Eunchae Laid Four Folders Side by Side on the Table

Eunchae laid four folders side by side on the table. Each cover had different words on it. Original, copy, testimony, hash.

"This is the chain of evidence." he said. "Right now all four of these are in our hands. That's not a chain. That's one lump."

2:10 PM. Yura's registration had been on hold for three days, and Eunchae's license audit was proceeding under warning status.

The auditor had sent a second questionnaire that morning. Eight items, six of which asked about Jin Yura's name. Eunchae wrote the same sentence for all six. I respond only within the scope of the party's consent.

That response had been sent that morning.

Mirae looked at the four folders. It was the same point she'd raised at the warehouse yesterday.

"If it's one lump, it disappears all at once." Mirae said.

"It disappears all at once, and it gets doubted all at once." Eunchae said. "One seizure ends it. One forgery claim ends it. If we hold all four, we can be accused of having fabricated all four ourselves."

"So we split them?" Mirae asked.

"We change how we split them." Eunchae pulled a piece of paper toward himself.

Eunchae drew three vertical lines on the paper. The columns became four.

"We make it three custodians, each holding a different type." he said. "The original goes in one place, the copy in another, the hash in a third. The testimony stays with the person who gave it."

"We don't hold the testimony?" Mirae asked.

"We can't hold it." Eunchae said. "Testimony belongs to the person. If we hold it, that person can't withdraw it later."

Mirae paused at that sentence. Four days ago she'd heard that if withdrawal is possible, more people will stay the course to the end.

"There are conditions." Eunchae continued. "It's better if the three custodians don't know each other. And they can't have any contract relationship with the Agency."

"How many candidates do we have?" Mirae reached for the list.

"Found four this morning." Eunchae pushed the list over.

Eunchae took out the list. Four names were written, each with its own conditions.

The Tower disaster victims' families group, two staff on site in a single office, no Agency contract. A regional labor counseling center, one that had handled subcontractor maintenance records before. A university research lab, disaster record preservation research. And an independent press association.

"The fourth one is your affiliation, Mirae." Eunchae said. "So I'm planning to exclude it."

"Why." Mirae asked.

"If it overlaps with your organization, it's not independent custody." Eunchae crossed out that line.

Mirae accepted it. It meant removing one option from her own side, and it checked out by the math.

Eunchae made confirmation calls starting with the first one. The victims' families group asked about the conditions as soon as they picked up.

"If we hold it, do we become a target for seizure?"

"You could be." Eunchae said. He gave that answer first.

There were three seconds of silence.

"Then what would we be holding?"

"A copy. Since it's a copy and not the original, its legal value is lower. But if the original disappears, this becomes the only form left."

"How long would we hold it?" the other person asked.

"I don't know." Eunchae said.

"...My mother never came back from the sixth floor, four years ago." the other person said. "She was on the list. But the compensation column was blank."

Eunchae's hand stopped.

"Could you say that sentence again, right now."

"She was on the list, and the compensation column was blank."

That was what Dohyeon had found in four of the printouts yesterday. A column that counted the total number but paid out no compensation.

"Do you have that document with you right now?"

"I have a copy." the other person said.

Eunchae added another line to his list. It was the moment a custodian candidate turned into a witness, an item that hadn't been in the plan.

"I'd like to ask one thing." he said. "We won't send our materials yet. Instead, could you let us see that copy first?"

"Why change the order?" the other person asked.

"To avoid putting you in danger first." Eunchae said.

Someone from the counseling center came in person. They said they wouldn't answer over the phone. He set a single sheet of paper on the table. A subsidy grant condition sheet.

"Here, clause 4." he said. "Performance using Agency materials counts toward our review score. Half our operating budget comes from this."

"Did you sign that clause?" Eunchae asked.

"I did. Three years ago."

"Then declining today is the right call." Eunchae said. "Can I write down the reason for declining?"

"Write it down. That's a fact too."

Eunchae wrote down the reason. A refusal was also a piece of data.

The third one, the university research lab, attached a condition. They would only accept the material in anonymized form, which matched Yura's consent scope.

"Has that lab ever received an Agency project?" Mirae asked.

Eunchae checked. There had been one, three years ago. A completed project.

"If it's completed, there's no contract relationship." Eunchae said.

"But what about receiving the next project?"

Eunchae's hand stopped. That question wasn't about a contract relationship but an expectation relationship, and it couldn't be confirmed by documents.

"That's not something I can judge." he said. "So I'll do this. I'll send the third custodian only the hash. Even if a hash leaks, there's no content in it."

"That's not a custodian, that's a verifier." Mirae said.

"Right. I'm lowering their role." Eunchae revised the list.

4:40 PM. The victims' families group hadn't decided yet, the counseling center had declined, the research lab had been demoted a level to verifier. There was no original custodian.

Eunchae looked at the last column. Original.

"I'll take this one myself." he said.

"You're under audit right now, Eunchae." Mirae said.

"That's exactly why it should be me." Eunchae put the folder in his own bag. "I'm already flagged. It's better if no new person gets flagged."

"That's concentrating it all in one place. You're the one who said not to do that, earlier."

Eunchae took that criticism. His own principle and his own choice had come apart.

"You're right." he said. "Then I'll leave the original open. If we can't find an external original custodian by chapter 25, no, by the twenty fifth day, my method has failed. I'll write that deadline into the document."

He wrote down the deadline. September 9th, calculated from August 15th, and beside it he wrote one more line. Up to our twenty fifth entry, by our own count.

Yura looked at that paper.

"If I get registered by that deadline?"

"Then it's strongest for you to hold the original, Yura." Eunchae said. "The party herself holding her own evidence is the strongest thing in court."

"And if I don't get registered?" Yura asked.

"Then you get to hold nothing."

Yura turned her bracelet. It was the fifth time. No one was counting.

"Eunchae." Yura said. "That deadline. September 9th."

"Yes."

"What if I can't hold out until then?"

Eunchae took his hand off the paper. The answer he'd learned over five years was don't say things like that. That answer had made three people withdraw.

"Then the deadline becomes meaningless." he said. "And so does the procedure I built."

"So what will you fix?"

"I'll fix it now." Eunchae pulled the paper toward himself. "I'll split the deadline into two. One is the deadline to secure an original custodian, September 9th. The other is the deadline for maintaining your treatment, Yura. That one I'll count by number of oxygen tanks."

"By oxygen tanks?"

"More precise than a date." Eunchae said. "When the sixth tank runs empty, we need to have decided who provides the next one, right now. That's my deadline."

The first candidate called back. The victims' families group.

"We'll do it." the other person said. "There's one condition."

Eunchae picked up his pen.

"Go ahead." Eunchae said.

"Please include my mother's documents too. The ones from four years ago."

"That would widen the case." Eunchae said. "Widening it slows things down. Yura's treatment is the urgent priority."

"Then we won't do it."

Eunchae stopped. He'd just removed someone else's case to protect his own, and in response the other person had let go.

Mirae watched that beside him and said nothing. The judgment was Eunchae's to make.

"I take that back." Eunchae said. "We'll include it together. But I'll attach one condition. I won't decide which one gets processed first. The two of you decide."

"Just the two of us?"

"You two don't know each other, so I'll only relay the conditions in between. I won't set the order."

After the call ended, Yura asked.

"I could end up pushed back, couldn't I?"

"You could."

"Then let's do it that way."

Eunchae laid out the four folders one last time. Original, copy, testimony, hash. This time he wrote the custodian's name under each cover.

The original was blank. The copy had the victims' families group, the hash had the research lab, and the testimony had three names. Bae Seongho, Jeong Hayun, and the person who had called that day.

"Three witnesses now." Mirae said. "Four days ago there was one."

"That's something you gathered, Mirae."

"I just wrote down names."

"Writing down names is the job." Eunchae closed the folder. "For five years I only gathered evidence. I never gathered names. That's why the case died three times."

Outside the window it grew dark. The gauge on the sixth oxygen tank sat at half.

An address came from the victims' families group. The place to send the copy to.

Eunchae looked up that address. Beneath the building's name was a single line.

Agency contracted business space, rent reduction recipient.

"Is that just renting, or is it a contract?" Mirae asked.

"The rental terms include a restriction on business purpose." Eunchae said. "That makes it a contract."

He didn't cross out the name in the copy column. Instead he put a question mark beside it.

Eunchae wrote down the condition. One case had become two cases. Four days ago, he would have avoided this direction.

There was one reason he didn't avoid it. The sentence that the compensation column had been blank had appeared four times in yesterday's printouts, and one more time in today's phone call.

Dohyeon's voice came through the terminal on the table. The call had been open on speaker since the start of the meeting.

"Dohyeon." Eunchae said. "A fifth sample."

"I haven't looked at it." Dohyeon said. "I don't count what I haven't looked at."

"Will you look?"

"I will. But if that copy comes into our hands, that person gets put in danger."

"She attached it as a condition herself."

Dohyeon paused for a moment. If there was someone who had attached the condition themselves, the calculation changed.

"Then I'll count it." he said. "Five. If it becomes six, I switch from observation to judgment."