The second sheet Doun took out was thinner than the first.
Its folds had worn into pale rectangles. Seorin watched the fingers pressing it flat. They covered the writing, then shifted, as though he had not decided which words should come first.
“I left another temporary line.”
She did not pull up a chair.
“From where to where?”
“The connecting-section camera to the rooftop relay cabinet. They said the inspection feed couldn’t go down when the main line was removed.”
The office clock was a little short of eight. Her phone had passed it. She put only the phone time at the top of her notes.
“Who requested it?”
“The site contact. The name’s in the messages. I don’t know if they still work here.”
He unlocked his phone. The staff member checked again what he intended to show. Doun agreed to share only the work request conversation and attached instructions. A shaking hand did not prove a lie. People correcting a wrong account could shake too.
The attachment listed the camera’s management number. It matched the photograph from the office. Its contract number differed from the first job sheet.
“One job, two sheets?”
“Two jobs. Equipment installation the first day. Sorting out the bypass line the next.”
“Why did you initially say you only kept the line working?”
He closed his mouth. The vibration of vehicles outside stopped, but the answer still took time.
“Because that was the work I’d been authorized to do.”
She wrote his words and left a line empty. Room for what had not been authorized.
“I didn’t put the temporary line on the completion drawing. They said it would be removed later. I had another job lined up.”
“Did you check that it was removed?”
“No.”
The paper touched the desk. His fingers no longer hid the writing. She did not treat that as the whole of a confession. They had established an unreported line and a responsibility he had failed to follow up. Who enabled the delay, and any connection to Haeun’s confinement, remained separate.
Eungyeong was on the phone outside. When Seorin looked toward the door, she ended the call and asked whether she could come in.
“We’re checking two contracts,” Seorin said.
Eungyeong looked at the numbers, then searched a list on her phone. She did not pretend to know long numbers by heart.
“One is equipment installation. The other is maintenance support. Sometimes the same equipment appears under both.”
“Can we have the actual scope of these two jobs, rather than what sometimes happens?”
“I’ll request it now.”
She asked which contractor Doun had worked for. He gave the company and his dispatch number at the time. Rather than describe her expression as she listened, Seorin asked him to repeat the company name. A change of employer and a change of personnel were different things.
A site staff member called. The relay cabinet outside the rooftop water-tank room could be checked from outside. They would photograph only its labels and approach, without opening it or disconnecting cables. Structural safety had to be checked first.
Doun picked up his equipment bag.
“I can show you where it is.”
“Tell us the location. Don’t follow us straight in.”
He secured the bag again and sketched the stairs and rooftop door in a margin. The cabinet sat beneath the eaves outside the water-tank room. Seorin asked whether his line represented the actual cable route.
“Only the route I remember.”
She added a note in another color.
RECALLED ROUTE. NOT YET CHECKED ON SITE.
She went to the rooftop door with the staff member. Doun stayed in the office to organize his original records. She could not neatly divide leaving him there out of suspicion from leaving him with material he needed to sort. At least everyone knew who had moved and who remained.
Her phone kept its signal on the stairs. The weak reception below in the connecting section was not a problem throughout the building. By habit, she covered the glowing screen with her hand. In a dark stairwell, the floor needed to be more visible than her phone.
Wet dust clung outside the rooftop door. Two trails of footprints led in from outside; she could not know who had made them, or when. The staff member photographed them and opened the door.
Wind sounded over its top before they stepped out.
They kept clear of the railing and followed the secured route to the water-tank room. A blue tie showed on the cable bundle beside the cabinet. Its end was folded twice and tucked inward.
Seorin kept her hands down.
“Like Doun’s method.”
The staff member changed the photograph’s angle.
“I’ll record the resemblance.”
Two layers of adhesive marked the cabinet label. The maintenance support contract number was printed on top. Beneath a slightly lifted corner, part of the installation contract’s final digits remained visible.
One device, called by different names.
She did not call that proof of falsification. A label might change when equipment changed hands. They now needed its replacement history. Nor could they yet see whether the unrecorded temporary line entered the cabinet.
Before closing the rooftop door, the staff member called out their access times. Seorin added the standing water and restricted railing approach to her report. Finding a device could not push the building hazards she was employed to inspect out of sight.
Back downstairs, Doun sat holding a paper cup. He had barely touched the water.
She showed him the cabinet photograph.
“The right location?”
“Yes. The tie looks like my method, but that photograph alone can’t establish I tied it.”
Earlier, she had needed to correct her question. This time he supplied the limitation himself.
“Did you test the delay when you ran the temporary line?”
“No. Just checked that we had a picture.”
“You said you didn’t know it had that function.”
“I didn’t read the whole equipment manual. I thought relaying the picture was enough.”
Her pen stopped. A manual skimmed over, a line to be removed later. You did not have to intend deception to leave blanks someone else could use. Leaving those blanks did not mean you had done everything that followed.
The scope sheets Eungyeong requested arrived. She identified the original sender to the staff member and laid her phone on the desk. The installation contract listed two relay devices and cable work. Maintenance support specified CONTINUITY OF SURVEILLANCE BEFORE DEMOLITION.
A second assignment during the same period.
“What exactly does continuity of surveillance mean?” Seorin asked.
Eungyeong looked at Doun, then back at the screen.
“Keeping the video working until the occupied areas were empty, presumably.”
“The reported date of complete vacancy is earlier.”
The sound of turning pages stopped.
Gijun looked down at his register. Doun reached to enlarge the screen, then asked its owner first. Eungyeong nodded.
Maintenance support began four days after the recorded completion of everyone’s relocation.
Seorin did not circle the date in red. An empty building could still need surveillance. The problem was the wording occupied areas, and an attachment that failed to identify them.
“Areas used by whom?”
Gijun answered cautiously.
“People came back for belongings.”
“Were they logged?”
“Not all of them.”
The entry log’s two and three returned to her. She would not dismiss those numbers as one lapse of memory today. Nor could she turn everyone who remained into a secret resident. A visit to collect belongings and continued residence needed separate records.
Doun showed the lower part of the work messages. A request to keep the feed working until the demolition crew arrived. The temporary line was meant to remain only a few days. Demolition had since been postponed twice.
“You didn’t follow up?”
“I asked once. They said still on standby. Then I went to another site.”
Seorin thought of her own incomplete report. Further inspection required could become someone’s excuse to keep postponing it. Leaving a note did not end responsibility.
In her report’s follow-up field, she added a contact and a response deadline. Failing to establish everything tonight did not mean no one needed to take over.
Doun searched for blank paper and pulled an old envelope from his bag. Fuel receipts were inside. He began to turn it over for writing, then asked the staff member for a fresh sheet.
“I’m not sure I can remember it accurately.”
“Write down what you don’t remember too.”
“Changing my story will look worse.”
“Keep the reasons wherever it differs from what you said earlier. Making the accounts match would be more of a problem.”
After saying it, she checked her own notes. Had she put what Doun did and what he might have done on separate lines? The questioner’s paper could be wrong too.
He put the receipts back. A vehicle maintenance date was written on the envelope. A man who remembered the next check for his equipment had failed to check one cable. She could understand the contradiction. Understanding did not excuse it.
He thanked the staff member for the paper. His voice had lost its humor. She did not force a light remark into the gap. Better to leave him time to finish his own sentence.
The staff member organized the contracts’ management numbers, sent materials, and original custodians. Doun asked whether he could give a separate account of the omitted line. He was told to leave the original unchanged and write what he remembered on a new sheet.
He put today’s date on the first line.
He did not backdate it three months.
Gijun turned toward the key board. Someone outside had said it was time to lock the entrance. Rings hung in numerical order.
Seorin opened a photograph taken when they first arrived. Doun had used his phone to compare the clocks. Having agreed to share the original, he checked the file beside her.
The key board appeared, small, at one edge.
The slot empty now had been empty then too.
But the handover register said its key had been returned at 17:00.
Without enlarging the picture, Seorin called Gijun.
“Mr. Nam. Where do you keep returned keys?”
He tightened his hand around the rings he held.
Half a numbered tag protruded from his palm—a tag missing from the board.