It was the evening before the Lunar New Year holiday.

"Ugh, I'm stuffed."

Jeong Daeun rolled over on the bed. She was in baggy gray sweats and fuzzy bed socks.

The clothes she'd worn down from Seoul had long since been tossed over the back of a chair.

She'd helped herself to the meat patties and pollock jeon her mom had fried, and downed two whole bowls of the makgeolli her father poured her.

After all that greasy food, the nutty, tangy makgeolli had been the perfect thing to wash it down.

The trip home had been worth it. One more bite on that toasty heated floor and she'd have fallen asleep right there, so she'd fled to her room.

"Daeun-a! Want me to peel you an apple?"

"I seriously can't eat another thing!"

Jeong Daeun yelled back through the door. Then she tucked a pillow under her chest and picked up her phone.

The news before a holiday was mostly the same every year.

Traffic jams on the roads out of the city. Holiday food prices. Politicians making the rounds of the markets and wishing everyone a happy New Year.

Even reporters got to take a break when it was time for one.

She'd planned to binge the dramas she'd fallen behind on while the articles she'd written in advance went up on their timers.

That was when an unfamiliar headline popped up at the bottom of the screen.

"What's this?"

Jeong Daeun's finger stopped. The article came from a tiny internet outlet.

The headline didn't bother being subtle.

["Blowing the Whistle on Boneless Hyundo Apartments" …Former Site Engineer Exposes Missing Rebar]

"Boneless?"

The word hooked her, and Jeong Daeun tapped the screen.

The story concerned a massive Hyundo Construction apartment project in Incheon, about four thousand units sold off-plan.

Construction was seventy percent complete.

The article carried a tip from a former site engineer who said he'd worked on that site.

He claimed that some structural sections had about thirty percent less rebar than the design called for.

Attached photos put the site, rebar exposed, side by side…