Even an S-Class Has to Read the Care Label

"What's the delivery fee?"

Seo Yul was already pulling out her cardholder.

I looked past the glass door, down at the wet cloak in my hands, and then back at the guild building.

"We do deliveries. Pickups, too. But if you're telling me to go in there, I can't."

Something moved behind the blackened windows. The building should have been full of people, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and yet not a sound carried out to the street.

"I awakened thirty minutes ago. And even that isn't certain."

Seo Yul put the wallet away. The urgency hadn't left her. What had changed was that her eyes were finally seeing my face.

"I'm sorry. My people are waiting inside."

She placed another call.

"Do-yoon. I found a place that can purify them. Recover the gear and come down. Don't move the people first—yes. I'm telling you because I've seen it myself."

While she was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠still on the line, the black veins at the tips of Seo Yul's fingers vanished. Red nail marks remained beneath them. She must have been clenching her own hand that hard.

I held out a dry towel.

"The cloak's still wet. You'll get cold if you put it on."

Seo Yul took the towel with a look of faint disbelief, then wiped her arm without a word.

"How many are inside?"

"Seven on the raid team. I came out first, so six."

I repeated the line on the Status Window exactly as it was written. Seo Yul couldn't see what hung in front of my eyes, but when the number reached her, she nodded.

"It got on all seven sets of armor. The scan was clean when we passed through the return gate. It started ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠after we came inside the building."

"And the person who put that paper in the cloak?"

"The equipment officer must have slipped it in while giving first aid. I was out of my head. I didn't see it."

I folded the paper and set it on the counter.

Did a teammate really write something like that? Whoever it was seemed to know better than I did, standing here trying to decide whether I ought to dump water on a person or strip the clothes off them.

Then the guild's front door opened.

A man came running out with three black boxes in his arms, bandages wrapped around his head and slippers on his bare feet. Behind him a yellow line flashed and was gone—a barrier sealing the building's entrance.

He stopped halfway across the street. The light was red. There wasn't a single car on the road at that hour, but he still looked both ways twice and glanced at Seo Yul.

"Cross!"

Only then did he run the rest of the way, set the boxes down, and catch his breath.

"Vice Guildmaster Jang Do-yoon. If I leave these clothes with you, will that do?"

He looked from my age to my apron and back again, and asked nothing else. I was beginning to understand what it meant that six people were waiting.

"Don't set them down farther in. Here, on the tarp."

Inside the boxes were two cloaks, three vests, and one long coat, all of it navy, each piece marked with Baekho's silver white-tiger emblem. Turned inside out, Red Thread showed in the same places on every one of them: the lining at the collar, the seam running down toward the shoulder, a small knot near the armpit. From the outside it was no different from factory reinforcement stitching.

"Were these mended at the same shop?"

"They're new. Issued yesterday."

"New, and someone still added lining."

Do-yoon dropped to his knees and turned the coat inside out. His blood-soaked hands went still.

"This thread wasn't there at the delivery inspection."

Finding whoever had done it wasn't my job. I pulled out six claim slips and started noting each garment and the name that belonged to it. Take in a stack of nearly identical uniforms at once, and the first mistake you make is handing someone the wrong life out of a pocket.

"I'll fill them in. You do what you need to do."

A Yellow Ribbon was fastened to every piece. Min-jae's vest carried his own name, and the ribbon that had fallen from Seo Yul's cloak listed the team leader and two squad members.

"What are these?"

"Our team's markers. If you get lost in a dungeon, look for the nearest teammate's name first."

"May I take the ribbons off?"

Do-yoon hesitated, then nodded.

"You can burn the clothes. Just don't let it pass to the people."

For a little while, six people were nothing but the names on their clothes.

I set the ribbons aside and wet the vest that looked the least contaminated. The same writing that had appeared on the cloak rose again.

One more line followed.

The curse moved the way dye bleeds from one load of laundry into another.

"We can't put them in all at once."

I pointed at machine two. It still ran, but the comforter cycle was dead. Machine three was waiting on a new door handle, and machine four's supply hose leaked. In a shop with no customers, breakdowns pile up quietly.

One garment at a time in machine one. Six runs ahead of us. The wash I had just finished had taken twenty-seven minutes. Six of those, and dawn would be gone.

"How much time do we have?"

Seo Yul looked at Do-yoon.

"The barrier holds for forty minutes. Min-jae is at ninety-two percent."

He broke off and turned the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠phone over, trying to keep me from seeing the young face on the screen. I had already seen the black stain spread all the way to the jaw.

Seo Yul pulled on a fresh pair of gloves.

"Will fixing the machines be enough? Tell me what you need."

"There isn't time to fix all of them."

I switched on machine two's panel. The short cycle still turned. Machine four was leaking at the faucet coupling—not a split in the hose, but a rotted rubber gasket.

"What about the biggest one?"

Do-yoon pointed at number seven.

"That one won't power on."

"If we supply power—"

"No. Fill a machine with water when you don't know it's broken, and you'll have a much bigger problem."

Do-yoon shut his mouth. I heard how hard my own voice had come out, and as I opened the toolbox I added the rest.

"I'll start with what I can fix."

When I tightened the coupling on machine four, Seo Yul braced the hose. Water spilling between the faucet and the machine soaked her knees. She paid it no mind.

I took the detergent off the worktable and told Do-yoon to bring more tarp and another pair of gloves. As he turned back toward the building, Seo Yul caught his arm.

"Get them from the guard at the front gate. Don't go inside."

She was still the guildmaster. Only now she wasn't the strong one. She was the one who remembered which direction was dangerous for whom.

The hose stopped leaking. Machine four took water.

I split cold water among three small washtubs. Pretreating outside the machines would cut the time they had to spend inside. I pressed a vest down into the water, and a path opened along the edge of the Red Thread. When I eased off the brush, the path widened a little more. Feeding it water was faster than tearing it free.

I let the vest soak for two minutes, lifted it once, and watched black water run out of the lining. Then I submerged it again.

"Is this a skill, too?"

Seo Yul asked.

"Soaking and lifting is what I was already doing."

The name made it frightening. Once a path I could see had opened, though, the work tangled with things I already knew. Even when my grandmother pulled grass stains out of school gym clothes, she told me to wait. Scrub hard with a brush just because a stain won't come out, and the clothes wear through first.

I loaded one vest into machine one and another into machine two, and put a third into machine four. The remaining three stayed in their own tubs for pretreatment. When all three machines ran at once, the shop made the sound of a laundromat for the first time in a long while.

"Did you start with Min-jae's?"

Do-yoon was back. I pointed at machine one.

He opened the call and turned the screen toward me. A young man lay on the floor of the guild infirmary, a single black line running down from his neck while a medic shone a penlight into his eyes.

"The reading's dropping. Eighty-nine... eighty-six."

Do-yoon gripped the phone so hard the screen protector cracked.

I looked away from the phone. The water in machine two was running weak. I couldn't repair a pump that had failed before dawn, but I could stop the cycle and start it again, and reverse the direction of the spin.

When the first vest finished, Min-jae opened his eyes.

Do-yoon called his name three times. The young man winced and said he was hungry. At those words Seo Yul slowly sank down beside the drying rack.

"Two of them still haven't come back."

At the medic's report she was on her feet at once.

I loaded three more. This time Seo Yul watched the timer, and Do-yoon checked each tag against its garment. When I nearly lost my grip on a cloak, Seo Yul caught it.

"You should sit, too."

"I have to check the pockets first."

A receipt came out of Do-yoon's coat: two convenience-store lunch boxes and seven canned coffees. From another cloak, a folded photograph—two children laughing, hanging on to a puppy. I slipped the photo into a clear sleeve and set it beneath the tag.

Everyone had something they meant to carry home.

Only after the last wash had started did a counselor's voice come through the phone's speaker.

Seo Yul took the call. The moment she gave the location and her name, the voice on the other end changed.

I crouched in front of the drain. The water wasn't going down. Machines two and four had always been loud when they ran together, but this sound was different—inside the pipe, wet paper being crumpled.

I angled the work light down. A thin Red Thread was climbing up over the floor drain.

The same thread that had escaped machine one.

"Ma'am."

Seo Yul lowered the phone.

"Where does the drain go?"

She asked it first. I looked toward the back of the building. Everything from this storefront collected into a shared line: the gukbap restaurant next door, the hair salon upstairs, and the street beyond. In the work light, the threads tangled with one another.

What I had pulled out of the clothes had not disappeared. The laundromat had been taking all of it in.

On the last three machines, the drain lights came on together.