The Document Before the Edit

Document Before the Edit

The shutter had been raised about the width of a palm. Doyun didn't drop to the ground to look inside right away. He pulled a lobby chair over first and wedged it under the shutter. If the shutter came down, the chair's backrest would break before anything else.

"Don't go in."

Seojin checked the clear file. Only the bottom half of ticket number zero remained. Hajun's name was on the torn side. What was left held only the issue time and a question.

Who is responsible?

Kim Taemin sat beside his mother. Park Hyeonju still couldn't look her son straight in the face, but she held a pen in her hand. Ticket number 37 was drying a wet stain inside the clear file. The visitor badge name had come back as far as Kim Tae.

"We need to get those people out first," Doyun said.

"If they go out the door, the ledger might close," Miran answered.

"So we just leave them sitting here and go into the window ourselves?"

"No. We need to split the roles."

Miran paused for a moment even after hearing her own words. She seemed to correct herself, so it would sound like a suggestion instead of an order. "Investigator Kang Doyun, stay with Kim Taemin. Recorder Yun Seojin, check the storage inside the window with me. Officer Lee Jeongbae, only log lobby visitors and on duty cooperation. Analyst Park Eunchae, keep the ledger screen up."

Seojin didn't agree right away. "You and I can't be the only two who go in."

"It's not just the two of us. This door stays open, and Investigator Kang keeps a line of sight. Anything inside gets photographed from outside before we touch it."

Doyun asked briefly. "If it goes wrong, can I pull her out?"

"You can."

When Miran said that, the shutter rose another five centimeters. It moved as if it had heard permission from inside. Seojin recorded the reaction.

Inside window number zero was different from a normal window. The glass on the visitor side was covered with a poster, and on the staff side desk sat an old intake ledger. A ticket cutter sat on top of the desk. It looked like a small machine for clipping grocery coupons. Three rubber stamps sat beside it.

Received. Not received. Amended.

Seojin didn't touch the stamps. She zoomed in with the camera to photograph the lettering. Miran pointed at the storage location with her finger. It was a steel drawer under the desk. There was no lock, but a red thread was wound around the handle.

"Is that a seal?"

"It's a mark made to look like a seal. It has no legal effect."

"If it has no effect, who did this?"

"Someone who wanted it to look like it had effect."

Miran's answer wasn't long. Seojin photographed the knot in the red thread, the dust, the scratches around the handle. Doyun spoke from outside. "Left wall. Behind the poster."

Seojin turned her head. There was a poster on the wall inside the window too. It was a notice about a complaint satisfaction survey. The bottom of the poster had lifted away from the wall, and a white paper corner showed through the gap.

Miran didn't touch it first. "Recorder Yun Seojin, you check it. I'll keep my hands back."

"Why."

"If I touch it, meaning could attach to it."

Seojin wrote the words down exactly as they were. Team leader avoids personal contact. Reason unconfirmed.

When she lifted the poster, a small storage key was taped underneath. The keyring had an empty square drawn on it instead of the number zero. Seojin didn't use the key right away. She showed it to Doyun outside. Doyun nodded.

"Witnessed."

Officer Lee Jeongbae wrote it down too, in shaky handwriting. Key found, 11:37 p.m.

Inside the drawer were three ledgers. The current ledger, the not received ledger, and the ledger before the edit. The third ledger's cover was worn, with a label in the upper left reading version zero. The label was new. The adhesive underneath was white, as if it had been stuck onto the worn cover that very day.

Seojin didn't take the ledger out, only photographed the cover. Miran drew a long breath. There was no explanation beyond that sound.

"Do you know this item?"

"I know the format."

"And the contents?"

"Unconfirmed for now."

Seojin accepted the answer. Saying it was unconfirmed could be concealment, or it could be an accurate stance. She couldn't judge which, not yet.

The first page of the ledger before the edit held a set of rules.

Assign a responsible person to every complaint. 1. A missing person report is provisionally received even if the reporter's qualification or address is incomplete. 2. Provisional intakes are kept jointly by the on duty supervisor and two field verifiers. 3. A missing person not yet received is not substituted in as the complainant. 4. The person responsible leaves their name and the date.

All four lines were in black pen. On the second page, the same rules were copied, and red lines had been drawn through them again and again. In rule one, provisional intake had been changed to not received. In rule two, the on duty supervisor and two field verifiers had been struck out. In rule four, name and date had been changed to keep blank.

Seojin didn't read it line by line. She photographed it and marked only the changed spots with numbers. Eunchae spoke from the other side of the screen. "If it says assign a responsible person to every complaint, then originally every complaint was structured to have someone responsible. The current system was changed so it only runs when that person is left blank."

"Don't treat that as a solution," Miran said.

"Why not."

"The old rules weren't always right. Blanket provisional intake, used wrong, becomes indiscriminate summoning. It could bind more people like Hajun, not fewer."

Seojin didn't close the ledger. "Does that mean it was still better than now?"

"I shouldn't be the one to answer that."

"You're talking like you already know the answer."

Miran didn't deny it right away this time either. "I know part of it."

Case records were attached at the back of the ledger before the edit. Seojin didn't flip through the whole thing, only checked the two pages marked with bookmarks. One was August 17, eleven years ago. The other was today's date. Both pages had an empty square in the same position.

Complaint supervisor.

On the page from eleven years ago, there was a trace of pressure beside the empty square, as if someone had started to write a name and then covered it over. The page from today had no such trace at all. It was a form made to stay blank from the start.

"The form changed," Seojin said.

Eunchae received the photo on the remote screen. "The old form has traces of an eraser or correction fluid, but today's form has the field itself disabled. Even the same blank space has a different cause behind it."

Miran nodded. "In the beginning, a person erased the name. Later, someone made it so the name couldn't be written at all."

"Who did?"

"If I answer that now, words would get ahead of the evidence."

Seojin didn't write her frustration down as an emotion word. Instead, she rearranged the order of the ledger photos. The blank from eleven years ago, today's blank, the rules before the edit, the red lines, the reprint log. Order came before words.

The right hand drawer of the desk held returned envelopes. Most of the recipient fields were empty, and the sender field was stamped with the complaint support division. On one envelope, the name Yun Hajun was faintly visible. Seojin didn't open the envelope. She only photographed the outside.

"You're not going to open it?" Miran asked.

"If I add new evidence about Hajun in this scene, it blurs the ledger check."

Doyun gave a short laugh from outside. "You've learned well."

Seojin didn't respond. Beside the envelope was a small card.

If identity cannot be confirmed, cross reference with the baseline voice.

The moment she saw the sentence, Seojin's hand stopped. She couldn't tell if it meant Hajun's voice could be cross referenced, or that it already had been. She didn't open the card either. She only photographed it and left it marked unknown.

Miran didn't stop that choice. Instead, she flipped off an old switch on the wall. One of the fluorescent lights inside the window went out, and another light showed under the desk. It was a small recorder. Its screen showed the playback time frozen at 00:17.

"Don't play it," Miran said.

"I haven't pressed it yet."

"Even if there's a chance it's Hajun's voice, playing it here could let the ledger process it as identity confirmed."

Seojin photographed the recorder. Not played. Possible identity confirmation trigger. Her fingertips slowed while she wrote that line. Doyun called out the time from outside.

"11:42 p.m. The shutter's coming down a little more."

Miran left the position of the three ledgers in the drawer exactly as they were and made only a copy of the rules before the edit. Even when she laid the ledger open on the copier glass, her fingers never pressed down on the text. She pressed only the spine and the margins. Seojin hadn't asked yet why someone so careful had drawn the red lines in the first place.

When the copy came out, there was one extra black dot on the empty square where the original had none. It looked as if the copier couldn't leave the blank space as a blank and had marked it instead.

Eunchae said, "The blank field turned into an object when it came through as an image. The system is reading the blank as an entry."

"So even a blank is something to be recorded."

Seojin didn't write anything on the margin of the copy. Writing directly on the margin could mix it up with the original. Instead she wrote it on a separate note and attached it. The blank itself reacts as a processing entry. Cause unconfirmed.

The Kim Taemin case outside was connected to what was inside the window too. In one margin of the ledger there was a trace of the number 37, written in pencil and then erased. Seojin didn't photograph the number prominently. She kept only as much of it as the current case required.

"The ticket cutter reacts to the ledger's margins too," Eunchae said. "Ticket 37's record might not have appeared and then been erased just now. It could be reading a trace that was already there."

"I'll leave both as possibilities."

Miran was flipping through the inner pages of the ledger before the edit when she stopped. At the bottom of an inner page was an old official seal. It was a district office seal from before the Seongan City Public Safety Response Agency was even established. That could mean this case hadn't been the Agency's alone from the start. But Seojin didn't write down an interpretation that expanded the scope of the agency involved.

"Seal confirmed. Jurisdictional history unconfirmed."

Miran said quietly. "That's the right way to write it."

Seojin didn't record that either. She needed one more photograph more than she needed an evaluation of what was right.

Outside, Park Hyeonju spoke. "Taemin?"

The full three syllable name came out completely for the first time. Kim Taemin was about to answer right away, then covered his mouth. Doyun spoke for him instead. "He's here. Let him answer in his own time."

On the display board, Kim Taemin's name flickered on and then off. A thin line was drawn through the one person amended notation on ticket number 37. It didn't disappear completely.

"Partial restoration," Eunchae said. "The ledger status changed from not received to provisionally confirmed. Handler is Lee Jeongbae, cooperating. Field verifiers are Kang Doyun and Yun Seojin. The responsible person is still blank."

The moment the words responsible person blank came out, the copier inside window number zero turned on. One sheet of paper came out. Seojin photographed it before carrying it outside. The printout was the last page of the document before the edit.

At the bottom was a small print log.

Reprinted: today, 11:07 p.m. Requested by: S.M. Edited by: S.M.

Below that, beside today's date, was another signature. Yun Hajun. The handwriting resembled the confirmation form from chapter 20, but Seojin only wrote that it resembled it. She didn't write that it was the same person.

Doyun spoke from outside. "Come out."

"The ledger isn't secured yet."

"Seojin."

Doyun called her name. It carried more force than an order would have. The shutter was coming down bit by bit. The chair's backrest was giving way and making noise. Miran stopped her hand as it reached to lift the ledger.

"We leave the original. We secure only copies of the rules before the edit and the blank ledger cover."

"If we leave the original, it might disappear."

"If we take the original, it could be processed as the ledger closing."

Seojin didn't clench her teeth. Instead she put the copies, the photo files, and the print log into the clear file. Miran didn't close the drawer, only set the red thread aside. There was no way to know if closing it would make someone the responsible party.

Even after the copies were made, the original stayed inside the drawer. Seojin photographed the drawer left open and the position of the red thread once more. If someone moved the original later, there had to be a record of at least how far the handle had been open right now.

Officer Lee Jeongbae spoke from outside in a shaking voice. "Do I have to guard that drawer?"

"Don't guard it alone," Seojin answered. "We'll leave watching the original as an attachment."

At those words, the display board flickered briefly. As if the word attachment didn't yet exist in the system, the screen threw up an empty square once and then went dark.

When the two of them came out of the window, the shutter came down. The chair's backrest snapped, and the shutter stopped three centimeters above the floor. From inside came the sound of the ticket cutter being pressed once.

Seojin looked again at the bottom of the printout. Below today's date next to the initials S.M. was printed the number of reprints.

Two.

The first was at 11:07 p.m. The second was now. Between the two records, the requester field read S.M. both times.