The Voice That Isn't Evidence

Kim Dabin didn't let go of the doorknob for a while after closing the door to the victim support office.

"If I tell you there was a USB, you'll dig up what was on it, won't you?"

"I won't ask about the contents," Seojin said.

"You want me to believe that?"

"You don't have to believe it. I'll write the scope of the questions down on paper."

Seojin wrote three questions on a sheet of paper.

Did Han Jaehee have a USB drive. Who was she trying to hand it to. Can the time and place of the handoff be confirmed, without touching the contents of the USB.

Dabin stared at the third line for a long time.

"I won't say who was supposed to receive it."

"I won't ask."

"What about who made the file?"

"I won't confirm that either."

"Then what are you even investigating?"

"The fact that the USB existed, and the timeline showing your sister was trying to hand over the falsified safety inspection data."

Dabin's lips trembled.

"My sister was going to hand it to someone at 10 p.m. Before that, she told me if she couldn't reach me, I should keep it safe for her instead."

"Did she reach you?"

"No. She never made it to me."

That statement connected to Han Gyeongmin's first misjudgment. Dabin had pushed back the time of the call by an hour to protect a minor informant, and as a result, Han Gyeongmin had looked like the person hiding her sister's final movements. The child under protection received the warning an hour late. The lie had shielded one person, but it had stolen someone else's choices and time.

Seojin slid the document toward Dabin.

"Do you want this fact included in the statement?"

"What about the name of the USB?"

"That's excluded, along with the author."

Dabin added a line.

"If the protected party does not wish this record disclosed, this statement is to be used only as an unnamed case fact."

Seojin accepted the sentence. The risk that Dabin was deciding on someone else's protection remained, but now there was a document that could negotiate the scope of disclosure.

At noon, Han Gyeongmin showed up at the site of the management office's correction notice. The resident representative was holding off on letting him return to work.

"I'll accept the correction notice. But people already saw it."

Dabin spoke up.

"I pushed the time back."

"Why?"

"There was someone who couldn't speak."

"So it's fine to lie to us?"

Dabin didn't lift her head.

"No. That's why I came to check the damage this caused Han Gyeongmin."

Han Gyeongmin looked at her, but he didn't call her "Dabin" the way he usually did.

"I won't forgive you."

Dabin's face hardened.

"I didn't come here asking for forgiveness."

"Then what do you want?"

"I'll sign a statement confirming I corrected the wrong time. You can use it for your lost workdays and your appeal against the company's disciplinary action."

Han Gyeongmin didn't take the document.

"I don't have to say the child's name?"

"You don't."

"Then only my damage stays on record."

"I'm not asking you to erase that damage."

Only then did Han Gyeongmin sign the statement. It wasn't that he'd accepted forgiveness, it was that he'd agreed to let Dabin's correction stand as an actual record.

Seojin didn't write down the relationship between the two of them as reconciliation. The reason for protection and the cost of responsibility had entered the same document, but whether they'd call each other by name again was still undecided.

At 2 p.m., two columns had formed on the gray room's evidence board.

The first column: the stairwell impact, the USB theft, the moving of the body. The second column: the 17 second edit, the remote session, the deletion log.

Minwoo wrote Baek Sangho's name in the first column.

"The case, the unreturned key, the time the door closed."

Yeoreum wrote a question mark beside the second column.

"The remote account belongs to headquarters. Just because Baek Sangho handled physical materials doesn't mean he also did the remote editing."

Minwoo spoke up.

"What about the possibility he had an accomplice?"

"That's a possibility. We need connecting evidence."

Seojin placed part of a customer number next to the photo of the blue receipt. Whether it matched the number of whoever paid for the remote session hadn't been confirmed yet.

"The USB is gone, and Baek Sangho denied having it before anyone even asked him about it."

"That's suspicious," Minwoo said.

"But it isn't the same as proving he took it."

"Then how do we write the second hypothesis?"

Seojin wrote a sentence in the center of the evidence board.

"Baek Sangho may have found the USB that Han Jaehee was carrying, or he may have tried to retrieve it knowing it would expose the case."

Below it, she attached the conditions that would disprove it.

The last recorded contact with the USB. Han Jaehee's movements after 5:32 a.m. Whether the route Baek Sangho used to find the ledger matches the location where the USB went missing.

"I separated this from the stairwell hypothesis," Seojin said. "Whether someone was on the stairs and whose hands the USB ended up in are different questions."

Yeoreum nodded.

"And Dabin's reason for protecting someone doesn't answer that question for us."

Dabin heard that from outside the door. She didn't come in, just handed a small envelope to a staff member.

Inside the envelope was a list of Han Jaehee's belongings. The USB itself wasn't there. Instead there was a short cable used for plugging in a USB drive, and a convenience store payment receipt stamped 22:14.

Seojin looked at the blue triangle on the receipt. It was the same shape as the receipt found by the server, but the customer number was different.

Minwoo spoke up.

"Maybe it's not the same vendor."

"It means the same mark was used for a different customer. Which means the mark alone can't connect an organization."

Dabin spoke from outside the door.

"My sister kept that receipt together with the USB. If she couldn't reach me, I was supposed to see the cable and receipt and contact someone."

"Who?"

"I won't say."

Seojin didn't press further. Instead she preserved the payment time and the contact traces on the USB cable separately.

At 4 p.m., Baek Sangho's phone payment records showed he was offline at the time of the incident. That only meant he hadn't paid for it himself, not that he hadn't received the item.

Minwoo asked.

"So the hypothesis that Baek Sangho took the USB gets weaker?"

"The direct payment record gets weaker. Physical access is still on the table."

"Splitting the account from the person again."

"If we lump them together, we have to fix two things at once when we're wrong."

Han Gyeongmin stepped up to the evidence board. He pulled out a slip showing Baek Sangho had ordered fluorescent paint the day before the incident. The delivery address wasn't the facility company's headquarters, but a private storage unit.

"Where did you get this slip?" Minwoo asked.

"I was checking the record of keys Baek Sangho never returned, and I found it in the management company's document files."

"Why bring it up now?"

"Because I'm responsible for having hired Baek Sangho."

Seojin marked the slip's delivery address on a map. It was in a different direction from the building with the server.

The slip listed a product number for the fluorescent paint, and the ordered quantity was more than what was needed for stairwell repairs. But there was still no conclusion that the paint had actually been used at the scene.

Minwoo paced between the two columns on the evidence board.

"22:14."

Seojin laid the server log's timestamp next to the convenience store receipt's timestamp. Both were 22:14. One was equipment record, the other was payment record. First they had to confirm whether the clocks matched exactly.

Seojin circled that time. Inside the circle were three questions.

Who paid. Who opened the remote session. Who had the USB.

The same time seemed to point at three people, but nothing had been confirmed yet.

The next step of the investigation wasn't about what the blue triangle meant, but about why the same number appeared across different ledgers.

Before matching up the ledgers, Dohyeon checked the clock on each record first. The convenience store receipt used the payment terminal's clock, the server log used network time, and the facility company's slip used the clock of the computer that generated the document. The three clocks differed by up to 41 seconds.

"We can't say 22:14 refers to the same moment."

"Then why put them together on the board?" Minwoo asked.

"I put them up as a window where they might be the same moment. With the margin of error left in."

Seojin wrote the margin of error next to each time. From 22:13:19 to 22:14:41. As the range of numbers inside the circle widened, the hypothesis that all three people had been in the same place weakened.

Han Gyeongmin pointed at the slip's delivery address again.

"I went to that storage unit once."

"When?"

"The afternoon before the incident."

"With who?"

"Alone."

"Why did you go?"

Gyeongmin didn't answer, and looked at Dabin instead. This time Dabin shook her head.

"I won't say why."

Gyeongmin accepted her choice.

"There was something the child had left at the storage unit. I brought it back."

Seojin recorded that fact separately from the identity of the protected party. Han Gyeongmin had a reason to access the storage unit, but that didn't automatically create a connection between the fluorescent paint and the USB.

Yeoreum asked Dabin.

"Did you know Han Gyeongmin had been keeping the child's belongings?"

"I didn't know."

"Now that you know, do you want it disclosed?"

Dabin answered after a long pause.

"No. I want to let the child decide."

That was different from the way Dabin had been holding every decision in her own hands. It still wasn't full trust, but it was an act of handing the scope of protection back to the person it belonged to.

Seojin wrote a new sentence in the center of the evidence board.

"The purpose of protection can explain a relationship, but the movement of an object must be proven by a separate ledger."

At 9 p.m., a preservation notice was delivered to the storage unit listed on the slip. The manager didn't give up Baek Sangho's name right away. Instead, he confirmed the storage number and the time of check in. One of three boxes of fluorescent paint had been moved in the early morning of the day of the incident.

Seojin didn't open the box. She photographed only the outer label and the state of the seal. The manager agreed to that method, but instead of handing over the photos, he only set a time when they could come check it themselves.

Minwoo spoke up.

"The investigation slows down when everyone gets to set their own scope of disclosure."

Yeoreum answered.

"But we can explain exactly who allowed what scope, in exchange for the delay."

Seojin didn't pick either answer as the right one. The investigation had slowed, but the timeline of the storage unit, the slip, and the USB had narrowed without ever obtaining the protected party's name.

The number 22:14 remained not as a single answer, but as a window where three ledgers overlapped. Within that window, someone had paid, someone had opened the remote session, and someone had moved the USB.

Seojin wrote that the three didn't have to be the same person.