Name

Chapter 1 · Handover

It was ten in the morning on the fifteenth of November.

The night before, this team had taken a number one.

And this morning the person in charge changed.

Bae Yeon-woo opened the door of the small meeting room on the third floor.

There was one person sitting inside.

A face he hadn't seen before.

"Hello."

The person stood.

"Jo Hyeon-u, New Artist Development."

"…Bae Yeon-woo."

"I know."

Jo Hyeon-u held out a card. He took it with both hands.

He looked about thirty-four. His shirt sleeves were folded back twice, and there was a stapled document beside the laptop.

"Congratulations on yesterday."

"…Thank you."

"I was assigned the day before yesterday."

He sat.

Jo Hyeon-u pushed the document across.

"The handover. I'll give you a copy."

He looked at the first page.

ECHO assignment handover

Prepared by — New Artist Development, Baek Ju-yeon

Handover date — 2027.11.15

12 pages

Twelve pages.

"You're welcome to read it."

"…Yes."

He turned it.

The second page was basic team information. Five dates of birth, contract start dates, remaining terms.

The third page was schedule operations. Waiting routes at each broadcaster, criteria for running two vehicles, Manager Gwak Min-su's working pattern.

The fourth page was health notes.

Choi Ra-on — left knee medial ligament. Landing-count adjustment in effect. Copy of orthopedic opinion attached. Surgical opinion valid until August 2028.

Mun Yu-il — history of gastritis. Care when waiting on an empty stomach.

Kang Tae-rim — none.

Yun Do-gyeom — none.

Bae Yeon-woo — none.

He stopped at that line.

None.

He looked at the word twice.

That person knew his breath was twelve.

She knew it last summer, she confirmed it again in August this year, and in September she had collected a three-week rest opinion with her own hands.

And she hadn't written it.

He knew why she hadn't.

Write it here and it becomes a record.

Once it's a record, the next person uses it as grounds. That the third verse is dangerous. That the part should be cut. That they should play it safe.

That arrives wearing the face of consideration.

And it cuts his screen time.

That person hadn't passed it on, right to the end.

"Yeon-woo-ssi."

"…Yes."

"No health notes on your side, correct?"

He looked at the document.

Jo Hyeon-u was holding a pen. He was waiting to write the answer down.

"Yes."

"Understood."

Jo Hyeon-u wrote nothing.

He knew what he had just done.

What she hadn't written, he had gone on not writing.

Pages five to nine were the history of fandom responses.

They were accurate.

The fan cafe complaint last December, the choreography quotation controversy in March, the referral sources after the one-take release in April, the traffic surge after the August concert opening, the settlement structure for the six filmers in October.

Every number was right.

Every date was right.

It took about ten minutes to read.

And nowhere in the twelve pages was the eleventh of June.

There was no roof.

There was no photograph.

There was no day she put a resignation in a drawer.

He opened the last page.

There was one field at the bottom.

Transferring officer's comment

There was one line in it.

This team is weak to notification and strong to explanation. Do not give them the decision first. Give them the reason first.

He looked at the sentence.

Twelve pages.

Twelve pages of numbers and dates and policy.

The one sentence with a person in it was that line.

"That part."

Jo Hyeon-u said.

"That line surprised me a bit as well."

"…"

"People don't write things like that on a handover."

"…"

"Usually it's no particular notes and that's it. Write it and if there's a problem later it means you knew."

He lifted his head.

"…You saw that."

"I've been doing this a long time."

Jo Hyeon-u closed his laptop.

"I did eight years at my last company. I've been here two."

"…Yes."

"I've received about twenty handovers."

"…"

"This is the first accurate one."

He closed the document.

It was accurate.

That was the problem.

There had been a year and eight months from March last year to yesterday, and inside it about a hundred and thirty notifications and about sixty rejections and one resignation, and it came out as twelve pages.

Everything that went into the twelve pages was correct.

What didn't go in was all of it.

"Yeon-woo-ssi."

"…Yes."

"There's one thing I have to ask."

Jo Hyeon-u opened the last page again.

Open item — 2027 year-end awards special stage proposal (draft)

Status — undecided

Note — a matter for the artist to decide. The person in charge does not pursue it.

He looked at the three lines.

The person in charge does not pursue it.

She had put that in a document.

Say it out loud and the next person starts again, so she'd left it in a document so that the next person couldn't.

"This."

Jo Hyeon-u tapped the line with the end of his pen.

"It's undecided, and with a note like that I can't pursue it."

"…Yes."

"But upstairs they ask about progress."

"…"

"So I have to take back at least one answer."

Jo Hyeon-u looked at him.

"By when can you decide?"

He looked out the window.

It was the fifteenth of November.

The awards were the twenty-seventh of December.

Counted, it was forty-two days.

"…"

"I won't rush you. Just give me a date."

"…"

"If I give that date upstairs, nobody asks you anything before then."

That was a method this person knew.

Fix a deadline and clear the space in front of it.

It wasn't bad.

"…I'll give it to you this week."

"Understood."

Jo Hyeon-u wrote in his notebook.

"The nineteenth of November. Let's say by Friday."

"…Yes."

"I'll hold them off until then."

Jo Hyeon-u stood.

"I start with you today. I look forward to working with you."

"…Yes."

"Ah, one more thing."

"…"

"That's a copy. I have the original."

Jo Hyeon-u pushed the handover across to him.

"We don't usually give an artist the handover."

"…"

"But there's a decision of yours on the last page. I think you should have it."

He took it.

Jo Hyeon-u left.

The door closed.

He was alone in the meeting room.

He turned through the twelve pages again from the beginning.

One page, two, three.

The name was in the author field once.

Prepared by — New Artist Development, Baek Ju-yeon

And that was all.

In twelve pages that person appeared once.

Once, as the person who wrote the document.

He folded the last page.

Folded it and put it in his pocket.

A year and eight months was twelve pages, and not one line of it was about her.

And the person who wrote those twelve pages had called him from three meters back yesterday evening.

He came out of the meeting room.

Gwak Min-su was waiting in the corridor.

"Yeon-woo-ssi, three things on the schedule today."

"…Yes."

"But."

"…"

"How's the new person in charge?"

He thought a moment.

"…He seems good at the job."

"That's a relief."

Gwak Min-su walked ahead.

He followed and counted forty-two days.

And inside them there was one question he had to answer.

Whether he would stand on that stage.

It was a stage that needed sixteen bars of breath, and he was at twelve, and the person who built that stage was him.

Chapter 2 · Outside

Her leaving date was the thirtieth of November.

She submitted the resignation on the fourteenth, wrote the handover on the fifteenth, and the remaining fortnight was processed as annual leave.

So the last day she actually went in to the company was the fifteenth of November.

She left a company of ten years in two days.

Baek Ju-yeon took the things to be returned in on the morning of the thirtieth.

There was a list at the HR window.

Return — ID badge / corporate card / laptop / access card / parking registration

Confirm — 1 copy of undertaking that no materials were removed

She laid the five out in order.

The photo on the ID badge wasn't taken when she was twenty-nine. It was taken when she was twenty. She hadn't changed it in ten years.

"Baek Ju-yeon-nim, please sign the undertaking."

"Yes."

"You haven't removed any work materials?"

"I haven't."

"There's a verification procedure. Please consent to a review of server access records."

Ju-yeon ticked the consent box.

Earlier this year she had once reviewed somebody else's access records.

This time it was her own.

"And this is a separate briefing."

The HR staff member held out a sheet.

Notice of obligations for departing employees

"The non-compete clause."

"Yes."

"Employment at competitors is restricted for twelve months from your leaving date. The listed companies are overleaf."

She turned the page.

There were eleven.

Every company in this country that makes idols whose name she knew was on it.

"…Eleven."

"Yes."

"So it's just all of them."

The staff member chose their words for a moment.

"…Whether all of it holds legally is contested. But the company's position is that list."

"Understood."

"And freelance service contracts aren't in the clause."

"…Sorry?"

"The clause says employment. Service contracts aren't caught."

She looked at the person.

"…Are you allowed to tell me that?"

"It's a briefing item."

The staff member squared the papers.

"I give briefings."

There were people like this at this company.

Most of the people she had met at this company were like that. Nobody was bad, nobody crossed their own line, and so nothing ever changed.

"And unemployment benefit?"

"With a voluntary resignation you aren't eligible."

"…Yes."

"Severance is paid on the fourteenth of December."

Estimated severance — 39,400,000 won

Service — 9 years 11 months

It wasn't ten years.

It was nine years and eleven months.

One more month and it would have been ten, and she hadn't filled that month.

She looked at the number.

Spend two million a month and it was nineteen months.

That was the time she had left.

Before returning the laptop she had to clear the server one last time.

At an empty desk beside HR she opened it.

There was one personal folder.

WHAT'S LEFT

When she made it last December the name had been `HOLD`.

She changed the name in June this year.

She opened it.

There were twenty-three files.

description_revision_original_v1.docx

description_revision_original_v2.docx

concept_meeting_objection(unsubmitted).docx

one-take_proposal_draft.pptx

fancam_agreement_3conditions.docx

ranking_formula_disclosure_option3.docx

assignment_change_request(rejected).pdf

And at the very bottom there was one more file.

refiling_10.docx

She opened it.

From August last year to October this year she had filed nine refilings.

All rejected.

She hadn't filed a tenth.

She hadn't filed it because she was frightened.

She had written the whole document and not pressed submit.

The sentences came up on screen.

Subject — request to cease surveillance-type measures directed at a contracted artist

1. The roof access restriction dated 15 June 2027 has a blank supporting-document field.

2. The dome camera on the emergency stairs has no recording device. Its purpose is not filming but deterrence.

3. I will not write in this document who is being deterred. Writing it would harm that person.

4. But the fact that this company is doing it must be left on the record.

She looked at the four lines.

It was the best-written document she had produced in ten years.

And it had gone nowhere.

Ju-yeon started to send the file to her own email and stopped her hand.

She had just signed the undertaking.

And before that, this wasn't how she did things.

There was something she had thought this spring while making a list of ten items and deleting it.

You can destroy evidence.

You can't destroy knowing.

Ju-yeon selected the whole folder.

Twenty-three.

She pressed delete.

Permanently delete?

Yes / No

She pressed Yes.

The loader turned about two seconds.

The folder was empty.

Only the empty folder's name was left.

WHAT'S LEFT

She deleted that too.

She closed the laptop and put it on the counter.

"Confirmed. Thank you for your work."

"…Yes."

"Thank you for everything."

She said goodbye and left.

At the ground-floor lobby the gate wouldn't open because she had no card.

Security opened the side door.

"Didn't you get a visitor pass?"

"…No."

"Then you can go out this way."

She went out through the side door.

On the second of December she went to the tax office.

The business registration form had several fields.

There was a field for a business name.

She stopped there a long time.

She had never named a company. For ten years she had always been under somebody else's name.

Business name — Baek Ju-yeon

Category — services

Type — record production, live production

It was strange.

For the first time in ten years her own name was at the top of a document.

Below it was a field for revenue, and it was empty.

In the first week of December she made eleven calls.

People she'd come to know through work. Production companies, distributors, choreography teams, film crews, small labels.

Two called back.

One said there was no budget right now.

The other talked a long while and asked at the end,

"Ju-yeon-ssi, what was the reason you left?"

"…Personal circumstances."

"…"

"Why?"

"It's just, we do check."

"…"

"If there's something on the personnel record it gets difficult on our side."

"…There's a reprimand."

"Ah."

"December last year. It's a three-year one, so two years remain."

"…"

"The grounds are unauthorized access to materials."

The other end was quiet.

"…Understood. I'll speak to my people and be in touch."

That call didn't come.

By the eleventh of December she had zero contracts.

She sat at the desk in her studio flat and looked at the business registration.

Baek Ju-yeon

Inside the company she was a person with a reprimand.

She had thought it would disappear once she was outside.

It didn't disappear.

Outside, it was the only information anyone had about her.

She turned on her phone.

There was one news alert.

[EXCLUSIVE] AION preparing year-end awards special stage… VERTEX and ECHO joint

She looked at the headline.

The article didn't say whether he was standing on it.

And now she had no way of finding out.