The Threshold Was a Single Emergency Exit

The threshold was a single emergency exit. Its width was 120 centimeters, and the transport bed's width was 70 centimeters.

Two beds couldn't pass through together. Side by side, that would need 140.

Igyeol confirmed that number first. Time was next.

"If we send them out one at a time, what's the interval?" he asked.

"Fifteen seconds," Dohyeon said. "That's how long it takes to turn around and bring the next one up."

"What happens within those fifteen seconds?"

"The exit ledger closes one case."

Once it closed, whatever came after was the second case. The second case had no name, no bed number, and until a moment ago hadn't existed in the system at all.

It was the same order he'd seen in August. Five closed first, and a sixth remained.

Back then, Yura had walked out on her own. Even someone who walked out on their own feet didn't enter the ledger.

This second case couldn't walk.

"Dohyeon," he said. "If one case closes, does whatever comes in after count as a new case?"

"A new case."

"What does a new case require?"

"A name," Dohyeon said. "A number works too. A paper number doesn't."

Hearing that answer, Eunchae looked at her own bracelet slips. Two remained, and both were outside the system.

"Then that person can't open a new case," he said.

"We send them out at the same time," Igyeol said.

"There's only one door," Saebyeok said.

"We put two people through one door. We lay two people on one bed."

Saebyeok ran the math. Two adults on one transport bed, one with a dislocated shoulder, the other with an oxygen saturation of 88.

"That's dangerous," he said.

"Yes."

"Which side is more dangerous?"

"The dislocated shoulder. It'll get pressed."

"Then get that person's consent."

Igyeol went over to him. The man had his eyes open but couldn't speak.

"We're going to lay both of you on one bed and take you out together," he said. "Your shoulder will be pressed. It's going to hurt."

The man moved his fingers. Three times, then a four second pause, then three more times.

"Is that a yes?"

The man did three more, and then one more after that.

Four times. In Majun's grid yesterday, four had also come up once.

They didn't try to interpret the signal. Igyeol used a different method.

"Three for yes, one for no."

Three came.

"I'll ask again. One for no."

Three came.

Saebyeok wrote it down on the handoff sheet. Two questions, two rounds of three responses each, method fixed in advance.

Mirae filmed it. She didn't put the fingers and the mouth asking the question in the same frame. She shot them separately and attached the timestamps.

"Why split it?" the daughter asked.

"If they're in the same frame, it looks like I led him to answer."

Jisu was standing near the exit. His order since morning had been one thing. Official patients first.

"Captain," Igyeol said. "Two people are going out on one bed."

"That's my transport team's bed."

"Yes. That's why I'm telling you."

"If that fails, both of them die."

"If they go out one at a time, the second one dies in the record."

Jisu held onto that sentence for a while. Then he stated his own calculation.

"If they go out one at a time, the first one definitely lives. That's my math."

"That's right."

"But you're not going to do that."

"No."

"Give me the reason in one sentence."

"I saw how the sixth person got erased," Igyeol said. "I don't want to see it again."

Jisu didn't answer. Instead he raised his hand toward his own transport team. A stop signal.

"I'm not changing my order," he said. "Official patients first."

Then he checked the time.

"Departure, 21:10. Until then, you use my bed."

He hadn't changed the order, he'd just given time. Igyeol understood the difference.

At 21:02 they laid the two men on one bed.

Bed 1's patient was on the left, the man out of the wall on the right. It was the same lying direction as before.

The direction the 02:00 handoff and the 06:00 handoff had each recorded.

Saebyeok fixed the shoulder with a splint and set her own shield upright over it. She used it as a board to prevent crushing.

"You're using your shield like that?" one of Jisu's men asked.

"Today this is where it's needed most."

Witness placement came next.

"One witness per person," Igyeol said. "If the same person watches both, later the record just shows one person watched two people."

The daughter stayed with bed 1's patient. She was the guardian, the one on the side with a name.

Eunchae stayed with the second man. She was the one who'd issued the paper bracelet.

Dohyeon stood at the exit ledger terminal. Mirae was outside the door. Inside and outside, split between them.

And one more person was needed. Someone to actually push the bed through the threshold.

Jisu's medic took the foot of the bed.

"That violates the captain's order," Dohyeon said.

"The order is official patients first," the medic said. "On this bed, the official patient goes out first. The left side passes through the door first."

There was one bed. The left side passed the threshold before the right. That matched the order.

Igyeol heard that interpretation. It wasn't breaking the order, it was using the room the order had left open.

At 21:06 they pushed.

The bed caught once as it crossed the threshold. Not the wheels, the door frame.

"Right side, 3 centimeters," Saebyeok said.

Mirae reached out from outside the door and adjusted the angle. It took four seconds.

During those four seconds, the right side man's shoulder pushed against the shield underneath. Saebyeok saw it and reached in to lift the shield 2 centimeters.

Lifting the shield meant the crush guard was gone. But it got the shoulder clear of the door frame.

Saebyeok chose that trade and said it out loud.

"Shield lifted. No crush guard now. Four seconds."

Saying it mattered. If the shoulder got worse later, this recorded whose choice it had been.

The bed went out. Both of them.

Oxygen saturation was 86 on the right, 91 on the left. Both were alive.

What Igyeol checked next was the exit ledger terminal.

Dohyeon looked at the screen.

"One case closed," he said.

"The name?"

"One."

"The vitals?"

Dohyeon scrolled. Then his hand stopped.

"There are two sets."

One name, two sets of numbers. Two pulse readings, two saturation values, two respiration values, all filed under one case.

"What is this?" Jisu asked.

"I don't know," Dohyeon said. "But it's better than the chart from before."

"How?"

"The chart was two sheets, so you could erase one and be done. This is one case, so to erase it you'd have to erase the name."

Jisu ran that difference through his head. If you erased the name, the daughter would know instantly. The daughter was looking at that screen right now.

"Did you aim for this?" he asked.

"No," Igyeol said. "I had no idea this would happen. There was one door and one bed."

"Then it's luck."

"It's luck. But I'm going to record where the luck landed."

"Why?"

"Next time there might be two doors, and this method won't work," Igyeol said. "If we don't have this record then, we'll mistake luck for something we did right."

The daughter was watching the side that had a name.

Eunchae asked Mirae to photograph that screen. Mirae took the shot, adding the time and terminal number.

"This isn't proof that two people lived," Eunchae said. "It's proof that two sets of numbers exist under one name."

"So how does this get used later?" Dohyeon asked.

"It cuts two ways," Eunchae said. "For our side, it's evidence that there were two people. For the other side, it's evidence that we put two people's numbers under one person's record."

"That reads as us falsifying it."

"Yes. That's why everyone here right now leaves their name."

Eunchae passed around a sheet of paper. Six people wrote on it. Igyeol, Saebyeok, Dohyeon, Mirae, Eunchae, and the daughter.

Jisu didn't write. He said he'd note it separately in his own report.

The medic stood there a moment, unsure whether to write. Jisu spoke then.

"Write it. Don't write that I ordered it, write that you put the left side in first."

The medic wrote his surname. He didn't write his given name.

"So what's the proof that two people lived?" the daughter asked.

"Two people are right beside you right now."

Hearing that, the daughter took her mother's hand. Then she took the hand of the person next to her too.

"I don't know his name," he said.

"Neither do I," Eunchae said. "The bracelet only has a number."

"So am I his witness too?"

"You're a witness for your mother's side."

"Who's on his side?"

"I am."

The daughter confirmed that answer and looked at Eunchae.

"So both of us are here."

"Yes."

Mirae wrote that down. It was the first case of a guardian asking to confirm the scope of her own witness role herself.

Outside it was 21:09. One minute remained before Jisu's departure time.

Jisu spoke to his own team.

"Move out."

Then he added one more thing to Igyeol.

"In my report, I'm writing that you used my bed."

"Understood."

"And that my medic put the left side in first."

"You're writing that too?"

"If I don't, it looks like he broke an order."

After the transport vehicle left, what remained was paper.

Eunchae's two bracelets, Saebyeok's handoff sheet, Mirae's photo log, Dohyeon's measurement record. And one photo of the exit ledger screen.

They didn't put all five into one envelope. That was a lesson from chapter 20. If one envelope disappeared, everything disappeared.

Eunchae split them into three envelopes. The bracelets and handoff sheet, the photo log, and the measurements with the ledger screen.

Gyeongmin handled the transport. It was a grade 1 slip, and it went from the hospital to three different destinations.

"Grade 1 means six cases a month," Gyeongmin said. "This is the fifth this month."

"So one case is left," Dohyeon said.

"Yes. That's why today we're bundling three destinations into one case. If the route covers all three, it counts as one."

"Is that allowed?"

"It's in the slip regulations. But it takes three times as long."

Gyeongmin wrote out the route on paper and signed his name. He wrote the expected arrival time for each stop too.

Igyeol went back to the hospital room last. Room 12 was empty.

There was no shadow on the floor. With one light source and no one there, there was no shadow either.

He looked near the ceiling of the inner wall. There was nothing there.

Turning to leave, what he checked was his own memory.

Yura's splint had been on the left. That was the answer Saebyeok had given him yesterday, and right now he still remembered that answer.

What he remembered was the answer itself. Not the scene of the splint being put on.