Zero on the Ledger
The fire at Old Man Kim's had passed, and I climbed the stairs to my studio.
Nothing happened, they said. Sure.
I'd finished washing up at the family house and was ready to go by the time my parents got home. I asked if anything unusual had happened. Nothing, they told me. I left with that disappointment folded away behind me, reached the studio, and slept like the dead. The next day—
I went in no different from any other morning. Senior Yeongseok and I finished the line tour, and at lunch the two of us headed for the company cafeteria.
"Seokhyeon, get a good rest?"
"Yes. I went back home."
"Yeah? Where's home?"
"Nonsan. There's a little place called XX Village."
We talked about this and that, most of it my stories—how we'd split the beef, how I'd bought them a down jacket. And then—
The news was on the cafeteria television.
Senior Yeongseok looked at me.
"Seokhyeon, isn't that your neighborhood?"
"Uh... yeah?"
Wait.
Is this... about me?
And how did they know that? Dad must have told them everything.
Senior Yeongseok's eyes found mine. I looked away, suddenly awkward.
"...You said you went to rest."
"I really did rest. Ate beef, bought them a down jacket..."
"And picked up a job as a firefighter."
"Hey—Senior!"
We were still tossing the joke back and forth when the broadcast continued.
...Huh?
A commendation, dropped on me out of nowhere. Senior Yeongseok started clapping.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
"Well, would you look at that. That's our new hire. Our new hire. Impressive, right? Goes off to rest and comes back having put out a fire."
He said it in a cafeteria full of people. I dropped my head. My face burned.
"Senior? Senior? Please, stop..."
"Everyone, a round of applause! He's getting a mayoral commendation! This company will never have to worry about a fire again!"
And the people at the next table actually started clapping. I was going to lose my mind.
Even so...
Secretly, it felt good.
Time slipped past without mercy. I clocked in and clocked out, learning the work at Senior Yeongseok's side. Now and then I still saw the white lights and the red ones, and bit by bit I came to know the difference.
First, the white light.
A white light was exactly what it sounded like: a malfunction. It appeared when something could no longer do its job. Leave a white light alone long enough, and now and then it turned red.
Next, the red light.
A red light was a hazard. It showed up when ignoring the problem meant a safety incident—the team leader's car, the boiler at Old Man Kim's. The WN-11 tool had been the same story, right down to a pipe so worn that water was leaking through it. Anything like a time bomb showed itself in red. So the moment a red light appeared inside the line, I had the part replaced. From what I'd seen so far, most of them were old pipes weeping water.
This line really is ancient.
Wander past with nothing to do and a red light would still find you. The fate of an engineer stuck on an aging line, I supposed. I filed one more pipe-replacement request that day, and someone came looking for me.
"Engineer Lee Seokhyeon?"
"Good afternoon, Deputy Manager Park."
Deputy Manager Park Seongwoo. He handled the department's budget, and I had a fairly good idea why he'd come to find me.
Money, probably.
Every time a red light appeared, I put in a part-replacement request, and that meant spending the budget allocated to the department. From a budget officer's seat, there would be plenty to ask.
"Replacing pipes and the like—aren't you spending an awful lot of money on that?"
My guess was dead on.
"I don't understand why you keep swapping out perfectly good pipe. You planning to replace every pipe on our line? Of course you're not."
No, Deputy Manager. Those pipes were not perfectly good. Not that I could explain a red light only I could see.
That's the problem.
I had no way to describe what only my eyes could catch. To everyone else, there was no problem to see—and that was the problem. So I'd prepared in advance.
"Deputy Manager, if you'd take a look here..."
I'd already sent him the durability-test data on every pipe we'd pulled, and I opened the mail. The vendor had at least been willing to run that much.
"If we'd left them as they were, a water leak probably would have occurred."
Like last time on WN-11, when the water came down like a waterfall. Maybe the careful phrasing was the trouble. His face stayed pinched and sour.
"It might not have."
"...Sorry?"
"It might have been fine, no?"
Oh, for the love of—
"We can't exactly sit around waiting for the water to burst."
"Is there any guarantee it actually bursts?"
There was. He just wouldn't hear it. The data was right there. Why were his eyes closed? Deputy Manager. Hello? Deputy Manager!
"Anyway, I have been putting budget into the WN section, but we can't keep going like this. Just know that. There might not be budget for it."
Which meant: keep working like this, and he wouldn't give us any. I was furious. How was I supposed to explain something I could see with my own eyes? And the durability data was all there to begin with!
Call the team leader?
He'd said he would hear me out. Just bring him in and get permission?
No. Don't.
That was a last resort... no. Don't even think of it as a last resort. A brand-new hire at the bottom of the ladder dragging in the team leader to make a scene? That wasn't even a sentence.
"...I'll be careful."
I swallowed the anger and gave him the only answer I had. Was it wrong to try to do the job properly? I went back onto the line in a slump, and—
"Seokhyeon. Something wrong?"
My light. My hope. My salvation. Senior Yeongseok asked what had happened, and I reported every last detail of Deputy Manager Park Seongwoo. Senior, he said this, he said that. I could have cried.
"Hm... that's a bit much."
"Right?"
I knew it. He was on my side. So what do we do now?
"But there isn't a way around it."
"...What?"
"The budget officer's authority is bigger than you'd think. Even the department head can't easily say anything."
"..."
"You'd probably have to be a team leader to get a word in. And even that could get read as interference."
What a world.
"...If the stress gets to be too much, tell me. I'll stick my neck out. Just don't go transferring to some other department."
Senior Yeongseok said it plainly. Finding failure after failure with the ability I had, I'd become, before I noticed, someone the section couldn't do without.
Even the deputy managers were saying it: Seokhyeon really is that good at the job. Seniors on the other shifts came to me whenever a tool was stuck.
"Anyway, we're on your side. Keep doing it the way you've been doing it."
He said it with eyes that didn't waver. Thank you, Senior. It put a little strength back in me. So I worked exactly the same way. White light, I fixed it. Red light, I replaced it.
The problem started the following week. I confirmed a red light the way I always did and filed the part-replacement request, and—
A system message rose in front of me.
"Uh... Senior? It says the budget's insufficient."
"...What?"
It had never once done this. Just in case, Senior Yeongseok submitted the request himself. Same result.
He picked up the phone at once.
"Deputy Manager. It's me. Yeongseok. Our section budget is showing as insufficient... Ah, yes, yes. Yes."
He talked for a moment, then hung up.
"Deputy Manager Park Seongwoo?"
"Yeah. Says if we wait a bit, he'll put the budget in."
"...He's doing it on purpose, isn't he."
"Seems like it."
Budget that wasn't there didn't appear out of thin air. He'd pulled all of it, and only now that a request had come in was he putting it back. A contest of nerves, then.
This is annoying.
All I'd wanted was to work in peace. I hadn't expected something like this to catch me by the ankle. Still, the budget came in before long, and I filed the part-replacement request immediately. Fine. Let's see how far he wants to take this.
The Line 1 office. Deputy Manager Park Seongwoo leaned back in his chair and settled into it.
What's a nobody like him going to do about it?
One of the new hires was burning through precious budget like he didn't know what money was. If you didn't break that habit at the start, it became a cycle of spending money like water, on and on.
And what comes after that is my performance review.
Had the kid decided to block his path on purpose?
Well, well. He put in another request yesterday?
The budget had drained again. Again. This wouldn't do.
Pull the budget again. That would wake them up. Honestly, there were far too many of these kids who didn't know a budget was precious.
The time... well, look at that. It's already this late.
By the time he'd finished the rest of the work, it was quitting time. Deputy Manager Park Seongwoo gathered his things and stood.
"I'll head out first~"
He'd been under far too much stress lately. Tomorrow was the weekend. He'd go somewhere and get a proper rest.
...This time, too.
I checked the budget line. Lately, checking it had become part of my routine. If there was any record of the budget being used the day before, Deputy Manager Park Seongwoo pulled it without fail the next morning. Call him, and he hemmed and hawed and added it back.
Screenshot this, too.
I'd been saving the whole pattern, timestamp by timestamp—the budget gone, then suddenly restored. You never knew. It might be useful later.
"Senior, I'll take a walk around the line."
"Yeah. Go on."
The daily work was already done. I walked the line alone. Since failures showed themselves to my eyes, making the rounds often was as good as a performance record. The mails I'd written off the back of those fixes already numbered in the dozens. I was making my way along when—
A flash.
A light.
Where?
I looked around again, and the flicker was coming from the top of a tool. But—
Red?
A red light. I moved at once. I'd seen plenty of red on the utilities, but almost never on a tool itself. There was no telling what failure was coming, or what accident. I found the glittering spot, and there was the power supply—the part that took incoming voltage, transformed it, and sent it into the tool. An adapter, of a kind. The red light was flashing there.
What is this?
I put a hand to it and felt a fierce heat.
...It has to be replaced.
There wasn't time to think. I checked the model number and went straight to the parts cabinet. The engineers' computer sat right beside it, and I told my senior what I'd seen.
"Senior. The power supply on top of WN-6 feels like it's running hot. I'm going to replace it."
"Yeah? I'll come with you."
He got up and started digging through the cabinet. And then—
"...We don't have one?"
"We don't."
There was no power supply of the same type in the cabinet.
"Nothing for it. We'll have to order one."
"Senior, but right now..."
The budget was zero. He nodded.
"I'll call."
He placed the call at once. But—
Ring... ring...
Ring... ring...
Only the ringtone. The call never connected.
Deputy Manager Park Seongwoo did not pick up.