Negative Hero Pay

Dojin's first hero pay was negative.

Sera's first return-to-duty review failed for lack of injury records.

Taeho didn't comfort either of them. He just pulled out the car key.

At seven in the morning, from her seat in the rehab review waiting area, Sera could see the pay terminal across the way. Baek Dojin's statement sat there, neatly displayed.

Contract salary: 2,180,000 won.

Guryong Station disaster special allowance: 640,000 won.

Agreement correction cost garnishment: minus 2,820,000 won.

Garnishment processing fee: minus 48,300 won.

Net payment: minus 48,300 won.

Dojin looked at the last number twice. "The allowance arrived in full. It just got returned the second it landed."

Taeho read the statement beside him. "Not returned. The delivery address was correct. The recipient just happened to be a garnishment account."

"That's somehow less reassuring."

Neither of them laughed. The fee had already come out of Dojin's living expenses account first. Balance: 13,720 won. Nineteen days until the next contract renewal. No joke could shrink that number.

Three autopay notifications hit at once. Rent, 380,000 won. Transit card, 50,000 won. Phone bill, 46,000 won. All three failed for insufficient funds. The agency transit card could only be used for special surveillance deployments.

Taeho held out a hundred thousand won. "No interest. Filed under friends."

Dojin set the repayment date for the day the garnishment ended and accepted it on the condition that the ledger stay open. Taeho relabeled the entry "Short term shipping advance."

"Am I cargo now?"

"Cargo gets insurance."

Dojin couldn't manage a laugh, but he didn't hide the money either.

Sera sat across the same terminal in the rehab review room. The instruction came to raise her right arm to shoulder height. Her arm stopped halfway. Heat spread under her armpit and her fingertips went numb.

The examiner looked at the screen. "The submitted command records list no injury. Unreported injuries can't be accepted as return-to-duty documentation."

"There's a field stabilization record and Eunha's exam sheet."

"They're not in the promotion review file."

The result printed on screen.

Return to duty review: failed.

Promotion review resumption delayed at least 30 days.

Reason: unreported physical risk under command fairness review.

Sera lowered her arm. Lowering it hurt more. She kept her face still in front of the examiner, and even after walking out the door, she carried her terminal in her right hand. The old habit moved first, the one that said switching to the left hand would give away the weaker side.

Eunha didn't take the terminal from her in the hallway. She just asked. "Keep it in the right hand, or switch to the left?"

"I'll carry it."

"That's not one of the two options."

Sera glared at her. Eunha waited.

"Left."

Eunha moved the terminal to Sera's left hand. That was the extent of the contact. "Pain level?"

"Three."

"It was eight when you lowered your arm."

"If you saw it, why ask?"

"Because it has to be logged in the team leader's own words."

Sera didn't answer. She looked back at the rehab room door instead. Inside, the next person up was rotating an arm. It wasn't the missing injury record itself that felt insulting. It was having to prove the injury all over again because a document said it didn't exist.

Hyeonju read the result and walked straight to the terminal.

"Name the author of 'no injury' and the basis for it."

The examiner didn't turn the screen. "It's an automatically reflected item from the official deployment summary."

"Automatic isn't an author."

"Changing the current record requires team leader confirmation."

"The team leader is the affected party. Don't make the affected party sign off on the omission too."

Hyeonju used her personal certification. The same name that had taken responsibility for preserving the original record last night now opened an objection over the missing injury. She didn't try to merge Sera's exam sheet into the promotion file. She suspended the effect of the "no injury" entry first.

The examiner asked, "Then the review itself is on hold."

"It's already been marked failed. Protecting the speed of a wrong conclusion isn't urgency."

Sera didn't thank Hyeonju. Hyeonju didn't wait for it either. The two of them only confirmed the objection number and the 30 day delay notice between themselves.

That was when the deployment alarm sounded.

In front of West Elementary School, two school bus drivers had been bound into each other's "spouse's proxy driver" roles. Whenever one took the wheel, the other's license points dropped. Twenty eight students were on the bus, and the replacement vehicle was estimated twelve minutes out.

Sera called the coordinates. "West Elementary main gate. Two escape routes. Team 7, vehicle one, move out."

When she got down to the parking lot, Taeho wasn't in the driver's seat. The car key spun on his index finger and stopped.

"Operation halted."

"Twenty eight students," Sera said.

"I know. That's exactly why we're not going. Vehicle one's insurance ran out this morning, and yesterday's civilian return budget already went into six replacement buses. If we head out now, we can pick people up and have no vehicle to bring anyone back on."

Dojin asked, "Alternative route?"

Taeho pulled up a list. "One civilian bus, one driver, eleven minutes out. Two medical seats. Half the field equipment. No returns if it breaks."

Sera's shoulder throbbed. Eleven minutes was a long time. But forcing a deployment with no return vehicle meant saving the students and abandoning the team on site.

"We go without vehicle one. Approve the civilian bus."

Taeho put the key back in his pocket. "Not yet. Budget revote first."

"The escape routes are already secured."

"Just this once. Zero deployments after this. Zero hero pay is less dangerous than zero deliveries."

Dojin took his pay statement out of his pocket. The paper had no fold marks. "My garnishment is my cost. Don't mix it with the deployment budget."

"That's exactly the problem." Taeho didn't soften it with a joke. "If you hide it as your cost, it drops out of the budget sheet again at the next correction. Sera's injury got dropped for the same reason, because it was her own body."

Sera cut in. "You're saying my injury and his pay go in the same column?"

Eunha answered. "Not the same column. The same ledger. Entries stay separate."

Taeho projected a blank table onto the car hood.

Money. Body. Time. Rank. Vehicle. Rest.

Beside each entry sat two separate fields: how much the affected party would disclose, and the impact on team budget.

Dojin's three months of garnished pay and the 48,300 won fee. Sera's right shoulder, a minimum 30 days of rehab, an additional 30 day delay on her promotion review. Hyeonju's suspended personnel evaluation and personal responsibility for the original record. Eunha's eleven straight hours of night shift. Taeho's six replacement buses and a civilian return budget sitting at zero.

Dojin read the table without looking at Sera. "No entry gets repaid as an emotional debt. Cut any sentence about me holding back for someone's sake too. Money is money, a shoulder is a shoulder, budget is budget."

Sera didn't find relief in that. She still had to choose how much of her own injury got disclosed.

"Exam footage stays private. Injury location and rehab period, team disclosure. Promotion file omission and the 30 day delay, external disclosure."

Dojin filled in his own row. "Garnishment period and net payment, external disclosure. Account balance, private. Co-signer, undetermined."

Eunha marked her shift hours for team disclosure and the patient list as private. Taeho put the vehicle and return budget on external disclosure. Hyeonju kept her own personnel cost at team disclosure, but asked to make the injury omission objection number external.

The vote opened.

Sera cast the field vote. "In favor. Cost items stay separate, affected party's disclosure scope stays as chosen."

Eunha cast the medical vote. "In favor. Deployment halts if injury or rest gets omitted."

Taeho cast the logistics vote. "In favor. Vehicle one stays halted until the return budget is restored."

Hyeonju held up the legal vote. "Conditional approval. The public version needs to include the source of every figure and the objection process alongside it."

Dojin held up an objection.

"Objection. If the agreement correction cost stays tied to my name alone, other roles' costs get pushed back into the footnotes again. I agree to temporary disclosure, but I'll call a revote on the classification in 24 hours."

The reason for the objection stayed on the first line.

Three roles in favor. One conditional. One objection.

Temporary disclosure of the cost ledger.

The civilian bus pulled into the parking lot. Team 7 left eleven minutes behind schedule. Sera held the handrail with her left hand. Dojin sat in the back without hiding his pay statement. Taeho stayed behind with the key to the halted vehicle one.

The civilian bus's cargo space was half of vehicle one's. Loading all the correction equipment would have bumped the stretcher and both civilian return seats. Taeho set a box back down.

Sera confirmed the students on the school bus had no injuries and that the two drivers were separated and on standby. "Only one correction box. Keep the stretcher and return seats."

Dojin set two of the three boxes back down. Taeho logged his objection on the loading sheet, that field corrections would be held if equipment ran short. Even off the vehicle, his veto held.

Three minutes after departure, a call came in from Mina.

"Our ledger's already out there."

The public version hadn't included the account balance or a single frame of Sera's exam footage, but the leak had both. The headline was short.

Incompetent contractor, personal drama, team leader bills the citizens for her costs.

Dojin's pay had been rewritten as "correction failure loss," and Sera's shoulder as "personal injury sustained during a romantic rescue." Taeho's civilian return budget and Hyeonju's objection number had been cut out entirely.

A three pronged watermark blinked in the corner of the screen. The same lineage as the co-signature approval on the pay garnishment. Over it, a connection point labeled PR-LEGACY-00 flickered for one frame and vanished.

The same leaked headline showed up on the civilian bus driver's terminal too. He glanced between Dojin and Sera in the rearview mirror. "Billing the citizens for costs, does that mean this bus fare gets dumped on the school later too?"

Sera didn't take the open screen with her exam footage away from the driver. Instead she pulled up the quote Taeho had made public. "The bus cost is Team 7's logistics budget. School and student charge: zero. The leaked version cut out the return budget line."

"What's my proof of that?"

"You can read the billing recipient on the current contract right now and choose. Keep driving, pull over and check, or cancel the contract. One of the three."

The driver stopped the bus at a light. He read the billing recipient and the cancellation fee himself. The stop ran one minute forty seconds longer. The car behind them honked, but Sera didn't push him to move.

"I'll keep going. Just attach a note confirming the return trip is the same amount."

Taeho locked in the round trip fare remotely. The driver pulled away again. The eleven minute delay became twelve minutes forty seconds. Disclosing the cost had slowed things down on site, but it was a delay they could recover from, unlike trusting the leak and severing the contract.

Sera closed her own exam footage. "Stop the original disclosure. Keep only the hash of the leaked version. Continue to the scene."

Two numbers sat side by side on the dashboard.

Baek Dojin, net payment: minus 48,300 won.

Team 7, vehicle one, deliveries: zero.