Chapter 8

Item Code

A day and a half of diesel left for the generator.

Jeongwoo wrote the numbers in the morning log. Diesel +20 liters, a day and a half remaining. Expected loss if refrigeration stops: milk, chilled boxed meals. Five jerry cans under the truck, unrecoverable.

One dog stationed around the truck.

Then he added one more line at the bottom.

Freezer warehouse, Three-Eyed Hound ×1. Hide: 300,000 won.

He stopped writing after that. The number felt strangely unreal. Nobody even knew if banks were running anymore. But if the government had put a price on it, that meant it was about to become money.

Jeongwoo glanced once at the window facing the front gate, then put down his pen.

"Boss, are we taking that out?"

Boram pointed toward the freezer warehouse.

"We should at least look. Can't classify it if we don't know what it is."

They laid the Three-Eyed Hound on the aisle floor outside the break room. Brought it out pallet and all, by forklift. Four days frozen, it was like a block of stone. As the frost melted on the gray, hairless hide, beads of water formed.

The five of them gathered around. Nobody touched it first.

"I looked at it with [Analyze]."

Boram said it from a step back.

"Three-Eyed Hound, F-rank. Status: dead. Material info... hide, meat, bone. And a low-grade mana stone. Edible, requires cooking."

"Does it say where the mana stone is?"

"Nope. F-rank info windows are lazy like that."

The manager cleared his throat.

"So, uh, the government says it's buying, right? Can't we just hand over the whole thing? To a designated buyer?"

"Where's the designated buyer?"

"...The announcement says 'details to follow.'"

"When they follow, we'll hand it over. It'll rot before then."

Jeongwoo took out a box cutter. The one he used to slice tape in the outbound area. He pushed the blade all the way out.

Then he set it against the dog's belly.

The blade didn't go in.

Jeongwoo pushed harder, and the blade bent and snapped with a tik.

The broken piece of blade went skittering across the floor.

"..."

Without a word, Mansik brought a hacksaw from the toolbox. Handed it to Jeongwoo. Jeongwoo set the hacksaw on the hide and pushed. The saw slid right off.

It left a single white mark on the hide.

"What kind of hide is this?"

"F-rank hide."

"F-rank is like this?"

"Guess that's why it's 300,000 won."

The five of them stared down at the dog for a while. A dog that had died under a one-ton pallet of water.

And neither a knife nor a saw would go in.

"May I try?"

It was Rajiv.

Rajiv brought his own knife from the kitchen. Wrapped in cloth, the handle worn smooth. He'd packed it in his bag when he came to Korea six years ago, he said.

"My father did meat work in our village. Goats. Every festival. When I was small, I helped beside him."

Rajiv knelt beside the dog. He didn't set the knife to it right away. He pressed slowly along its body with his palm. From the neck to the shoulder, shoulder to ribs, ribs to belly.

Pushing into the hide with his fingertips, looking for something.

"Hide is not all the same hard. There are weak places. Goat is same. Here."

Rajiv's fingers stopped inside the armpit, where the foreleg met the body. The place where the hide folded. Rajiv set the tip of the knife there.

He didn't push. He slid it along the grain of the hide.

The knife went in.

"...It went in."

Boram murmured.

Rajiv didn't answer. The hide opened along the knife's tip. Armpit to belly, belly to the inside of the hind leg. Only along the grain. Go against the grain and the knife slipped. Every time, Rajiv stopped and pressed again with his palm to find the grain.

It took twenty minutes. A whole hide, peeled off in one piece.

Sweat beaded on Rajiv's forehead. His hands were trembling a little. Jeongwoo saw that and fetched a bottle of water from the break room.

"Take a break."

"It is okay. If I stop now, the meat melts."

Rajiv took a sip of water and picked up the knife again. Meat this time. Between muscle and muscle, along the thin membranes. Even taking meat off the bone, there was a grain. Rajiv knew it.

Then, inside the ribs, beside the heart, his hand stopped.

"Boss. There is a stone here."

Rajiv drew his hand out. A stone the size of his thumb sat on his palm. Murky blue. Faintly holding the same light that had seeped from the cracks in the parking lot.

"Mana stone."

Boram said. Her voice shook.

"A low-grade mana stone. The 500,000-won kind."

The butchering was done in an hour and a half.

They spread plastic sheeting on the aisle floor and laid everything out by part. One hide, six chunks of meat, a pile of bones, and one mana stone. Wiping his knife, Rajiv looked at the meat.

"This meat, we can eat. The smell is like goat. Boil long time, and it is fine."

"Seriously?"

"I will eat first."

The manager grimaced. Mansik silently picked up a chunk of meat and weighed it in his hand.

"Eight kilos."

"All together?"

"Over thirty. Five of us, ten days' worth."

Since the eggs ran out, it had been nothing but canned food. Ten days of meat was not a small number.

Jeongwoo looked down at the parts laid out on the floor. Hide, meat, bone, mana stone. Then he went over to the break-room whiteboard and picked up a marker.

Three-Eyed Hound (F).

He drew a line under it.

A-1 Hide. Start at the armpit grain, follow the grain.
A-2 Meat. Six cuts along the fascia.
A-3 Bone.
A-4 Mana stone. Inside the ribs, left of the heart.

Boram read it from behind him.

"Boss, what's this?"

"Item codes."

"...Item codes?"

"When an item you've never seen comes in, you give it a code first. That way you can assign it a rack number."

Jeongwoo capped the marker. He remembered the window from the freezer warehouse yesterday. No sorting criteria. He was the one who hadn't had criteria. He hadn't known what this thing was made of, or where each part was supposed to go.

Now he knew. Rajiv had spent an hour and a half showing him.

Jeongwoo read A-1 through A-4 on the whiteboard one more time. Then he turned to Rajiv.

"Rajiv. Next time we get another one."

"Yes."

"Before you pick up the knife, call me first."

Rajiv tilted his head.

"Why is that?"

"I want to watch. Start to finish."

That was all Jeongwoo said. Instead, he looked at the parts on the floor. Six chunks of meat tossed every which way on the plastic, the pile of bones, the rolled-up hide.

"Meat, location change. Freezer warehouse, Slot 2. A-2."

【Location change request confirmed.】

The chunks of meat lifted. This time was different from yesterday. The chunks lined up by size, then slid off toward the freezer warehouse. Biggest first, to the back. Bones with bones, hide with hide, each finding a different slot.

Only the mana stone was left. Jeongwoo touched it and said "Inbound," and the blue stone vanished from his palm. Into [Warehouse].

Yesterday, he'd tried to put a whole dog in and been rejected. Today, the things that had been that dog had each found their place.

"...Boss."

Boram looked from the whiteboard to the freezer warehouse and back.

"So once you put codes on it, it works?"

"Guess so."

"Then next time? Rajiv wouldn't even have to pick up a knife, right? Since you know the codes, from the start you could—"

Boram stopped mid-sentence and closed her mouth. Looked at Jeongwoo. Instead of answering, Jeongwoo started gathering up the plastic sheeting from the floor.

Rajiv made dinner.

He put the Three-Eyed Hound meat in a big pot and simmered it for over two hours. No onions, no garlic. One packet of curry powder from storage, salt, and a small jar Rajiv took out of his locker. Spices his mother had sent from Nepal, he said.

The smell filled the break room. At first everyone held their noses. After about an hour, nobody did.

Rajiv took the first spoonful. The other four watched his face. Rajiv chewed slowly. Swallowed. Then nodded.

"A little more tough than goat. But it is okay. It is delicious."

Jeongwoo went second. Tough. It tasted like curry. And underneath that, a rich flavor he'd never tasted before. Meat. For the first time in three days.

Boram went third, the manager fourth. The manager emptied one bowl and, without a word, ladled himself a second.

Mansik went last. One spoonful, a long chew, then he looked at Rajiv.

"...That'll do."

Rajiv smiled. The biggest smile Jeongwoo had ever seen on him.

That night, Jeongwoo stood in front of the break-room whiteboard for a long time. He read A-1 through A-4 once more, then drew a few more empty rows below them.

At the head of the first, he wrote B.

He left the space beside it blank and capped the marker.

☾