Chapter 2
I’m translating the chapter now and preserving the HTML rules you specified, including styled blocks where the text becomes in-universe display content.CHAPTER_TITLE: Is This Some Kind of Superpower? +40
From inside the machine, a bright red light flashed.
I was just about to sit up and take a closer look when—
Rattle.
The sound of the hospital room door opening cut across my view.
A nurse in a white coat walked in and headed for my bedside with a chart in her hand.
“Are you feeling awake now, sir?”
I nodded vaguely.
The nurse skillfully flipped my eyelids open and checked my pupil response.
The beam from a penlight danced in front of my eyes.
“Do you know where you are?”
“...In a hospital, I assume.”
“Your name and date of birth?”
“Baek Gunwoo. May 5, 1984.”
“Yes, your consciousness is clear. Any dizziness or nausea?”
“Other than my head pounding a little... I’m fine.”
The nurse checked my blood pressure and temperature, then wrote something in the chart.
“The CT scan didn’t show any signs of intracranial bleeding, but because the impact was so severe, you’ll probably have concussion symptoms for a few days. Absolutely no overexerting yourself.”
With that warning, she checked that the IV fluids were flowing properly and left the room.
The room fell quiet again.
I turned my head once more and looked at the infusion pump from earlier.
“...”
I couldn’t see it.
Not the vivid red light I’d seen before, and not the components hidden inside the machine.
Now all I saw was a worn plastic shell.
Had I imagined it?
Well, I had hit my head hard enough to make my brains shake around. It wouldn’t have been strange to see things.
I clicked my tongue bitterly.
Then there was another knock.
Tap, tap.
The door opened again, and the moment I recognized the face of the man who came in, I reflexively tried to sit up.
“Director.”
It was Song Younghoon.
He was holding a thick document envelope.
His expression was dark and rigid.
“Don’t get up. Stay lying down.”
Song Younghoon waved me back and sat down on the auxiliary chair beside the bed.
He said nothing for a long while.
He only kept glancing back and forth between the bandage around my head and the IV line.
An awkward silence stretched out.
“How’s your body?”
“I’m fine, other than being a little dizzy.”
“That’s a relief. A real relief. Assistant Manager Jung was running around outside crying that he’d grabbed the ladder wrong, so I sent him back to the company.”
“You did the right thing. I fell because of the wind, nothing more. It wasn’t Assistant Manager Jung’s fault.”
“Right. I know.”
Song Younghoon dragged a hand down his face, then set the envelope he’d brought onto the table.
Thud.
The sound landed heavier than it should have.
“The company tried to be considerate. This private room is fully covered until you’re discharged. It’ll be quiet and comfortable.”
“...I see.”
“And since you weren’t seriously injured, they said that if industrial accident coverage is needed, they’ll make sure it’s handled properly. Don’t worry about that, either.”
I was probably just dealing with a concussion.
A few days of rest, and I’d be able to shake it off and return to the site.
The private room, the industrial accident talk—it was all probably just a show of goodwill in the end.
That was what I thought as I shifted my gaze to the document envelope on the table.
Song Younghoon let out a deep sigh when he noticed.
“Baek Assistant Manager.”
“Yes.”
“This is your voluntary retirement application.”
I’d expected it.
But hearing it directly made it feel far heavier.
My heart seemed to drop again.
“The terms are... good. No, to be honest, they’re extraordinary. The legal severance pay is, of course, included. On top of that, they’ve set aside a special consolation payment equal to thirty-six months of your base salary.”
Thirty-six months. Three years of pay, all at once.
With severance added on top, it was a fortune that made your eyes widen.
Enough to wipe out every loan I had and still have money left over, maybe even enough to go after a small commercial property.
It meant the company had opened its wallet with full intent.
They were willing to slap me with money if that’s what it took to get me out.
“And this is something I checked on my own. You know Taeseong Precision, our partner company? There’s a research lab director position open there right now.”
“...Taeseong Precision?”
“Yeah. The president there said you’d be welcome. You’d just go there, take the title of research lab director, and live comfortably managing things. They said they’d also do their best to match your salary.”
From a large conglomerate assistant manager to an executive at a partner company.
On the surface, it looked like a promotion, but in reality it was exile.
Not a place to develop cutting-edge technology, but a place to manage production from drawings sent down by headquarters.
A death sentence for my career as an engineer.
“The doctor said you should be able to leave after a few days of rest. I know you weren’t badly hurt. But, Baek Assistant Manager... even if you recover and come back to the company, I can’t promise your seat will still be there.”
“...”
“If you miss the voluntary retirement window, the next step is recommended resignation. By then, you won’t get a consolation payment or anything. You know the rules at this company.”
It was a fact.
If I left now, I’d walk out with a lump sum and the dignity of an executive. If I held out and got marked for removal, I’d be sent out with nothing.
“So in the end...”
My mouth tasted bitter.
“You’re telling me to make the decision you mentioned this morning. Take the money and step aside quietly while they’re offering it.”
At my words, Song Younghoon closed his mouth.
“Perfect timing. Is the fact that I got hurt a chance for the company?”
“Baek Assistant Manager.”
“If I’d been coming in to work as usual and sitting in my seat, it would’ve been awkward to push me out. But now that I’m lying here, it’s easy to press the issue.”
My voice settled into a calm, flat line.
I didn’t even have the energy to get angry.
“I can still work, Director. A few days’ rest and my head will be fine.”
“I know.”
Song Younghoon couldn’t meet my eyes, and his head lowered.
“I’m sorry. I tried to stop it too. But... the decision came from above. They say there’s no future in ground equipment anymore... if they don’t cut staff this time, the whole division’s going to collapse.”
There’s no future in ground equipment.
That sentence dug particularly deep into my chest.
It meant that the technology I’d staked my life on was nothing more to them than a useless pile of scrap metal, no, malignant inventory that needed to be cleared out fast.
“Give me a little more time to think.”
“Fine. Rest well. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
Song Younghoon fled the room as if escaping.
I leaned back weakly against the headboard.
It was an offer too sweet to refuse, and too miserable to accept.
It was exactly the kind of sum that defined my life’s dilemma.
What was I supposed to do?
After Song Younghoon left, I stayed awake all night.
Money or pride.
Trying to work through an answer on a hospital bed felt like rotting from the inside out.
“I’ll be discharged.”
The next morning, I told the doctor during rounds.
He nearly jumped out of his skin trying to stop me, but he couldn’t break my stubbornness.
Before the discharge procedures were finished, the attending physician called me over quietly.
“The MRI reading came back a little late, so I’m telling you now...”
The doctor pointed to the image of my brain displayed on the monitor.
A black-and-white image of blood vessels tangled together in dense complexity.
“Here, in the temporal lobe, there’s a small vascular malformation. There’s also a mildly bulging section.”
“...Is it serious?”
“No. The immediate risk of bleeding is low. We can’t tell whether it was caused by the accident or whether it’s congenital, but... for now, it’s best to keep an eye on it. If your vision blurs or you start seeing anything strange, come back immediately.”
Something strange.
I left the examination room with a bitter smile.
I did think of the red light I’d seen in the infusion pump yesterday, but right now that wasn’t what mattered.
*
When I got home, silence was the only thing waiting for me.
An empty officetel.
On the dining table sat a cup noodle container I’d left half-finished days ago, dried out and brittle.
I collapsed onto the bed.
The envelope Song Younghoon had given me was still in my bag.
Thirty-six months of consolation pay.
If I accepted it, my fifteen-year career as an engineer would end here.
But if I refused? I might be driven out with nothing in my hands.
There was still no answer.
I spent the day brooding over it, then the next morning came.
I woke as usual.
Without thinking, I washed up on fifteen years of routine and opened the wardrobe.
Win or lose, I figured I still had to go to work.
And in that situation, I found myself wondering.
Should I wear a suit, or should I wear work clothes?
But the question was pointless. My hand was already reaching for the gray work jacket.
After wearing it for fifteen years, it felt like part of my body.
Maybe today would be my last day at the company, so I wanted to at least wear something that meant something to me.
“...Let’s go.”
I stepped out the front door.
Our home was a twenty-minute walk from the company.
After those twenty minutes, I passed through the main gate and entered the Ground Equipment Division building.
The air in the lobby felt heavy.
As I blended in with the employees coming to work, I could feel sharp eyes on me.
Everyone seemed to be glancing at me and whispering.
What a stubborn bastard. He crawled back out already to get more money.
Look at him. He doesn’t even seem hurt. So it really was just an excuse.
It was almost as if I could hear those phantom voices.
I bit my lip hard and got on the elevator.
Third floor, where our TF office was.
As I walked down the corridor, the sound of my dress shoes echoed far too loudly.
To reach the office, you had to pass through a long hallway.
And at the end of that hallway was a space sealed off with glass walls.
The so-called graveyard.
It was the storage room where we’d piled the composite armor prototypes our TF had developed and failed with over the past three years.
The traces of two hundred billion won in research funds going up in smoke.
Just looking at it made my stomach turn, so it was the sort of place I usually turned my head and passed without a glance.
Except this time.
“...Huh?”
I couldn’t keep walking.
Beyond the glass wall, above the different versions of armor plates manufactured over time, strange colors were rising like heat haze.
Some were clumped together in a bright red mass.
Some were cut off abruptly, like paint that had started to run and then dried halfway.
“What is... that?”
As if under a spell, I approached the glass wall.
As I got closer, I could see even more.
It wasn’t that the armor plates were simply glowing. It felt as though some definite cause was making them emit light.
The one in the front row.
It was the TP-A model that had shattered during testing last year and been scrapped.
The left corner of it was burning a vivid red.
Like a clogged artery, it looked as though energy had pooled there and was about to burst.
That was...
That model always cracked from the left corner first whenever we ran impact tests.
We’d assumed it was a design flaw and responded by increasing the overall thickness.
In the end, all that did was make it heavier, and it was rejected.
But now I understood.
It wasn’t a thickness problem.
Was the bolt-hole placement... cutting through the main stress line?
The identity of the red mass was abnormally concentrated stress.
Because we’d drilled bolt holes right in the center of the path where force needed to flow under external impact, the trapped energy had swirled around the holes and torn the material apart.
A faint blue line flowed beside that red clump.
It was like it was telling me the answer.
Move it just a little to the right.
Shift the hole only a little off-center and drill it there.
Then the bolt wouldn’t be swept away by the wave of stress; it would be able to carry the impact load smoothly along the blue line.
There was no need to tear the structure apart and rebuild it.
Just changing the position of a single hole would raise the armor’s durability dramatically.
I swallowed hard and moved my gaze to the side.
This time it was the TP-B model we’d made the year before.
It had been scrapped after delamination caused by poor adhesion.
On its surface, broken yellow lines flickered in discontinuous fragments.
And between them, overlapping illusion-like images were layered.
“The adhesive application pattern... was the fatal mistake, wasn’t it.”
A diagonal pattern speeds up the process, but it has a fatal weakness.
It can’t withstand the horizontal shear force that appears when impact is applied.
Like firewood splitting along the grain, the crack had raced along the adhesive line and gone all the way through in an instant.
It should have been a grid.
Yellow lines interwoven densely in a lattice pattern.
The adhesive should have been applied in crisscrossing horizontal and vertical lines.
Then the adhesive lines themselves would become a massive breakwater, and even when impact came, the cracks wouldn’t be able to spread to the neighboring cells—they’d be trapped.
It would block the path for force to escape and let the entire material hold together as one mass.
During research, I’d carried out countless tasks and buried myself in just as many documents and simulations to solve problem after problem.
At the time, I never could have imagined that the answer would appear so clearly before my eyes now.
If that was really true...
If I wasn’t hallucinating, but had acquired some sort of superpower after hitting my head...
I let go of the glass wall and started walking again.
My heart was pounding as if it might burst, but I tightened my expression and pretended nothing was wrong.
Rattle.
The moment I opened the TF office door and stepped inside—
“...”
As if by prior agreement, the noise in the office was cut off all at once.
The eyes of employees gathered in little clusters over coffee or meetings all snapped toward me.
Surprise, embarrassment, and discomfort.
It was obvious enough how I looked in their eyes, even without seeing it.
Song Younghoon was the one who broke the suffocating silence.
“Haah...”
Seated at his desk, Song Younghoon let out a deep sigh and stood up.
He gestured toward the surrounding employees.
“Everyone back to work. Is this a show?”
Only then did the employees awkwardly pull their eyes away.
With a stiff face, Song Younghoon approached me.
“Baek Assistant Manager. Come with me for a second.”
He tried to lead me by the arm toward the break room at the end of the hall.
He must have meant that it was difficult to talk about this inside the office.
But I stopped where I was and didn’t move.
“Director.”
“Let’s talk over there. Why did you come in? I told you to rest. Are you really going to make this awkward for everyone?”
His voice carried both frustration and pity.
A complaint that I should have left gracefully when they were offering money, instead of coming in and making the situation precarious.
Normally I would have bowed my head under that pressure, but not now.
“Just let me confirm one thing.”
“What?”
“Where is TP-C right now?”
The word that came out of my mouth made Song Younghoon’s brow furrow.
“Why are you asking about that all of a sudden? We put it in the measurement room for the accident investigation. Why are you looking for it?”
“I need to check something.”
“What are you checking in your condition? And what would changing that now even accomplish? The project’s already on the verge of being scrapped anyway...”
“It’ll make a difference.”
I cut him off and spoke firmly.
“Just let me confirm one thing. I’ll explain the reason after I see it.”
“...Ha, seriously.”
Song Younghoon rubbed his forehead, incredulous.
His glare was sharp, but I didn’t back down; I held it right back.
A moment later.
Song Younghoon ran a rough hand through his hair and turned away.
“Follow me.”
He led the way down the corridor.
Across from the office was the first measurement room, accessible only by scanning a security card.
It was a restricted area where damaged prototypes and defective items were analyzed in detail.
Beep.
When Song Younghoon tapped his card, the heavy steel door opened.
The smell of disinfectant and a chill breeze rushed out.
Inside, on the inspection bench, lay an isolated black object.
The very thing that had sent me crashing to the floor the day before, and the same thing on which the life of our division now hung.
TP-C was there.