What Mirae Did First Wasn't Filming

What Mirae did first wasn't filming. It was measuring the light fixture's position.

The emergency light was on the upper corridor wall, 2 meters 40 from the floor. One step left of the ward door. He put the tape measure to it, measured twice, and wrote the number on paper.

"Why are you measuring that." One of Jisu's team members asked.

"Without this number, the shadow angle means nothing."

The shadows were still two. The rescued man lay on the transfer bed, and his shadow split on the floor.

One fell at 32 degrees toward the wall, one at 71 degrees toward the bed. Mirae set a protractor on the floor and read the values.

Only after that did he start filming.

The first frame he shot wasn't the shadow. It was the tape measure. The distance to the light, and his own terminal screen showing the time.

"If you shoot the strange thing first, that's all people pass around." He said. "The angle and the time have to be together so someone else can redo it."

"Who's going to redo it." Dohyeon asked.

"The nine people from yesterday."

Yesterday's nine were the ones who had measured the width of the cut surface and checked the page numbers. One of them had used a method Mirae hadn't proposed.

So what he meant to leave behind today wasn't a conclusion. It was a method.

The editor's side had wanted something different that morning. Fifteen seconds of footage showing the shadow splitting into two, at the hospital.

Those fifteen seconds had circulated the best. And been the first to draw suspicion of manipulation.

Mirae's answer to that request was short. Without the angle, I'm not sending it.

He moved the light. More precisely, he didn't turn off the emergency light, he just turned on one more flashlight of his own.

He placed the flashlight at 90 degrees to the left. Then he shot.

One shadow moved. The 71 degrees toward the bed shifted to 62.

The 32 degrees toward the wall stayed the same.

Mirae turned off the flashlight. The 71 degrees came back.

He repeated it three times. On, shoot, off, shoot. Each time only one shadow reacted.

On the fourth try, both moved.

Mirae stopped his hand. He did it again. On the fifth try, only one moved.

"Why was the fourth different." He asked himself.

He checked the flashlight's position. On the fourth try, his own arm had passed in front of the light.

The emergency light had been blocked for half a second. That was when the wall shadow had also shifted.

"This one's my mistake." He said. "But I'm not deleting it."

"Why not." Jisu's team member asked.

"If I cut out the one that came out different out of five tries, then later when someone else gets a different result on a sixth try, my data becomes the lie first."

He logged the fourth trial as a separate entry. Reason for failure: camera operator's arm blocked the light source.

"This isn't a lighting error." He said.

"Then what is it."

"There are two light sources. One is here. One isn't here."

Dohyeon translated the sentence into his own notation. Light source A observable, light source B location unknown, the two shadows correspond to A and B respectively.

"Where is B." Mirae asked.

"Don't know. Working backward from the angle gives a direction. Not a distance."

"Just give me the direction."

"Upper inner wall. Roughly near the ceiling."

That was where the man had pointed yesterday.

Mirae wrote it into the log split across two lines. One was the direction, one was the fact that the direction matched the finger signal. He didn't write them as one line.

Written together, it became interpretation. Written apart, it was data.

At 8:10 PM, Eunchae arrived. What she carried wasn't a briefcase.

It was paper. Hospital printer paper cut into bracelet shapes, and a stamp.

"I'm here to give him a number." She said.

"This person can't be registered." Dohyeon said. "The chart has only one name."

"A formal number, no. A temporary number, yes." Eunchae said. "A disaster site temporary identification number. It can be assigned to an unidentified person during rescue operations, and the assigner is the on site legal support officer."

"Is that valid."

"For a week. If it's not converted to a formal one within that time, it disappears."

"Then it vanishes again in a week."

"Yes." Eunchae said. "But for that week, prescriptions can be issued under this person's name. Something we couldn't do in chapter 11."

At that, Mirae's hand stopped. In chapter 11, Yura had had no number, so formal treatment had been blocked.

"Why couldn't we do it then."

"Back then I didn't know about this clause." Eunchae said. "I found it last week. It turned up while I was going through twenty six rejected cases."

"Then does this apply to Yura too."

"Not to Yura. Hers isn't a case of unidentified identity, it's identified but with no slot for it." Eunchae said. "A different problem."

Mirae wrote that down. That two people who looked the same got caught on different clauses.

Eunchae wrote the number on the paper bracelet. By hand, and she wrote the date in four digits.

In the assigner field she wrote her own name. And in the reason field, she wrote this.

Rescue subject at disaster site, identity unconfirmed, time of assignment 20:14.

"Does this get audited." Mirae asked.

"It does. The fourth one."

"Eunchae."

"I'll handle the count." Eunchae fastened the bracelet. "Are you filming, Mirae."

"I am. The wrist, the number, and your name together."

"Then it's fine."

Mirae shot it. Three frames. The wrist, a close up of the number, and the assigner's signature.

Then he shot a fourth. Eunchae's hands fastening the bracelet.

In that photo, both their hands were together. If anyone later asked who had fastened it, the answer was in the photo.

At 8:40 PM, a sound came from Dohyeon's terminal.

"Bed number lookup failed." He said.

"Which bed."

"Room 12, bed 4. The spot we temporarily assigned this person to."

Mirae looked up the same thing on his own terminal. Failed as well.

Ten minutes ago it had worked. Mirae knew the exact time. He'd looked it up at 8:30 and saved a screenshot.

"I have a capture." He said. "It existed at 8:30."

"It's gone now."

"Who deleted it?"

"Remote." Dohyeon said. "It wasn't deleted from a ward terminal. The access path is external."

Eunchae checked that sentence twice.

"If it's a remote deletion, it's not the hospital's responsibility." He said. "It's the Bureau's system."

"Then can we report it?"

"We can report it. I don't know the outcome." Eunchae said. "I reported it back in chapter 20 too, when my cloud got deleted."

It was the answer he'd expected. Mirae asked something else.

"How many are deleted right now?"

Dohyeon checked. All the bed numbers in the ward.

"Only room 12. Beds 4, 3, 2."

"What about 1."

"Bed 1 is still there."

Bed 1 held a patient with a name. The other three were empty, and in bed 4 lay the person without one.

"Do you see the order." Dohyeon asked.

"4, 3, 2."

"Reverse order. Starting from 4." He said. "When a person deletes manually, they usually start from 2. Top to bottom on the list."

"Then what does this mean."

"It deleted starting from the number that had a person in it."

Mirae's hand stopped once while writing that down. Great, worst case, he said.

"Why are you saying that now." Eunchae asked.

"It's something I say when things get scary. Same as naming a file."

"If the number disappears, what happens to this person." Mirae asked.

"The paper bracelet stays." Eunchae said. "That's this person's only number right now."

He photographed the bracelet again. Same angle, only the time different.

Two shots now existed. 8:14 and 8:47. Same bracelet, different times.

"Why shoot it again." Jisu's team member asked.

"To show it was still there even after the system deleted it."

The shadows on the floor were still two. Mirae shot them one last time.

After shooting, he read the angles again. 32 degrees toward the wall, 71 toward the bed.

The numbers were the same. But the wall side shadow had gotten a little shorter.

Mirae measured the length and wrote it down. 68 centimeters before, 61 now.

The angle stayed the same, only the length had shrunk. That meant the light source had moved closer.

He sent both values to Eunchae. Angle and length, and the two measurement times.

The reply came back. Two lines.

I can't sign this under my name. I don't know optics.

He understood the meaning of that answer. Yesterday's verifier had also only written on the certificate what he himself knew.

The next place he sent it to was the university lab. Yesterday's verifier, the node whose credentials had been suspended yesterday.

The reply came ten minutes later.

The credential suspension is for tower access. A hospital isn't a tower. Please send the angle data.

He read that sentence twice. What had been suspended was access, not the ability to verify.

He sent the data. Angle, length, light position, time, and the three flashlight trials.

He didn't send the video. The verifier hadn't asked for it.

Meanwhile Dohyeon looked up the bed numbers again. This time bed 1 had failed too.

"Even bed 1." Mirae asked.

"Even bed 1."

That was the patient with a name. That number was gone too.

"So now there's no one registered in this room."

"Correct."

Eunchae took out more paper from her bag. Bracelet stock, three sheets remaining.

"I'll write one more." She said. "For the patient in bed 1."

"That person has a name."

"Had one." Eunchae said. "Not anymore."

On the second bracelet she wrote the name. That was the difference from the first.

"Writing the name lets it be cross checked." Eunchae said. "Later, if the name returns to the system, we can see whether it matches this bracelet."

"What if it's different."

"If it's different, that's the evidence."

Mirae shot both bracelets in one frame. One with only a number, one with a name and number.

Then he called the daughter over. She was the guardian of bed 1, and had been waiting out in the corridor the whole time.

"Please check whether your mother's name is written correctly here."

The daughter looked. She pointed at one character.

"The final consonant here is wrong."

Eunchae rewrote it on the spot. She didn't throw away the wrong sheet, she wrote the reason and kept it.

"Why not throw it away." The daughter asked.

"If two versions of the name end up circulating later, I need to know which one was my mistake."

The daughter looked at the sheet. Then she said she wanted to write a line herself.

Mirae handed her a pen. What the daughter wrote was short.

I confirmed this. Daughter.

She didn't write her name. Eunchae left it as it was.

"Is it all right that she didn't write her name." Mirae asked.

"The relationship alone is enough." Eunchae said. "If it's needed later, she can write it herself then."