“Which door did you open?”
Seorin asked for the door before the names.
Gijun looked beyond the office. A contractor’s employee stood in the corridor; at the main entrance, staff were counting people leaving work. He lowered his voice.
“The side door. And the inner storage compartment. Not the blue door’s latch.”
“You let people sleep in the compartment?”
“They kept belongings there. They waited in the waiting room until somewhere was settled.”
She unfolded the hand map marked STAFF WAITING AREA. The room now called a storehouse had a changed door swing absent from its plans. If he was right, more than its name had survived from before.
Yunjae asked, “Is anyone still there today?”
“The people I know have gone.”
“Start with when you last checked personally.”
Gijun opened his mouth, then stopped. He did not say everyone as he had until yesterday. He separated the two he had called from earlier departures: locations personally checked, others known by telephone, people not reached for days.
Seorin made different columns. There might be people he did not know. Assuming the building empty once one man disclosed every name he had hidden would carry the same danger.
They cleared a small consultation space outside the office. Staff first established whom he would call and whether others could listen. Seorin would hear only what she needed for rescue locations and routes. Unrelated personal history stayed separate.
The first contact was the support worker who had helped with the move. Yunjae checked affiliation and contact route again through the organization’s public service channel. A name in Gijun’s phone was insufficient to close a safety handover.
Waiting, Seorin noticed a small paper envelope behind the old heater below the window. Her hand could have reached it. She resisted finding more things simply because she could, reporting only its location.
After affiliation was checked, the support worker explained within the agreed scope. Two people reached another temporary lodging yesterday evening. Vehicle and arrival-handover records existed. The current worker also confirmed they were receiving necessary support.
Gijun’s receipt times fell within the movement records’ range.
One receipt did not transport people. Accounts from separate places, joined to a person speaking now, had finally made a route.
The first resident joined by voice alone.
“Is the contractor listening?”
Yunjae introduced the listeners again. No contractor was present. Seorin described her role: checking where the resident had stayed and which doors she used. No decision about names in a public report was being made now.
“I heard that if I stayed, I wouldn’t get relocation support.”
The woman’s voice shook.
“Who said that, and when?” Yunjae asked.
Her account mixed words heard during a contract consultation with something a neighbor had repeated. He recorded directly heard sentences first, separating hearsay. Seorin did not conclude that everyone was on one side. She heard that both accounts had remained the same fear for this woman.
“I said I had nowhere to move to. They said then it couldn’t be completed. After that, I thought it was better not to put my name down.”
Seorin remembered chair marks in the narrow waiting room. People whose relocation could not be marked complete kept moving their chairs as rooms and doors changed.
The woman said Gijun received food through the side door. She was the one who requested a smaller spoon for her hand. She remembered the triangle. On a particular date, she ate dinner in the waiting room; when she went outside afterward, she could not say.
“I liked that they didn’t ask my name when I gave them a ticket. Later that frightened me. Who would say I’d been there?”
Seorin put down her pen. This was the cost missing while she matched symbols and quantities. The method that let someone stay hidden could later make her presence difficult to establish.
“Do you agree to submit this to the responsible organization? A public report could use only a summary hiding identity and location.”
After consulting the support worker, the woman set her limits. Consent did not become unrestricted permission to disclose the entire call. They agreed a contact channel and a summary for her to check. At the end, she corrected one point.
“I didn’t sleep there every night. Please put that in. Some days I went to my younger sibling’s.”
“I will.”
The second resident described his location around the time entered on the October 26 Vacancy Confirmation. He had come for belongings on the lower level, then rested in the room. When the lights went off, someone told him to wait outside its door. He did not remember the exact minute.
He could provide relevant portions of his own transit-card history and messages with support staff. Seorin did not ask him to send everything to her. She explained voluntary submission through the preservation contact.
The 15:00 ZERO declaration was no longer only about internal inspection methods. Someone said he had been in the building around then, with outside material available for comparison. The actual minutes of his stay would need that material.
When the call ended, Gijun opened his hand. The receipt had pressed lines into his palm.
“They would have slept on the street if I’d sent them out.”
“So you wrote that nobody was there?”
He lowered his head.
“If I listed them, I thought they’d be told to leave sooner. Say it was belongings, and perhaps they’d wait a few days.”
“What if rescuers believed there were only belongings?”
He could not answer. Seorin did not drive into the silence. Beginning to substantiate a wish to protect people and judging the method safe were different things.
Yunjae listed further contacts necessary for current risk checks. Consenting residents would receive the agency’s service channel directly, preventing Gijun from monopolizing contact. They needed to be able to seek help without an intermediary.
Only then did he draw a thin envelope from beneath the drawer. Designated staff alone saw personal contacts. Seorin saw item numbers and door operation: dates the side door opened at night, umbrella signs on rainy days, last vehicle times.
Inside lay a copy of the duplicate-key handover note.
LOSS-RESPONSE DUPLICATE. USE FOR RETURNING PERSONAL BELONGINGS. RECORD IN OPERATIONS REGISTER.
Gijun had not followed the last line.
The former worker’s note still needed authentication. Parts of his stated purpose matched residents’ accounts and receipt traces, however. Hiding a duplicate did not make it the key that imprisoned Haeun. The whereabouts of the original Common Key 04 remained a separate question.
Wheels stopped outside.
Seorin raised her head. Empty boxes rode a small trolley. A worker asked whether he could cross the passage. She covered the envelope so names would not remain visible as someone passed. She did not drive him away as though he were a culprit.
When the trolley was gone, Gijun spoke softly.
“I thought Haeun was there for belongings that night too. Assuming that first was my mistake.”
“Did you see who lowered the latch?”
“No.”
“Did you ever tell anyone to lock that door?”
He said no. She did not record his answer as another person’s confirmation. Some evidence supported a protective purpose; responsibility for Haeun’s confinement remained unresolved. Neither could turn both matters together into guilt or innocence.
Evening light stretched across the office glass. Doun brought a revised route sheet. It reflected residents’ waiting locations without names or current lodgings. Unlike the previous plan, it did not merely choose an order convenient for visitors. Unchecked areas and reasons they remained inaccessible came first.
Seorin showed Gijun.
“A door admitting people can’t be known to just one person anymore. Nor can the person they should contact about danger.”
He touched the side-door symbol briefly.
“I thought keeping them from getting in without me was protecting them.”
“We’ll make a way for them to contact help themselves.”
Yunjae linked designated access staff to temporary-support contacts. This did not authorize continued residence in the building. It supported checking current locations and keeping people from returning to danger. For the first time that day, Seorin saw a choice added beyond the confirmation form.
Her company conclusion changed too. A blank marked REMAINING OCCUPANTS UNKNOWN was insufficient. People could now explain use and movement after the completion report; responsible staff would check their safety. Completing that handover, rather than forcing a completion checkbox, became today’s work.
After hearing the summary, Eungyeong said she would review the current contract’s scope.
“Extended waiting creates other responsibilities. It would be difficult if this went down as our permitting residence.”
“We aren’t deciding who authorized it today. First, establish who was there and what support is needed.”
Eungyeong nodded. Whether agreement or preparation for another explanation, Seorin could not tell. She asked how far the received preservation request had been passed on, establishing a responsible contact for the answer.
Doun stopped a worker about to switch off the corridor lights. A designated staff member had not come out. One remained on the access board. The worker withdrew his hand and waited. Seorin kept her papers open until that person’s footsteps climbed the stairs.
Before departure checks, Yunjae went outside to align the newly connected support service with the current safety-check scope. Doun reopened his work record. Seorin saw him filling no gaps with dates pretending to belong to the past.
“I keep thinking about saying I didn’t know it had a delay.”
“Your statement stands. Have you established something new?”
“Not reading the manual was my responsibility. But the supply list I received only said relay. Today I asked for a separate equipment specification.”
Between his earlier work and the actual equipment specifications lay paper they had not seen.
His phone sounded.
The relevant details belonged to a separate supply order, not the site submission. The contractor could provide them after checking stored records tomorrow. Only part of the item name showed in the attachment preview:
VIDEO CONTINUITY SUPPORT. DELAY FUNCTION INCLUDED.
And in the field for acknowledgment of receipt was Doun’s name.