The first woman pulled one chair away after they had placed two together.
“Could we speak together? She remembers dates I don’t.”
Seorin looked at the gap. Separate interviews should prevent either woman from following the other’s account. But speaking alone could frighten someone more.
“You can hear the introduction together. We’ll check what each of you experienced separately. A support worker can stay beside you if you wish.”
The woman agreed and drew her chair closer, without touching the other.
It was October 31, morning, in an outside consultation room run by a support organization, rather than a district office. They had chosen somewhere offering transport and mobility support, without bringing people back to Eundam. Seorin explained her company’s scope: comparing the building’s use history. She could not determine compensation or replace an investigation.
“You don’t have to answer today. That won’t affect support. First we’ll agree how much of what you say can become work material.”
The first woman refused recording. The second permitted it because she kept forgetting her words, but wanted to check a summary before anyone else heard it. Seorin did not circle one answer on a shared consent sheet and apply it to both.
Doun unpacked equipment, then removed the recorder from the first seat. While she read the questions, she could see that no red light was lit. Seorin’s confidence in her own memory offered no excuse for recording secretly.
Both women were named Lee Jeonghui.
The old move-in notice and printed relocation acknowledgments carried the same characters. She did not immediately attach large birth years or addresses beside their names. She asked how they wished to be distinguished.
“Call me the room with the big window,” said the first.
“Then I’m Little Window. I only learned here that even our surnames matched.” The second woman smiled faintly.
Each received an individual intake code in the consultation record. Big Window and Little Window made today’s conversation easier; they did not replace official identity. Seorin would not identify rooms from remembered window sizes alone.
Haeun joined from home to show the old layout her mother described. Her ankle rested on a support; today’s parcel list hung nearby. Before an introduction, she explained that she had separated what she saw from what her mother told her.
“I don’t want to make the wrong room again.”
Seorin nodded. The drawing held many blanks. Today’s speakers might fill them, but their memories need not agree in every place to belong to the same picture.
Big Window spoke first. She described the lower level without room numbers: a corner overlooking drying racks, morning light slanting across a frame, a route taking two turns to fetch water. Seorin recorded the sequence on blank paper before drawing it on a plan.
“Four steps below the east-wing stairs?” she began, then corrected herself. “Do you remember which direction you went, and how far?”
Supplying a number could pull memory toward it. The woman remembered descending to a low landing, but not the number of steps. Seorin retained her question’s correction. She had changed it to make uncertainty speakable, rather than obtain a fitting answer.
Big Window took her original move-in notice from a transparent sleeve. She would take it home. The permitted copy retained relevant dates, address, and the recipient section she personally checked.
“This says you left that day.” Seorin indicated the relocation confirmation.
“Some of my belongings left. If they wrote that the person left too, that’s wrong.”
The woman searched her handbag for an envelope of bus tickets, then stopped. Perhaps she had heard a demand to bring every object proving a date. Seorin said they could hear her memory now and agree later on any necessary submission.
Only then did the bag zip close.
“I thought a wrong date would make it a lie.”
“We distinguish exact dates from approximate memories. You don’t need to make them fit now.”
Reading her summary, Big Window corrected a line. She had not slept at Eundam every night; she returned when work ran late. Seorin replaced CONTINUOUS RESIDENCE with the use actually described. She did not determine compensation eligibility from that difference today.
Little Window’s interview took place separately, with a support worker beside her while Big Window rested in the corridor. Neither woman opened the other’s paperwork on her behalf.
Little Window stopped smiling at her printed intake acknowledgment.
“They gave me this number. But she says they contacted her under it.”
Seorin copied both numbers onto separate sheets. They matched to the final digits. She kept each source beside its copied line, so the comparison did not become a single repeated number detached from the two people who had brought it. Each woman had paper, with different printing dates; this was more than a number misheard.
“At intake, did they explain it belonged to someone else?”
“No. Just that documents were already submitted, so they wouldn’t create another one. I thought someone had applied for me without my knowing.”
That explanation needed recording before a conclusion that someone merged their names. Asked which desk said what, she could not confidently identify a face. She retained her inquiry and its reply.
The relevant inquiry, voluntarily shown, already explained that two people had used different rooms. The answer was brief: SAME-NAME DUPLICATE MERGED INTO EXISTING INTAKE. NO SEPARATE APPLICATION NECESSARY.
Seorin read and returned the phone. They still needed to establish the sender, original writer, and any intermediary. Yet the wording was difficult to explain as only a machine accidentally overlapping identical names.
“May the relevant part be preserved?”
Little Window looked toward the support worker. After agreeing scope together, she consented. They took no unrelated conversations or contacts. The file went through the designated desk; Seorin linked only the viewed material’s reference number.
Doun announced the room’s closing time from the doorway. They could not borrow it indefinitely. Seorin did not hurry another person inside. Remaining checks would follow a formal company request comparing intake numbers and a later interview.
The women reunited in the corridor. Big Window offered a mandarin from the organization’s snacks. Accepting it, Little Window nearly dropped her bag handle. Doun held the door.
“I thought registering under one name might mean only one snack too,” Big Window said.
Little Window finally smiled again. Seorin did not copy the joke into a statement. Laughter sounded because two people stood in the same corridor, rather than because it constituted evidence.
After lunch, permitted material obtained by her company arrived. The support organization had arranged an initial intake comparison with other residents masked. It retained two submission dates, different contact-number endings, and different former room locations.
The final table retained one row.
Beside it, a handwritten check marked SAME-NAME DUPLICATE MERGED. Below, REFER TO PREVIOUS INTAKE replaced a separate history. Viewing the vanished row required opening another reference table.
Seorin centered the paper. Doun pointed to each initial row.
“Information suggesting different people was already there.”
“Yes. We have a processing record merging them in that state.”
“Could someone have clicked the wrong thing?”
“We can see a selection was made. Why it was judged that way, and who approved it, need checking.”
She divided intentional in her mind. Choosing a button and maliciously excluding a person did not describe the same scope. Evidence remained of processing two initial entries into one despite their differences. It justified requesting an explanation and original history. She would neither close the matter as an innocent automatic duplicate nor turn the processing choice alone into proof of every motive behind it.
She added preservation of before-and-after changes to her company request, beyond simple correction. A repaired two-row table alone could lose the reason it became one. The intake officer identified a review desk and explained that each person could object separately.
Seorin did not combine contacts through one representative. Big Window chose telephone; Little Window chose messages with her support worker. Separating the same name required more work than writing it twice.
She told Haeun what had changed. Her mother’s memory helped distinguish the women, but her mother would not guarantee both identities. Haeun nodded across the screen.
“Mum wants to get her own account right first. She hasn’t slept because she thought she had to remember everyone else’s dates too.”
Seorin moved two questions from confirmation through her mother to the people concerned. She had almost made the person connecting them responsible for every blank. Haeun showed her hospital exercise instructions and said that was today’s task. Seorin added no new questions to it.
At 16:00, Little Window requested a summary correction: the sentence saying support money had not been paid.
“I didn’t say I hadn’t received it yet. I said the record says I received it, but I don’t remember receiving it. Please write the difference.”
Seorin reread her questions. Today’s interview had not fully checked payments. Yet her hurried summary had shortened it to UNPAID. She corrected the line and read the reason back. Her own inaccurate abbreviation remained part of the correction history, rather than silently disappearing from the work she had given the resident to check. Little Window retained a payment notice separately; she would consider whether to show the organization. Seorin did not press. After seeing her name on two papers, producing another might be no small matter.
Doun folded the empty recorder pouch.
“Equipment we didn’t switch on did work today.”
“Perhaps leaving it off let us hear some of it.”
She restored the chairs. A scrap of mandarin peel remained beneath the table. Small traces still distinguished the women’s days after they had gone.
Toward evening, Little Window’s consent arrived: name, birth date for comparison, payment recipient and acknowledgment fields only. Full account details and present address were masked.
The name was correct.
The birth date was not the one she confirmed as hers.