The Sales Log Was Two Sheets of Paper

The sales log was two sheets of paper. Mirae laid them side by side on the warehouse office desk, and set his own notebook beside them like a third sheet.

10:12 a.m. The same morning Yura had come out of the eighth floor. One hour and forty eight minutes before noon, the license review result and Eunchae's qualification audit notice had arrived together.

"Where did this come from." he asked.

"The used equipment exchange." Gyeongmin said. "If I search under my own account, only what I sold shows up. So I looked through someone else's account."

"Whose account."

"I won't say. That person would get into trouble."

"How much trouble."

"Their account gets blocked on the exchange." Gyeongmin said. "That's their livelihood."

"Then I won't ask."

Mirae turned his pen backward. Not writing a name down took practice too.

He wrote down that answer. Account undisclosed, source protected. It matched the same shape as the judgment he'd made about Yura's name yesterday.

The first sheet was the transaction record for bracelet KJ-7741.

Sale registration time: August 14, 02:40.

He read the number twice. The time Yura had entered the tower was the afternoon of August 12. The time she'd come out of the eighth floor was August 14, 04:06.

The registration was while Yura was still inside the tower. One hour and twenty six minutes earlier.

He checked the time a third time. With his eyes, tracing it with his finger, copying it into his notebook. All three times gave the same number.

The number matching was the problem. If it were different, it would be a typo. If it matched, it was a fact.

"Gyeongmin."

"I saw it." Gyeongmin said. "I checked it three times too."

"What does this mean." Mirae asked.

"Do you want my opinion, or just what's confirmed."

"Start with what's confirmed."

"Only two times are confirmed." Gyeongmin said. "Everything else is my opinion."

"It's one of two things." Gyeongmin gripped the strap on his bag. "First, someone had that bracelet outside at that time. Second, the registration time isn't the time a person pressed the button."

"If it's the second, what pressed it." Mirae raised his pen.

"The system." Gyeongmin said.

He didn't write that down right away. Writing it would make it a conclusion, and right now only one number had been confirmed.

The owner field on the second sheet had no name. Instead there were four characters.

No recovery target.

Yura's cough sounded twice from inside the warehouse. Mirae looked that way, then came back to the paper. He'd seen the remaining time gauge drop into the two hour range a moment ago.

"What usually goes in this field." Mirae asked.

"The original owner's name. If there isn't one, it says unconfirmed." Gyeongmin said.

"What about no recovery target." Mirae pointed at the four characters.

"In eight years I've seen this phrase three times." Gyeongmin said.

Gyeongmin pulled a ledger out of his bag. It was handwritten, and the cover had been replaced twice. He didn't turn it toward Mirae, he flipped through the pages himself.

"I'll open it up." he said. "My own transactions are in here too. If you're going to suspect me, better to do it now."

Mirae didn't answer. Instead he reordered his questions.

"Gyeongmin. Right now I want to confirm two things separately." he said. "First, why this transaction time comes before Yura's return. Second, under what conditions automatic reversion turns on. If these two get mixed together, nothing gets proven."

"Where does my name come in."

"Third. That comes after the first two are settled."

Gyeongmin let go of the strap. He folded down three pages.

"Then I'll do the third one first." he said. "All three times, it was my account."

Mirae's pen stopped.

"One of three, eight years ago." Gyeongmin pointed to the first folded page. "The owner field here says no recovery target. It's the one of the three I sold. The price was four hundred and ten thousand won."

"What's the second." Mirae asked.

"Five years ago. One helmet. Same phrase. That one I didn't sell, I kept it in the warehouse."

"The third." Mirae asked.

"Last year." Gyeongmin pointed to the third page. His finger stopped over the line. "This one I didn't sell. It was sold under my account."

"Did you report it at the time." Mirae asked.

"I did." Gyeongmin said. "There's even a case number. Here."

An eight digit number was written in the margin of the ledger. Below it was one more line.

Processing result: user identity error.

"What's a user identity error."

"It means I don't remember pressing it, even though I'm the one who pressed it."

"Did you accept that."

"I had no choice but to accept it." Gyeongmin said. "To dispute it, I'd have to prove where I was at that exact time. I work alone in the warehouse."

He copied the case number down. One eight digit number pointed, for the first time today, toward the inside of the Administration Bureau.

"What does that mean." Mirae asked.

"It's in my account's record even though I didn't press it. At the time I thought I'd just misremembered."

Mirae copied three lines into his own notebook. Eight years ago, five years ago, last year. And today. Four times.

"That case last year, what was the item."

"A work bracelet." Gyeongmin said.

A forklift passed outside the warehouse office window. Mirae waited until the sound passed. Whatever he wrote while the sound was going, he couldn't read afterward either.

"I need to ask Dohyeon." he said. "Under what conditions automatic reversion turns on. I don't know that."

"Use the phone." Gyeongmin pushed the receiver toward him.

Mirae dialed. Dohyeon picked up on the second ring.

"Probably three conditions." Dohyeon said. There was the sound of a measuring device's fan behind the call. "First, original owner lookup fails. Second, the item is within the radius. Third, I don't know. But something's strange right now."

"Go ahead." Mirae picked up his pen.

"A lookup failure happens after a person is dropped from the list. Yura was dropped from the roster at 04:12 on August 14. But the bracelet registration is at 02:40."

"So." Mirae asked back.

"The lookup had already failed before she was dropped from the list." Dohyeon said. "That would mean the ledger didn't erase a person, it already knew, in advance, who was going to be erased."

That sentence didn't get written down. Mirae's hand stopped.

"Is that a hypothesis." Mirae asked.

"It's a hypothesis. There's one counterexample." Dohyeon said. "If the equipment registration time is the server's time, there are cases where the server logs the wrong time because of communication delay. In that case, the two hour gap would just be an error."

"How do we check." Mirae asked.

"You'd need to look at three or more other transaction times logged on the same server. If they're all off, it's error. If only this one is off, it's not error."

"What if we can't get three."

"Then we can't reach a conclusion." Dohyeon said. "I'll write that we can't. I don't write what I don't know as if I knew it."

"That can't go in the article."

"Then it's right that it doesn't go in."

Mirae wrote that sentence down.

Mirae looked at Gyeongmin.

"Those three transactions from that date, can I see them."

"You can." Gyeongmin said. "I'll have to ask that account owner again. This time I'll have to give something in return."

"What did you agree to give." Mirae asked.

"Haven't decided yet." Gyeongmin closed the ledger. "They said not money. They said an item."

"What item."

"A working work bracelet."

Mirae set down his pen. There was one non working bracelet right now, and the reason it wasn't working was this very case.

"What is it." Mirae asked.

Gyeongmin didn't answer. He looked toward the warehouse door. In that direction Yura sat with the oxygen tank beside her.

Mirae followed his gaze. He didn't need to ask what had been requested.

"The bracelet?"

"Yes."

"That's not allowed." Mirae said.

"I said the same thing." Gyeongmin said. "That's why I said it hasn't been decided yet."

"Can't you give something else."

"They say they need a working bracelet. They won't say why they need it."

"Then they're trying to confirm something too."

"I'll cover the cost." Gyeongmin said. It was the first time he'd dropped formal speech. "Yura's bracelet is off the table. Instead I'll give up one of two pieces in my warehouse. It's an item I'm supposed to return, but I haven't found the owner."

"Then the return gets delayed."

"It gets delayed. I'll note down that cost."

Mirae looked back toward the warehouse door. Yura had a paper tucked into the oxygen tank's handle resting on her lap, and was writing something on it. It was the item new had entrusted to her yesterday dawn.

"I won't tell Yura." Mirae said.

"Why not."

"If I tell her, she'll say to give it up." Mirae closed his notebook. "Then I'd have no grounds to stop it. The decision is hers to make."

"So you're hiding it."

Mirae's hand stopped. There was something he'd said to Yura yesterday. If you don't decide, I end up deciding for you.

"No." he said. "I'll tell her. But I'll find two other options first and tell her all of them together. If there's only one choice, it isn't a choice."

Mirae closed his notebook. Then he opened it again and wrote three items on the last line.

Confirmed: The bracelet registration time is one hour and twenty six minutes before the return. Owner field reads no recovery target. Of four cases with the same phrase, three are under Oh Gyeongmin's account.

Not confirmed: Whether there's server time error. The third condition for automatic reversion. Who pressed the button on last year's case.

Price demanded: Yura's bracelet.

Below those three lines he wrote his own name and the time. 10:41.

At the bottom of the second sheet of the sales log, a red stamp had been pressed. The ink had dried.

Mirae didn't decide here whether it matched what he'd seen on yesterday's seizure list. He needed to compare it against what he'd sketched yesterday, and that sketch was toward the front of his notebook.

He took a photo with the log and his own hand in the same frame. He'd included his hand so there would be a record of who had taken it.

Outside the warehouse, the remaining time alarm rang. It was the sound of the oxygen tank gauge dropping to one hour fifty minutes.

Mirae folded the papers.

"We're moving." he said. "If we stay here any longer, Yura runs out first."