The phone buzz on the hill steps had been Dil, in capitals. *JEONG SAYS A MAN IS SITTING IN THE SHOP SINCE 6 HOLDING AN ENVELOPE LIKE A BABY. SAYS HE KNOWS YOU. SAYS HE DRIVES YOUR BUS.*

Seon-ho had read it, and put the phone away, and said to Priya, "I don't have a bus."

He found out the next morning, at ten to eight, that it was the 88.

Jeongjik Copy & Notary smelled of toner and last year's rain. Mr. Jeong sat behind the counter in his cardigan, pretending to read a newspaper he had already finished, and on the visitor's bench against the wall, sat bolt upright with an envelope in both hands, was a man in a transport-company fleece with the zip pulled to his chin. He was Seon-ho's age, round-faced, broad in the shoulder, with the reddened eyes of someone who had spent a night deciding something.

"Orphan," said the man, and half rose, and sat again. "Sorry. Sorry. It's what I call you. In my head. Because of what the woman said, the dispatcher, the one who got on at Gaeul Lane. She told the whole bus."

"I'm not an orphan," said Seon-ho.

"I know. I figured it out about a week ago. I've been trying to think of a way to ask you without it being rude." He held out the envelope. "I'm Gil Ho-jun. We were in the same clinic year, the Tide Hall one. I did the copper and it said zero. The same as you. I remembered because you didn't cry. I cried for an hour."

Mr. Jeong turned a page of his newspaper with a great noise and found something fascinating in the shipping tables.

"Sit," said Seon-ho. "I'll make tea."

He made it in the back room in paper cups. When he returned, Gil had taken the offer out of its envelope and flattened it on the counter with both palms. It was good paper, cream laid, with the crest at the head and the fine twist of a qi thread running through the margin like a vein.

*PLACEMENT OFFER (COHORT B, No. 06). The Haedong Registry is pleased to offer Mr. Gil Ho-jun a Residential Placement in the Calibration Programme at Nam Pier, with full board, a monthly stipend of 2.4 million won, and complimentary dental services.*

"Two point four a month," said Gil. "I drive a bus for 2.1. My wife is eight months along. They said I'd be looking after myself, mostly, in the evenings. Sitting for an hour or two so they can monitor the calibration. Free dental, a clean bed. They've already done the first appointment." He opened his mouth, tilted his head, and pointed with one thick finger at the lower left. "Here. Yesterday. The man had gloves and a mask and a little silver tray. Said it was a bonded crown. I don't have anything wrong with that tooth."

Seon-ho looked.

The molar was bright and new and slightly too white, with a hairline seam where it met the gum, and as he looked there was a small thin tightness at the corner of his eye. He had felt it before. It was the feeling of a thread in a page.

"Don't touch it," he said. "Not with your tongue."

"I do it all the time."

"I know. Don't." He pulled the letter closer and went down it clause by clause, with Gil breathing over his shoulder like a dog that has heard its name. Preamble. Stipend. The residential terms, in the middle, in a type size meant to discourage. *The Participant shall reside at the facility for the duration of the Programme, which shall be determined by the Registry.*

"Duration," he said. "They didn't give you one."

"They said a few months."

"They said *determined by the Registry.* That's a few months if they feel like it." He underlined the sentence with the back of a pencil. "What did you do with the other copy?"

"I haven't got one. They said the Registry holds the original."

"They do. You hold the offer. Now, a Placement Offer isn't a contract until you accept it in writing. It says so, here, in the last paragraph." He found it. *This Offer is accepted by the Participant's signature below and the delivery of the Participant's thumbprint.* "Have you done either?"

"No. I wanted to ask. I thought, that guy copies things for people, he'd know. And the thing is, I've never met anybody else who was a zero and wasn't a, a *crack*, a person who hated himself. You didn't cry. I thought, maybe he'd know why they want us."

He was looking at Seon-ho with the same look the old women at Hwang's counter gave a weather forecast. Seon-ho decided, once and for all, that he would be an adult about this, and did not tell Gil the first thing that came into his head.

"I'll tell you what it says, and not why," he said. "I can't prove the why." He picked up his brush, an ordinary one, a cheap red-handled thing from the pencil jar. He dipped it in ordinary black ink. "This is oak gall. It's for notaries. I'm going to write a rider on the bottom of your offer, and if the Registry doesn't like it, they can send it back, and there'll be a record that they did."

Gil leaned in. "What are you putting?"

*The Participant accepts on the following conditions, to take effect on delivery: (1) attendance by day only, from nine to five, Monday to Friday; (2) a fixed term of ninety days, renewable only by the Participant in writing; (3) all medical and dental procedures to be recorded by the treating practitioner and copies supplied.*

He wrote it in his best clerk's hand, the legible one, and all the while Mr. Jeong's newspaper did not move. When he'd finished he added the date and a blank line for Gil's name.

"That's all?" said Gil. "No magic?"

"Don't say that word in here."

"Sorry."

"It's an acceptance with conditions. In law that's a counter-offer, and the Registry has to answer it. If they ignore you, nothing binds you. If they say yes, you work nine to five, and sleep in your own bed with your wife, and you know the day it ends. If they say no, you've lost nothing but a free tooth."

"I'd rather lose the tooth."

Seon-ho said nothing.

Gil heard it. He was not a stupid man, and he had been a bus driver for six years and knew, better than most, the silence of a vehicle that is about to say something unwelcome. "Oh," he said. "It's not a free tooth."

"It's a bonded crown. There's a thread in it."

"A thread."

"I think it's how they keep track of you. A little string tied to a long one." He kept his voice level. "I can't take it out with oak gall. I could possibly, with something else. It would cost me, and I don't know if it would work, and I'm not in a position to do it twice in one weekend."

"What does it cost you?"

He opened his mouth to answer, and shut it.

"A great deal of sleep," said Seon-ho at last. It was the first time he'd told anybody the price who wasn't family or the Grandmaster. "I've got two nights down this week and a bed at the care hospital to pay for. I can do it, but I'd have to want to. And then I'd have thought, for the rest of my life, that I'd chosen who got a night and who didn't."

Gil took this in. He looked at the rider on the paper, and the flattened envelope, and Mr. Jeong's studious back. He nodded slowly.

"You don't owe me one," he said. "I wouldn't ask. I only came to ask about the paper."

"Yes," said Seon-ho. "I know you wouldn't."

The bus driver put the offer back in the envelope with a hand that was almost steady, and he got as far as the door before he turned. It wasn't a dramatic turn. He had the air of someone who had remembered, on the way out, that he'd left the stove on.

"The numbers," he said. "Did you see the number? Cohort B, number six."

"I saw."

"There's six of us in B. They called us in on Thursday, all six. But the girl who runs the desk told me, in the lift, because she was upset, that there's thirty-one in the whole programme. A to F. Thirty-one zeros, from just this coast, in just our year." He swallowed, and Seon-ho saw him run his tongue towards the molar and stop, a long half inch short. "I'm the only one who asked anybody. The sisters, they signed, they signed on the spot. And the boy with the headphones. He was in B as well. Number four. Do you remember him?"

"I think so. Young."

"Twenty-four, same as us. Lives with his gran in Ongdo." Gil's voice cracked slightly. "I got a text from his gran at six this morning, because she found my number in his phone. She says he hasn't been home since Monday night. He took the ferry in on Tuesday for the Placement. They told her he was settling in." He looked at the crest on the envelope. "She asked me to ask the Registry. And I thought, if I ask the Registry, they'll just put me with him."

The bell on the door gave its small flat chime as he went out. In the quiet that followed Mr. Jeong closed his newspaper, folded it twice, and set it on the counter with the careful hand of a man laying a body to rest.

"Mr. Ryu," he said. "I don't want to know. But I would like to point out, as your employer, that the 88 runs on Sundays too."

Seon-ho was already looking at the shipping tables on the wall. A ferry from Ongdo, Tuesday, 07:40. A boy in headphones. He took out his phone and, for the first time in a week, wished very much that there was a shortcut for sleeping.