“You tied it just now?” Seorin asked.
Doun shook his head.
“Three months ago. They wanted the line kept working temporarily, before the equipment was removed.”
The blue tie did not lock the cabinet. It secured a loose cable to the handle beside it. Its end had been folded twice and tucked inward, an unusual finish.
“Have you touched it?”
“Not yet.”
“Leave it.”
She looked at him.
“Wait. Wrong question. Are you certain this is the knot you tied?”
He studied the cabinet again.
“I have a habit of tying them that way. I can’t know it’s the same tie.”
He corrected his answer. She made the same correction in her notes. Similar to Doun’s tying method. Not proof of the same person tying it.
“But you did work here?”
“Yes. Through the company. Kept this camera line working through to the office. There wasn’t a delay device.”
She looked again at 780. She could not date the writing. The ink was dry; comparing it with surrounding dust would not establish a precise day.
“Do you have work records?”
“Job sheet in the car. Request messages too.”
“Keep them. Don’t delete anything. We can compare dates first.”
He pressed his lips together. He seemed about to add something. She did not hurry him.
Yunjae called from the stairs.
“Both of you, back to the office. We’re restricting this area.”
Before he put up the tape, Seorin stepped back and photographed the entire space, copying the file times into her paper notes.
Taking many photographs and knowing what you had photographed were different things.
Paramedics had arrived on the ground floor. Baek Haeun sat on a folding chair with her ankle supported, envelope on her lap.
“Can you go to hospital?” Seorin asked.
Haeun nodded.
“Just this first.”
She removed one photograph, holding its edges in both hands rather than passing it over. A group outside the residence on an overcast day: perhaps fifteen people around a flower bed. Above their heads was a sign different from today’s.
EUNDAM BLOCK 3.
“It wasn’t the west wing. It was Block 3 when my mother lived here.”
“Your mother was a resident?”
“Yes. She lives elsewhere now. There are names of people who’ve died, and living people whose departure dates are wrong.”
Seorin did not examine the faces closely. The people in the picture had not given her permission.
“You can submit what you choose to the relevant authorities. I don’t need to receive everything.”
Haeun’s hands lowered a little.
“Then who will look?”
“Today, being trapped will be recorded first. The photographs and registers need a separate conversation where you can explain them. Keep your originals when you make copies.”
Haeun closed the envelope.
Seorin wrote down her name and a company contact again, a number answered after office hours. This time she knew who would be reading it.
Haeun slid the paper into the envelope without folding it. The bill bearing an address and the paper bearing a name went into one place. To someone else, odds and ends. To her, perhaps a way back.
“I know I made things worse by coming in where I shouldn’t,” she said while waiting for the paramedics.
“Coming alone was dangerous. If someone knew you were inside and fastened it from outside, that was their action.”
“They’ll all say I came back again.”
“Ask them to record ‘came back again’ and ‘was trapped’ separately today.”
Seorin decided to remember the expression that briefly crossed her face. Too guarded to name relief. Too little had been done to call it gratitude. Seeing an expression did not entitle Seorin to decide the thoughts behind it. That was another order she needed to keep today.
When the paramedics took Haeun out, the building suddenly seemed larger.
The space one person left felt bigger than a room.
On the office monitor, Haeun still sat against the wall.
Screen time: 18:59.
Seorin’s phone: 19:12.
After the living woman had left, the woman on the screen was still waiting to be rescued.
Gijun looked between monitor and doorway.
“Shouldn’t we switch that off?”
“Why?”
“Feels wrong.”
It felt wrong to Seorin too. That did not make her want to turn off something they could verify.
“Leave it until the rescue appears. We’ll show the responder.”
Yunjae entered the office. He photographed the display beside her phone and told them not to interfere with the power. He would include the delayed feed in his handover to the additional personnel.
“To test the delay, someone has to go back in?” she asked.
“No going alone. I’ll accompany you to the doorway.”
At the connecting landing, she wrote TEST 19:14 on prepared paper. Yunjae watched his phone and called the change of seconds.
She held the paper toward the camera for ten seconds, then flashed her torch three times. They recorded when the test ended too. It needed to be simple enough for another person to understand later.
Back at the office, Doun was waiting without sitting down.
“May I fetch the job sheet?”
Yunjae checked where the car was and asked a staff member to accompany him. Doun held his keys, then put them back in his pocket. He seemed to be showing he would not move about alone, even without being told.
Seorin examined the equipment layout on the wall.
1. East-wing entrance.
2. Main gate.
3. Storehouse.
4. West wing, outside 214.
Tape marks along the bottom showed where another sheet had been removed. Whether someone had neglected to replace an old layout or deliberately left it there, the result was the same. People in the office would believe a different room was 214.
She asked Gijun who had put it up.
“Been there for years.”
“Three months ago too?”
“Not sure about then.”
“This part used to be called Block 3?”
He looked at her.
“Who says?”
“It’s in an old photograph.”
“Just a change of name. Everyone calls it the west wing.”
She photographed the layout without removing it. Changed names made records easy to lose. Search a west-wing register for a Block 3 resident, and the person might cease to exist.
The blue door opened on the monitor.
Torchlight swept the ceiling. Her own hand entered at the bottom of the picture. Haeun rose, then sat again. Doun reached toward her from outside.
Screen time: 19:09.
Current time: 19:22.
Four people stood in the office, watching the same scene.
Seorin remembered what she had said.
Don’t force it.
The silent picture showed none of those words. It could not explain why Haeun had sat down again or Doun had stayed outside.
“Someone could watch that and say she was running away,” Seorin said quietly.
Yunjae looked up from his notes.
“That’s why we take accounts and inspect the scene together.”
Additional staff arrived shortly afterward. He handed over the site conditions and completed rescue. Seorin checked the time. A few minutes remained before thirteen minutes had elapsed since the paper test.
While they waited, Gijun began tidying the entry log.
She raised her palm.
“We agreed to leave it as it was.”
“Just tidying.”
“Please don’t fold today’s page either.”
He withdrew his hand. His expression was displeased, but he left the book.
19:27.
The paper appeared on screen.
TEST 19:14.
Then three torch flashes.
She recorded a result of exactly thirteen minutes. At least now, this channel displayed present light 780 seconds later. A coincidentally incorrect display clock could not explain it.
A staff member at the connecting section called. They had opened the cabinet with Gijun, who held the key. There was a relay device inside, its small display readable from outside.
DELAY: 780 SECONDS.
SETTING CHANGED: TODAY, 17:56.
A photograph arrived. Seorin checked that the original was preserved and compared its time with her notes. Not three months ago, when Doun worked here. Forty-six minutes before her arrival, someone had changed the setting.
“The display alone doesn’t identify who changed it,” said the staff member receiving Yunjae’s handover.
She nodded. Asking the caretaker about a date was different from writing him down as the culprit. They had not checked whether the device’s clock was correct either. She recorded the change time as a displayed value and added that it needed comparison with standard time.
Treat every number as though it shared a clock, and discovering the thirteen minutes would mean nothing.
The staff member would preserve the equipment in place with power maintained. Its effect on other channels and the original storage location belonged to the subsequent investigation. Beside that, Seorin wrote her own remaining work: the difference between the supplied plan and actual wall lengths. That discrepancy existed whoever had touched the device.
“Who was in the office at that time?” she asked.
Instead of answering, Gijun looked at the wall clock.
Still two minutes slow.
Doun returned and laid his job sheet on the desk. Seorin read the cover without touching it. A date three months earlier. The commissioning company. Inventory numbers for two devices.
One matched the device in the transmitted photograph.
“I fitted the relay,” he said. “The delay was off.”
“Earlier, you said there wasn’t a delay device.”
Her voice was level.
“I didn’t know it had that function.”
“Then I’ll record that you didn’t know.”
He closed his eyes and opened them.
She did not reach for the entry log. Instead, she asked the site staff member whether she could photograph today’s page. They checked it together.
Today’s date. Three names. The afternoon clearance contractor’s party entered as two.
She noticed black marks showing at the corner of the next page.
At first she thought writing was visible through thin paper. But the letters were not reversed. It was printing on another sheet beneath the next page.
The staff member asked Gijun to turn it.
Tomorrow’s date appeared.
October 27.
TASK: FINAL SAFETY CHECK.
VERIFIED BY: LEE SEORIN.
She stared beside her own name.
A faint rectangular border surrounded the signature. No pen pressure marked the paper. No hand had reached across from the future. Someone had taken an old signature and put it in tomorrow’s field.
The ordinary method chilled her more.
There was a signature she had not yet made.