Paper has a smell.

Clean paper seems as though it should have no smell at all, but if you bring it close to your nose, you can catch a faint mixture of thin glue and dry dust. Paper pulled from an old file carries something more: the oil and dampness left by human hands.

The sheet in front of me was new.

CORRECTIONS HEADQUARTERS was printed in gray at the upper right. Near the bottom were blanks for the writer's inmate number and name, and beneath them, in bold, the title: Reference Material for Parole Review.

I wrote my name first.

Jaeho Han.

The tip of the ballpoint pen slipped slightly on the last stroke of my name. It wasn't that my right hand was weak. The desk was the wrong height for my wheelchair. If I put my elbow on the desktop, my shoulder rose and I had to bend my wrist to write.

"Are you uncomfortable?"

The corrections committee member sitting across from me asked.

His name was Gihyeon Seo. I remembered because I had checked the name tag on his chest twice. He looked to be in his mid-forties, with short hair and thin-rimmed glasses. Every time he turned a page, he wet his thumb with his tongue.

"I'm fine."

I lowered my shoulder a little and raised it again.

I wasn't fine, but not enough to ask for another desk. In prison, saying you were fine wasn't really a description of your condition. It was closer to saying you weren't asking anyone to do anything more.

Gihyeon Seo looked down for a moment at the name I had written.

"You need to write your inmate number too."

I moved the pen to the box above my name.

When I first came in, I kept getting my inmate number wrong. At the hospital I had been called by a patient number, at trial I was the defendant, Jaeho Han, and at the company I had been Manager Han or PM Han. At home I was Dad, and to Sujin I had been oppa. What people called me changed from place to place, but for a long time I never doubted that all of those names pointed to the same person.

Now I never get my inmate number wrong.

4271.

Writing the four digits took less time than writing my name.

When my hand stopped, Gihyeon Seo pointed to the lower part of the page.

"There are three questions. You don't have to answer all of them. You may choose one and write about it."

I had already read them.

First: Evaluate, from your present perspective, your judgment and actions at the time of the offense.

Second: Describe the efforts you have made toward repairing the harm and returning to society.

Third: Describe any new meaning of life you discovered through incarceration and how you intend to put it into practice in the future.

The third sentence was the longest.

A new meaning of life.

I read the phrase silently. New meant the old one had become worn out. Discovered meant it had been lying somewhere all along. The meaning of life sounded like a wallet dropped in the woods or inventory forgotten in the corner of a warehouse, something you only had to find.

"The reviewers aren't judging how well you write."

Gihyeon Seo said.

"Just write honestly."

As I listened, I looked at the gray words CORRECTIONS HEADQUARTERS in the upper right corner.

Write honestly.

I had heard something similar at the company. On the first day of the accident-cause investigation meeting, the head of legal closed the conference-room door and said,

Just tell us exactly what happened.

Then he wrote DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION, MANAGEMENT, and FORCE MAJEURE on the whiteboard. He placed everything the attendees said into one of those four categories. Anything that did not fit was erased.

People tell you to speak honestly, then build the boxes your honesty is allowed to fit inside.

With my left hand I touched the cap of the ballpoint pen. There were tooth marks at the end. I hadn't made them. It was a communal pen from the education room. Someone had bitten it when they couldn't think, or while holding back anger, or perhaps simply because they had a habit of putting things in their mouth.

"You have one hour."

Gihyeon Seo said.

"If you don't finish, you can take it back to the medical unit and continue there. We'll look at a draft during next week's counseling session."

Someone beside me was already writing.

The scratching of the pen was steady. Two seats away, a man leaned forward and pressed down as if he might tear the paper. On the other side, someone kept writing and crossing out the first line. There was no eraser, so he blacked the words out with his pen.

I read the first question again.

Evaluate, from your present perspective, your judgment and actions at the time of the offense.

The words at the time of the offense caught in my throat.

Not at the time of the accident.

Not at the time of the work.

Not at the time of the collapse.

At the time of the offense.

I thought the wording was wrong. Then I thought that it was already a wording confirmed by the court. Believing it was wrong and knowing it had been legally fixed could exist at the same time.

I put the pen to the paper.

I,

I wrote two characters in Korean.

After that, I could write nothing.

As the general manager responsible for the site at the time,

I could have continued like this.

I prioritized the construction schedule over safety,

without sufficiently examining the possibility of danger,

approved the work,

thereby causing the loss of two precious lives.

I already knew the sentences. I had read them many times in the judgment, in statements of remorse, and in the company's apology. Change the order of the words a little and the paragraph would be complete.

As the general manager responsible for the site at the time, I prioritized the construction schedule over safety and approved the work without sufficiently examining the risk, causing irreversible consequences.

It was an accurate sentence.

But that day was not inside it.

The air that day had been damp. It wasn't raining, but the smell of water rose from the concrete floor. A portable generator sputtered as if it might cut out. Sweat ran inside my hard hat, and my phone rang every ten minutes.

There had also been a message from my wife on my phone that day.

Don't forget to buy Yuri's toy.

I read it and did not reply.

I meant to answer after the afternoon meeting. After the meeting I had to call the site manager, then check the contractor's report, then report the progress rate to the division director.

Yuri's toy came after all of that.

The world always seemed arranged as if there would be a next thing, and then another next thing.

"Mr. Han."

At Gihyeon Seo's voice, I looked up.

"Are you in pain?"

I had been gripping the pen hard. The joint of my index finger had gone white.

"No."

"You may return to the medical unit if you need to."

"I'm fine."

It was the third time that day I had said I was fine.

I looked back at the paper. After the word I, there was a pen mark like a comma. The ink had spread into a small black dot.

Looking at that dot, I remembered the column just before the collapse.

There had been a line on its surface thinner than a strand of hair, ambiguous enough that I wasn't sure it could be called a crack. I rubbed it with my finger. Dust came away. The site manager said it was likely a trace left by surface drying.

The safety inspector had said over the phone,

"I can't be certain. But the displacement at the connection is approaching the limit."

I asked,

"Approaching it, or exceeding it?"

"It hasn't exceeded it."

"So it doesn't meet the threshold for suspending use, correct?"

There was a brief silence.

"Numerically, yes. But I recommend postponing the nighttime load work."

The first sentence was the answer I wanted. The second was the one he emphasized.

I recorded the first.

Does not meet suspension threshold.

I left the second sentence out of the meeting minutes.

Was that an omission?

Or a summary?

At the time, I thought it was a summary.

My hand did not move across the paper.

When the hour ended, all I had written was my name, my inmate number, and I.

Gihyeon Seo did not collect the sheet.

"Take it with you."

He said.

"Everyone finds it difficult at first."

Everyone.

The word sounded like comfort, but it was really classification. I had been placed among the inmates who could not write.

"By the next counseling session, you should have about a paragraph."

He started to take the pen, then noticed I was still holding it and stopped.

"You can take that too."

"Isn't it communal property?"

"Return it next time."

I placed the pen and paper on the writing board across my lap and held the sheet with my left hand so it would not slide.

Correctional officer Doyun Na was waiting outside the education room.

He did not grab the handles of my wheelchair. I did not use a powered chair. Parts of the medical-unit corridor had raised thresholds, and charging was a nuisance. I thought propelling the wheels by hand gave me more freedom, though on days when my shoulders hurt I could not tell whether that choice was freedom or stubbornness.

"Will you go on your own?"

Doyun Na asked.

"Yes."

"I'll only hold the chair on the ramp."

I pushed the wheel rims.

There was a short corridor between the education wing and the medical unit. Where it overlapped with the route to the general cell blocks, we had to pass through three steel doors. Each time a door opened, metal struck metal.

We waited in front of the first steel door.

On the other side, inmates were moving toward the work area in a line of gray uniforms. A few glanced at my wheelchair. Most did not.

When I was first imprisoned, I had made a habit of checking people's eyes.

Who was looking at my legs.

Who recognized my face.

Who had seen the news.

Over time the looks became fewer. More precisely, I stopped counting them.

The door opened.

On the ramp, Doyun Na took hold of the back of my wheelchair.

"I'll push."

"I can do it."

"I know. It's the slope regulation."

He did not say he wanted to help me. He said it was because of the rule.

That kind of wording was easier.

Help sometimes came with a face attached: pity, satisfaction at having done a good deed, the expectation that I should be grateful. Rules had no expression.

By the time we reached the medical unit, lunch distribution was nearly over.

When I entered the room, Jeongho Lee was sitting on his bed reading a Bible. It had been taped back together several times. Most of the gold lettering on the cover had worn off, and the spine leaned to one side.

"Write something good?"

Jeongho asked.

"No."

"Not even one word?"

"Two characters."

"Two characters means you've started."

I set the writing board on the table beside my bed.

"Aren't you going to ask what I wrote?"

"You'll tell me if you want to."

Having said that, Jeongho immediately asked,

"So what did you write?"

I didn't answer.

He laughed. One of his front teeth was missing.

"My first statement of remorse was twelve pages long."

"You remember it?"

"Of course. I killed a person, then spent twelve pages explaining how pitiful I was."

Jeongho straightened the scraps of paper tucked inside his Bible.

"My father was a drunk, my mother beat me, I had no education, my wife looked down on me every time she opened her mouth. Read all twelve pages and you'd think it was strange that I hadn't killed someone sooner."

"Do you think differently now?"

"Now I could write thirteen pages."

"One more page."

"On the last page I'd write that I killed her."

I turned my wheelchair toward the bed.

"And leave the first twelve pages as they are?"

"They didn't stop being true."

Jeongho closed the Bible.

"Explaining why a person did something isn't the same as saying he didn't do it."

"Are you saying that to me?"

"I was talking about myself."

"You were looking at me."

"My eyes are on the front of my face. Who else am I supposed to look at, the wall?"

Jeongho had the manner of someone who liked to teach other people. Because he had lived a long time and been locked up a long time, he believed he understood people's hearts.

I disliked that about him.

We had shared the room for four months, but some days merely hearing his voice exhausted me. He prayed every morning. If I could not sleep, he read verses from the Bible. Without being asked, he told me God had not abandoned me.

When he said God had not abandoned me, it sounded as though God had abandoned Jinsu Park and Gwangcheol Oh.

I once told him so.

Jeongho did not speak to me for three days.

The lunch tray was lukewarm: rice, soybean-paste soup, stir-fried fish cake, and kimchi. I pulled the movable table toward the bed. Whenever I leaned forward, the part of my body below the waist, where I had almost no sensation, followed a beat later.

After the accident, a doctor had explained my sensory level.

Below the navel.

The phrase was as simple as drawing a line on a map. I existed above the line, and my body existed below it too. But the lower body did not move when I ordered it to, and I could not feel its pain.

Not feeling pain did not mean nothing was wrong.

Pressure sores formed without pain. My bladder filled without warning. My legs spasmed on their own. My body changed condition without telling me.

Jeongho coughed while drinking soup.

The top button of his prison uniform hung loose, half its thread already pulled free.

"That's going to fall off."

I said.

Jeongho looked down at his chest.

"I'll sew it later."

"Tell the nurse now."

"Call a nurse over a button?"

"Better than looking for it after it falls."

"Did you stop everything before it fell?"

I put down my spoon.

Jeongho seemed to realize what he had said. He did not apologize. Instead, he picked up a piece of kimchi.

"It's just an expression."

"You don't need to say things like that."

"All right."

After that we ate without speaking.

When I returned the tray, I transferred to the bed. To move from wheelchair to bed I had to lift my body with both arms. I planted my left hand on the mattress and pushed against the wheelchair armrest with my right. As I raised my hips and shifted sideways, my legs followed like objects lying on the floor.

That day it didn't work the first time.

My body caught halfway. My right thigh pressed against the wheelchair wheel.

Jeongho started to get up from his bed.

"Stay there."

I said.

"I was going to help."

"You won't help."

The words came too quickly.

Jeongho sat back down.

I put strength into my arms. The second time I got onto the bed. I lifted my legs one at a time with my hands and placed them on the mattress. My right ankle was twisted outward. I straightened it by hand.

My foot was cold.

I would not have known if I hadn't touched it with my palm.

I lay down and looked at the ceiling.

A long crack ran across it. It was only cracked paint, not a structural crack. A facilities worker had explained that when I first arrived in the room.

There is no structural problem.

I had almost laughed.

The word structural was everywhere.

Structural cause.

Structural corruption.

Structural pressure.

Structural responsibility.

When people talked about structure, the individual grew small. When they talked about the individual, the structure disappeared.

In court, the prosecutor had said,

"The defendant was the site manager with final authority to approve the work."

The defense attorney had said,

"Actual decision-making was constrained by head-office management's order to shorten the construction schedule."

Both were true.

I had final authority to approve the work.

I had been under pressure to shorten the schedule.

Neither sentence erased the other.

But the trial made the sentences compete.

The stronger sentence remained in the judgment.

After two in the afternoon, sunlight came through the bars.

It made a small rectangle on the floor. The medical-unit window faced southwest, so sunlight entered only in the afternoon. At first I found it strange that the position of the light changed with the seasons. Later I began using its position to estimate the time.

When the right edge of the light crossed the crack in the third floor tile, it was two-thirty.

When it touched the bed leg, it was three-ten.

When it reached the bottom of the wall, it was nearly four.

Time passed even without a clock.

I looked at the paper on the table.

From a distance, the two Korean characters meaning I were invisible. The sheet looked blank again.

Jeongho turned over in his sleep.

There was a small sound.

Click.

Something hard struck the floor and rolled twice.

A button had fallen from Jeongho's prison uniform.

It stopped between our beds instead of rolling underneath one. It was gray plastic, with four holes and a piece of white thread clinging to one side.

Jeongho sat up.

"It fell off."

"I told you it would."

"You did."

He moved to the edge of the bed. He tried to bend down, but his hand could not reach below his knee. Jeongho had had back surgery long ago, and lately his hip pain had been severe.

He stretched out his right hand.

There was still about a palm's width between his fingertips and the button.

"If it would just come a little closer."

Jeongho muttered.

"You'll fall."

"I won't."

He bent farther. His body tipped forward.

I grabbed the bed rail.

"Stop."

"Almost got it."

"Mr. Lee."

He didn't listen.

I looked at my wheelchair beside the bed. A long reacher hung from the back, something the nurse had given me to pick things up from the floor.

Transferring back into the wheelchair was a nuisance.

If I pressed the call button, an officer or nurse could come. It might take a while to summon someone for a single button. We could wait until the next meal distribution.

Jeongho's uniform would not gape open without that button. There were buttons above and below it.

I looked at the button for a while.

Jeongho looked at it too.

Between us lay an object neither of us could reach.

It seemed like a strange scene.

One man could not walk.

The other could not bend at the waist.

The button lay on the floor asking nothing of either of us.

"Just leave it."

I said.

"It'll get swept away during cleaning."

"Then get a new button."

"That is a new button."

"How can a button be new or old?"

"All four holes are fine and the color hasn't faded."

Jeongho reached again.

"Guess we'll have to call someone."

"For one button?"

"Even for one button, I can't pick it up myself."

His voice became a little quieter.

I looked at my wheelchair again.

Right after the accident, a rehabilitation doctor had explained independent living to me.

Transferring from bed to wheelchair by yourself.

Managing urination by yourself.

Picking objects up from the floor by yourself.

Crossing thresholds by yourself.

He used the word independence over and over.

I hated that word.

Even before the accident, I had never lived alone. Sujin cooked. Staff arranged my schedule. A driver took me to the airport. At work sites, workers did what I instructed them to do.

Back then people called me independent.

Now I needed a reacher to pick up a single button.

I pushed myself upright with my arms.

"What are you doing?"

Jeongho asked.

"Move."

I transferred from the bed to the wheelchair. This time my body moved in one attempt. I placed my legs on the footrests and released the brakes.

Two pushes of the wheels brought me in front of the button.

I picked up the reacher.

When I squeezed the handle, the jaws closed. Grabbing the button precisely was harder than I expected. The first time I caught only the white thread. When I lifted it, the thread unwound and the button dropped again.

Jeongho said,

"Take your time."

"You don't need to tell me."

The second time I caught the edge. Halfway up it slipped and rolled toward the bed leg.

"This thing's testing a man's temper."

Jeongho said.

I didn't answer.

I turned the wheelchair slightly.

On the third try, I put the tip of the reacher through one of the buttonholes. When I squeezed, the button caught at an angle. I lifted it slowly.

It did not fall.

I placed it on Jeongho's bed.

He picked up the button and set it in his palm.

"Thanks."

"Ask the nurse to sew it back on when she comes."

"I can sew."

"Needles aren't allowed."

"The medical unit has them."

"Exactly. Ask the nurse."

Jeongho placed the button beside his pillow.

"All right."

I turned the wheelchair around.

The paper on the table was half in sunlight. In the light the sheet looked whiter, and the black writing on it was visible even from across the room.

I.

I wheeled to the desk.

I picked up the pen.

I almost wrote beneath the first question, then stopped. Not the second question either. I put the pen to the blank space beneath the third.

Describe any new meaning of life you discovered through incarceration and how you intend to put it into practice in the future.

I could have written that I had not discovered any meaning in life.

I could have written that life had no meaning.

But that, too, was too large a sentence.

I had never seen all of life. My own life was not over, and there was more I did not know about the lives of Jinsu Park and Gwangcheol Oh than I did know. There were not many things whose meaninglessness I had the right to declare.

The accident was meaningless.

I almost wrote that, then stopped.

Saying the accident had no meaning could sound as though the deaths of those two men had been meaningless. I had no right to give their deaths a meaning, and no right to conclude they had none.

I put down the pen.

"Still can't write?"

Jeongho asked.

I looked at the floor where the button had been.

It was gone.

In its place lay a strip of light that had passed through the bars.

I picked up the pen again.

And wrote.

Today I picked up a button.

The sentence was short.

There was no new meaning in it.

No lesson either.

I did not write why I had picked up the button. I did not know whether it was to help Jeongho, to prove to myself that I was still useful, or because leaving it on the floor bothered me.

The button had been on the floor, and I had picked it up.

As far as I could remember, that was something that had happened today.

I put a period at the end of the sentence.

Jeongho asked,

"What did you write?"

"One sentence."

"Read it."

"No."

"Is it a good sentence?"

I read the paper once.

Today I picked up a button.

"I don't know."

"Then it's an honest one."

"How do you know it's honest?"

Jeongho held up the button beside his pillow.

"Because that's there."

I did not answer.

The light moved across the paper and reached the back of my hand. The veins and old needle marks stood out clearly. Before long, the light would move off my hand too.

I did not fold the paper.

I left it on the table.

That day I wrote one sentence.

I did not think the sentence explained me.

I did not think it would change me.

I doubted the reviewers would like it.

But the blank page was no longer blank.

And Jeongho's button lay beside his pillow.