Episode 17. Face at the Transfer Point
# Episode 17. Face at the Transfer Point
The shuttle stopped slightly later than the scheduled time.
Not a huge difference — but on roads like these, that slight always pricks. Sion opened his eyes the instant the engine tremor faded, and Seorin rose almost simultaneously. Sern had never fully fallen asleep; Ater had only closed his eyes — already awake.
Yona said short from the cockpit.
"We're here."
The door had not opened yet, but the air inside the ship was already different.
Not the sealed feeling of being in motion — the stilled tension particular to docking against an external structure. The metallic pressure of an old hull and worn docking ring interlocking each other transmitted through the wall.
Sion asked first.
"How's the side we've docked to."
Yona scanned the panel briefly and answered.
"It's alive."
Seorin grimaced.
"Nice. Not remotely reassuring."
"In a place like this, that counts as good news."
It sounded like a joke but was not entirely one.
The outer access point was, as its name suggested, not a living port — closer to a place where paths that could not die were forced together. Just the electricity not being fully out was already half a success.
When the door opened, cold air rushed into the narrow cabin.
Outside was even emptier than the previous access layer.
Ceiling lights were alive only every few sections, and on the long access bridge walls, dock numbers erased long ago remained in faint traces. Hardly any formal signs — only old direction arrows and overwritten warnings layered on top of each other. A space where no one could likely remember who last called this an official facility. The reason it had not fully died despite being abandoned was that access rules and equipment from different eras had half-overlapped and endured here.
Ater stepped out and immediately hesitated.
This was not simply outside a port. A structure long abandoned yet unable to fully die because of need. If it were the Empire, cost would have shut it long ago, or authority would have sealed it deeper. Yet here it lived, ambiguously.
That ambiguity felt like the rule of this entire place.
Yona pointed ahead with his chin.
"That far. Fewer words."
Not far away, in a dark waiting-area-like space at the access bridge's end, someone was leaning against the wall.
At first it looked like a structural shadow.
The lighting was too dim to see the face, the body line overlapped with the wall. But Sion recognized it as a person only after two steps closer — and recognized who, at the same time.
"Well."
A half-laugh escaped him.
"You're really the one here?"
The woman leaning against the wall slowly raised her head.
Short-cropped hair, a work jacket stained in spots with grease and metal dust, an insulation band wound carelessly around one wrist. Her expression was indifferent, but her eyes were not indifferent at all. The eyes of someone who assessed value, condition, and risk simultaneously the moment she saw something.
Han Jiwoo looked Sion up and down once and said.
"Why do you look like that."
Sion smirked.
"Not very warm for a first word to someone you're glad to see."
"I am glad."
Han Jiwoo said, dry.
"You came alive. But for someone who came alive, you look like it cost too much."
Seorin laughed small beside her.
"Every word accurate from the start."
Only then did Jiwoo's gaze go to Seorin.
"You too."
"Yeah."
"Then this one's truly troublesome."
"Yeah. Very."
Just a few short lines of exchange, yet Ater could tell immediately.
This woman knew Sion well. Knew him long, had seen him many times, and was familiar — at minimum — with what face he wore when carrying something dangerous. And she was no stranger to Seorin either.
Sern silently looked at Jiwoo's hands.
On the backs — burn scars remaining like afterimages, and old metal scratches. The hands of someone who touched equipment at the scene directly. Not a simple broker.
Jiwoo soon shifted her gaze to Ater.
Only then did her eyes change, very faintly. Not reading clothes — reading posture, silence, the interval of steadied breath.
"What's this one."
Sion answered short.
"Long explanation."
"Long and I don't take it."
"That's why I'm keeping it short."
Sion said.
"The necessary side, if we don't want to die together."
Jiwoo heard that but did not nod immediately.
Instead she looked at Ater once, Sern once more, and said.
"Nice. If you're saying that much, it really is a strange combination."
What she said was not simple mockery. Taking people on at the access point meant staking her own line and the next dead-marker approach route along with them.
Ater did not change his expression, but inside he sensed this woman was a similar kind to Elia. Except where Elia was a person of storage and reading, this one was a person of movement and equipment. Someone who looked at objects and people together, calculating first whether both could hold.
Yona said short from behind.
"No time."
Jiwoo adjusted the band on her wrist once and nodded.
"I know. That's why I've been waiting."
Mixed into those words was the meaning: she had already finished her calculation. Not taking them on might preserve one route — but the larger line that the fragment they carried pointed toward might be lost entirely.
She turned and pointed deeper into the waiting area.
Inside were two old cargo carts, half-stripped panels, and one mid-range transport ship slightly larger than the shuttle — hidden. The exterior looked even more worn, but precisely because of that, signs of heavy handwork were also clear. Temporary reinforcement plates, external wiring bypasses, manual lock replacements. Not a dying ship forced alive — a ship held together with calculation so it would not die.
Sion saw it and laughed immediately.
"Your hands touched this."
"Obviously."
Jiwoo said.
"If someone else's hands had, I wouldn't have put you on it."
Seorin looked at the ship and said low.
"Better than it looks."
"I hate that phrase most."
Jiwoo fired back instantly.
"It looks plenty good too."
Seorin smirked, and Sion saw it — for the briefest moment, old memories flashed.
It was always like this. Jiwoo pushed people away with words, but her hands moved first. Cursed and said she hated it, yet the necessary adjustments were already done.
Sern asked quietly.
"Is this the next transport."
Only then did Jiwoo face Sern directly.
"Yeah. But it won't be a smooth ride."
She pointed her chin toward the shuttle side.
"I'm the type who reads dead markers and still-living equipment together. This leg — can't attach it without that."
She said.
"Of the paths into the outer cluster, two are already dead. One — someone's been feeling along it from behind since earlier. So we have to loop further out than originally planned."
Ater asked low.
"Is that possible."
"I'm here to make it possible."
That did not sound like bluster.
Ater felt, in that instant, that this woman held the same kind of certainty as the nobles and Approval Bureau officials of his world — but in the precisely opposite manner. Her certainty was not born of lineage or authority, but the kind only someone who had repeatedly fixed, revived, and failed could possess.
Sion asked.
"How dangerous."
Jiwoo answered, perfectly calm.
"By the standards of the people standing next to you — quite."
And added brief.
"By your standards — a bit more than usual."
"Not comforting at all."
"I'm not here to comfort."
Short silence passed.
In the gap, from somewhere distant in the access point, a single metallic knock sounded.
It could have been natural aging noise — but Sern and Yona raised their heads at the same time. Seorin held her breath immediately, and Sion instinctively checked the positioning behind Jiwoo first.
Jiwoo said low.
"Yeah. That sound's why we can't stay long."
Yona chewed a short curse.
"Already probing."
"Precisely — a side that isn't sure yet."
Jiwoo answered.
"But two more sounds and they'll be sure."
Sern asked.
"Can we depart immediately after boarding."
"I made it possible."
Jiwoo said.
"But once you're on, the option of getting off in the middle is nearly zero."
Sion heard that and did not even laugh.
By now, everyone knew too well that such sentences were not jokes.
Seorin took the first step.
"Nice. Let's get on."
Ater felt that short phrase sound strangely more solid than any directive given so far.
Seorin was always like this. The moment the atmosphere stretched or judgment threatened to split, she cut to exactly the needed length and pushed forward.
Just before boarding, Sion passed beside Jiwoo and said, small.
"One more debt."
Jiwoo did not even look at him and answered.
"Your debts never shrink."
And added, very small.
"So pay them back alive."
Sion did not answer.
But that brief line somehow hung heavier in his chest than the hull itself.
And five people — beyond the outside of the neutral port city, further still — began stepping one degree deeper toward the outer cluster, chasing the first path-fragment left behind an erased name.