Strange Lines

My parents died in a car accident when I was in the first grade. Fortunately, my grandmother raised my younger sibling and me.

From the second grade on, I worked handing out flyers, walking from one apartment complex to the next and sticking them to front doors.

In high school the work turned serious. My homeroom teacher knew how hard things were at home and gave permission, which was the only reason I could do it at all. Before school I delivered newspapers, and at lunch I worked the school store.

The government provided some support. Even so, I wanted to make my grandmother's life even a little easier.

I got into a national university on a full scholarship. A prestigious private university had accepted me too, but without a full ride I couldn't afford to go. That was all right. Just being able to attend college was more than enough to be grateful for.

All through university I tutored and worked part-time at once. By a small mercy amid the misfortune, I was able to serve my military duty as a full-time reservist, and the battalion commander was considerate enough to let me keep tutoring and picking up shifts after I got off duty.

Then my grandmother died of old age. All that day, my sibling and I clung to each other and cried.

By luck, I found work the moment I graduated. I became a staffer in the public relations office of a conglomerate anyone would recognize by name alone.

At first I'd meant to join a regional public corporation. Halfway through, though, my major was merged out of existence, and every professor I'd been close with left the region. Recommendations and everything else evaporated with them. In the end I had no choice but to come back up to Seoul, where I'd originally come from.

By any ordinary measure, I didn't have the credentials for a PR post at a major firm. The company that took me was famous for hiring only graduates of the SKY universities — Seoul National, Korea, and Yonsei. A government ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠policy meant to favor talent from the provinces had pushed the conglomerate to open a portion of its slots to national-university graduates as a special hire, and just like that the incoming class split into special hires and open recruits.

Nine out of ten open recruits were SKY graduates. One had come from a prestigious university overseas. The special hires were all from national universities rooted in the provinces.

Special hire or open recruit, I thought it would be enough to work hard. It was a major corporation. Do the job well, and they'd notice on their own. The larger the organization, the more people it held, and so the more rational it had to be. I believed that.

I was the first one in. I wiped down the seniors' desks, watered the plants, and took on every stray task there was, and I left later than anyone. If I just kept at it, I believed a road would open for me too. And in fact, on both presentation scores and attitude scores, I posted the highest marks of anyone still on probation.

When probation ended, I ran into the wall of reality. The open recruits were converted to permanent staff at once. Even a peer who strolled in late every day, left the moment quitting time hit, and had scored a flat zero on attitude became permanent.

The special hires did not.

A year on contract, and there was still no permanent post waiting. There was only a permanent contract. Your pay grade ticked up a step, and that was all. No real raise. No promotion.

They were talking around it, but the word they meant was dismissal. Government policy had compelled them to fill the probationary slots. It had not compelled them to fill the slots for final conversion, and they had aimed straight at that gap.

Seven of the ten special hires were cut loose in the process. I signed the contract anyway, forcing the pen across the page. Even on a contract, a year of experience at a major corporation was something money couldn't buy. That's what I believed when I signed.

If the company threw me out today, I couldn't cover the living expenses of my sibling, who was still living in a dorm. After the new contract, the post I was assigned to was the Information Documentation Department on B5.

"Jiwoo, you wanted to stay in PR, didn't you? This is a wonderful place! A hundred years of our company's PR history is alive and breathing right here! Every bit of information in the company comes through this room. I'm counting on you for document requests from here on out!"

The head of PR clapped me on the back while I stared blankly at the transfer email, cheering me on.

"Ah..."

Only then did I understand.

No matter how well I worked, there was an invisible wall I could not cross. What the company liked better than someone who simply did the work well was a person who had something else. A probationary employee who had gone to the same high school and the same university as the head of PR, for instance. Or a probationary employee famous for having a father who headed a major law firm.

The world was not a place where effort alone would let you survive. You had to work hard, and work well, and have been born well on top of it.

"Jiwoo, clean Section C today."

There were two employees in the Information Documentation Department. One was me. The other was a woman in her mid-to-late twenties named Oh Seorin, a permanent contract employee who had worked there for five years. At first I'd made a real attempt at breaking the ice, hoping we might get along. Her answers were an iron wall of single syllables, and in the end I gave up.

"Yes."

There was no chain of command between us. Oh Seorin simply knew the department better than I did, so I followed her instructions. What we had was a clean, professional relationship. Thanks to that, it wasn't bad.

"Ugh, the dust."

B5 held hundreds of thousands of documents. Even with the ventilation fans running around the clock, they couldn't keep out the stale, musty smell peculiar to old paper.

"Section C... Section C..."

I reached Section C, the space where newspapers that had mentioned the company by name were clipped and kept. I cleared the dust settled over the scrapbooks and checked that they'd been shelved properly by year.

More than a week had passed since my assignment, so the work itself was familiar. The problem was enduring a place this dull and this quiet.

Every contract peer from the special-hire track had been sent, like me, to a dead-end department. Our group chat was nothing but despair piling on despair.

The open-recruit peers, meanwhile, were doing very well. They'd been assigned to the PR office, the secretariat, the strategy office — each of them a place I'd wanted to go. Hefty performance bonuses were guaranteed, and everyone preferred those departments.

"It's fine."

If anything, it was good. A major corporation's salary is nothing to take lightly. That I could do work this simple and still draw a paycheck like this was almost astonishing. Of course, if I considered that Oh Seorin — sitting over there, tapping at her laptop — had lasted longer in the Information Documentation Department than anyone in the company's hundred-year history, holding out didn't look easy.

The department's work came down to two things: managing the materials, and answering requests for them. Usually, when PR asked us to dig up something usable for a press release, we organized it and sent it along. Every piece of information in the company flowed into this room. It was a treasury of information in the most literal sense.

"Senior Seorin."

"Yes."

"Um, what are you scanning?"

Oh Seorin had stacked documents beside her desk and was running them through the scanner. The machine let out a long whine, then a click.

"The company's archival materials."

"Oh? Are you digitizing them?"

Back during my probation in PR, I'd been startled to learn that more than eighty percent of the department's materials had never been digitized. So for my first-week assignment I'd presented the idea that it would be better to have an AI sort through them, and the head of PR had agreed without hesitation. These days you only had to scan a page. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠AI split text from images on its own and turned the result into a PDF or a Word file.

It whined and clicked again.

"Yes. Once this is finished, I'll have to start looking for another job. The department itself will be gone."

Oh Seorin's face, bent over the scanner, was perfectly flat. A process like this already looked familiar to her. The scanner whined and clicked, and the sound rang through the quiet department. I had nothing to say to that. I went back to Section C and started cleaning again.

In a year, once the digitization was done, the Information Documentation Department would be shut down. Closing it would save at least several hundred thousand dollars a year, and the money saved could be turned into additional benefits for the staff. That was what the last slide of the presentation I'd made had said.

I hadn't known. I hadn't known that a choice from my own past would close its hand around my leash.

"This isn't easy."

I'd thought the job was simple — do your own work well, and that was enough. It wasn't. A single word out of my mouth, a single line in a report I'd written, could change someone else's life.

The department's one advantage was the absence of any superior to tiptoe around. I meant to wolf down lunch as fast as I could and skim a few job sites.

Heavy-hearted, I finished with Section C and started on Section D. But what was this? I lifted my head and looked at the ceiling. The air purifier, the dehumidifier, the air conditioner — all of it for controlling the humidity — were running evenly and well. Even so, my back was damp.

A faint dizziness had come over me, and my body felt heavy.

"Maybe I've caught a cold..."

I started toward my desk for a painkiller. I took a step, and I was fine. The damp on my back cooled quickly. I hesitated, then walked back toward Section D. My back dampened again. My body grew heavy again. The dizziness returned.

As if something had taken hold of me, I walked into Section D. Sweat poured off me like a waterfall, but I wiped it away and kept going. Only now did I see it. This was not Section D.

Written on the wall was something that belonged to no language in the world. Spellbound, I went farther in. Ordinarily instinct would lead and reason would hold me back. Instead, instinct and reason alike were shouting at me to go inside.

My footsteps echoed. For an instant, it was as if the art style had changed. These were not the Information Documentation Department's hard aluminum shelves. Shelves of old wood stood in rows.

"Hmm... something's off."

None of the books on the shelves had titles. I pulled one out and opened it, and it was blank paper through and through. The outside looked worn enough to be decades old at least, and yet nothing was written inside. I couldn't understand why anyone would wedge a thing like that onto a shelf. No — I ought to have been starting with why it existed in a place like this at all. And yet, strangely, the place felt familiar, and warm.

"Hm?"

One book caught my eye. It seemed to be the only one with a title written on it.

"Book of Truth? That's an odd title."

Wait. I'd called the title odd?

I blinked. No ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠matter how I looked, there was no title written on the book at all. So what had I just said? Book of Truth? How had I known the title? What was this?

Before I realized it, my back was soaked through with sweat. I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠swallowed against a dry throat and carefully opened the book. The pages rustled. The first line of the book was this.

"Huuuueeeegh—"

I brought up everything I'd eaten that day. I retched for a long while before I could push myself upright. The vomit was gone without a trace.

When I lifted my head, strange lines began to appear before my eyes.