The document arrived near noon.
Additional paperwork. Low priority. I opened it without expression, flipping pages out of habit.
Then I stopped.
Reviewed & Approved by:
KIM TAE-KYUNG
Legal Affairs Division
I didn't react.
I read it again. Once. Then once more.
The name wasn't unfamiliar
not because I knew him personally,
but because I had seen the damage it left behind.
Scrolling down, I found the internal correspondence chain.
Mid-level staff. Liaison positions. Names that rarely appeared in major meetings.
Then one name surfaced.
PARK JIN-SEOK Compliance Liaison
My hand stopped.
My breathing didn't change.
My face stayed neutral.
But a memory I had sealed carefully opened on its own.
In my previous life, I had seen that name often. Not as a main figure. As a connector. Someone who always moved positions just before problems surfaced.
Always clean.
Always safe.
And when the company began to sink
that name disappeared first.
I closed my eyes briefly.
How did I miss it before?
The answer came immediately.
Because back then, I wasn't standing close enough to see patterns. I only saw outcomes.
Now was different.
I closed the document and continued working as if nothing had happened.
Phones rang. Screens changed. Conversations carried on.
No one knew that a single name had just shifted the board.
During lunch, I wrote one short sentence in my notebook.
I was late once.
This time, I'm early.
I didn't touch Park Jin-seok.
Not now.
Not directly.
Because people like that don't fall from accusations.
They fall when they're allowed to speak too long.
And this time,
I wasn't standing in the dark corridor anymore.
I was close enough to the light
without stepping fully into it.