Director Han Seung-cheol had kept his records with the precision of a man who understood that they might one day be the only thing standing between him and something worse.
The package contained thirty-seven pages. Some were original documents — carbon copies of correspondence, a handwritten notation on ministry letterhead, a printed schedule of disbursements with certain figures underlined in faded ink. Others were the director's own notes: observations recorded over the years in a careful, formal hand, dated and cross-referenced, the work of someone who had decided to document what he could not yet report.
Kaien and I read in silence while Shin Bao sat across the table and waited.
He had already read it, of course. On the journey home, most likely, and perhaps again before he came to meet us. He knew what was in it. He was watching our faces as we encountered it for the first time.
