Mr. Sixty-Two: Jaeho Gets a New Name as S-62B, but His Real Name Nearly Gives Him Away | NOV-HUM Ep. 5

NOV-HUM · EPISODE 5 OF 25

ACT I · DAY 4 / D-27

Three lines were displayed on the wall terminal in the Hangyeol Funeral Services workroom.
Night Supervisor: Haewon Jeong
Casket-Transfer Support: MORU-17
Operational Asset: S-62B

Jaeho stared at the bottom line for a while. The contract he had signed the day before did not contain the name Jaeho Yoon. Neither did the assignment sheet he had received today. Still, when the blue indicator lit beside his shift start time, something in his chest eased before anything else did. For the first time in eleven months, he had arrived somewhere that had been expecting him.

Haewon Jeong, dressed in a black work vest, ran a finger across the terminal. Beside her stood a humanoid with two joint covers in slightly different colors. MORU-17. The asset marking beside its neck was worn, but its posture remained perfectly precise.

“You know Moru. And this is S-sixty-two-B.”
Haewon finished the full designation, then rolled it around once in her mouth.
“If I have to say that every night, I’m going to be the first one to break down. Sixty-Two. We’ll call you Sixty-Two from now on.”

One of the drivers laughed from behind a box of supplies.
“Shouldn’t you ask the machine if that’s okay?”
“We’re the ones who have to say it. We should be comfortable.”

Haewon turned toward Jaeho.
“Mr. Sixty-Two.”
“Yes.”

Jaeho turned before she had even finished saying the name. All afternoon, he had practiced responding like an old model. Wait a beat. Do not turn the neck first. Move the torso before the eyes. But the instant someone called him, every part of that sequence disappeared.

The workroom went quiet for a moment. Haewon’s mouth curved first.
“That response was practically new-model speed.”
Jaeho forced his stiffening shoulders down.
“That part still works.”

Another brief laugh came from behind the supply boxes. No one examined him any further.

A light beside Moru’s neck came on once.
“Adding ‘Sixty-Two’ as S-62B’s field name in the secondary identification field.”
“Put the ‘Mr.’ in too,” Haewon said. “We don’t call anyone casually in front of the families.”
“Field name updated: Mr. Sixty-Two.”

Jaeho listened as an asset number shortened inside people’s mouths. As S-62B, he had existed inside a contract. As Mr. Sixty-Two, he felt as though he had finally entered the workroom.

Haewon gave him his first assignment. Twelve folding chairs. Two batteries for the memorial-room lights. One bundle of securing straps for the casket cart. Jaeho looked at the worn handles on the boxes and the wheel marks across the floor, then loaded the items used most often along the outside edge of the cart.

“Was that loading order in your deployment data?” Haewon asked.
“At night, if you put the things you’ll need again on the inside, you end up doing the same work twice.”

Jaeho closed his mouth. The answer had gone on too long. Too human.

Haewon did not look suspicious. She simply nodded.
“That old field data is worth something after all. Mr. Sixty-Two, start with the third-floor prep area. Go with Moru.”
“Yes.”

Again, Jaeho answered too quickly. This time no one laughed. The name had been called again, and with it, another piece of work had been handed to him.

---

Only half the memorial-room lights were on in the third-floor preparation corridor. Moru moved ahead at a constant speed with one hand on the cart. When Jaeho came alongside, Moru turned its head exactly fifteen degrees.

“Sixty-Two.”
Jaeho looked up immediately.
“Call response: 0.18 seconds. Faster than the average range for units in S-62B’s class.”
“Isn’t faster better?”
“Conformity to specification is not an efficiency rating.”

Moru’s gaze moved from the back of Jaeho’s neck to his chest. The fake service port sat beneath a synthetic-skin patch. The core inside his vest was transmitting a normal signal. The heart that had nothing to do with that core was still beating at the rate of a man who had just climbed the stairs.

“Exterior surface temperature: 34.6°C. Above the upper limit for standby state.”
“I run a little hot before work.”
“That is not a valid cause of standby temperature increase for S-62B.”
“Old models don’t always live by the manual.”
“Years in service do not authorize deviation from specification.”

Jaeho gave a small laugh. If he did not laugh, he felt as though his breathing would become more obvious.
“Moru, if you check every little thing like that, we’ll be here all night.”
“An unverified deviation becomes a risk input for subsequent tasks.”

Jaeho picked up two folding chairs at once. As a person, the weight would have seemed trivial. Pretending to be a machine made it something he had to think about. He could not let strain show on his face. If his palms became slippery, he could not casually change his grip.

“There is also irregular variation in your voice waveform,” Moru said.
“Old voice module.”
“Recent full-inspection data is insufficient.”

Jaeho’s fingers stopped briefly against one of the chair legs. Moru assigned no meaning to the movement. The indicator beside its neck simply blinked twice.
“Exterior temperature, voice waveform, and call-response deviation will be temporarily classified as legacy-unit variance. Recheck after the next mandatory cooldown cycle.”

Only then did Jaeho set the chairs down.
“Going easy on me because we’re both old models?”
“Leniency is not a classification category. An unverified error is not classified as a defect.”
“That’s going easy on me.”
“It is not.”

Moru offered no further explanation and pushed the cart toward the memorial room. Jaeho watched it from behind and clicked his tongue silently. If the thing knew even a little about reading people, he thought, it would not build a wall at the end of every sentence.

He thought he had fooled Moru. But Moru had not believed him. It had not looked the other way either. It had simply refused to classify an unverified malfunction as a confirmed defect and deferred it to the next check.

Haewon’s voice came from the far end of the corridor.
“Mr. Sixty-Two, put the chairs starting with the second row on the side nearest the deceased.”
“Yes.”

As Jaeho turned, Moru’s indicator lit briefly. Two temporary entries went into the same night log.
A new field name.
And legacy-unit variance.

---

By the time the shift ended, the blackness outside the workroom window had begun to thin. Haewon closed out the night assignment on her terminal and handed Jaeho a paper schedule.
“Pretty smooth for a first night. Same time tomorrow. You and Moru are a team.”

The word tomorrow was placed there so naturally that Jaeho forgot to answer for a moment.
“Confirmed.”

It sounded as though he had borrowed the word from Moru. Haewon smiled and opened the lower compartment of a work cabinet.
“This one’s yours, Mr. Sixty-Two. Charging cable and shift paperwork only. Not that you’d have personal belongings.”

Jaeho was slipping the folded schedule inside his vest when a thin envelope fell to the floor. He had received it at his long-term rental room the day before and put it into his pocket without thinking.

Black print showed across the front.

NOTICE OF LOAN DISBURSEMENT
SECURED BY LONG-TERM RENTAL DEPOSIT

Below it, in larger letters:

TO: JAEHO YOON

Haewon read the name first.
“Jaeho Yoon?”

Jaeho’s hand stopped half a beat late. His body had turned too quickly when someone called him Mr. Sixty-Two. Now, at his own name, it reacted too slowly. Moru’s head moved toward the envelope as well.

“Why is there mail for a person in here?” Haewon asked.

Jaeho did not pick it up. For a moment, he calculated which would look more suspicious—bending down immediately or leaving it there.
“It is presumed to have been caught in the registration-transfer packing materials.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he realized he sounded like Moru. Haewon seemed to hear it too. She looked from Moru to Jaeho.
“One day together and you already talk alike.”

The driver sorting supplies nearby laughed and joined in.
“Don’t tell me Mr. Sixty-Two’s real name is Jaeho Yoon.”

It was an easy joke. That made it harder to escape.

Jaeho cleared his throat.
“There is no function for using a personal name. The voice module is old and does not reliably process long human names at once. Sixty-Two is short, so response accuracy is higher.”
“Then Mr. Sixty-Two it is from now on.”

Haewon said it without much thought, then answered a call on her wrist terminal. As she stepped through the doorway, she looked back.
“If you’re throwing that envelope away, put it in the sorting bin.”
“I will verify whether it is registration documentation before disposal.”

After Haewon disappeared, Jaeho pressed the corner of the envelope with the toe of his shoe. If he picked it up and put it inside the work cabinet, someone might see it again. He would push it underneath for now and take it when he was alone.

The envelope with Jaeho Yoon written on it belonged to him. But that name could not get him into this workplace. The name Sixty-Two did not belong to him. Yet people were already holding a place for him tomorrow under that name.

Haewon’s voice came again from the corridor.
“Mr. Sixty-Two, over here. We need to check your access authorization for tomorrow.”
“Yes.”

Jaeho turned immediately.

At his feet, Jaeho Yoon disappeared into the darkness beneath the work cabinet.