Kim Yuna Was the Exception Candidate

The exception candidate was Kim Yuna.

Kang Mijin took out her own employee ID.

Im Seoha stopped her hand.

"We're not picking someone to take her place. Let's look at how to pick no one first."

At 4:07:56, the automatic exception assignment count was counting down from 54.

On the center screen only Yuna's face and name remained, the employee number field left blank. Below it a new gray line appeared: `Current shift lowest employment grade / cost attribution candidate`. The comparison table beside it listed Mijin as `regular staff`, Dowon as `regular maintenance`, Seoha as `career contract`, and Yuna as `short-term contract`.

No one could see who had written that criterion into the code. All that showed was that the current screen was reading Yuna as the lowest employment grade.

Count 51.

Hyeonju spoke over the radio. "If you approve the exception right, you can seal the incomplete task immediately and restore Kim Yuna's work status. The approver will be excluded from the cost target."

Mijin held her supervisor's ID in her right hand, her left arm still fixed under the cold pack. If she pressed her card to the candidate change field, her name could go in instead of Yuna's. Like last time, pulling the cost onto herself would look like protecting someone else.

Seoha didn't grab Mijin's wrist. She set an empty clear panel in front of the card reader, blocking only the contact.

"If you go in, the problem with Yuna's position just becomes a problem with yours."

"When the count ends, it goes to Yuna automatically."

"That's why we start with a field other than the one that picks one of the two."

Yuna scrolled the screen all the way down. Behind Approve, Change Candidate, and Confirm Responsible Party, there was a small box, smaller than the terms and conditions text.

`Current shift, full refusal.`

When she opened the box, three lines of instructions appeared.

`Requires the actual name of every participant.`

`Each participant must confirm the facility failure that will continue if the exception is not used.`

`Once per shift, temporary suspension.`

It didn't say restore or cancel. It only stopped the automatic assignment for a while.

When the refusal procedure opened the participant verification window, the main count went on hold. A separate hold time built up in seconds on the right side of the screen, and once the verification window closed, the remaining number began counting down again. This wasn't a favor buying time, it was procedural time to confirm each name actually came from a real person.

Count 46.

The current participant field had four seats. Kang Mijin, Im Seoha, Kim Yuna, Baek Dowon. Jeongho, as an outside union recipient, didn't go into the current shift field. He didn't offer to add his own name and just kept photographing the screen and the receipt time on the SN-7-017 copy.

When Seoha pressed the refusal box, four confirmation fields opened for the four of them. The three fields inside the center waited for handwritten input, and Dowon's field showed `field connection required`.

Dowon had gone out to the equipment corridor behind the center to check the automatic door wedge and motor after the E14 occupancy panel malfunctioned. He was in the same building, but the screen wasn't visible from there, and a door and two bent passages stood between them. If they took only a name over the radio, an imitation voice could slip in.

Count 42.

Yuna opened Dowon's channel. "Don't say your name first. Tell me what you're handling right now and your next move."

A voice came through the static. "Rubber wedge. Door width 82. Automatic motor pressure, three times. Next is checking motor heat."

It matched the E14 log. But a voice reading from the record could also mimic that.

Yuna asked for a radio button sequence. "Once short, once long. With the contact click in between."

The first confirmation tone was short. A small friction sound came the moment the button released. The second confirmation tone was long, mixed with the scrape of the corridor exhaust fan's third blade behind it. The center's equipment camera also showed Dowon's hand and the fan's vibration at the same moment.

Voice, button pattern, on site footage. All three channels matched.

Count 36.

Yuna still hadn't asked for his name. "If you refuse the exception, the incomplete facility status continues. The current screen warning says automatic doors, water supply, and some transit equipment could stop. Which facility is undetermined. Do you still refuse, knowing that?"

Dowon didn't answer right away. He read the motor surface temperature at 46 degrees first and checked whether the wedge was holding. He also knew that inside the door, Yuna had already dropped out of the occupancy count.

"I won't complete this by processing one person. I accept the facility stopping. I'll say my own name myself."

Count 31.

"Baek Dowon."

The radio button clicked once short, once long. The name entered Dowon's confirmation field without Yuna typing it. The voice hash and button interval attached beside it.

Mijin asked, "Can we write it into the rule that the center screen accepted one vote from the field?"

Yuna shook her head. "Just this once. Only that the radio was verified and the name went in."

Count 27.

The three people inside the center also took their turns. Seoha read the screen warning and wrote her name by hand instead of her employee number, 4721.

`Im Seoha / aware of facility stoppage risk / automatic exception refused.`

She hadn't left out the employee number to mirror Yuna's blank one. The refusal field simply required her own name. After she entered it, Seoha's access privileges didn't return, and the open ticket didn't close either.

Count 22.

Yuna didn't hand her own field to anyone else.

`Kim Yuna / refuses own automatic assignment / shares the service failure jointly.`

On the last stroke of her handwriting, her profile photo flickered once. The employee number field stayed blank. Even while she was writing the refusal, the identity cost didn't stop.

Count 18.

Only Mijin's field was left.

Hyeonju read the condition again over the radio. "If the full refusal is executed, exception sealing becomes impossible. Even if a public facility failure occurs, the current shift shares the responsibility. The scope of loss could grow larger than if the supervisor approved alone."

Mijin looked at the candidate change field next to the refusal one. If she pressed her employee ID there, she could end the count. The doorframe mark on her left arm throbbed under the cold pack. The old habit of putting her own name in first to protect someone else still lived in her right hand.

Seoha didn't take the card away. Yuna didn't write the phrase in her place either.

"It's your choice." Yuna said. "Whether to become the substitute candidate, or to refuse together with us. Just don't decide by yourself that it's my cost to bear."

Count 13.

Mijin set her employee ID down on the table. She pulled up the refusal field instead of the candidate change field.

"If the facility stops, I won't say I'm off the hook because I'm the supervisor."

She wrote it with her right hand because of her injury.

`Kang Mijin / confirmed by all four in the field / automatic exception refused / shares failure responsibility.`

Count 9.

Once all four names were entered, the screen demanded a final confirmation.

`Without assigning the cost to one person, the current facility state will be maintained.`

`Agreed service failure: undetermined.`

Undetermined didn't mean free. It meant they didn't know which facility would stop, but they could take a facility failure instead of a person.

Yuna asked each of the four once. Seoha and Mijin answered directly in front of the screen. Dowon answered after the radio button pattern. Yuna read her own name again last.

Jeongho didn't merge the four answers into a single voice file. He saved each one separately and bound them into the same hash list.

Yuna read the hold log aloud. Mijin's card and handwriting verification, 21 seconds. Seoha's handwriting and screen verification, 18 seconds. Yuna's own status comparison, 16 seconds. Dowon's voice, button, and footage verification, 57 seconds. A total of 112 seconds. Combined with the 52 seconds the main count had actually ticked down, it went from 4:07:56 to 4:10:40.

Count 5.

Hyeonju said, "Does the current shift acknowledge the citizen impact cost?"

Mijin answered, "Acknowledged. Record that the target facility is undetermined too."

Count 3.

Yuna pressed `Execute full refusal`.

2.

The number stopped.

It didn't reach 0. The ticket wasn't completed either. Yuna's employee number didn't come back either. In the candidate field, only Kim Yuna turned gray, and beside it appeared `automatic assignment temporarily suspended, used once this shift`.

No one cheered.

The first alarm came at 4:10:42.

`Downtown transit facility A / escalator safety stop.`

The second came at the same second.

`Downtown transit facility B / escalator safety stop.`

The third came at the same second too.

`Downtown transit facility C / escalator safety stop.`

When the center screen tried to merge the three lines into a single map, Yuna closed the automatic bundling. She opened A, B, and C in separate windows and read each facility's on site timestamp first. All three read 04:10:42, but the camera types and operating bodies were different.

On the A screen, an upward escalator had stopped halfway, with eleven people standing gripping the handrail. Fall detection read 0. A station attendant was blocking entry from below and guiding people to walk down one step at a time.

B was an underground shopping arcade. A stroller had stopped in front of the lower comb plate, and four riders were up on the flat landing. The green light indicating the safety brake had engaged was on, but the on site manager hadn't arrived yet.

On the C screen, no person but a single tool bag remained on the middle of the stairs. The emergency stop button hadn't been pressed, and only the motor current had dropped to 0. Where the bag's owner was hadn't been confirmed.

Unable to raise her arm, Mijin dialed the three facilities' operation numbers one by one with her right hand. "A has a station attendant secured, B's manager hasn't arrived, C only has the tool bag confirmed. Don't write injuries as zero. Write it as unconfirmed."

Seoha didn't close the full refusal screen and pinned the citizen response window next to it. Yuna saved the original timestamps for A, B, and C separately. Jeongho sent the outside union network only the facility codes and whether manual evacuation was needed, not addresses. Dowon, still in the equipment corridor, said not to attempt remote restart of the escalators.

"We don't know the cause of the stop. Get people off site first, then check the power and the brake."

They decided not to restart any of the three facilities until the two channels, phone and camera, matched. No one suggested canceling the full refusal to push the cost back onto one person. Instead, getting the people off the stopped stairs became the new task.

They were three different locations. The exact addresses and passenger conditions hadn't come in yet. Whether the full refusal was the direct cause, or whether the same state change had simply reacted at the same time, couldn't be settled from a single instance of simultaneity.

Yuna wrote the three alarm times beside her own blank employee number field.

One person's automatic assignment had stopped.

The city had begun to stop in three places.