Empty Coordinates

Yura's bracelet beeped and picked a new owner again.

The name on the screen was Oh Gyeongmin. The second one.

Yura was standing right there, alive.

The civilian equipment storage was a three story building behind the management bureau. Forty six hours until the license review. The terminal sealed yesterday had been confiscated and taken away, and this building's recovery counter had taken its place. Ownership was still undecided. Undecided meant the rules were still alive.

"I didn't scan this." Gyeongmin said. His polite speech was slow. "I just got close."

"It's an automatic proximity lookup." the storage clerk said. "When a recovery account enters the radius, it automatically matches unregistered items."

"So if I just walk around, other people's things become mine?"

"It doesn't work that way. Registered items have an owner."

"Then what about unregistered items?"

"Those don't have an owner."

"Not that there's no owner. Just that it isn't written down."

The clerk paused for a moment. He flipped through the regulation screen twice, and no clause came up to refute it.

"The regulation says only ownerless items." the clerk said.

Gyeongmin looked at Yura. Yura held onto the wall. Saebyeok had written down that if she stood on her left foot for more than ten minutes, the area above the splint would swell, and it had now been fourteen minutes.

"A chair." Gyeongmin said. He laid a board on top of his cargo to make a seat.

Yura sat down and held up the wrist with the bracelet.

"It's right here."

The screen didn't count Yura. It was the same two lines that had shown up on the treatment room terminal yesterday. Original owner lookup failed. Pending conversion to unclaimed property. Below it, the confirm button glowed blue.

Gyeongmin knew what that button was worth. For a bracelet of this grade, six hundred thousand to eight hundred thousand won. It was high end among the maintenance workers' issued equipment. Items entered into a recovery account became eligible for disposal after thirty days.

Thirty days meant his mother's hospital settlement date would pass twice. At the last settlement date, he'd scraped the money together by skimping on rope for his cargo straps.

He gave the strap a tug. When his hand held something, it stayed farther from the button.

"Don't press it." Mirae said. The camera was already on. "Or, tell me before you press it. That's a record too."

"Record keeper."

"Yes."

"I pressed this button eight years ago." Gyeongmin said. "There was no record keeper back then."

"There is now."

Gyeongmin found the small text next to the confirm button. Report an error. The text was a third the size of the confirm button, and it was gray.

He pressed the gray one.

The screen changed. It asked him to choose an error type. There were six items on the list, and "original owner present at the scene" wasn't one of them.

"It's not here." Gyeongmin said.

"Then use other." Mirae said. "Write it as a sentence in the text field. Whatever isn't on the list is the most important information."

"Other gets lowest priority." the clerk said. There was no malice in it.

"Even lowest priority stays on record." Mirae said.

Gyeongmin pressed other. He typed with his finger in the text field. His writing was slow.

Original owner is standing right here at this moment. Currently worn on wrist. Name Jin Yura. Identity can be confirmed.

"If you put her name in, Yura's location stays on record." Mirae said.

Gyeongmin stopped. He looked at Yura.

"Should I put the name in, or leave it out?"

"Why are you asking me?"

"This is your property. And it's your risk."

Yura looked at the screen. The name field and the location field sat side by side.

"Put it in." she said. "I saw yesterday that nothing works without a name."

"It's dangerous."

"Then I'll go the dangerous way. I get to decide that, don't I?"

Gyeongmin entered the name. After entering it, he turned the screen toward Mirae. The shutter clicked twice.

"Starting with the file name." Mirae said. "storage_attribution_error_other_report_jinyura_consent."

"You put consent in the file name too?"

"That's the first thing that disappears."

A submission number came up. The proceeds switched to pending. The automatic attribution rule went up on the public log, and that log kept the record that Gyeongmin had pressed error instead of confirm.

Weight doesn't lie. That was what Gyeongmin said when he counted his recovery lists. This screen counted names instead of weight.

"What happens now?" Yura asked.

"A thirty day review." the clerk said. "During the review, it can't be disposed of or returned."

"So I can't use my bracelet for thirty days?"

"You can still wear it. The functions will be suspended."

"What were the functions?" Yura asked.

"Location response and work authentication."

"So now I can't prove where I've been."

No one corrected her.

Nine minutes later, at the storage sealing counter.

Gyeongmin filled out the paperwork to fully cancel his own attribution. Canceling it meant the pending proceeds disappeared too. As he signed that field, his hand stopped twice. Both times, he touched his cargo strap.

Mirae saw both, and didn't photograph them.

"Why aren't you taking a picture?" Gyeongmin asked.

"I will. After the signature's done." Mirae said. "I don't photograph hesitation. That gets edited into something else later."

Gyeongmin signed.

"Let's try the return now." he said. "Yura, put your hand here with the bracelet still on. Don't take it off."

"If I take it off?"

"Off, it's an object. On, it's a person's wrist. That difference buys us three more days."

Yura placed her wrist on the sealing counter's reader. The reader beeped three times.

Screen: No original owner

Gyeongmin pointed at that line with his finger. In his ledger, over eight years, there were eleven lines that read no original owner.

One more line came up below it. A line he'd never seen before.

Last response: Maintenance Zone 8-B, number MJ-2208

"What's this?" Gyeongmin asked.

"It's the last party the bracelet communicated with." the clerk said. "Usually a management server shows up. This isn't a server, it's a personal terminal number."

Mirae wrote down the number. The number she'd seen on this morning's confiscation list was KJ-7741. This one was different.

"There are two numbers." Mirae said. "One on the confiscation list, one here."

"Do they belong to the same person?"

"I don't know." Mirae said. "And right now there's no way to check. The original confiscation list is at the management bureau. All I have is the number I copied by hand."

"Doesn't something copied by hand count as evidence?"

"It does. Weakly." Mirae held up her notebook. "But when two weak pieces of evidence come out of two different people's hands, that gets strong. That's why I needed your ledger, Gyeongmin."

Yura's hand pulled off the reader. It came off fast.

Mirae saw that speed.

"Yura."

"...Yes."

"MJ. These first two letters, do you know them?"

Yura didn't answer. She turned her gaze to the window. Mirae wrote down the length of that silence. Six seconds.

"I know Maintenance 8-B." Gyeongmin said. "There was a subcontract team there. Eight people as of last month."

"How do you know that?" Mirae asked.

"I carried their equipment. Twice a month." Gyeongmin flipped through his ledger. There were about ten pages of handwritten lists. "No names written down. Just numbers. I only count things."

"Could you show me the number list?"

"I can show you. But this is a company ledger. If I show it to you, I'm in breach of contract."

"Then you don't have to show me."

"I'll show you." Gyeongmin turned the ledger around. "But when you photograph this page, photograph my name tag along with it. If someone asks later who leaked it, there needs to be an answer."

Mirae fit the ledger and Gyeongmin's name tag into one frame.

MJ-2208 was on that list. KJ-7741 was there too. The two numbers were on the same page, different lines.

"As of last month?"

"This month's roster has five people."

Mirae wrote three things side by side in her notebook. Two bracelet numbers, and a headcount dropping from eight to five.

"Yura." she said again. "I won't ask. Just one thing. Is there a chance that person is alive?"

Yura kept looking at the window.

"Don't call it that." Yura said.

Mirae wrote down that sentence exactly as spoken. Don't call it that didn't mean the person wasn't there, and it didn't mean they were, either.

Gyeongmin peered at the inside of the bracelet. The back digits of the engraving had been scratched out, and underneath, a different engraving overlapped it. It was an item engraved twice.

"This bracelet originally belonged to someone else." he said.

Yura wrapped her hand around her wrist.

"I received it."

"From who?"

Instead of answering, Yura turned the bracelet a full rotation inward. The scratched spot went out of sight.

Mirae wrote down that motion too. She'd seen the same motion in the treatment room. A motion that appeared twice, she filed not under habit but under decision, and next to it she wrote that she didn't know what was being decided.

11:12. Forty hours until the license review.

Walking out of the storage building, Gyeongmin opened his ledger. Below today's entry, he added one more line by hand.

1 attribution error, proceeds forfeited, submission number recorded. Oh Gyeongmin.

"Why are you writing this down?" Mirae asked.

"In case I forget later." Gyeongmin said. "I didn't write it down eight years ago. So for eight years, it was as if it never happened."

Yura walked three steps behind the two of them. She was slow because of her left foot, and no one rushed her.

"Oh Gyeongmin." Yura called.

"Yes."

"Those things from eight years ago. Where are they now?"

Gyeongmin stopped. He let go of the strap.

"There were three pieces. I sold one and used it for hospital costs. The other two are in my storage."

"Can you give them back?"

"I couldn't find the owner."

"Did you find them and then couldn't give it back, or did you not look at all?"

Gyeongmin took hold of the strap again.

"I didn't look." he said. "If I found them, I'd have to give them back, and if I gave them back, I'd have to admit I sold one."

"You just said it now."

"That's because the record keeper is here now."

Yura thought about that for a moment.

"Then I'll stay by your side." she said. "Find the owners for the two you have. Write down the price for the one you sold. There'll come a time when I have to say who my bracelet's owner is too."

Gyeongmin opened the ledger again. His hand was slow finding the page from eight years ago.

Gyeongmin didn't answer. Mirae didn't photograph that silence. Instead, she wrote a line in her own notebook. It meant that today, there were people she needed to question outside the management bureau too.