1Ep.. The Name at the Bottom

Ten p.m. On the planning team's floor, the only living light was the glow of Seo Jiwon's monitor.

Everyone had gone. Beyond the partitions, a couple dozen chairs sat neatly tucked in, and a humidifier someone had left running breathed its white steam all alone. Jiwon lifted the lanyard from her neck, laid the badge face-down on the desk, and opened, one last time, the file that would go up on the company board at nine the next morning.

The final layoff list.

The scroll pushed the names down one by one. Faces she knew. Her own name was already stamped in the approval field. It was her list, and these were the people she had cut. Her fingertip slid across the trackpad in a steady rhythm. Twelfth. Thirteenth.

At the very bottom, her hand stopped.

Lee Dohyun.

Jiwon looked at those three syllables for a long time. The fact that for days she hadn't been able to turn her head toward his desk settled onto her fingertip now as the weight of the cursor. She held the cursor over the name. It wasn't a name she could delete. It was her list, after all. And still she couldn't move the cursor away.

Outside, the rain thickened. The sound of it striking the glass swelled, nagging like a scold.

That was when a dull vibration rose up through the floor beneath her feet. Somewhere deep in the building, the sound of something giving way. The fluorescent lights flickered once. The second time, they didn't come back.

The whole floor went dark. The monitor, the humidifier, and the name Lee Dohyun vanished along with it.

Soon a red emergency light came on in a corner of the ceiling. The world was steeped in the color of blood, and the partitions stretched their shadows like unfamiliar beasts.

Jiwon moved like someone used to this kind of thing. She gathered her bag, switched on her phone's flashlight, and walked to the elevator. She pressed the button. No light came on. Once more. Beyond the doors was nothing but a black shaft. The elevator was dead.

She stood a moment and steadied her breath. Sorting what she could control from what she couldn't—a habit worn into her body over more than a decade. The emergency stairs. She could just walk down.

She pulled the stairwell door open.

The smell of water rose first. Damp and briny, the smell of the basement. Beneath it, the sound of something rising—in the dark, water was swallowing the stairs one step at a time. When she aimed the flashlight down, a black surface glistened on a landing several floors below. The rain had poured down into the basement.

Then a heavy clang of metal rang through the whole floor. Somewhere, the sound of a thick shutter riding down its rails. Once, and then again a little farther off. The fire shutters were sealing the lower floors. To hold back the water, the building was closing its own doors.

Jiwon listened, gripping the stairwell door frame. The way down was underwater, and up there was only a locked roof door and dark, empty floors. With the elevator dead too, there was no way out of the building. Until morning, when the water drained and the power came back, she was bound to this place. Alone with the list that would go up at nine a.m.

When she shut the door and turned, there was a sign of someone across the red dark.

Jiwon's flashlight swept toward the sound. Between the partitions a single yellow lantern-light came on and moved slowly toward her. A person. Sleeves rolled up to the elbows, tie loosened and hung around the neck.

It was Lee Dohyun.

"Team lead." He lifted the lantern a little. There was no surprise in him. "You're still here."

Jiwon swallowed her answer. The one person on this floor she least wanted to run into had, of all nights, stayed behind. The fact that the name at the bottom of the list now stood before her holding a lantern closed off the back of her throat.

"…Why are you still here, Lee?"

"One deadline left. I'm always the last one, anyway." Dohyun pointed the lantern at the stairwell door. "Not that way. The basement's flooded."

"I know. I went down to check."

"You mustn't go down." He took a step closer. His voice didn't rise, and that made it firmer. "There are wires running along those flooded stairs. The wiring here is old, and the breaker doesn't always trip the way it should. Even ankle-deep is dangerous."

Jiwon looked at him. She wanted to ask how he knew all this so well, but she didn't.

"I know this building's electrics better than anyone." Dohyun answered as if for her. It wasn't a boast, just the tone of stating a fact. "The breaker room, the drainage pumps—stay late enough and you end up knowing all sorts of things."

He set the lantern upright on a desk. A yellow pool of light gathered in the middle of the floor. Their two shadows met long against the wall, then parted.

Eight hours. Until morning. Jiwon looked at the wall clock. The second hand had stopped.

Dohyun picked up a bottle of water and came toward her. Like the man who always stayed to the very end, he seemed to keep at least enough water on hand to get through the night. He held the bottle out.

"Have some."

"You drink it, Lee."

"You're always worrying about everyone else and never looking after yourself." Dohyun set the bottle down without a sound on the desk beside her. It wasn't a reproach, and it wasn't a joke. It was simply the remark of someone who had watched her for a long time. "I'm used to this place, anyway."

Jiwon looked at the water bottle. She couldn't meet his face head-on.

"Three years ago, too," Dohyun began, gazing into the lantern's light. "When we pulled that all-nighter on that project, it was like this. You'd drink nothing but coffee—"

"Let's not get into that." Jiwon's words came a touch too fast. "It's not what matters right now, anyway."

Dohyun fell silent. He didn't push. That retreat, if anything, scraped at something inside her.

Silence filled the floor. Fidgeting with the bottle cap, Jiwon shifted the lantern a little. As the circle of light moved, Dohyun's desk came into it.

There, her gaze stopped.

Every other desk was cluttered with odds and ends, yet his alone was strikingly bare. The monitor stand, the top of the drawers—all empty. Instead, a cardboard box sat beside the desk. Half-filled with a mug, a picture frame, a palm-sized potted plant.

Jiwon quickly looked away. Pretending she hadn't seen, she picked up the bottle and twisted off the cap. But something inside her wavered.

The announcement was tomorrow morning. No one knew yet. Not even he did. So why had he already packed?

It must be a coincidence, she told herself. He'd done a big clean-out, or he was moving desks. There were any number of ordinary reasons like that. She chose to believe it. Only by believing it could she swallow the water.

Dohyun bent toward the box. He picked up the last item—a pen holder—and set it in with the rest. Then he raised his head.

Their eyes met.

He smiled. As if it were nothing. As if to reassure someone startled—far too composed.

Jiwon couldn't move, facing that smile. For the face of a man who had packed his things the night before the announcement, it was strangely serene. Too still to be the smile of someone who knew nothing, too gentle to be the smile of someone who knew everything.

In the lantern's light, for the first time, a chill ran down Jiwon's spine.

That man—does he really not know?

Or.