Day 3 ended with curry.

Insik had found three kinds of instant roux in the station pantry and combined all of them, quote, "for depth of flavor."

"That's not depth," Haru said, looking into the pot. "That's an argument."

"It's a blend."

"It's three curries fighting."

Yeonhwa tasted it, said nothing, and added sugar while Insik defended his blend. After that it was good.

We set up two folding tables in the engine bay, end to end, beside Engine 3. Chae-a laid out bowls and Dohyeok followed behind her, moving each bowl two centimeters for no reason, until she smacked his hand without looking. The Hwangs brought out a jar of kimchi from their supplies, a real jar, homemade, and Mrs. Hwang portioned it like it was a holiday.

Gureum set his two dinosaurs on either side of his bowl, facing outward.

"Guards," Haru said. "Smart. Curry theft is real in this house."

I checked my phone under the table. Habit already.

[LIBRARY]

[Catalogue empty. Please wait for tonight's acquisitions.]

[Readers: 39]

No pages falling. Nothing new in the app. My arm said 7 days, and at this table that made me the rich one.

Be at dinner, Seojin.

I put the phone away.

* * *

We were most of the way through the pot when Haru put down her spoon and knocked on the table like a judge.

"House rule."

"We have a house?" Baek-gu said.

"We have a fire station, which is better. House rule. Everyone says one true thing about before."

"Before what?"

"You know what."

The table got quiet in a specific way. Not bad quiet. Careful quiet.

"Why," Minseo said. First word all dinner.

"Because I looked around just now and I know how everybody fights and nobody's birthday." Haru shrugged. "That's backwards."

"One thing," Insik said slowly, like he was checking the contract.

"One. True. Small is fine. Pass is allowed once per table, but everyone will judge you."

"That's not a real rule."

"It's a house rule. Houses are lawless."

Dohyeok raised his hand. "I'll go first. I have three."

"You have one."

"Junior judo. Regionals."

"He lost in the first round," Chae-a said.

"That's HER true thing. Mine still counts."

"It counts," Haru ruled. "Barely."

Mrs. Hwang went next, hand in her husband's hand on top of the table, the way they always were. "We met in a stairwell. Blackout, 1994. He held the flashlight and talked so much I missed my floor twice."

"On purpose," Mr. Hwang said.

"He says that now."

Minseo said, "Pass."

Nobody judged her. Haru just nodded, like a pass was also an answer, and moved her eyes on.

"Fine, me." Haru cracked her knuckles. "I can pick locks."

"...What?" Insik said.

"Pin tumblers, padlocks, the cheap doorknob kind you can do with a cut-up soda can. I taught myself at fourteen." She held up her hands and wiggled the fingers. "I was an excellent thief."

"Was," Mu-hyeon said, from the end of the table.

"Was. Retired. Nothing big, before anyone asks. Bread. Batteries. Once a phone charger, which I regret, because it was the wrong kind anyway." She said it light, and then a little less light. "Some months you either get good with your hands or you go hungry. I got good with my hands."

Gureum looked at her fingers like they might do a trick.

"Anyway." She pointed her spoon at Insik. "Confess."

Insik took off his glasses. Cleaned them on his shirt. Put them back on. A whole ceremony.

"Twenty-two years at Daehan Paper. Section chief, general affairs." He said the title the way you'd read it off a door. "Twenty years of that was learning how to not be in the way. Book the room, order the lunches, sit where nobody looks. If I did my job perfectly, no one knew I'd done anything at all."

"Insik," Mrs. Hwang started, gently.

"I'm not sad about it. That's not the true thing." He tapped the notebook by his bowl, the census, the ledger, all of it. "The true thing is, today twelve people needed me to count right. Needed. Me." He pushed his glasses up. "I know how that sounds. I don't care."

"It sounds correct," Mu-hyeon said.

Insik looked down at his curry and turned a page in his notebook for no reason, and Haru let him have the moment by loudly refilling his bowl.

"Yeonhwa," she said. "One true thing."

"I have one." Yeonhwa set down her spoon. "But you'll all make faces, so finish chewing."

We finished chewing.

"I caught babies for forty years. Two thousand and some. I stopped counting because the counting got smug." She folded her hands. "And I'm dying. The regular way. I've known for a while. Months, the doctors said, back when there were doctors."

Nobody moved.

Gureum kept eating. Everyone else had stopped.

"There it is. The faces." She clicked her tongue. "So the countdown on your arms doesn't frighten me, children. Mine started first, and mine doesn't extend for winning games."

"Why would you..." Dohyeok's voice came out young. "Why tell us like THAT?"

"Because it's true, and the girl asked for a true thing." Then, softer, "and because you should know what it means. It doesn't mean take care of me. It means the opposite. It only means I walk in front when something has teeth. I'm the cheapest one here. Let me spend right."

"No," Haru said.

"That wasn't a question, dear."

"I'm also not a question."

They looked at each other across the table, seventy-one and nineteen, and something got settled without either of them winning.

"Moving on," Yeonhwa said, and took Haru's wrist for two seconds on the way to her water glass, pressing like she was listening to it. Whatever she heard, she kept.

Baek-gu had been quiet the whole round, turning his helmet strap over in his hands. Haru didn't even have to point.

"Okay. Mine." He cleared his throat. "I was on the Gyoha overpass at 11:47. Red light. Nobody idles there at night, but I stop at reds when I'm tired, keeps the rhythm honest."

His thumb kept moving on the strap.

"There were maybe nine cars behind me. I had them in my mirrors. Light turns green, I go, and I do a mirror check at the merge like always, and there's eight. Check again at the ramp. Six. No doors opening, no swerving. The cars just went quiet inside and started slowing down on their own. One at a time. Like someone was going down the row turning them off."

"Baek-gu," Minseo said quietly.

"By the bridge it was zero. Just headlights parked behind me getting smaller, and me and the company doing ninety toward home." He patted the helmet. "I talked to her the whole way. Out loud. Full conversation. She's a good listener."

"The company is the bike," Chae-a explained to no one who needed it.

"The company is the company." He set the helmet down. "Anyway. That's my true thing. Haven't slept since. Not really. I close my eyes and I'm at that red light doing the count." He tried to make his voice do a shrug. "So if you ever want someone for the late watch, I'm cheap."

"Noted," Mu-hyeon said. "You and me, then. We can not sleep together."

It took a second. Then Baek-gu barked a laugh, one real one, and the table came back to life around it, and Haru mouthed "we can not sleep together" at Chae-a like she was saving it forever.

"That your true thing, boss?" Baek-gu said. "You don't sleep either?"

"No." Mu-hyeon looked at his bowl. "Mine is why I count exits."

Quiet again. He didn't do ceremonies. He just started.

"I had a sister. Mu-yeon. Younger. Loud in the way where the house feels broken when it's quiet." A breath. "There was a fire. Apartment block. I was off shift. I was three streets away, in a shop, buying nothing. Looking at things. When my pager went, I ran, and I was still the last one there who mattered."

His thumb moved once along the table edge.

"You can't fix being three streets away. So now I eat fast, I give food away when there's extra, and I count the exits before I sit down. Two in this bay, plus the vehicle doors, plus the window in the office that opens all the way." He looked up. "That's all. Somebody else go."

"Has everyone eaten," Haru said gently, "eat first, then we talk about this calmly."

"I don't sound like that."

"You sound exactly like that," half the table said, in pieces, and Mu-hyeon almost smiled, and let us keep it.

"Receipts," Haru said. "Your turn."

Me.

The cold coil in my throat shifted, checking, the way it always did when I opened my mouth these days. But this wasn't the novel. This was mine from before there was a novel.

It let me by.

"My mother ran a shop. Small one. Snacks, cigarettes, phone cards. I did homework behind the counter my whole childhood." I picked up the receipt Insik had insisted on writing for dinner supplies, because of course he had, and folded it. Corners first. One crease with the thumbnail. Small square. "She did this. Every receipt, all day, into a paper cup by the register. I asked her why once and she said tidy money, tidy heart."

I set the little square by my bowl.

"She's been gone two years. But my hands still do it. I'll be somewhere, holding a receipt, and she just." I stopped. Said it plain. "My hands remember her. That's my true thing."

"Tidy money, tidy heart," Yeonhwa repeated, like she was filing it with the wrist-pulses.

"That's why you're receipts," Haru said. "It was already true before I named you. I'm a genius."

"You named me after trash."

"After HERITAGE."

Gureum pushed his bowl forward. It scraped the table louder than anything anyone had confessed.

"More."

Every head turned. He looked around at all of us looking at him, and gripped his long-neck dinosaur, and decided to be brave about it.

"More please."

"That's his true thing," Haru declared, already reaching for the pot. "Truest thing said all night. Nobody else even came close."

* * *

Cleanup happened the way it had started to happen, everyone owning a job nobody assigned. I dried bowls until the bowls ran out, and then I was standing in the hallway off the bay, alone, in front of the squad photo wall.

Young Mu-hyeon, mid-laugh, second from the left. I'd found his face in half a second, first try, two days ago.

Because I'd read this wall before I ever walked in the building.

"Seojin."

Mu-hyeon stood at the end of the hallway with a dish towel over his shoulder, watching me the way he watched doors.

"The photo wall," he said. "You walked to it like you'd been there before."

Beat.

"Whatever it is you don't say, keep not saying it competently."