Chapter 10

Forklift

"Hyung, what was your skill again?"

Jeongwoo asked over breakfast. Mansik paused with his spoon in the air.

"[Forklift]."

"Have you tried it?"

"Tried what."

"The skill."

Instead of answering, Mansik took a spoonful of soup. Three-Eyed Hound soup, Rajiv's.

Same soup three days running, and nobody had complained.

"A forklift skill means you drive a forklift good, don't it. I done it twenty years. I drive good without a skill."

"...That's it?"

"What else. It's called Forklift."

Boram set down her spoon. Looked at Jeongwoo.

Jeongwoo looked back at Boram.

"Hyung, if it were a skill for driving forklifts well, it'd be called [Driving]."

"Then what is it."

"That's why I'm asking."

Mansik said nothing for a long time. Then he put his spoon down and looked at his own arms. Bare below the short sleeves of his work shirt. Arms that had gripped forklift levers for twenty years.

There was a pain-relief patch on his shoulder.

"...Description just says 'Lifts heavy loads.'"

"Then have you tried lifting?"

"Lifting what."

"Heavy loads."

Mansik didn't answer. Instead he got up and put his tray in the sink. With his back turned, he said:

"Shoulder's been shot three years. Something needs lifting, I lift it with a forklift."

Jeongwoo didn't ask again. He'd seen the patches on Mansik's shoulder for three years now. Two in winter, one in summer. Mansik had said he didn't have time to see a doctor, so he got by on patches.

Jeongwoo looked at Mansik's back at the sink for a moment, then picked up his spoon again.

Four dogs left.

Going by Boram's notebook, the four slept near the crack on the far side of the lot before sunrise and scattered at night to circle the center. Scratching at the shutters had become a nightly sound. Since the truck dog disappeared, the remaining four came near the shutters more often, as if filling its spot.

Jeongwoo wrote numbers on the whiteboard.

4 × (hide 300,000 + mana stone 500,000) = 3,200,000 won.

Meat: 120 kg.

And below that, one thing he couldn't write as a number. Once the dogs in front of the shutters were gone, someday people might come through that gate. The government announcements still said nothing but avoid going out. Stories of people stranded in nearby apartment complexes went up on social media several times a day.

Mansik looked at the 3,200,000 on the whiteboard for a long time. Then he said, like he was talking to himself:

"Six hundred forty thousand a head."

"Yeah."

"My girl's tuition is 3,800,000 won a semester."

That was all Mansik said before going quiet. It was a number Jeongwoo had never heard. Seven years on the same night shift, and he'd never asked why Mansik was working nights at fifty-eight. Or why he bought cup noodles two at a time.

"Hyung, is your daughter—"

"Dorm in Suwon. Talked to her yesterday. They've got everybody gathered in the school gym. Says they're getting fed."

"That's a relief."

"They feed you. They don't pay your tuition."

Mansik took his eyes off the whiteboard.

"Let's do it. Tonight."

"We'll do it tonight."

Jeongwoo said.

"All four?"

"If all four come, all four. If one comes, one."

Rajiv asked while stirring the pot.

"The night vision food, we eat at dinner?"

"Eight o'clock. Two hours, so till ten."

Boram wrote the time in her notebook. Then she looked up.

"But boss, the aisle sack only works one at a time. Last time it was just one dog, so it worked. What if two come in together?"

Jeongwoo had thought about that too. He'd thought about it, but he had no answer.

"Then I don't open the shutter."

"So we just don't catch them?"

"We don't catch them. We try again the next day."

In the afternoon, Jeongwoo looked at the aisle walls again. Through the viewing window: the water walls, now on their third day. A meter and a half on both sides. A few bundles at the top had been knocked a little crooked by the wind.

In a logistics center, when you stack pallets high, you wrap them. Stretch film. Plastic wrap that goes around the whole load so it doesn't collapse. Jeongwoo knew there was some in Building A's supply room. Building A was eighty meters away through the rack zone. And to wrap it around the aisle walls, someone would have to go outside.

Jeongwoo looked away from the viewing window. The walls had held so far. The dogs had only ever tried to climb them, never push them.

Jeongwoo switched off the outbound dock lights and went back to the break room.

Eight o'clock. The five of them each finished a bowl of Rajiv's soup. A few minutes after the broth went down, Jeongwoo felt his eyes go strangely cool. Even with the outbound dock lights off, he could see the rack numbers. 7-3-B. 7-3-C. Floating up white out of the dark.

"...Whoa."

Boram let out a small gasp at the viewing window.

"Boss, I can see everything. All the way to the end of the lot. Four dogs, near the crack. Not moving yet."

9:10. The first dog moved, walking toward the shutter on its own.

Jeongwoo pushed the meat onto the aisle floor. This time, he'd cleared away half of the water wall sealing the aisle entrance. Just enough of a gap for one dog to squeeze through.

The dog stopped at the gap. Sniffed. Came in.

"Just one. Nothing behind it."

Boram's voice shook. Jeongwoo crouched under the shutter and looked at the water by the entrance.

"Water, aisle entrance gap. Packed solid."

The gap closed. The dog turned, meat in its jaws. Rammed the sealed entrance. It didn't budge. It turned toward the shutter.

Then Boram shouted.

"Boss! A second one! Outside the aisle, right wall!"

Jeongwoo looked up. In his night vision, a gray mass was pressed against the outside of the aisle's right wall. He thought it was scratching, but there was another sound mixed in—the bundles shifting.

It was pushing.

The water bundles were only stacked, not bound. When ninety kilos pushed with its whole body from outside, one bundle at the top fell inward. Then the next. A gap opened in the wall. The dog's head came through.

Two dogs in the aisle.

And the shutter was open a meter.

"Drop it!"

Mansik hit Down. The shutter started coming down. Seven seconds.

Both dogs leapt for the shutter at once. The first dog got there first. Shoved its head into the gap. The bottom edge caught on its back. The safety mechanism stopped the shutter. Mansik hit the down button again. Instead of coming down, the shutter started rolling up. Press the button again while something's caught, and it runs in reverse.

One meter.

The second dog leapt off the first dog's back and through the gap.

Inside the outbound dock.

Jeongwoo watched it from flat on the floor. The dog landed. Its three eyes searched the dark for Jeongwoo. In his night vision, Jeongwoo saw those eyes clearly. The dog saw him too.

There was no water nearby, no jerry cans, and the racks were ten meters back. The dog crouched low.

Someone stepped in front of him.

Mansik. Work-shirt sleeves rolled up. The patched shoulder at Jeongwoo's eye level.

The dog leapt.

Mansik thrust both arms forward. Palms up, elbows tucked in. The exact angle he'd slid forklift forks under pallets for twenty years.

Ninety kilos landed on Mansik's arms.

His arms didn't drop.

Jeongwoo saw it through his night vision. A faint light ran along both of Mansik's forearms. A sheen like polished steel. The dog thrashed on top of his arms. Its claws raked his work shirt. Mansik didn't move. With the dog resting on both arms, he slowly lifted it, the way a forklift raises a pallet. The dog's feet left the floor.

Mansik turned only his head to look at Jeongwoo. Not a single breath out of rhythm.

"Enough. I'll lift it."

☾