Only three names appeared in the entry log.
Lee Seorin. Gwak Doun. Nam Gijun.
But a fourth person stood in the corridor on the monitor.
Seorin put down her pen. A woman in gray work clothes and trainers, head bowed, back against the wall. Her face was hidden.
“Mr. Nam. Who’s still in the west wing?”
The caretaker turned from the key board.
“It’s empty. I checked yesterday.”
“There’s someone on the screen now.”
Three keys chimed in his hand. As he came to look, the woman raised her right hand and knocked on a door.
Once. A pause. Twice.
Seorin took her phone from her work bag.
FORMER EUNDAM RESIDENCE. PRE-DEMOLITION RESIDUAL HAZARD INSPECTION.
That was the entire assignment heading. Check for unstable floors, remaining gas, anyone still inside. Tick NO OCCUPANTS REMAIN in the handover form’s final field, and the job was done.
She was glad she had left it blank.
“Do you know her?”
“Not sure. The west wing’s locked.”
Gijun pointed to a sticker beneath the picture.
WEST WING, SECOND FLOOR. OUTSIDE ROOM 214.
It was 6:47 in the evening. The office wall clock said 6:45. Seorin decided not to begin by trusting the wall clock.
“Doun. Can we reach the second floor by the outside fire stairs?”
Gwak Doun, setting down an equipment case, looked out the window.
“We can climb them, but I’d check the railing first. Looks fine in a photograph. Half those bolts aren’t seated.”
“Inside stairs, then. Mr. Nam, stay here. Call if she moves.”
He did not answer. He was watching the picture’s lower right corner rather than the woman.
Seorin looked too.
18:34:00.
Her phone had just changed to 18:47:00.
Thirteen minutes.
“Is this a recording?”
“It’s set to live.”
Gijun moved the mouse. LIVE appeared in the corner. She watched the four letters, then opened her phone camera. Trying to put the monitor and phone time into a single photograph, she realized she could not photograph both with the phone itself. She asked Doun.
“Please film my phone and this screen together. Keep the footage as it is. No editing.”
He used his own phone.
“Could just be a wrong clock.”
“Yes. That’s what I want to check.”
She opened the office window. Outside were the east-wing entrance and its round camera. Channel 1 showed that same entrance.
She flashed her torch three times.
Channel 1 brightened three times at once.
“This one’s current.”
“So only Channel 4 is late.”
“We don’t know yet whether it’s the clock or the picture.”
Doun nodded. He did not rush to force an answer. She liked that.
The woman on the screen shifted sideways. Her shoulder slid down the door. She sank onto the floor and tapped her knee with a white envelope.
Seorin signaled for the filming to continue.
“We find her first. We don’t know if she’s still inside, but we can’t ignore it.”
Gijun offered a key.
“214 sticks. Don’t push. Lift, then pull.”
“It looks as though the door on the video opens inward.”
“What?”
“We’ll check.”
The key carried a yellowed tag. 214. Beneath the final digit lay a rectangular mark, as though another label had been peeled away.
A notice beside the office door was fixed with new tape.
SAFETY INSPECTION: LEE SEORIN. EXPECTED VISIT 18:30–19:30.
She checked the company’s main number beneath her name, rather than a personal number. It matched the work notice sent yesterday. Her visit, at least, was expected.
“You were told the inspection includes anyone still here?”
“Everyone’s gone. Just a few things left.”
He folded and unfolded the corner of the entry log as he answered.
“People come back for things. Did anyone collect a key today?”
“The clearance contractor came this afternoon.”
“How many people?”
“Two. No, two vehicles. Three people, perhaps.”
She stopped pressing. Pressure would not improve memory. Instead, she asked him to preserve the afternoon entry records too.
Doun began to push the wedge holding the entrance door farther under it, then stopped.
“Fire door.”
He picked up the wedge and put it on the desk. Seorin nodded. Keeping a door conveniently open and securing a way out were different tasks.
“Check we can open our return route from inside as we go.”
“I don’t collect locked-door experiences either.”
The answer was light. He tested the handle from both sides.
She pressed the side pocket of her bag. Whistle, spare batteries, paper floor plan. The habit dated from a site where she had entered relying on a phone and lost signal and battery together.
That report had said INSPECTION COMPLETE too.
She had written it.
No person had been missed that day. Still, a colleague’s voice calling her name for twenty minutes behind a locked basement door remained attached to the word complete.
She copied the office phone number onto the plan.
This time, the person on the screen came first.
Beyond the office, the building became quiet. One of three fluorescent tubes in the corridor was lit. Her torch revealed sand and wet shoeprints. Neither hers nor Doun’s. They led toward the stairs and ended where the floor dried.
“Caretaker says he’s been here the whole time?” Doun asked.
“He says so.”
“Saying it and being here are different things.”
She placed a folding ruler beside a print and photographed it without answering. Size and direction were things memory always got wrong later.
He did not laugh after the remark.
She tightened her helmet strap, leaving two fingers’ space. An uncertain person’s location called for urgency. A head injury adding another person to rescue did not.
“If we hear something, call to each other first. No checking alone.”
“Understood. Lose you and I don’t get today’s driving fee.”
“When we get back, I’ll correct your departure time first.”
Their voices echoed once in the stairwell. Then only soles pushing sand remained.
A vacancy checklist hung at the second-floor landing. Rooms 209 through 218 carried identical circles. Inspection time: 15:00. Signature: Nam Gijun.
Outside 214, Seorin lowered her torch.
Dust ran beneath the door, a thin gray line that even a small opening would break. No footprints. Dust lay evenly where a seated woman’s heels or knees should have brushed it.
“Is anyone there?”
She knocked. No answer.
Doun checked the corridor’s end. She could not tell whether he was looking for a way out or someone coming in.
The key turned smoothly. She lifted the handle and pulled. The door opened outward.
Empty.
Two rectangular stains marked where furniture had stood. The window was bolted. Short wires hung from the ceiling. There was nowhere for a person to hide.
Without entering, she photographed frame and floor.
“Right room?” Doun asked.
She called the office.
“The door’s open. Can you see us?”
Gijun breathed into the receiver.
“No.”
“The woman?”
“Still there.”
She moved the torch up and down twice. If the camera was filming her and only its clock was wrong, that light should appear now.
“No torchlight either?”
“None.”
“Keep recording. We arrived at 18:52. Watch until 19:05 without looking away.”
As she ended the call, Doun pointed overhead.
“Camera’s there.”
A black dome. She opened her palm toward its lens. On the monitor, nothing would change yet.
“Delayed footage, or a different location,” she said.
“Could be both.”
He indicated the threshold with his toe. Three horizontal grooves crossed the metal, worn as though by rain.
She enlarged a photograph of the monitor. In front of the woman’s trainers, the threshold had been smooth, with a black rubber strip across its center. A silver ventilation grille sat low in the door.
Room 214 had no grille.
“Somewhere else.”
Once she said it, the wind seemed louder.
The corridor window was closed. So was the stairwell fire door. Yet air seemed to be coming from a wall rather than a doorway.
She unfolded the plan. A rectangular west wing. A rectangular east wing. Between them, a thick black line labeled EXISTING STRUCTURE. NO ACCESS.
Doun pressed the sheet flat.
“When did you get this?”
“This afternoon.”
“Looks like an old drawing printed again.”
He studied the black line and withdrew his hand.
“The floor heights don’t match here. From outside, the west-wing windows sit about half a floor higher.”
She judged the corridor’s length by eye. Shorter than the plan specified.
Before she could measure wall to wall, her phone rang. Gijun.
“Someone just went past on the video.”
“Who?”
“Work clothes. Couldn’t see the face. She held something out to them. They kept going.”
“Screen time?”
“18:42.”
Her phone read 18:55.
Thirteen minutes again.
At 18:42, she had entered the office. Doun had been unloading equipment from the car; Gijun had opened the log. They had not all been together throughout. None had said they had been to that corridor.
She did not mention it. Voice an unverified suspicion first, and every answer afterward might bend to fit it.
“Can you still see her?”
“She’s unfolding the envelope.”
“Read anything written on it.”
A chair scraped beyond the receiver.
After a moment, he said, “There’s a name.”
Seorin leaned against the pale wall. Far away, metal scraped in the rhythm of the woman’s earlier knocking.
Once. A pause. Twice.
“What name?”
Before Gijun answered, Doun turned off his torch. In the dark, she watched him bring his ear close to the wall.
Gijun’s voice came through.
“Lee Seorin.”
The person on the monitor was holding the name of a woman she had never met.