The records room was quiet. The quiet was maintained like a rule. The sound of the door, the slide of a chair, the turn of paper arrived separately. They did not overlap.
The fluorescent lights kept a steady brightness. They did not flicker. They were not dark. They did not leave an impression of being bright. The room was designed that way.
Doyoon checked the access log and entered. The automatic door closed at its usual speed. It never hesitated. No one slipped in behind him.
Boxes were arranged in numerical order along the shelves. No case names were written. Only dates and codes. There was no sign the system had ever changed.
He did not look for a specific box. His hand did not move first. He scanned the aisle line by line. Corners, tape, the angle of labels.
Some boxes had double layers of tape. Some had been opened and resealed. The room was organized, but not perfect. Perfection was not required here.
He pulled one box out. The weight matched expectation. His wrist did not waver. He lowered it without sound.
Inside, files were bound together. Time of accident. Time of report. Dispatch records. Photo lists. The order was always the same.
He turned the first page. Then the next. His reading speed stayed even. There was no place to pause.
The records covered only what came after. The choices before the accident were not written. They could not be. Records always began there.
He stopped turning pages. He did not explain where or why. There was no need. Only the stop remained.
The content was ordinary. Statistically unremarkable. Low probability of recurrence. There was no point demanding judgment.
He did not close the file. He turned a page again, then the one before it. He read the same sentence twice. It did not change.
The air in the room stayed constant. No ventilation noise. No one entered. Time raised no question.
Doyoon did not lean back. He did not shift position. Only his eyes moved. In a room without screens, eyes had less to do.
He thought about why the judgment was slow. Before, this would have been enough. He would have closed the file and moved on.
This time, he could not. He did not look for a reason. Looking would turn judgment into explanation.
No accidents happened in the records room. They could not. Only what had already happened was stored here. That fact used to calm him.
Not now.
He put the file back. He aligned it precisely. He pressed down the tape edge.
He moved to the next box. The movement was neither fast nor slow. Only less certain than before.
When he left the room, he did not look back. There was no reason to. The records would not change.
The door closed. The automatic door moved at the same speed as always.
Doyoon no longer received that speed the way he used to.