Humanity Protection Company

Illustrations: None.

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It was his fourth time taking the civil service exam.

A 100-minute exam with 100 questions.

Even if it was an unfamiliar exam, the skills he had honed over four years did not disappear.

‘First, I need to figure out what kind of exam this is.’

His fingers, drenched in cold sweat, trembled uncontrollably.

Yeonwoo barely managed to pick up the test paper and turn to the next page.

As the front page, which contained instructions, turned over, the back page with the actual questions was revealed.

Yeonwoo intended to quickly skim through and identify the type of questions, but he froze at the first question.

Question 1: A train is speeding towards you. There are four tracks ahead, and you can decide which track the train will take. On each track, the following people are tied up. Which track would you guide the train to?

[A track: You alone.]

[B track: Both of your parents.]

[C track: Five of your friends.]

[D track: One hundred innocent people unrelated to you.]

1: Track A.

2: Track B.

3: Track C.

4: Track D.

A question with no correct answer. A subjective question with answers that vary from person to person.

A question that, if it appeared on the civil service written exam, would cause an uproar.

And a type of question he never imagined facing at this moment.

Yeonwoo screamed internally.

‘How am I supposed to answer this! There isn’t even a correct answer!’

He instinctively gripped the pen tighter, almost tearing the test paper.

Sweat droplets that had formed on his chin dripped onto the crumpled test paper, creating stains.

One drop, two drops, three drops, the stains gradually widened.

During this, the rough sound of pens moving around him could be heard.

Scribble, scratch, tear, squeak.

Yeonwoo’s bloodshot eyes glanced at the other examinees.

They were pale, with their heads buried in the test papers, solving problems.

A frenzy of dancing pens.

‘What is this? Are the questions different? How are they so fast?’

The suspicion lasted only a moment.

Hearing the ticking of the second hand, he checked the clock and saw that ten minutes had already passed.

There were 90 minutes left.

Even solving one per minute wouldn’t be enough time.

‘This isn’t the time to hesitate. I need to solve the problems. I can’t waste any more time.’

Hurriedly returning his gaze to the test paper, Yeonwoo recalled a maxim he had held onto since his college entrance exams.

‘The examiner\'s intention. Right. Understand the intention.’

Yeonwoo’s eyes fixed on the six characters at the top of the test paper.

Human Qualification Exam.

An exam to test one’s humanity, where failure meant turning into a beast. Understanding this meaning made the intention clear.

‘An exam to judge humanity. I just need to choose the most humane answer.’

He roughly grasped the context. His bloodshot eyes moved rapidly.

He interpreted the question quickly but carefully and chose one of the four answers.

It wasn’t easy.

His pen hovered over the four choices multiple times.

‘Track A? Sacrificing myself to save 107 people. Plus, it’s self-sacrificial, so Track A is the most humane. Or, a humanly selfish choice? Sacrificing 100 strangers for myself?’

He narrowed it down to 1 and 4 emotionally, but he couldn’t choose recklessly.

His pen, poised a few centimeters above the test paper, trembled and wouldn’t move.

If he got it wrong, this single question could disqualify him from humanity and turn him into a beast.

What was at stake was not just a civil service job but his human dignity.

‘What should I do?’

Yeonwoo closed his eyes tightly.

The sentences he had memorized just before the exam were completely erased.

Instead, the disheveled face he saw in the mirror that morning, his parents’ faces turned white with age, and the faintly remembered faces of his friends from long ago came to mind.

‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want my family and friends to die either. I’d rather a hundred strangers die.’

This was his honest feeling in front of this extreme situation.

‘I am human. The choice my heart makes is the most humane answer. If I fail, it means I was never truly human in the first place, so...’

Like pulling a trigger, like giving up impulsively, he slammed the pen down and marked the answer with a V.

4: Track D.

“Hoooo.”

After solving just one problem, he felt as exhausted as if he had completed a sprint. He struggled to lift his limp hand and wiped the sweat drenching his face.

Maybe because he had relaxed a little, the world that had narrowed to the single problem on the test paper widened again, and he noticed the various figures in the exam hall.

A man shaking his legs incessantly was gnawing on a pen cap.

“Hu, huuuu. Huuu.”

Someone was covering their mouth with one hand, sobbing and shedding tears.

Another was drenched in sweat, as if they had been caught in a sudden downpour.

“Cough, cough. Hem. Hemhem.”

Someone was coughing in spasms, like having a seizure.

Despite this, the desperate scribbling of pens filled the exam hall with a cacophony of sounds.

The various noises he had barely registered due to his near-panic state now poured into his ears, disrupting his focus.

‘It’s too noisy.’

Frowning, Yeonwoo looked for the assistant supervisor.

But the assistant supervisor had collapsed at the back of the classroom, leaning against a locker.

He sat with his arms around his knees, looking dazed and unlikely to be of any help.

Forcing himself to focus on the test paper, Yeonwoo reminded himself.

‘Focus, focus. There’s not even enough time to solve the problems.’

A quick glance at his wristwatch showed that five more minutes had passed.

Now, only 85 minutes remained, and there were 99 questions left.

The horrifying thought of failing because he didn’t mark the answers in time flashed through his mind.

Even the thought sent a shiver down his spine.

‘No, I need to read quickly and solve quickly.’

Rustle— rustle—

Flipping through the test paper roughly, he saw that all the problems were similar to the first one.

Subjective questions asking for personal opinions, without correct answers.

This meant that solving the problems wouldn’t take much time.

He just needed to choose the honest answer that immediately came to mind.

Returning to the test paper, Yeonwoo picked up his pen to answer the second question.

Bang!

A loud noise that he couldn’t ignore erupted. A trembling voice followed.

“This is filming, right? A hidden camera prank? Hey! You’re all in on this! A person can’t turn into a beast!”

It was the long-time exam taker who had been pointing at the supervisor.

He stood up, hitting the desk with both hands, pointing everywhere with dilated pupils, and then locked eyes with the equally haggard examinees.

He hesitated, then suddenly bent down and started shoving the test paper and pen into the pockets of his tracksuit pants.

“This can’t be real. You insane people. I won’t let this slide. On the day someone stakes their life on this exam, you pull this kind of stunt. This won’t end well for you. Watch.”

His hands, reddened from hitting the desk, moved busily.

Despite having a bag, he clumsily shoved the large test paper into his pants pocket.

Leaving his bag hanging on the side of his desk, he rushed to the back door of the classroom.

“I won’t forgive this prank.”

Without glancing at the assistant supervisor collapsed by the lockers, he put his hand on the sliding door.

The sound of pens moving stopped slowly.

As the door creaked open, the examinees turned their heads.

Multiple pairs of eyes focused on the long-time exam taker.

Their gazes were a mix of faint hope, disbelief, expectation, and fear, along with low murmurs.

“Can he really leave? Really?”

“Please.”

“Yeah, this must be a bad prank. Like one of those viral YouTube videos.”

Seeing the heads turned back, the long-time exam taker gritted his teeth with a pale face.

"It doesn’t matter. I’m going home."

Bang!

The long-time exam taker pulled the sliding door all the way open and stepped out into the hallway.

One step, two steps, three steps, and then four steps.

He walked to the middle of the hallway without any incident.

Hope appeared on the faces of the pale examinees, and they unconsciously began to rise from their seats.

‘That’s...’

Yeonwoo noticed the answer sheet flipped over on the edge of the long-time exam taker’s desk.

Though he couldn’t see it clearly, he could make out the darkly marked spots showing through the back of the answer sheet.

‘He finished all the questions? And even completed the marking? Then why did he make such a fuss and leave? Could it be...’

Yeonwoo looked around the exam hall.

Seeing the long-time exam taker leave safely, many other examinees were preparing to follow suit.

They hadn’t even finished solving the problems.

Thirteen of them, about a third of the examinees in the hall, began packing their bags.

A quick glance revealed that their answer sheets weren’t even marked.

A chill ran up Yeonwoo’s spine.

‘He wanted the others to leave without properly solving the questions. The reason could be...’

Because the Human Qualification Exam might be graded on a curve.

Because they didn’t know how many would be selected as passers.

To eliminate competitors who might be more human than him.

With that realization, fear overwhelmed him.

‘If it’s graded on a curve. If only one person can pass. If the competition is as fierce as the civil service exam. What will happen?’

He thought he just had to choose the most honest answers.

But what if his competitors are more human than him?

What if his humanity score is lower than theirs and he becomes a beast?

Watching the people who had stood up, the examinees competing for the position of a human, Yeonwoo thought without realizing it.

‘Please, just leave.’

As if in response to his desperate wish, the speaker crackled.