Han Siwoo arrived at 8:42 a.m
The office opened at nine. It always opened at nine, but he came at 8:42 because the bus arrived at 8:37 and the walk took five minutes if he didn't stop at the pedestrian light.
He unlocked the glass door, stepped inside, and locked it again behind him.
The air smelled faintly of plastic and coffee mix.
He placed his bag under the desk, aligned the keyboard so its edges matched the wood grain, and turned on the computer. While it booted, he checked yesterday's installation sheet. Three wall units, one ceiling cassette, one compressor replacement.
He circled a phone number written slightly out of line.
Someone had copied it wrong.
He corrected it.
He read it once more and compared it to the customer record before moving on.
By 8:58, the office was no longer quiet.
The door opened loudly.
"Why is this wrong again?"
Director Choi did not greet anyone. He walked straight toward Siwoo's desk holding a printed order sheet.
Siwoo looked up.
The director tapped the paper with his finger. "The Daehan Apartments order. The gift set is for a previous customer. Do you know how much this costs?"
Siwoo read the document. Then he opened the previous request on his monitor and compared the two.
"The address fields were duplicated when the new order was created," he said. "The previous customer information remained attached."
Director Choi frowned. "So whose fault is it?"
Siwoo paused.
"No person caused it. The system copied the existing entry."
"That's not what I asked."
Siwoo considered the question again but did not find a different answer.
Behind the partition, someone's keyboard stopped typing.
Another voice whispered quietly, "Again?"
Director Choi tapped the paper. "I'm asking who made the mistake."
"The process allows it."
Silence spread across the nearby desks.
Director Choi's voice lowered. "I need someone responsible so it stops."
"Then the template has to change."
"Can you change it?"
"No."
"Then write a reflection note and fix the order."
Siwoo moved his hands to the keyboard.
Director Choi added, "Being correct doesn't help if the problem keeps happening."
Siwoo's fingers paused.
"…the result will repeat until the process changes."
Director Choi watched him for a moment, then took the paper and walked away.
Typing resumed, but quieter than before. A coworker passed Siwoo's desk without looking at him and picked up the order sheet from the printer tray.
From the shelf near the wall, a small radio continued playing morning news.
"…several reports of glass panels falling from upper floors of commercial buildings this morning. Authorities state structural fatigue is suspected, though engineers have not yet confirmed…"
Siwoo's typing paused for a moment, then continued.
An employee laughed softly while reading her phone. Someone opened instant coffee.
Siwoo resumed checking order numbers.
The air conditioner stopped.
Not gradually. Not lowering speed.
It simply became silent.
Siwoo's hands paused above the keyboard.
He looked up at the ceiling vent.
One second later, it resumed.
The office did not react.
He stared at it for another moment, then returned to his screen.
The radio spoke again.
"…engineers have not yet yet confirmed…"
No static. No distortion. The sentence continued normally.
Siwoo's fingers did not move.
He typed two numbers.
Stopped.
He looked toward the window.
Nothing visible was wrong with the glass. Cars were parked outside as usual. A delivery truck passed the intersection.
But a pressure settled in his ears, like descending in an elevator that never moved.
He stood.
A coworker glanced over the partition. "Bathroom?"
Siwoo did not sit back down.
"…please move away from the window."
"What?"
The nearest employee leaned back in her chair. "Why?"
He looked at the glass. Then at the vent. Then toward the radio.
He searched for a reason he could say out loud.
There wasn't one.
"…I can't explain it," he said. "Just move."
She half-smiled and checked the weather on her phone. "Is it raining?"
The computers shut off.
Every monitor in the office went black at the same time.
"My data—!"
The lights flickered once.
The radio dissolved into static.
Silence filled the room.
Then the window exploded inward.
Glass scattered across the floor. Someone screamed. Chairs overturned as employees finally moved away.
Siwoo did not step back.
He stared at the empty space where the window had been.
All screens in the office flickered.
Then went dark.
At the same time, a thin pane of light appeared in front of Siwoo's eyes.
He flinched.
Around him, others had stopped moving.
"…there's something in front of me," someone whispered.
Words formed on the pale surface.
[Incident observed.]
[Preventive action insufficient.]
The surface flickered once more.
The others were already talking, overlapping, trying to explain what they had seen.
Siwoo did not speak.
The light did not disappear for him.
The text changed.
[Environmental discrepancy detected prior to incident.]
[Subject attempted warning.]
His throat tightened.
A final line appeared.
[Outcome unchanged.]
[Intervention failed.]
The pane vanished.
Noise returned immediately. Voices overlapped. Chairs scraped. Someone laughed nervously.
"What was that?"
"Did your phone do that?"
"I didn't even touch anything—"
Siwoo did not answer.
He was looking at the wall clock.
The second hand was not moving.
It ticked once.
But instead of advancing, the numbers changed.
[59:59]
A smaller line appeared beneath the numbers.
[First audit in progress.]
The clock began to count down.
The numbers continued to fall.
[59:48]
Someone laughed shakily and began gathering papers from the floor. A chair was set upright. A monitor was turned off and on again.
Conversation slowly returned.
They thought it was over.
Siwoo kept watching the timer.
If this was an audit, the incident would not be the last one.
He looked across the office. At the window. At the hallway beyond the desks. At the door to the stairwell.
[59:31]
There was not enough time to wait for proof.
The next incident would happen inside the building before the numbers reached zero.
And this time, he would have to make them move before it began.