9Ep.. In My Own Name

The object said to hold Director Kang's dirty secret — a thing no bigger than a thumbnail — was in Jiwon's hand. Since taking it from Dohyeon's grip a moment ago, she hadn't let it go. She meant neither to use it nor to destroy it. She was simply holding it.

Dohyeon had stepped back from the door of the stairwell. The hand that had been about to hurl it down into the darkness below now hung empty at his side.

"This isn't your card to play," Jiwon said, her voice low. "Protecting you with this would just be making you do what you did three years ago all over again. Carrying someone else's weight."

"Then it's the end for you," Dohyeon said quietly — repeating what he'd said only moments before.

"That's for me to decide," she said. "Not you."

Dohyeon looked at her. The lantern was down to a single thread of red now.

They both knew there was nothing left to hide on this floor. Whose mistake it had really been, who had known and buried it, who had shut their eyes to survive — the night had peeled it all back, layer by layer. What remained was the single question of what they would do on top of it.

Then Jiwon's phone rang.

The name on the screen turned her fingertips cold. Kang Minseok. Four percent. At this hour, on that battery.

While she wavered over whether to answer, Dohyeon saw the name too. Nothing came from his face, but his eyes darkened once.

Jiwon pressed the answer button.

"...Yes, sir."

"So you were up." Even at this hour, there was no trace of sleep in Director Kang's voice. As always, he was in no hurry. "Heard you're trapped in the building. That must be rough."

She didn't ask how he knew. This man always knew.

"I'm calling to make sure tomorrow morning's list goes up as it is," Director Kang said. "There are people who go soft overnight. You're not one of them, Team Lead Seo."

"...Sir."

"And," he went on. His tone was gentle, and colder for it — exactly the tone from that room three years ago. "There's an opening for head of Planning in this reshuffle. Your name came up from above. I pushed for it." A brief silence. "The past three years, keeping your mouth shut. I'm the kind of man who gives a seat to someone like that."

Jiwon said nothing. Outside the window, the sound of the rain had eased a little.

"Get some sleep, and I'll see you in the morning," Director Kang said. "That floor will drain soon. I've told them to send people in."

The call ended.

Jiwon stared at the dark screen for a long moment. The price of her silence had just arrived, converted into a number and a title. Three years ago it had been a single sheet of paper; this dawn it was a division-head's seat. Only the price had risen — what he was buying was the same. Her mouth.

"...Division head." Dohyeon spoke out of the darkness. There was neither scorn nor surprise in it. "That man's good with people. He was three years ago, and he is now."

Jiwon didn't answer. Not because she had nothing to say, but because what he'd said was true.

The lantern finally went out. Only the red emergency light remained, staining the floor blood-colored again. In that red glow Jiwon closed her eyes. Behind the darkness of her shut lids rose a morning three years ago, one lit white by fluorescent lamps.

The hand holding the report stopped before the door of Director Kang's office.

It was the morning after a whole night without sleep. The 'Person Responsible' box was no longer blank. A single name had been written in it. Not in her hand — a name Dohyeon had written in himself. His own.

The night before, when Dohyeon picked up that fountain pen and wrote his own name, Jiwon hadn't stopped him. She had only said, once, "Lee." Without even lifting his head, Dohyeon said, "If you go down here, the whole team gets swallowed by Director Kang. If it ends with just me pulled out, that's the cheapest way to stop it." And he finished the last stroke beneath his name.

In that moment Jiwon knew the truth. That at that review stage, the one who had missed a single decimal place no one else was watching was not Dohyeon but herself. Who the real owner of that mistake — the one Dohyeon had stepped up to take the fall for — really was: only two people in that room knew, and one of them was now writing his name in her place.

She could have spoken then. Said, that was my mistake. She could have snatched the pen, struck through that name, and put down her own.

But she did not.

Because she couldn't afford to fall. Because the position she'd spent three years building, and everything she'd believed she could do once she reached it, couldn't end here. She hadn't taken the hand Dohyeon offered because she was threatened. No one had held a gun to her head. She wanted to live, and so she shut her eyes. It was a choice.

That morning she took the report and opened the door. She set the sheet bearing Dohyeon's name down on the table. Director Kang looked down at it and, with unsmiling eyes, nodded just once.

"Well done, Team Lead Seo."

That one phrase had lodged in her throat for three years.

The sound of the water was dropping lower.

Dohyeon noticed first. "The water's draining." He turned his head toward the stairwell. "The shutters will open soon."

A while later a dull vibration rose again from underfoot. This time it wasn't the sound of something receding but of something coming back to life. Down below, the drainage pump began to turn, and a beat late the ceiling fluorescents flickered back on. The red emergency light went out. After eight hours, the blood-color lifted from the floor.

Outside the window it was still dim. The rained-out sky was breaking gray. For the first time, the two faces stood revealed in plain light rather than red. Only now could each see how worn down the other had grown over the night.

Somewhere far off came the sound of a shutter riding up its rail. Once, and then again. The door that had held the two of them all night was opening.

Dohyeon picked up the box — the one that had passed the night half-packed.

"Go on down first, Team Lead," he said. "I'll just finish packing this."

"Lee." Jiwon called to him. "Wait a moment."

Jiwon went back to her desk and sat down. With the power restored, the monitor came on, and the file due to be posted at nine that morning rose again onto the screen. At the very bottom of the list: Lee Dohyeon.

She set the cursor over that name. Like that night in the first episode. Only this time, her hand did not hesitate.

She deleted the name.

Then she opened a new document. Addressed to the board's audit committee. There were things she had kept for three years, unable to delete. The minutes from back then, the circumstances of Director Kang ordering that responsibility be pinned on the working level, how Dohyeon's name had come to fill that blank — and above all, whose mistake it had really been.

She wrote it in her own name. She never even opened Dohyeon's object. What overturned the board had to be her confession, not his card. Only then would the weight he had carried three years ago finally be moved onto her own back.

At the end, she attached her letter of resignation. For someone who had closed her eyes to keep her position, there was no way to make this confession real except to open them and stake that very position on it.

Over the send button her hand stopped once. It was the same hand that had stopped before the fountain pen three years ago. That time, she had never managed to write the truth.

This time, she pressed it.

"Team Lead."

Dohyeon's voice came from behind her. Holding the box, he was looking at the screen. For the first time, the composure he'd kept all night split apart completely across his face.

"What did you do." He set the box down. "Don't tell me—"

"It's already gone," Jiwon said. On the screen glowed the words 'Sent.'

Dohyeon came at her in a stride. For the first time, he was rushing. "Take it back. It's not even morning yet. Before the audit committee even convenes—"

"Lee." Jiwon cut him off. Her voice trembled but did not break. "Three years ago, in that room, when you wrote your name in my place — I could have stopped it. And I didn't."

Dohyeon stopped.

"This time, you can't stop it." Jiwon looked at him. For the first time in three years, straight into his face. Without turning away. "I'm sorry. This one is mine to decide."

Outside the window a gray morning was coming up. Down on the street, the first footsteps entering the building that had been sealed all night echoed in past the open shutter. There were still three hours until nine.

And what would go up on the board three hours later was no longer Lee Dohyeon's name.