The Meeting Room Was on the Fourth Floor, and Yura Sat Closest to the Door

The meeting room was on the fourth floor of the hospital, and Yura sat in the seat closest to the door.

There was a reason for that seat. It was the seat she could leave from fastest if she was told to get out for not having a pass.

Eight hours ago, two people had crossed the same threshold. The problem now was what came after.

"The rescue result could be cancelled." Jisu said.

He passed around a sheet of paper. It was the Agency's rescue performance report form.

There was one field. Number of people rescued, and a name.

"One case, one name." Jisu said. "If you enter figures for two people, it gets returned for a counting error in review. If it's returned, this rescue doesn't count toward performance."

"What happens if it doesn't count toward performance." Dohyeon asked.

"Neither of them has a rescue record."

Yura heard that sentence. It wasn't the first time she'd heard it today.

"So what are you saying we should do." Igyeol asked.

"We register one person officially." Jisu said. "The other one gets carried over to the next case."

"When's the next case."

"Whenever a name or a number comes up."

"You said paper numbers don't count."

"Right."

Yura spoke without raising her hand.

"Then that person doesn't get registered."

Jisu looked at her. She'd been in the room since yesterday, but this was the first time Jisu had actually looked at her.

"Jin Yura."

"Yes."

"This isn't something to treat as an emotional issue right now."

"I'm not treating it as emotional." Yura said. "I went through it."

Igyeol tried to speak then. Yura pressed her palm down. Igyeol stopped.

The stopping mattered. Yura confirmed it and went on.

"August 14th of last year. I came out of the eighth floor. 4:06 AM."

"I know that."

"The ledger that day had six people total. Five names." Yura said. "All five of them had names then. I didn't."

"That's a system problem."

"That came up back then too. Someone said to register one person first." Yura said. "That one person was the five. I was the next case."

"So has it come up now."

"Not yet."

"It's been a year?"

"Seventeen days." Yura said. "From August 14th to today."

Jisu calculated the number. Seventeen days, and no next case had come.

"Will you write a statement." Eunchae asked.

"I'll write it. Short."

Yura wrote three lines. She didn't write her own name. She wrote Witness 1.

The first line was the date and time. The second line was six people total, five names. The third line read like this.

The next case has not come in seventeen days.

Eunchae took it and pushed it toward Jisu.

"This becomes grounds for the Captain's judgment." Eunchae said. "Whether you write anything or not, it gets filed."

"Why are you hanging my judgment on this."

"You said to register one person first, Captain. These three lines go right next to that choice."

Jisu looked at the paper. Then he looked at Yura.

"Jin Yura. Are you passing the responsibility to me."

"Yes."

That was her answer. She didn't add anything else.

Jisu didn't smile. He left the paper as it was, without folding it.

"Han Igyeol." He said. "What do you want."

"A hold." Igyeol said.

"What's a hold."

"Postponing the official designation until both of them regain consciousness." Igyeol said. "We don't decide who becomes official. They decide, themselves."

"There's no performance credit in the meantime."

"Right."

"Rescue performance factors into license review. Your team is conditional."

"I know."

"If you hold, your team's license dies first."

"That could happen." Igyeol said. "But if we designate one person now, we become the ones who decided."

"What's wrong with that."

"The two of them won't be able to overturn what we decided, later."

"I could let them overturn it." Jisu said. "I register one, and if the two of them later say they want to change it, I file the correction request under my own name. I can do that."

Igyeol calculated the offer. It was safer. The performance record would stand, and a correction path would remain.

"How long does processing a correction request take." He asked.

"I don't know."

"Eunchae."

"Same category requests take twenty two days." Eunchae said. "And a correction can only be filed after the original record is finalized."

"What does the other side do in the meantime, once it's finalized."

"Subsequent processing proceeds based on the finalized record. Compensation, treatment approval, identity settlement."

"Then before the correction comes through, one of them will already have been processed as a person who doesn't exist."

Jisu didn't argue against that calculation. Instead, he said this.

"That's not my jurisdiction."

"Right. So thank you for the offer." Igyeol said. "But I won't take it."

At that, Yura's hand opened. It was a line from the Chapter 9 charter. The right to request correction and deletion.

"How long is the hold." Jisu asked.

"Until they regain consciousness."

"And if they don't."

Igyeol didn't answer right away. It took three seconds.

"Then we were wrong." He said. "At that point there's no performance credit and neither of them can decide. I'll put that risk in the record now."

"Write it."

Igyeol wrote it. The hold decision, decision maker Han Igyeol, and the risk item, three lines in all.

Saebyeok added one more line below it. No objection, but the fact of recognizing the risk to be recorded under the names of the entire team.

Four of them signed their names. Yura didn't sign.

"What about you, Yura." Mirae asked.

"I'm on the party's side in this. If my name goes on the team's decision, later it reads as me applying pressure."

Mirae wrote down the reason. Then she looked at Yura.

"Who told you that?"

"Eunchae did. In chapter 18."

In the middle of the meeting, Dohyeon checked the form itself.

"The rescued personnel field has two digits. You could enter 2."

"You could enter it. The name field is one."

"Is there a request to expand the name field."

"There is. In chapter 9 we made the original proposer field that way." Eunchae said. "Same route applies. Processing takes twenty two days."

"That's longer than seventeen days." Yura said.

No one answered. Dohyeon just wrote down the number.

The meeting ended at 11:20 AM. Before it ended, Jisu said one more thing.

"I'm going to file a public objection."

"About what." Eunchae asked.

"That the Gap Rescue Team is putting the entire rescue licensing system at risk over personal feelings."

"That's not true."

"In my judgment it's true." Jisu said. "And an objection is filed on judgment."

He paused once at the door.

"Jin Yura."

"Yes."

"I'm attaching those three lines to my objection."

It took Yura two seconds to understand that sentence.

If he attached it, those three lines went into an official document. The objection was review material, and review material was kept on file.

"That's in my favor." Yura said.

"I know."

"Why."

"To show my objection isn't emotional, I have to include the other side's grounds along with it." Jisu said. "And if those three lines are true, the Agency has to explain the seventeen days."

Jisu left. Two team members followed him out.

Dohyeon spoke first.

"The content of the objection is bad for us. The attachment is good."

"Both." Saebyeok asked.

"Both."

Yura went to the window. It was the fourth floor, and below she could see the ambulance bay.

It was the spot where the two people had been carried out. It was empty now.

In the afternoon, it was Yura alone who went into the second patient's room. Not as a guardian but with witness status, and Eunchae had entered her under that status.

The man had his eyes closed. His fingers weren't moving.

Yura looked at her own wrist. Nothing was there where the bracelet used to be. She'd returned it in chapter 17, and it had been empty since.

On the man's wrist was a paper bracelet. It had a number, no name.

Yura sat down beside the bed. She didn't speak.

Not speaking was the condition Eunchae had given her. Witnesses don't ask questions. If you ask questions, you become an investigator.

There were two things she observed. The IV drip was slower than it had been that morning, and a hand written sticker marked number 4 had been newly added to the bed.

It wasn't a system number, it was paper. Eunchae had put it there that morning.

A nurse came in, checked the IV, and left. On her way out, she asked Yura.

"Are you the guardian?"

"I'm a witness."

The nurse's face said she'd never heard that word before. But she didn't ask again, she just wrote it in her notebook.

Yura watched her write it. That notebook was the handoff log Dohyeon had seen yesterday.

"What are you writing there?" Yura asked.

"Visitors. If there's no name, I write the relationship."

"What if the relationship is witness."

"Then I write witness." The nurse said. "I write down what I'm told."

About twenty minutes later, a finger moved once. Once.

Not three times. By the rule they'd set yesterday, that meant no.

Yura didn't know what the no was answering. She couldn't ask, either.

She wrote down only the time. 3:41 PM, once.

After leaving the room, Yura reported that one movement to Eunchae.

"We don't know what the no was answering." Eunchae said. "So we don't record it as a no."

"Then what do I write it as."

"One signal, the time, no question asked. Leave the interpretation blank."

Yura rewrote it. She checked the line she'd written earlier to make sure there was no interpretation in it. There wasn't.

"You wrote that well." Eunchae said.

"But I thought it meant no."

"You're allowed to think that. Just don't write it on paper."

At 5 PM, Mirae was waiting in the hospital lobby. She was holding a terminal, and a draft article was on the screen.

There were two headlines. One was that two people had come out through the same door. The other was that only one of them could become official.

"Which one should go out first?" Mirae asked.

"The second."

"Why. People like the first one better."

"The first one is a story where we did well." Yura said. "The second one is a story that isn't over yet."

Mirae switched the order. Then, without deleting the first headline, she moved it down.

"Yura." She asked. "The three lines you wrote in the meeting earlier. Are you putting that in the article?"

"It's already in."

"Where."

"In Bae Jisu's objection."

Mirae's hand stopped. It took her a few seconds to work out the structure of that sentence.

"So our testimony is going into a document that's attacking us."

"Right."

"That's dangerous."

"Whichever side is more at risk decides the order." Yura said.

It was a line she'd written the day before. Mirae understood it, and didn't argue.