The Storage Locker Was at the End of the B1 Corridor, and Gyeongmin Pulled Out the Slip First

The hospital storage locker was at the end of the B1 corridor, and Gyeongmin pulled out the slip first.

Opening without a slip counted as removal. Opening with a slip on file counted as verification.

He had used five of his six entries this month. This visit used the last one.

The storage lockers had twenty four compartments. Eighteen held items, and four of those were tagged unowned.

The unowned tag was a red sticker. Gyeongmin knew that color. He had seen it for eight years.

"Mind if I open it," he asked the hospital facilities staffer.

"Not without guardian confirmation."

"I'm asking about an item with no guardian."

The staffer paused on that sentence. Then he checked his own log.

"Unowned items get disposed of after six months."

"What day is this one on."

"This one's on day one hundred seventy two."

Eight days left. Gyeongmin wrote that number on paper.

Compartment number twelve. He checked the number twice. It matched the shelf number in his own storage unit where he'd kept a helmet five years ago.

Coincidence. But he wrote the coincidence down too.

Inside the compartment was a work measurement belt. The kind worn at the waist, with a battery inside.

The battery light was on. A single red light.

"This is powered on," Gyeongmin said.

"That's been there six months. The battery should be dead."

"It's on."

He didn't touch it. Instead he called Dohyeon.

Dohyeon came. He turned his meter toward the belt.

"There's a signal," he said.

"What kind of signal."

"Pulse type."

"There's no one here."

"Right. But it matches the second set of values picked up in the ward yesterday," Dohyeon said. "82 to 86."

"So this belt is reading that person's."

"Or that person is still registered to this belt."

"Are those different."

"They're different," Dohyeon said. "If it's reading, it's connected now. If it's residual, it was registered before."

Gyeongmin translated that distinction into his own terms, the ones he'd used for eight years moving between buyers and sellers.

Equipment didn't follow its owner. Equipment followed its registration.

If the registration was live, value stuck to it even if the owner died. If the registration was erased, it became unowned even if the owner was alive.

"Dohyeon," he said. "This belt's registration is live. But it's been ruled unowned."

"Can both be true at once."

"They can't," Gyeongmin said. "I've watched this for eight years. It can't happen."

"So what went wrong."

"The unowned ruling. Not the registration."

Gyeongmin looked at the belt and pulled his hand back.

There was one thing he wanted to do here. Open it and look inside.

The belt had a user authentication chip. Reading it could produce a name.

Last year he'd sold something like this. He'd erased the authentication before selling, and it had gone for more that way.

"If I open it, does a name come up," he asked.

"It could."

"Then I'd know who this person is."

"Yes."

Gyeongmin stopped that calculation. And ran a different one.

"If I open it, an ownership inquiry gets triggered on this belt," he said. "If the inquiry runs, the unowned ruling gets updated."

"Is an update good."

"It's bad," Gyeongmin said. "An update doesn't recalculate the disposal deadline, it finalizes it. Eight days becomes today."

"Whose regulation is that."

"Exchange regulation. Probably the same on the agency side too," Gyeongmin said. "I made a living off that for eight years."

Dohyeon wrote the sentence down. Along with who said it.

"So you're not opening it," he asked.

"I'm sealing it."

Gyeongmin took out his own seal sticker. A grade one transporter's seal, with his number printed on it.

He stuck it on the compartment door. Then wrote above it by hand.

Do not open before original owner's intent is confirmed. Sealed by Oh Gyeongmin. Time.

"If this is on, can the hospital even open it," the staffer asked.

"The hospital can open it. But my seal has to come off first," Gyeongmin said. "And if it comes off, that goes in the record."

"Whose record."

"Both my slip and the hospital's log."

The staffer wrote it into the log. As he wrote, he asked once.

"This isn't going to come back on me, is it?"

"It works in your favor," Gyeongmin said. "If the belt goes missing, this shows there was a seal on it while you were on duty."

At 4 PM the second patient woke briefly.

Gyeongmin wasn't in the ward. Yura was there, and Eunchae was there.

The waking was brief. About forty seconds.

The first thing the man saw when he opened his eyes was the ceiling. Then the next bed over.

In the next bed was patient number one. The two had been moved into the same ward, at Eunchae's request.

The man raised his hand. Not a finger, the whole hand.

He pointed at the next bed. Then touched his own waist.

Yura saw it. The waist. Where the belt sat.

"The belt?" Yura asked.

The man did it three times.

"You want it used over there?"

Three times.

Yura confirmed it on the spot. The method was the same as yesterday. One for no, three for yes.

"Shouldn't you be the one using it right now?"

Once.

"That one first?"

Three times.

The man closed his eyes after that. The forty seconds ended.

Yura told Eunchae.

"We need to change the treatment order."

"On what basis."

"The person himself decided it. Three means yes."

Eunchae put the basis into a document. The subject's expressed intent, the pre-designated method, two confirming witnesses, the time. And she also wrote down what remained uninterpreted.

The man hadn't said what to use, or how. He'd pointed at the belt, and pointed at the next bed.

"We leave the content blank," Eunchae said. "We only write the object indicated."

Gyeongmin got the call at 4:40 PM.

Coming up from the basement, he ran two calculations.

One: opening the belt would produce the man's name, and reveal his location.

Two: the man had said to use that belt on the next bed.

The second came before the first. That was the order it had been decided in.

But opening it would turn eight days into today.

"Eunchae," he asked. "If I remove the seal and open it, does a recovery log get left for the ownership record?"

"It does. But the unowned finalization processes first."

"Then what about the recovery log."

"A finalized item doesn't get a recovery log attached," Eunchae said. "It's permanent deletion."

Gyeongmin heard that sentence twice.

"Then this person would have no way left to reclaim this belt as his own."

"Right."

"But if I don't open it, the next bed can't use it."

"Right."

Gyeongmin stood in front of the seal again. He didn't touch it.

Between eight days and forty seconds. The forty seconds had already passed. The eight days still remained.

He asked Dohyeon.

"Can you read the sensor values without opening the belt?"

"Only the external signal. The authentication chip needs the belt opened."

"Can the external signal be used for the next bed's treatment?"

"I don't know. We don't know what you're trying to do with it."

He had his answer. Not knowing was, right now, the only accurate thing anyone could say.

At 5:20 PM he confirmed one more thing. The other three unowned items in the log.

Compartment twelve was the belt. He asked about the remaining three.

"What are these."

"Compartment three is safety boots. Compartment nine is a helmet. Compartment twenty one is a bracelet."

Gyeongmin's hand stopped on the word bracelet.

"Is there a number."

The staffer checked the log. A number was written down.

It didn't start with KJ. A different prefix.

"That's not it," Gyeongmin said.

He wrote the number down anyway. Even though it wasn't his.

"How many days has this bracelet been unowned."

"One hundred seventy four."

Two days ahead of the belt. Two items, two days apart, in the same storage unit.

"Did they come in the same day."

"No. Intake was the same week. The unowned ruling dates are two days apart."

He wrote down that gap. Intake the same week, ruling two days apart.

A ruling had to be entered by a person. A two day gap meant whoever entered it had done it in two separate passes.

"Is there a record of who entered the ruling."

"That's not in our log. It's in the system."

"Could you look it up in the system?"

The staffer checked. He didn't turn the screen toward Gyeongmin.

"The ruling officer field is blank," he said.

"Both of them?"

"Both."

That was where he called Mirae. Footage was needed, and he couldn't be the one filming it.

Mirae arrived twenty minutes later. B1, one light fixture.

"One light," he said. "No double shadows here. Today I'm filming the log."

He filmed three things. The four unowned lines in the log, the two ruling dates, and the sealed compartment door.

The ruling officer field was on a screen, so he couldn't film it directly. Instead the staffer read the screen and wrote it on paper, and Mirae filmed the paper.

"This is your handwriting," Mirae said. "Would you write your name too?"

"Would that get me in trouble?"

"It could. You don't have to." Mirae said. "Then I'll just write that a hospital staff member wrote it."

The staffer wrote his name. And added one more line beside it.

I copied this exactly as it appeared on screen.

Looking at that line, Gyeongmin took out one more seal sticker. He stuck it on compartment twenty one, where the bracelet was.

"Why are you putting that one on too?" the staffer asked.

"I haven't asked this bracelet's owner yet either."

At 7 PM the team gathered in the hospital lobby. Four of them, with Igyeol still at the agency.

Gyeongmin reported two things. One belt, one bracelet. Both sealed.

"How many cases have a blank ruling officer field," Dohyeon asked.

"Two, as of what I saw today."

"Then we need to check the other two as well."

"The boots and the helmet. The slip for those comes through tomorrow."

"Have you used all six entries this month?"

"All six," Gyeongmin said. "Next six start on the first of next month."

"What's today's date?"

"August 19th."

Thirteen days in. Eight days until disposal.

Saebyeok wrote the two numbers side by side. Eight days and thirteen days.

"What about going in without a slip," he asked.

"That's an ungraded individual entry. But then no record of me stays behind."

"Why is that a problem, if there's no record?"

"If that item disappears later, I become the last person who touched it," Gyeongmin said. "And I'd have nothing to prove otherwise."

Saebyeok wrote down that reasoning. Then added one more line under his own name.

After August 19th, storage access requires two people. One must hold a valid slip.