April 5. I wrote three characters in the compiler box.
At ten past nine I read the compiler procedure again.
It says to write the name of the person who bound it as one set. It says a title of office is not admitted.
Titles of office went into the recorder boxes. In January I entered the four by their offices, and head office had them amended to unknown.
The compiler box takes names only, from the start.
The two boxes ask different things. A recorder is one who wrote; a compiler is one who gathered.
From twenty to ten until half past I wrote down the difference between the two boxes.
A recorder is one per material. A compiler is one per set.
There is one entry with me in a recorder box. My log. I wrote it, so I am its recorder.
If I go into the compiler box I am attached to five.
Of the five there is not one I wrote a character of.
Having a name attached to what one did not write is the first in fifteen months.
At twenty to eleven I saw one more thing.
The compiler box is a required box. Left empty it is not accepted.
But until yesterday this box did not exist in this room.
Unless the combination application is written, this box does not come into being. Writing the application was decided by me.
It is required, and I brought the requirement.
The imprint box exists whether I am here or not. It has been there since the four were registered, and it is there while I leave it empty.
The compiler box is not there if I am not.
A box has come into being in this room, and the one who made it come into being is the one who writes in it.
At ten past eleven I wrote it.
Three characters.
I have never written my name in this log. There is no box for a name in a log and there was no occasion. In fifteen months my name has not once gone onto paper in this room.
Today it went into this room's records for the first time. Not into the log but into a set's compiler box.
Having written it I looked at the three characters a long while.
I did not write it because a box required it. I did the work that made the box, and nobody told me to do that work.
In January, filling the recorder boxes, I filled them because filling boxes was the work. Today it is not the work.
At half past eleven I submitted it.
It was accepted. The expected date of disposal came up as the twentieth of April.
At twelve the third-floor man came down. He asked whether I was going to lunch.
He looked at the screen and asked what that was. I have bound five as one set, I said.
Who told you to, he asked. Nobody, I said.
He looked at me.
Then why do it, he asked.
Because somebody asked, I said.
You do all that for one person, he asked.
Yes, I said.
He did not laugh. In fifteen months of coming down to this room it is the first time he has not laughed.
At half past twelve I ran off the list.
One row has been added. Five sub-numbers.
I looked at the set's recorder box.
It takes one representative. The procedure says a holder of a name takes precedence.
Of the five, one has a name.
Kim Dogyeong.
The four being unknown, one person represents five. That person wrote one of the five.
At ten past one I ran off the recorder list again.
Four. Myself, unknown, Kim Dogyeong, and the set.
The set's row gives the recorder as Kim Dogyeong.
The compiler does not come up.
The list form has no compiler box. The application has one and the list has none.
I wrote it and it cannot be seen.
There are two things this month that I wrote and that do not catch. The imprint's name in the title box, and the three characters in the compiler box.
I wrote both, and the list reads neither.
At two head office telephoned.
Who told you to do this, they asked.
Nobody, I said.
Then why did you, they asked.
There is a procedure in article twenty of the guidance, I said.
If there is a procedure, may you do it, they asked.
It was quiet a moment.
There is no clause saying you may not, they said.
From half past two to half past three I wrote that call down.
I thought there was nothing between what one is told to do and what one is told not to do.
For fifteen months everything that came into this room was a thing to do. Things not to do came too. I did not know there was a box between the two.
Today I stood in it.
What I did there was not returned. Not returned does not mean right. It means there is no clause.
At twenty to four I read the procedure for what follows a combination.
A set carries a table of contents and a summary.
For each sub-number, what is written in it is to be given in ten lines or fewer.
All five must be read. Read, and set down in short.
Eight hundred and sixty-five pages have to go into fifty lines in five parts.
Reduce a page to a line and it is still eight hundred and sixty-five lines. Fifty is a seventeenth of that.
Reducing it drops sixteen of every seventeen. Somebody decides what is dropped.
There is no box for what is dropped. Only what remains remains in a summary.
For fifteen months everything dropped in this room had its reason written. In February, when I struck the fifth bundle, I wrote it in the margin.
This time there is too much to drop to count.
At ten past four I opened the right-hand material.
Three hundred and thirteen pages. The date of the added page is 4 May 98.
My log is on its three hundred and thirteenth page today.
At half past four I opened the box.
Seven. Six impressions. The forty-first day.
At five I looked at the sixth box.
Four hundred and thirty-seven.
At twenty past five I took out the librarian's bundle.
The first of the five. The one the person asked about.
I opened the first page. I copied the first line out.
I set what I had copied against the original.
They are the same.
I wrote down that they were the same.
In fifteen months I have never written down that something was the same. I wrote only what diverged.
Writing today that they are the same is counting in advance what will diverge tomorrow.