Chapter 6: Word of the Dead

Yook didn't wait for the lot door to be quiet.

He came to it at the start of the next Market, before the first lot, with half the hall still finding their seats.

He stood just outside the arch with his back to the benches, so they could all see him.

He had a sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve.

"I'm told the seller wants word," he said, loud enough to carry. "Hanbat always pays its terms."

He held the sheet up to the arch.

Gyu-ho stood under the arch and read it through the hood.

It was a photocopy of an Association form, with a stamp in red ink in the corner.

The heading said Declaration of Death, breach loss, Geumsan County, August 9, 2022.

His grandfather's name was typed in the box, and his age, seventy-five.

He had never seen this paper.

Grandma had signed it alone, the September he was out cutting the last peppers, and put it somewhere he never found.

"Word," said Yook. "He's dead."

He said it gently.

"Term met," said the crier, from the middle of the hall.

[Term met. XP: 5,650 of 10,000.]

The line hung in front of his eyes, and he hated it.

Twenty-eight hundred coins had just dropped into the hollow of his stone for his grandfather's death certificate.

Gyu-ho's hands had gone cold inside his sleeves.

He had asked for word, and the Tower had counted a piece of paper.

The Tower didn't care that he had meant alive, or what he had meant at all.

The crier had said so the first night: a term was met or failed by its words.

The words were all it read.

He should have written "word of where he is", or "bring him", or anything a man couldn't meet with a photocopy.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Yook said, more quietly now, just for the arch.

"If it is your loss," Yook added.

Gyu-ho said nothing.

"Most people who'd ask about a Geumsan farmer from four years ago would be family," Yook went on.

"I could be wrong. I often am."

He smiled, and patted the stone of the arch.

"When you want to do business with someone who reads terms properly, Hanbat's on the third bench," Yook said.

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