The Shoes That Went Unseized

Han Gyeongmin's shoes were not seized. Only after he signed the correction notice did he allow the soles of his shoes to be photographed within the scope of voluntary submission.

"Show the bottoms and I'll look like a man on the run."

"There's already a post that makes you look that way," Seojin said. "That's why we need the photo."

Gyeongmin took off one shoe and set it on the evidence bag. Gray powder remained in the grooves of the sole. Seojin photographed it without scraping any off. The powder deep in the grooves and the powder at the edges had been pressed in different directions. She couldn't yet tell whether it was recent or old.

Minu looked at the photo and spoke.

"The paint is the same family as the stairwell."

"Same family, not the same particles."

"The hypothesis list is growing."

"Both hypotheses are. Either Han Gyeongmin walked on those stairs, or someone other than the building manager passed through the same construction zone."

Minu pressed the bridge of his nose in frustration. What he wanted wasn't a list of possibilities. He wanted a list of names that got shorter by the end of the day.

Seojin handed off the extracted values from Han Jaehee's phone to Dohyeon. Bae Dohyeon worked with timelines, and he was not a man who turned numbers into intent.

"The eighth floor wifi connection ran from 05:31:44 to 05:32:07."

"Where was the elevator during that window?" Minu asked.

"Standing on the first floor. No Bluetooth connection."

"So only the phone was on the eighth floor?"

"It means the phone connected to that network. Whether a person carried it there is a separate question."

Dohyeon didn't jump to conclusions. Seojin recorded that sentence exactly as he'd said it.

At 10 a.m., the gray room sealed off the eighth floor emergency stairwell again. This time, before opening the door, they laid down a transparent baseline underneath it, to compare the scratches on the door closer against the dust marks in a single pass.

On the inner wall, near the door, there was a faint blue triangle. Someone had marked it with a pen where the paint had peeled away.

"Same mark as the cash receipt," Minu said.

"Same shape. That doesn't mean they're connected."

Seojin photographed all three points of the triangle. The left point touched the wall directly. The bottom point was drawn over dust. It was possible the marks had been made at different times.

"So we find whoever drew this?"

"Before that, we find out who could even see this wall."

Han Gyeongmin still hadn't submitted the building manager's master key. Baek Sangho, an employee of the facilities contractor, claimed he'd come in the morning to inspect equipment, but the management office access log had no entries before 06:02.

"So Baek Sangho erased the log," Minu said.

The moment Seojin heard that sentence, she moved Baek Sangho's name over one column on the hypothesis board on the wall. Not into the suspect column, but into the column for things to verify.

"No access record means there's no record. It doesn't mean he didn't come in. It doesn't mean he erased anything either."

"Analyst."

"If we attach a name now, and it turns out wrong later, it takes another full day to walk that name back."

Minu didn't argue. Instead he added Baek Sangho's subcontractor work order and the facilities company's emergency key return log to the server preservation request.

That afternoon, Baek Sangho came to the management office. He raised a hand and smiled from the entrance.

"What did I do wrong?"

"We don't know yet," Minu said.

"But I hear you're looking for an access record."

"We need to check the work order first."

Baek Sangho didn't look at Han Gyeongmin. Han Gyeongmin didn't look at him either. Between them, only the key ledger sat, avoiding both their eyes.

Seojin looked at the back of Baek Sangho's hand. White paint stuck to his right index finger, and blue ink had gotten under his fingernail. It could be related to the mark. It could just as easily be from using a pen on a facility checklist. The hand alone couldn't tell the two apart.

"Where were you yesterday between 05:30 and 06:10?"

"At home."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"Anything that can confirm that?"

"No."

Baek Sangho answered well. Too well. His answer was empty in the same direction as Han Gyeongmin's statement.

Just as Minu was about to press harder, Seojin's phone rang. It was Kim Dabin.

"Seojin, my sister left a text saying she saw someone on the stairs at 05:32."

"Can you send me the original text?"

"I can't. It has my niece's name in it."

"Then show me the screen, cover the name yourself, and choose what I get to see."

Dabin didn't agree right away. Without hanging up, she said,

"If I hand that text over, that child gets pulled in, doesn't she?"

"We don't need the name. We need the time and the sentence structure."

"Saying you need it doesn't make it feel safe."

Seojin stayed silent. Dabin withholding the material wasn't a choice to obstruct the investigation. It was a choice to decide what stayed private, and to change the order in which the investigation proceeded.

"Then I'll look at it myself. I won't save it, and whatever you cover stays covered."

Dabin agreed, after a long pause.

The text read: *Saw that person on the eighth floor. But it wasn't the elevator sound.* Part of the name and location had been blacked out. Timestamp: 05:32:11.

Seojin didn't photograph the line of text. What Dabin had allowed was verification, not duplication. Instead, she recorded only the time and the sentence.

Minu asked.

"Is that person Baek Sangho?"

"I don't know."

"Does the text say so?"

"No. That's why I don't know."

That was when Gyeongmin spoke for the first time.

"Han Jaehee had arranged to meet someone at that time."

On the other end of the line, Dabin's breath caught. Seojin looked at Gyeongmin.

"Why are you telling us this now?"

"Because I was hiding it."

"To protect who?"

Gyeongmin pressed his lips shut. He didn't look at Dabin. He looked only at Seojin's notebook.

"I won't say who. Just don't let that child get dragged into this case."

"Because of that lie, someone else was drawn into suspicion in your place, Manager Han. That goes on the record too."

"I know."

Gyeongmin took the correction notice back. This time, before signing, he revised a sentence. Not "I delayed the facts to protect someone's privacy," but "Knowing that delaying the facts would put someone else under suspicion, I stayed silent anyway."

Seojin read the sentence and set down her pen. Protection didn't erase responsibility.

At 6 p.m., Dohyeon found another value on the server. The stairwell door sensor had opened at 05:32:14 and closed 17 seconds later. The sensor only recorded that the door had opened. It didn't record who opened it.

That was three seconds off from the timestamp on Han Jaehee's text.

The paint on Baek Sangho's hand didn't prove the crime on its own. But the stairwell, the sensor, the text, and the contractor's access all converged on the same window of time.

Minu spoke to Baek Sangho.

"Don't leave the country today."

"Does that mean I'm a suspect?"

"No. It means there's more to check."

Baek Sangho's smile disappeared.

Seojin looked again at the word "stairs" written on the side of her notebook. The word the ability had given her didn't speak the truth. But the independent records were holding on to the question that word had raised.

The first hypothesis about Han Gyeongmin had collapsed. That didn't mean he'd done nothing. It meant the person who delayed time to protect someone, and the person who used that delay, could no longer sit in the same column.

The next thing to check wasn't the stairwell door. It was the device that had accessed the server three seconds before that door opened.

Back in the server room, Minu called Han Gyeongmin in again. This time not to the interrogation room, but to the open management office. Yeoreum sat by the door writing down the scope of what could be viewed, and Seojin didn't turn on the recorder. She wanted Han Gyeongmin to choose for himself how far his own words would be kept on record.

"It's true that I tried to protect Dabin's niece," Gyeongmin said. "But I shouldn't have hidden the fact that Han Jaehee met that child."

"Why did you hide it?"

"If the child's father finds out, he'll take her back. That home isn't safe."

"I understand the reason. That doesn't remove your responsibility for delaying Han Jaehee's final movements."

Gyeongmin nodded. He didn't make excuses. He pointed with his finger at the sentence written on the correction notice.

"I'll leave this sentence as it is."

Minu spoke.

"And it was our responsibility that we put your name up as a public suspect this morning, sir. I'll add my name to the correction notice too."

Gyeongmin's eyes flickered for a moment. He didn't say he'd accept the apology. Instead he took out the emergency key return log and set it on the desk.

"One of Baek Sangho's keys is missing. It wasn't returned yesterday."

"Why didn't you say so right away?"

"Because saying it would expose my own poor management first."

"That silence goes on the record too."

"I know."

Seojin didn't hand the log back. She checked the last line where she stood. B.S.H. Emergency Key, Not Returned. Beside the signature was a time: 04:58. Thirty four minutes before Han Jaehee's phone connected on the eighth floor.

Time didn't create a culprit. It showed who had been able to push a responsibility onto someone else.

Seojin sealed three copies of the correction notice. One went to Han Gyeongmin, one to the gray room's records, one back to Dabin. Dabin's envelope did not include the nameless text message. The secret of the person being protected was kept separate from the facts the investigation needed.

On the server screen's connection list, one unfamiliar device remained. Its owner had not yet been identified. Seojin zoomed in on the list and stopped. At the end of the device's name, a small blue triangular symbol was attached.

The symbol was a direction, and a direction wasn't evidence yet. Seojin left the screen open and wrote the name of the next person in charge beside it. This time, so she wouldn't be the only one looking.

Below the name, she left a column open for the opposing hypothesis.

So she could wait for the next person's confirmation.