Chapter 2
Assigning a Location
The spoon flew.
Slid, more accurately. Rajiv's spoon lifted off the floor, floated up, and dropped neatly into the cutlery holder beside the break-room sink. Handle down. Facing the same way as the other spoons.
Boram's bag went next. From the floor to the back of a chair. Zipper facing up.
Mansik's noodle cup went to the recycling bins. The broth got poured into the sink separately. Cup in the plastic bin. Lid in the paper bin.
Three seconds.
The break-room floor was clean.
"..."
"..."
"..."
All four of them went quiet at once.
【[Tidy Up] complete.】
【Sorted: 3. Stacked: 3.】
"Boss."
Boram spoke first.
"Did that just... separate the recycling?"
"...Looks like it."
"The trash skill sorted the trash."
"Boram."
"Sorry."
Rajiv walked over to the cutlery holder and pulled out the spoon. Turned it this way and that. Just a spoon.
"Boss, this skill is very clean. There is Korean proverb. The one who tidies well gets one more rice cake."
"That's not a proverb."
"It is not?"
"Wish it was, though."
Mansik looked down at the recycling bin without a word. The noodle lid sat perfectly upright in the paper bin. He nodded.
"...Tidy."
That was all he said before he shut the lid of the recycling bin. Boram caught Jeongwoo's eye and mouthed, Was that a compliment? Jeongwoo nodded.
Another howl outside.
Closer this time.
Jeongwoo went to the window. Kept low and looked out at the parking lot through a gap in the blinds.
The cracks had multiplied to five. The asphalt was split like a spider web, blue light seeping from every seam. And between the beams of light, three-eyed dogs prowled.
Five of them.
"Hyung, did the one that chased the manager come back?"
"Can't tell. They all look the same."
The dogs had their noses pointed at Building B's outbound dock. Right in front of the shutters, where pallets waiting to ship stood in rows. Two refrigerated box trucks were backed up to the dock, engines off.
"They're smelling something."
Boram pressed close to Jeongwoo and whispered.
"I checked them with [Analyze]. They're called 'Three-Eyed Hounds.' F-rank. Specialized in smell. But boss, that dock shutter—"
"I know."
Jeongwoo knew. Shutter No. 3 at the dock had been broken for two weeks. He'd filed three repair requests with facilities and gotten no answer, and right now Shutter 3 sat fifty centimeters off the ground.
One of the dogs pushed its nose into the gap.
Sniff, sniff.
"...It's getting in."
"Yeah, it is."
"Boss, why are you so calm?!"
"I'm not calm. This is just my face."
Jeongwoo ran the numbers.
Dock to break room, forty meters in a straight line. Building B's rack zone in between. Aisles between racks, three meters wide. One door into the break room. Push-button lock on the handle. If a dog threw its weight against it, it wouldn't hold.
He had to block the gap under the shutter.
With what.
His eyes went to the pallets in front of the dock. Two-liter water bundles, eighty to a pallet. At twelve kilos a bundle, that came to close to a ton per pallet.
And one was sitting right in front of the shutter. Three meters away.
"Boram."
"Yes?"
"That skill earlier. Did you see how far it goes?"
"The description just says 'sorts and stacks objects within your field of view'..."
"What's the sorting based on?"
"Huh?"
"What decides where things go? The spoon went into the cutlery holder. Who decided that?"
Boram opened her mouth, then shut it.
Jeongwoo looked out at the dock again through the blinds. The shutter, the pallet, and the dog with its nose in the gap.
In a logistics center, the location decides where things go. And the person who sets the night shift locations for Building B is—
"...Me."
Jeongwoo murmured.
For seven years, he'd laid out Building B's night shift locations. Water in 7-3-B, sparkling water in 7-3-C, eggs in Zone B, refrigerated. The center manager didn't know. Facilities didn't know. If Jeongwoo decided it, that was where it went.
Then—
Jeongwoo drew a breath. Glaring at the dock shutter, he spoke in exactly the tone he used on the radio every night.
"Location change, effective now. Two-liter water. Floor in front of Shutter 3."
【Location change request confirmed.】
【Using [Tidy Up].】
The pallet moved.
The water bundles did, to be exact. All eighty lifted off the pallet one by one. Lined up. Slid through the air toward Shutter 3. And stacked themselves, layer by layer, on the floor in front of it.
Heaviest at the bottom, exactly to his usual stacking standards.
The dog with its nose in the gap yelped. A bundle had landed on its snout. It backed off. The next bundle settled into the space. Then the next. Then the next.
Ten seconds, and there was a wall of water in front of the shutter.
A one-ton wall, a meter and a half high and four meters wide.
The gap was sealed.
"..."
Silence fell over the break room again.
【Sorted: 80. Stacked: 80.】
【[Tidy Up] proficiency has increased.】
"...Boss."
Boram said it almost in a whisper. She couldn't take her eyes off the wall of water.
"Did you just change a location by saying it out loud?"
"I always change them out loud. Over the radio."
"That's not what I—!"
Boram grabbed her head.
"This isn't a trash skill. It sends things to wherever you decide. Wherever you set the location, it goes there. This is completely broken—"
"Boram. Volume."
"Sorry."
Outside, the dogs scraped at the water wall. Scritch. Scritch. The one-ton wall didn't budge.
Without a word, Mansik tapped Jeongwoo on the shoulder.
Rajiv pressed his palms together.
"I am glad Boss is our boss."
"Is that a proverb too?"
"No. It is true."
Jeongwoo didn't answer. He tucked the pen behind his ear. His hand was shaking a little. He put it in his pocket so no one would see.
4:50 a.m.
The dogs had given up on the water wall and scattered to the far side of the lot. Nothing new crawled out of the cracks. The green window in the sky was still there.
The four of them sat in a circle on the break-room floor.
Rajiv passed around emergency cup noodles. Boram scrolled through news on her phone. The whole country was in chaos. Seoul, Busan, Daegu. Monsters wherever the cracks opened. No government announcement yet. Death toll: "being tallied."
"Boss, look at this."
Boram held out her screen. Between all the skill-reveal videos flashing with flames and blades, there was one post she'd dug up on purpose.
Got [Tidy Up] wtf is this? A skill that cleans your room?
└ lmaooo you won the trash skill
└ your mom will love it
└ honestly better to get nothing
Jeongwoo looked at the screen. More comments kept coming.
"...I'm not the only one. [Tidy Up]."
"Everyone except you is just using it to clean their rooms."
"Could be."
"No, but boss, you moved a ton of water—"
"That's because I know the locations."
Jeongwoo peeled the lid off his noodles. Steam rose. Someone cleaning their room would only know where the things in their own room went. Jeongwoo knew what belonged in every slot of Building B's twelve racks.
Boram studied his face for a long moment, then pulled out a notebook and wrote something down.
"Boram, pull up the inventory list. All of Building B."
"Now?"
"Now. If we wait for a government announcement, we'll starve."
Boram opened the laptop. The inventory system was still running. Jeongwoo scanned the screen top to bottom.
Two-liter water, 3,200 bundles. Cup noodles, 140 boxes. Instant rice, 90 boxes. Canned tuna, 60 boxes. Batteries, flashlights, butane canisters. Twelve boxes of first-aid kits, pending return.
"Hyung, how long does all this last?"
"For the four of us? A year."
Mansik answered. Quick math. A man who'd eyeballed pallet weights for twenty years.
"If the neighbors show up?"
"...Depends how many."
Jeongwoo nodded. Then he looked at the Building B floor plan on the break-room wall. Racks 1 through 12. Outbound dock, inbound dock, refrigerated zone.
In his head, the locations started rearranging. Water and food on Rack 1, next to the break room. First-aid kits inside the break room. Butane at the far end, away from anything that could catch. Heavy stuff in front of the shutters.
Survival locations.
"Rajiv, can you clear Rack 1?"
"Yes, can do. What we put?"
"What keeps us alive."
Rajiv looked at Jeongwoo for a moment, then smiled. A real smile.
Then Jeongwoo's phone rang.
Foreman Kim lit up the screen. The day shift foreman—the mentor who'd taught a rookie Jeongwoo his rack numbers seven years ago.
4:52 a.m. Day shift started at six. Foreman Kim always came an hour early. Today, even earlier.
Jeongwoo answered.
"Foreman."
"Jeongwoo. It's me."
Behind Kim's voice was the sound of wind. An engine. And beyond that, something howling.
"I'm at the front gate right now."
Kim's voice dropped.
"What the hell is all this?"
☾