Majun Counted the Sound Beneath the Grate

Majun counted the sound beneath the grate.

The response came after four days. Three knocks, twelve seconds apart. It matched the format he had sent, which meant the other side had read his rules.

He turned the wrench half a turn. His hands were shaking, so he turned it in two stages.

Pipes carried sound. He knew that. He had locked and opened the pipes in this section for three years.

A human voice came from above the grate. The old model detector couldn't record audio, but it could display frequency.

"Someone's talking." A voice from above. "The waveform is different from the knocking."

"Can you get content out of it?" Saebyeok asked.

"Not from here. We need to find the other end of the pipe." Dohyeon folded the pipe diagram.

The maintenance pipe diagram was agency material. The subcontractor kept its own separate diagram, and Gyeongmin knew where that company's warehouse was.

It took forty minutes to get the diagram from the company office. There was one condition attached: tell the company first what they found using it.

"Can't do that." Igyeol said. "If someone's inside, that person hears it first."

"Then I can't give you the diagram."

Gyeongmin pulled out his own transport slip. Grade 1.

"Let's say I'm the one transporting this diagram." he said. "Then you didn't hand it over. It went out carried by me, and the record stays on my slip."

The company owner understood the calculation. Responsibility shifted from himself to the carrier, and the carrier accepted it knowing that.

3:20 PM. The other end of the pipe was the west ventilation room on the eighth floor. An unsealed area.

Pressing an ear to the floor grate in the ventilation room, sound came through. It was human speech, broken into sentence units.

"Look at the schedule sheet."

He repeated the same three words three times. The reason for repeating was that he hadn't gotten confirmation the other side had heard. Dohyeon sent a response signal with the detector. Three knocks, twelve seconds apart.

The repetition stopped. Then the sentences grew longer.

"Who came down?"

"Rescue team." Dohyeon spoke into the pipe. "Gap Rescue Team. Four of us."

"Four." Majun repeated.

"Yes."

"What time?"

Dohyeon said the time. Majun repeated it back. Then he asked.

"The date?"

It was August 16th. Majun went quiet.

Twenty-six seconds later he spoke again.

"Four days have passed."

He hadn't been counting the days. In the dark, sleep and fainting were indistinguishable. What he'd spent those twenty-six seconds doing was recounting the water bottles. Two and a half were left, and if two people split them, that was a day and a half.

"Majun." Yura put her hand on the grate. "It's me."

Inside, the sound stopped. Ten seconds.

"Sis."

"Yeah." Yura answered.

"Is your name erased?" Majun asked.

Before Yura could answer, Igyeol looked at him. The order of that question was strange. What a trapped person should ask first was the rescue time, or water, or oxygen.

"How did you know?" Yura asked.

"There's a manifest here." Majun said. "The locked floor inspection manifest. There are eight of us on the team, but only five names. Three only have numbers."

"Who are the three?" Yura asked.

"Me, and Kim Suhyeon, and Park Taeo." Majun said.

Dohyeon wrote down the three names. Then his hand stopped.

The 8-B subcontractor team had eight members last month, five this month. That number came from Gyeongmin's ledger, and it matched Majun's manifest.

"Where are the three with only numbers now?" Dohyeon asked.

"Kim Suhyeon is with me. His leg is broken." Majun said.

"What about Park Taeo?" Dohyeon asked.

The silence lasted four seconds.

"I don't know."

Igyeol spoke for the first time then.

"Why did you go back?"

The question was direct. He didn't attach a word like reckless or admirable.

"Because of the schedule sheet." Majun said.

"Explain." Igyeol said.

"I signed the inspection sheet before the collapse." Majun said. "The pipe pressure was over standard, but I signed off as no abnormality. If you don't sign, you don't get paid for the day."

"Did you sign that alone?" Igyeol asked.

"All eight of us did. But there's only one signature line. My turn came up that day."

"Who decides the turn order?"

"It's on the schedule sheet. The manager arranges it."

"Then does that schedule sheet have the manager's name on it?"

"No. The manager's column is just approval marks."

A pen scratched somewhere above. It was a format where the name of the person who signed stayed on record, but the name of the person who set the turn order didn't.

"Majun." he asked. "Is that schedule sheet also among the eight pages?"

"Yes. Two pages."

"Then how many pages total? Three manifest, five pressure readings, two schedule sheets, that's ten."

The sound of pages turning came from inside.

"Ten." Majun said. "I said eight, but it's ten. I miscounted."

"That's not a miscount." Dohyeon said. "You counted in the dark for two days. What you're counting now is correct."

Dohyeon wrote down that structure. It was a way for eight people's judgment to get recorded under one person's name.

"So that's why you went back for the log?"

"If that signature is my name, then the cause of the collapse becomes my name too." Majun said. "But the original log has the pressure readings. If you take that out, it shows why the signature turned out that way."

"Do you have that log now?" Dohyeon asked.

"I have it. Eight pages." Majun said.

Yura took her hand off the grate. Her hands were shaking, and the inside of her mask fogged.

"Majun." she said. "Why didn't you say this. For four days."

"If you got out, the agency would come looking for me." Majun said. "And if they find me, they take the log too."

"What good is the log if you die?"

"If I die, Kim Suhyeon is still here. He can't get out on that leg."

The ventilation room fell silent. Dohyeon looked at the detector screen. It wasn't oxygen levels, and it wasn't pressure. There was nothing for him to look at.

"Yura." Igyeol said. "We need to set a rescue order. Right now the only thing we can reach is this grate, and a person can't pass through the grate."

"Then what can pass through?" Yura asked.

"Paper."

The gap in the grate was two centimeters. A person couldn't fit, but eight pages could.

Yura did that math first.

"Get the log first." she said.

"Yura." Mirae said. "Your brother is inside."

"I know." Yura said. "But we can't break through today. The support equipment is four days out. If that log stays inside for four days, water fills up in there, or someone goes in first."

"That's not a decision for you to make."

"You're right." Yura put her hand back on the grate. "Majun. You decide."

An answer came from inside.

"The manifest first." Majun said.

"Which of the eight log pages is the manifest?"

"Three pages. The one with five names and three numbers." Majun said.

Majun pushed them up through the grate. It took two minutes. The gap was two centimeters, so the wet paper got stuck twice.

On the second try he tightened his helmet strap and pushed his hand in further. His fingertips came through above the grate.

His sister's hand touched his there. Four years since the last time. He moved two fingers.

"You're alive." Yura said.

"I'm alive."

Mirae took it and filmed it immediately. Wet, smeared, exactly as it was. If she filmed it after it dried, someone could ask who had dried it.

"What about the five pressure reading pages?" Dohyeon asked.

"I have those." Majun said. "I'll bring them out myself."

"What if you can't get out?"

"Then save the eight names first with these three pages."

At the end Majun said one more sentence. An address.

"The ground floor, thirty something below the west drainage..."

The rest was swallowed by a collapse sound. Dohyeon watched the waveform. Where a number should have been, there was only vibration.

"Say the last number again." he said into the grate.

There was no answer.

"Majun." Yura called.

For thirty seconds there was no sound at all. Then a knocking sound came. Three knocks, thirty seconds apart.

Earlier it had been twelve seconds.

"The interval got longer." Dohyeon wrote down. "It could mean his strength is dropping, or it could mean the air is running low."

"Do you know which?" Saebyeok asked.

"I don't know."

Yura held up the three manifest pages. Wet paper, with five names and three numbers.

"I'm submitting this today." she said.

"If you submit it today, the agency will know about this area." Igyeol said. "We've seen what comes after they know, nineteen times."

"So we don't submit it?"

"We submit it." Igyeol said. "But we change the order. Instead of submitting the manifest first, we log the submission time first. To Eunchae, the bereaved families' group, and the research institute, all at once."

"What difference does that make?"

"If these three pages disappear later, the time they disappeared stays on record in three places outside our hands."

Waveform files and three listening statements were made that afternoon. Four people had heard Majun's voice, and three of them wrote statements. Yura didn't write one. Eunchae said family statements carried less weight, and Yura accepted that.

The hash went to three places. Eunchae, the research institute, the bereaved families' group. The arrival times were all different.

During those two hours, Majun retied the splint on Kim Suhyeon's leg. He used pipe fixing clips instead of wood, and three clips were left.

"The times are different." Mirae said.

"That's better." Eunchae said. "If the times matched, it would look like one person sent it. If they're different, it means three people moved."

A person returned above the grate at 7:20 PM.

Pressing an ear to the grate, sound came. It was knocking, thirty seconds apart. Same as eight hours before.

It hadn't shortened. A sound of someone writing that down came from above.

"This is the best reading we've got today." he said.

Yura sat down beside the grate. She set a ninth oxygen tank next to her, one the bereaved families' group's resident member had submitted under his own name.

"Majun." she said to the grate. "I'll be here."

From inside came three knocks. Thirty seconds later, three more.

The interval shortened to twenty-seven seconds. Majun knew he had shaved off those three seconds himself.