February 19. Notice of headcount reduction by department arrived at the archive too. One seat.
A printed sheet on the head archivist's desk. On the paper, the department head's signature and the personnel office stamp; at the top, a polite heading: "Notice of Workforce Rationalization." The text was two lines. The archive's headcount is reduced by one seat. Disposition is left to internal department decision. One seat. There was no mention of who would be cut, but the fact that five worked in the archive was not stated precisely on that paper — before a roster names people, a notice names only the number and leaves the person to implication.
The archive's headcount was five. The head archivist, Do-gyeong, and three others. One vacant seat had been empty since December — the predecessor's. His canister of film had remained on the desk for a while in his absence, only the nameplate removed, the seat itself the same. Recruitment notices had gone out twice and been canceled twice. As the crisis deepened, new hiring itself had stopped.
So the archive's headcount reduction — by arithmetic alone — was finished if that empty seat were processed as "confirmed vacancy." A notice had come to cut one person, but the person to cut was already cut. One of the five seats had been without a person since December. If that seat were made administratively non-existent — the headcount drops to four, and the four people in the archive all remain.
I looked at the arithmetic for a long while. It was too clean.
When the roster came down from firm-scale to person-scale, I hesitated for the first time at the sender field — because the face of a person was at my fingertip. The archive headcount reduction had no face on the arithmetic. The seat to be processed as a confirmed vacancy was already a seat without a person. No one living wore thin and the task ended.
But the cleaner the arithmetic, the clearer the thing beyond it. That seat was not a vacated seat but an emptied seat. Since December, someone hadn't merely not come — someone had vanished. The predecessor had not transferred. His resignation, filed without a resignation letter, had left only the date of resignation on the personnel record. His canister of film had remained on the desk for some time — between "no person in the seat" and "the seat may be empty," that canister was the interval.
How the predecessor vanished, I had read in scattered pieces from his log. That the last film he shot contained Do-gyeong's date of resignation was near the end of that log. He did not file a resignation letter. From the day after his last day at the archive, his seat was empty in the same shape as when he was at it. The canister on the desk, the place where the nameplate had been removed — none of these were the marks of someone who had moved on, but of someone who had vanished. Personnel had recorded that vanishing as a voluntary resignation. A voluntary resignation without a resignation letter — the contradiction of that form had left his seat, since December, an administratively living empty seat.
If I went now to fill out the archive headcount reduction form, I would close that interval. The fact that no person was in the seat I would convert into the fact that the seat could be empty. With that one entry — five becomes four, the four living in the archive remain, and the predecessor vanishes from the seat itself.
I entered the personnel system.
There was a "Confirmed Vacancy Processing" form. Three blanks: name of former occupant, employee number of former occupant, reason for vacancy.
The hand stopped at the name field. It was not a different kind of stopping than the stopping at the sender field. The terminal was different and the form was different, but in that I entered a name in a blank and that name decided some line somewhere, the press of the sender field and the entry on the personnel system were the same single motion. The hand that had been rewriting rosters was the same as the hand filling the name field of a personnel form. When the form of the hand is the same, the grain of what the hand calls up is the same.
The predecessor's name remained in the personnel record. Han Seong-█, one character blacked out. If I entered that name in the form's name field — he would become a vacancy at the seat. He had been a person who was not since December, but a person awaiting replacement; the moment the name is entered, he is confirmed as a person who has vanished. Erasing a person who is already erased.
With that one entry, the rest of the archive — four — all survive. The head archivist. Two assistants. And me.
For the first time I saw clearly that surviving in the archive included my own seat. From the time the roster's unit came down to person, the destination of the relocation — at the closest seat — was me. There was a floor's distance between Min-seok's neighboring seat and Do-gyeong's neighboring seat, but the archive's own headcount reduction had no distance. If the archive had five and only four remained, who remained was for me to decide.
Before entering the name I thought one more thing. The predecessor too may have processed someone's seat as a confirmed vacancy. Near the end of his log, his hand did not only take film. There was a hand stopped over an empty sender field, and a hand transcribing rosters, and — possibly — a hand that entered a name into the name field of some form before he vanished. Whose name that was, I do not know. Only that the seat of the name he entered became a confirmed vacancy, and that, after he vanished, another name may have entered the seat of that confirmed vacancy. The archive's seats were probably seats that had each been thus moved once.
I entered the name.
The terminal received the input. A line saying "Confirmed Vacancy Processed" appeared and disappeared, and the form closed.
And the terminal refreshed.
Tomorrow's roster came up in a different format. The first line was not a firm or a person.
A dispatch hung above the roster. The sender field was empty. The recipient field was empty. The body field had not a single character written — an empty dispatch. Only the fact that an empty dispatch had arrived at my terminal was shown.
What dispatch had arrived at the predecessor's terminal at his last hour I had seen in his log. That dispatch also had an empty sender field.
The dispatch with the empty sender field was a dispatch I had to write.
The empty dispatch was not merely an empty form. As the roster's unit came down from firm to person, from person to seat, from seat to system form, at some point the unit became — the blank itself. What was to be entered into the form was not written. The blank only made known: that the next line was empty, and that the one who would write that emptiness was me.
What would be written when the hand reached that form I had never seen. What the predecessor wrote was not recorded in his log. After he wrote, he vanished, and after he vanished, one seat in the archive remained as a vacancy. That one seat had today become a confirmed vacancy by my entry. Where the next one seat would be — the form asked, but the answer was not written in the form itself.
Before I turned on tomorrow's roster — before the roster — that empty dispatch was waiting for me.
