Chapter 7: Twenty-Two Minutes

Lim Eun-seo was waiting on the steps of a closed pharmacy in Yeonnam-dong.

She wore a black parka and was smoking a cigarette she was not good at.

She was thirty-four, small, dry, and the only person at Daon who had ever corrected Pyo in a meeting.

"You came fast," she said.

"You said tonight."

"I said tell no one. Did you?"

"No one."

She looked at his wet hair and his swollen mouth and raised an eyebrow, but did not ask.

She took a flat envelope out of her parka and held it a moment before she gave it over.

"Fire resistance test. The glass door assembly. Korea Fire Institute, September fourteenth."

Seo-won opened it under the streetlight.

The first page was a graph.

A red line climbed, and a blue line stopped climbing.

Under it, in plain type: Integrity failure at 22 minutes. Rating required: 60.

"Twenty-two," he said.

"The lab shut the furnace at twenty-two because the glass blew out of the frame."

"The file has a certificate that says sixty."

"A revised certificate." Eun-seo flicked ash. "Same lab, three days later."

"I never saw anyone retest it. I think somebody called someone."

"Why didn't you..."

"I did. I told you."

He stopped.

"I came to your desk on the twenty-seventh," she said, without heat.

"I put this report in front of you. You said you'd think about it."

"I remember."

"Two days later you signed."

"I know."

It was nothing like how he remembered the guilt.

He had imagined it as grief.

It was a physical thing, a stone in the hand.

"I'm not here to punish you," Eun-seo said. "I don't know why you changed."

"Last week you were the man who signs. This week you stood up in a meeting."

"I had a bad dream."

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