4Ep.. It's Been a Few Days

The lantern glowed yellower than before. It was an LED running on a battery, not oil, and when the color turned yellow it meant the thing was about to die.

Jiwon checked her phone. Twelve percent. A single bar flickered up and vanished, over and over. When she'd called emergency services a little earlier, the ringing had cut out three times. They'd taken it down, they said. They'd send people in as soon as the water receded. When she asked when that would be, the answer dissolved into static.

It was past midnight. The water would drain and the shutters on this floor would open at dawn, at the earliest. But that wasn't the hour Jiwon was counting toward. Nine in the morning. Less than nine hours now until the list went up on the board. On this floor, she was the only one who knew what would be posted at that nine o'clock.

Dohyeon sat across from the single lantern. A laptop on his knees, the screen dark. Saving the battery. Someone who stayed this late had even that ingrained in him.

The water bottle was down to half. He'd pressed it into her hands earlier, over her objection. Jiwon swallowed a mouthful and screwed the cap back on. Thinking that this one bottle had to last until morning only made her throat drier.

"Team lead." Dohyeon closed the dark laptop. "If you can't sleep, at least rest your eyes. I'll keep watch here."

"Watch what, out here."

"The sound of the water rising." He tipped his chin toward the stairwell. "When the sound drops, it's going down. I'll wake you when it does."

Jiwon couldn't answer. The fact that even in this darkness he was listening for something, standing guard over it, tightened around her in a way she couldn't explain.

From a few hours ago, Park Seonyeong's call still hung in her ear. There's a part the director handled personally. Please keep it a secret that I told you this. That voice, trembling as if it might break off. That single line had changed the weight of the name at the bottom of the list. This wasn't restructuring. Not for this one person, at least.

She had to tell him, Jiwon thought. Better than letting him find his own name on the board. From my own mouth. Now.

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Not knowing where to begin.

The same floor, but the lights were alive. The ceiling fluorescents were bright, and beyond the conference room glass the city's lights were densely packed. Back then Jiwon's hair fell a little past her shoulders, and no matter how many nights she went without sleep, her eyes never looked tired.

That night, the project collapsed.

More precisely, the cracks that had been hidden all split open at once. An item missing from the supplier's materials inspection record had flowed untouched all the way to the ordering stage, and on-site, the problem broke loose. Someone had nearly been hurt. Not badly, thankfully—but it was already too late to paper it over with the word 'thankfully,' because upstairs had caught the scent.

"Team lead." The Dohyeon of back then came rushing in with a stack of documents. His tie was straight, and there was no brand on his face yet. Just an urgent, bright face. "I pulled all the records from the inspection stage."

"The bottom line first," Jiwon said.

"It could have been stopped. If someone had just caught it at that stage, once." Dohyeon spread the documents across the desk. "The problem is that that 'someone' is about to become the problem."

Jiwon looked down at the documents. The printed words wouldn't register. She already knew—in which box of that paperwork, what had gone wrong. Before anyone else.

Footsteps of dress shoes approached from the corridor. Slow, unhurried. Someone with no reason to come up to this floor so late at night was coming.

"It's Director Kang," Dohyeon said, lowering his voice.

The door opened. Kang Minseok swept his gaze over the two of them from behind gold-rimmed glasses and made a smile that wasn't smiling.

"Everyone's working hard, this late." He pulled out a conference room chair and sat. No gesture to sit, no gesture to stand. "I heard about the site incident. It's gone all the way up."

"We're preparing an incident report," Jiwon said.

"An incident report." Kang Minseok rolled the word around in his mouth. "An incident report needs a name in it. If there was an accident, then the name of the person who caused it."

The air in the conference room sank a hand's width lower.

The red emergency light lay thin across the side of Dohyeon's face. For three years now Jiwon had been unable to take that face head-on. Even now she could only look at it along the edge of the lantern light, her gaze set off to the side.

"Lee." Jiwon fiddled with the bottle cap. Her fingertips were cold. "There's something."

"Yes."

"…I'm sorry." Her voice came out smaller than she'd expected. She swallowed once and spoke again. "Tomorrow—when morning comes… there's something you're going to find out. I didn't want you seeing it on the board. So, from my own mouth—"

"I know."

Jiwon's hand stopped.

Dohyeon didn't turn his head from the stairwell he'd been watching. He didn't raise his voice. He simply said it, the way you bring out words you'd sorted through and put away long ago.

"It's been a few days."

The floor was quiet. Only the sound of rain, and somewhere the low sound of water rising.

"…What has," Jiwon barely managed to ask.

"That my name's on the list." Only now did he look at her. It was the same face, the same smile as when he'd first appeared holding the lantern—the one that steadies a startled person. Now she thought she understood where that smile came from. "There's someone I know in HR." He caught for half a beat. A catch that swallowed a name. "They tipped me off, with their own neck on the line. Don't ask who."

Who, Jiwon couldn't ask. The fact that somewhere in this organization there was a person who had staked their own position to reach out a hand to Dohyeon pierced her, strangely.

Jiwon looked at the box beside his desk. A mug, a picture frame, a half-packed potted plant. The box she'd told herself, from the moment this night began, was a coincidence, a bit of spring cleaning—the box she'd chosen to believe in, because only by believing it could she swallow the water.

It wasn't a coincidence. Not luggage packed in ignorance, but luggage packed because he knew.

"But why." Jiwon's words wavered. "Why didn't you say anything. You could have taken it up with me. Why me, of all people. Why now."

"Because I saw the face you made while you were putting that list together." Dohyeon reached toward the box and idly pushed a stray leaf of the plant back inside. "And how for days you couldn't turn your head toward my desk. If I clung on too, with a face like I'd collapsed, I thought you might really break."

Jiwon couldn't say a word.

"Me packing my things early—it wasn't to put your mind at ease." Dohyeon smiled faintly. As always, the edge of the smile was a little forlorn. "But I figured, if it looked like nothing was wrong right up to the end, maybe it'd be a little easier. For both of us."

That consideration hurt more than any reproach. Had he resented her instead, Jiwon could have borne it. Resentment at least offers a way to repay it. But he left nothing to be repaid—he only quietly packed his things.

"…Drink your water." Dohyeon gestured toward the bottle with his eyes. "Ration it. This night is long."

Jiwon picked up the bottle. The hand opening the cap trembled. Something she had kept sealed for three years rose, for the first time, all the way to the top of her throat, before his composure. The apology wasn't about tomorrow morning. It was something far older, far heavier. Whether to bring it out now—whether this darkness was pressing at her back, telling her to.

She was about to open her mouth—

Kang Minseok rose from his seat. He did not hurry.

"The name to go in the incident report—decide it and bring it to me by tomorrow morning." He pushed his glasses up. "Someone has to take responsibility for this to be buried quietly. Better one name than the whole team getting shaken, wouldn't you say."

The door closed. The footsteps of dress shoes receded.

Between the two people left in the conference room, the fluorescent light flickered once. In that instant, from somewhere beyond the window, the red light of a warning beacon swept across the glass. Exactly the same color as the emergency light three years later.

Dohyeon looked down at the documents on the desk, then raised his head. Jiwon didn't yet know what he was thinking. She pulled the documents toward herself. She knew only that one box on the paper now in her hands had just turned into a blank demanding a single name.

And who that name had to be.