THE STORY · EPISODE 17
The records felt too light.
Logrin lifted what should have been a thick bundle, then set it on the desk again. There had been more rows when the staff received it that evening. After that time, the amount in storage had suddenly fallen.
“I can’t find the missing parts.”
Mana began to reach for the papers, then stopped. She could not write the missing rows back herself. Listening to what had happened was not the same as restoring the originals.
The next morning, a black shadow flowed between the shelves of the Log Archive District. Each time it touched a column of numbers, the characters’ lights went out. Bands of time lay at its feet, cut off halfway through.
Mana remembered the shelves from the day she first met Sapo.
She had felt that coming here would tell her the order of anything. But records also needed protection if they were to remain readable afterward.
The staff checked the procedure for stopping changes at the affected storage location. Records forwarded elsewhere had also stopped arriving partway through that period.
Logrin looked beneath the papers he held.
“If I’d looked sooner…”
Mana did not immediately say it was not his fault. They were still investigating the cause. But the companion beside her did not need to carry every missing row alone.
“Let’s look together at where things become different. We’ll start by protecting what’s still here.”
He nodded, though his fingers remained stiff around the paper.
The audit settings had been changed, too.
Who had touched them, when, and with which permissions? Some rows missing from the storage location remained at the forwarding destination. The two places also displayed time on different bases.
At the edge of the paper, Sapo made a field for checking the time difference. Instead of rewriting the original times, he added a separate column for comparison. He did not flatten the missing interval into a neat timeline from the start.
“Is this clock wrong?”
A young staff member asked.
The doctor pointed out the display basis.
“First, establish what time each one represents. Whether the display differs and whether the clocks themselves differ are separate checks.”
Logrin spread out the two sheets. The shadow tried to flow into the gap.
Defense lit up in Mana’s encyclopedia.
OPTIONAL QUESTION · 17-D1What a record hash can establishWhat is a preserved record's hash mainly used to check?Open illustration & choices
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“A. A value for comparing whether the contents have changed later. It doesn’t prove that the events were true or that everything was retained.”
Mana finished the whole answer, careful not to feel reassured by similar-looking characters.
The staff recorded the preserved files’ hashes with their source, acquisition time, and the person responsible. Copies exported to another safe storage location were read back and compared, too.
The shield’s light returned before the shelves.
If one number alone had reassured them, the shadow could have used everything outside that number. Recording which record and which moment the value belonged to made the boundary now.
Mana wanted to place the actions she remembered between the missing rows.
The recovery in Episode 10. The repair in Episode 11. The sharing changes. There were things they had certainly seen together.
“We had returned by this time, so…”
As she spoke, she picked up a pencil.
Sapo offered a different sheet.
“Let’s make that an interview record. It’s better to keep it apart from the log rows.”
Mana put the pencil down.
The day Sapo had corrected his own mistaken paper came back to her. Wanting to fill a gap was not only about wanting to investigate. It could also be about how painful it felt to leave something unknown.
“You’re right. I’ll write it as what I remember.”
Watching that, Logrin finally lowered his shoulders a little.
“I remember, too. But I can’t say it remained on the shelf.”
“Let’s pass on only what we can say.”
The shadow projected different words into the missing section.
Nothing happened.
No one touched it.
Sentences that turned an absence of records into an absence of events.
Mana read them, but did not copy them into the gaps in the originals.
Episode 17, Illustration 1 | Leaving gaps in the originals unfilled
“Preserve and export the logs.”
The doctor read the procedure the staff had checked.
“Protect the records and export them to safe storage.”
At Mana’s words, the Attack question opened.
OPTIONAL QUESTION · 17-A1Investigate missing logs without filling gapsLogs are missing and forwarding has stopped. How should you investigate with the staff?Open illustration & choices
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“D. Protect the originals. Export them to another safe location, compare them, and keep the acquisition details. Investigate the gaps with other records and interviews kept separate.”
Mana turned to Logrin.
“Logrin, give the surviving records to the staff. Securidon, protect the boundary so nothing else gets rewritten!”
The blue shield moved beneath the shelves. Patchron supported the work area, while Miscure showed the settings selected by the staff. Where forwarding had stopped, the staff investigated the cause and restored it after checking.
Rows from another storage location joined the working timeline.
Sections they could not find were marked as still missing. The shadow tried to insert convenient sentences there, but the originals and the comparison sheets did not overlap.
“I won’t let you write even the empty parts.”
At Mana’s words, Securidon’s light pushed the black bands back.
The last band could not slip into the shelves and stopped on the floor.
From the Securies’ light appeared a soft, dark purple-black companion. His white eyes were clearly open. In his hands, he held a record board marked LOG.
His body was dark, but what he carried was visible.
“It’s empty here.”
He pointed.
“That’s what we don’t know yet.”
At Mana’s reply, he brought the board back to his chest without adding a line himself.
Episode 17, Illustration 2 | Keeping unknown sections empty
“Shadowlog.”
COL-013 — Shadowlog lit up in the WS Encyclopedia. He was the seventeenth companion.
When the work ended, not all the missing records had returned.
The staff moved the remaining questions to another table. Mana and the others did not say that purification had ended the investigation.
As they left, Logrin looked at Shadowlog’s board.
Both carried something. One did not take the other’s job away; there were now two places to keep things.
“May I put this copy here?”
At Logrin’s question, Shadowlog checked the shelf’s location before nodding.
Mana thought of the doctor’s dining table, which had still been big enough around the eleventh companion’s arrival. They were gaining more than names. There were more companions who supported the same work with different hands.
That evening, the doctor searched the house for an old memo.
“Perhaps I needed a record of where I put it, too.”
Mana pointed to a box beside the desk.
“You wrote ‘here’ on this in your own handwriting.”
“An excellent record.”
“It doesn’t name the contents.”
When the doctor went quiet, Logrin laughed aloud for the first time.
A message sounded in the middle of his laughter.
The guidance system had stopped just after a new change was applied to the live screen. The staff were about to rush in another fix.
Mana looked at the memo she had returned to the box. This time, they needed a record of where to go back, as well as what to change.
END OF EPISODE 17