February 26. Eight a.m. I sat down at the desk.
New lines had filled the place left by the first line I moved yesterday, and the body field was four lines again. I read the last two digits top to bottom. The one line in the body field that had been far from Min-seok — the unknown number whose last two digits matched mine — had closed by my hand yesterday, and today all four lines were Treasury. All of them close to Min-seok.
To give Min-seok a day today, I had to move one of the four into the sender field, 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 his circle and save him. As the stillness had closed his circle one seat a day, the motion too closed his circle one seat at a time. The difference was that the seat the stillness closed was chosen by the arithmetic, and the seat the motion closed was chosen by me.
That choosing had begun yesterday, and today was its second day. The seat I chose yesterday had no face, so the hand did not fully know what choosing was. Today the four lines of the body field had faces. To choose was to decide which of them I would close, and to decide which I would close was also to decide which would not. Those that would not close were not ones I had saved. I had only not chosen them today; tomorrow or the day after, when the arithmetic of the body field reached them, I would again choose a line from among them. The seat I saved today was the seat I would choose tomorrow. To save was the same as to postpone the day of moving.
I looked into the four numbers. The last two digits of one of them I knew. It was the number of the person who sat across from Min-seok. The face seen head-on, two desks away, not over Min-seok's shoulder, when I went up to Treasury with records. The person Min-seok went out to lunch with. The one who had stood beside Min-seok at the pantry a few days ago, while Min-seok held a paper cup.
Of the four lines, the one furthest from Min-seok's number was that across-the-desk number. To move the furthest line was the cleanest way to buy a day. The cleanest way to keep Min-seok alive one more day was to close, by my hand, the face he sat across from every day.
The person in that seat across from him, I had never seen from where the work was assigned. I had only glimpsed them two desks away when I handed records to Min-seok. Once I saw them laugh out loud at one of Min-seok's jokes; once I saw the two of them open the same newspaper and share a page. Two people who had faced each other for ten years had shared small things like that. The arithmetic of marking the furthest line held neither that laugh nor that newspaper. It answered only which line kept Min-seok alive one more day, and only after the answer did the laugh and the newspaper follow onto that line. The unknown number I moved yesterday had nothing to follow, so the hand was light; the line I would move today had something to follow, so the hand was heavy.
I brought my hand to the sender field. As I had lifted the hand knowing it yesterday, I lifted it knowing it today. Only, the seat I moved yesterday had no face, and the seat I would move today did. In the empty seat where I could sign my name yesterday there had been a person I did not know, and in the empty seat I would sign today there was a person Min-seok faced every day.
I wrote the across-the-desk number in the sender field.
The line vanished from the body field. The vertical line moved one unit off. Min-seok gained a day. The person across the desk was the price of that day.
Nine a.m. A personnel notice came up. The firm's headcount reduction for February 26: one Treasury seat. That number was the seat across from Min-seok.
In the morning I went up to Treasury. The seat across from Min-seok was empty. Min-seok was looking at the empty seat. The man who had said yesterday that no one in his section was cut said in a low voice that today the one across from him was gone. They had joined the firm together, he said. They had sat facing each other for ten years. He had three children, the youngest started school this year, Min-seok said, not taking his eyes off his colleague's seat. A perfectly fine man — Min-seok had been saying that for days. A few days ago he had said it of the next seat; today he said it of the seat across. The perfectly fine ones went one a day, and Min-seok alone remained fine. He looked at the empty desk a long while, then said, why that one, and let the words trail off. 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 lifted the mug left on the empty desk and set it aside. Half a cup of cold coffee was in it. It would have been a cup poured this morning, a sip taken and set down. The colleague had come in this morning, poured the coffee, taken a sip, and in that interval his seat had closed. The closing of a seat came with no warning, and the only warning had been my body field. Only I had seen the body field, and the one who saw moved the seat.
Min-seok carried the mug to the pantry, emptied it, washed it, and set it upside down. No one had told him to clear his colleague's desk, but he did it. The hand that cleared the empty seat could not know the hand that had made it empty, and the hand that made it stood beside the clearing hand and looked at the empty desk together. The cleared desk was as clean as a seat no one had ever sat at.
I came back to my seat and looked at the body field. While a new line filled the place the across-the-desk line had left, I reckoned the last two digits of the remaining lines again. The distance between the body field's lines and Min-seok's number had shrunk by as much as the two days of emptying his circle. While I emptied his circle to buy a day each, the circle left to empty shrank by a day too.
The seats around Min-seok now numbered what one hand could count. His front seat, one person on his row, and one more seat. Three seats. Move the three over three days and I buy three more days, and after three days the only line left in the body field would be Min-seok's number. Three days was what Min-seok had left. The days I could empty his circle for him numbered three, and over three days his front and side and across would empty in turn.
Once the three seats 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; do not move it, and it was him. That moving and not-moving meet at the same place, I felt I had known since I first chose stillness. Only, the place was far then and I did not know it; once the circle emptied and the place drew near, I knew. Stillness was him and motion was him. Wherever I put my hand, at the end was Min-seok.
