Pāhonoa te oro

The men waiting in the corridor outside could feel it through the wall—the specific silence of a man deciding things that could not be undecided. Min-ho called Director Baek first. Then Chairman Lim. Then three men whose numbers he kept in a separate, encrypted phone he'd had to borrow from a stranger. One by one, the calls rang out. Not voicemail—just silence, then a flat, automated rejection. The kind that means the block was deliberate. By midnight, he had cycled through eighteen names. Eight