The Ledger of Borrowed Names by J. Han

A ledger can prove a crime. It can also expose the people who survived it. When a water-damaged ledger arrives at Han Iseul's radio-repair shop, its columns seem to record debts. The pencil marks beneath them tell another story: borrowed identities, missing documents, and a system built to make women disappear. The book was left by Jo Ryeon, a Korean-Chinese interpreter who once made that system run—and who has returned to South Korea to name what she did. A shipping company is about to destroy its old files. A former handler wants the ledger back. And the only person who can authorize its use is hidden behind one unresolved alias: May Seven. Over four rain-soaked days in a fictional port city, Iseul and Jo must decide whether evidence can expose a crime without exposing the people who survived it. The Ledger of Borrowed Names is a literary suspense novella about complicity, consent, and the dangerous distance between preserving a record and claiming a life.