10Ep.. Nine O'Clock

The lobby's automatic doors opened only halfway, even with the power back on. The rails, waterlogged overnight, had stiffened and jammed. The two of them twisted their bodies through the narrow gap.

Outside, the rain had stopped. Wet asphalt gleamed gray, and each puddle held a sliver of the clearing sky. It was the first outdoors she'd stood on in twelve hours. Jiwon paused and drew the air in. It felt as if the red darkness and mildew that had settled in her lungs all night were being washed away.

Dohyun shifted the box in his arms. It was the same box that had crossed the night still only half packed.

"I'll flag you a cab." He turned his head toward the road.

"Lee." Jiwon called to him. "Even now, you're worrying about someone else?"

Instead of answering, Dohyun smiled faintly. It was the face of a composure that had cracked overnight finding its way back into place. Only, beneath it lay something that hadn't been there until yesterday. Fear. Not his own—hers, on her behalf.

"Is there really no way to take it back?" he asked. "The audit committee hasn't convened yet. One phone call now and it never happened—"

"It goes up on the board in three hours." Jiwon cut him off. Quietly. "At nine. And what Director Kang will do before then—you know that better than I do."

Dohyun fell silent.

"By now he already knows. What I sent." Jiwon looked up at the building. The one that had held her captive all night was, in the morning light, nothing but old gray concrete. "He'll be looking for a way to bury it before nine. Which is why I have to be inside for it."

"Team lead." Dohyun started to say something, then didn't. Instead he asked something else. "My name—did you really erase it?"

"I erased it."

"Then what goes up on the board at nine?"

Jiwon couldn't answer. What she had erased was a single name inside a file. Whether that file would reach the board unchanged was already a matter out of her hands. Between here and there lay Director Kang's hand.

At a corner desk in HR, where the fluorescent lights were unusually white, twenty-six-year-old Park Seonyeong sat staring at a single document for a long time.

It was a disciplinary action notice. In the box marked "responsible party" was the name Lee Dohyun, and below it the grounds didn't add up, even to her, only half a year on the job. The item listed as the cause of the project's collapse didn't line up with the work Dohyun had actually handled. It was a discrepancy anyone could see with half a day of cross-checking.

Seonyeong took the document to Team Lead Seo Jiwon. Jiwon sat at her desk with the face of someone who'd been up all night, yet without a single thing out of place. While the whole team was going under, she alone kept her back straight.

"Team lead, this notice… the grounds don't quite match up, I think." Seonyeong ventured carefully. "It lists Mr. Lee as responsible, but this item wasn't his to handle—"

"Seonyeong." Jiwon took the document. She looked down at it for the briefest moment. "Send it up as is."

"…Sorry?"

"Just send it up as is." Jiwon handed the document back. There was no waver in her voice. "Good work."

Seonyeong couldn't ask any further. Back then, Jiwon was the person she most wanted to be like in the whole company. The one who stood gripping the helm alone as the ship went down. If a person like that said to send it up as is, she believed there must be a reason she herself didn't understand.

The notice went up without passing through Seonyeong's hands. Neither the filing nor the approval was anything a half-year junior could touch. She simply remained the person who had been first to notice the discrepancy and had kept her mouth shut. And for three years, every so often, that mismatched item would surface. Did the team lead not know back then? Or did she know? Seonyeong had never once asked.

The planning floor was so bright it was hard to believe it was the same floor that had held her captive all night. The fluorescent lights were on and steady, and only a damp smell lingered in the wet carpet, drifting like the sole evidence of the night before. People trickled in for work, stepping around the wet patches, murmuring. Everyone knew something had happened overnight. No one yet knew what.

Before Jiwon had even sat down at her desk, the sound across the floor dropped a tone.

Kang Minseok was standing beside her desk.

Never before had a director come down to the planning floor at this hour. He wore the same glossy dark-gray suit as yesterday, and looked at her with the same unsmiling eyes as yesterday. His gaze, from behind gold-rimmed glasses, swept once over her face. They were eyes that read everything she'd been through in the night.

"Team Lead Seo." He spoke gently. "You look worn. Rough night for you."

"…Director."

"Let's have a word." He nodded toward the meeting room. It was not a request.

When the glass door closed, the floor's murmur cut off abruptly. Director Kang didn't sit. He stood by the window, looking down for a moment at the drained-off street.

"An interesting email made the rounds before dawn," he said, his back still turned. "One of the audit members called me. Said there's a confession that came in under Team Lead Seo's name. In great detail, going all the way back three years." He turned around. "Locked in all night, and that's all you managed to write?"

Jiwon didn't look away from his eyes. It had been three years. Since she'd heard "well done" in that room, this was the first time she'd taken this man's gaze head-on.

"I wrote what needed writing," she said.

"Team Lead Seo." Director Kang stepped closer. His voice was still low and soft. "Do you know whose name is written largest in that confession? It isn't Lee Dohyun. It isn't Kang Minseok either." He smiled faintly. His eyes did not. "It's Seo Jiwon. The one who knew three years ago and closed her eyes. The one who sent that paper up herself. A confession doesn't tear down someone else's first. It tears down your own first."

"I know."

"This won't end with a single position on the line. Your three years—everything you signed off on in that time—gets reopened. People won't see it as Team Lead Seo acting on some great conscience. They'll see a woman who got soft, locked in all night with that man." He tilted his head slightly. "Did Lee Dohyun slip you something? Over the night."

Jiwon's fingertips went stiff. The thing Dohyun still held close. The thing he had never once, all night, held out for her to open or pressed into her hand. She knew why he wouldn't use it, to the very end. It was his, and it would remain so.

"No one gave me anything." Jiwon said. It was the truth. "This isn't going soft overnight. It's finally standing up straight, after three years."

Director Kang looked at her for a long time. Across that face, for the first time, something like the faintest crack passed. It was the face of a man whose calculation had come apart.

"I submitted my resignation along with it," Jiwon went on. "I tore down my own first. That's the only way it's real."

"…Foolish."

"At nine," Jiwon glanced at the meeting room's wall clock. It was 8:41. "Don't post it to the board as scheduled. That list is no longer yours, Director, nor mine."

Director Kang didn't answer. He straightened his tie once and opened the door. Before stepping out, he said quietly:

"The board goes up at nine, as scheduled. It's the system's doing. Erasing one name from a file doesn't change the world." He looked back at her. "You learned that yourself, three years ago."

The door closed.

The HR floor was unusually quiet.

Park Seonyeong sat before her monitor. On the screen was the file set to go out to the company board at nine. The final layoff list. At the very bottom, Lee Dohyun. Before dawn, a call had come directly from Director Kang's office. Post the original as is. Not the version Team Lead Seo touched.

Seonyeong's cursor rested over "Schedule Post." Nine o'clock. Even if she didn't click it, the schedule would run on its own. That hand trembled. Just as it had three years ago, at that white-lit desk, when she'd looked the other way as a mismatched notice went up.

Back then, she couldn't ask. Did the team lead know, or not? But before dawn today, a verification request had come down from the audit committee to HR as well. Whether anyone had noticed the discrepancy in that notice three years ago. Whether anyone knew of the director's involvement in this list.

There was one person on this floor who knew the answer to both questions. It was her.

The company phone beside the monitor caught her eye. The one she'd used, days ago, to leak the list to Dohyun. If the leak were discovered, the name at the bottom of the next list would be her own. For three years, that fear had kept her mouth shut.

Footsteps sounded from the far end of the corridor. Seonyeong looked up to find Seo Jiwon walking toward HR. With the face of someone who'd been locked in all night, yet with her back held straight as it had been that day three years ago. Only, today, those eyes did not avoid Seonyeong.

Jiwon stopped before her. The wall clock was ticking past 8:59.

"Park." Jiwon said. It was the very voice she'd used to call her that day three years ago. But the words that followed were different from then. "This time, I'm not going to tell you to send it up as is."

Seonyeong looked up at her. The cursor was still over "Schedule Post."

"Before dawn I wrote it all down and turned it over to the audit," Jiwon said. "All the way back to that notice three years ago, without leaving anything out. So people are going to come here soon. And they'll ask you about back then, too." She caught her breath for a moment. "What you answer then… this time isn't something I can decide for you."

Jiwon turned and walked away at her own pace. And a few minutes later, footsteps did indeed come crowding in from the end of the corridor. Strangers with ID badges hanging at their necks. People that Jiwon's confession had arrived ahead of and summoned. The audit committee stopped at the entrance to HR and asked:

"We're here about a disciplinary action from three years ago. Is there anyone who saw the matter up close at the time?"

Every face on the floor went stiff. No one answered. Only the fluorescent light filled the floor, white. It was the same white light as that morning three years ago.

Seonyeong's hand trembled. It was a mouth kept shut for three years. If she raised her hand here, the next thing to fall might be her own position.

She rose from her seat.

And for the first time, without letting her words trail off.

"…Excuse me." Seonyeong opened her mouth.