The Saved and the Dead

12:00, the door to Yun Haewon's office was locked from the inside.

I knocked only twice. A third knock becomes the signal of someone who can't wait. Yun Haewon looked like the kind of person who would use that signal against me. Inside, the sound of papers turning stopped, and the lock clicked open.

"This visit isn't on the schedule."

He opened the door only halfway. His management key sat in his right breast pocket. His fingertips pressed against it once. In the body from chapter one, it had been the left trouser pocket that bulged. I couldn't explain that difference yet. To tell a living man about the pocket he'd have after death, I would first have to say what I'd chosen yesterday.

"Don't go to the calibration room tonight."

Yun Haewon didn't ask right away. He opened the gap a little wider and looked past me. At the end of the hallway stood Gang Taejun. The chief of security didn't come closer, but he wasn't far either.

"A warning with no reason given is hard to tell apart from a threat."

"Around 23:55, the oxygen alarm in the calibration room goes off. The door locks, and manual ventilation comes too late. If you're inside, Deputy Director, you die."

At the word die, Yun Haewon's hand went still over his pocket. It was a face where calculation arrived before fear. He opened the door further.

"How do you know the exact time?"

"I saw it happen once."

"Where."

I didn't cut the answer short. This time I had to give him part of it.

"In the same day."

Gang Taejun walked over. He'd most likely only heard my last sentence. That alone was enough.

"Ms. Seo Ihyeon. Is this an unauthorized meeting?"

"The Deputy Director needs protection."

"From whom."

There was no answer to that question. At least, not one I had right now. Yun Haewon spoke without looking at Gang Taejun.

"Chief Gang, please hold my authentication on Door 4 after 18:00 today."

"What's the reason."

"To verify what Ms. Seo Ihyeon said."

He wasn't acting because he trusted me. He was setting conditions because he didn't. Yun Haewon took a small envelope folder from the desk inside his office and set it in front of me. There was no name on the front. It was an empty white envelope.

"If it's true that I die tonight, the person who moved me changes along with it. If it's false, then you, Ms. Seo, have obstructed my audit procedure."

"You're saying you'll record that right now?"

"Verification without a record is worse than a threat."

Yun Haewon put the empty envelope back in the drawer. The key went into his right breast pocket. His hand wasn't fast. He put it away slowly, as if he wanted me to watch. He wasn't a man being protected, he was a man leaving conditions behind him. The person I was trying to save was tying my experiment down on paper.

Gang Taejun turned his gaze toward me.

"When the subject of verification is a person, it's called an experiment."

He was right. I didn't argue. It was already what I was doing.

18:00, the air in the security office smelled dry with the heat of electronics. Yun Haewon had stayed in that room, as I'd asked. Not his office, not the calibration room. The windowless security office. Gang Taejun stood by the door with his arms crossed. The posture made the bandage on his left wrist more visible.

"This is a door the Deputy Director is supposed to authenticate himself."

"Just handle it in my place for today," Yun Haewon said. "If it's a procedural violation, log it under my name."

"To log a procedural violation, I have to do it with my own hands."

Gang Taejun ended up standing in front of the Door 4 terminal. Yun Haewon stepped back, and I looked at his right breast pocket. The key was still there. That one simple check calmed me a little. A living man's belongings stay where they belong.

Gang Taejun scanned his thumb.

The terminal turned blue. Instead of the sound of a lock releasing, a sheet of paper slid out of the printer at the back of the security office. It was a scene I hadn't seen on the first day. If Yun Haewon had authenticated it, whose name would that paper have come out under? I went closer.

It was an envelope.

Gang Taejun's name was printed on the front. The black lettering stood out too sharply against the fresh paper. Gang Taejun stood at the printer and didn't pick it up right away. He looked at Yun Haewon first.

"What is this."

Yun Haewon delayed his answer. The delay itself tipped the scale toward him already knowing.

"It's an individual audit confirmation."

"It has my name on it."

"That's exactly why it's individual."

Gang Taejun picked up the envelope. It was sealed, but not completely. When he checked the gap with his fingers, Yun Haewon took a step closer.

"Don't open it right now."

"It just printed out under my name."

"That's exactly why I'm telling you not to open it now."

I noted the distance between the two of them. Yun Haewon didn't try to take the envelope back. Gang Taejun didn't open it right away either. Both of them were weighing what authority the other was speaking with. The input I'd changed was Yun Haewon's location. The output was Gang Taejun's name.

The log beside the printer showed only `Door 4 / First authentication / 18:00:07`. There was no recipient name in the log. The name only appeared on the paper. The system seemed to remember which door had opened first, not who had been sent what. That much was enough to build a hypothesis. But it still felt too close to a person to call a hypothesis.

"Give me one reason not to open this envelope," Gang Taejun said.

Yun Haewon was silent for a moment. The silence was information. He was choosing between a reason he could say and a reason he shouldn't.

"Tonight you'll be moving as the officer in charge on site, Chief Gang."

"I'm already the officer in charge on site."

"A different site."

Gang Taejun's eyes came to me. It was a question of whether I knew too. I couldn't nod. It was a site I didn't know yet either. At that moment there was only one thing I knew. If Yun Haewon didn't move, someone else would move in his place.

21:20, Gang Taejun opened the envelope.

The spot was too exposed for him to have opened it alone. The end of the residence-wing hallway, in front of the emergency stairwell. The point where the path split toward Hong Sangwook's office and the calibration room. He read the first page inside and folded it back at once. It was a motion befitting a chief of security, not one meant to lessen shock, but one meant to shorten the time anyone else had to read it.

The second page was an old site photograph. I only saw the corner. A year, a blueprint number, and a water-soaked stairwell. It was most likely a photo from 2019. After seeing it, Gang Taejun couldn't close the envelope again. Closing it meant lining up the fold, and his left hand failed that task once.

"Chief Gang."

I called to him from the bottom of the stairs.

"Don't follow me."

"That envelope changed your movements."

He stopped. He picked apart the words in my sentence.

"Changed my movements."

"Originally, Deputy Director Yun Haewon would have authenticated Door 4. Today you did, and an envelope with your name came out. What happens next can change too."

"What's your basis for saying originally."

"A day I've already seen."

Gang Taejun gripped the stair railing. With his left hand. When the bandage touched the rail, two of his fingers closed a beat late.

"Have you considered the possibility that this is psychiatric."

"Yes."

"And your conclusion."

"If I were mad, the cup should have broken."

He didn't understand it. Even without understanding, he saw the structure of my answer. That I wasn't a sloppy prophet, but someone counting falsifications. That much got through to Gang Taejun.

"What's in the envelope."

"A 2019 on-site judgment report," he said. "It's not under my name, but it needs my signature."

Hong Sangwook appeared at the end of the hallway. He wasn't surprised to see the two of us. Instead of surprise, he arranged his face into something like a smile.

"Chief Gang, we need to check the calibration protocol. An alert came up from the basement."

Gang Taejun put the envelope in his inner pocket.

"The Deputy Director is in the security office."

"Good. Then today, Chief Gang, you come down with me."

Today.

Hong Sangwook had added that word carelessly. Not like someone who knew what had changed from the original, but like a manager efficiently handling a schedule change. But that efficiency moved a person. Gang Taejun filled the spot Yun Haewon had vacated.

I followed the two of them.

Yun Haewon tried to follow too. Gang Taejun raised his palm to stop him.

"Stay in the security office, Deputy Director."

"This is a procedure that started under my name."

"Not today."

For the first time, Gang Taejun cut Yun Haewon off. That brief interruption erased the conditional clauses from Yun Haewon's face. He looked at me over Gang Taejun's shoulder. It wasn't a look that said look at the result you made. It was a look that said record this. So I followed. Not like someone trying to save a life, but like someone trying not to miss the order of the next death.

23:55, the manual valve in the basement ventilation room was deeper in than the map showed. It was the equipment area Jeong Mugyeom had briefly mentioned earlier in the day. Seeing it in person, the passage was narrow, and old water stains had dried on the floor. Jeong Mugyeom wasn't there. A sign on the wall read `Two or more people required to confirm manual switchover,` though in reality the space could barely fit one person standing.

A basement calibration warning lit up. I didn't know what it meant, but I could tell the outcome. The oxygen level display dropped. It was the same color as on the first day. A different room, a different person.

Gang Taejun said to Hong Sangwook.

"Go back upstairs, Director."

"By procedure, I'm the approver."

"The approver has to sign while alive."

He didn't speak like a hero. It was a short on-site call. Hong Sangwook stepped back a beat late. Even a late retreat was a choice. While he stepped back, Gang Taejun gripped the manual valve. His left hand went first, and his right followed.

Jeong Mugyeom's name was written on a small piece of tape beneath the equipment panel. `Manual valve inspection: Jeong Mugyeom.` A name I hadn't seen earlier that day. Only after reading it did I understand that the valve was something someone maintained routinely. Not a secret device, but equipment that someone had greased and checked the lock on, every single time. If that was true, then both a malfunction and a choice could leave a record.

"Where is Foreman Jeong Mugyeom."

Hong Sangwook answered.

"Over at the residence wing's power section. There's no time to call him now."

The words there's no time always pushed someone out at this research institute. It was very likely the same in 2019. Hearing those words, Gang Taejun moved faster. It looked as though the photograph in the envelope was pulling at his wrist.

I looked at the oxygen display beside the valve. 18.1, 17.4, 16.9.

"Chief Gang, let go."

"Get out through the door."

"That valve locks."

"How do you know that."

There was no time to answer. The valve shaft kicked once. Gang Taejun's wrist twisted backward, and he clenched his teeth. I grabbed the auxiliary lever. Cold metal pressed against my skin. Yun Haewon arrived late at the entrance of the ventilation room. He was alive. Out of breath, but standing.

"Chief Gang!"

When he called out the name, Gang Taejun turned for the first time. That one second wasn't enough. The valve cover came down and trapped Gang Taejun's arm inside. The door began to close automatically. I pulled the lever, and the lever didn't move.

00:14.

The alarm inside the ventilation room grew quieter. It wasn't that the sound had lessened, it seemed the thinning air simply couldn't carry it anymore. Gang Taejun went down on his knees. The fall wasn't a large motion. His body went down the way a body does when it loses its own weight. Yun Haewon tried to put his hand into the gap in the door, and I grabbed his wrist and pulled it back. I couldn't let another person into that room.

By the time O Sejin arrived, Gang Taejun wasn't responding.

"00:14," O Sejin said. It was the same time as on the first day. "No breathing."

Yun Haewon was alive.

That fact registered first. Then Gang Taejun's name came after. I had saved Yun Haewon, and Gang Taejun had died. The sentence was too clean. The actual scene wasn't. The envelope, the authentication, Hong Sangwook's call, the manual valve, the lever I'd grabbed too late. There was too much that didn't fit inside that clean sentence.

00:17:13.

A white pulse folded up the water stains on the ventilation room floor. Yun Haewon's wrist slipped out of my hand. O Sejin's emergency bag closed again. Gang Taejun's body didn't disappear from the floor, it rewound to a state in which it had never fallen at all.

When I opened my eyes, I was in the hallway.

00:17:13.

My hands were dry. Neither the water on the ventilation room lever, nor the water on the calibration room floor, nor Gang Taejun's last breath remained behind like an object. The lights in the residence-wing hallway were on, normal. Gang Taejun stood in front of me. Alive.

I looked at his left wrist first.

Gang Taejun saw that look. He also saw the beat-late breath I took, like someone who knew a dead man's final posture. He didn't know anything yet, but he saw clearly enough that I was hiding something.

"Did you just check my wrist."

I stepped back before answering. Too late. Gang Taejun was already pulling out handcuffs.

"Ms. Seo Ihyeon. That's the face of someone who just saved someone."

Steel touched my wrist. A steady weight came before the cold. I couldn't resist. I was exactly as late as the time I'd spent relieved at seeing Gang Taejun alive.

"Where did you learn that expression."

He asked it low. I opened my palm. There was no physical evidence. In the residence-wing hallway, there was still no ventilation room, no valve, no death. And yet I stood frozen, like someone who had just come from seeing all of it.

"I can't answer that."

"Can't, or won't."

"Right now, I can't tell the difference."

Only after locking the handcuffs did Gang Taejun look at my face. He didn't believe in the loop. But he did believe that I was hiding something I'd just gone through. That much was enough to start the next day.