The Summons Song Juhyeok Didn't Answer

Song Juhyeok didn't go in right away even after receiving word to report to Gray Thread. He stared for a long time at his own face reflected in the window at the end of the hallway. The correction notice released the day before had listed his name as a victim of misjudgment, but that sentence alone hadn't restored the trust that had been damaged. He could explain the reason he'd hidden something, and he also had reasons not to.

Seojin opened the door.

"You're not coming in?"

"I'll come in. Just don't record this."

Seojin took out her phone's voice recorder and set it visibly on the table. Then she turned it off and showed him the screen.

"I'll take the notes myself. The right to review them belongs to you, Song Juhyeok."

Only then did Song Juhyeok step inside. Minwoo had already laid out the question sheet, and Yeoreum was organizing the entry logs and test phone data. Before he sat down, Seojin asked first.

"What part can you tell us?"

"That I went as far as the empty house before dawn."

Minwoo straightened up immediately. Song Juhyeok kept talking despite seeing the reaction.

"Someone delivered in my place. Someone not on the company's registered list."

"An unregistered worker?"

"Don't write that word down."

"Then I won't write the name down either. But I'll need independent evidence to confirm this person exists," Seojin said.

Song Juhyeok stayed silent for a while. He said the company had promised a proper contract to the migrant worker who'd handled the medicine delivery, but there was a chance the company would shift blame onto him if an accident happened. That person knew how to operate the delivery device, and Song Juhyeok had handed off one predawn delivery to him. He'd gone as far as the empty house so the man could get out of the car.

"Why didn't you say that from the start?" Minwoo asked.

"Because I was afraid he'd get caught."

"That lie made our team see you as the culprit."

"I know."

"Moon Serim is dead."

Song Juhyeok's fingers pressed against the table. "That's not me saying I won't take responsibility. But I can't hand over my own responsibility and that person's identity at the same time."

Seojin wrote his statement down as two separate lines. A lie made for protection, and the cost that lie had created for the investigation. Protection wasn't a pardon, and the cost wasn't grounds to force disclosure either.

Song Juhyeok explained his movements at four in the morning. He'd left his vehicle behind the warehouse and checked the test phone's status from the operations room. The delivery device had been used by Park Hyeonwoo, the registered delivery driver, and Song Juhyeok had gone to the empty house to receive the medicine box. But he said he hadn't confirmed a photo being taken at the front door, and he'd never told Yun Hyejin the test phone's passcode.

"Then who took the photo?"

"I don't know."

"What about the second cancellation token?"

"I didn't create it."

Even while giving his statement, Song Juhyeok never named the person he was protecting. Seojin didn't ask for the name and instead demanded independent evidence. The temperature changes in the warehouse's refrigerated section, the vehicle's door open and close log, the delivery device's Bluetooth connections, the timestamp on the test phone's photo. All four could be confirmed without exposing anyone's name.

Minwoo duplicated the vehicle log Song Juhyeok had submitted. The rear door of the vehicle had opened once between 03:58 and 04:06, and the connection between the vehicle and the delivery device had cut off at 04:01 and returned at 04:05. It was confirmed that Song Juhyeok had left the vehicle, but the vehicle log alone couldn't say where he'd gone.

"Why didn't you give us this record from the start?"

"Because if I had, you'd have gone looking for the person who rode with me too."

"To protect that person?"

"Yes."

"Then what did that person do inside the warehouse?"

Song Juhyeok lowered his eyes. "I don't know. All I know is that he delivered in my place, and that the company never gave him a safe contract."

Seojin didn't treat that answer as fact. She wrote, "Claim regarding the person being protected, requires independent verification." Song Juhyeok checked the note and nodded.

"Write it that way. Whether the reason I gave is true also needs to be confirmed with evidence."

After that, the team reconstructed the logistics flow without asking anyone's identity. The packaged weight of the refrigerated medicine differed between the shipping log and the delivery completion photo, and the temperature in the warehouse's refrigerated section had risen twice before Moon Serim was found. The time the vehicle's rear door opened overlapped with the first of those two rises. The test phone's photo had been generated after that.

The likelihood that the person Song Juhyeok was protecting had been at the scene went up, but there was no evidence connecting that person to Moon Serim's death. Song Juhyeok admitted he'd made the delivery in someone else's place, but said he hadn't met Moon Serim.

"If I'd seen her, I would have said so."

"You haven't said much so far."

Song Juhyeok looked at Seojin. "That's exactly why I was wrong. Having a reason for not saying something doesn't erase the cost of not saying it."

Those words lingered in the room for a long time. Minwoo reopened the report confirming Moon Serim's death. The time of the injury didn't line up exactly with the delivery completion photo, and the time the medicine box disappeared still hadn't been fixed. The existence of the person being protected was a partial answer about who, but the structure of the crime was still a blank.

In the afternoon, Song Juhyeok started to say the name Adil and stopped. Seojin saw him stop but didn't ask for the name.

"You don't have to say the name. Just tell me about a protection procedure that person can access whenever he wants to give a statement himself."

"Can that procedure be trusted?"

"I won't ask you to trust it. I'll show you the person in charge, the scope of authority, and the limits of what's retained, in writing."

Seojin wrote down contact information for a protection agency and a labor counseling center. Song Juhyeok left the paper unfolded on the table. He agreed to provide additional logistics records on the condition that the person's identity wouldn't be handed over. He did require that an independent reviewer confirm both the access logs and the statement.

That evening, part of Song Juhyeok's statement was added to the correction notice. It said he'd gone as far as the empty house but hadn't taken the delivery completion photo. This fact didn't clear him, but it narrowed down the path the photo had taken again. Without disclosing who Song Juhyeok had been protecting, only the vehicle door log and the test phone's serial number remained on the case board.

Minwoo said, "While you're protecting Adil, someone could use that name to run."

"Then find him with independent evidence. Don't solve it by pulling the name out of my mouth."

Seojin checked herself over whether that sounded arrogant. Song Juhyeok, while still holding the position of a suspect, was exercising the right to choose on behalf of the person he was protecting. He was still controlling, and that control could pose a real risk to someone. But the possibility of risk wasn't the same as the authority to disclose.

At night, Song Juhyeok requested that the company's unregistered contract records be preserved. The original contract had no name on it, only working hours and the payment method. He handed over the document and said.

"Looking at this, you could guess who that person is. So please send it to the protection agency first."

Seojin sealed the document and passed only its hash to the protection agency and an outside reviewer at the same time. This time, the fact that a document without a name could still expose a person was reflected in the procedure itself.

Before leaving the meeting room, Song Juhyeok asked Seojin.

"Do you understand now why I lied?"

"Some of it. Understanding it doesn't erase the responsibility."

"That answer is enough."

After he left, Seojin wrote a sentence on the case board.

"Part of the protective purpose behind Song Juhyeok's lie has been confirmed. But the identity of the person being protected and the facts of the crime are verified separately. The core structure is built from the physical records of the vehicle, the temperature, the token, and the photo."

The reason behind the person had come out, but the case had grown more complicated. Without naming the person being protected, they still had to confirm who had moved the medicine and where Moon Serim had been injured. Seojin didn't let that complexity shrink and opened the next preservation request. The next morning, the protection agency's caseworker reviewed the contract record Song Juhyeok had handed over. There was no name, but there were working hours, part of a payment account, and the warehouse entry times. The caseworker said she wouldn't confirm Adil's identity from this record alone. Instead, she set up a channel he could use to make contact whenever he judged it safe to do so.

Even after receiving that channel's contact information, Song Juhyeok didn't pass it on to Adil right away. He checked the method of delivery and the retention period first. Seojin pointed out that his slow approach could become another form of control.

"If the person who says he's protecting someone takes too long to decide, the person being protected loses the time to choose."

Hearing that, Song Juhyeok handed the sealing authority for the contract record over to the protection agency. It was a choice not to control every contact from the middle himself. Still, they agreed that Gray Thread wouldn't reach out unless Adil made contact first.

Minwoo enlarged the temperature graph for the refrigerated section. There was a four minute gap between when the vehicle's rear door opened and when the warehouse's refrigerated door opened. If someone had moved the medicine, they needed to separately confirm whether that person was the same one who took the delivery completion photo. Song Juhyeok's vehicle log explained those four minutes, but it didn't explain the path the photo had taken.

Seojin compared the photo of the wristband on the test phone with the blurred wrist visible on the warehouse CCTV. They looked like the same color, but the lighting difference was significant. She wrote only "possible same wristband" and didn't put in anyone's name.

Song Juhyeok looked at the record and said, "Now you're spending more time looking at what I didn't say than what I did."

"There can be reasons for not saying something. Having a reason doesn't make it fact."

Instead of answering, he checked the hash of the contract record the protection agency had kept. Trust wasn't about handing over more information, it was also about agreeing on where the information handed over would stop. That day's record left a preservation number in place of a name. The fact that someone still hadn't spoken was also part of the case.