"Judgment requires sin. But what if there is none?"
The scanner hummed faintly, casting crimson light over the boy's trembling frame. Jiwoon stood silent, arms crossed, his cold eyes fixed on the display. Another red bar should have appeared. Another name. Another sinner.
But the screen remained blank.
[SYSTEM ERROR]
No debt detected. Subject not eligible for judgment.
Re-calibrating…
Re-scanning…
[ERROR CODE: NULL–0001]
The boy couldn't be older than seven. Dirty, shivering, with wide eyes full of fear—but not guilt. His name was Somchai. According to the intel, he had survived a raid on a debtor village and was suspected of inheriting karmic residue from his father, a war criminal.
But the system found… nothing.
No debt. No inherited sin. Not even the shadow of one.
"Is this… broken?" Jiwoon muttered.
He reached out, placing his gloved hand on the boy's head. His sin-sight activated.
Still nothing.
No fog. No red threads. No weight. Just silence.
Jiwoon had judged kings. He had burned false prophets. He had seen newborns carry the weight of ancestral crimes. But this boy… this one was empty.
Sinless.
A chill ran through him—not from fear, but dissonance. The system had never failed to find fault.
"Stand back."
A voice came from behind—an enforcement agent, holding a secondary scanner.
Jiwoon raised a hand. "Don't. The boy's clean."
"But protocol says—"
"I said he's clean."
The enforcer paused, hesitant. Jiwoon's aura pressed down like a storm.
"Is the system wrong?" Jiwoon asked the air, more to himself.
The boy looked up. "Mister… did I do something bad?"
Jiwoon's throat tightened. For a moment, the mask cracked.
"No," he said softly. "You're the only one who didn't."
Later that night, Jiwoon stared at the message still frozen in his lens:
[Entity has no registered karmic signature. Judgment not applicable.]
Possibility: External corruption of system data.
Recommend: Purge anomaly.
Purge…?
They wanted him to erase the boy. Not because he sinned, but because he didn't.
He closed his eyes. This wasn't just an error. It was something the system didn't know how to handle.
Or worse…
Something it wanted to hide.
"Who wrote the rules…?"