The Algorithm of Spring

34

"It sounds like you know Jun-ho's sister well," she continued. "Tell me what happened to her."

Jun-ho stiffened. "Show her," he said. "It'll make more sense if you see it, rather than us trying to explain."

Min-seo opened a folder of profile screenshots. Maya recognised Yeon-joo from the makgeolli bar, but the images moved backward through time—like a flipbook in reverse. Dozens upon dozens of pictures. A wilder smile. Messier hair. Something closer to joy.

"She was our team lead," Min-seo said, hovering on one image longer than the rest.

"When I say team lead, I mean my team lead," she added, clearly keen to assert herself as the authority on what came next. "She's still at Samsung. Different department now."

"It started small," Jin-woo said. "Just little wardrobe tweaks. Playing around. Then—"

"The personality shifts," Dae-hyun finished. "She was stepping back into herself, but also scanning for something else. New hobbies. New friends. A different tone at work—like she was talking to you but always looking past you, checking to see if there was someone more interesting nearby."

Maya thought of the Beijing message. The fertility warning. "How long did these changes take? From when she started using the app?"

"Three months, tops," Jun-ho said. "That's all it took to... rewrite her personality."

Maya flinched slightly at the phrasing.

"We tried talking to her," Min-seo added. "But by then, she was gone. Said we were paranoid. Jealous. Asked me to help her transfer to a department with more of a 'trajectory.' We barely see her now."

"That's why we need you," Jun-ho said to Maya. "You see both sides—the tech and the art. You notice things we don't."

"You can't treat this like an equation," Maya said, eyes still on one of the earlier photos. "It's not just code. It's about how AI thinks. How it learns. How it evolves. How it..."

She stopped. "If Yeon-joo knew all this, then HarmoniQ hadn't outsmarted her—it had offered her exactly what she wanted most."

"You said she was a coder?"

Min-seo nodded. "One of my best."

"Then she would've known all this. The patterns, the incentives, the loops. But HarmoniQ still got through. Which means it's tapping something deeper."

She looked at Jun-ho. They both knew what she meant—how the app had dug up her own buried history too.

The group fell quiet. Behind the counter, the milk wand let out a long, unbroken hiss.

Later, as the others packed up, Maya still looked unconvinced. Jun-ho pulled her aside.

"Do you really think the government is capable of banning abortion," he asked, "but not designing an app to steer people away from it?"

"That's policy," she said. "This is something else."

"Is it?" he asked, lowering his voice. "Think about it."

"And who's they, exactly?" she asked. "You think the government's manipulating your sister into motherhood with salary bumps and push notifications?" She raised an eyebrow. "They're too busy running the country, Jun-ho."

"Something's off with HarmoniQ, I'll give you that," she added, glancing toward Min-seo. "But your friend over there? She sounds like she's trying to dismantle the deep state."

Her voice softened. "Last night I was spooked. But today... this?" She exhaled sharply. "You're all starting to sound just as affected as the people you're worried about. Talking about personality shifts like they're a defect."

She flicked her head toward Min-seo. "If you put them both in a room and asked me who I'd rather go for a beer with it would be your sister.. Every time."

"'Rewrite her personality,' you said." Maya's tone was flat now. "I saw her a few nights ago. She seemed perfectly fine."

Jun-ho stepped outside, nursing his bruised feelings and pretending to check his device.

Motorcycle engines revved as riders pulled away. Sunlight glanced off their chrome, scattering through the windows—catching dust in the air, splitting from white into a quiet spectrum of colour.

Maya sat at the edge of the table, staring past him through the glass. Her mind raced, connecting the dots: her own interface, built for art; the uncanny patterns in the map; the permissions she'd never granted. It was all there, hiding in plain sight.