February 25. Eight a.m. I sat down at the desk.
There were four lines in the body field. Overnight the fourth line had been written, and its last two digits were one unit below the third. The vertical line had come down another unit. The units remaining to Min-seok's number were one fewer than yesterday — now a number I could count on two hands' worth of fingers.
For the last four days I had held out by keeping my hand at the edge of the desk. With the hand far from the sender field, the body field's lines did not become results, and a seat that did not become a result did not reach Min-seok. But even while it did not reach him, the vertical line came down one line a day. The stillness only kept a line from becoming a result; it did not stop the line from descending. Even while I held still, his circle closed one seat a day, and the arithmetic — that once his circle was all closed, the vertical line reached him — was exactly the same as yesterday's.
If stillness could not slow the count, there was only one way to slow it. To move one line of the body field into the sender field myself. The moved line becomes a result on the spot and closes, and by as much as it closes, the vertical line moves one unit further from Min-seok. If I closed one line now, his seat gained one more day.
Which line to move, I had to choose. Of the four lines in the body field, the first had last two digits matching mine; the second, third, and fourth were Treasury. The three Treasury lines were lines close to Min-seok. To move one of them was to close his circle with my own hand. Only the first line — the one whose last two digits matched mine — was far from Min-seok.
The first line's number was the one the body field had first written at dawn, its last two digits the same as mine. The seat that had stayed unclosed for four days because it was never moved into the sender field. A person I knew only by number, neither name nor face. The person who had lived for four days on the stillness of my hand.
If I moved that person, Min-seok gained a day.
For four days I had kept that unknown number resting on my stillness, and I had not called it saving. To call it saving I would have had to know the person's face, and I did not. Keeping an unknown face alive was indistinguishable from keeping a hand still. But to move that number and save Min-seok was different. In closing one person I did not know to save one person I did, there was an arithmetic in which the two did not weigh the same. That the hand knew the weights were unequal was the hardest thing to bear before lifting it.
I lifted my hand from the edge of the desk. For the first time in four days, I lifted it knowing I lifted it. As the hand went toward the sender field — unlike the days before, when the hand had drifted a knuckle over without my knowing when — today I watched each knuckle of the way. Where the result had preceded the subject, today alone the hand went first. I chose, and I moved.
I wrote the first line's number in the sender field. As I wrote, the hand moved in the grain it always used to copy an employee number — the one breath at the firm code, the pressure at the rank slot, the close interval of the last two digits. The same hand that copied into the memo pad copied today into the sender field, and the distance between the memo pad and the sender field was not one knuckle in the grain of the hand. The same hand, in the same grain: written in one place it was a record, written in the other it was a result.
The instant I wrote it, the first line of the body field vanished. The remaining three lines rose one notch, and at the empty seat at the bottom a new line began to be written. The vertical line moved one unit further off. The units remaining to Min-seok grew by one. I had bought a day.
A day was one seat. The price of giving Min-seok a day was another person's seat, and that arithmetic did not decrease anywhere. However many days I postponed his seat, as many seats closed as the days I postponed. Postponing changed the name of the seat that closed, not the number of seats that closed.
Nine a.m. A personnel notice came up. The firm's headcount reduction for February 25: one seat. That number was the first line's number. A person I had known only by number, last two digits the same as mine. The seat I had written in the sender field closed, there in that seat.
I looked at the sender field again to see whether the closed seat could be undone. The number I had written was still there in the sender field. I pressed a key to erase it, and the number did not erase. As when I first edited a line of a roster last winter, what was written stayed written, and erasing too was a writing. A number once written in the sender field remained as a record that I had closed that seat.
For four days that person had lived on the stillness of my hand. Today that person closed on the motion of my hand. That stillness saves and motion closes, I had known until yesterday, and today I did it. If choosing-without-knowing was the work up to yesterday, today I chose while knowing. What set the hand that chose while knowing apart from the hand that chose without knowing was this: I could sign my name to the closed seat.
In the morning I went up to Treasury. Min-seok was in his place. Today no seat closed around him. The space beside him, which had emptied one seat a day until yesterday, was the same today. He raised a hand to me and said no one in our section was cut today. For the first time in days there was a faint relief in his voice. Whose seat that relief had been bought with, he did not know, and I did.
Beside Min-seok's desk, the empty chair where a coat had hung until yesterday was still empty. The seat closed the day before had closed while I held still; the seat closed today had closed because I moved. They were the same empty seat, yet one bore no name of mine and one did. Min-seok looked at the two empty seats with the same eyes; I looked at them with different eyes.
I came back to my seat and looked at the body field. The new line at the bottom was already filling itself out, not overnight but during the day. To have bought a day meant I would have to move another line tomorrow. As I had moved the first line today to gain a day, tomorrow I would have to choose and move another line for Min-seok to gain another day.
I looked ahead at the line I would move tomorrow. The lines of the body field were all Treasury, and the Treasury lines were close to Min-seok. The unknown number whose last two digits matched mine had closed today, and there was no longer any line in the body field far from Min-seok. To give Min-seok a day tomorrow, I would have to move a line of his circle with my own hand. Buying him with a seat whose face I did not know had ended today.
Between closing the seats around him to save him, and not closing the seats around him so that the vertical line reached him, the seats my hand could choose were shrinking by one a day. The far seats ended today. From tomorrow every seat I could choose was a seat with a near face, and at the end of those seats closing was Min-seok's.
