February 26. Eight in the morning. I sat down at my desk.
New lines had filled the gap left by the first line I moved yesterday, and the body stood at four lines again. I read their last two digits top to bottom. The one line that had been far from Kang Min-seok — the unknown number whose last two digits matched mine — had closed by my hand yesterday, and today all four lines were Treasury. Every one of them close to him.
To give Min-seok a day, I had to move one of the four into the sending column, and all four were his circle. Until yesterday I had held still to keep his circle from closing; today I had to move to close it and save him. As stillness had closed his circle a seat a day, so did motion, a seat at a time. The difference was only this: the seat stillness closed, the arithmetic chose; the seat motion closed, I chose.
The choosing had begun only yesterday; today was its second day. The seat I chose yesterday had no face, so the hand had not fully grasped what choosing was. Today the four lines had faces. To choose meant I decided which of them to close, and to decide which to close was also to decide which would not — and the ones that did not close were not ones I had saved. I had merely not chosen them today. Tomorrow, or the day after, when the body's arithmetic reached them, I would choose one of them too. The seat I saved today was the seat I would choose tomorrow. To save meant nothing more than to postpone the day of moving.
I looked into the four numbers. The last two digits of one I knew. It belonged to the person who sat across from Min-seok — a face I met head-on, two desks off, not over his shoulder, whenever I carried records up to Treasury. The one Min-seok went to lunch with. The one who had stood beside him at the pantry a few days back, while he held a paper cup.
Of the four, the line furthest from Min-seok's number was that across-the-desk one. Moving the furthest line was the cleanest way to buy a day. The cleanest way to keep him alive one more day was to close, with my own hand, the face he sat across from every day.
The person in the seat across from him I had never met over any work of mine. I had only caught sight of them two desks away when I handed records to Min-seok. Once I saw them laugh out loud at one of his jokes; once I saw the two of them spread the same newspaper and split a page between them. Two people who had faced each other ten years had shared small things like that. The arithmetic that marked the furthest line held neither the laugh nor the newspaper. It answered only which line kept Min-seok alive a day longer, and only after the answer did the laugh and the newspaper come trailing onto that line. Yesterday's unknown number had nothing trailing it, and the hand was light; today's line had something, and the hand was heavy.
I brought my hand to the sending column. As I had lifted it knowing yesterday, I lifted it knowing today. Only, the seat I moved yesterday had no face, and the one I would move today did. In the empty seat I could sign my name to yesterday there had been a person I did not know; in the empty seat I would sign today there was a person Min-seok faced every day.
I wrote the across-the-desk number into the sending column.
The line vanished from the body. The vertical line drew one unit off. Min-seok gained a day. The person across the desk was the price of it.
Nine a.m. A notice went up from Personnel. One seat cut from the firm's headcount, dated February 26 — Treasury. The number was the seat across from Min-seok.
In the morning I went up to Treasury. The seat across from Min-seok was empty. He was looking at it. The man who had said yesterday that his section lost no one now said, low, that today the one across from him was gone. They'd joined the firm together, he said. Ten years facing each other. Three kids — the youngest started school this year, he said, not lifting his eyes from his colleague's seat. A perfectly fine man: Min-seok had been saying that for days now. A few days ago he'd said it of the seat beside him; today he said it of the seat across. The fine ones went one a day, and Min-seok alone stayed fine. He looked at the empty desk a long while, then let it trail off — why that one. Why that seat, I knew: because it was the furthest line, the cleanest for keeping him a day longer. I could not say it.
Min-seok picked up the mug his colleague had left on the empty desk and moved it aside. Half a cup of coffee, gone cold. Poured that morning, a sip taken, set down. The man had come in, poured his coffee, taken a sip, and in that interval his seat had closed. The closing of a seat came with no warning — the only warning had been the body on my terminal. Only I had seen that body, and the one who saw it had moved the seat.
Min-seok carried the mug to the pantry, emptied it, washed it, set it upside down. No one had told him to clear his colleague's desk; he did it himself. The hand clearing the empty seat could not know the hand that had emptied it, and the hand that had emptied it stood beside the clearing hand and looked at the desk with it. Cleared, the desk was as clean as a seat no one had ever sat at.
Back at my seat I looked at the body. As a new line filled the gap the across-the-desk line had left, I reckoned the last two digits of the rest again. The distance between the body's lines and Min-seok's number had shrunk by exactly the two days I'd spent emptying his circle. While I emptied the circle to buy a day at a time, the circle left to empty shrank a day at a time too.
The seats ringing Min-seok were down now to what one hand could count. The seat in front of him, one on his row, and one more. Three seats. Move the three across three days and I buy three more days, and after three days the only line left in the body would be his number. Three days was what Min-seok had left. Three was the number of days I could empty his circle for him, and over those three days the seats around him — in front, beside, and across — would empty one after another.
Once the three were moved, on that day the only line my hand could move would be Min-seok's, and if I did not move it the vertical line would reach him. Move it, and it was him; leave it, and it was him. That moving and not-moving meet at one place I seemed to have known since I first chose stillness. Only, the place had been far then and I did not see it; once the circle emptied and the place drew near, I saw. Stillness was him and motion was him. Wherever I set my hand, at the end stood Min-seok.
For days I had emptied his circle and left him at the center. Once the circle around that center stood wholly empty, all that remained was him alone. To save him was to leave him alone.
