March 4. Eight a.m. I sat down at the desk.
There was one line in the body field. The line written in the place where Min-seok's line had vanished yesterday, the line whose last two digits were mine. In the center seat where Min-seok had sat yesterday, today my line sat.
I did to myself today the arithmetic I had done to Min-seok yesterday. With my line in the body field, the instant an answer is written in the sender field my line becomes a result. Keep the hand off the sender field, and the vertical line reaches my line. Move it, and it is me; do not move it, and it is me. In the seat where, over Min-seok, it had been move-it-it-is-him and do-not-it-is-him, today there was only me.
There was a way to postpone my line by a day. As I had postponed Min-seok by three days, I could move my own circle. The archive had its head archivist, and the two assistants who had survived until the day before yesterday. A few days ago I had entered the predecessor's empty seat as a vacancy and four had lived, and two of them were now turning, behind my back, the rosters they had not finished yesterday. Move the two, and my line gained two days. Move the head archivist, and a day more.
With my hand at the edge of the desk I followed that arithmetic to the end. After moving the two assistants and the head archivist to gain three days, the archive would have only me. In the seat where I sat alone among empty desks, the body field would again have only my line. That seat three days off was Min-seok's seat yesterday. At the end of the three days bought by emptying my circle was me. As the hand that left Min-seok at the center left him alone, the hand that left me at the center would leave me alone.
I decided to let the hands of the two assistants turning rosters behind my back keep turning. I decided not to move the two assistants. I decided not to move the head archivist. I decided not to empty my circle. I decided not to postpone my line.
If deciding not to postpone was a stillness, I knew that stillness too is an answer. I had known it since the day I wrote that there is no still hand. But the stillness I had held over three days was a stillness that kept the center while watching the circle close, and today's stillness was a stillness that chose not to keep the center. The two stillnesses were one hand placed in one place, yet one was a stillness that meant to save and one was a stillness that gave up saving. Giving up saving was the first thing I had done outside the arithmetic. The arithmetic asked whether to move or not move, but whether to empty the circle to save or not empty it the arithmetic did not ask. That alone was a thing I could decide, and I decided not to empty it.
The reason I decided not to empty it was not for my own sake, I learned only after deciding. Empty my circle and I gain three days, but over those three days the head archivist and the two assistants close. The price of keeping me alive three more days was those three. As the price of keeping Min-seok three more days was his colleague and his front seat and the new hire, the price of saving me was my circle too. Min-seok never knew his circle was his price; I knew. To do, while knowing, the thing of emptying a circle — to do to myself the thing I had done to Min-seok — I decided not to. I could not undo what I had done to Min-seok, but I could keep from doing the same thing once more.
I looked into my line in the body field. My number was in the recipient field, and the sender field was empty. The recipient was me. If I wrote an answer in the sender field, the sender too was me. When recipient and sender are one number, the dispatch does not ask who sends it to whom. As the telegrapher wrote his own name in the blank recipient field of a broken sentence, I was looking at my own number in the recipient field. The difference was that the telegrapher's recipient field was blank and mine was already filled. My number was there whether or not anyone wrote it. A dispatch whose recipient was me even with no sender writing it had come to the body field as one line.
The predecessor too, at the last, must have read his own number in the recipient field. Near the end of his log there was an entry where he placed and lifted his hand over the sender field. What he decided before he vanished is not in the log. Now, come to that seat, I thought that what he could not write in the log might be not a decision but the absence of one. When the recipient is oneself, in a seat where moving is oneself and not-moving is oneself, placing and lifting the hand end in the same result, so nothing is left to call a decision. The predecessor had not failed to decide; he had come to a seat where there was nothing to decide.
After Treasury emptied entirely yesterday, the arithmetic of the empty seats did not end at Treasury. When a section emptied, the count passed to the next, and the archive was the section after Treasury. Since the hand that emptied Min-seok's circle was in the archive, the seat the count reached first in the archive was that hand's seat. The hand that chose the seats to close closing first was because that hand was the one nearest the count. I had thought I only answered, from outside the arithmetic, but a hand standing nearest the count could not be outside it.
I opened the fifth bundle. On the sixty-fifth page I wrote that my line had been written in the body field today. As I wrote, I thought that the page I was writing would one day be read by another hand. As I had read the logs of the four bundles, someone would read the log of the fifth bundle. When that someone read my number on the last page of the fifth bundle, my number would become, to them, a blank recipient field. I was the one who had read the four bundles, the one writing the fifth, and the recipient of someone who would open the sixth. Reading and writing and being read turned one full circle within one person, and the end of that circle was the beginning of the next.
I came back to my seat and sat before the body field. My hand was at the edge of the desk, the sender field was empty, and in the recipient field was my number. Neither lifting nor placing the hand, I looked at my number in the recipient field. Knowing that looking too is a writing, for the first time in days I did not look in order to save. The eye that did not look in order to save was different from the eyes of the three days. Over three days I had looked to find the furthest line; today, with only my own line to find, I looked without searching.
As the hands that wrote the four bundles read, at the end, their own numbers in the recipient field, I read my own number in the recipient field. From the one who reads to the one who moves, from the one who moves to the one who answers, from the one who answers to the one who empties the circle, from the one who empties the circle to the one left at the center — at the end of the changes I had become the one who is written. When the one who is written has no circle left to move, the only thing left to the one who is written is to watch the writing.
We were watching a little further. And now, we were writing one of our own. The one being written was me.
