The Vote Was Supposed to End in 18 Seconds

The vote was supposed to end in 18 seconds.

The count froze the moment Ma Taeho raised his dissenting vote.

Behind the locked door, twelve people watched that single vote.

Jang Mina had trimmed the voting board in the waiting area outside the exam room down to three options.

Designate Chae Garam as the cost bearer.

Designate Team 7 as the cost bearer.

Designate Gang Eunha as the cost bearer.

If any one of the three received a majority, the role of "person who witnessed the price of luck" would be lifted and the automatic door would open. The witness who cast the deciding vote would be exempted from civil and criminal liability tied to the outcome of the designation. Team 7 would also be cleared of failing to respond to the witness detainment.

The name the Coordination Bureau had put forward was the "Witness Protection and Rapid Suppression Plan."

Oxygen levels in the waiting area were normal. Zero acute patients. The exit was locked, but the fire door was rated safe to open. Expected passage rate: 84 percent. Time to door opening: 18 seconds.

Mina had put a green number up in the top right corner of the screen. Public trust had dropped on the first day of special observation, and if this plan passed, it was calculated to recover by 11 percent.

"Sample size twelve, three options. Starting now."

Before the first vote came in, Taeho stuck a red cargo hold tag on top of the ballot box.

Shipment suspended.

"Objection."

Mina looked at him. "Reason first."

"This vote has no exit."

"Voting is what opens the door."

"Only if someone gets pointed at."

Taeho pulled up the twelve wristbands from the waiting area on the screen. A student who'd raised a hand toward Garam's name and then lowered it. A facility engineer who'd been rejected when he tried to name a piece of equipment as the cost bearer. A fan account operator who'd picked the team and gotten an error saying a group wasn't allowed. If none of the three chose, it was recorded as an abstention. Abstention wasn't counted toward the door opening condition.

The screen Mina had built didn't even show an abstain option.

"There's no time." The Coordination Bureau official said. "If the witness role spreads, the wards nearby get sealed off too."

Taeho answered. "That's exactly why I'm not pointing at a person like a shipping label."

"Logistics staff don't have the authority to halt a vote."

Taeho pulled the power cord out of the handheld voting terminal. That terminal and its emergency battery were both registered under Taeho's special observation logistics manifest.

"I do have equipment with transport, power, and return rights attached. Right now this terminal isn't sending a person out, it's loading the person in charge. Return to sender."

Neither Dojin nor Sera had authorized this. Taeho stopped it first, and recorded the reason after.

The Coordination Bureau immediately put up the cost.

One point off Team 7's safety rating per minute of delay.

If it exceeded 20 minutes, the logistics officer's special observation promotion would be held.

If it exceeded 30 minutes, the citizen transport insurance preference would be revoked.

The independent logistics network Taeho had been preparing would run at a loss from its very first contract if it lost the insurance preference. The promotion he wanted would also be blocked. Mina waited for the joke to come.

Taeho didn't laugh.

"Put it on record. I'm voting against this over safety rating, promotion, and insurance."

That statement went into the public log. The red vote wasn't registered as a friend's impulsive act or team discord, but as a logistics objection.

Mina looked at her own screen again. She'd left only three options to make the translation fast. The 18 second figure was accurate. Leaving out the option not to point at anyone and the option to withdraw a designation after submitting it had also been, precisely, her own decision.

"I'm halting my screen too."

The Coordination Bureau official asked. "Even the data officer is objecting?"

Mina turned the green passage estimate to gray. "Not because I agree with Taeho's objection. I'm halting it because I'm the one who cut the options down."

The 11 percent recovery estimate for citizen trust disappeared. In its place, she put up the four missing options.

Do not designate a cost bearer.

Designate a non-human cause of the incident, equipment, or institutional procedure.

Request individual departure before the vote.

Withdraw the designation or change disclosure scope after submission.

The Coordination Bureau's system drew red borders around all four boxes.

Not eligible for exemption.

Zero contribution toward automatic door opening.

Mina didn't hide the error. She asked Taeho. "Conditions for a revote."

Taeho started with the equipment list. "Two manual jacks, four mobile partitions, one wheelchair, twelve open seats in the return vehicles. People choose the list themselves."

He attached seven conditions.

A majority does not override a minority's vote.

Non-designation counts as a full vote.

Treatment, transport, statement, and disclosure are each asked separately.

Who leaves first is not decided by relationship role.

The person designated chooses separately whether to rebut or have it deleted.

Investigation into the cause of the incident does not conclude by pointing at a person.

The cost of opening the door is not exchanged for the weight of a vote.

"If that last condition stands, the automatic door can't open." Mina said.

"That's why I brought the manual jacks."

"How long to get twelve people out?"

"24 minutes if it goes fast. Longer if choices change."

The Coordination Bureau's delay penalty started at 20 minutes. Taeho didn't make even his fastest estimate fall outside the penalty window.

Inside the waiting area, a witness knocked on the wall. It was the student whose wristband had shown Garam's name at the top of the recommendation list.

"Can't I just pick Garam and leave?"

Taeho didn't answer for her. Mina opened an internal line.

"You can. Do you want it disclosed, or kept private?"

"Private. Can I change it after I'm out?"

"Under the new plan, yes."

"Then it's Garam, for now."

Another witness cut in. "Does that mean the rest of us end up counted as picking Garam too?"

"No. Each vote stands on its own."

Mina opened the same question to all twelve, one at a time. Two designations for Garam, one for Team 7, three for the lighting rail's management authority, four non-designations, and two who wanted to decide after checking with a lawyer. Of the two who'd named Garam, one chose to keep their name private, the other chose to disclose only the reason.

No one reached a majority.

The automatic door didn't open.

The Coordination Bureau official immediately tried to void the result.

"This vote didn't meet the opening requirement. We're taking it back to the original plan."

Mina read the explanation displayed over the void button. "Failed to designate cost bearer." It wasn't a sentence about a choice failing, it was a sentence about there not being enough people. The four non-designation votes and the two pending votes were fading out at the bottom of the tally.

"Freeze the tally."

When Mina blocked the transmission, the official's voice dropped. "If you use that authority, it becomes the data officer's responsibility."

"It already is my responsibility. I'm the one who cut the options in the first place."

She restored the color of the six faded votes. She changed the label, not calling them votes that failed to open the door, but votes that refused to trade with the condition for opening it. The system reverted the name three times. Mina rewrote it three times.

From inside, the facility engineer spoke. "Am I included in those three votes for the management authority?"

"No. Only the department that approved the lighting rail inspection is included."

"I was the last one who inspected it."

Mina didn't flip the screen. The inspection record did have the engineer's name on it. Showing that name would speed up the cause investigation and ease the pressure on the institution and the team.

"That's a personal inspection record. I won't merge it with the cost bearer vote."

The reply from the engineer's wristband came late.

"Agreed. But the investigation statement stays as is."

Only after confirming that line did Taeho open his jack bag. He wasn't going to let one consent skipped in a rush turn into someone else's cost tally.

Taeho slid the manual jack under the door. The first jack kicked back out with a warning tone.

Luck cost bearer not designated.

No opening authorization.

The second jack also stopped at 4 centimeters. The facility engineer checked the door rail from inside. Of the three locking pins, only the middle one was wired to the role signal. The pins on either side were standard fire safety equipment.

Taeho didn't touch the middle pin. He released only the two side pins and opened a 20 centimeter gap. After blocking the camera with a mobile partition, the people who'd chosen to leave first twisted their bodies through, one at a time.

The first witness: refused treatment, went home, statement kept private.

The second: confirmed treatment, then went home, designation held pending.

The third, the facility engineer, chose to stay inside and hold the rail until the last person was out. Taeho didn't stop him just because it looked like a hero's role. Instead, he sent the engineer a withdrawal check three separate times, and paired him with two people to rotate in.

While all twelve were being brought out, Mina didn't bundle the votes and the exit order onto the same screen. The voting board showed only each person's choice. The transport board showed only physical condition and exit route.

At 24 minutes, the Coordination Bureau finalized the hold on Taeho's promotion.

At 30 minutes, the citizen transport insurance preference was revoked.

The last witness came out 37 minutes later.

Injuries: 0. Automatic door openings: 0. Manual exits: 12.

The designation votes stayed exactly as they were: two for Garam, one for the team, three for the management authority, four non-designations, two pending. Not one vote changed as the price of opening the door.

Mina's dashboard showed that citizen trust had dropped another 7 percent. An institutional caption was spreading: "Team 7 refused a realistic exemption plan and kept a witness confined for 37 minutes."

"It's true we're the reason it ran long." Mina said.

Taeho folded up the broken first jack. "Because of my objection."

"No. Recording your objection and building a new screen was my choice."

Mina didn't delete the institutional caption. Instead she attached a timeline. The first 18 seconds, the moment Taeho halted the vote, 11 minutes of individual choice questions, 26 minutes of manual exit. She didn't pile the credit and the delay onto the same person.

Under Taeho's dissenting vote, Mina's responsibility for halting the screen stayed as its own separate line.

At the end of the hallway, Garam came running. A temporary access badge, still not returned after being moved from the school exhibition hall, hung around her neck. Seeing that two votes still bore her name on the locked screen, she reached out first.

"If I just agree, doesn't that end it?"

Taeho stopped folding the jack. "Agree to what?"

"To being the cost bearer. The two of them picked me, didn't they?"

"Ten people didn't."

Garam's hand froze in front of the screen. Mina didn't send her a consent window. Instead, she showed her only the disclosure scope the two who'd named her had chosen. One private, one reason only. Neither vote had asked for Garam's after the fact consent.

"Even if you accept it, that vote doesn't cover the other ten." Mina said.

"But it could still stop the institution from binding all of us together."

Instead of answering, Mina shared the new liability notice on Garam's screen as well. The estimated chance of stopping it was 63 percent. Pressing that number automatically attached a sentence recommending Garam's individual designation.

She folded the estimate away.

"There's a chance it would stop it. But I'm not going to recommend it."

After a long moment, Garam lowered her hand. "Then what happens to my two votes?"

"They stay at two. Not erased, not bumped up to twelve."

Taeho wrapped a return tag around the broken jack. This time he laughed, just briefly.

That was when the Coordination Bureau sent the special observation liability notice.

Witness release delayed: 37 minutes.

Team 7 joint responsibility under review.

Next deployment budget, promotion, and insurance all scheduled for a combined reassessment.

Mina didn't press "confirm." She only preserved the timestamp it arrived.