Twenty Years of Overdue Complaints (2)
How should I write the report, he had asked.
I swallowed the last mouthful of instant coffee and crushed the paper cup.
"Write it as it is."
The Association President's throat bobbed hard.
"Chief, that would be..."
"Kang Taehyun, Chief of the Association's General Civil Affairs Office. Survivor of the final defense line at the Grand Hall twenty years ago. Write that I'm the name the people upstairs have been looking for."
"If we send it up like that, they won't leave you alone, Chief."
"If they won't leave me alone, they'll come to meet me."
It took the Association President a moment to weigh the full meaning of those words. The erased side wasn't going to hide—it was going to summon the ones who had done the erasing.
I turned my wheelchair around.
"To process a complaint that's been sitting for twenty years, you need the person with the authority to sign off. But with this body, the thresholds of every government office are too high for me to go hunting them down. So I'll make them come to me."
The Association President couldn't speak for a long while. Then he asked, "Are you... really all right with that?"
"Association President."
I looked back from the doorway.
"Twenty years ago you wrote whatever they told you to write. This time, write what you know. Compare which one lets you sleep better."
On the elevator ride down I finished running the numbers.
There were two ways to step back into the world after twenty years: get dragged out, or walk out on your own feet. Get dragged out and you play on their board. Walk out yourself and you get to lay your own. If I was going out either way, better to meet them from my seat behind the reception counter in the Civil Affairs Office.
Back downstairs, I pulled a business card from the drawer. The one Seo Jingyeong had left behind.
She picked up before the second ring.
"Chief?"
"That thing you said you'd ask."
"...Excuse me?"
"You said you'd ask when you were ready. Ask now."
I heard her steady her breathing on the other end.
"I'm going to record this."
"Do it."
That evening I hung the Closed for Business sign on the Civil Affairs Office door and talked about twenty years ago.
How the conscription warrants had arrived. How a sixteen-year-old, a mother with a child, and a gray-haired old man had been stood up on that battlefield. How nine out of ten had died in the first year. How those deaths had been wiped clean from every document.
I didn't speak any names. Not mine. Not the dead's. Names weren't for articles. They were things to be returned to the bereaved families.
Seo Jingyeong didn't interrupt once in four hours. She kept a notebook open beside the recorder, and only when a passage brushed against her father did the tip of her pen pause for a moment.
When I finished, she asked, "Once this testimony goes out, they'll start tracing the source from the top. Even if it's anonymous, there aren't many survivors left. If they identify you, Chief..."
"If they identify me, they'll come to meet me."
"...That's what you're aiming for."
"Face-to-face consultation is the fastest way to process a complaint."
Seo Jingyeong gave a short, incredulous laugh. Then she closed her notebook.
"I won't write the part about my father. That isn't for an article—it's mine. I'll re-verify the documents and publish within five days."
Five days.
There was still one thing left to do in that window.
I got the number from Do Cheol.
"So the day has finally come when you go looking for Bokhee first. Did the sun rise in the west?"
"Just give me the number."
"Good call. She needs to hear it from your mouth. Letting her find out from an article wouldn't be right."
I got a full lecture on top of the number. I almost snapped back something about him and his talk of "what's right," then stopped. This once, Do Cheol was correct.
Do Cheol and Do Hagyeong had already moved on their own feet or were up in the mountains. But Bokhee was different. She was the one who had built a dream on top of the ashes from twenty years ago, and the bigger this board got, the harder that dream would shake. A man who had decided to dig up the graves had no business failing to notify the girl who had built a house on top of them.
Two nights later I pressed that twenty-year-old number for the first time.
It rang for a long time.
The voice that answered was flat, without greeting.
"...So there really is a day when you'd use this number."
"Let's meet. I have something to say."
"Tomorrow, three in the morning. That convenience store."
She hung up without asking what it was about. Not asking meant she already had a pretty good idea.
The convenience store at three a.m. was quiet. A woman in a pulled-down cap and a mask was already waiting at a corner outdoor table. Two cartons of banana milk sat on the tabletop.
"One of them's yours."
"I've got coffee."
"You drank it just fine twenty years ago."
I stuck a straw into the banana milk without further argument. Back then, whenever banana milk had somehow found its way into the unit's supply crates, we had treated it as more precious than rank insignia. The girl who remembered that and bought two of them was the same girl who claimed she couldn't feel a single emotion from those days. I couldn't even begin to picture what the shape of a place looked like when the memories stayed and only the feelings had left.
"State your business."
Han Bokhee pulled her mask down to her chin and stuck a straw into her own milk.
"An article's coming out soon. About the conscription twenty years ago, and the people who were erased. Anonymous survivor testimony will run with it."
"That's you."
Han Bokhee took a sip of milk.
"I'd like to at least pretend to be surprised, but pulling out the reaction manual feels pointless when the other person is you."
"Can that reporter be trusted?"
"She's bereaved family. Grand Hall."
Han Bokhee's straw paused for a beat.
"...I see. So that's why you moved."
I hadn't explained, and her calculation was already finished. Typical of the girl who had filled the empty space where her emotions used to be with pure computational power.
"So I came to tell you in advance."
I laid it out in order. That I had accepted the complaint to organize the bereaved families' documents. That the Association President had reported the truth. That once the article ran, I would soon be sitting face-to-face with the people upstairs.
Han Bokhee didn't interrupt once. Maybe because there was no need to pull out the reaction manual for me, she had switched her expression off entirely. That empty face was perfectly still under the convenience store lights at dawn.
"And I came to say this."
I set the milk down.
"Your name doesn't go on anything. Not the list, not the testimony, not the article. Not until you decide to put it there yourself."
"...You called me after twenty years just to say that?"
"Yeah."
"You haven't changed."
Han Bokhee toyed with her straw.
"Do Cheol said if you needed testimony, I should use him too."
"It's easier to leave it that way with Do Cheol. If I say no, the conversation gets long with him."
Han Bokhee looked down at the milk carton.
"I can't give testimony. Not that I won't—I can't. The moment Han Bokhee says on camera that she was first-generation, twenty years of laughter all get sold as acting. From that day on, my story eats the bereaved families' stories. That's how broadcasting works."
She wasn't wrong. The identity reveal of a national MC was a scoop, and scoops always crushed quieter truths underneath them.
"I'm grateful you're blocking that for me. But Taehyun."
Han Bokhee looked at me.
"No matter how hard you block it, once the board gets this big, someone will recognize me eventually. They'll start digging through first-generation faces one by one. An entertainer who hasn't aged in twenty years. Anyone who can do basic arithmetic will get the answer."
"..."
"But it's strange. When I think about that, I'm not scared. I know it's a place where I should be scared, but nothing comes."
As always, she added, and the voice truly carried nothing at all.
"I saw Do Cheol's video too."
Han Bokhee continued.
"Prosthetic snapping, coughing up blood, going down on his knees. It looked exactly like the old unit."
"I flipped through the manual. What a person is supposed to feel when an old comrade ends up like that. Worry, anger, grief. I know the items. None of them came."
"But while I was rehearsing a script at dawn, my manager said—"
Han Bokhee paused for a moment.
"Unnie, why are you crying?"
I froze with the milk still in my hand.
"I touched my face and it was actually wet. I couldn't feel anything, but my body was crying. For the first time in twenty years."
"When water comes out of a place you thought was broken, that was... a little fascinating, at least."
Even while she said it, the switched-off expression didn't move a single degree. Emotions might have burned out along with the circuits, but somewhere in the body that time was still alive.
"You used to cry a lot."
I said.
"In the unit. You laughed a lot, cried a lot, talked a lot. Looks like your body remembers."
I thought of the longest night. The day half the unit hadn't come back, everyone sitting like corpses, and that girl had stopped cleaning up just long enough to throw out some stupid joke. Some people laughed until they cried, some cried until they laughed, and either way, the next morning every single person stood up on their own feet. That night, after tossing the joke, Bokhee had turned away alone and cried the longest of anyone.
"...Is that so."
Han Bokhee seemed to turn the words over for a long time. She couldn't feel them, but she could calculate where they belonged.
"So I'm going to do one thing my own way."
Han Bokhee folded the milk carton.
"When that article comes out, people who haven't been asked anything in twenty years will open their mouths. But if their mouths open and there's nowhere that will listen, they'll close again."
"Next month I start a new culture program. I get to decide the guest lineup for the first episode. I'm filling it with the bereaved families. Nobody thinks it's strange when a national MC sits and listens to people's stories."
"What if programming blocks it?"
"Twenty-year national MC. There aren't many people left at the network who can block me. Not current affairs, not variety—a show that doesn't try to make you laugh or cry, just listens all the way to the end. That's what I do best."
"So instead of testimony, you're handing over the microphone."
"All I've gotten better at is setting the mood. I should do what I can with that."
"Sounds like the girl who hid in the brightest place."
"Turns out there are things you can do while hiding."
Han Bokhee set the neatly folded milk carton upright and looked at me.
"But Taehyun. What about you?"
"What about me."
"Once the families' documents are sorted, once the bastards upstairs are on their knees, once that whole board is finished—what's left for you? Did you factor in the loss of your peace?"
She couldn't feel a thing, yet she knew how to ask the question.
"When the complaint is processed, I clock out."
I finished the banana milk.
"The Civil Affairs Office will still be there. The instant coffee will still be there. No matter how loud the world gets, the closing time at my window doesn't change."
"...That answer hasn't changed either."
"Because the question is the same one from twenty years ago."
Then Han Bokhee's gaze suddenly dropped toward my pocket.
"But Taehyun. Magic power has been leaking from your pocket this whole time."
"..."
"Something that isn't even a circuit is sucking it in like an intake. What is that?"
I took the black grain out of my pocket and set it on the table. The core of the mutant I had crushed during the live broadcast. What had been the size of a grain of rice was now the size of a thumbnail.
"A thing that didn't die even when I killed it. It's growing on my body heat."
"You're carrying it around knowing that."
"I know. Its food bill's gone up a bit lately."
Han Bokhee's eyes locked on the grain and didn't move.
"That's not a size you can laugh off. My detection is reading it at a density of about thirty circuits."
"When I first picked it up it was probably around five by your measure."
"And you're saying that casually. That's six times. In less than a month."
For the first time, something like pitch entered Han Bokhee's flat voice. Not emotion—alarm.
"If Do Hagyeong finds out about this, she'll come running barefoot down from the mountain. Dealing with the people upstairs is fine, but this feels like a completely different class of problem."
I thought of what Do Hagyeong had said about the gates across the country. If this one thing was growing at this speed, I didn't even want to calculate how far the things growing inside the gates had already come. The arithmetic only produced answers that were terrifying.
I put the grain back in my pocket.
"Once the upstairs business is finished, I should go see Do Hagyeong too."
"You can't climb a mountain in that wheelchair."
"That's exactly why it's a headache."
She was the one who had said she would send a signal on the quietest night. The problem was that these days, not a single night was quiet.
At four-thirty in the morning, as I turned my wheelchair, Han Bokhee pulled her mask back up. The eyes above the mask looked at me for a moment.
"Thank you, Taehyun."
The girl who had called me Butcher the last time at this convenience store had used my name this time. Before I could even calculate what that difference meant, she was already walking away down the dawn street. I watched her back straighten into the angle of a national MC as she turned.
Then my phone buzzed once, short.
Seo Jingyeong.
The message was a single line.