The parliamentary complex smelled like floor polish and old paper and the anxiety of people who made decisions that affected millions while sitting in chairs that hadn't been reupholstered since 1994.
Taeyoung's escort brought them through the east security checkpoint at 8:32 AM. Two Bureau vehicles, credentials pre-cleared through channels that Taeyoung had activated before dawn. The security officers at the checkpoint processed Yeji's party with the practiced efficiency of people who'd been told to expect them and to not ask questions about the woman with dried blood on her collar or the man whose left arm didn't move.
The committee room was on the third floor. Wood paneling, a horseshoe table, microphones at each seat. Five chairs occupied out of nine. Representative Kwon Dohee sat at the center of the horseshoe, her wire-frame glasses catching the overhead light, her posture the posture of a woman who'd been waiting six years for this morning and intended to use it.
Chae Wonhee was already there.
Yeji hadn't seen her since — had she ever seen her? The RSIP's principal investigator existed in Yeji's understanding as a name on documents and a voice through Hayeon's phone and a woman in a house in Hadong who'd kept copies. Now she was a person in a chair at the witness table: mid-forties, lean, the kind of thinness that came from months of not eating on a regular schedule. Her hair was pulled back and her hands were on the table and between her feet sat a document case with three sets of physical copies that she'd carried on the KTX from Jinju.
Her eyes found Yeji's. Held. The look of someone recognizing the person at the center of the thing she'd resigned over.
Yeji sat down beside her. "Dr. Chae."
"Ms. Ahn." Wonhee's voice was what Yeji had expected from the phone calls — measured, precise, the voice of a researcher who'd spent eleven years being careful with words because words in research documents meant specific things. But underneath the precision, something less controlled. The slight tremor in the fingers resting on the table. "I brought everything."
"I know."
"Including things Hayeon doesn't have." Wonhee opened the document case. The third set of copies. "I kept a parallel archive. Off-network. Physical documentation of every RSIP subject I personally assessed." She pulled out a folder. Inside: photographs. Not clinical photography — candid shots, taken with a phone camera, of teenagers sitting in assessment rooms. "Their faces," Wonhee said. "The Foundation erased their files. I kept their faces."
Yeji looked at the photographs. Teenagers. Some smiling, some not. Some looking at the camera, some looking away. The ordinary faces of ordinary kids who'd been identified by a screening protocol and fed to fragments.
One photograph near the bottom: a girl with short hair and an oversized hoodie, looking directly at the lens with the flat defiance of someone who'd been assessed by adults before and had not enjoyed the experience.
Yerin. Age fourteen. Before the fragment.
*Yeji.* Yerin's voice in the bond. Quiet. *That's me.*
*Yes.*
*I look angry.*
*You look like someone who didn't trust the person holding the camera.*
*I didn't.* A pause. *I was right not to.*
---
Representative Kwon called the session to order at 9:04 AM.
The five members present: Kwon herself, Chair Im Junhyeok (who'd approved the emergency session and looked like he'd slept three hours and was running on institutional obligation), two senior representatives who'd served on the HOC for five and eight years respectively, and a newer member — Representative Baek Seongjin, appointed seven months ago, whose voting record Hayeon had described as "cautious to the point of institutional paralysis."
Baek was the unknown. The others were either aligned or at least not opposed. Baek voted present instead of yes or no. Taking a position meant being held to it, and Baek did not enjoy being held to things.
The three Foundation-sympathetic members were absent. Two had not responded to the emergency session notification. One had responded with a procedural objection that Chair Im had overruled at 7 AM.
At the back of the room, a man in a suit who hadn't been there when Yeji arrived. Foundation legal counsel. He'd entered two minutes before the session opened, taken a seat in the observer section, and placed a leather folder on his knee with the casual precision of someone who'd been in this room before.
Kwon didn't look at him. "This emergency session of the Hunter Oversight Committee has been convened under Article 47, Section 3, of the parliamentary charter governing oversight of Bureau operations and affiliated institutional partners. The matter before the committee is the alleged misuse of the stability research clause of the cooperation agreement between the Korean Hunter Bureau and the Korean Foundation for Awakened Research." She set her papers down. "We'll hear from the witnesses first. Dr. Chae Wonhee, principal investigator of the Foundation's Resonance-Sensitive Individual Protocol."
Wonhee stood. Moved to the witness position. The microphone adjusted — she'd done this before, maybe not in this room, but in rooms like it. Research review boards. Ethics committees. The institutional spaces where scientists defended their work.
This time she was defending someone else's.
"I designed the RSIP screening protocol in 2019," she began. "The original purpose was identification and monitoring of awakened individuals with unusual sensitivity to placed fragment resonance. The protocol was purely observational. We were studying a phenomenon, not intervening in it." Her voice steadied as she spoke — the researcher settling into the rhythm of testimony, the familiar structure of presenting evidence. "In 2021, I discovered that the Foundation's Applied Research division had modified the protocol's output parameters. The screening data I was generating — sensitivity profiles, resonance compatibility scores, geographic distribution of high-sensitivity individuals — was being routed to a secondary analysis team that I had not authorized and whose existence was not disclosed to me."
"What was the secondary team doing with the data?" Chair Im asked.
"Identifying targets." Wonhee's voice didn't waver. "The modified protocol generated a ranked list of individuals whose sensitivity profiles made them compatible with fragment absorption. Not accidental exposure — deliberate integration. The secondary team was selecting teenagers and young adults whose profiles indicated a high probability of surviving the absorption process."
The room. The wood paneling. The five representatives. The Foundation legal counsel in the back, his pen moving across a notepad with the steady speed of someone transcribing for later rebuttal.
"Surviving," Representative Baek said. He'd leaned forward. The cautious man, asking for precision.
"The absorption process has a survival rate of approximately 31%," Wonhee said. "Of the individuals I've confirmed as RSIP subjects — twenty-five total, across the program's operational period — eleven died during the absorption event or within seventy-two hours of fragment integration. Seven are unaccounted for, their records erased from Foundation databases. Seven were successfully integrated."
"Successfully."
"Alive. Inside fragments. Dissolved into the fragment's consciousness matrix." Wonhee's hands were flat on the witness table. "I don't use 'successfully' the way the Foundation uses it. They mean the fragment accepted the consciousness. I mean seven people are trapped in stone."
Hayeon presented next. The tablet connected to the room's display system — the evidence laid out the way Hayeon laid everything out. Chronological. Geographic. Personnel. The RSIP documentation beside the fabricated exhibits from Seunghan's appeal, the fourteen false documents that cited databases where the referenced files didn't exist. Kim Seunghan's co-signatures on Mapo anomaly reports that had authorized monitoring access for Foundation technical advisors. Roh Jisun's three-year-old Foundation research proposal with its language about "longitudinal fragment integration studies."
The Foundation legal counsel stood. "Chair Im, if I may—"
"You may not." Kwon's voice. Sharp. "Observer status does not include speaking privileges during witness testimony. You'll have an opportunity to respond when the committee reaches the rebuttal phase."
"Representative Kwon, the Foundation has filed an emergency injunction with the administrative court—"
"Which has no jurisdiction over parliamentary committee proceedings, as the Foundation's own legal team is aware." Kwon looked at him over her glasses. "Counselor, please sit down or I will ask security to escort you to the observer gallery where you can watch the proceedings on a monitor."
He sat down. The leather folder on his knee. The pen still.
---
At 9:47 AM, Representative Baek asked the question.
Wonhee had finished. Hayeon had finished. The evidence was on the displays and in the physical copies and in the room's recording system. The five representatives had spent forty minutes processing information that described a government-affiliated research institution using a cooperation agreement to kidnap teenagers and dissolve them into sentient rock.
Baek looked at Yeji. The cautious man, looking at the person at the center.
"Ms. Ahn," he said. "The testimony describes an ability called [Requiem] that allows communion with spirits trapped in dungeons and in fragments. The committee's assessment of this situation depends in part on the credibility of that claim." He folded his hands. "I don't question Dr. Chae's research or Ms. Hayeon's documentation. But the Foundation will argue, and has argued, that the spirit-summoning claim is the weakest point in this case. An extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence."
The room waited.
"You're asking me to demonstrate," Yeji said.
"I'm asking whether demonstration is possible."
She looked at Kwon. The representative's face — the same face from the tea house, the woman who'd seen Minwoo materialize and had taken twelve seconds to reorganize her understanding of what seeing meant. Kwon gave a slight nod. Not permission — confirmation. *This is the moment.*
*Minwoo.*
*Yeah, kid.* The ghost tank's voice. The roughness still there — the pattern damage, the 15% coherence loss. He'd been quiet through the testimony. Listening. The way he listened when things were serious, when the jokes weren't the right tool. *Same as last time?*
*Same as last time. But you're damaged. If it's too much—*
*I'll come through.* Firm. The same decision he'd made in the tea house and in the hallway and in every space where manifesting was what was needed. *Might be a little rough around the edges.*
*You're always a little rough around the edges.*
*Hey.* A flicker of the humor underneath the damage. *That's my line.*
Song Minwoo materialized in the committee room of the Korean parliamentary complex at 9:49 AM on a Wednesday morning, in front of five members of the Hunter Oversight Committee, a Foundation legal counsel, two Bureau security officers, and a court recorder who dropped her pen.
He was translucent. More than before — the coherence loss visible as a thinning of his form, the edges less defined, the solid middle-aged trucker who'd manifested in the tea house now looking like a photograph left in sunlight too long. But present. Visible. His face, his build, his hands — the hands of a man who'd spent twenty years gripping steering wheels and four years gripping a ghost's shield.
He looked at the committee. The five representatives. Five people in positions of institutional authority who were looking at a dead man standing in their committee room.
*Tell them,* he said to Yeji. *Tell them what I told you in the tea house.*
"This is Song Minwoo," Yeji said. "D-rank tank. Died in the Gyeonggi dungeon four years ago. He stayed because he has a daughter, Somin, who's thirteen and started junior high last month." She kept her voice level. "He's one of six spirits currently bound to me through [Requiem]. Two of those six — Yerin Seo and Lee Soyeon — were absorbed by the Foundation's RSIP program and extracted from fragments. They're reconstituting inside the bond."
Minwoo turned to Baek. The cautious representative. Looked at him with the steady gaze of someone who understood that this man's vote mattered and that the vote depended on what happened in this room in the next thirty seconds.
*Tell him I know he's going to ask how they can verify I'm real and not some kind of projection or illusion,* Minwoo said. *Tell him to check the Gyeonggi dungeon death records for Song Minwoo, trucker, died August 14th four years ago, survived by one daughter, Song Somin. Tell him the Bureau has my death certificate on file. The body was recovered.*
Yeji relayed it.
Baek wrote something down. His hand was shaking. Not much — the small tremor of a man whose institutional paralysis had just met something that institutions were not designed to process.
"The committee will verify," Chair Im said. His voice was controlled. The chair's discipline. But he hadn't looked away from Minwoo since the manifestation, and the quality of his attention was the same quality that Kwon's had been in the tea house. Twelve seconds of reorganizing. "Security, please contact Bureau Records for confirmation of the death certificate Song Minwoo referenced."
Minwoo dematerialized. The controlled withdrawal. Yeji felt him settle back into the bond — rougher than before, the manifestation costing more than it had in the tea house, the damaged pattern taking longer to stabilize.
*You okay?*
*Ask me after I rest.* The ghost tank's humor, thin but present. *That room had bad energy. Too many lawyers.*
---
The vote was at 10:23 AM.
Bureau Records had confirmed Minwoo's death certificate in fourteen minutes. The court recorder had retrieved her pen. The Foundation legal counsel had been given his rebuttal opportunity, during which he'd said "professionally compromised" three times and "insufficient evidentiary chain" twice and "the cooperation agreement provides for exactly this type of research under the stability clause" once, and Representative Kwon had responded to each point with the specific procedural precision of someone who'd been waiting six years to do this in a committee room.
"The committee votes on whether to open a formal investigation into the Foundation's use of the stability research clause and to suspend the cooperation agreement pending investigation results." Chair Im's voice. Formal. The weight of parliamentary procedure. "Representative Kwon."
"In favor."
"Representative Park."
"In favor."
"Representative Lim."
"In favor."
"Representative Baek."
A pause. Three seconds. The cautious man.
"In favor."
"Chair votes in favor. Motion carries five to zero. The cooperation agreement between the Korean Hunter Bureau and the Korean Foundation for Awakened Research is suspended effective immediately, pending the results of a formal HOC investigation." Im set down his gavel. "The Foundation's access credentials, shared databases, and co-regulatory functions within Bureau operations are frozen as of this vote. Bureau Strategic Response will execute the suspension within twenty-four hours."
Yeji breathed. The chair beneath her. The committee room. Chae Wonhee beside her, her hands still flat on the table, her face showing the particular expression of a woman who'd resigned six months ago and moved to Hadong and kept copies and had just watched the institutional machinery she'd tried to activate from inside finally turn.
Wonhee didn't say anything. She closed the document case.
---
They were in the corridor outside the committee room when Hayeon's phone buzzed.
The analyst read the notification. Read it again. Her face didn't change — the analyst's discipline — but her thumb pressed the screen hard enough that the display whitened under the pressure.
"The Foundation is moving," she said.
"Moving what?"
"Everything." Hayeon turned the phone toward Yeji. A message from a contact whose name was a single initial: the kind of source that analysts maintained through years of careful relationship management. "Applied Research division. Building 7. They've activated an emergency data purge protocol. Physical records, digital archives, research specimens." She looked at Yeji. "And subjects."
Subjects.
"The seven," Yeji said.
"The seven integrated subjects in natural fragments across the Seoul metropolitan area. The Foundation isn't waiting for the investigation. They're destroying the evidence." Hayeon's voice, flat. The analyst naming the thing. "Including the evidence that's alive."
The corridor. Floor polish and old paper. The committee had voted to protect people whose protection depended on the evidence surviving long enough to matter.
Yeji looked at Jihoon. The party leader. His right hand already moving toward his phone.
"How long?" she asked Hayeon.
"My contact says the purge order went out eleven minutes ago."
Eleven minutes. While the committee was voting. While Chair Im was saying *five to zero.* The Foundation had already decided the vote wouldn't save them, and they'd started burning.
"How fast can they reach the fragments?"
Hayeon was already calculating. "The natural fragments are distributed. Mapo, Songpa, Gwanak, Yongsan, three outside Seoul proper. The Foundation has field teams, but with their Bureau access frozen they can't use Bureau transport infrastructure. Private vehicles. Maybe ninety minutes for the Seoul fragments, two to three hours for the ones outside the city."
Ninety minutes.
Jihoon had his phone to his ear. "Taeyoung. The Foundation is executing an evidence purge. We need Bureau rapid response teams at every known natural fragment site in Seoul." A pause. "Yes. Now."
In the bond, six spirits held steady. The diminished bond. The four operational slots. The ninety minutes.
Yeji looked at the corridor ahead. The stairs down. The exit. Seoul outside, and somewhere in it, seven people dissolved in stone whose existence was about to be erased by the organization that had put them there.
"Move," she said.
