Doubt Me

The next day at noon, the sky lit up once more.

Jeong Minho was on his way out to grab lunch. On the street in front of his company, people stopped in their tracks all at once and tilted their heads upward.

The electronic billboards at Gwanghwamun, the outer walls of buildings, even the phones in their hands—every screen displayed the same image.

The voice resonated inside everyone’s minds. Jeong Minho ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠swallowed hard. Had that entity heard the suspicions that had kept him awake last night? Of course it had. It saw everything, after all.

Jeong Minho tensed. He thought the entity would lash out in anger. That it would plaster the writers of those posts across the sky again and crush them under the label of falsehood.

That was exactly what the people in that dark office had been counting on—the image of a dictator who silenced any words that threatened him.

But the voice said something entirely different.

The street stirred with murmurs.

Jeong Minho doubted his own ears. The person beside him, and the one beside them, all stared at the sky with bewildered expressions.

The words in the sky rearranged themselves into a single line. Large. Clear.

Jeong Minho’s heart beat strangely. Those were not words a dictator could speak. A dictator feared doubt above all else and silenced doubting mouths first. Yet this entity was telling them to doubt it—first and foremost.

The image on the sky screen changed. What appeared this time was neither corruption nor crime. It was a method of verification.

Jeong Minho stared blankly at the sky. He had never heard of a dictator who admitted his own faults. Dictators never apologized. The moment they acknowledged a mistake, their authority crumbled. A dictator had to be right at all times. Never wrong. Never sorry. That was the grammar of dictatorship.

Yet this entity had declared first that it was not perfect. That the Barrier had been forced upon them, and that it was sorry. And that if its judgment proved wrong, they could judge it later. Those were not words that built authority—they dismantled it.

Jeong Minho looked again at the crack that had formed in his heart a few days earlier. The doubt was still there. But its color had changed. Yesterday’s doubt had been terror. Today’s doubt was simply doubt. The healthy kind that every person ought to possess.

At the prosecutors’ office, they were watching the broadcast as well. Seo Hajin stood in front of the office television, listening to the three promises displayed across the sky. At the first one, her hand froze.

The original black box, original CCTV, and call records had been submitted in physical form to the prosecution and the court. Compare them to see if they matched what the sky had shown. She understood the meaning of those words better than anyone.

Until yesterday, her greatest worry had been whether the phrase “the sky showed it” would be accepted as evidence in court. The defense would surely have seized on that. Where did it come from? Wasn’t it fabricated?

But now, physical evidence had landed in her hands. The sky’s footage had merely been a map pointing to where to dig. The real evidence was what she had lawfully secured herself.

“Investigator Go Jinsu.”

She called for her investigator.

“Let’s go to the evidence storage room. We’ll personally verify the newly arrived physical evidence. We’ll check if it matches what the sky showed down to a single frame.”

Go Jinsu looked at her.

“Prosecutor, that thing… it just dumped more work on us. Again.”

“It did.”

Seo Hajin picked up her jacket. The corner of her mouth lifted ever so slightly.

“But this time, I’m grateful for the handoff.”

She understood. When that entity told people to verify it, it had simultaneously made her trial ironclad. That permitting doubt ultimately became the strongest weapon. Lies could not withstand scrutiny, but the more truth was doubted, the stronger it grew.

People on the street buzzed with conversation. Yet the tone of those voices was different from yesterday.

“…Is that really a dictator? It’s telling us to doubt it.”

“It says we should compare the evidence ourselves. If anything doesn’t match, it’ll admit it’s lying.”

“Would a real dictator talk like that? They’d be too busy shutting mouths.”

The people who had been wavering yesterday were now moving in a different direction. So was Jeong Minho. The vague anxiety that had gripped him last night was fading away like dew under sunlight.

Only then did he realize it. Those posts from yesterday hadn’t been meant to make him think. They had been meant to stop him from thinking. They had driven him in one direction using nothing but the single emotion of fear.

But this entity was saying the opposite. Doubt me. Verify it yourself. Judge for yourself.

The side that told people to think, and the side that told them not to. It was now perfectly clear which one was the dictator.

At the same moment, in the dark office, the faces of those who had orchestrated the plan had gone rigid.

“…What the hell is this.”

One man glared at the screen. Their plan had been perfect. If the entity refuted the claims, it would look like a dictator. If it stayed silent, public opinion would waver. Either way, they won.

But the entity had taken a third path. It neither refuted nor stayed silent. Instead, it embraced the criticism. It acknowledged that the points were valid, encouraged people to doubt it, and even handed them the tools to verify it themselves. Far from silencing mouths, it had opened them wider.

They had shaken people with fear, but the entity had transformed that fear into “the freedom to doubt.” The weapon they had planted had turned around and aimed itself at them.

“At this rate… every question we threw out is going to end up helping the other side.”

Someone muttered. It was true. People had begun to doubt. But that doubt was no longer directed at the entity.

Who wrote those calm, composed posts? Who funded them? Why did this flood of writing pour out right after the chairman was arrested?

The doubt had changed direction and was now swinging back toward them.

Posts had already begun appearing online. Someone had analyzed the upload times of those inflammatory articles. Dozens of them had gone up at regular intervals starting the very night the chairman was taken into custody. The tone and phrasing were identical. Clearly written by one person—or one organization.

Comments poured in.

The entity had not deleted those posts. There had been no need. Instead of erasing them, it had let people uncover their true nature on their own. Lies that would have become martyrdom if suppressed simply exposed themselves when left alone.

One man in the dark office turned off the screen and spat out,

“…That thing is a step ahead of us.”

No one could argue.

The cult that had formed at City Hall Square also began to collapse that day. Because the voice from the sky had reached them too.

On the platform, the cult leader froze. The god he had exalted was telling people not to exalt him. The crowd stirred. Those who had offered their bankbooks began picking them up again. Before a god that refused to be treated as one, fanaticism lost its footing.

A middle-aged woman who had handed over her bankbook stared blankly at the platform. Three days earlier she had fought with her husband and left home.

The world had seemed to be collapsing, but listening to that entity’s words in the square had brought her peace. Because it said she could entrust everything to it. Because it said she didn’t have to think.

But that very entity had just told her not to entrust anything to it. To think for herself.

She slowly put the bankbook back into her pocket. For the first time, she thought about why she was even here. She missed her husband. She wanted to go home. That simple feeling, blurred for days, came back into sharp focus.

She left the square. One by one, then in greater numbers. Those who had been kneeling stood and headed home. Only the leader remained on the empty platform, shouting desperately.

“Come back! This is the entity’s will!”

But no one looked back. A voice that told people to stop thinking could never defeat a voice that told them to think.

Jeong Minho did not return to the office. Instead, he took out his phone and reopened the post that had shaken him yesterday. The calm, rational, terrifying post. This time it read differently. He no longer saw its logic—he saw its intent.

This post wasn’t trying to make me think. It was trying to scare me.

He closed the post. Then he opened the video of the Park Sang-woo incident again. The mother who had collapsed in tears when her dead son’s name appeared in the sky. The scene that had grown blurry yesterday struck his chest clearly once more.

This was what I truly felt.

He turned and began walking slowly in the opposite direction of his company. Somewhere, there had to be something even an ordinary person like him could do. Not as a spectator, but as someone who could carry his own weight.

At that same moment, in the convenience store—

Kim Jeongsang looked out the window at the street. The expressions on people’s faces had changed from yesterday. The faces that had been shaking now stood firmly on their own two feet. Not faces twisted by fear or entranced by something, but the faces of people who judged for themselves.

He took a sip of canned coffee.

They will never fully understand, he thought.

The ones who had shaken people’s hearts from the darkness had always seen humans as a stupid majority. A herd that stampeded at a single push of fear, something to be toyed with. They had seen them that way their entire lives. Because that method had always worked.

But they had been wrong about one thing.

People were not stupid. They had simply been deceived. The truth had been hidden from them, and the tools to doubt had been taken away. That was why they had looked stupid.

Give them the tools, and people would think for themselves. They would judge for themselves. That was what Kim Jeongsang had observed for five years while working at this convenience store—the people of this country.

Mr. Park, the student who counted out seven hundred won, Jeong Minho who couldn’t sleep. They hadn’t suffered because they were stupid. They had suffered because they lacked the tools.

So he had given them the tools. Not answers, but the right to doubt.

“Looks a bit more like people living now.”

He muttered to himself, then went back to organizing the triangular kimbap on the shelf.

High above, one final line floated slowly across the sky.

Jeong Minho gazed up at that sentence for a long time. And for the first time, he was not afraid of the entity. Far from it—he felt strangely reassured. Because it did not tell him to believe, but to doubt. Because it did not tell him to follow, but to stand on his own.

He lifted his phone and searched for the trial schedule of the Park Sang-woo case. It said applications for public attendance were being accepted. He pressed the button.

He decided to become not a spectator, but a person who would see everything with his own two eyes. Because that was what the entity wanted.

The dictator frame collapsed that day. Not because it collapsed on its own, but because the people tore it down.