Chương 18: The New York Ledger

On the flight to New York, Kichan did not close the window shade. The passenger beside him was asleep with a neck pillow, and the one on the aisle had pulled a blanket all the way up to the tip of their nose and had not moved once. The cabin was dark. On the screen mounted in the seatback ahead, the route from London across the Atlantic to New York was displayed as a single blue line. On the map, it looked absurdly simple. Kichan watched that line for a long while, then lowered the tray table.

Several sheets of paper lay on top of it. They were printouts he had taken from the basement server room of the London Reading Society. Some of the letters had run where the ink had been soaked by rain and dried again. Even so, a few words remained sharp. RAONBIO NEW YORK NODE SOYGA ANALYSIS STORAGE PRIVATE FUNDING ROUTE Kichan set a fingernail against the fourth line, then pulled it back at once. The paper was thin, and the tray table was narrow.

If the passenger beside him shifted an elbow even a little, the documents looked ready to slide off. A flight attendant passed, then stopped.

"Sir, would you like anything to drink?" Kichan laid a hand over the papers.

"Water, please." The attendant handed him a small bottle and moved on. Kichan kept holding it without opening the cap. The paper beneath his palm slowly turned warm. Inside his bag, the fragment of the Rohonc copy sat in silence, heavy as ever. The wake-up rod was in checked luggage. When the airport staffer had taken his bag, they had lifted the long case a second time and raised an eyebrow. Sports equipment? Kichan had given the answer he had prepared in advance. Training stick.

The staffer had not asked anything further. Kichan tucked the baggage tag between the pages of his passport. The thin slip kept sticking out, and he had to push it back in with his finger. The cabin lights dimmed further. Kichan folded the papers and slipped them into an inner pocket of his bag. Then he closed his eyes. Sleep did not come. Numbers floated on the back of his eyelids. Recovery rate. Projected cost. Return on investment. Clinical value.

The English words he had seen on the monitor did not need to be translated perfectly for their shapes to remain. The numbers attached to people's names kept wavering with the sound of the aircraft engines. New York was brighter than London. Beyond the airport glass, cars passed in an unbroken stream. Yellow taxis, black vans, silver sedans, airport shuttle buses—they changed lanes and shoved forward.

People pulled rolling suitcases and walked fast, while the information boards kept flipping from arrivals to delays to transfers without pause. Kichan stood in line at immigration. The people ahead of him were a family of four. One child was dozing while sitting on top of a suitcase, and the man who seemed to be the father had all four passports spread open in his hands. Behind Kichan, someone was talking loudly on the phone. The English was so fast it sounded more like noise than language.

Kichan pressed a finger into the gap in his passport. The line shortened a little. The officer looked back and forth between Kichan's face and the photo.

"Purpose of visit?" Kichan closed his lips once, then opened them.

"Research." The officer's fingers stopped over the keyboard.

"Research?"

"Books. Old books." The officer looked at his face one more time. Kichan neither smiled nor offered any further explanation. He only pressed a thumb into the corner of his passport. A stamp came down.

"Welcome." Kichan dipped his head and walked out. People stood in a ring around the baggage carousel. Suitcases emerged one by one, and each time someone spotted their own, they suddenly sped up. Kichan kept his eyes on the end of the belt until his bag appeared. The long equipment case came out. A white sticker had been slapped across the black fabric. OVERSIZE Kichan lifted the bag. His shoulder sank at once. The wake-up rod inside felt slightly heavier than it had in London.

The weight itself had probably not changed. Only the number of reasons he had to keep carrying it had increased.

"Need help?" An airport worker asked him. Kichan shook his head.

"No, thanks." The worker had already turned toward someone else. In New York, even a refusal did not linger. Kichan slung the strap over his shoulder and headed for the exit. When the automatic doors opened, cold air and exhaust hit him together. It smelled different from London rain. New York's air was not damp. Instead, it was a mix of hot brakes, coffee, perfume, and the old smell of the subway all layered on top of one another. Kichan went to the end of the taxi line.

As the driver opened the trunk, he looked at the equipment case and said,"Heavy?"

"A little." The driver grinned and tried to lift it, then immediately changed expression.

"Not a little." Kichan took out his wallet and folded the bills he meant to use for the tip in advance. He could not tell whether the driver's tone was joking or annoyed. English still made it hard to separate the two. But the driver put the bag into the trunk in the end, and Kichan got into the back seat. The taxi pulled away from the airport road. Billboards passed by the window. Insurance, investment apps, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, law firms.

Promises to heal people, move money, and solve problems flashed from high poles and electronic displays. Kichan took out his phone. There was a message from his mother. If you got on the plane, you should be sleeping. Message me as soon as you arrive. He started typing a reply. I landed. Got my luggage too. He nearly added `I'm fine, ` then deleted it. The taxi changed lanes sharply. His shoulder struck the door. The screen of his phone pressed into his palm. Send. The message went through short.

Kichan stared at the screen a moment, then slipped the phone back into his pocket. The driver watched him in the rearview mirror.

"First time in New York?"

"Yes."

"Business?" Kichan looked out at the buildings.

"Something like that." The driver did not ask anything else. The radio moved from stock prices to weather. A brief item about a company's clinical trial came on, then was immediately buried under sports news. Even though the name Raon Bio was never mentioned, Kichan flexed his fingers once and then again. The small paper receipt he got when he paid joined the others inside his passport case. The thin slips that had followed him from London overlapped there. His lodging was a little outside Manhattan.

In the booking site photos, the room had looked clean. In reality it was not dirty either. It was simply narrow. There was one bed, one small desk, and an old chair by the window. Outside was the wall of another building and a row of air-conditioning units. Kichan shoved the equipment bag under the bed. It did not go in on the first try. He knelt and pressed down on one end. The fabric dragged against the floor with a low sound. In the hallway outside, someone rolled a suitcase past the door. Kichan stopped moving.

The sound of the wheels receded. Kichan pushed the bag in again. The wake-up rod vanished into the dark beneath the bed. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! On the desk he set the Rohonc copy fragment, the storage device, the London printouts, and his passport case. There were not that many items, yet the desktop filled almost immediately. Kichan did not sit down. He made one slow circuit around the room instead. He touched the lock on the window.

The old metal felt cold under his fingers. Ever since touching the Rohonc copy, he had been able to read more from metal than before. How worn the latch was. Which screw had come loose. How much moisture had gathered inside the frame. All of it caught against his fingertips. But there was nowhere to run outside that window. Kichan took his hand away. His phone buzzed. It was his mother's reply. Did you eat? Kichan looked around the room. There was a ring from a discarded cup in the corner of the desk.

On the bed lay the packet of snacks he had failed to open on the plane. He typed back. I was about to go out. He sent it and put on his coat. Before closing the door, he looked once beneath the bed. The equipment bag was hidden from sight. Only the end of a black strap still stuck out a little. Kichan nudged it in with the tip of his shoe and left. Evening in New York kept pushing people forward. At crosswalks, people started moving before the light changed.

Delivery bikes cut through gaps, and taxis jabbed their horns. Every glass facade of every building was lit, and the smell of grilled meat drifted up from street carts. Kichan stopped in front of a hot dog cart. The vendor started working before even looking at his face.

"One?" Kichan nodded.

"With everything?" Kichan hesitated. Someone behind him shifted impatiently.

"Yes." The hot dog landed on a paper tray in an instant. There was far too much mustard and onion on it. Kichan paid, and the vendor was already looking at the next customer. Kichan took another bite. Onion fell onto the back of his hand, and he wiped it off a beat late. He reached for a napkin and pulled a crumpled boarding pass from his coat pocket instead. The back of it still had the address of his London lodging written down. He put the boarding pass away and folded the wrapper in on itself.

Across the street, a pharmaceutical ad glowed from a giant screen. A woman in a white coat smiled while holding a child's hand. The slogan was brief. HEALING, FASTER. Kichan could not finish the hot dog. He dropped the rest into a bin and wiped his hands. The napkin turned yellow. He scrubbed at his fingers for a long time. The grease did not come off easily. The New York partner company connected to Raon Bio had an utterly ordinary name.

Aster Clinical Data Solutions Even after reading it three times, Kichan felt nothing in particular. Clinical data, solutions, analysis, research. You could stick words like that anywhere and they would sound like a company. The building stood close to the river. There was a revolving door in the first-floor lobby, and two employees sat behind the reception desk. The security gate came up to waist height. Staff tapped in with cards; visitors handed over ID and received temporary badges.

Kichan did not go inside immediately. Instead, he took a seat in the café across the street. The window seat was already occupied by a man on a video call with his laptop open, so Kichan sat beside him. It was uncomfortably close, but in New York that sort of distance still counted as distance. The drink cost more than it would have in London. Kichan looked at the number once and put the thought away. From where he sat, he could see straight into the lobby.

People in suits, researchers with badges around their necks, delivery drivers, contract cleaners, office workers returning with lunch—they all moved through the revolving door. Some walked while looking at their phones. Some laughed with someone beside them. None of them looked like members of a secret organization. Kichan lifted the paper cup to his mouth. He did not drink. The man beside him said,"Can you move your bag a little?" Only then did Kichan look down. His small side bag was sticking into the aisle.

He pulled it inward against the chair leg.

"Sorry." The man was already looking back at his screen. Kichan unzipped the bag slightly. Inside were a few small metal pieces he had brought from London. He had left the wake-up rod at the lodging. He could not exactly show up in front of a company's lobby carrying an iron staff in broad daylight. Instead, he had brought two thin wires, a few coins, and the metal jack from a broken pair of earphones. Dust was still back home in Korea, above the front door.

It was probably clinging there with its tiny wire body while his parents went in and out below it. The thing in his hand now was not something that would crawl around on its own like Dust. Still, metal was metal. Kichan slipped the wire between his fingers. It was a way of using metal he had learned after touching the Rohonc copy. He could not make a moving familiar, but he could at least send his senses along metal and feel his way through a building.

The sensation spread through the wire and began touching the metal inside the lobby one piece at a time. The axis of the revolving door. The locking pin of the security gate. The rail inside the elevator door. The bracket of the ceiling camera. The handle of the drawer beneath the reception desk. And the door of the freight elevator leading underground. Kichan's fingers stopped beside the cup. The freight elevator was at the end of a staff-only corridor behind the lobby. Employees almost never went that way.

But shortly after three in the afternoon, a man in a gray uniform pushed a handcart through there. Three plastic boxes sat on the cart. Each one had refrigerated transport markings on the side. Kichan took a sip. The bitterness stung his tongue. The man in the gray uniform exchanged a brief greeting with the receptionist. The receptionist opened the door without even checking a visitor list. Through the café glass, the sound of the cart wheels did not reach him. Kichan checked his watch.

Eight minutes after the cart went in, someone else came out. Same gray uniform. Different face. Empty handcart. Kichan set the cup down. In the meantime, a woman who had passed through the security gate answered a phone call in the corner of the lobby. She wore a gray jacket over a white blouse, and a badge hung from her neck. Kichan could make out the small print at the bottom. RAONBIO Liaison He did not lean forward. He simply wrapped both hands around the paper cup. The cup dented slowly under his grip.

The call did not last long. It was in English. Kichan could not understand all of it. But he caught a few words.

"Korea case."

"Unauthorised contact."

"Family pressure failed." Kichan squeezed the cup too hard. A little hot liquid leaked through the lid and dropped onto the back of his hand. It was hot. He did not let go. The man beside him glanced over. Kichan wiped his hand with a napkin. Brown stains spread over it. He folded the napkin and put it into his pocket. The Raon Bio woman ended the call and headed for the elevator. A lobby employee smiled and asked her,"Long day?" She replied,"It's going to be longer." The elevator doors closed.

Kichan stood up, leaving the cup half full. The back of the building was quieter than the front. There were dumpsters, vents, and a staff smoking area. The two men smoking there paid little attention when Kichan passed. One was watching a baseball clip on his phone, and the other kept glancing at his wristwatch and muttering curses. Kichan walked to the end of the alley and came back. The freight entrance sat below a narrow ramp. Beside the door were a card reader, a small camera, and a delivery check-in terminal.

On the concrete of the ramp, dried water stains had left chalky white marks. Without stopping, Kichan passed the entrance twice, taking in the door, the camera angle, even the tire tracks on the ground. At last one of the smoking men called out,"Hey. You lost?" Kichan stopped.

"Delivery?" The man looked at Kichan's empty hands and laughed.

"Without a package?" Kichan looked down at his hands. He was not carrying anything at all.

"Wrong building." He gave an awkward smile. The man shrugged and went back to his phone. The other looked at Kichan once more and flicked ash from his cigarette. The stare did not last long. But it lasted long enough. Kichan left the alley. Once he reached the main street, the noise of taxis and buses settled over him again. He stopped at a crosswalk. Even while the signal was still red, several people started across. Kichan did not follow. His phone buzzed in his pocket. Unknown number. No international marker.

Kichan did not answer. The call ended. A text came immediately after. Do not walk through the front door in broad daylight. It was in Korean. There was no sender name. Kichan stared at the message, then turned off the screen. The light changed. People poured across. Kichan moved with them. Someone bumped into him from behind.

"Watch it." Kichan lowered his head.

"Sorry." His hand did not leave the phone inside his pocket. His reflection slid past in the windows of the buildings. His coat was wrinkled. One shoulder hung lower than the other. He was carrying nothing. That somehow made him look even more suspicious. Kichan did not head back toward the lodging. Instead, he circled the building one more time. This time he entered a small copy shop on the opposite block. A bell over the glass door rang.

Inside were several printers, rolls of packing tape, envelopes, and stacks of shipping boxes. The young man at the counter pulled one earbud halfway out and asked,"Print?" Kichan nodded. He copied part of the printouts he had brought from London. The originals went back folded into his inside pocket, while a few of the copies went into a mailing envelope. He did not write a recipient name. Instead, in small letters on the front, he wrote an address. It was an old private postbox address he had once used in Korea.

He had set it up years ago when he worked at the company to receive documents, then almost forgotten about it. The clerk asked,"You sending this?" Kichan looked down at the envelope.

"Not yet." The clerk lost interest at once. Kichan left with the envelope and the extra copies. If he lost the originals, that was the end. If he got caught carrying the originals around, that could also be the end. So he made copies. A few photocopied pages would never be enough to stop the Golden Dawn and Raon Bio. Even so, one more set of paper felt like a small kind of insurance he could physically hold. Kichan folded the envelope and tucked it inside his coat. By nightfall, the building had changed its face.

There were fewer people in the lobby than during the day. Only one receptionist remained, and a guard in a black uniform stood beside the security gate. The streetlamps outside the revolving door stretched long across the glass wall. Kichan sat at the bus stop across the street. Three buses came and went. He boarded none of them. Another pharmaceutical ad had been mounted in the shelter. This one showed an old man smiling on a park bench with his granddaughter.

Along the bottom, small text invited people to participate in a clinical trial. Kichan looked at his reflection in the glass of the ad panel. Wet coat. One shoulder dragged low. 10: 17 p. m. The gray-uniformed handcart went in again. This time there were two boxes. Kichan did not stand. A cold paper cup sat in his left hand. His right hand, inside his coat pocket, was feeling over the piece of wire. The cart stopped in front of the freight elevator. Metal wheels. Card reader. Inner rail of the door.

The depth of the descending elevator. Bit by bit, the underground layout started taking shape at Kichan's fingertips. London's basement had been shut in by old stone and damp. This one was divided by current, coolant lines, fire doors, and cable trays. Basement level one. Document storage. Basement level two. Server cooling. Basement level three. His fingertips slipped. Something other than metal was bracing itself there. Kichan nearly dropped the wire. The homeless man sitting near the bus stop looked at him.

"You okay, man?" Kichan raised his head. The man had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. A paper cup sat by his feet. He was looking less at Kichan's face than at the paper cup in Kichan's hand. Kichan looked down at it.

"Yes." The homeless man smiled.

"Nobody okay here." The line was a little too accurate, and Kichan could not think of anything to say. He took out a bill and dropped it into the man's cup. The man looked at the money and lifted his brows.

"Thanks, Korea." Kichan paused.

"How did you know?" The homeless man pointed to the corner of the airline ticket sticking out from inside Kichan's coat. ICN Kichan pushed the ticket back in. From the building, the freight elevator doors closed. Kichan caught hold of the wire again. For the briefest moment, the sense of basement level three opened. Soyga. Kichan stopped breathing. A bus pulled in at the stop. The doors opened and people got off. Someone's bag struck his knee.

"Excuse me." Kichan stood and moved aside. In that short moment, the sense of the third basement floor cut off. The bus drove away. Kichan looked back at the building. Inside the glass wall of the lobby, the woman with the Raon Bio badge had lifted her head. She was looking toward the bus stop. Kichan did not move. A guard in a black uniform approached her. They exchanged a few words. The guard looked toward the revolving door, and the woman took out her phone. Kichan's phone rang. Unknown number.

"Mr. Han Kichan." It was a low female voice. It was not Lee Seoyoon's voice from London. Kichan looked at the lobby through the ad panel's reflection.

"Where does everyone keep finding my number?" Without laughing, the woman said,"If you turn back now, we can treat today as though it never happened." Kichan dropped the paper cup in his hand into a bin. It crumpled softly inside.

"What exactly have I done?"

"You circled the building three times. You entered the copy shop. You checked the freight entrance. And just now, you interfered with the access conditions to basement level three." Inside his pocket, Kichan slowly bent the piece of wire. The narrow scrap of metal curved between his fingers.

"New York sure has a lot of surveillance cameras."

"That is not the only reason." Kichan looked at the woman inside the lobby. She was still holding the phone.

"Then I guess you can see a lot from your side too."

"What do you mean by that?" Kichan turned his eyes to the ad across the street. HEALING, FASTER. The woman in the white coat. The smiling child. And below them, small print. Clinical trial. Consent to personal data disclosure. Investor briefing. Kichan pressed a palm against the copy envelope inside his coat.

"The part where you put prices next to people's names." There was a brief silence on the other end. Hearing it, Kichan turned away. He walked into the alley behind the bus stop.

"Tomorrow night, then."

"Mr. Han Kichan, you are under the mistaken impression that you are moving alone." In the lobby behind him, the woman was still watching him, and the guard had a radio in hand. The homeless man at the bus stop still had only his eyes visible above his blanket, and there were people in the café and the smoking area who would remember Kichan's face. He had left too many traces. There were too many places to move, and too many places to be seen. Kichan hung up.

On the phone screen, the missed call sat beside a message from his mother. Did you eat? He looked at it for a moment, then slid the phone back into his pocket. At the end of the alley, a delivery bike passed by. The metal spokes flashed under the streetlamp. Kichan lifted his head and followed that glint. Tomorrow night. The freight elevator. Basement level three. Soyga. Kichan started walking back toward his lodging. This time, he would have to take the wake-up rod back out from under the bed.