that one name looks like the perpetrator.

Bora held the pen but didn't write the director's name.

"If we write it, we become the same as him."

The words were short. A few students tried to argue back, but stopped when they saw the name on Bora's wrist. Just a moment ago, Bora had almost gone into that slot herself.

Park Minjae said.

"But this happened because of the director."

Bora looked at Park Minjae.

"Right. That's why I want to write it."

That thought had come first. Bora didn't produce the good answer right away. The tip of the pen in her hand stopped over the space where the director's name would go. Jeongmin was watching that hand. Lee Seohyeon was watching too.

Bora set the pen down.

"But if we write it, next time someone writes one of us in."

Seojin wrote that sentence down. Not a refusal of revenge, a refusal of repetition. It wasn't an easy phrase for the students to grasp, but in this classroom right now, it was enough.

Bora drew another line next to the slot for the person to leave behind.

Absence cannot be recorded without two witness signatures.

Seojin looked at that sentence and spoke to Eunchae.

"Put a mutual confirmation field in the temporary roster."

Eunchae answered along with the sound of typing.

"Done. Name, current location, partner's name, exit confirmation time."

The parent calls started up again. This time it wasn't only about confirming your own child's voice. Jeongmin's mother confirmed Lee Seohyeon's voice, Lee Seohyeon's father confirmed Jeongmin's voice. The awkward silence went on. Taking responsibility for another person's child was not easy.

Seojin logged the call durations. An average of 38 seconds per call. It was slow. But she chose slow over leaving one person behind.

Eunchae shared her screen. The mutual confirmation field had many blanks. Name, location, partner's name, guardian confirmation, exit time. If even one box was empty, the green light wouldn't come on.

"It's not foolproof. If a box is missing, it locks up."

"Even so, you can see the missing box."

Bora said.

That was the difference. The old rules hid the missing person. The new roster showed the missing box. The students saw the blanks and called each other's names. Each answered only once. On the second check, they raised a hand or held up an object.

Jeongmin confirmed Lee Seohyeon's blue pencil case, and Lee Seohyeon confirmed Jeongmin's phone case. Park Minjae showed that his own phone had actually come back into his hand. Small objects held up before names did.

The stairwell signal lights began turning on two names at a time.

Jeongmin and Lee Seohyeon. Green.

Park Minjae and the student in the front row. Green.

Bora and Seojin were left as the last pair. Doyoon still wasn't visible to some of the students. Bora stated where Doyoon's shoes were, and Seojin stated the time on Doyoon's wrist. Once the two records were attached, Doyoon's name moved from absent one back to on site confirmed.

Doyoon didn't smile.

"That was slow."

"But he came back."

"Next time, if it's slower than this, someone dies."

Seojin wrote that down too. Cost of resolution: increased time, increased smoke exposure.

Meanwhile the director tried to slip into the emergency stairs alone. He tucked the card and the original envelope against his chest, in the gap while the students were checking each other in pairs. The stairwell door showed him a green light. The director went down one flight.

He opened the next door and found the study hall corridor.

The director came back to the same floor. The students looked at him. This time no one laughed. It was the sight of the man who had created people outside his own roster, unable to get out without his own signature.

Seojin held out a paper to the director.

"Write down the actual number of people, all of them."

The director picked up the pen. This time he wrote the name. Registered 23, actually present 26. Unregistered 3. Illegal late night study operation. His handwriting shook.

"There's a joint responsibility field too."

The director signed it. It wasn't a pardon. It was a record.

Dogyeong photographed the director's signature. He kept only the hand and the paper in frame. He didn't upload it right away, and instead created a hash value of the original.

"I'll be requesting release of this after the students leave."

"From whom."

"Bora, Jeongmin, Lee Seohyeon. At least three."

Dogyeong said that with an uneasy face. Putting an exclusive story on hold pending permission from three students didn't sit well with his instincts. But this time, instead of hiding that discomfort, he left a process in place.

The last student sent the signal for reaching the first floor. Eunchae read out the numbers.

"26 students, 3 field team members, 1 director. First floor confirmed."

The classroom was supposed to be empty of everyone.

But the exit roster wasn't complete. At the very bottom, an automatically generated name remained.

Yun Hajun.

Status: exit unconfirmed.

Seojin's hand moved toward the screen. It felt like pressing the name would open the staff room door. The thought that Hajun might be in there came first. His finger couldn't stop.

Bora grabbed his wrist.

"Two people need to have seen it."

Seojin looked at Bora. Bora was handing back to Seojin the same procedure she herself had just been put through. If one person checks alone, all the cost lands on that one person.

Doyoon stepped up beside them.

"I'll be a witness too."

Only then did Seojin take his hand off.

A voice came from inside the staff room. It was a little closer than the voice in the chapter 12 file. Whether it was a speaker or a person couldn't be confirmed.

"Sis."

Seojin didn't answer.

The voice spoke again.

"Don't answer."

Dogyeong's camera was on. It wasn't filming faces. Only the bottom of the staff room door, the exit roster, and Seojin's frozen hand were in the frame.

Bora read out the time.

23:41.

Seojin wrote down the time. No answer given. Witnesses: Kim Bora, Kang Doyoon.

The staff room door didn't open. But today's date appeared next to the exit unconfirmed line.

The lights in the study hall flickered off and back on once. Whether it was because of the fire or a signal that the roster was about to close, no one could tell. Eunchae checked the electrical room status.

"Fire department arrives in 4 minutes. Smoke is spreading faster through the corridor than the stairs."

Four minutes. Most of the students were on the first floor already, but Seojin, Doyoon, Bora, the director, and Dogyeong were still upstairs. The staff room door was still closed. Hajun's name remained on the screen.

The director said.

"We need to go down now."

That was true. Because it was true, it landed even later. The director had just been the one pushing students off the roster, but the statement that they needed to go down now was a fact.

Seojin looked at Hajun's name. She didn't press it.

"We seal it and go down."

Doyoon pulled out the sealing stickers right away. The staff room door, the exit unconfirmed screen, the line where today's date had appeared. He put numbers on all three spots. Bora read the numbers aloud, and Dogyeong photographed only the numbers.

"You're not opening the staff room?"

Bora asked.

Seojin was slow to answer.

"Not now."

Only after saying it did his breath come back to him. He had chosen to leave Hajun's name behind and go down. Whether that was the opposite of eleven years ago or the same as it, he couldn't judge. Right now, getting all the students out and sealing the site came first.

Before going down the stairs, Dogyeong asked the director.

"Do you consent to releasing the actual headcount sheet."

The director said, "After consulting a lawyer."

Dogyeong recorded that answer too. There were no student names in it. Only numbers, the signature, and the director's answer.

Dogyeong renamed the recording file right away. He deleted the default title that included a student's name, and left only the time and place. 2342_Baekro_Academy_director_response. He briefly pressed the upload button, then took his hand off.

"If this goes out now, other kids' schools get dragged in too."

The words were less something said to Seojin and more something meant to stop his own finger. Dogyeong turned off the scheduled release. Instead he only sent an external storage request. Location delayed by 30 minutes. Faces excluded. No sharing before the original is verified.

Seojin wrote down those three conditions. Dogyeong hadn't gone soft. He still wanted to be first to grab a story. But this time, he didn't throw the evidence he'd grabbed out right away.

This time the stairwell signal light couldn't read four people at once. It went two at a time. Doyoon and the director. Seojin and Bora. Dogyeong tried to stay alone at the end, but Bora turned back to him.

"If you go alone, that makes one more person left behind."

Dogyeong swallowed a short curse and fell in behind Seojin instead of behind the director. The camera looked heavy.

"Who's going to be my witness."

Bora said.

"I will. The reporter's camera bag, black. Right strap torn."

Dogyeong almost smiled for the first time, then didn't.

"That's right."

Once that confirmation was added too, the stairwell signal light turned green. The voice inside the staff room didn't come again. But behind Seojin's back, the sound of today's date being stamped came once more.

Bora didn't let go of Seojin's wrist.

"If we press it now, do we all go back up?"

"I don't know."

Seojin said he didn't know. It took time to say those words in front of Hajun's name. Bora heard that answer and wrote it in her own file. Yun Hajun, exit unconfirmed. Not pressed. Unknown.

Doyoon glanced back and forth between the staff room door and the stairs.

"Finish confirming all students on the first floor first."

Eunchae called out the numbers again. 24 out of 26 students. Two had lost the guardian call and were stopped on the second floor landing. Both were registered students. Even while Seojin had stopped in front of Hajun's one name, the count of the students still present wasn't finished yet.

Seojin took his hand completely off the screen.

"Confirming the remaining two."

Bora handed the phone to Jeongmin. Jeongmin called out the name of the student on the landing. Only once. Instead of answering, the student held up their own belonging to the screen. A red vocabulary notebook. The other student held up a yellow umbrella. The guardian call had cut off, but the partner's sighting remained.

The student with the yellow umbrella couldn't keep their arm raised for long. The smoke made the arm drop. As it did, the green light on the roster dimmed along with it. Bora read the academy sticker attached to the end of the umbrella. Building 3, row 2, locker 14. Even without the student answering, the object's location tag remained.

Seojin added the locker number to the confirmation sheet. Name, object, the object's original location. With one more box added, the stairwell signal light brightened again. It was slow, but faster than the pace at which it was fading.

The student holding the red vocabulary notebook tried to say their own name and coughed instead. When Jeongmin tried to say the name for them, Seojin stopped him.

"Only the person themselves, once."

The student opened the first page of the notebook. A name written inside was visible. Handwriting instead of a voice. Seojin wrote down voice unavailable, handwriting confirmed. No one spoke for anyone else. The moment someone spoke for another, it could become another proxy signature.

Bora attached her own confirmation time next to that line.

The stairwell signal light turned green twice.

Eunchae said.

"26 students, first floor."

Only then did the desks in the study hall gradually return to their original places. The desk with the empty seat remained, but the shadow of Park Minjae's phone that had been on it was gone. Park Minjae was confirmed on video, holding his own phone on the first floor.

Eunchae didn't close the confirmation screen. Under the number 26 students, the methods of exit confirmation were listed one after another. Guardian call: 18. Partner sighting: 26. Object confirmation: 21. Partial confirmation: 1. Only next to Doyoon's name did the partial confirmation mark remain.

Doyoon looked at that mark and said.

"Leave me as the one who's one short of complete."

"Why."

"In case someone later says everything was fully resolved."

Seojin wrote down maintain partial confirmation. Those words meant Doyoon wasn't going to hide his own risk. At the same time, it was a mark that blocked the lie that the person in charge had cleaned everything up.

The director was still inside the study hall. He was looking at the paper with his own signature on it. It was the face of a man who hadn't managed to run, but it wasn't the face of a man who'd been punished. It was the face of a man whose responsibility had just started.

Dogyeong didn't photograph the director. Instead he photographed the signed actual headcount sheet and the screen showing all 26 students confirmed on the first floor.

"Once this incident is over, this goes out."

"After the consent process."

"I know. Students' faces excluded."

This time Dogyeong attached the condition first. Even so, his eyes went toward the staff room door. Hajun's voice was an exclusive story to anyone.

A short burst of static came from inside the staff room again.

"Sis."

Seojin didn't answer this time either. Bora's hand was still on his wrist. Doyoon was right beside them too. The fact that there were two witnesses became the strength not to answer.

The voice spoke one last time.

"Don't answer."

After that, there was nothing more. Only today's date remained next to the exit unconfirmed line. Seojin pressed a sealing sticker onto the staff room door handle. It didn't mean he wasn't going to open it. It meant that when it was opened, a record would be left of who opened it.