Twelve Hours to Keep the Record

The external delivery management service had a retention period of twelve hours. If the two tokens and the approval path from 04:03 couldn't be confirmed, the server would automatically erase the relay records at dawn the next day. Gray Thread needed to secure the original, but Song Juhyeok refused to grant direct access to his own company account. The refusal was accepted, and the deadline kept shrinking.

Minu wrote the times in large letters on the meeting room whiteboard. 10:12 retention request, 14:00 legal review, 16:00 designation of an external reviewer. After that came the scheduled deletion time. He drew two lines under the last number.

"At this rate it'll disappear before we even see the original."

Seojin opened the access rights table. Preserving the original was possible immediately, but reviewing its contents required double review. Song Juhyeok's company account might contain personal information mixed with traces of unregistered workers, and if Gray Thread copied that data wholesale, there was a risk of exposing someone under protection.

"We need to separate the authority to preserve the original from the authority to view its contents."

"What if it gets deleted while we're separating them?"

"We put in the request to stop the deletion first."

Yeoreum sent the platform a retention order that specified a scope. From 04:02 to 04:05, the normal completion token and the cancellation token, the approval path and the device identifier. The full account and other couriers' records were excluded. Minu wanted to widen the scope, but if it was material Song Juhyeok could refuse, the minimum scope had to come first.

Song Juhyeok read the screen and added a line. 'The retained material shall not include any non public identifier designated by a protection agency.'

"If we add this, the server might reject the request," Yeoreum said.

"Then get the reason for the rejection and an alternative retention method."

He didn't log into his own company account directly. Instead he sent a one time approval code to the external reviewer. Gray Thread agreed not to receive the code itself, only the time it was used and the result. Song Juhyeok's private purpose sat somewhere between helping the investigation and hiding someone under protection, and it couldn't be explained by either one alone.

At two in the afternoon, the platform's legal team replied asking to narrow the scope of the retention request, on the grounds that the account identifier and courier information counted as personal data. Minu reached for the phone to call immediately, but Seojin raised her hand.

"Get the answer in writing instead of over the phone. We need a record of who refused which scope."

Minu let out a short breath and drafted a second request. He asked for the device identifier as a hash, the courier's name under a pseudonym, and the approval path as a token linked to the case number. The platform accepted that scope, but said access to the original would only be possible from the external security office.

Song Juhyeok refused to enter the external security office. His reason was that the moment he saw the original himself, it could raise suspicion that the protected person's data had been exposed. He proposed passing only the hash and approval path to Gray Thread, and letting the external reviewer and a legal authority handle the actual content review.

"If you refuse, the evidence of the crime could get shut out along with it," Minu said.

"That's why I'll provide the physical records myself. Just don't open the personal data inside my account."

Seojin put his conditions into writing: the scope of the refusal, its expiration time, and a way to substitute independent material. Song Juhyeok confirmed it as, "The identity of the protected person will not be disclosed, but access to delivery equipment and time records is permitted."

At four in the afternoon, the external reviewer arrived. He didn't copy the server original first, only checked the list of preserved hashes and relay paths. Minu found the procedure frustrating, but the reviewer explained his reasoning.

"The moment someone sees the original, that person becomes the owner of new material. Right now we need to settle who's allowed to see it first."

The reviewer also asked for Seojin's ability records. Seojin submitted the output and the cost record for "empty house," but asked that it not be added to the evidence list. The external reviewer confirmed that the word had been used in the case board's first hypothesis and then discarded, and added a misreading warning.

Minu expressed his displeasure, but Seojin spoke first. "This warning has to be there, so I don't make the same mistake the next time I listen to an original."

With two hours left before the retention deadline, the first logs came out of the server. The normal token had been issued directly from the delivery device, and the cancellation token had been reissued through the external approval path. But there were two service accounts on the approval path, and without viewing rights to the original, there was no way to confirm which account had made the request first.

Even after seeing that result, Song Juhyeok didn't authorize a review of his own account. Instead he handed over additional power and access records from the company's logistics equipment. Those records showed the refrigeration zone's power rising at 04:01, and the control room test phone waking at 04:03. There were no names, but the order in which the equipment moved was confirmed.

Seojin drew two branches on the case board. First, the possibility that Song Juhyeok had used his own vehicle and company equipment to carry out the delivery himself. Second, the possibility that someone else had used the control room test phone and the external approval path to create the photo and the token. The two overlapped in part of the timeframe, but she didn't merge them into a single crime.

Minu said, "If there's a second person, they might be the same person Song Juhyeok is hiding."

"That's possible. But we can't override his refusal just to find out a name."

"Then how do we narrow it down?"

"We let the equipment speak first."

Minu heard that and lined up the power record of the control room test phone with the timestamp of the refrigeration zone sensor. The two devices' clocks were off by 0.7 seconds, but the order they woke in was the same. The cancellation token had been issued almost simultaneously with the photo's creation, not after it. That raised the possibility that someone hadn't created the photo and canceled the token afterward, but had generated both events within a single service flow.

Thirty minutes before the retention deadline, the platform sealed the original. The external reviewer confirmed the seal hash and passed only a summary on to Gray Thread. Song Juhyeok never saw the original containing the protected information, and Gray Thread never opened the full history of the company account he held.

Minu folded up the documents and said, "Separate things this much, and neither side knows anything about the other."

Yeoreum answered, "It's not that no one knows anything. It's that everyone only knows what they're allowed to know."

Seojin added a new condition to her access rights table. Whenever the original was reviewed, Minu and the external reviewer would confirm it together, and if the use of the ability was chosen, its output and cost would be recorded immediately. Material Song Juhyeok refused would be replaced with other physical records, and the refusal itself would not be used as evidence of the crime.

That night, Song Juhyeok confirmed the time his approval code had been used by the external service. He didn't say who the code had been passed to, but he did disclose that it had been discarded immediately after use. The act of staying silent for the sake of protection had, on one hand, closed off a piece of evidence, and on the other, kept a server original alive.

Seojin sorted through that contradiction and wrote it down.

'Song Juhyeok's refusal delayed the investigation, but it made minimum scope retention possible. Do not conclude that the refusal was made in good faith or as concealment. The next step is to independently verify the approval path and the order of the equipment.'

The retention server's clock pointed to 04:03. The original still remained, and viewing rights were still divided. Gray Thread chose to record who came to know what, rather than learn the case quickly. The next morning, Minu spread out the logistics records secured the day before once again. He tried to bind together the fact that Song Juhyeok had gone as far as the empty house's front door, and the fact that the control room test phone had created the photo, into a single line of movement. Seojin added a second time to that table. The moment Song Juhyeok's car door opened and the moment the test phone woke up were close, but not the same.

"Being close in time doesn't mean it's the same action."

"Then if we keep them separate, the case splits into two."

"It might have been two from the start."

Minu thought for a moment, then deleted the title "Song Juhyeok's Delivery Manipulation" from his report. In its place he wrote "The Relationship Between Delivery by Proxy and the Creation of the Photo and Token." It was a revision meant to keep a single title from prematurely assigning blame to a suspect.

Even after reading the summary the external reviewer had written, Song Juhyeok didn't withdraw his refusal regarding his company account. Instead he additionally provided the original power meter data from the logistics warehouse and the control room door opening and closing records. That material contained no trace of Adil's identity, and no direct trace of the person Song Juhyeok hadn't named either.

Seojin kept that material and said to Song Juhyeok, "This is already a substantial amount of help."

"It's not help. It's a transaction."

"Keeping to conditions and making a transaction aren't the same thing."

"I still don't trust you people."

"We don't reach conclusions based on your word alone either."

That exchange wasn't a sign the relationship had improved. It was a sign they could each state their limits to the other. Seojin wrote in the relationship table, "Conditional cooperation, independent purpose maintained."

Toward evening, the external service disclosed only the device region for one of the approval accounts. The region was the same zone as the logistics warehouse, but the exact location stayed undisclosed. Seojin didn't suspect Song Juhyeok again because of that information. The same zone held the control room, the delivery vehicles, and the external service's relay station, all together.

Minu went in with the external reviewer to review the preserved original. Seojin watched the screen from the seat beside them, but chose not to use her ability. The original had no voice, and a sensor flaw in the footage had smeared part of the photo's color. The camera flaw could make the hypothesis that someone had duplicated the photo either weaker or stronger.

"It's confirmed that the photo was made on the test phone," Minu said.

"Not who made it."

The external reviewer agreed. He compared the frame hash of the original footage with the request hash of the server token. The two hashes hadn't come from the same device. They showed a structure where the external service had received the control room test phone's photo through a separate request. The creation of the photo and the issuing of the token were linked, but no name was linked to either.

Seojin left that limitation in the report. Saying the case had narrowed wasn't the same as saying the culprit had narrowed. The physical records showed the boundary of the service, and the person outside that boundary still wasn't visible.

At eleven at night, Song Juhyeok paused once as he was leaving Gray Thread. "If Adil doesn't contact you, don't try to find out the name."

Seojin nodded. "Instead, I'll build the case out of temperature, power, and the flow of tokens."

"Is that possible?"

"Only as much as it can be."

Song Juhyeok heard that answer and turned away. Seojin couldn't tell if he'd been reassured. What was clear, though, was that the scope of the next retention request had to be designed so it wouldn't need anyone's name.