Shin Jaeho Knew the Date on Im Seoha's False Signature

Shin Jaeho knew the date on Im Seoha's false signature.

He said he would erase that record.

In exchange, he said he needed one recoverable worker.

Im Seoha asked for a name.

At 4:29, the same unlisted number showed up again on Seoha's personal phone. The A, B, and C mobility equipment and the underpass drainage pump were still stopped. The old man at A was waiting for family, the B stroller had cleared the ramp, the C tool bag was sealed at a thermal reading of 28 degrees, and the underpass water level was at 2.8.

Yuna pulled out an offline recorder instead of the office account with the blank employee number field. She split the storage into two folders so the call transcript and Seoha's personal documents would never end up in the same file.

"Is it okay if I just save the raw call?"

Seoha nodded. "My old records get filed separately. We decide how much to release once the call's over."

Mijin didn't push her to answer faster. With her arm still marked from the door frame under the cold pack, she pointed at the public facility incident board. She meant: keep the citizen facility status up on one side of the screen the whole time.

Seoha switched on the speaker.

"This is Im Seoha."

The man answered in a low, smooth voice. "This is Shin Jaeho, Director of Operations Strategy. Let's confirm the current incidents first. Three mobility equipment failures, one drainage failure. Citizen injuries are still unconfirmed, and the normal operation rate has dropped to 82 percent."

He didn't hide the citizen damage. But he didn't say a single person's name.

"You're the one who sent the text?"

"That's right. I'd like to propose cleaning up the past record and restoring the current facilities at the same time."

Yuna opened the link Jaeho sent on a separate isolated screen. Not the company's original server, a read only relay display. The file title was "August 11, 2019 / Nam Sangho Voluntary Departure Confirmation."

Below it was Seoha's signature from when she'd been a transfer assistant back then.

"Field departure confirmed as the individual's own decision."

It was false. Seoha had never confirmed anything with Sangho directly. After the accident, she'd read the line the team lead handed her and signed it. Even after Sangho never came back, that one line was why the company record showed voluntary departure instead of disappearance.

Jaeho said, "This signature doesn't need correcting, it can be deleted entirely. It would also be excluded from your career review, and we can restore the name, access, and pay records currently under employee number 4721."

Seoha kept the call open even while looking at her own signature on the screen. The bruises on both her wrists throbbed in the same rhythm under the protective film.

"How would the facilities get restored?"

"One controlled exception is all it takes. Automatic assignment was halted by the full refusal, but manual exception is still available. If one unit is set as an exception, all four facilities return to normal operation."

Before he finished speaking, the stop indicator on the A site footage turned green. The field team hadn't requested restart. The lift platform trembled briefly, then rose six centimeters against the railing marker.

The station worker blocking the lower side immediately hit the manual stop button. The power cutoff seal strap went taut and one plastic ring snapped. The citizen was already on level ground, but the old man who'd gotten his medicine bag back tried to stand from his chair, then grabbed the railing again.

Yuna didn't mute the call, and put the A screen timestamp 04:30:17 along with the lift platform's movement distance into a separate file. Dowon told the field team channel to check the brake disc heat and residual power, and the A team lead restated his own judgment that he would not restart without central approval.

Seoha asked, "Was that movement just now also normalization?"

Jaeho didn't hide it. "That was a remote diagnostic pulse. A procedure to check the possibility of returning to normal operation. It wasn't completed because the manual field stop intervened."

"Why send it before confirming everyone was off?"

"An evacuation complete report came in. If facility downtime extends, congestion increases in other sections."

The old man was included in the number that said everyone was out, but the time his body froze in front of the stairs that had moved again wasn't in the normal operation rate anywhere. Seoha set the photo of the broken seal ring beside the call screen.

"Who gets set as the exception?"

"One unit of recoverable personnel currently linked to this shift."

"Name."

Jaeho didn't answer right away. The A incident board showed confirmation that the old man's family had arrived. The B ramp width held at 91 centimeters, and the C tool bag was still on the stairs. Inside that 82 percent Jaeho kept quoting was the time each of these people had spent waiting.

"Employment grade is short term contract," he said. "Highest likelihood of work restoration after exception processing, and limited legal exposure."

The employee number field next to Yuna's photo was blank.

Seoha asked again, "Did they consent?"

"Automatic exception doesn't presuppose individual consent."

"What about manual exception?"

"The responsible officer confirms the public interest need."

"I'm asking for the person's name and whether they consented."

Jaeho laid the two choices side by side. "If you allow one recoverable worker to be processed as an exception, four citizen facilities resume. If you refuse, the citizen incidents and your falsified record both stay as they are. Decide which loss you can explain publicly."

He didn't mention the third option. He was treating the current choice, sending the field team to clear citizens and check the facility slowly, as an unrealistic delay.

Seoha didn't fill in the name he refused to say.

"Is it Kim Yuna?"

There was a sound of paper turning on the other end.

"Individual names aren't part of the proposal terms."

"Is it Yuna."

"It's the recoverable unit at the lowest employment grade."

Yuna marked that sentence on the recording waveform. She didn't say her own name in Jaeho's place. In the file notes she separated question from answer: "Question: Kim Yuna / Answer: recoverable unit at lowest employment grade."

Jaeho shared the current incident screen. The A motor brake, B dual power lines, C lift sensor, and drainage pump water level were lined up in one row. The approval line at the bottom wasn't in red, but the word order matched the document from seven years ago.

"Maintain normal operation with one exception processed."

At the bottom of the 2019 document on Sangho's departure was a sentence too.

"Confirm normal operation after personnel exception processing."

The subject and the year were different, but "exception processing" and "normal operation" were bound into the same sentence both times. Yuna only recorded that the two phrases were similar. She didn't conclude they came from the same original contract drafter or the same automated code.

Jaeho asked, "Would you like to see the screen where I delete the signature file first?"

Seoha's mouth went dry. If that file disappeared, one of the biggest obstacles to her reinstatement review would vanish with it. She could erase both Dowon's suspicion that she'd abandoned Sangho and the false sentence she reread every day.

But a deleted file could also erase the evidence that Sangho hadn't left of his own will.

"Not deletion. Release the corrected original."

"Correction leaves a dispute on record. Deletion doesn't affect normal operation."

"Say the name of who the exception is, and I'll consider the proposal."

Jaeho never said the name, to the end. "Don't reduce a public interest decision to personal feeling."

"Don't turn a person into a unit."

Seoha refused without hanging up. "I refuse the proposal to insert one unnamed person in exchange for deleting my signature and immediately restoring the citizen facilities. I don't approve the controlled exception either."

Jaeho didn't get angry. "I'll record the downtime that results from that choice under your name."

"Record the names of everyone who refused and the field team too."

The call ended at 4:34:12.

Yuna didn't upload the raw file right away. She kept Jaeho's statements, the facility footage, and the timestamps in the shared evidence folder, and separated Seoha's 2019 signature screen into an encrypted envelope.

"Choose how much to release."

Seoha didn't hide her old signature from the team. She put it into the internal verification copy that Mijin, Dowon, Yuna, and Jeongho could see, and left it out of the citizen incident notice. Whether to hand it over to Sangho's family or for union legal action wasn't decided yet.

Mijin didn't apologize on Seoha's behalf for having mentioned the old signature. "Let's find the record of the team lead who handed her that line back then too. Don't pull your signature out on its own and turn it into either innocence or guilt."

Seoha answered briefly. "Yeah."

Between the two of them, protecting each other had changed from hiding old files to searching together for who had handed over which line.

At 4:36, under the last silent stretch of the recording waveform, an access approval tone sounded.

It wasn't the staff entrance to the center. It came from the row of lockers that had been sealed for seven years, Nam Sangho's row.

The current time stamped on the screen read:

"Locker S-07 / Card recognized 04:36:19."

The card number used was the last four digits of Nam Sangho's old employee ID.

Dowon, on his way back from the equipment corridor, stopped walking. He didn't run to the locker alone. He pressed the radio button twice to tell Seoha his current position and the exit route first.

Park Gitae came carrying an old bundle of keys. He didn't hand over the key to Sangho's locker right away, he checked the seal record first.

"August 11, 2019, 03:02. I locked it myself."

Gitae didn't push the responsibility off onto some hallway story. He read the triangular nick on the key handle and the seal number on the patrol log. Yuna took charge of Sangho's card signal, Dowon the metal friction sound inside the locker door, Seoha the 2019 sealing time, each their own piece.

Jeongho found the same locker number in the SN-7-017 external copy, but didn't conclude it matched the original contract's meaning. Mijin didn't hold the door with her injured arm, she only wrote down the exit and evacuation order.

Gitae knocked the key against the door twice.

"Nobody opens this alone. And we can't just trust the word of whoever locked it either."

They matched up the confirmed inventory of Sangho's belongings. The old employee ID, one brass key, a screwdriver with white tape wrapped around the handle. The walkie talkie making noise inside the locker was set aside in a separate category as an observed object, its owner, custody, and meaning left unconfirmed. The only things confirmable from outside the actual locker were the card recognition signal and the metal sound inside the door.

Seoha didn't hide her wish to save Sangho. "Even if a voice comes out, I won't call out a name first. Object, custody, next action, in order."

Dowon answered. "No solo entry."

Yuna opened a new recording folder. Gitae wrote down the 04:39 access under his own name in the patrol log.

The key turned.

The door opened by two finger widths.

Static came from the walkie talkie inside.

And a voice like Nam Sangho's said,

"Don't close the door."