They postponed dinner twice before finding a time when they could eat it.
On the night of December 19, Seorin saw Doun reflected in the restaurant window and raised a hand. He had actually returned the company equipment before coming with one personal bag. Later than the time they had discussed on the bus, but the message about delay had arrived first. She had drunk warm water while waiting, without investigating the alley outside.
“Was the sewing machine that good?” he asked as he sat.
She had watched it for half an hour without touching the treadle. Rather like a good chair, he said: something that let a person stay without assigning work. For the first time today, Seorin described the exhibition without beginning with the company's reply.
His phone rang when the food arrived. He checked the caller, established that the work inquiry belonged with the duty desk, and supplied the designated contact. No personal call became a substitute site decision. After the short exchange, he turned the phone over. Seorin had eaten her dumpling meanwhile.
She did not announce that she had waited or pretend she had not. Her food had not gone cold; his was still warm. For next time, they decided only whether to meet outside or wait inside. A whole month's evenings did not need booking together.
On the morning of December 22, Seorin received a new assignment: passage checks following interior rearrangement at Dorim Riverside Rehearsal Rooms. The river was two blocks beyond the building bearing its name. Doun read the full address and laughed. This time there was one building, without a main block and annex.
Two ensemble rooms, a shared waiting room and management space occupied the site. Her company would examine passage and structural conditions affected by changed partitions and equipment placement. Acoustics and instrument maintenance belonged to other specialists. Seorin began with the submitted drawing's date and today's operating plan.
The operator, Yujeong, emerged carrying a folding chair awkwardly with a notebook and keys. Before offering his hands, Doun asked where it was going. Yujeong looked around. No position had been chosen yet.
“One chair apparently blocked everyone's way.”
Rather than begin with how many people, Seorin asked who had been using which route. It concerned the final ensemble session on December 19. Another staff member had witnessed it and would arrive this afternoon. She put the reported event and current arrangement on different lines.
Adult ensemble members' music lay in the waiting room. They rehearsed at booked times and were preparing a small internal year-end playing session. No public audience event appeared in this assignment. The word performance did not enlarge Seorin's task into checking an entire concert venue.
The room had been marked finished while one person remained, Yujeong explained. A staff member treated it as ended and parked a cleaning cart in the corridor. The remaining user opened the door to leave, then had to turn an instrument case in the narrowed passage. No confinement or injury had been reported.
The door now stood open and nobody occupied the room. Fixed large-instrument positions lay on one side, chairs on the other. Outside were two floor marks: a waiting position and a space for cleaning equipment. They did not overlap each other. Include the door's moving area, however, and an equipment handler and departing user could not comfortably stand there together.
Seorin placed her feet on a mark. Doun waited outside without a bag. Both needed to step back for the door leaf to move through its defined range.
“They can clean after everyone leaves,” Yujeong said.
“Who confirmed the room was empty on the nineteenth?”
Yujeong pointed to a green column on the use board. A finished magnet occupied it. Finished meant both the ensemble booking had ended and no actual person remained. The board had no state for somebody still inside.
When the representative ended the booking, staff began clearing. Whether remaining personal practice had been permitted, and for what interval and contact arrangement, required the operator's check. Seorin did not record a rule-breaking customer before that answer existed.
Sometimes one person stayed to tidy, a staff member said. Yujeong had heard it was practice, not tidying. Different descriptions occupied the same person remaining in the room. The operator would arrange a suitable contact with that person; Seorin could examine actual passage and layout first.
The folding chair stood near the corridor's end, with a small music rest leaning against it. It resembled a comfortable waiting place, but was absent from the current drawing. Yujeong said it served someone waiting for practice to finish. The waiting person's route and departing user's route had never quite found separate room.
Doun began to move it, then stopped. Yujeong would establish permitted storage and ask the designated worker to receive it. Removing one object looked like a solution. Seorin still needed to distinguish the cart from the remaining user's state. An absent chair would not change what finished meant.
At midday the ensemble representative arrived, an adult man introducing himself as Dohyeon. Had their playing disturbed the neighboring room? Seorin explained that she was not investigating a noise complaint. Only then did he lower his music bag.
He had ended their final piece on the nineteenth and moved the magnet. While gathering music, he had seen Eunju remain inside. He told staff the session had ended without mentioning her further practice. He had assumed the staff member saw her too.
“She was right there. I didn't think I needed to say it separately.”
Seorin looked from the corridor. With the door closed, the chairs could not be seen; even open, the partition hid part of the room. Dohyeon's sight supplied no proof of the staff member's. She left the actual communication point blank rather than filling it with another sentence.
He began calling Eunju to come immediately. Was there a reason she needed to attend today? Seorin asked. The room was under defined control, without a present emergency. A possible contact time with the operator would do. Answering the question need not take her entire day.
They read the operating permission first. Individual practice after the group required a separate request and actual acceptance. Yet the form showed the representative's ending without making the additional user's name and contact visible to the next worker. Permission, if granted, needed to travel beyond its first receiver.
Yujeong found the December 19 reply. A staff member had accepted Eunju's extra use for a limited time. The other worker had not seen it, and the board had changed to ensemble ended. The picture of somebody secretly remaining was wrong. An actual permission had disappeared between hands.
Seorin did not propose one person handling everything. The operator needed to decide who would receive the remaining user's state, end of extra use and cleaning start. Her company's passage check would continue within that actual plan. Counting one more person would not widen the narrow doorway by itself.
The afternoon staff member indicated where the cart had stood: inside its floor mark. Seorin could confirm that explanation fitted the arrangement. The problem was not necessarily a hand following the wrong mark. The position had been drawn without the moving door and person together.
The equipment worker explained the actual cart's dimensions and restraints. They checked one defined short section with an empty cart. At the door's interference area they stopped; nobody forced a person carrying an instrument case through it. An absence of collision supplied no reason to retain the arrangement.
The operator compared two changes: receiving actual use completion before cleaning, and moving the equipment waiting position. Would a shorter rehearsal help? Dohyeon asked. Without somebody receiving finished, the same problem remained, Yujeong answered. He took his hand from the magnet.
Seorin remembered Doun's dinner message. Equipment returned had meant the last actual work hand had changed. She did not offer their evening as an example for the site. Her memory could help a question; the site's people needed to provide its answer.
Late that afternoon, Eunju's available contact time arrived. The operator explained purpose and sharing scope, and she agreed to discuss December 19. Seorin listened only to what she needed. Eunju had folded her chair and started out when the door closed more heavily than expected. She put her case down briefly.
Was that how the chair had remained in the corridor? Yes. Not knowing whether the door was always like that, she did not go back in. A staff member came, they cleared the passage together, and she left. She had not said the door could not be opened. Several real hands had changed the scene.
Yujeong said that door always closed slowly. The staff member remembered a quick final movement that day. Seorin did not select the better memory. A specialist needed to check the door. Smooth closure in an empty room now would not explain all the nineteenth's conditions.
The operator managed current access within stated restrictions and requested equipment inspection. Seorin dismantled no door and turned no closer screw. She sent her company the changed partitions, current access and observed scope. The remaining questions reached actual receivers rather than staying as a request to be more careful.
Before departure, Dohyeon asked where to put the finished magnet. Yujeong would match current use directly before moving it. Eunju's next individual practice was not automatically authorized by today's conversation. Group departure and a person remaining finally occupied different lines.
Evening wind was strong outside. Doun pulled his bag strap. Seorin still did not know why the door had felt heavier on the nineteenth. Blaming only the pushing hand would not answer it. Then equipment noise behind the building ceased. The entrance door, closing slowly until that moment, swallowed its final gap in a quick movement.