Two Pages of A4, and Yura Rewrote the Last Line Three Times

The public notice was two sheets of A4, and Yura revised the last sentence three times.

She revised it beside the grate. It was the floor of the west ventilation room on the eighth floor, and the skin below her knees was cold. The tapping interval held steady at twenty seven seconds.

The last sentence of the first draft read like this. Ms. Jin Yura must be protected without exception.

Yura drew a diagonal line through that sentence.

"Who wrote this." she asked.

"I wrote it." Mirae said.

"Why."

"Because that's the sentence that makes people move."

"Then I can't decide who goes next." Yura said.

Mirae asked why. Yura turned the paper over and wrote two lines on the back.

The protected party is not audited. The witness is audited.

"The audited side is more dangerous." Mirae said.

"The dangerous side decides the order." Yura said.

9 AM. The four of them made a final check of the items going into the public notice. Yura, Mirae, Eunchae, Dohyeon. Igyeol wasn't there. The deadline for the Bureau's supplementary document submission was this morning, a condition attached three days earlier.

Four items were going in.

One, the discrepancy between the total headcount and the number of names. Five cases. Four printed copies and one case from the bereaved families' group resident, the sixth floor incident from four years ago.

Two, the ownership discrepancy. The time record showing the sales registration of bracelet KJ-7741 preceded the return by one hour and twenty six minutes.

Three, the deletion log. The deletion of six copies at 4:03 AM on August 20th, and the unregistered device access at 4:00 AM.

Four, yesterday's verifier's confirmation statement. Anonymous confirmer, confirmation time, method.

Six items were not going in.

Yura's name, face, age. Family code. Majun's waveform. The 8-B-3 location.

"What about row zero." Dohyeon asked.

"It's not going in." Yura said.

"I saw the enlarged copy yesterday." Dohyeon said. "I still haven't set a counting standard. If row zero goes into the five cases, it becomes six. If it doesn't, it's five."

"Then put out five."

"Please explain the reason."

"That material came in yesterday." Yura said. "Gang Taemun gave it to us, and if we make it six using something he gave us, he can turn six back into five later."

Dohyeon accepted that reasoning. He wrote it down as an observation instead of a ruling. Row zero separated as a distinct matter, not included in the count, reason: single source.

"Then our ruling is still five." he said.

"Is five not okay." Mirae asked.

"It's fine." Dohyeon said. "Five is also four different sources. Better than rushing to make it six."

Eunchae revised one sentence at that point. It was the item on the method of reproduction.

"We can't write our conclusion here." he said. "What goes here is procedure. Who cross checks where and in what order to get the same result."

"So we don't write a conclusion." Mirae asked.

"We write one line. In five cases, the total headcount and the sum of names don't match. That's all." Eunchae said. "We don't write why they don't match. If we write that, it becomes a claim, and a claim ends in rebuttal."

Yura read that item. The order had seven steps. Checking the paper ledger's page numbers, measuring the width of the torn edge, calculating the card hash, cross checking the handwritten records, confirming the separation of the time systems, comparing the shape of the labor rosters, cross checking the confirmation statement's time.

"Who can do this." Yura asked.

"Anyone can, if they have the equipment." Dohyeon said. "That's the purpose of this item."

"So we don't need to be here."

"Yes."

Yura heard that answer twice.

11 AM. It was time for the last sentence.

Mirae's second draft read like this. The person involved does not wish for their identity to be disclosed.

Yura revised that one too.

"This one uses me as an object too." she said. "Not wishing means someone asked, but in this sentence I'm just the person who answered."

"Then what should we write."

Yura took the pen. Her hands were still shaking. The ninth oxygen tank was half full.

The sentence she wrote was two lines.

I am not the protected party of this case. I will be in the position that decides who gets pulled out first next.

And below that, she wrote something other than a name.

Witness 1.

"If it's 1, that means there's a 2." Yura said.

"Who is 2." Mirae asked.

"There isn't one yet. Leave the spot empty."

Mirae made one more column. Witness 2, blank.

At noon, it was published in four places at once. The bereaved families' group, a university research lab's personal account, Eunchae's office, the exchange's public ledger. The last one Gyeongmin posted using his own tier one account, which already had three of his own errors recorded on it.

"If I post here, my tier drops again." Gyeongmin said.

"Then you don't have to post it." Eunchae said.

"I'll post it. Since my error is right there in my own ledger, people will look here first."

For forty minutes after the publication, the view count was low. Instead, a different number rose.

Nine accounts announced they had begun independent cross checking. Four of them posted measurements of the torn edge's width, and the value was 6 millimeters in every case.

One of them did it without equipment. Instead of measuring the width, they only checked the continuity of the page numbers, and noted that page 231 and page 232 lined up.

"That's a method we didn't use." Yura said.

"That's the best value we've gotten." Dohyeon said. "If they'd followed our order exactly, our mistakes would have been copied too."

Yura wrote down the account number. She still didn't know if it was the one to fill the Witness 2 column.

"What about a sixth." Mirae asked.

"Still five." Dohyeon said. "If there are nine cross checks, that's not nine cases, it's nine verifiers. That's what we gained this round."

The bereaved families' group resident said not to put in the mother's name. The sixth floor incident from four years ago was left with only the case number and floor.

"Putting in the name makes it stronger." Mirae said.

"That's not my name." the resident said. "I can't ask my mother."

Mirae recorded the reason. Name omitted in the absence of the person concerned, decision maker: the bereaved family.

At 1:12 PM, Eunchae's terminal rang. It wasn't a correction request, and it wasn't an accusation either.

It was a notice that the Bureau's public relations office had assigned a case number. The separate filing number for the missing name field had been merged into the main case.

"Is this a good thing." Mirae asked.

"Half of it." Eunchae said. "A case now exists. And once a case exists, jurisdiction gets assigned."

"What's the bad half."

"Once jurisdiction is assigned, we can't do outside that jurisdiction what we were doing."

Igyeol came back at 1:40 PM. One more condition had been attached to the receipt. It stated that the fact of refusing a private mediation proposal had been recorded as a reference point for review.

"Why does refusing something go into the review." Mirae asked.

"It's under the item for willingness to cooperate." Igyeol said.

He put the receipt into an envelope and wrote the time and the receiving officer's name on the outside. He didn't disclose that envelope.

"Why aren't you releasing this." Yura asked.

"I will. Not today. If we attach the license issue here, people will look at that first."

Yura accepted that judgment. In exchange, she set a condition. That the date of the postponement be written down.

Igyeol wrote it. August 18th, postponed by Han Igyeol.

At 2 PM, the screen flickered once.

Yura saw the screen change from beside the grate. Mirae's terminal, Eunchae's terminal, and the exchange's ledger screen all refreshed at the same moment.

Three of the four public notices stayed the same. One changed.

Among the five cases of headcount and name count discrepancy, one line was blank. It was the line for the sixth floor incident from four years ago.

"Did they delete it." Yura asked.

"No." Eunchae said. "Our document is unchanged. What got deleted is the screen they cited."

"Then we can just look at our document."

"Yes. That's exactly why this becomes evidence." Eunchae said. "The same material looks different on two screens."

Dohyeon wrote down the time. 2:00 PM. Three of the four places held steady, only one had one line missing.

"This is how five cases become six." Mirae said.

"That's still an observation too." Dohyeon said. But this time he wrote one more line. Ruling to be converted upon condition being met.

Yura put her hand on the grate. The tapping came. Twenty seven seconds.

"Majun." she said. "I submitted it."

Three taps came.

And then a fourth came. Three was the rule, and four wasn't in the rule.

"What does four mean." Yura asked Dohyeon.

"I don't know." Dohyeon said. "Until yesterday it was three."

Yura asked against the grate. What does four mean.

The answer was three again. And then, twenty seven seconds later, three more.

Four came only once. Yura wrote down the time of that one occurrence.

And then the receiver placed beside Yura's knee turned on. Yura hadn't turned it on.

It was the public band. Not the band yesterday's verifier had used to write the confirmation statement, but the band Yura herself had opened in chapter 5.

It was a woman's voice. It was short.

"Don't make me into someone who was rescued."

Yura looked at the receiver. There was no transmission location. Only the time remained.

She wrote that sentence on the back of the public notice. Right below the two lines she'd written that morning.

What the voice had said was the same thing as those two lines. Said by a different person, in a different place.

Yura told Mirae about it. She didn't tell Igyeol.

"Why." Mirae asked.

"Igyeol can't judge a voice." Yura said. "You shouldn't ask someone who can't judge to make a judgment."

"Then when do we tell him."

"Once we have the waveform." Yura said. "A waveform isn't a judgment, it's data."

Mirae recorded that. The fact that it hadn't been disclosed, the name of the person who decided not to disclose it, and the time.

At 4 PM, Eunchae checked the last item. Three things had attached themselves to Yura since the publication.

One rejected application for a temporary clinic number. This time there was a reason. Review withheld as the case's public party.

The second was a notice that an item had been added to the separate license review. Public activity by an unregistered person.

The third had no name. Two people were standing in the corridor in front of the ventilation room, with no Bureau markings and no guild markings. They were looking toward Yura, not toward the grate.

"What are those people." Yura asked.

"I don't know." Saebyeok said. "They weren't there until yesterday."

Saebyeok wrote down the two people's location and the time on the handover log. She left the name column blank, and wrote down the reason for leaving it blank too.

Yura didn't move from her spot. She pulled the oxygen tank toward her knees and folded the back of the public notice.

The protected party is not audited. The witness is audited.

Those two lines went into the folded inside.

The Witness 2 column stayed empty that day.