Im Gwanpil Untied the Red Cord on the Arrest Warrant

Im Gwanpil untied the red cord on the arrest warrant.

The first person to see the name of the subject was not Yun Haejun but Min Chaeok. She kept her hand between the warrant and the truce settlement sheet, read the name, and did not change her expression.

Yun Haejun. Charged with altering a priority code without official seal, damaging the original telegram, and obstructing execution of the army grain order.

"Execution time is now," Im Gwanpil said.

Min Chaeok pointed to the blank space on the settlement sheet.

"The total still doesn't match."

"That fact is separate."

"After the arrest, who confirms this counter signature?"

Im Gwanpil said nothing. The warrant had no clause requiring the settlement officer to be left in place. But if the warrant were shelved simply because the arrest subject was holding the ledger, then anyone with evidence in hand could use their own duties as a shield.

Haejun did not run. Across the table he was writing down the transmission time of the corrected report copy. Im Gwanpil did not have the two inspectors flank him. He first opened the warrant so the name and charges could be seen.

"Lord Yun Haejun."

Haejun stopped his brush.

"An arrest warrant has been issued."

The officers and trading house clerks around the table fell silent at the same moment. Im Gwanpil did not use that silence to strike.

"We will question the order of evidence, act, and responsibility. From this point, hiding or moving any submitted item will be recorded as a separate act."

"What is the charge against him?"

Im Gwanpil turned the warrant toward Haejun. Haejun checked the official seal and the issue time first. He read his own name last.

"Is this about the first telegram?"

"We are looking at the three cases where the priority code was changed, together with the execution of the grain order."

"Does looking at them together mean you consider them the same act?"

"No. That is why we are asking about the order."

Haejun did not fold the corrected report copy.

"Please wait until the settlement transmission is complete."

"State your reason for the request."

"It is not because I am under arrest. The grounds for reclassifying the four hundred twenty seven sacks available, the one hundred seventy three excluded or unconfirmed, and the fifty eight not yet found are not tied into a single ledger until the settlement is finished."

"Can it not be done without you?"

Haejun's answer came slowly.

"It must be done even without me."

Min Chaeok cut in.

"But taking him now creates a risk of insolvency."

Im Gwanpil looked at her.

"Start with the total."

Min Chaeok spread out the settlement supplement she had prepared. The first garrison shift she could approve from currently available stock, the joint water transport crew, Oh Bokrye's treatment costs and the waiting wages for the twenty three, and the loss claims for the three blockaded carts were each caught in different ledgers.

"How many payments require Lord Haejun's signature?"

"None."

"Then why delay execution?"

"Not because he is the approver, but because he is the sender of the first report. If he is removed now, the reasons for the correction and the counter records will pass entirely through the statements of a suspect under investigation. The responsibility that should be confirmed in the original settlement will be pulled into the interrogation record instead."

"What about loss to the treasury?"

"The repurchase of supplies for the wounded, the waiting wages for the carts, and the waiting and inspection wages for the labor corps are all unconfirmed. If the settlement is cut off, payment dates will pass, and the trading house's credit and the labor corps' claims could both default at the same time."

"Who pays for that exception?"

Min Chaeok wrote her own name.

"I take responsibility for the temporary postponement."

There was no word of sympathy in it. She did not ask that Haejun be released either. She wrote down when and to whom how much would go unpaid if the settlement were halted, and the risk that the treasury would end up recognizing the same cost twice as a result.

Im Gwanpil calculated the gap between the warrant's issue time and the postponement time Min Chaeok proposed. If he hid the warrant and struck after the settlement, the chance of flight would drop. But Haejun might move evidence in the meantime without knowing what he would have to submit. If he made it public, he gave Haejun a chance to flee, but every act of submission would become testifiable.

"We set three conditions for ending the postponement."

Min Chaeok picked up her brush.

"First, the original truce settlement and the three copies are sealed. Second, confirmation of receipt that the corrected report was sent through the same route as the first report. Third, a list of the arrest subject's submitted items is drawn up."

Haejun asked.

"What is the deadline?"

"Until the next shift change of the truce hourglass. Even if the settlement is not finished, execution proceeds then."

"What if the risk of insolvency remains?" Min Chaeok asked.

"A separate warrant will be sought, along with the postponement responsibility you signed for. An endless settlement is not a legal exception."

Min Chaeok signed under the three conditions. Im Gwanpil also wrote the reason for the postponement on the back of the warrant. It was not a record that an inspector had failed to execute a warrant, but a record of what public interest had delayed it, and by how much.

Im Gwanpil had one more copy of the warrant made. He wrote down the fact of issuance, the time the postponement would end, and the movement restriction, and posted it beside the settlement board where the officers, the trading house, and the labor corps could all see it.

Haejun could choose among the settlement table, checking the storage boxes, or the waiting room with the statement assistant, but he could not leave the docks. If he made no choice, he would be kept apart from the settlement in the waiting room.

"I will stay at the table. I will submit the first title and the reason for the correction in the same open place where they were disclosed."

Im Gwanpil recorded only the act of choosing an open place, without noting it as an evaluation of good faith.

Min Chaeok asked.

"If he speaks with a witness, does that count as contact with evidence?"

"Private conversation is forbidden. Questions and answers are written down at this table, and the custodian brings the originals."

Seorin read the public copy of the warrant.

"You attach the subject's name but not a copy of the grounds for issuance?"

"We cannot pin the original evidence to a public copy."

"Then the name alone becomes the crime first."

Im Gwanpil added to the public copy that issuance was not a finding of guilt, and that the evidence list, counter statements, and reasons for postponement would all be available for review together. Seorin wrote that this was not enough.

Haejun wrote beneath it, "Dispute of the charge is reserved until the evidence list is received." Im Gwanpil did not erase the line, and attached the time it was written along with two witnesses. It was a record made so that reading the warrant would not be turned into a statement admitting guilt.

The officer signed in opposition, saying this gave the accused special favor. Seokman, the labor corps representative, agreed to the postponement on condition that the settlement not push the workers back into labor. Min Chaeok did not turn either side's position into agreement, but placed the votes for and against on the same line.

One inspector recorded only Haejun's movements, the other only the times items were received.

Haejun put his own submitted items on the table first. The original first public report, the corrected version, the transmission route sheet, and the official document lifting the cart blockade. He did not withdraw even the first title, which could work against him.

"Where is the original of the first telegram?" Im Gwanpil asked.

"In the inspection storage box."

"Who has the key?"

"Lord Im Gwanpil and the telegraph bureau custodian."

"Copies?"

"There is a comparison record at the trading house original, the labor corps reading box, and the finance settlement office."

"Who can move them?"

"No single person can move all of it."

Im Gwanpil did not send one inspector alone to the storage box. If he held the key himself and only his own people checked it, it would not become independent evidence. He had the telegraph bureau custodian, the labor corps representative, and the finance clerk each record the seal condition at the same time.

Haejun said.

"Are you allowing the transmission to be completed before the arrest?"

"Not allowing it. Not stopping the preservation of evidence that was already underway."

"Will you also take testimony that the result saved lives?"

"That fact is separate."

Im Gwanpil paused, then added.

"It is recorded together precisely because it is separate. Whether the act was unlawful and what the result was are not cancelled out into a single sentence."

Haejun did not bow his head. He did not say thank you either. He signed at the end of each line of the submitted items list.

The settlement did not pick up speed. The officer insisted on recognizing unaccounted field consumption, and Min Chaeok wrote it down as unconfirmed wherever there was no name of who had eaten it.

"In wartime you cannot get everyone's name," the officer said.

"Then does the total match?"

"The quantity is correct."

"A quantity with no record of who used it when is not settled."

The officer cursed her as a heartless number keeper. Min Chaeok kept her formal address and, next to the field consumption item, wrote his title instead of his name. The fact that the person in charge refused to give his name became part of the classification itself.

Im Gwanpil watched Min Chaeok leave the title, refused as a name, standing in the responsibility column.

Three labor corps inspectors brought the quarantine numbers for the bundled pulley ropes. Oh Bokrye was at the relief station, and Seokman signed as representative. The first shipment had not yet begun.

"Can you order work resumed for the sake of the settlement?" Im Gwanpil asked Min Chaeok.

"No. Settlement is the work of recording what has arrived, not an order to make it arrive."

Im Gwanpil added that sentence beneath the reason for the postponement. If a settlement that had delayed an investigation became an excuse to push workers back to labor, the exception would stop being evidence preservation and become coercion.

By the time the next shift of the truce hourglass drew near, the totals of the original and the copies had not been reduced to one. Instead, which figures had been confirmed and which had been contested were posted on the same board.

The dawn watch changeover began. The Joseon garrison held the gate without crossing it. The first public grain ledger, listing the count of water jugs from the joint water supply, the actual available army provisions, the unconfirmed quantities, and the wounded and waiting wages, was posted at a height readable from both inside and outside the gate.

Im Gwanpil went to write down the time he would execute the warrant again.

At that moment, the telegraph bureau custodian, back from the inspection storage box, brought the original first telegram sheet along with the comparison copy. One corner of the original was scorched brown and curled from an oil lamp. On the comparison copy, the same shape of empty corner had already been marked in ink.

"Who made this mark?" Im Gwanpil asked.

The custodian opened the submission record.

"Lord Yun Haejun. At dawn on the first day, before he had seen the original, he drew the same shape on the copy."

If Haejun had marked the same burned corner on the copy before seeing the original, it meant he had already known its shape. It was not a chance stain but an identifiable physical trace.

Im Gwanpil did not rush to a conclusion. He would need to confirm separately the time of access to the original, the time the copy was made, and the position of the lamp. But now there was grounds to write a name beside "forger unknown" in the warrant's charge column.

He raised his brush and wrote Yun Haejun.