Chapter 4: The People Who Were There
“Tonight?” I asked.
Han looked up from the security provider’s response. “The scheduled deletion is tonight. That doesn’t mean it has happened yet.”
She called the provider from the chair beside my hospital bed. I listened to the careful repetition of words I had heard her use in the written request: preserve the records, preserve the access log, confirm what remained under the provider’s control.
When she ended the call, she did not look relieved.
“They’ll place a temporary hold on the clips stored on their servers while they review the request. They won’t confirm whether the mansion has a separate recorder that could overwrite its own files.”
“And the person who asked to see last night’s archive?”
“They’ve retained the request record. They won’t identify the person to us now.”
I stared at the ceiling. The house I had lived in for three years had a system for remembering when a door opened. Whether it would remember what happened to me depended, at least in part, on machinery I could not see.
Han sent Daeho’s attorney another notice about the possible overwrite. She copied me on it. There was no accusation about the unidentified requester, only a request that no one alter or delete records while their preservation was being addressed.
“Who else was working?” she asked.
“Ms. Choi was there in the evening. She takes care of the house.”
“Do you have her number?”
I did. I had used it to ask about a plumber once, and to tell her she could go home early on a holiday Daeho had forgotten was a holiday.
I pulled up the contact, then hesitated.
“She needs those shifts,” I said. “If Daeho finds out she spoke to us—”
“We shouldn’t pretend there’s no risk.”
Han put her phone down.
“We can invite her to talk. She can refuse. We won’t ask her to get into a camera system or take anything from the house.”
I wrote the message myself. I said I was safe, that I wanted to ask what she remembered about the previous night, and that she owed me no answer. I offered to have Han speak to her first, somewhere away from the mansion.
For twenty minutes, nothing came back.
A nurse arrived to check my breathing. I sat forward for her, slowly, holding a pillow against my chest. Afterward, my phone lit up.
Ms. Choi had replied: Can I come after my shift? Please don’t tell them I asked.
Han arranged for her to come to the law office. I would speak to them by video from my hospital room. Ms. Choi would not have to learn where I was, and no one would record the call without her agreement.
Before she arrived, a letter came from Daeho’s attorney.
The subject line called it a clarification. Attached was a short account attributed to Sora, offered, the letter said, to support the theft declaration they still wanted me to sign.
Han read it first.
“Sora says she entered the study at about eight-thirty, noticed company documents were missing, and immediately told Daeho. She says that was the first time she suspected you.”
“I was in the dining room around then,” I said. “I remember her coming in.”
“What do you remember her saying?”
“That I’d taken them. I don’t remember the exact words.”
Han wrote down the distinction. I was grateful and ashamed of how grateful I felt. My memory of that night was not a neat sequence. It had sharp pieces and spaces between them. I did not want to fill the spaces just because Sora had written a tidy paragraph.
By the time Ms. Choi reached Han’s office, it was dark outside my window. Han called from a private room. Ms. Choi appeared beside her on my screen, still wearing the plain cardigan she wore to work. She kept both hands around the strap of her bag.
“Mrs. Kwon,” she said.
“Yuna is fine.”
She looked at my face for a moment. Her own changed.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m being cared for.”
I wanted to say more, but I had no easy answer to her question.
Han explained what the call was for. She said Ms. Choi could stop whenever she wanted, and that anything she shared might eventually need to be disclosed if I used it in a legal proceeding.
“Can you keep my name out of it?” Ms. Choi asked.
“We won’t give your name to the Kwons just for speaking with us,” Han said. “I can’t promise it would stay private if you became a witness. I’d rather tell you that now.”
Ms. Choi glanced at the office door.
“I’m hired through an agency,” she said. “They can stop assigning me to that house. They can stop assigning me anywhere.”
“I know asking costs you more than it costs me,” I said.
She shook her head. “You don’t know what will happen yet.”
She was right. I had money, a lawyer, and a hospital room whose number Daeho could not get. Ms. Choi had tomorrow’s shift.
“Then tell us only what you choose to tell us,” I said.
For a while, she told us nothing. Han let the silence stand.
Finally, Ms. Choi said she had been folding linens near the service hallway when voices rose in the main part of the house. She heard Sora accuse me of taking documents from Daeho’s study. She heard Daeho tell me to apologize.
“Did you hear my answer?” I asked.
“I heard you say you hadn’t taken anything.”
She had gone farther down the hallway then. She said there were sounds she could not place and words she could not make out. She had not been in the room; she could not say what happened every moment.
Near the end, she heard Sora speak clearly.
“She said it was enough,” Ms. Choi told Han. “She said she was satisfied.”
I closed my eyes. Hearing those words from someone else did not make them less real. It made the hallway outside that room real too: the folded towels, the person standing there with work left to do.
“Did you see anything after they went upstairs?” Han asked.
“Only Mrs.—Yuna, from the hallway. She was on the floor with her phone. I thought about going to her.”
“You weren’t sure it was safe,” I said.
Ms. Choi’s fingers tightened on the bag strap.
“I heard her speaking to someone. I thought help was coming.”
“It did,” I said.
I had not known she was there. That did not make me wish she had put herself in Daeho’s path.
Han asked when Ms. Choi had first heard anything about missing documents. Ms. Choi took out her own phone.
“Sora sent me a message before dinner.”
She held the screen toward Han, not the camera. Han asked permission to read it aloud.
“‘Keep out of Daeho’s study. I found a file missing and I believe Yuna took it. Don’t tell my brother until I do.’”
The time displayed was 5:47 p.m.
Han read the message a second time, then asked whether the phone belonged to Ms. Choi and whether the message remained in the original conversation. Ms. Choi said yes to both. With her permission, Han photographed the screen showing the sender, text, and time. She did not take the phone from her.
“At eight-thirty,” I said quietly. “That’s when Sora now says she first noticed.”
“It’s a discrepancy,” Han said. “We’ll keep the original message available for verification. It doesn’t tell us whether any file was missing.”
Ms. Choi looked from Han to the screen.
“I didn’t go into the study. I don’t know what was in there.”
“That’s important too,” Han said.
Ms. Choi seemed surprised that not knowing could be useful.
I watched her turn her phone face down. She had chosen to show us a message that might cost her work. I thought of the cashier’s check Han had sealed in an envelope, its eight million dollars offered as if a number could settle what Daeho had done. For one reckless second, I wanted to offer Ms. Choi enough money that she would never have to go back to that house.
“Can I help with the shifts you might lose?” I asked.
Han looked at me but let Ms. Choi answer.
“I don’t want to be paid for saying this.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know. But if he hears you gave me money, he’ll say I made it up.”
She had seen the problem before I had finished speaking. I apologized.
Han told her that, if her work was threatened, she could speak to an independent employment adviser whether or not she gave another statement. She offered to provide contact information. Ms. Choi accepted that.
“You don’t have to decide tonight whether you’ll speak again,” I said.
“I need to think.”
“Of course.”
May you like
Han began to ask whether there was anything else Ms. Choi remembered from before dinner. Ms. Choi shook her head, then stopped. She looked down at her bag, as though she could still see the mansion hallway from where she sat.
“I saw Sora go into Mr. Kwon’s study before she sent me that message,” she said. “She was carrying an envelope I’d never seen before.”
