2:47 pm and I finally have my login. I will pretend I didn't whine about it hours ago but the office is still calm as usual, everyone is programmed to know when to keep shut and work and when to be jovial with others.
That's not me complaining. It is a beautiful sight indeed.
The previous worker on this desk really had some unfinished business to attend to: scattered files, half-baked databases, even hundreds of emails from clients left unattended.
Who is all this work for?
I will just ignore them. What I wasn't informed about is none of my concern. I continue to scroll the applications trying to get accustomed to the ways of this system. An email notification pops up. This careless person couldn't even log out of her own email account.
I am too curious not to read what is on the notification bar.
Did you forget?
What… the actual… fuck?
My fingers click on it before I could think for another second.
Just that: Did you forget?
No further body text beneath it.
I click out of the email application. Ignoring is the only logical answer. I have grown too paranoid from watching countless horror movies and serial killer documentaries. I know better than to mind other people's business.
Another email notification pops up: I am asking you Yeon Siah, did you forget?
I stare at the screen.
Yeon Siah.
My full name. Not a glitch, not a misfired automated system, not a chain email that somehow populated my name from a database. Someone typed that. Someone typed my name into an email addressed to a woman who no longer works at this desk and sent it at — I check the timestamp — 2:51 pm. Four minutes ago.
While I was sitting here.
I check the sender address.
It's a string of characters. Random, or meant to look random, the kind of address that gets generated when someone doesn't want to be found. I've seen addresses like this before. I know what they mean.
They mean whoever sent this knew enough to cover themselves, which means this wasn't an accident,
which means —
I close the application.
I open it again immediately because closing it didn't help.
The email is still there. Both of them, sitting in someone else's inbox, with my name in the second one like a hand on my shoulder.
I think about the sticky note. Don't forget!!! No context, no signature. Just an instruction left behind by someone who sat where I'm sitting, at this same desk, under this same bad lighting. I took it with me. It's still in my coat pocket. I checked this morning without meaning to.
Coincidence is a thing that exists. I believe in it. I have also spent the better part of two years learning to be
suspicious of it.
I pull up what I can about the previous desk occupant. Her name was Oh Mirae. She left three weeks ago. I find this out from the employee directory, which tells me her department, her title, her start date, and nothing else. No reason for leaving. No forwarding contact. Just a name and a gap where the rest of her should be.
I quickly send a request to IT about the email account.
Then I sit with my hands in my lap and look at the notification bar and wait to see if a third one comes.
It doesn't.
For twenty-three minutes nothing comes, and I answer two process questions from a colleague two desks over and eat half of the sandwich I brought and perform the version of myself that is simply a new employee having a normal first day. I'm good at that.
I've been doing it since I was old enough to understand that what you show people and what you're actually doing are two separate tracks that don't have to intersect.
At 3:19 pm, a third email arrives.
You're not her. But you're exactly who I expected.
I read it three times.
The sandwich goes back in the bag.
You're not her — not Mirae, the woman whose inbox this is, whose login I'm using, whose unfinished work is still open in seventeen browser tabs. But you're exactly who I expected. Expected at this desk. Expected in this office. Expected here, today, on this specific first day that I chose for reasons that have nothing to do with the job description.
Someone knew I was coming.
Someone knew before I got here, and left a sticky note, and waited, and is now emailing a dead account to talk to me through it.
I think about the archive. Sub-level, restricted access, pending clearance. I think about the section of Haewon's infrastructure that sits directly over the oldest part of the Veil, and the seven months of planning that brought me to this desk, and the notebook in my second drawer at home, and the nine reasons written in it, and the blank tenth line I still haven't filled.
And I think about the person I'm planning to summon.
Who has been dead for fourteen months.
Who was, before he was dead, exactly the kind of person who would find out about someone's plan before she executed it and decide that the correct response was to make it inconvenient.
My chest does something I don't have a name for and I decide I don't need one.
I log out of everything. I stack the files neatly. I put on my coat and I check my pocket without meaning to and the sticky note is still there. I move it to my bag instead.
File it.
I stop by Lee Chanwoo's office on my way out and knock twice on the glass. He looks up from whatever he's pretending to read.
"I have a personal matter," I say. "I'll make up the time."
He looks at me for a moment. Then he nods, the way people nod when they've decided not to ask questions, which is one of the things I already like about him.
I take my leave.
Outside, the air is cold in the specific way Haewon gets in this season, sharp and a little damp, and I stand on the pavement for a moment doing nothing.
Exactly who I expected.
Fourteen months. I've been planning for seven of them. Which means for seven months, while I was planning, someone or something was already waiting.
I start walking.
I have a notebook to finish.