The Line You're Allowed to Read

Kim Dabin didn't show him the text. Instead, she tilted the phone screen toward herself.

"You can read this part, but not below this line."

Seojin looked at the screen. The message Han Jaehee sent before she died was short.

'8th floor. Not the elevator.'

Below it, a name and address were blacked out. Dabin kept her finger pressed over the covered section.

"You mean don't copy the original text?"

"Right. If the kid finds out who sent this sentence, that person gets put in danger too."

"Then I'll just record the time and the sentence."

"Please be careful with the time too."

Dabin only spoke after confirming with her own eyes that Han Jaehee had sent the message at 05:31:58. Seojin didn't photograph the screen. She wrote it in her notebook. Staying within the range Dabin allowed and preserving facts the investigation needed had to be possible at the same time.

Han Yeoreum spread out the disclosure limit sheet beside her.

"The name, contact information, and school of the protected person will be sealed even within the investigation team. However, the fact that this sentence relates to Han Jaehee's movements will be recorded."

Dabin read the last line of the sheet.

"Can I withdraw this later?"

"Disclosure of the original text can be withdrawn. But erasing facts that have already been confirmed would require grounds for correction."

"Then does my lie stay on record too?"

Seojin answered.

"It has to stay. There's a reason for the lie, and someone else who was suspected because of it."

Dabin bit her lip. She didn't cry. Instead she read the correction statement with her name on it twice, and signed it.

At 11 a.m., the gray room cross checked Han Jaehee's communication records against the elevator server. At 05:31:44, her phone connected to the 8th floor wifi. At 05:32:14, the emergency stairwell sensor opened. The message had been sent 16 seconds before that.

"So she moved to the stairs after sending the text," Minwoo said.

"That's a possibility." Dohyun cut in immediately. "The phone could have been in someone else's hand."

"Is there a record that Han Jaehee was holding it?"

"There's an accelerometer log from the call. A pattern close to walking shows up from 05:32:02 to 05:32:09. But that's the phone's movement, not necessarily a person's."

Seojin didn't strip the number out of Dohyun's statement. An incomplete record had to stay incomplete.

Minwoo checked Han Kyungmin's master key usage history. At 04:58, the emergency key had been removed from the management office logbook. At 05:11, the management office door had opened. At 05:18, Kyungmin had entered the server room. At 05:32, when the stairwell sensor opened, there was no access record for Kyungmin.

"So Kyungmin wasn't on the stairs."

"It means there's no access record," Seojin said. "It doesn't mean he wasn't on the stairs."

Minwoo sighed.

"Do we have to keep attaching that sentence?"

"Every time we act like we know something we don't, someone's job and relationships change."

That afternoon, Han Kyungmin came to the gray room himself. Even after signing the correction statement, he hadn't been able to return to his post as building manager. The resident representative believed he had manipulated Han Jaehee's final hours.

"I was trying to hide Dabin's sibling," Kyungmin said. "I knew the kid had contacted Han Jaehee."

"Why didn't you tell Dabin?"

"I was afraid she'd say the name."

"Then you decided something that was hers to decide, and something that was your own to decide, both on your own."

Kyungmin lowered his eyes.

"I had to protect the kid."

"And what about the protected person's right to know who tells them what?" Yeoreum asked. "That right of choice is part of protection too."

Kyungmin didn't answer. Seojin didn't read the silence as malice. Nor did she excuse it as good intention.

"Do you know who Han Jaehee met last?"

"I don't know."

"When you heard the word stairs, did anyone come to mind?"

Kyungmin's hand went stiff on his knee.

"I never said that word."

"You're right. What I sensed isn't evidence."

For the first time, Seojin chose to speak not of her ability directly, but of its limits. Minwoo looked at her. Yeoreum asked nothing.

Kyungmin pulled out a document. It was the facility company's emergency key logbook. The B.S.H. key had been handed to Baek Sangho the day before, at 04:58, and the return field was blank.

"Why bring this out now?"

"Because I corrected the fact I hid."

"Do you want something in exchange?"

"No. Just handle my correction statement and this material separately. What I did wrong shouldn't disappear along with it."

Seojin accepted the request. She didn't want to trade someone's cooperation for accepting their apology.

That evening, Baek Sangho's work order arrived. It stated he'd been assigned to inspect server room equipment from 05:20 to 06:00. But the electronic signature on the work order had been generated at 06:04. The printed paper copy still showed a handwritten time of 05:20.

Both times could be true. He might have arrived on site first and made the document later. Or he might have fabricated the document afterward. Seojin chose neither.

Dohyun brought the power meter log. The server room's auxiliary power showed a reading 18 percent higher than usual from 05:27 to 05:36. It didn't tell them who had been there, but it left behind the fact that the equipment had actually run.

"The likelihood that Baek Sangho inspected the equipment goes up."

"It doesn't mean he went to the stairs," Minwoo said.

Seojin looked at him. He was the one raising the counter condition first now.

That night, Han Jaehee's younger sibling Dabin stood in front of the management office holding a copy of the correction statement. In front of the gathered residents, she didn't explain on Han Kyungmin's behalf.

"I said my sister's call time later than it actually was. There was someone I needed to protect. But I acknowledge that Han Kyungmin was suspected as a result."

Dabin didn't say the protected person's name. She didn't demand an apology from Kyungmin either. Instead, she held out the correction statement to the resident representative.

"I decide the scope of what's disclosed in this document. If you demand a name, I won't say anything more."

The resident representative couldn't take the document. Minwoo held out the public copy instead. The name and contact information had been removed, but the correction to the call time and the misjudgment against Kyungmin remained.

Watching the scene, Seojin decided not to use the word public interest lightly. The fact that needed disclosure and the right not to disclose sat in the same place.

The server access list confirmed the location of the blue triangle terminal. It wasn't the management office computer, but a portable terminal used by the outside contractor. The terminal connected to the 8th floor wireless network at 05:29 and disconnected at 05:33.

Baek Sangho had never said he was in the server room at that time. That was just what the work order stated.

Seojin closed the screen and spoke to Minwoo.

"Next we need to check what the terminal did, not what Baek Sangho said."

Minwoo nodded.

"And we release Han Kyungmin's correction statement today."

"Without disclosing the choice of the person with no name."

"Let's do that."

The first misjudgment had been corrected. But the name of the person within those 17 seconds still hadn't surfaced. Only the connection record of the blue triangle terminal remained, on the threshold of the next chapter.

Before copying the terminal's original data, Seojin confirmed the scope of access with Han Yeoreum. Taking the entire device would also pull in other clients' information belonging to the outside contractor. Preserving only the network logs and location data for a specific time window was slower, but it disturbed the records of people unrelated to the case less.

"Narrowing it that much could make you miss an important file," Minwoo said.

"Widening it could mean that even if there's an important file, we can't explain it in court," Yeoreum answered.

Seojin wrote both statements in the same column. The risk of losing speed, and the risk of violating privacy. The goal wasn't to eliminate one or the other, but to record who had taken on which risk.

Baek Sangho was given a choice. Submit the entire terminal, or allow a witnessed copy of the connection, location, and power logs from 05:20 to 05:40. He refused full submission at first, but chose the second method once he saw Han Kyungmin's emergency key logbook.

"I'm the one who lent out the equipment. I'm not the one who killed anyone."

"We haven't determined which of those you are yet," Seojin said. "What we're confirming today is where the equipment was."

During the copying process, it was revealed that the terminal's clock ran 6 minutes and 12 seconds behind the server's. The 05:29 connection might actually have occurred at 05:35. Instead of pushing one number up the list of suspects, it shook the timeline all over again.

Minwoo didn't apologize to Baek Sangho. Instead, he revised the scope of the search. Seojin also erased the asterisk she'd placed next to Baek Sangho's name. In the space where it had been, she wrote 'review again after time correction.'

Han Kyungmin watched the correction and spoke quietly.

"The correction I received wasn't enough, even for me."

"What do you mean?"

"The residents only know that I hid the kid. They don't know why I hid them. Even so, I don't want to disclose the reason."

Seojin didn't say she understood, not easily.

"Then I'll record both the right not to disclose, and the harm that came from not disclosing."

Kyungmin nodded. It wasn't a sign that he'd accepted an apology. It was a sign that he wouldn't refuse the next question.

Seojin checked the seal number on the terminal's copy. This time, she recorded not just who had opened the original, but who had chosen not to.

Preservation was measured not by how much was collected, but by the responsibility taken in accessing it. Seojin wrote the seal number and the name of the person in charge on the same line. Whoever kept the record was part of the case too. That line was the place the next reviewer would read first. Every time. First. Next time too.