The Exception Depletion Rate

Oh Hyeonju never once said the word ghost.

Instead, she asked about the "exception depletion rate."

Kim Yuna laughed, since she was hearing it for the first time.

The screen didn't laugh. It picked out Kim Yuna in yellow.

Hyeonju stood outside the threshold of the break room. Even when told to come in, she didn't move. The red square on the folder in her hands, marked Night Exception Rights Temporary Assignment, tilted in the same direction as the fifth mug on the floor.

Inside the break room, Dowon was wiping down a blood stained wrench. As long as actual leftover work continued, the phone's ring couldn't cross the threshold. Hyeonju didn't question it or test it, like someone seeing that boundary for the first time.

"I'll ask this precisely," Hyeonju said. "I need to confirm whether an exception has been used this shift, and the remaining count."

"We're hearing that term for the first time," Seoha said.

"I'll take that as an answer that none has been used."

"Start with a definition. What counts as an exception, and who pays the cost?"

Hyeonju's gaze passed over Seoha's employee badge and the copy of the shift schedule. The electronic name had shrunk to a single character, Ha, but the paper still had all three characters: Im Seoha.

"An exception right is an accident buffer that immediately seals off one current rule violation. It's assigned to restore normal operations."

No person's name came up.

Seoha asked her to spread the approval document out just inside the threshold. Hyeonju pulled a tablet from the folder and set it on the floor. She turned only the screen toward the room without reaching her hand inside. It was the same way she'd handled the fifth mug.

Target incident: 00:17 unnamed transfer.

Current handler: 4721.

Recovery scope: name / access / pay / shift.

The things Seoha had come back to reclaim were listed one line at a time. If her name was restored, she could formally look up Nam Sangho's records. If access permissions returned, she could reach the on site storage locker too. If her pay and contract came back to life, she wouldn't even need to prove a reason for staying here.

"If I sign, when does the recovery happen?"

Mijin looked at Seoha. She didn't stop her. It was a face that, in the past, would have hidden the dangerous information first.

Hyeonju answered. "Upon approval, the handler record is restored immediately, and the current ticket is sealed."

"Show me the next line."

"That's an internal formula unrelated to the scope of approval."

"Is who pays the cost unrelated to approval?"

Seoha's question pointed at the scroll bar hidden beneath the tablet's view. Hyeonju didn't scroll the screen down.

At that moment, the phone's vibration inside the break room crossed one tile past the threshold. Dowon had finished wiping the wrench. Yuna no longer pretended to wipe a table that was already clean. She wiped a fresh drop of water inside the microwave and read off the completion time of the task. The vibration retreated back past the threshold.

"Keep working safely," Mijin said. "Don't put your hands down while you're listening to the explanation."

The questions weren't a meeting, they were an act of spending time. Even before the hidden line on the tablet was opened, the ticket outside had been holding at 4721 and 3 seconds.

Yuna withdrew the flashlight from the fifth mug on the floor.

"I'll look. You said I'm the candidate, right?"

Only then did the yellow cell become clear. Kim Yuna. Beside the name was Automatic Candidate, Priority 1.

Yuna's laugh cut off at the end.

Mijin stepped forward and blocked the space between the screen and Yuna.

"Yuna, step back. I'll check it."

"It's my name."

"So."

"So I should be the one reading it."

Yuna looked at the tablet past Mijin's shoulder. She didn't touch the screen. She didn't touch the capture button either. Instead she turned on her offline recorder and read out the visible rows in order.

"Candidate name, Kim Yuna. Grade field, blank. Employment code, T-0. Risk exposure score, 17. Next line, Baek Dowon, grade technician, employment code F-2, risk score 61."

Dowon tightened the gauze on the back of his hand inside the room. His risk exposure score was higher. The order was reversed.

"Show me the sort column," Seoha said.

Hyeonju moved to take back the tablet. Mijin, without crossing the threshold, pressed the corner of the folder down with the tip of her shoe.

"Manager. My team member's name came up. Disclose the criteria."

Hyeonju's expression didn't change.

"Candidates are calculated by combining recovery likelihood and work continuity."

"Don't hide behind a definition," Yuna said. "Right now the sort column is employment_grade ASC. Employment grade ascending. Risk score is third."

A small triangle icon was attached to the employment code column at the bottom of the screen. T-0, F-2, M-3. It wasn't grade order, it was contract and employment grade order.

Yuna read her own name aloud, along with the triangle and the change timestamp, 1:26:04. Mijin no longer blocked the front. Instead she placed her own employee badge on the floor between the tablet and Yuna. Not as protection, but as an object marking that the team lead had also stood behind this choice.

Yuna found the Basis List arrow next to the candidate window. Without clicking it, she read the keyboard shortcut label aloud to Seoha. Seoha opened an offline copy of the same menu on the training laptop just inside the threshold.

In the pay and shift schedule preview, blank lines were inserted at regular intervals between the lines with people's names. The blank lines had empty fields for grade, employment code, and signature too. Only the change time on the right was the same across all of them.

00:17.

Seoha didn't count the number of blank lines. Yuna didn't guess whose name was missing either. Into the offline copy, she only entered the change timestamps, which matched the row numbers.

"Every blank line, 0:17," Yuna said. "That's all we know so far."

Hyeonju closed the menu. She didn't delete it.

"That list is the internal history behind the candidate calculation."

The red square on the fifth mug caught the light from the tablet screen and flashed once. No one mentioned the relationship between the blank lines and the mug. The same time and the same marking were still two separate observations.

"So the accident buffer is a person," Seoha said.

"It's a cost unit applied to a person," Hyeonju corrected. "Using an exception recovers the current handler's loss and suppresses facility risk. It doesn't eliminate the cost."

"So you picked my name for that?" Yuna asked.

"The automatic formula presents the candidate."

"Whoever made the formula isn't automatic."

Hyeonju didn't answer. It was a silence without malice and without apology. Instead she opened the second page of the approval document.

Accident Buffer Target Change, Consent.

Kim Yuna was printed in the candidate field. The signature field was blank.

"Is this a candidate consent form?" Seoha asked.

"It's a handler's approval document."

"Where's Yuna's signature field?"

"Automatic assignment doesn't require separate consent."

Mijin set an offline record USB down next to her employee badge. "Put that answer in the original record too. No candidate consent field, confirmed by team lead."

Yuna read the timestamp without asking Hyeonju's permission. Hyeonju didn't order the recording to stop. Instead she wrote in the margin of the document: Responsibility: handler approval.

The port inside the break room was off. While Dowon sorted gauze wrappers and Yuna managed the recorder, the phone's ring stayed outside the threshold. But once the work ended, the boundary would come back in. Not signing didn't make the danger disappear either.

Hyeonju slid the pen toward Seoha.

"If you sign, your name, access, and pay records are restored. The 0:17 incident is also sealed within this current shift. If you refuse, facility risk and handler loss continue."

Nam Sangho's falsified departure record surfaced in Seoha's mind. If her official account came back, she could open the original approval chain. The reason she'd chosen the 90 day contract sat on top of one sheet of paper.

The tip of the pen touched the signature line.

On the tablet, Seoha's name field was briefly restored. Im Seoha. Three characters blinked in yellow. A short approval tone sounded from the access terminal outside the break room. The title of a locked past incident folder also appeared as one line on the training laptop.

Nam Sangho / on site departure / original approval chain viewable.

Seoha didn't open the folder. Beneath it, Yuna's name was growing darker.

"I'll strike out the wording that restores my name."

For the first time, Hyeonju reacted immediately. "If you delete that wording, the benefit of using the exception no longer holds."

"The benefit is mine and the cost is Yuna's."

"The cost of refusal stays with the civilian facility. Write down who takes responsibility for that number too."

It wasn't an easy moral answer. If they left the ticket as it was, the internal black line and the phone could keep moving. While they held the line with the break room's small labor, the facility risk outside might not stop.

Seoha divided the margin of the approval document into three columns. Handler recovery, candidate cost, facility risk. She wrote down what was known and what wasn't separately. Yuna pointed a finger at the blank candidate consent field, and Dowon spread out the corridor map outside the threshold to check whether the facility risk could be shifted elsewhere. Mijin didn't sign in anyone's field on their behalf.

"Disclose the candidate selection criteria. The candidate's own consent. Confirmation from the whole current team. Until all three, I won't sign."

She drew a line through the wording that read Handler Name Restoration.

The approval tone at the access terminal changed to a rejection tone. The title of the past incident folder locked again. Seoha confirmed on screen exactly what she'd given up.

Yuna entered two timestamps side by side in the offline record. Seoha's name temporarily restored, 1:30:41. Restoration wording deleted, 1:31:03. In between, her own candidate color shifted from yellow to orange. Mijin laid both screens next to the paper shift schedule and pressed the corners down with her employee badge. The result of refusing the deal wasn't left as words either, it was left as an object the next shift could compare against.

Mijin stood next to Seoha. She didn't sign on anyone's behalf, the way she used to.

"Leave the team lead confirmation field blank too."

Hyeonju looked at the incomplete approval document. She didn't discard it, and she didn't take it back either.

A warning tone sounded from the tablet.

Manual approval time exceeded.

Beneath the 4721 in the handler field, a thin bar began moving to the right. Im Seoha at the starting point, Kim Yuna at the destination.

Yuna looked at the screen and said,

"When my contract ends, am I not a person anymore?"

No one took it as a joke.

A yellow counter appeared next to Yuna's name.

00:30.

The black line Seoha had drawn stayed there, right beside the first number.