The Mayor Is Behind the Glass

While an utterly unexpected drama was unfolding outside City Hall, I had quietly started something interesting inside it as well.

"Here we are, Mayor."

Kang Seol-heon pressed the button. The elevator rose in silence, the floor indicator creeping toward 9.

I watched the number climb for a while before the question slipped out of me.

"The ninth floor is the highest one in our City Hall, right?"

"Yes, the top floor. The mayor's office sits at the very summit. It's been arranged that way, like a tradition, since the previous mayor's day."

"So he was a king."

"...I beg your pardon?"

Kang Seol-heon gave me ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a bewildered look. I smiled lightly and nodded.

"This place is practically the Epang Palace. One look and you can tell it was built on the belief that authority flows from above. What does a city of barely a hundred thousand people need with a Qin Shi Huang?"

Ding.

The elevator doors opened. The top-floor corridor was hushed, a red carpet running down its length on both sides.

Potted plants stood in perfect mirror symmetry along the carpet, and at the far end of the corridor a single heavy door kept its vigil. Beside it hung a silver nameplate.

"How do I put this... this is a little intimidating, isn't it?"

I tilted my head. Kang Seol-heon studied my reaction with that expression of hers I still couldn't read.

"It's a symbol, meant to show that the mayor carries authority. For visitors and outside dignitaries, I'd say this much symbolism is necessary."

I walked up to the door slowly, gripped the weighty handle, stared at it for a long moment — then turned my head.

"Seol-heon. There's an empty office down near the first-floor lobby, isn't there?"

"...Yes, there's a vacant reception room, but... you can't possibly mean to move down there?"

"Precisely."

Only then did Kang Seol-heon's eyes widen a little.

"Mayor, that's going too—"

"It's too high up."

"...I'm sorry?"

"Think about it. This is an era when citizens line up hoping to meet their mayor in person. If the mayor is perched on the ninth floor, who's going to feel comfortable walking up for a word?"

I glanced at the nameplate one more time, then added, "If you want to meet your citizens at eye level, you start by matching the physical height. I'm... going down."

Silence fell. Kang Seol-heon kept her lips pressed firmly together, but inside that silence was a strange blend of grudging understanding and sheer bewilderment.

"And I'm having the mayor's office built out of transparent glass. So that citizens can watch their mayor at work through it."

"...And the security concerns?"

"We expand the petition police detail, and classified documents get a separate internal meeting room."

"A proposal the previous mayors could never even have imagined."

"Then it's a good thing I'm not a previous mayor. I'll do the imagining."

I said it with a smile. Kang Seol-heon spent a long moment unable to find her words, then let out a small sigh.

"...You truly are ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠anything but an ordinary man, Mayor."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

Brushing off my hands, I turned back down the corridor. And in that instant, a single line surfaced in my mind.

Sitting in a high seat doesn't actually widen your field of vision.

First floor of City Hall, to the right of the lobby. The space that had once served as a waiting room for outside guests began to transform at remarkable speed.

The partition walls came down; the tables and sofas were carted away. In their place, transparent glass walls rose on either side — a structure anyone could see straight through. And at the center of the glass front, white letters spelled out: Yeojin Mayor's Office.

"You can really... see the mayor in there?"

"Good grief, you can watch him working and everything."

"You can even see how he sits."

A murmur spread among the staff. Beyond the glass wall sat one office desk, one laptop, and on the wall a whiteboard and a single urban-planning map.

From any angle, nothing about it said "mayor's office." And seated at its center, coffee cup in hand, was me.

"So now we can actually make eye contact with the Mayor."

"What are we supposed to do if we actually do make eye contact?"

"...Don't bow. Just wave."

Nerves and jokes crossed paths in the air. At that moment, someone on the far side of the mayor's office glass waved at me. I waved back on pure reflex — and two or three people hurried past, laughing.

"Oh my god, he actually waved!"

"The Mayor waved at us? Is this real life?"

Before I knew it, the first-floor lobby of City Hall had taken on the air of a playground. But that wasn't all.

A few days later, a CCTV camera went up beside the glass wall. To be precise, it was a surveillance camera recording the interior of the mayor's office twenty-four hours a day.

"Mayor, this is too much... isn't this literally for surveillance?"

The director of the Urban Development Bureau asked, carefully, almost as though lodging a protest. I nodded.

"That's right. It's for surveillance."

"...Surveilling whom, exactly?"

"Everyone. Myself included."

The conference room froze solid. I went on, unhurried.

"If a private favor gets slipped in during a meeting with the mayor, what is a civil servant supposed to do?"

"...Leave a record and report it."

"Correct. But in practice, that's easier said than done. If it's only words, there's no evidence afterward, and memories start to diverge. So from now on, every meeting will be preserved on video."

I pressed the presentation remote and advanced the slide. Written across the screen was a single line:

"From now on, whatever proposal comes through that door — if it's legal, there's no reason to flinch at being recorded. And if it's a shameful proposal... well, it will never make it out of anyone's mouth in the first place."

The directors looked at one another. Some nodded; others fell into a heavy silence.

The next morning, when I stepped into the office, Kang Seol-heon was already at her desk sorting through something. The view through the glass wall looked little changed from the day before, yet somehow the air felt a shade lighter.

"Mayor, we were at six meetings through yesterday. Today there are only two."

Kang Seol-heon came quietly to my desk and held out a folder.

I looked up from my monitor and took the meeting schedule she offered. The sparseness of the list leapt out at me.

"What about the corporate representatives?"

I asked. Kang Seol-heon shrugged with an unreadable expression.

"All canceled. They claimed scheduling conflicts, then cut off contact entirely. I didn't expect things to turn on a dime like this."

I turned the pages slowly and let out a dry chuckle.

Just as I predicted. Now there's no doubt left about what they wanted these meetings for.

I'd been through it countless times in my previous life. Corporations would request a meeting under the banner of "policy consultation," but what they actually wanted to say was something else entirely.

A quiet word passed along off the record, in a room where nothing was ever written down.

"Mr. Mayor, about the development of this district... we're counting on your support."

"The new-town site — is there any room to revisit the plans?"

Everyone spoke the language of official procedure, but I had learned, bitterly, that the unofficial channel was where the real hearts lay. So this time, I changed the structure itself.

A CCTV camera in the meeting room, glass walls around the office. Anyone could see me at work exactly as I was, and every conversation would live on as video.

An environment where quiet deals simply cannot be made.

Perhaps that was why the corporate groups canceled their own meeting schedules. If they had genuinely needed to discuss policy, they would have had no reason to avoid such conditions.

But what they had wanted was never a meeting — it was a "quiet deal." And the moment the quiet vanished, the meeting requests vanished with it.

"It's working better than I expected."

Kang Seol-heon studied my reaction with a flicker of surprise on her face.

Perhaps she, too, had nursed a sliver of doubt — would things really change just from this? But reality was answering far more clearly than that.

I lifted the mug in my hand. The rich scent of coffee spread through the room as citizens and staff drifted past beyond the glass.

Administration is not merely the keeping of rules, and politics is not just a banquet of words for persuading someone. What truly matters is changing the structure — making systems and space decide how people behave. One glass wall. One camera.

And this small change was stirring a wind through Yeojin City Hall.

"Uh... huh? Aren't you the Mayor?"

That day, too, I sat at my laptop as usual, sorting through work reports. The first floor of City Hall was its usual unremarkable weekday scene.

A few citizens stood at the passport counter, and a petition police officer sipped coffee beside the main entrance. Then, without warning, someone waved through the glass.

I looked up without thinking, and our eyes met.

"Oh my god, it's real! I just made eye contact with the Mayor!"

The voice carried far enough that the two people at the counter turned around and began to murmur. Before long, someone had a phone camera out, sneaking shots toward the glass wall.

"...So it begins."

Putting on my most composed face, I raised a hand and gave a small wave.

"Oh, he's waving!"

And the chatter burst out from beyond the glass. After that, everything happened in a flash.

"Huh? It really is the Mayor?"

"Whoa, people said the Yeojin Mayor sits inside a glass window — that was actually true?"

"Wait, don't we get points for taking a verification shot of this?"

"You can actually see him working... Whoa, maybe I should put a nameplate on my computer screen too."

From that day on, a veritable "mayor-watching ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠boom" swept through City Hall.

A few days later.

"Chief Kang, is there any way we could... make the lock on the mayor's office door a little stronger?"

I asked quietly. Kang Seol-heon set down her coffee cup and gave me a long, level look.

"Someone tried to come ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in again?"

"...This time it was an elderly gentleman. He looked at my face through the glass, then simply opened the door and walked in."

"What did he say?"

"'Mayor~ just came by to see your face~' — smiling the whole while."

"You stopped him, I trust?"

"The petition police did. They rushed over and blocked his path. I just smiled and bowed my head... it was a little, well, embarrassing."

The corner of Kang Seol-heon's mouth lifted slightly.

"You're quite popular."

"Is this what popularity is...?"

I took a sip of coffee and looked out the window. An elderly man stood at the glass wall, waving and saying something, while his son beside him held up a phone.

Don't tell me — again? A moment later, a petition police officer was gently talking the old man down at the door, laughing all the while. I couldn't concentrate on anything.

And these little episodes soon spread by word of mouth. Posts like these began appearing on the community board for City Hall:

Part of me found it all rather mortifying, but it was unquestionably working. The fact that the office of "mayor" no longer felt distant was itself a symbol — the tearing down of administration's barriers.

That afternoon, a young entrepreneur, on his way out after his meeting, tossed off one last remark.

"With your office right there... somehow I'm less nervous. Oh, and my team's been passing around the 'the Mayor is REAL' meme. Politics is in its proof-of-life era now, I suppose."

I saw him off with an awkward laugh.

He's real. How could three little words be this funny — and this meaningful — at the same time?

But I knew. Each of these ridiculous little moments was, in the end, the process of building an infrastructure called trust.