The Proxy Signature

Proxy Signature

18:04, there was no one in front of the sickroom, D-04.

The door was half open. A pair of white gloves hung on the handle. The inside of the gloves wasn't wet. Whoever put them on hadn't just come through the rain. Gang Taejun looked at the angle of the door gap before picking up the gloves.

"Did someone open it and go in, or open it and leave?"

Go Yura checked the log.

"Door open, four seconds. No interior sensor response."

"Then no one went in."

Gang Taejun set a paper marker beside the gloves. He left a direction marked before touching anything with his hands. It was a slow procedure he'd learned because of Oh Sejin's habits.

Oh Sejin arrived late, from the far end of the corridor. He wasn't running. His pace was quick, like someone who thought running wasn't befitting a doctor.

"I didn't open it."

He said it first.

Gang Taejun asked back.

"I didn't ask if you opened it."

Oh Sejin's mouth closed. A denial that comes before the question is always worth recording.

Go Yura turned the screen toward me. `YHW_deputy`. A proxy authority under Yun Haewon's name. But Yun Haewon had been in the meeting room. His card was on my desk. That left only one thing: a proxy issuance.

"Yi Juwan."

I said it.

Yun Haewon didn't deny it right away. He looked like someone who'd already put that name on a list of possibilities.

18:20, Yi Juwan was found in a small meeting room next to the director's office.

He hadn't locked the door. Instead he'd laid three bundles of documents out on the desk. Hong Sanguk's pending approvals, the foundation's audit response, and the `daily correction token issuance record`. It was an arrangement prepared by someone who knew he'd be seen.

"Did you leave the door open on purpose?"

Gang Taejun asked.

Yi Juwan didn't take off his glasses.

"If I lock it, Team Lead Gang just opens it harder."

He looked at me and lowered his head slightly.

"Miss Seo Ihyeon will translate my sentence into a crime again, I suppose."

"Signatures come before sentences."

I said.

Yi Juwan didn't like that answer. His expression showed it, but he didn't smile. He wasn't someone who ran away into a smile. He ran away into conditions.

Gang Taejun placed the `YHW_deputy` log in front of him.

"Explain it."

"It's a proxy authority."

"Proxy for whom."

"Proxy for a position. Not for Yun Haewon personally, for the deputy director's position."

"Who issued it."

Yi Juwan pushed a single sheet forward.

"I did."

Go Yura swallowed a small curse. I didn't hear the word, but I saw the shape of her mouth. If Noeul had been here, she'd have read it more precisely.

"Why did you issue it?"

"For daily correction."

Gang Taejun asked again.

"Daily correction."

"There are moments in the access system when a door needs to open even though no one is present. Emergency supplies, weather equipment, control correction. If everything has to wait for the director's signature, the facility stops running."

He didn't stretch out the legal terms. Instead he showed us three documents. Equipment return, refrigerated storage temperature alarm, emergency access. All of it minor. Minor procedures are what move people. They're more dangerous for being minor.

The documents had no faces on them. Position, proxy, approval number, expiration time. Yi Juwan erased people with columns like that. Erasing a name isn't always malicious. It could be a procedure built so night staff don't have to wait for the director's approval every single time. But the same procedure had left a pair of white gloves in front of the D-04 door.

"Why is the expiration time set after 18:00?"

Gang Taejun asked.

"Operational convenience."

"Whose operation."

Yi Juwan looked down at the documents.

"Emergency access is usually cleared up after the evening rounds."

Oh Sejin spoke from the end of the room.

"That's true."

Gang Taejun didn't look at Oh Sejin as he asked.

"Who decided that."

Oh Sejin was slow to answer.

"I proposed it, and the director's office approved it."

Yi Juwan wrote that down. He wrote down even the statement that could hurt him. Not because he was thorough, but because it might be useful later.

"So the proposal and the approval were separated."

I said.

Yi Juwan looked at me.

"If they're not separated, everyone dies together. If they're separated, people can argue over who's at fault in which column."

"Is making that argument possible the goal?"

"That's usually the goal of a document that survives."

"Is the R-3 token the same kind of thing?"

I asked.

Yi Juwan's eyes turned to me.

"Who told you that word?"

"The records did."

"Records don't talk. People read them."

"That's why I'm asking."

This time he delayed his answer.

"R-3 is a scheduled execution right for correction commands. Originally for equipment correction. It wasn't made to hurt people."

"You don't have to hurt someone to kill them."

Yun Haewon said.

Yi Juwan didn't look that way.

"Do you want that sentence on the record?"

Yun Haewon answered right away.

"Put it on the record."

Yi Juwan picked up his pen. He actually wrote it down. That made him even more irritating. He recorded threats and he recorded cooperation, whichever way suited him.

18:45, Go Yura sorted the issuance records in chronological order.

The R-3 token shared the same root code we'd seen in the remote correction command logs. But the record itself didn't look like a criminal one. `Ventilation restart`, `barometer resynchronization`, `emergency storage access`, `meeting room entry delay correction`. Small approvals the facility used to keep a day running.

"It's not exclusively malicious."

Go Yura said.

"That's exactly what makes it worse."

I answered.

If it were exclusively malicious, it would be easy to find. When an everyday tool gets turned to a bad purpose, everyone has already grown a little used to it.

Gang Taejun asked Yi Juwan.

"The loop where the management key turned up in Seo Ihyeon's coat. Did you issue a proxy authority then too?"

This time Yi Juwan couldn't find the right document right away. His hand paused between the bundle on the right and the bundle on the left. That brief pause was the first mistake of the day.

"I don't remember."

"Not remembering and not saying are different things."

He lifted his head.

"I'll tell you. But I'll keep to the order."

"It isn't your order to keep."

Gang Taejun's voice dropped.

Yi Juwan didn't back off from that right away.

"Then let's go by the order of evidence."

He pulled out a record marked `D-09 storage room / temporary removal / legal review`. The management key that had come out of my coat. The path by which that key reached me was still half empty.

"Could this authority have been used to remove the key?"

"It could have."

"Who removed it?"

"According to the record, there's no one listed as having removed it."

Go Yura pulled up the screen.

"It's not that there's no one. The remover's column got covered over by a proxy signature."

Yi Juwan looked at Go Yura.

"That's correct."

"Don't compliment me."

Go Yura answered quickly.

He didn't say anything more. He typed on the keyboard like someone trying not to leave a gap behind a quick statement.

19:10, the key removal record and the R-3 token issuance record shared the same signature chain.

Issuer Yi Juwan, approval basis Hong Sanguk's position account, execution target deputy director's proxy or emergency access. On paper it looked clean. In practice it was a chart showing who could sell out whom.

"So you had a chance to frame Seo Ihyeon."

Gang Taejun said.

Yi Juwan didn't deny it right away. He calculated the cost before denying anything.

"I did."

"Did you do it?"

"That question needs a lawyer."

"Aren't you your own lawyer here?"

"That's exactly why I need one more."

He pulled a small bundle of stickers out of a drawer. Red, blue, gray. The legal auditor's color classification. Red for immediate seal, blue for post review, gray for hold. The record of the key removal from my coat had a gray sticker on it.

"Why is it on hold?"

I asked.

"Because the removal itself looks legal."

"What about it ending up in my coat?"

"That looks illegal."

"Did you use that difference?"

Yi Juwan straightened the stickers again.

"I knew about that difference."

"Answer the question."

Gang Taejun said.

"I created the opportunity. I won't say I put it there myself."

"You can't say it, or you won't say it?"

"Both."

The answer was cowardly, but it wasn't empty. We hadn't caught him completely. Instead we'd caught the opportunity he'd built. The way a document can make a person look like a criminal. Yi Juwan knew that method too well.

I looked at him and spoke.

"Which side are you on?"

"That question is always the wrong one."

Yi Juwan squared the edges of his documents.

"I'm not someone who sides with the winner. I'm someone who picks the document that survives no matter who wins."

"That's called conspiracy."

Yun Haewon said.

"Sometimes."

Yi Juwan didn't dodge that.

"But there is a line."

Gang Taejun gave a short laugh. It was more a breath escaping than a laugh.

"You're talking about a line now?"

"I have to. Otherwise I become someone who'd do anything at all."

Yi Juwan opened the third bundle of documents.

"I don't sign anything that erases an original. I've signed things that delay opening an original. I've signed things that change whose hands an original reaches first. But I've never signed a deletion."

That sentence was self defense. It was also useful. When people defend themselves, they reveal their own rules.

"Why not deletion?"

I asked.

"A deleted original has no bargaining power."

His answer came too fast and too realistically. Not justice, but a price tag. That's why it was believable. I didn't want to believe it.

Yun Haewon spoke, low.

"So you could have sold my schedule too."

Yi Juwan looked his way.

"I could have."

"Did you?"

"Not yet."

"Yet."

Yun Haewon repeated the word.

Yi Juwan wasn't ashamed.

"On an island where time keeps closing, the word yet matters. You have to separate what you didn't do today from what you couldn't do."

"Does that distinction keep people alive?"

"Sometimes."

He looked at me once.

"Sometimes it only keeps them alive in court."

I hadn't meant to write that sentence down, but I did. Even a truth I didn't like might be needed later.

19:40, Yi Juwan printed out the `YHW_deputy` issuance ledger.

The stated reason for issuance was `emergency access daily correction`. The usable door was D-04. The time restriction for use was after 18:00. It lined up exactly with the first authentication door routing.

"Who requested this?"

Gang Taejun asked.

"The requester is a position account."

"A person."

"No person was recorded."

"Someone who didn't record it."

Yi Juwan set down his pen.

"That's me."

Go Yura spoke right away.

"Then you're the one who erased it."

"No. I approved a form that doesn't require a person's name."

"That's what erasing is."

Go Yura's voice sped up. It looked like three more questions were about to come. Gang Taejun raised a hand to stop her.

"The result is the same."

Yi Juwan nodded this time.

"Legally it's different."

"Even when someone dies?"

He didn't answer. That silence lasted longer than before. For the first time, it looked like his calculations had stopped.

20:05, we split Yi Juwan's documents into three envelopes.

The R-3 daily correction issuance record. The D-09 key removal proxy signature. The YHW_deputy emergency access authority. The three envelopes looked like separate cases, but the signature chain was the same.

Gang Taejun wrote on each envelope: "not deletion, delay and reordering."

"I don't like that phrase."

Yi Juwan said.

"Isn't it accurate?"

"It's accurate. That's why I don't like it."

He didn't cover his own weakness with a joke. That much of him was honest.

Yun Haewon asked him.

"Can you cancel the proxy authority issued under my name?"

"I can."

"Do it now."

Yi Juwan didn't move right away.

"If you cancel it, the existing chain breaks."

"Good."

"It's not good."

For the first time, he lowered his voice.

"The original chain Seo Ihyeon is holding onto could break along with it."

The words were aimed at me. I didn't know what he was about to bring up. But my hand was already pressing down on the left corner of my notebook.

"Explain it."

Gang Taejun said.

Yi Juwan looked at the Q-13 key hanging around my neck. His gaze was brief. It was too brief, which made it more precise.

"The original chain has a legal defect."

He said it slowly.

"The first access authority is registered under a dead person's name. And that person's family started making copies while they'd delayed the emergency procedure. Even if the original survives, someone will call that chain a contaminated copy, not evidence."

Every gaze in the room turned to me. I didn't meet them one by one. In my notebook, the gap between 23:55 and 00:04 was still empty.