The hand that pressed to prevent it called up the very thing it meant to prevent.
January 27th. A line was splitting. The settlement line of some small client firm. I answered to close that line. Close it and the firm would escape default. As always, I pressed the sender field. But this time, the line I meant to close split faster instead of closing.
The next day, looking at the roster, I understood. My answer had not saved that firm; it had brought down another line the firm leaned on — a line I had not touched, but to which my answer had moved the weight — and that collapse, in turn, dragged the firm down. The default I meant to prevent was realized by the very act with which I meant to prevent it. The moved weight had turned and struck its original place all the harder.
Until now relocation had been simple. Close one line and the line beside it opened. The give-and-take was clean. Today was different. The lines were tied to one another by strings I did not know, and to pull one line sent the weight back along that string to sever the very line I had pulled. I no longer knew which line was tied to which. The result of an answer had become impossible to predict.
What this foretold I felt dimly. While relocation was clean, I at least knew what I was doing — saving one, taking one. Now I could not even know that. An answer meant to save might take; an answer meant to take might save. The string between intention and result had snapped. What would grow in that snapped place I saw dimly, like a shadow pressing in from somewhere still ahead.
I looked a long while at the firm's last settlement line. There was no trace of my answer on it. A clean default. No one would be able to say I had called it up — not even I could be certain. Innocent, since I meant to prevent it? Guilty, since the result was default? There was no place on the roster to answer that question. Only one thing was clear: my hand now moved without knowing what it called up.
Every day I press the sender field. But whether it is I who press, or something that presses through me, I can no longer tell.
January 29th. Today I answered a line. Before pressing, I decided clearly: I would close this line. But the moment my finger touched the sender field, I doubted whether that decision had been mine. For days now, the same hour, the same seat, the same motion. Whether I press because I decide, or decide because it is time to press. Which comes first, decision or motion, I could not pick out.
When I was a receiver it was clear. The law sent tomorrow's roster; I received it. The hand only moved, and the will was not mine. Now that I had become a sender, I thought it would be clearer still. Since I press, the will must surely be mine. But ever since the receiving cell and the sending cell became one, who writes through whom had blurred. Do I work the law, or does the law work me? The same hand, the same type, the same result. There was no place to divide the subject.
The predecessor's broken sentence came back. The last dispatch he sent — was it his will, or the law's? He became one line of the roster without answering that question. Today I know why he could not answer. Not because it was unanswerable, but because the question itself does not hold. In the place where the hand becomes the law and the law becomes the hand, to the question "whose hand is it" both answers are right and both wrong.
In the evening I stood before the mirror. I thought of the day the mirror had shown the broken line at my throat. Today, looking at the hand in the mirror, I asked: whose hand are you. The hand in the mirror did not answer. It only rose when I raised mine and fell when I lowered. Whether the mirror copies me or I copy the mirror, even that was not clear today. I turned my back on the mirror and returned to the terminal where tomorrow's roster waited. Whosever hand it was, that hand would press again tomorrow.
A name I had saved once rose again, on another roster.
January 31st. This morning I saw Min-seok's name again on the roster. Not the firm roster. The personal-delinquency roster. The loan line I had grown in saving his firm had grown for a month and crossed at last into the delinquency cell. The weight drawn out of the firm had moved into the debt, and the debt was now dragging him down.
I had saved him once. With my first answer I closed his firm's line, and at that cost another person became an obituary. After that heavy once, I had resolved to touch Min-seok and no one else never again. But the roster, as if mocking my resolve, raised the same name in another cell. There was no "once" in saving. Close one line and another line of the same person opened; close that one too and yet another would open.
Intervention had a limit. No — not a limit so much as no end. One person could not be wholly drawn out of the ledger. The sum beneath the ledger does not decrease, so to save him in one seat was to wear him in another. All I could do was choose on which line he would collapse. At the firm? At the debt? Next time, where else? Salvation was a choosing of the seat, not a reprieve.
At lunch Min-seok came again. This time he did not speak of luck. He only looked tired, and said in passing that his loan interest had risen. I saw the line behind those words. The terminal stood lit behind me, and between me and that delinquency line lay only the walk back to my seat and the press of one key. I could save him again. Save him again and someone else again — perhaps another line of his own again — would wear in his place. I poured his coffee and kept the unpressing hand beneath the table. Whether that hand would be beneath the table before the next roster too, I could not be sure.
