Gang Taemun Never Came to the Team Office

Gang Taemun didn't come to the team office. He called Igyeol to the guild headquarters, twelfth floor.

"Sit down, Agent Han Igyeol."

Before she sat, Igyeol checked the window's orientation. The tower was two blocks left from here, and the eighth floor's west ventilation room wasn't visible.

Two stacks of documents sat on the desk. The left was thin, the right was thick.

"Yesterday the research lab's node operator license was suspended." Taemun said. "That wasn't us."

"Who did it."

"I don't know. Realistically, I can't even see that approval chain." he said. "But I know what it means. As of today, there's nowhere for your team to submit your data."

Igyeol didn't answer.

"Conditional license retention, three days for supplementary documents, review of the unregistered person's presence as a separate matter." Taemun pushed the left stack forward. "These three things can go away today."

"There must be a condition."

"Move Jin Yura's case to a private settlement." he said. "Compensation comes from our business budget. Her status gets sorted out as our contract worker. In exchange, the case won't remain in the public record."

"Does Yura's name stay."

"It stays in the contract. It doesn't stay in the disaster record."

Igyeol had heard that sentence twice now. It had the same structure as what Mirae heard yesterday. Employment record versus disaster record.

"I can't make that decision." she said.

"You're the team leader."

"Our charter leaves the final decision authority box empty. And this is the concerned party's case."

"Then call her right now." Taemun said. "I'll wait."

Igyeol didn't make the call. Instead she set her own terminal on the desk and turned on the screen. A copy of Yura's consent table appeared.

"Private settlement isn't on this table." she said. "What isn't on it has to be asked of the concerned party. If I ask now, Yura will say yes because of her brother. I won't ask today."

"That means you're making the judgment in her place."

"Yes. So I'm recording that I deferred it." Igyeol said. "I'm leaving a record of who didn't ask what, and when."

"What's the second stack." she asked.

Taemun opened the right stack. Internal data on Zone 8-B. Pipe pressure history, the sealed floor inspection schedule, and a copy of the floor by floor rescue merit table.

Igyeol didn't touch it.

"You're welcome to look." Taemun said. "You can read it and still refuse. I think it's better for you to judge after reading this."

"If I read it, it counts as received."

"Then do this." Taemun pulled out a sheet of paper. "Leave a viewing record and read it. Time, viewer, provider. I'll write my name too."

The viewing record later became the source of this data. Igyeol calculated that first.

She wrote her own name. Then she left the paper unfolded, flat on the desk.

She looked at the schedule first. There was the sequence column Majun had mentioned yesterday. One signature line, an approval mark, no manager's name. Majun had been right.

She looked at the pressure history. Two days before the collapse, the reading was 1.4 times the standard. Next to that line was a "no abnormality" signature, and the signer's name was Jin Majun.

Next was the rescue merit table.

The table was divided by grade. From grade 1 to grade 5, each grade had a headcount and a merit distribution rate.

Below grade 5 there was one more line. In the grade column, a 0 was written.

The 0 line had no name. Only a number in the headcount column, and the merit distribution rate column was blank. Not zero, blank.

"What is this row." Igyeol asked.

"A reserve row." Taemun said.

"There's a headcount number in the reserve row."

"People who were on site but didn't receive a grade rating. Temporary deployments, subcontractors, unregistered cases, that sort of thing."

"Why is the distribution rate blank."

"Because they're not subject to distribution."

"If it's zero, write zero." Igyeol said. "Blank means something else."

That was the first time Taemun chose his words carefully. Igyeol counted that half beat.

"That's just how the form is." he said.

Igyeol counted the headcount number in the 0 line. On the eighth floor incident line, it read 3.

Three out of eight. Majun, Kim Suhyeon, Park Taeo.

"Who makes this table."

"Headquarters compiles it after the rescue operation ends."

"Then do the people entered in the 0 line know they're a 0."

"They don't." Taemun said. "There's no need to know. No distribution means no notification."

"No notification means no objection either."

"That's right."

"Then this is a table where objections never get recorded." Igyeol said. "I've seen a table like that once before. During the license review, our charter left the final decision authority box empty, and the examiner recorded that as a deficiency in command structure. Our objection stays as a deduction. Here, objection doesn't even have a box."

"Agent, those are two different problems."

"They're the same form problem."

Igyeol drew a line on the floor. With her toe, short.

"Director." she said. "No deal."

"Please tell me why."

"If Yura's case moves to a private settlement, that 0 line stays a 0." Igyeol said. "It saves one person, Yura, and leaves three others in that row."

"One person survives for certain, and three couldn't have survived anyway." Taemun said. "Look at it in terms of overall survival rate."

"That one person is Majun's sister."

"That's emotion."

"That's sequence." Igyeol said. "If Yura goes into settlement first, Majun stops being a brother and becomes an unregistered subcontractor. That's the person who's inside right now holding the pressure log."

"If that log comes out, who takes responsibility." Taemun asked. "Whoever signed off knowing the pressure exceeded standard. The person you're trying to save right now is that signer."

"Eight people made the judgment and it got signed in one box."

"The record shows one name."

"That's exactly why I'm trying to change that record." Igyeol said.

Taemun was quiet for a moment. Then he spoke again.

"Agent Han Igyeol." He said her name. "If your license is suspended in three days, who gets that person out."

"I'll handle that."

"Can you handle it."

"I don't know." Igyeol said. "But even if I can't, I'm not handing it over to your side."

"Your four teammates carry that answer along with you."

"Yes. So I'm recording today's refusal too." Igyeol said. "The name of the person who refused is mine. The authority to reverse it belongs to the four of them."

Igyeol stood up. Then she picked up the viewing record paper.

"I'm taking this."

"That's our form."

"Your name is on it." Igyeol said. "I'll write the proposal contents here too. Right now, right here."

She wrote three lines in the blank space at the bottom of the paper. Proposal for private settlement, proposal to lift license conditions, proposal to provide internal data. Then she wrote the time.

"Where are you going to put that."

"Into the evidence chain."

"Agent, that makes my proposal public under my own name."

"Yes."

Taemun looked at the paper and didn't reach for it.

"Take it." he said. "But I'll tell you one thing. We didn't create that row. The form is the agency's standard."

"Then who created it."

"I don't know that either." Taemun said. "Realistically, I'm the one who uses that table."

She stepped outside at 4:40 PM.

A file arrived on her terminal. No sender was displayed.

The file was a copy of the proposal Taemun had shown her today. It was the original that Igyeol hadn't accepted, and there was a seal stamped over the bottom of it.

It was the seal of a rescue team that had disbanded fifteen years ago. Igyeol knew the name. It was a name she'd seen in old records.

The sender hadn't written their own name. Instead there was a file name.

Igyeol didn't read the file name out loud. Without reading it aloud, she looked at it twice.

Inside the file name were four digits and two letters. 78ds3.

Seven eight, ds three.

Igyeol set down her terminal and opened her hand. It was the code that had been in the voice Yura restored in chapter 5. The woman's voice had repeated it three times.

What she remembered was the code. Not the voice.

She couldn't judge whether it was Nari's voice. She'd lost her last year, and that hadn't been replaced by any record.

Being unable to judge and being certain it wasn't were different things. She wrote them down separately, distinguishing the two. It was Dohyeon's notation method, and this was the third time she'd used that distinction today.

Two people could use that code. One was Nari, and the other was someone who had learned that code from Nari.

She didn't write down which one it was. There was no basis to write it.

There was one more page inside the file. A photo of the 0 line, enlarged.

In that enlarged copy, the 0 line spanned multiple incidents. The eighth floor incident, 3. Below that, an incident on the sixth floor from four years ago, 2. Below that, other incidents, 1, 1, 3.

And in the left margin of each line, there was a pencil diagonal mark. Same spacing, same slant.

She sent the enlarged copy to Mirae. She attached only one sentence.

Please check whether this is the same mark the verifier saw yesterday.

Before the reply came, she sent it to Eunchae too. Along with a photo of the viewing record paper.

Eunchae's reply came first.

If you make the proposal contents public under the proposer's name, they could file it as a defamation issue. Are you still putting it in.

Igyeol wrote her reply.

I'm putting it in. But I'm putting my own name in too. I'm recording first, myself, the fact that I viewed it.

Saebyeok's reply cut in between. Because she was on the same team line.

Did you go there alone today.

Yes.

Next time go as two. If you go alone, only their side's record of what was said survives.

Igyeol left that sentence without deleting it. The charter had a pre-entry notification clause, and this had been a meeting. It was a situation not covered by the clause.

She wrote her reply. It's right to add one more clause. The receiving end of a proposal should also be two people.

Mirae's reply came after that. Two lines.

Same mark. And whoever sent this file, they're not one of ours.

After reading those two lines, Igyeol looked out the window. The tower was still two blocks left.

One of the other incidents in the enlarged 0 line copy was the sixth floor from four years ago. It was the floor the chief mourner at yesterday's bereaved families' gathering had mentioned. That person's mother was on the list, and the compensation box was blank.

Being on the list meant not being in the 0 line. And yet the distribution rate box was blank all the same.

Igyeol wrote down the two cases separately. Cases where the name was erased, and cases where the name remained but only the box was blank. Both existed on the same table.

The last thing she wrote was a question. A line meant for Dohyeon.

Should the 0 line be included in the criteria for counting the sixth case, or counted separately.