The Joint Responsibility Hearing Was Set for 9 AM

The joint responsibility hearing was scheduled to start at nine in the morning.

At eight forty, a civilian rescue request came into Yun Sera's terminal first.

The sender had written only the name "Rin."

The location was the exhibition storage room in the old building of Chae Garam's school. There were two request items.

One person.

One sheet of paper.

Sera reached for the team call button and stopped. Because of the joint responsibility notice the coordination bureau had sent the day before, Team 7's next deployment budget was under temporary freeze. No service vehicle, no equipment insurance available.

"I'm at that school."

Garam's voice came in first. Her breath was quick.

"I came to submit exhibition safety review papers and saw the storage room alarm. I am that fan, yes. But right now I'm speaking as a student, not as a dispatch request."

"Don't go inside."

"The paper is in the wet suppression zone."

"Person's location first."

"Inner preservation room. One fire shutter between us. She's conscious, and her ankle is caught under a display stand."

Sera pulled up the old building floor plan. In the middle of the long storage room, a fire shutter had come down. Rin was in the inner preservation room. In the glass display case in the outer corridor sat the document Rin had supposedly brought. The ceiling piping had begun preliminary discharge from a heat sensor malfunction.

Main discharge in five minutes.

If the shutter was forced open, water on the preservation room side would pour in first. The person could get out, but the glass display case would flood. If the display case was removed first, the oxygen cutoff door on Rin's side would close.

Sera said it briefly.

"Give me the coordinates. Person comes out first."

Garam didn't answer.

"Chae Garam."

"If you open it that way, the paper is finished."

"I'm not making a person wait for a piece of paper."

"I'm not asking you to make a person wait either."

Garam's camera turned on. Inside the glass case, a folded document was visible. On top of the document was a title, "Joint Responsibility Objection Withdrawal Confirmation," stamped with the coordination bureau's seal.

Rin said she'd been told that if she delivered that paper to the school administration office, Team 7's responsibility for the 37 minute delay would be canceled. In exchange, she had to withdraw the vote she'd witnessed on who bore the cost and her statement about the manual evacuation.

"If it's an official document, send it to the evidence room," Sera said.

"It looks official. It isn't official."

Garam marked three spots on the zoomed image. The sentence order, a typo where "without delay" had been run together as one word, and a half erased educational watermark at the bottom of the page.

All of it matched the sample of the formal agreement Team 7 had received before. But one word had been slipped in that wasn't in the formal sample.

Withdrawal.

That line read as though Rin could take back her statement even after submitting the document. Right below it, in small print, the withdrawal was limited to "agency discretion after joint responsibility is acknowledged."

Sera didn't ask who had made it. She only recorded that it looked alike.

The coordination bureau's joint responsibility review officer joined the field call.

"Former Team Leader Yun, that document is an unregistered copy. It has no recovery value."

"What about the person."

"Classify it as a school facility accident. If you log it as a Team 7 deployment, you add responsibility for unauthorized use of frozen budget."

The officer sent conditions for remote shutter release. If Sera approved sole on site responsibility and Garam signed as a "lucky observer witness," they'd open the preservation room door within 40 seconds. Rin's document would be immediately discarded as an attachment to a false report.

Sera closed the approval button. The officer warned right away.

"Choosing manual rescue will be reflected unfavorably in the delay responsibility review."

"Reflect it."

"There will also be a record that a citizen rescue was delayed because of a paper whose evidentiary value was never confirmed."

"Log two separate timestamps. One for the paper, one for your conditions."

Sera fixed the timestamp in the log and switched off only her microphone.

"Recovery of the original goes to the audit team."

"We're four minutes twelve seconds from main discharge. If we wait for the audit team, it spreads."

"If you touch it, that's evidence tampering."

"If you open the shutter, Team Leader, that's more definite tampering."

The two of them spent three seconds each calling the other an obstacle.

A scraping metal sound came from inside the preservation room. It sounded like Rin had tried to push the display stand and tipped it further.

Sera gripped the shutter's manual chain with her right hand. The inside of her shoulder pulled hot. Garam spoke immediately from the other side of the screen.

"Don't use your right arm."

"Now a witness candidate is giving medical orders during rescue command?"

"Exhibition setup gets suspended too if a shoulder goes out. School rule."

"Fine. We go by your rule."

Sera let go of the chain.

"Chae Garam. From now, evidence preservation judgment is yours. I set the person's exit route. Your stop authority applies if the paper gets wet, if your body is used as lucky equipment, or if Rin's disclosure scope is exceeded."

Garam went quiet.

"Repeat it back."

"Paper, my body, Rin's disclosure scope. If any one of those three is crossed, I stop."

"My stop authority is the person's breathing, the shutter's load, your exit route. If any one of those breaks, you drop the paper and come out."

"Agreed."

Sera entered Garam's name into the command screen not as "mascot" but as "evidence preservation." Temporary delegation time: 10 minutes. No automatic extension.

Garam changed the win condition right away.

"Carrying the original out isn't the goal."

"What's needed."

"Front and back photos before water touches it, its folded state, zero people who handled it. Leave the original in the case."

"Then what about the shutter's water path."

"We can redirect it. There are six mounting boards for the graduation exhibit."

Those boards were foam aluminum panels Garam had bought with her own money to display her work. If they came out warped, the safety review would fail and everything would need replacing.

Garam pulled up the receipt screen for a moment.

498,000 won.

"They're not school property, they're mine. It's fine if they get cut up."

Sera asked. "What about the exhibit."

"I'll buy new ones. Graduation runs on receipts anyway."

A short silence followed the joke.

"I'm logging it as your expense."

"Log it as joint credit too."

"That gets confirmed once this is over."

Garam stood two boards under the display case to redirect the water path into the drains on either side. She pushed one board through the six centimeter gap under the shutter. Sera pulled the manual chain with her left hand.

"I'm opening it for thirty seconds only."

"I'll stop it at twenty eight."

"Why are you cutting my time short."

"No rounding up for the commander."

The shutter rose.

Cold water surged in ankle high first. Garam's mounting board bent and split the flow. The water level on the display case side didn't rise.

Sera pushed her body through the 20 centimeter gap. She kept her right arm tucked to her chest and took the shutter's load on her left shoulder. Inside, Rin was down. A metal display stand leg pressed above her ankle.

"Yun Sera. Rescue. Name disclosure scope."

"Rin only. Face not disclosed. Document, front and back only."

"Exit route agreed?"

"Agreed."

Sera didn't lift the display stand. She kicked the floor anchor bolt to shift the load onto the neighboring panel. Rin pulled her foot free.

In the corridor, Garam called out the count.

"Twenty four."

Rin tried to stand and sat back down. Her ankle wouldn't take weight.

Sera didn't say get on my back. "Can you crawl out?"

"Yes."

"Go first. I'm behind you."

"Twenty eight. Stop!"

Garam pulled the chain's locking pin. The shutter began to descend. Sera didn't push Rin's waist. She held out her palm. Rin took that hand and crossed the gap on her own strength.

The moment Sera got out last, the shutter closed.

29 seconds.

2 minutes 03 seconds until main discharge.

While Sera caught her breath, Garam didn't run to the display case. She asked Rin first.

"Do you consent to photographing the document, front and back only? I'll blur the sender's name and contact info."

"Yes. Please keep the time I received it on record."

"What about disclosure?"

"Up to audit submission only. No broadcast."

Garam didn't put her phone against the display case glass. Reflected light could catch a hand or a face in the shot. She set up a black exhibition cloth behind it and fixed the school's shared camera on a tripod.

One shot, front.

One shot, back.

One shot of the folded corner.

She cropped each so only the sentence order, the typo, the educational watermark, and the newly added word "withdrawal" were visible. She didn't touch the original.

The school's administrative office head arrived in the corridor and held out the display case key.

"If we just take the document out, this ends as property damage. If it's on record that a forged document was found inside the school, the whole exhibit gets shut down again."

Garam didn't take the key.

"Did Rin consent to moving the original?"

The office head looked at Rin. "We're trying to remove a hazardous item."

"The document doesn't have legs. Please ask her first."

Rin hesitated, then shook her head.

"I'd like it left as it is until the photos are verified."

Garam photographed only the key number and sent it to Hyeonju. She left the key in the office head's hand.

The office head wrote on Garam's exhibition intake form: "Non compliance with on site control requires confirmation."

Garam's hand, which had been about to write an apology, stopped. Instead she wrote next to her own name.

"No contact made, per the party's refusal to move the original."

That was when main discharge started.

Water struck the mounting boards. The first board bent completely. The second board's corner split too. A stream of water spread across the bottom of the display case, but it didn't reach the height where the document sat.

Sera grabbed Garam's arm to pull her back, then stopped.

"Exit route."

Garam checked her own footing. "Clear."

"Evidence."

"Three photo sets saved. Original's position held."

"The person."

Rin was in a dry section at the end of the corridor, showing her ankle to the school health officer.

"Secured."

Only then did Sera pat Garam's shoulder once. She didn't use her injured right hand.

"Your judgment changed the conditions."

Garam was unfolding her soaked receipt when she said, "If you call that luck, I'll actually get mad."

"A 498,000 won kind of luck is too expensive to call luck."

Garam laughed. Sera's mouth moved just slightly at the corners.

With six minutes left until the joint responsibility hearing, Sera transmitted the field record.

Exit route design, command: Yun Sera.

Evidence preservation and stop authority: Chae Garam.

Disclosure scope, the party involved: Rin.

Civilian rescues: 1. Injury worsened: 0. Original contact: 0. Restricted photo sets: 3. Exhibition material loss: 498,000 won.

A field came up asking whether credit was to be held jointly.

Sera turned the screen to Garam.

"Confirm it."

Garam didn't select "Team 7" or "Yun Sera." She typed in something new: "Yun Sera, Chae Garam, Rin, by scope."

Sera approved that wording as it was.

The first edited clip went up before the hearing even started.

Rin's face and the document were blurred out. Instead, only the scene of Sera coming out of the flooded storage room and the scene of Garam laughing were spliced together.

The caption was short.

"Even the cold hearted Team Leader smiled in front of the lucky mascot."

The on site delegation, the stop authority, Rin's choice, the resemblance to the forged document, all of it had been cut out.

Sera didn't order it deleted. She sent Garam the link along with the original record.

"You decide the next stop authority too."

Garam replied.

"First I'd like to return that laughing clip for a refund."