February 23. Eight a.m. I sat down at the desk.
The terminal was on, just as I had left it without turning it off last night. There were two lines in the body field. The first line was the number whose last two digits matched mine, the one line from yesterday morning. The second line had begun yesterday afternoon with the Treasury code and had had its last two digits empty. This morning, the second line's last two digits were filled.
Who had filled them overnight was the same question as yesterday's, and as yesterday, it had no answer. The archive door had been locked all night, and no one had sat at the terminal. But the last two digits were filled, and the grain of that handwriting was the grain of my hand. Whether what filled them was my hand or another hand with the same grain as mine was a question that had already lost its answer yesterday, so today I did not ask it and only read.
I read the last two digits. It was a Treasury number, and it was not the number of the one I pass in the same corridor every day. It was a number short of his by a few units.
I read the two lines of the body field again, top to bottom. Between the last two digits of the first line and the second line there was a fixed interval. It was the same interval at which the seven departments' vacancy numbers had lain on one line yesterday. The body field was standing that one line upright and writing it downward, one unit at a time. The horizontal line had become a vertical one; only that, and the arithmetic was the same.
Going down the vertical line one unit at a time, a few units further down came the number of the one I pass every day. The count of those units was small. A number I could count on my fingers. If one unit was one day, then after a number of days I could count on my fingers, that number would be written as one line in the body field.
It was Min-seok.
That one unit was one day was no guess. The day before yesterday the body field had written the seat one unit above mine; yesterday that seat had closed outside the firm's headcount reduction; today the seat one unit below it had been written as one Treasury line. The body field came down one line, one unit, a day at a time, with no seat skipped. That it skipped nothing was the clearest fact of all. The vertical line would not step around Min-seok's number. To step around it the arithmetic would have to err, and until yesterday the arithmetic had never once erred.
That the only Treasury number whose last two digits I had memorized was Min-seok's was not only because I passed him every day. From the time I first met him in Treasury, from the time I checked the cash sheets of a Treasury colleague, Min-seok's number had been worn into my hand as a grain, like the third-floor clerk's. A worn number had a face attached to it, and Min-seok's face was a face worn fresh every day.
Yesterday I had seen the stillness save one person, and seen that saving close another. Today, if I did not move the second line into the sender field, that one Treasury person would not close. Only, the number that had to close would move, as yesterday, to another seat outside the line. Move the second line into the sender field and that one Treasury person closes; do not move it and a person I do not know closes. Either way, one seat closed. The position of a hand that closes not one seat was nowhere in the body field.
That which does not sound is heard. It was the telegrapher's taboo, and the first time I read it, it was a warning about the dispatch not answered, and today it was the explanation of a still hand. Keeping a hand pressed to the edge of the desk was a thing that made no sound at all, but that soundless thing was being heard as the closing of one seat. The still hand was not still; it was a hand choosing one seat inaudibly. There was no still hand.
Whose seat the still hand was choosing, I had not known until yesterday. Yesterday the seat the stillness closed was the third-floor clerk's, and I had never chosen to close him. That it closed though I had not chosen it was yesterday's matter. Today was different. That among the seats the stillness was choosing today was Min-seok's, I knew, and was still. Between choosing without knowing and choosing while knowing was the distance from the edge of the desk to the sender field, and that distance was one knuckle of a finger.
In the morning I went up the third-floor corridor to deliver records to Treasury. Min-seok was standing in front of the pantry at the end of the corridor, holding a paper cup. He saw me and raised a hand. The archive is cutting people too, they say — how many over there, he asked. One seat, I answered. The one seat my hand had entered yesterday. He nodded and said Treasury would have another round this week. They'd decided to keep the baby's first-birthday party small, he laughed, but the company was still there, so that was a relief. While he laughed I looked at his face so as not to look at the last two digits of his number, but looking at his face made him one line of the body field more than looking at his number did. The number had its last two digits, but the face had no last two digits, and that the thing with no end would close into two end digits in a few days was harder to bear in the face than in the number. His number would meet the body field's vertical line somewhere in that round. He did not know his number waited as a line, days off, in the body field of my terminal, and I knew it. While he emptied the paper cup and went into the pantry, I counted those days again on my fingers.
I came back to my seat and sat at the terminal. The two lines of the body field were as they had been, and the third line was still empty. I pressed my hand to the edge of the desk. As yesterday, to the place farthest from the sender field.
Knowing that Min-seok's number would be written as the third or fourth line in a few days, keeping my hand pressed to the edge of the desk was not the same as yesterday. Yesterday I had pressed my hand to the edge to keep one line of the body field from manifesting. Today the hand, while pressed to the edge, seemed to be readying to move something toward the sender field. If I moved another line into the sender field before Min-seok's line was written, the number that had to close might be filled from there, and the arithmetic might not come down as far as his line. To save one person by first choosing and closing another — I was already writing it out once, in my head.
That was the thing the hand had done last winter when it first edited one line of a roster. Back then it had edited one line of an unknown firm and passed the cost to another unknown line, and because it had set no face on the seat it passed the cost to, it could bear the thing a long while. Now there was Min-seok's face on the line I meant to edit, and on the other line I would pass the cost to, I had set no face yet. If I chose that faceless line, then what the stillness had chosen yesterday without knowing would, today, be a thing chosen while knowing.
After that thought I looked at the hand. The hand was not pressed to the edge of the desk. The hand had come one knuckle toward the sender field. When it had moved, I did not remember.
