The Public Phone, Fourteen Steps From the Back Door

The public phone was fourteen steps from the treatment center's back door. Yura dragged the oxygen tank the fourteen steps over three minutes.

He could have called from a terminal. Dohyeon held out his own terminal, and Yura refused.

"The number stays on record."

"My number stays on record."

"Then it means Dohyeon called our house." Yura said. "If someone asks about that call later, Dohyeon will have to explain it."

"I'll explain it."

"I'll be the one to explain it."

Dohyeon put the terminal away. Then he walked ahead to the public phone and checked the state of the receiver. By the time Yura arrived, the dial tone was already on.

"I'll carry it for you." Mirae said.

"I'll drag it myself."

The sound of the tank scraping came from the floor. As long as that sound continued, it meant he was still moving under his own power.

When he picked up the receiver, Yura's hand was wet. It wasn't from the oxygen.

The home number had eleven digits. He had been memorizing it for two days.

His mother picked up on the third ring.

"Hello." his mother said.

Yura took one breath.

"Mom."

"Who is this?"

"It's me. Yura."

The sound on the other end of the line stopped. It wasn't complete silence. A television played in the background, and someone was running water in the kitchen.

"Your voice." his mother said. "Your voice sounds like my child's."

"It's me, Mom. It's Yura."

"Who's Yura?" his mother asked.

It was strange that the question didn't make him angry. To be angry, the other person would have had to be lying, and his mother wasn't lying.

"Mom, how old am I?"

"Who?" his mother asked back.

"Me."

His mother paused for a moment. "Are you a student?"

"How many daughters do you have, Mom?"

"We only have one daughter." his mother said.

It wasn't the hand holding the receiver that trembled first, it was the other one. Yura pressed that hand against the handle of the oxygen tank.

"What's that daughter's name."

"Seonyeong." his mother said.

Jin Seonyeong. Yura's younger sister.

That family had three children. Yura, Seonyeong, and one more.

"Mom." Yura said. "What about the son?"

While he asked, Yura pictured the cabinet in the living room. He tried to remember how many photographs had stood there, but he couldn't trust even his own memory today.

"There's no son." his mother said.

Yura pulled the receiver a little away from his ear. Mirae stood beside him, terminal in hand. A finger rested on the record button, but it hadn't been pressed.

"Yura." Mirae said in a low voice. "If we record this, it becomes evidence. Evidence that you can recognize the voice and still not connect the relationship. This won't get waved off as a system error."

"No." Yura said.

"This would be material that works in your favor."

"It's my mom's voice." Yura wrapped his hand around the receiver.

Mirae lifted his finger off the button. It had been three seconds.

Igyeol had been standing two steps back. He hadn't said a word during those three seconds, and after Mirae's finger came off the button, he said only one sentence.

"Recorder. Log the fact that you didn't press it, too."

"Why." Mirae asked.

"If someone asks later why we didn't make this piece of evidence, the record needs to show that we followed Yura's decision, not that Yura refused."

"Does that difference matter that much." Mirae asked.

"It does." Igyeol said. "The first version puts the responsibility on Yura. The second puts it on us."

Mirae spun his pen twice. Then he crossed out the sentence he'd been about to write and wrote a new one.

Mirae wrote in his notebook. 09:41, recording not conducted, reason: subject refused, requested by Park Mirae, all present as witnesses.

Yura put the receiver back to his ear.

"Mom, let me ask you one more thing."

"Yes." his mother said.

"How many beds are in the small room?"

His mother paused for a moment. The sound of running water stopped, and footsteps started. She was walking toward the small room.

"Two." his mother said.

"Why are there two?"

"It's Seonyeong's room. There are two beds in it."

His mother's voice shook for the first time.

"Why would there be two. Why is this."

"Mom." Yura called out.

"That's strange. Whose is this other one." his mother muttered to herself.

What had been erased were the name and the relationship. The object remained. The bed stayed. His mother saw that bed every day and had never once found it strange. It only became strange the moment someone asked about it today.

"Mom, don't throw that bed away."

"What?" his mother asked.

"Don't throw it away. Please."

"Okay." his mother said.

"And one more thing. Is there a man's work uniform in the closet in the small room?"

Footsteps sounded again. The sound of a closet opening.

"There is one. Whose is this." his mother said.

Water ran from Yura's eyes. He made no sound. If he made a sound, his mother would feel sorry, and his mother had no way to find a reason to feel sorry.

Mirae turned his back. Not filming someone crying was his principle, and yesterday it had become a written clause.

Igyeol didn't turn away. Instead, he looked not at Yura's hand but at the gauge on the oxygen tank. Deciding in advance where to look was his way of handling it.

"Don't throw that away either."

"Who are you, really." his mother asked.

"Wrong number."

Yura set down the receiver.

Even after the receiver was hung up, he didn't let go of it. His breathing rose to twenty four per minute. The inside of the oxygen mask fogged two times out of every three.

"Sit down." Saebyeok said. He stood beside Yura without putting a hand on his back.

"I'm fine."

"A person who's fine doesn't breathe twenty four times a minute."

Yura sat down. For two minutes after he sat, no one said anything.

The fourteen steps back took two minutes. No one helped support him. Yura had said earlier that he would drag it himself.

After sitting on the steps, he spoke first.

"Jin Majun."

The three of them looked at him.

"He's my younger brother. Twenty three. He worked tower subcontract maintenance." Yura said. "I was with him for two days. Below floor 8."

It was the name he had swallowed back at the threshold. He'd swallowed it then because it seemed like the three of them would go back in, and he said it now because only three hours of oxygen were left.

"Find Majun first." he said.

Igyeol raised his head.

"Is one of the two bracelet engravings his number?"

"I won't say that yet."

"Understood."

Mirae's hand went to his notebook. Yura watched that hand.

"Write it down. Write this down." he said. "But there's a condition."

"Go ahead." Mirae raised his pen.

"I won't say where Majun is. I won't say whether he's alive either." Yura said. "If I tell you, the Bureau goes in first. If the Bureau goes in first, Majun gets found without a name too. Just like me."

"Then what do we know." Igyeol asked.

"That he's inside the Tower. That much." Yura said.

"We'd already guessed that."

"Right. So what I've given you new is one name." Yura said. "If there's a name, when he's found later, they can count six instead of five."

Igyeol opened his notebook. Below the line where he'd written 8-B-3, he made a new line and wrote a name on it. Jin Majun. Beside it he wrote location undisclosed.

"When can this condition change." he asked.

"When I change it."

"Then we won't ask."

"Surveyor." Saebyeok said. "If we don't ask, we can't build a rescue plan."

"A plan can be built without a location." Igyeol said. "Equipment, oxygen, personnel, entry conditions. All of that can be decided in advance. We only need the coordinates at the very end."

"If we get the coordinates at the very end, there's no time to prepare."

"Then I'll extend the preparation time."

"How."

"From now on, I'll load the equipment into the car." Igyeol said. "When the coordinates come in, there won't be time to load anything. If it's already loaded, that time has already passed."

"If it's loaded in the car, the Bureau will read it as deployment preparation." Dohyeon said. "Deployment preparation before the license review is a violation."

"Then we won't load it. We'll stack it beside the car instead."

"Is that allowed."

"It's not in the regulations." Igyeol said. "If it's not covered, we do it anyway for now. If someone asks later, I'll give the time and the reason."

Mirae wrote down that sentence. Until yesterday, this man had double checked things three times before doing anything not covered by regulation.

Saebyeok ran the calculation. And he didn't push back. No number came out that could contradict it.

Mirae wrote one last line.

Call not recorded. Jin Majun, twenty three, tower subcontract maintenance, accompanied Yura for two days. Location undisclosed. Survival unconfirmed. Disclosure decided by Jin Yura.

Below that he wrote his own name and the time.

The oxygen tank's remaining gauge had dropped to three hours and twenty minutes.

Igyeol looked at that number and calculated. If registration didn't come through within three hours and twenty minutes, Yura's readings would drop back into the eighties. Registration hinged on the review results due at noon, and those results had already been signaling a deduction.

"Saebyeok." he said. "Let's make an entry preparation list. Without coordinates."

"Now?"

"If we don't do it now, we won't be ready when the coordinates come in."

Saebyeok sat on the steps and took out a sheet of paper. It was the back of the charter.

"Two oxygen tanks, two bleeding kits, three splints." he wrote. "Three entry personnel, one on standby. And we need one more thing."

"What."

"A procedure so the rescue target doesn't get found without a name." Saebyeok said. "That's harder than finding them. We brought Yura out from floor 8, and the ledger had five people."

Igyeol took down that item. He put a question mark next to it. It was an item with no method yet.

Yura looked at that paper.

"I'll think about that one." he said. "Since I'm the kind of person who gets erased that way, I know where the erasing happens."

"Then you're in charge of that item." Igyeol said. He wrote a name next to the item. Jin Yura.

It was the first time an unregistered person's name had been listed as the person in charge on a preparation list.

Saebyeok folded the paper and handed it to Yura.

"You keep this." he said. "The person in charge needs to hold it."

Yura tucked the paper into the handle of the oxygen tank. His hand paused once while doing it.

"What if I lose it?"

"Then we write it again." Saebyeok said. "The paper can be rewritten. The person in charge can't be reassigned."