At 5:58, the pipes inside the wall began screaming.
JP sat upright in bed.
"The mountain is under attack."
TZ looked at his phone.
"Water starts at six."
"Then the water is attacking."
The pipes groaned again. Somewhere below us, a tap opened and released enough trapped air to shake the wall.
NS remained asleep with one arm across his eyes.
His phone lay facedown beside the bed.
The screen illuminated once, showing two missed-call notifications without names, then went dark again.
I collected my towel.
"Who is showering first?"
TZ had already arranged his clothes across the foot of his bed.
"I am."
JP pointed at him.
"This is why reliable people should be regulated."
"You were awake."
"Emotionally. My body remained unavailable."
TZ entered the bathroom.
Water struck the floor thirty seconds later.
JP stared at the door.
"He probably prepared soap last night."
"That is where people usually keep it."
"Do not defend him before sunrise."
NS lowered his arm.
"It is after sunrise."
"Then do not defend him before breakfast."
For a moment, the four of us occupied the same room without remembering why that had become difficult.
Then NS reached for his phone.
He read the notifications, unlocked the screen, and cleared them.
He did not call anyone back.
I took my phone onto the balcony while JP negotiated with the bathroom door.
Mist covered the lower market.
Only the highest roofs remained visible. The temple above us appeared to float across a white field, its gold edges catching the first light.
Grandmother answered on the fourth ring.
Her camera remained off again.
"You said tomorrow," I told her.
"It is tomorrow."
"You sound disappointed."
"I am disappointed you called before I prepared a convincing healthy voice."
I leaned against the balcony railing.
"So you admit you need one."
"Everyone needs one when speaking to medical students. You hear a cough and begin planning a funeral."
"That is not what medical students do."
"Then your university has become less dramatic than I expected."
She coughed away from the phone.
The sound was muffled this time, as though she had covered the microphone.
"Did you make a clinic appointment?"
"The clinic opens on Monday."
"That was not the question."
"It was near the question."
"Grandmother."
"I will go if it continues."
"It is continuing."
For several seconds, only her breathing reached me.
Then she changed the subject with the confidence of someone who had practiced changing mine.
"Your photograph had no people in it."
"You asked for the valley."
"A valley without people is a geography textbook. Send one with your friends."
"They were sleeping."
"All of them?"
"The important ones."
She became quiet.
"Do not decide who is important while you are angry," she said.
"I am not angry."
"Then you are making the decision with something less useful."
The bathroom door opened behind me.
Steam entered the room.
TZ stepped out fully dressed.
JP looked offended.
"He even completed the buttons."
Grandmother heard him.
"Is that JP?"
"Unfortunately," I said.
JP moved closer to the phone.
"Grandmother, I am being oppressed in the mountains."
"Wear a jacket."
"Your family always responds to emotional suffering with clothing."
She laughed.
The laugh ended in another cough.
The call disconnected before I could ask again.
I stared at the screen.
CALL ENDED: 04:12
Kitty sent a message almost immediately.
KITTY: DID YOU CALL HER?
XH: YES.
Three dots appeared.
KITTY: AND?
I looked at the blank space where Grandmother's voice had been.
XH: SHE SAID SHE IS FINE.
Kitty did not reply.
She had learned that fine was usually where I hid the rest of an answer.
Breakfast began at seven.
By 7:10, the tables had divided themselves in exactly the same way as lunch.
Mr. Kim noticed this time.
He stood between them holding the activity sheet.
"Today, you will observe services at the East Ridge Community Clinic. Since this is an educational trip and not the formation of rival governments, I have assigned the teams."
JP lowered his spoon.
"He noticed the borders."
NC unfolded the printed schedule.
"You made four stations?"
"The clinic did. Intake, vital signs, records, and community education."
Mr. Kim read the assignments.
"Intake: XH, June, and Anna."
Nobody reacted quickly enough to make the silence look natural.
"Vital signs: Kitty, NS, and NC. Records and supply observation: Jihye and TZ. Community education and queue assistance: JP, Bunny, and Cherry."
Cherry raised her hand.
"Why does community education sound like crowd control?"
"Because you are in the group," NC said.
Mr. Kim continued.
"You are observing local staff. Do not diagnose patients. Do not promise treatments. Do not photograph records. If someone asks a question beyond your training, direct them to the clinic supervisor."
JP pointed toward NS.
"What if someone asks who ranked first?"
"Direct them outside," Mr. Kim said.
NS did not look at me.
June kept her attention on the schedule.
Kitty folded her copy once, then again.
Under the table, her shoe touched mine.
It remained there until Mr. Kim dismissed us.
The clinic stood above the central market, fifteen minutes from the training house.
We walked downhill in two uneven lines.
The morning mist had lifted, revealing streets crowded with produce trucks and motorcycles. Vendors arranged tomatoes, cabbages, flowers, tea leaves, and fruit beneath striped awnings. Steam rose from soup pots. A radio played an old song from somewhere inside the market, losing the signal whenever the wind moved.
Festival preparations occupied every third shop.
Artisans bent thin bamboo into circles. Children painted paper animals on the pavement. A row of small balloons hung upside down beneath one roof while their paste dried.
One had the body of a fish and the face of a man who regretted becoming one.
JP stopped walking.
"That is me after graduation."
Bunny pulled him forward by the sleeve.
"You have to graduate first."
"Do not ruin the fantasy."
At the next corner, a public water tap had been locked behind a metal cage.
A handwritten notice said the afternoon distribution had been suspended.
Several residents filled containers from a private tanker parked beside the road.
The tanker was painted blue.
Its original markings had been covered by a white rectangle.
Jihye slowed.
"That looks like one from yesterday."
TZ followed her gaze.
"Many tankers look the same."
"The rear ladder is bent in the same place."
"You saw it for three seconds from a moving coach."
"Fourteen seconds."
"That does not make it evidence."
Jihye photographed the public notice instead of the vehicle.
"Now we have evidence that the tap is closed."
TZ looked as though he wanted to answer but could not find a sentence that remained professional.
He walked ahead.
Jihye joined NC beside me.
"Reliable people dislike incomplete explanations," she said.
JP heard her from behind us.
"Reliable people dislike many things."
TZ did not turn around.
The East Ridge Community Clinic occupied a two-story building with a narrow balcony and a red roof.
Patients already filled the waiting area.
Some had traveled from villages beyond the valley. Mud covered their shoes. Woven bags rested beneath their chairs. Several children slept against their parents while an overhead fan rotated too slowly to improve anything.
A television near reception displayed the morning news without sound.
Footage showed transportation workers gathered in Yandong. The caption beneath them called the strike an unlawful disruption of essential movement.
The next image showed MALT opening a municipal development meeting.
VT stood two people behind him.
He smiled only when the camera turned toward the room.
Then the signal broke into static.
The clinic supervisor switched off the television.
"It does that every morning now," she said.
Jihye looked toward the window.
The sky remained clear.
Mr. Kim introduced us to Nurse May, who assigned colored badges and repeated every instruction we had already received.
"You are students," she said. "Patients may mistake the badge for authority. Do not make the same mistake."
JP looked down at his badge.
"Mine says queue assistance. There is no danger of confusion."
Nurse May pointed toward the waiting room.
"Excellent. There are forty-three people waiting to meet you."
JP stopped smiling.
Bunny patted his shoulder.
"Comedy King versus public administration."
Cherry opened the door.
"My money is on the public."
Anna sat between June and me at the intake table.
This was not an accident.
She arranged the forms, checked the pens, and placed a box of translated symptom cards where it could function as both a medical resource and a border.
"I will ask the demographic questions," she said. "June can record symptoms. XH can check the forms before they go to vital signs."
"Efficient," June said.
"Safe," Anna replied.
Our first patient was an elderly farmer with knee pain.
Our second had come for a medication refill.
The third brought a child with a healing burn on his hand and enough energy to touch everything in the room except the chair assigned to him.
Work made speaking easier.
June and I knew the same questions. We reached for the same forms. When one of us forgot a detail, the other supplied it before Anna needed to intervene.
For almost twenty minutes, we became the version of ourselves that had once survived practical examinations together.
Then both of us reached for the same pen.
Our fingers touched.
June withdrew first.
Anna placed another pen beside her without looking up.
"We have twelve," she said.
"I liked that one," June replied.
"It was blue."
"Exactly."
The next patient was an older woman who complained of dizziness whenever she stood.
June asked the questions while I checked the medication list.
The woman watched us instead of the form.
"You have worked together a long time," she said.
"We are classmates," June answered.
"That was not my question."
Anna pretended to reorganize the symptom cards.
I returned the medication list.
"We used to study together."
June wrote something on the form.
"We used to do many things."
The woman looked between us again.
"Used to is a heavy phrase for young people."
Before either of us could answer, Anna directed her toward the vital-sign station.
Across the room, Kitty prepared the blood-pressure cuff.
She had heard everything.
NS stood beside the pulse oximeter.
He had too.
NC controlled the vital-sign station with the authority of someone who had finally found a legal reason to tell everyone to sit down.
"Feet flat," she instructed. "Back against the chair. Please do not speak while the cuff is measuring."
The patient obeyed.
Kitty wrapped the cuff around her arm.
Her movements remained careful.
Her eyes did not.
They returned to the intake table whenever June spoke to me.
NS noticed.
"You should watch the gauge," he said quietly.
Kitty kept her attention on the patient.
"You should watch the oximeter."
"I am."
"Then we are both doing our jobs."
NC wrote down the blood pressure.
"If both of you could stop monitoring the opposite side of the room, this station might become medically useful."
Neither answered.
The patient looked at NC.
"Are they always like this?"
"Today is one of their calmer days."
At the records table, Jihye found seventeen complaints from three eastern neighborhoods reporting dizziness, nausea, or a metallic taste in drinking water.
She did not photograph the pages.
She copied only the totals onto the observation sheet.
"All within nine days," she said.
TZ checked the dates.
"The municipal delivery schedule changed nine days ago."
Nurse May closed the cabinet beside them.
"The regular reservoirs are low. Temporary tankers have been covering several wards. We sent water samples to Yandong."
"Did the laboratory return anything?" Jihye asked.
"Not yet."
"Which company operates the tankers?"
"The city assigned them. The name changes depending on which document you read."
TZ looked at Jihye.
"Supply disruption can change taste. Old tanks, cleaning agents, mineral buildup."
"I know."
"Then write that as a possible explanation."
"I am writing what patients reported."
"Without context, it looks more alarming than it is."
"Without results, you do not know how alarming it is."
Their voices remained quiet.
The disagreement did not.
NS approached during the next patient change.
TZ showed him the observation sheet.
"There is no confirmed contamination," NS said.
Jihye capped her pen.
"Nobody said there was."
"You connected it to the tanker we saw yesterday."
"I asked whether it was the same tanker."
"Based on a bent ladder."
"Based on observation. That is why we are here."
June had come to collect a new stack of forms.
She looked over Jihye's notes.
"NS is right about one thing. We do not have laboratory results."
Kitty placed a completed vital-sign sheet on the table.
"That is why she asked whether they arrived."
Cherry entered from the waiting room.
"Are we fighting over water now? I need to know which side has chairs."
"There are no sides," Anna said from behind her.
JP appeared in the doorway.
"I joined that faction yesterday. Membership has become complicated."
Mr. Kim took the observation sheet from Jihye.
He read it once.
"Record what you observe," he said. "Do not invent what you cannot prove. But do not erase something because its explanation is inconvenient."
NS said nothing.
Neither did I.
We heard different instructions inside the same sentence.
The power failed at 11:36.
The overhead fan stopped.
The room became quiet enough to hear the market outside.
Then the backup battery activated and every machine at the vital-sign station sounded at once.
One electronic alarm became an ambulance siren.
The white clinic wall tilted.
Red light moved across broken glass.
Someone was knocking on a window above me.
No.
Below me.
The ceiling had become the road again.
"XH."
June's voice reached me from far away.
Then Anna touched my wrist.
The clinic returned to its proper position.
I was standing beside the intake table with a form in my hand.
The paper had folded beneath my grip.
"What happened?" Anna asked.
"Nothing."
June watched my face.
For one second, her anger disappeared.
"You stopped responding."
"The alarm surprised me."
"You have heard medical alarms before."
"Not all at once."
Across the room, Kitty had already started toward us.
NS saw her move.
The electricity returned.
The overhead fan resumed rotating.
Kitty stopped beside the records table instead.
Publicly, she had no reason to come closer.
Her phone appeared in her hand.
Mine vibrated beneath the table.
KITTY: ARE YOU OKAY?
I typed without looking at her.
XH: YES.
The reply arrived immediately.
KITTY: STOP USING THAT WORD.
Outside, wind struck the clinic windows.
The eastern ridge disappeared behind sudden rain.
Sunlight remained across the western market.
Jihye opened her weather application.
"Still no rain," she said.
Nobody laughed.
By noon, JP had reorganized the waiting room into a fictional kingdom.
Patients with blue cards belonged to the River Province. Green cards represented the Mountain Province. Children under ten were appointed royal inspectors and allowed to report anyone who entered the wrong line.
It should not have worked.
It worked better than the clinic's numbered tickets.
Bunny distributed health pamphlets while addressing every child as "Inspector."
Cherry stood near the entrance and prevented three adults from accidentally joining the medication queue.
For the first time that morning, JP looked useful without needing to pretend usefulness was a joke.
An eight-year-old girl handed him a blue card.
"Are you the king?" she asked.
JP placed one hand across his chest.
"Finally, someone recognizes the qualifications."
The girl pointed toward Cherry.
"She said you are the clown."
"Every king requires an opposition party."
Cherry bowed.
"Long live accountability."
Even TZ laughed from the records table.
JP heard him.
His own laughter arrived half a second late.
We returned to the training house after three.
The rain had crossed the valley without reaching the road beneath us.
Wet roofs covered the eastern neighborhoods. The market pavement remained dry.
Ms. Nway waited in the courtyard beside several bundles of bamboo and paper.
"Before you rest," she said, "the balloon artisans would like to introduce your festival project."
JP looked toward the stairs.
"Rest was visible."
"It will remain there," Mr. Kim said.
The artisans had constructed a circular frame beneath the dining roof. Colored paper covered one side, but the design remained unfinished.
Two birds faced each other across a painted moon.
One wore a gold crown.
The other carried a narrow black mark across one wing, shaped like a blade.
JP moved closer.
"Which one is the hero?"
Ms. Nway smiled.
"That depends on who tells the story."
She pointed to the crowned bird.
"The old valley tale calls this the King of the Sky. It carried daylight across the mountains and demanded that every smaller bird fly beneath it."
Her finger moved toward the dark-winged bird.
"This one was born without a name. It learned to fly through the King's fire. Some called it the King's Shadow. Others called it the King-Slayer."
Bunny examined the unfinished painting.
"Did it kill the king?"
"In some versions."
"What happens in the others?" Anna asked.
"The King tears away its wings."
The courtyard became quieter.
Cherry folded her arms.
"Those are both bad endings."
"The story says they can cross the same sky only once," Ms. Nway continued. "Before morning, one must descend. A king and the one created to end him cannot remain above the valley together."
JP looked at the two birds.
"What if they both land?"
"Then neither becomes a legend."
"That sounds healthier."
"Stories rarely reward healthy decisions."
NS studied the crowned bird.
"Legends like this justify succession. Someone wins, then tells everyone the sky chose them."
I looked at the dark-winged bird.
"Or they warn what happens when one person believes the whole sky belongs to him."
NS turned toward me.
"The second bird still wants the same sky."
"Wanting freedom and wanting a throne are not the same thing."
"They become the same when someone wins."
June stood beside him.
"History remembers winners because they are the ones left to speak."
Kitty remained beside me.
"Or because the losers are not allowed to."
The wind entered the courtyard.
Both unfinished birds lifted against their strings.
For several seconds, the painted moon stretched between them.
Mr. Kim took off his glasses.
"It is a paper balloon, not a constitutional debate."
JP raised his hand.
"Can it be both?"
"Not for academic credit."
The tension broke, but it did not disappear.
Ms. Nway distributed small squares of pale paper.
"On the third evening, these will be placed inside the balloon before release. Write one wish. You do not need to show anyone."
Cherry held hers toward the light.
"Does the wish have a word limit?"
"The balloon must still fly."
Bunny began writing immediately.
Anna folded hers into her pocket.
Jihye wrote the date in one corner before considering the rest.
June covered her paper with one hand.
NS did not take out a pen.
Kitty looked at me, then lowered her eyes to the blank square in her palm.
JP opened his diary.
TZ watched him from the other side of the frame.
I placed my paper between two pages of my notebook.
It rested beside the medical-evaluation form from the campus clinic.
Both pages were blank where I wanted an explanation.
JP's Diary
Today, we measured blood pressure, pulse, temperature, oxygen, pain, water complaints, and the exact number of minutes XH could work beside June before everyone became strange.
The clinic had machines for all of those except the final one.
Mountain Valley also has a king and a king-slayer.
Apparently, they cannot share one sky.
This seems inefficient. If I were king, I would appoint the king-slayer to another department and avoid the entire tragedy.
That is a joke.
The page knows which part is not.
That evening, the blank wish remained inside my notebook.
I tried to write three times.
Each time, my pen stopped above the paper.
Outside, the artisans hung the unfinished balloon beneath the courtyard roof. The King and the King-Slayer faced each other across their paper moon.
Another sound like thunder crossed the clear valley.
The lights flickered.
For one second, both birds disappeared.
When the light returned, they were still there.
So was the blank page beneath my hand.
I had not written a wish.
That did not mean I did not know it.
Some wishes became frightening the moment they were given words.