A Contract, Not a Case

The company's legal team came bearing a contract, not a case.

"This equipment belongs to the facility company. Since the contract has ended, we'll be retrieving it by midnight tonight."

Han Yeoreum looked at the case's seal number and spoke.

"We won't be examining the contents. We'll only preserve the wheels, the exterior surface, and the serial number as case-related physical evidence."

"There are other clients' storage devices inside the case. If we allow surface sampling, trade secrets and personal information will be exposed."

"Then let's do a joint seal. We'll store it in a third-party warehouse designated by the company, and check only the exterior condition with both sides present."

The legal team's attorney turned a page of the contract.

"Ownership belongs to the company. Gray Thread has no authority to block the retrieval itself."

Minu cut in.

"We're not saying don't retrieve it. We're saying don't alter its condition before retrieval."

"Those two produce the same result."

"They're different. You can move the equipment, but you can't change the seal or clean it."

Seojin was uncomfortable with the fact that the attorney wasn't entirely wrong. There could be materials inside the case unrelated to the case. If Gray Thread took everything, investigative convenience would go up, but it could turn into infringing material rather than evidence.

Yeoreum held out a joint seal agreement. Company-designated warehouse, exterior photography, serial number verification, no internal access, no seal replacement. The legal team agreed to the ban on internal access, but rejected the surface sampling clause.

"The fluorescent particles are on the surface," Seojin said.

"We don't even know if those particles came from the client's equipment or were picked up at another site."

"That's exactly why sampling is necessary."

"If you sample it, it can't be restored to its original state."

Yeoreum looked at Seojin. Seojin didn't push further. Even if the legal team's refusal seemed unjust, crossing into unlawful duplication could shake the validity of everything they'd secured.

"We'll accept a joint seal without surface sampling," Yeoreum said.

Seojin looked at her.

"Then we lose the authority for the key comparison."

"I'll put the evidence we're losing on record. And before we lose it, I'll file a separate application on the necessity of emergency sampling."

Seojin thought Yeoreum's process was too slow. She wrote it in the dissenting opinion column of the meeting minutes.

At 7 p.m., the time the case retrieval order had been drafted was confirmed. Not the morning after the incident, but 9:12 a.m. on the day of the incident itself. It meant the retrieval plan had existed before anyone knew the server originals were missing.

Minu picked up the order.

"Is this evidence that the company retrieves equipment on a regular schedule?"

"It looks like a routine retrieval document," the attorney said.

"Then why is the print time after the incident?"

The attorney didn't answer immediately.

"Printing can happen later."

"And drafting?"

"That needs to be checked."

Seojin photographed the document number on the retrieval order. The paper itself didn't speak of any crime. But a gap had opened between the explanation that this was routine work unrelated to the incident and the time it had actually been drafted.

That night, O Nari called using an anonymous line. The person on the other end was a staff member at the remote service company. The condition was that neither the client number, the file name, nor the company name would be spoken.

"I won't ask whose file it is," Nari said. "Just confirm for me whether the scheduled destruction time was ever changed manually."

The other side was silent for a long while.

"It's routine destruction."

"And the scheduled time?"

"Around midnight."

"Is that the default policy, or a value applied only to this session?"

The breathing on the line wavered.

"Only the item marked in blue was moved up."

Nari didn't ask anything more. She preserved the call record on the original channel and did not note the staff member's identity separately.

"Was it a manual change?"

"Yes. I saw it scheduled for 11:30 p.m."

"And who made the change?"

"I can't say that."

"You don't have to. Just confirm the hash on the policy screen for me."

The staff member didn't capture the policy screen, only sent the hash value. Handing over a screenshot could expose internal company accounts and names. Nari accepted that limit.

"If we submit this to the court, can we get a preservation order based on an anonymous confirmation?" Yeoreum asked.

"I can't be certain. But if we have the circumstance of the deletion time being moved up along with the policy hash, we can explain the urgency."

Minu checked his watch. Two and a half hours until midnight. The case retrieval and the remote log deletion were both scheduled for the same night.

"We need to broaden the scope."

"If we broaden the scope, the whole application could be dismissed," Yeoreum said.

"If we narrow it, we lose both pieces of evidence."

"Let's file the two items separately. Sampling the microparticles on the case exterior, and preserving the change event on the case's client number. If one is dismissed, the other still has to survive."

Minu started to object, then stopped. He had to choose not the maximum scope, but the scope that would survive.

At 9:30 p.m., the on-duty court's remote hearing began. The judge asked, in order, whether other clients' data was inside the case, whether surface sampling could create contamination, and to what degree the anonymous staff member's statement could be trusted.

Yeoreum stated up front that she was not applying for access to the case's contents.

"What's needed now is the microparticles on the exterior surface and the serial number. The contents and client names are excluded from the scope."

Minu explained the change event application as a separate item.

"This isn't a request for the full text of the remote logs, only for preserving the access, change, and deletion schedule times for the case's client number and the device in question."

The judge asked.

"How do you verify the 11:30 p.m. the anonymous staff member mentioned?"

Nari submitted the original channel preservation confirmation and the policy screen hash. The name was redacted, but the call time and the hash generation time remained.

The judge reviewed the documents for a moment.

"I'll separate the two applications. For the case exterior sampling, conditions are joint attendance, no internal access, and minimum sample quantity. For the change event, it's limited to the case's client number and device serial number, a 24 hour window, and deletion and change types only."

Minu let out a breath. Both items had survived, but only 70 minutes remained before execution.

In the corridor leaving the court, Yeoreum spoke to Seojin.

"You thought I was being too slow earlier."

"Yes."

"I saw that you wrote it down in the meeting minutes too."

"Was I wrong?"

"No. I just don't want you deciding my reasons for slowing down on my behalf."

Seojin fell silent for a moment.

"You want to stop me from using my ability to read a party's intent on their behalf."

"That's right."

"Then I'll stop you from calculating legal risk on my behalf too."

Yeoreum nodded. The warmth between them didn't rise, but the way they watched over each other's authority became clearer.

At 11:10 p.m., when they arrived at the joint seal warehouse, the CCTV footage showed a company vehicle entering first. It was the vehicle Baek Sangho was riding in.

Minu picked up the radio.

"We arrived before the retrieval team. Begin on-site execution."

Seojin looked inside the warehouse. Next to the sealed case, a second case of identical size was being brought in.

The two cases had different serial numbers. But the wheel width was the same.

Forty nine minutes until midnight.

The second case was slowly unloaded from the back of the company vehicle. Baek Sangho claimed he had brought the replacement equipment.

"The routine replacement is tomorrow," Minu said.

"Emergency replacement is also possible under the contract."

"Right now we're carrying out an emergency preservation order."

Baek Sangho showed the serial number on the new case. The company's legal team argued that swapping the two cases would preserve trade secrets and client data. Seojin compared the wheels and handles of the two cases. The exteriors were identical, but the right wheel of the new case had no gray powder on it.

"If you swap them, the surface condition of the original case disappears."

"If we move the storage devices to the new case, the data is preserved."

"Data and surface are not the same evidence."

Yeoreum read the court order.

"It prohibits moving, cleaning, or replacing the seal on the original case before exterior sampling. The company bringing a new case isn't blocked in itself, but the original case can't be swapped out."

Baek Sangho's expression hardened.

Minu pointed at the warehouse CCTV.

"First we're recording why the vehicle arrived early."

"To carry out the retrieval order."

"The order was drafted at 8:42 p.m. The vehicle departed at 8:31 p.m."

Baek Sangho fell silent. Another gap of time had opened up between the explanation of routine retrieval and the vehicle's actual movement.

Seojin checked the exterior seal number on the original case. The number hadn't changed, but the corner of the seal tag was pressed down with moisture. She photographed the surface without rubbing it.

Dohyeon prepared minimal sampling tools. It was decided that the case's fluorescent particles would be sampled once at the handle and once at the wheel edge. The sampling locations, the person in charge, and the time were recorded on the document.

"If the sample is too small, comparison might not be possible," Baek Sangho said.

"Even so, the condition has to be preserved first," Seojin answered.

"If no result comes out of it, who takes responsibility?"

"We'll record the fact that no result came out, too."

Just before the sampling began, a new notification arrived from the remote service company. It reported that the scheduled deletion time had been moved up again, from 11:30 p.m. to 11:12 p.m.

O Nari called the staff member right away, but there was no answer. Minu took the court order and contacted the server access administrator.

"Preserve the deletion schedule change event."

The response came six minutes later. The change had been made not by automation but through an administrator account. The account name couldn't be disclosed, but the access IP was different from the facility company's head office network.

Seojin put the serial numbers of the two cases and the IP record into the same table. Who was behind the two actions was still unknown.

But the explanation that the company had simply been trying to retrieve equipment had grown weaker. Midnight might not have been the contract's expiration time, but the time set to erase the record.

At 11:18 p.m., the fluorescent particle sampling was finished. The case was jointly sealed again, and the internal storage devices were never opened. Dohyeon wrote the two locations separately on the sampling tool envelope.

Yeoreum confirmed that no material outside the scope of preservation had been included. Minu sealed the movement records of the vehicle and the warehouse.

The reason Baek Sangho had arrived first and the need for the second case didn't add up together. The possibility remained that he had tried to erase the surface of the original case.

Twelve minutes until midnight.

Lastly, Seojin sealed the staff member's hash confirmation. What the nameless person had left behind, defying a superior's instructions, was not the culprit's name but a deletion time. Because that time existed, Gray Thread had been able to secure emergency preservation instead of unlawful duplication.

The warehouse door closed. The two cases stood side by side, and which one was the object connected to the case had not yet been settled.