She will not file after today

A torn page was in my locker that was not there yesterday. Someone's handwriting — I do not recognize it — and the line was: she will not file after today. I stood in the empty staff corridor reading it three times. I want to rank who on the 21st floor would write that. I keep landing on names I would have smiled at this morning and now cannot look at the same way.

The box was small. Five years of night shifts and morning briefings in something that fit under one arm. I carried it across the lobby at eleven a.m. and Yoon Se-ra was at the elevator bank, watching. I have smiled at her every single day. My smile went thin at the corners under the marble light and I could not stop it. I do not know if she saw. I know I saw her.

Before any of that, Maa called at seven on a Saturday. That is wrong, and that means it was planned. Appa was on the line, I could hear him breathing like a man waiting to be handed something. Da-eun's mother told the family. The hotel is not the plan. I am coming to Chuseok, I am meeting Ji-seok, I am apologizing to my father tonight. Ji-seok. I have been writing and deleting his name for an hour. He is still a stranger to me, which is maybe the point.