The Wrong Part
"..."
"..."
Swish. Swish. The only sound filling the changing room was the soft rasp of a towel against skin. The steam that had filled the shower room vanished the moment Jiwoo pressed the button, leaving behind nothing but a faint, pleasant scent.
"......"
"...Sh-should we go?"
Jiwoo glanced at me, reading my face. After everything we had just done, I couldn't understand why she still looked so embarrassed.
Her face had turned a shade close to tomato red. If we walked out like this and ran into anyone, it would be like advertising exactly what we had been up to.
"..."
Well. Nothing to be done about it, I supposed.
I dried my hair with a dryer that seemed no more advanced than anything from my own world, and by the time I finished, my complexion had settled into something that could pass for skin flushed from hot water.
The thing still standing stiffly between my legs bothered me, but this time I decided I didn't need to go out of my way to spare Jiwoo's feelings. After all, she had thoroughly enjoyed herself too.
We had gone so far past the excuse of "almost sex" that we had been right on the brink of the real thing.
More than that, the bone-deep exhaustion settling through my entire body made it hard to care. Right now I just wanted to bolt for the bed, sink into the soft mattress, and stare at the ceiling while I caught my breath.
It felt like I still couldn't get enough air, no matter how long I breathed.
Unfortunately, this was not a country that would grant me that kind of leisure.
There was too much to do. Cleaning still waited, and I needed to go see Soyeon. I also had to find Dahyeon and tell her that while I was truly grateful, she didn't need to worry about me...
"Okay..."
I answered softly.
When we stepped out into the corridor I found myself checking both directions without meaning to. The halls were usually quiet, with only a handful of people moving through them, but at one end a group that looked like the facilities team had torn open a section of wall and were examining the inside.
Fortunately they weren't close. We slipped quietly back to the room.
"Th-then... food?"
Jiwoo asked once we had finished changing.
Hyejin was still asleep. Meals were free-for-all here, so I nodded, thinking she would wake and eat later—
"......"
Then I decided resting would be better. Things with Soyeon were still awkward; the idea of sitting down to a meal together before we had even talked properly felt too heavy.
Better to rest a little while everyone else was eating.
"...Ah, um, could I... rest just a little...?"
I asked. Jiwoo answered with an exaggerated tone and expression that it was fine to do whatever I wanted, then left the room alone.
I lay down on the bed. In the quiet room, with only Hyejin's occasional breathing for company, I closed my eyes.
I was too drained for other thoughts, and the mattress felt softer than usual today.
I dozed off without realizing it.
I fell asleep so fast I barely knew it had happened, and when I woke two hours had already passed. Probably because I had gone to bed so late the night before.
Two whole hours. At this rate the things I kept putting off would just slide into tomorrow again.
I shook off the dull, ringing headache that always came with a nap and the dry tightness in my throat, then slowly got out of bed and walked the corridor that felt oddly cool.
People were the same as always even without me. No one greeted me; a few offered only a silent nod.
I was heading for the Control Room. Workers were still out in the hall assembling things (that was the most technical word I could manage) or making repairs, every one of them with something smeared on their faces as they looked back and forth between their PDAs and the open wall interiors.
"......"
I couldn't bring myself to say hello. So I was fretting over whether even a quiet "good work" would feel like a lie when I tried to slip past—
"...Ah. Administrator. If you go to the warehouse, there's an interlock—no, something that looks like a bearing... no, how do I put it. Go in, second from the top on the left, the one that looks like a donut? Could you bring that for me?"
These little side quests sometimes came when I wandered around cleaning with nothing better to do.
Normally I would have beamed and been happy to help somehow, but the timing was terrible.
The conversation with Soyeon that I had already put off too long. And of course I had fallen asleep. No—I should have just gone during lunch.
"...Ah, um, that is... so, uh..."
"...What? You busy?"
"Ah, n-no! I, um, it's just..."
"..."
The woman who had half her body shoved into the opened wall grunted and wriggled back out.
She was one of the rare women around my height. Most people here were taller than me...
I only barely reached average height for a woman myself, but these were people who had gone through specialized training, and that training must have included physical conditioning.
They had the physiques to match. No one who couldn't keep up with regular exercise would have ended up here in the first place—
Even this body of mine, thin as it was, had clearly been trained. Lean muscle sat on everything except certain parts.
The absolute difference in muscle mass still made the strength gap obvious, of course. Anyway.
She wore work clothes. When she casually wiped a hand across her waist, the dust on her palm left a streak on the fabric.
"Hey."
A cold impression? No—not cold. Closer to heat. The kind of face every group has: the scary senior who looks like she could take you in a fight and trigger that instinctive fear of losing—
The kind of person who usually turns out gentle once you get close. Those large eyes fixed on me, and then—
"Hhk. Y-yes..."
"Why are you stuttering like that? It's annoying. You sick or something?"
"...N-no...!"
"Then what? No. Look. That... what is it? Just talk straight. What."
My body locked up. It wasn't the ordinary feeling of getting chewed out at work. Something I couldn't name, like a blow to the head, wrapped around me.
"...Ah, uh, th-the, Control Room—"
"I asked if you're busy. Ah, forget it. Just go."
So the words wouldn't come out properly, worse than usual. Her sharp—no, perfectly reasonable—question had frozen me so solid my mouth wouldn't open. She tossed her tools into a corner and turned to walk down the corridor—
"Ah, n-no! I'll! I'll g-go get it! Left u-upper, second! Donut! Y-yes...!"
I grabbed her wrist and blurted it out. Left upper second, the donut-shaped thing. I had to remember it.
"...Haa. What. Did you just lose your memory? Were you always like this? Tch..."
She muttered it loud enough for me to hear. A few of her coworkers glanced our way, reading the atmosphere, and the whole picture felt heavy. I wanted to run.
And I had both the motive and the excuse. So I ran hard. Toward the warehouse, toward the second-from-the-top donut on the left.
I ran with everything I had, trying to make up for the time I had wasted by failing to get a simple sentence out. When I met Dahyeon along the way I gave her a quick greeting and kept running.
"Oh, where are you—"
I felt bad, but Dahyeon was kind to me, so fixing my mistake first seemed right. I ran.
I reached the warehouse and opened the door. A hastily converted storage room that had once been something else. Inside, left side.
Left lower second...
"Haaah... haaah...!"
Where was the donut-shaped thing supposed to be...?
I searched the drawers that looked like hard cases from a sci-fi movie, each compartment shaped to fit its contents so perfectly it almost seemed space-inefficient—
Nothing that matched the donut description she had given me. So I started pulling them out one by one, reading the names engraved in the metal.
Multi-layer pressure washer.
Torsion pin.
Bearing—
"Ah!"
She had definitely started to say bearing or something. Right. She must have been about to say bearing, then decided I wouldn't know the word and switched to "donut-shaped part."
The heart that had dropped into my stomach eased a little. If I had run all this way, made her wait, and then brought the wrong part, I really wouldn't have been able to show my face again.
It was a bit of a stretch from a donut—more like a horseshoe—but if you squinted, maybe a donut with a bite taken out. Yeah. Human creativity was endless like that.
"I-I should take all of them."
She hadn't said how many, so better to bring the whole set. Maybe she needed more than one and I would look stupid showing up with a single piece.
I lifted the entire metal box. It was heavy enough that I could barely cradle it against my chest, so this time I couldn't run. I walked. It was heavy enough I might fall.
"Ah. Moving something?"
"Ah, hehe... yeah...!"
"...Hold on, I'll help carry it."
Dahyeon, the one who had called out to me earlier, was still standing in the same spot. We met on the way back, each of us taking one side of the box as we walked.
In the distance I saw the woman tipping back what looked like a personal canteen.
She pulled out some tool I didn't know, pried off another sheet of plywood, shoved her head into the opening, and sighed heavily before she noticed me.
"Hup. H-here..."
"Why do you need this? You use these here too?"
I set the box down in front of her and finally caught my breath. Dahyeon tilted her head, clearly wondering why we were looking for this particular part here.
"Ah. Hello. No—all the wiring is physically locked. I need to free it first. I only need one, though, so why you brought the whole—"
The woman who had walked over slowly at Dahyeon's question bent to look at the box, then trailed off and just stared at it blankly.
"..."
"...Um, i-is something... wrong...?"
I asked carefully. She glanced once at Dahyeon standing beside me looking at the same thing, then—
"......This isn't it, haa... No, never mind. Go take care of your own business."
"You brought the wrong one?"
Dahyeon's question.
"Yeah. Must have mixed it up..."
Her tone was swallowing anger. The tremor in her voice gave it away. She shot me one sharp look, then trudged back toward the warehouse I had just run from.
"Ugh. N-no. I-I'll go get it again, uh...? Left l-lower second, wasn't... wasn't it...?"
"Upper. Upper. Second from the top. How do you forget that. What. Ah. Shit."
...
"Umm."
Dahyeon made a small sound, looking back and forth between me and the woman, then started trying to mediate—trying to soothe the woman's temper with this and that—but I couldn't hear any of it.
"...I-I'll go get it again...!"
There was useless, and then there was this.
What hurt more than any hatred directed at me was the fact that I had bothered someone who was just trying to do her job properly. Even if I couldn't pull my own weight, I at least shouldn't become a minus.
And I had even botched something as simple as fetching a part.
It wasn't that her explanation had been vague. I had literally been running around with my head full of nonsense and forgotten. Completely my fault.
Having lost my memories and knowing nothing wasn't even an excuse. Pure, perfect mistake on my part.
So I bent to pick up the wrong box again, ready to go get the left-upper thing I would absolutely not forget this time—
"Ah, for fuck's sake."
A hand clamped hard around my forearm. Even with one hand her middle finger and thumb nearly touched, the hand was that large—
"Kyah...!"
She swung me toward the opposite side of the warehouse like she was throwing something away. My balance vanished.
"Go somewhere else."
The world tilted sideways. I hit the floor so hard it wasn't even a proper fall—more like a towel dropped flat.
"Hey, what the—!"
Dahyeon moved in shock, but the woman didn't react at all. She didn't even look at me as she started walking toward the warehouse, this time flinging the tools she had been holding onto the floor in irritation.
The corridor froze solid.
"You okay? No, wait, she must have been in a bad mood, right? Right? A-are you okay?"
"U-ugh..."
After hitting the floor, my mind went completely blank for a moment. The shock was so sharp I almost forgot why I had fallen in the first place.
Even when I took Dahyeon's outstretched hand and slowly stood, even when I tried to open my mouth to say I was fine, the answer simply would not come out.
Just sudden tears, and a throat that locked shut.
The pain blooming from the places that had hit the floor felt so pitiful I could hardly stand it.