The screws that should have occupied the same place would not meet.
Seorin restored the original magnification. On the afternoon of January 10, Yunjae's copy and her permitted work photograph lay open on the company desk. Enlarge one, and Common 04 almost matched. The key board's lower corner moved out of line. Pushing the picture about with her finger made her increasingly sure of something she had not established.
She separated the windows. Her own photograph still connected to its original file and capture sequence. The other was a transmitted copy. Its first device and intermediate cropping were unknown. The same lettering could not fill the space between them.
“How much comparison can I put in the result?” the company officer asked.
“First, whether they came from the same source.”
The assignment did not ask whether a key existed or who had retrieved it. The officer underlined the comparison scope. Seorin owed the connections she could establish inside that line, and the questions left there.
She began at her photograph's edge. A narrow point of light caught the lower screw head. Beside it, a thin gap in the board met a small wall stain. The capture record retained her description of position. She added no distance as though visiting Eundam again today.
In the received copy, the lettering's black border appeared thicker. Enlarged, the screw's bright point became a round blur. Copying or reducing a picture could do that. She placed a red mark at the loss of definition, then removed it. The blurred picture was not necessarily from another day.
She saved the comparison copy separately. The number of times she had enlarged a window said nothing about where the image came from. Someone else needed to begin with the unchanged file. Leave only marked material, and her own red lines might eventually become objects supposedly seen in the scene.
The officer shortened the comparison filename, then retained the words identifying a working copy. Seorin watched what title a person meeting the photograph for the first time would read. The officer asked to see the unmarked copy beside it. Her spoken account need not become the only way to see the boundary.
Instead, she marked the different margins. Her direct photograph had almost no space beyond the board's left side. The copy had a broad white area there. If it was merely a crop, the extra outside space needed explaining. Perhaps a wider source existed. Perhaps she was calling something wall that was not wall at all.
She did not increase the white area's brightness. No need to manufacture a shape absent from the file. Following the visible edge, she found a fine grey line at lower left. It seemed too straight for a stain, but straightness alone did not make it a paper edge. The file ended, taking the line with it.
The question for Yunjae was brief: which material had supplied this excerpt, and could its surroundings be checked within permission? She requested neither anyone's statements nor the complete case record. The company officer received the question and sent it through the existing route. While waiting, Seorin completed the source entry for her own photograph.
Near sunset, Doun came in carrying an empty equipment box from his other assigned support. One folded flap stood loose. He pressed it down with his palm. Seorin almost indicated the widened white area, then stopped. Remembering that day would not tell him what lay beyond today's file.
“Photograph refusing to talk?”
“Plenty of words. I don't know who's saying them.”
“My box has a name.”
He turned an old brand label toward her. A newer company equipment label crossed it.
“Which one are you returning?”
“Today? The empty box.”
They laughed. He took it to the person actually receiving equipment.
The answer reached the company shortly afterward. Yunjae had checked an image made by photographing a page of a review report. Today's excerpt came from that image. His request had never called it original recording-device material. In shortening its title, the distinction between a photograph and paper containing a photograph had disappeared.
Seorin looked again at the white area. She did not simply replace wall with paper everywhere. The printed photograph itself could contain wall. She needed to see where that photograph ended. Closing the enlarged window, she attached the source of the explanation actually received.
Further permission covered the relevant photograph and nearby caption on that page. Other content and personal names would be masked. The custodian would prepare the permitted copy before transmission. Seorin had received no authority to remove masking or open other pages. She acknowledged those conditions. The permission belonged beside the incoming material, where the next reader could find the same limit without relying on her memory.
Building lights outside had come on when the new copy arrived. More of the lower area remained. The grey line crossed the white surface as a border around the printed photograph. Beyond it, the black tip of a clip held the paper. No extra stretch of Eundam wall had appeared beside the key board.
Rather than overlap the files, she drew two small boxes. One held a direct site photograph. The other held a photograph of material containing a site photograph. Inside that second box she drew a smaller one for the printed image whose source remained unknown. She had started by comparing objects from different layers.
The clip belonged only to the second capture. Its light and position could not explain the caretaker's office lighting. Printing and photographing again might also have distorted the lower screw. She retained her first mismatch mark and added that its cause had not been established.
The clip crossed only the area outside the printed image. She preserved it with the actual document border. Trim it away for a cleaner picture, and the layer she had just found would vanish again. This question needed its untidy boundary more than a handsome copy.
The officer came to look.
“So the answer is different photographs?”
“The direct file and this photographed page are different images. Whether the site photograph inside is the same is separate.”
She touched the small box inside her drawing. That was the part they had not yet connected.
“Then we haven't found the key.”
“We've seen a label and a hook. They can't answer for the key.”
Common 04 remained visible in the comparison result. Its lettering could be read; nothing newly established the original key's present location. She would not name a blurred piece of metal after the object she hoped to find. Words beneath the photograph needed their own writer and subject too.
The first inquiry had omitted those words. In the photographed page, a caption appeared beside the picture, cropped at the right. The surviving word was RETRIEVAL. Seorin marked it quietly. Printed writing outside the image had not been writing on Eundam's wall. Sharing an image did not put every visible thing on the same day.
Now the officer understood why the request had begun with source. The custodian likewise could not read an object's movement from the short copy alone. Seorin made no claim that someone had cropped it to hide wrongdoing. The current material showed a route where shortening an excerpt had changed what readers thought they were looking at.
She kept three further questions separate: the printed photograph's source, the complete caption, and its subject. Even whether retrieval referred to everything in the picture or one object remained unseen. The officer received them for the next working reply.
At the end of duty, she left her original file in its designated place. Marked comparisons kept a different name. Her drawn boundaries had not altered the old scene. She linked the first request copy instead of replacing it. The next person needed somewhere to find the initial misunderstanding.
Before leaving, Doun asked whether she had eaten. Not yet. He had heard the nearby shop still had warm dumplings. He added that he had not checked the stock himself.
“Did you say that on purpose?”
“Dumplings have easier sources than photographs today.”
They met there after each had finished duty. Actual dumplings sat behind the glass. Seorin almost counted with her finger, then ordered enough for two. When the employee asked who was taking them away, Doun said they would eat in. A small plate replaced the paper bag.
Lifting a dumpling as its steam thinned, she said the hardest mistake today had been reading the outside of paper as wall. She shared no private contents. Doun said paper inside photographs made a person forget the paper outside. He turned his chopsticks to avoid lifting the thin liner beneath their food.
Cold air brushed her ankles whenever the entrance opened. She had spent a long time looking at Eundam's wall without entering Eundam once today. A day with material tired her differently from a day on site. She stayed seated. An employee shut the door.
At home, she left company files closed. She wanted the caption's missing end, but wanting created no new material. She set out tomorrow's clothes and cleared a cup from the table. Her permitted questions had gone where they could be answered. Waiting need not occupy every part of an evening.
On the morning of January 11, the officer read the new reply's heading. The caption and photograph-supply route could be checked. Seorin unfolded yesterday's two boxes, expecting a source for the small inner one. First came a different correction.
RETRIEVAL did not mean the key.
The cut-off line beneath named a cover. Above the printed Common 04 label, an arrow absent from Seorin's original file pointed toward the inside of that cover.