Chapter 9: Three Nights

"I'm not going to Chuncheon," Seok-hyun said.

He said it in the yard, in the last of the light.

Five tired people looked at him, and a man in handcuffs was being walked to a truck.

"Then you've withdrawn your petition," Da-hae said. "It's in writing. The summons says so."

"Then what do I do?"

She was already looking down at the form on her clipboard, and the pen was moving.

"Article 12," she said.

"An owner of an active dungeon may demand that any assessment of him be held at the site, and the Association must comply."

"Has anyone done that?"

"No one has ever needed to." She wrote the date on the back of her hand and then, after a moment, on the form.

"I wrote the guidance note on Article 12 myself, in my second year. Nobody read it."

She tore the sheet from the clipboard and signed it, with her badge number beneath.

Then she photographed it, sent it, and put her phone in her pocket.

"That's a demand under the Act, countersigned by the inspector of record," she said. "If they refuse it, they refuse their own law."

"And if they take it out on you?"

"They will," she said, and looked at the headframe. "I'll let them."

He wanted to say something to her and did not know what it was.

Six minutes later her phone rang.

She listened with her eyes shut, said "Yes, sir," and "I understand, sir," and then, very evenly, "Then reassign me after Monday."

When she hung up, her hand was trembling, and she put it in her pocket.

"I'm not asking you to do this," he said.

"No." She almost smiled. "That's why."

The warden who had held the prisoner came across the gravel with a tablet.

The sixth man had given his statement in the Association truck, and it was short.

A lawyer from Daewon's legal office had met him at a taxi stand in Taebaek on Wednesday.

The lawyer had handed him an envelope with five million won in it.

A lead cap in a cloth bag, and a list of lamp numbers on a card.

Five million more would follow when the Pit was declared unstable.

"He says he thought it was a lamp inspection," the warden said.

"Did he say who?"

"He said, 'Mr. Seon's office.' Then he asked if the heavy man was dead."

"He isn't," Seok-hyun said. "He's in the lamp house with a stitched leg, counting my embers."

The warden nodded slowly.

He wrote it down, and the statement went into Da-hae's case.

Seok-hyun saw her put it into the front pocket, where she kept the things she meant to use.

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