Omen
Chime.
Five in the afternoon, the bell over the shop door rang.
With the dinner rush still ahead, the dining room sat nearly empty. Two students in school uniforms occupied a window seat, and a man with a laptop open had taken the corner. In the kitchen the grill hummed low as it preheated.
Kwon Sion didn't need to turn around to know who it was. A sweet perfume had already come in ahead of her, threading through the smell of grease.
"God, it's hot. Sion, what's the AC on?"
Park Hyejin.
She stepped in behind the counter with her visor cap hooked on one finger, spinning it in lazy circles, then tossed the cap down beside the register and yanked her apron strings tight behind her back. Her makeup looked freshly retouched, sharp and bright, and the brown waves that fell to her waist swayed against her back.
"Twenty-four."
"Drop it to twenty. I'm sweating."
"Yes, I'll turn it down."
As he reached for the remote, Sion's eyes snagged on her fingertips. Pink almond nails—rhinestones and pearls set into every one of the ten, not a finger spared—glittered under the shop's fluorescent lights.
...They're fine.
Last night those pieces had ticked off onto the iron floor, one after another. That face, half gone, her lower belly twitching in front of the bent bars. Now the same face was using the front camera for a mirror, layering on more lip color and snapping about the air-conditioning.
The Other World was the Other World. The Park Hyejin standing here didn't know a thing.
"What are you looking at?"
She asked it without taking her eyes off the screen.
"Ah—nothing. Your nails... they're pretty."
The words were out, and Sion was the one startled by them. That wasn't what he'd meant to say. Before the thought had even finished forming, his tongue had rolled it out on its own.
...Did I just do that?
Twenty-five years in this country. In front of the orphanage director, in front of part-time interviewers, in front of the store manager and the SV and Park Hyejin—everywhere a bowed head was what put food on the table, that tongue had learned to roll. These days the flattery jumped out before judgment ever got a say.
A body sent to conquer this planet, and the one thing it's mastered is flattery a local would envy.
So this was where a vanguard scout's gift for adaptation had chosen to shine.
"Right? Just got them done. Look at the pearls. Any idea what one of these costs?"
She spread the back of her hand toward the fluorescents. All ten pieces flashed at once.
"Oh, and today's inventory count and the order entry—you do those. After close."
"...Isn't that the manager's job?"
The glittering hand came slowly down.
Park Hyejin turned her head. Beneath half-lowered lids, brown eyes ran him once from top to bottom.
"So. You're not doing it?"
Her voice wasn't loud. If anything it was low, and slow.
Before Sion could answer, her eyes went back to the phone. She capped the lipstick and muttered, small as something said to herself.
"...Orphan brat."
It wasn't meant to be heard. It also wasn't meant not to be.
The corner of Sion's mouth went still, just for a moment, where it was.
...Honestly.
There isn't a bitch alive who holds a candle to this one.
Sion didn't answer. He only pressed the button on the remote in his hand.
Beep.
Park Hyejin seemed to take the silence for a yes. Humming under her breath, she picked up the visor and put it on.
The rush passed the way it always did—in a blur.
The order screen blinked without a pause, and fries came up three baskets at a time out of the fryer. Sion moved between grill and fryer, flipping patties, shaking off potatoes, shoving trays out. Park Hyejin took orders at the counter. In front of customers, and only then, her voice climbed half a tone.
"Happy to take your order~"
The moment a customer turned away, she tipped only her head toward the kitchen.
"Sion, when's number three's fries? The customer's waiting."
"Coming right out!"
Like nagging makes the oil boil faster.
It was past nine before the dining room finally thinned.
Sion tied off a trash bag and stepped into the break room. A corkboard hung on the wall beside the refrigerator, and pinned to it with a thumbtack was a sheet of paper that hadn't been there when he clocked in. Next month's schedule. A name in ballpoint filled every box—opening, mid, closing. His eyes traveled down the closing column.
Five days a week. The same as this month. The week after that, and the week after that.
...One sortie a day.
That was what Redi had said in the Command Room. Once a day, for now. Around next month, as many as three times across two days. But by the time he finished close and made it back to his studio, it was past one in the morning. Log in, spend the one sortie, and the day was over. Even if the sorties increased next month, he wouldn't have the time to use them.
In the end he would have to carve up his waking hours. And half of those hours were already mortgaged to a single sheet of paper.
Sion stared down at the schedule for a long while.
The math finished quickly. Drop even two closing shifts and more than a third of his paycheck vanished. After rent and maintenance fees, what remained was about enough for instant noodles.
...Cut my hours and I'm actually finished, aren't I?
That was still true. But now there was something more important. Something more urgent.
Sion left the break room.
Park Hyejin was half-leaning on the counter, eyes on her phone. Her thumb pushed the screen up, and up again. Instagram.
"Um, Manager."
"Yeah."
She didn't even lift her head.
"I saw next month's schedule. I'm cutting my closing shifts. Down to about three a week."
The thumb stopped.
Only then did Park Hyejin look up. The eyes with their lifted tails narrowed.
"...What?"
"The closings, I just—"
"No, I heard you. I heard."
The phone slapped face-down onto the counter.
"Are you kidding me right now? You know Minji quit, right? You're the only one left who can work close. If you drop out, who covers? You want me standing there alone?"
"If you hired a few more people..."
"You think hiring is that easy? We post the listing and the kids don't come! And the ones who do last a week and bolt!"
Her voice climbed. The last customer left in the dining room glanced their way. Park Hyejin didn't care.
"You're honestly hilarious. Not a word all this time, and suddenly this? ...Oh. Is this because I told you to do the inventory earlier? One little task and you get sulky?"
"It's not that."
"Then what. Huh? Say it."
The tips of her nails tapped the counter. Tok. Tok.
"Forget it. Until we find someone, you do it. That's what's fair. Think about the people you work with, for once."
The people you work with.
Sion turned the phrase over once, inside. The people you work with who dumped the security close on him, dumped the grill grease on him, dumped the food-waste bin on him. The person who filled five boxes on the checklist with a single wipe of a rag in the seven minutes it took to cash out.
...Fuck.
Something boiled up in him. The heat he had swallowed for seven straight years.
And as always, the corner of his mouth tried to rise first. The words climbed all the way to the top of his throat.
Yes. I understand. I'll do it.
His mouth opened.
"...I don't want to."
That was what came out.
Park Hyejin's eyes went wide.
"...What did you just say?"
"I can't do five closings. Three times a week is as far as I'll go."
His voice wasn't loud, and it didn't shake. It simply wasn't the tone that had always curled upward at the end. The strangeness of it seemed to cost her a moment; Park Hyejin lost her words.
Then she snorted.
"Ha. Are you notifying me right now? You pull this and I'm telling the store manager everything. You know attendance reviews go up through me, right?"
"Yes. You're welcome to tell them."
"...You really—"
"And."
Sion looked her straight in the eye.
Her, leaning on the counter, and him, standing in front of it. For seven years, the one looking up had always been him. And yet now, somehow, he couldn't quite feel that difference in height.
"If that won't work, I'll quit."
Silence settled in.
Only the low rush of the air-conditioning went on. The customer in the dining room quietly ducked their head.
Park Hyejin's mouth froze half open. The glittering tips of her nails had stopped on the counter.
Sion watched that face.
Where a person broke—that was something the one who had lived bent knew better. For Park Hyejin, it was closing. The grease under the grill, the waste-oil drum, the food-waste bin. The things those painstakingly set nails would never, ever touch.
Her pupils wavered for an instant. In that short gap he could see the calculation pass through.
"...You're serious about that?"
"Yes."
"...Ha."
She picked the phone back up. Turned the screen on, turned it off, turned it on again.
"...We'll talk later."
Her voice had dropped a tone.
"Can't you see I'm busy right now? In a bit—no. Later. We'll talk later."
Phone still in hand, she walked toward the break room. Her steps were faster than usual.
Inside, the footsteps stopped. Somewhere in front of the wall where the schedule was pinned. He heard her pick up a pen, then set it back down.
Sion turned toward the grill.
His hands went to the grease tray underneath. Even now, the body moved first.
After close, with the shutter halfway down, Kwon Sion opened the walk-in freezer.
White cold wrapped his ankles. Patty boxes were stacked to the ceiling on every shelf. Tablet in one hand, he counted the numbers on the sides of the boxes one by one. Twelve boxes of bulgogi patties. Nine of chicken. Shrimp, seven.
The inventory count. The order entry. The manager's work.
...So I'm doing it anyway.
The refusal had only worked on the schedule. Work dropped on him today was still work dropped on him today.
Orphan brat, she said.
The frozen fingertips tapping the screen grew rougher.
When she's dumping her own work it's Sion, Sion. The second he talks back, orphan brat. And that same mouth never gets tired of showing off her nails.
If she spent half the care she puts into finding a selfie angle for Instagram, counting a few of these boxes wouldn't even count as work.
...Just let one of those nails break.
Halfway through the shrimp column, Sion went back to the chicken boxes and counted again.
...Nine. Nine is right.
Filling in the last column, he suddenly looked up at the shelf.
Redi's voice came back to him.
For the briefest moment he pictured the orcs wrapping their arms around these boxes and vanishing with them whole—and, the next morning, Park Hyejin standing dumbstruck before empty shelves with the order sheet in her hands.
...As if that could happen.
This was reality.
No matter how thoroughly he stripped this shop over on the Other World, not a single box would disappear from the shelves in front of him now. The Other World was a copy, and what happened to a copy did not cross over. Just like Park Hyejin's nails.
...Corruption Rate, 0.00%.
For now, that means nothing on this side has been touched at all.
Kwon Sion turned the tablet off and shut the freezer door.