The Emergency Application Was Two Pages

The emergency application was two pages. Eunchae filed it at exactly 8:00 AM.

The application had two purposes. Preservation of temporary treatment status, and initiation of identity verification procedures.

The court's filing system ran automatic review first. Standard processing time was two to six hours.

The answer came in seventeen minutes.

Denied. Reason: applicant's existence could not be confirmed.

Eunchae stared at that screen for a long time. Over five years he had received eleven denials, with reasons running three lines, five lines, once two full pages.

This one was a single line.

"Seventeen minutes," Mirae said. "Did a person even read it?"

"If a person read it, it wouldn't come back in seventeen minutes," Eunchae said. "The document is two pages with nine attachments. Reading alone takes forty minutes."

"So it's automatic," Mirae asked.

"Automatic. But automatic isn't a bad thing." Eunchae turned the screen toward her. "If it's automatic, there's a rule. If there's a rule, we can find it."

He pointed to the bottom of the denial notice. There was a processing code. Six digits.

"We can search past denials with this code," he said. "In the public case law search."

The search took four minutes to return.

Twenty six cases had been denied under the same code over three years.

Eunchae opened each of the twenty six, one by one. It took twenty minutes.

The applicant field was empty in all twenty six. Not blank, the field itself failed to render. Nineteen of them had been converted to proxy applications, and those nineteen had a guardian field in place of an applicant field.

The remaining seven had no field at all. Of those seven, four had no further records after.

"What happened to the four?" Mirae asked.

"No follow up filing," Eunchae said. "Not withdrawn, not closed. Just gone."

The intake worker at the treatment center had said something four days ago. That two of four hadn't come back.

Eunchae wrote the two numbers side by side. Two of four, four of seven.

"Yura," he said. "Twenty six people."

Yura leaned toward the screen. Her oxygen line was short, so she only made it halfway.

"Are they all like me?"

"We don't know that yet. Only the code matches," Eunchae said.

"So what's the same," Yura asked.

"The reason for denial is the same," Eunchae said. "That existence couldn't be confirmed."

Mirae listed the twenty six filing dates vertically. They were scattered across three years, with five cases clustered in the last four months.

"The frequency has gone up." Dohyeon's voice came through the terminal. The call had been open since morning. "Over the three year average it's one case every two months. In the last four months it's one every three weeks."

"Is that an observation," Mirae asked.

"An observation. With a sample of twenty six, frequency comparison holds. Cause doesn't."

Eunchae calculated the next step. An objection was possible. If the denial reason was one line, the point to refute was also one line.

To do that they had to prove existence. And the way to prove existence was identity verification, and to open identity verification, this application had to pass.

It was circular. The same shape Dohyeon had described at the treatment center four days ago.

"Eunchae," Yura said. "Couldn't you just put me under someone else's name?"

Eunchae's hand stopped.

"It's possible," he said. "There's such a thing as a guardian proxy application. If Igyeol's name is listed and Yura is registered as the ward, the procedure opens."

"Then let's do that," Yura said.

"Then Yura, you become an object, not an applicant."

"I still get treated," Yura said.

"You do," Eunchae said. "But then these twenty six denials stay twenty six. Your case never becomes the twenty seventh."

It took Yura three seconds to understand the math.

"So if I get through, the next person just stays blocked?"

"Blocked. And no one can ever use the fact that this code is the problem."

"Why not?"

"That's what happened with the nineteen proxy cases that passed." Eunchae tapped the list. "In all nineteen the person was saved, and the code was never once reviewed."

Mirae set her pen down between the two of them. This wasn't something to record. It was something to decide.

"Which way would you recommend, Eunchae?" Yura asked.

"Five years ago I would have recommended the proxy application," Eunchae said. "I can't recommend it now. I did it that way three times, and all three times the case disappeared. The person was treated and the rule stayed exactly as it was."

"So what about now," Yura asked.

"Now I'm not qualified to recommend anything. This is a decision that puts your body on the line, not mine."

Yura took hold of the oxygen line with her hand. The sixth tank had run empty that morning. At five liters per minute, half a tank lasted half a day.

The seventh was the one Eunchae had checked out a second time yesterday.

"Who signed out the seventh tank?"

"I did."

"And the eighth?" Yura asked.

Eunchae didn't answer. After the third checkout, his license was on the edge of suspension.

"So it's not just my body on the line," Yura said.

The sentence broke off midway. Her saturation dropped to eighty seven. Saebyeok raised the flow rate one more notch and stopped the conversation for three minutes.

Eunchae opened his mouth to deny it. For five years he had worked in a way that never let the person involved see the burden.

"You're right," he said. "My license is on the line. The second checkout added one more audit."

"Why are you telling me this only now?"

"Until yesterday I thought not saying it was a kindness."

"If it's a kindness, then I can't decide for myself."

Eunchae wrote that sentence down in his notebook. It was the first time he had written down a sentence instead of a clause.

He reached for the screen. The proxy application form was open, the cursor sitting in the guardian's name field.

Yura closed the window.

"I'll go for the twenty seventh," she said.

"Yura," Eunchae called out.

"Leave the denial log under my name," Yura said. "But there's a condition. If I can't hold on anymore, switch it to a proxy application then. I'm giving that permission now, in advance."

"Then at that point your case drops out of being the twenty seventh."

"It's fine if it drops out," Yura said. "Because the fact that twenty six became twenty seven already stays on record. In today's denial log."

Eunchae traced back through that logic. What Yura was aiming for wasn't winning the case. It was a single number.

"That's a way I hadn't thought of," he said.

"Because you're the one thinking about winning."

Eunchae wrote down the condition. Then he read the sentence he had written twice.

Prior consent of the party involved: permission granted to convert to a proxy application in a state where the person cannot express will. Judge of that state: Yun Saebyeok.

The morning's denial log was already up in the public case law search. Searching the six digit code brought up one sentence on the twenty seventh line.

Applicant Jin Yura, denied, reason existence could not be confirmed.

It was the first line where a name remained. None of the previous twenty six lines had a name.

"Why Saebyeok," Mirae asked.

"She signed to hold the Majun item four days ago," Yura said. "It's better if one person holds two things. If different people hold them, they judge differently."

Saebyeok wasn't there in person. Eunchae called her, and Saebyeok attached one condition.

"Set the judgment criteria in writing right now," she said. "If I set it later, my own feelings will get into it."

The criteria were set in three lines. Unconsciousness, oxygen saturation at eighty five or below sustained for thirty minutes, and a medical determination. Conversion would happen only when all three held at the same time.

"What if only two hold?" Yura asked.

"We wait," Saebyeok said. "Until Yura can speak again."

1:20 PM. Eunchae filed the objection. The rebuttal to the single line denial reason had three items.

While he wrote, Yura read each item beside him. He stopped at the first one.

"Does my name go into the saturation records?"

"It does. Under Dr. Baek Seonho's unnamed prescription record."

"Then his name goes out too?"

"It does."

"Did you ask him?"

Eunchae's hand stopped. He hadn't.

He made the call. Baek Seonho answered within thirty seconds. He said to use it, but asked that his name be moved down to the second item. His reasoning was that if it came first, it would read as though his prescription were the core of the case.

Eunchae changed the order.

First, the Bureau's thermal imaging records counted her as a sixth entity. Second, the medical facility's oxygen saturation records confirmed a living body. Third, the return counter's rejection reason contained the applicant's name as a direct quotation.

The third item had come out of yesterday's counter. The rejection itself had become evidence.

Eunchae smiled once while writing that item. Over five years he had rewritten documents eight times just to avoid a rejection.

The answer came twenty two minutes after filing. The reason wasn't a single character different from the morning's. Applicant's existence could not be confirmed.

But this time there was an attachment list below it.

Reference material: ownership inquiry record for work bracelet KJ-7741.

Eunchae's hand froze.

He had never submitted that number. It appeared nowhere in the three items of the objection.

"Mirae," he said. "How far has KJ-7741 gone out?"

Mirae flipped through her own list. There were three access records. The Bureau's seizure list, the private exchange's sales log, and her own notebook.

All three were places he had seen with his own eyes, and in all three he had never submitted it.

"There's no official submission," he said. "Not anywhere, not yet."

Eunchae read the reference material item again. The material the court's automatic review had referenced wasn't an attachment to the filing, it was an external lookup.

"This is one of two things," he said. "Either the court is looking directly into the Bureau's database. Or someone fed this number into the court's side."

"Which one is worse?"

"If it's the first, it's a structural problem. If it's the second, it's a personal one." Eunchae took a screenshot. "I can't prove either one today. But the screenshot stays."

Mirae pulled the hash of that screenshot. She wrote the sixteen digits by hand, and Eunchae copied it down. The order was reversed from yesterday at the warehouse. The record keeper pulled it, the lawyer kept it.

Yura asked from inside her mask.

"Is this a win or a loss?"

"We lost twice today," Eunchae said. "And for the first time, we saw what the other side is watching."