April 1. Eight a.m. I sat down at the fifth desk.
The basement archive smelled of winter even in April. The draft coming down from the vent dragged a dry mildew smell as it passed between the papers, and one fluorescent tube blinked at an even interval at the end of the desk. The terminal's body field blinked at a different beat from the tube. While the two blinkings overlapped out of step, I rubbed my hands and picked a pen whose ink had not frozen. The desk the five bundles had left was empty in the middle, with only the one sixth bundle set at one end.
On the first page of the sixth bundle, Do-gyeong's last line ran on. The fifth bundle had gone up to headquarters, but Do-gyeong's end line broke off at the last page of the fifth bundle and crossed over into the first line of the sixth bundle, so from the broken place this side was left in my hands. To know how Do-gyeong had closed, I needed not the bundle that had gone but this crossed-over line and the memory of having read it to the end the day after I took the post. I decided to read Do-gyeong's depth. It was the nearest seat, and the same kind of seat as the one I would close into.
Do-gyeong closed by answering. Reading her log from beginning to end, the closing came from a single press. Pressing one character into the sender field, copying over one line. A thing done to save. That day Do-gyeong had written that she pressed the first character of a colleague's name into the sender field. That the finger that pressed had trembled a long while was written too. But save one line and another grew by that much. Answering was the work of changing a seat. It only moved the seat to be closed; the total of closing did not lessen. When the saved colleague's seat went empty, the unknown name beside it took on that depth, and Do-gyeong never did see that unknown name. She moved it and moved it, and at the end of running out of seats to move to, she reached her own line. What the saving hand left at the last as a seat to save was her own seat. Answer = displacement, and its end was her own seat.
I did not answer. I had never pressed the sender field. I only preserved. I measured bundles and wrote dates and copied descriptions. As another line grew each time Do-gyeong moved one, the bundle grew each time I preserved one. If Do-gyeong's displacement moved the total of closing, my preservation neither moved it nor anything but increased it. Answering closed one seat trying to save another, but preserving, without even the wish to save, simply made the seat it touched grow. Do-gyeong's door was a hand that meant to save; my door was a hand that meant to keep. A different entrance of the same law.
That the two entrances opened onto the same place, I knew laying Do-gyeong's depth over my own. I set Do-gyeong's last line beside my line in the terminal's body field and matched the digits. Do-gyeong's line was dim in the last two places; my line had one last place empty and blinking. Dimness and emptiness were different shapes, but both began at the end and were coming inward. Do-gyeong, the more she answered, the closer the seat to be closed came to her; I, the more I preserved, the closer the seat that would grow came to me. Do-gyeong's last seat was a line she had left while moving; my last seat would be a bundle I had grown while preserving. Do-gyeong was herself whether she moved or not, and I would be myself whether I preserved or not. We came in by different entrances, but the seat we met at inside was one seat. Do-gyeong's two dim places and my one empty place were walking inward from the end at the same pace.
Do-gyeong was now a depth that is read. As the surveyor measured depth and became that depth, Do-gyeong read the ledger and became a line that is read, and that read line I was now reading. To read Do-gyeong's depth was to measure again the depth Do-gyeong had measured. And measuring was the work of making depth. The more exactly I read Do-gyeong's depth, the more that depth deepened one place at a time. That Do-gyeong's last line had dimmed one place more yesterday was because I had pointed at that line yesterday. Read and it deepens, deepen and one reads it more.
If I stop reading, will the deepening stop too. I took my hand from Do-gyeong's line and did not point for a long while. For the two blinks of the fluorescent tube I turned my eyes from the line too. While I did not point, and while I did not look, the line did not dim further. As the surveyor's shaft did not grow if not measured, Do-gyeong's depth too seemed not to deepen if not read. Left with the hand lifted, it seemed I could stop Do-gyeong's depth there. But even while my hand was lifted, the blinking of the terminal's body field did not stop. Do-gyeong's line deepened because I read it, but my line was arriving even when I did not read it. Do-gyeong's depth was in my hands, but my depth was not in mine.
There was the difference of the two entrances. Do-gyeong's seat was one that would stop there if Do-gyeong stopped answering. By leaving empty at the last the hand she chose not to block with, she did not close one more person, at least. Answering was a finger pressing the sender field, so it could be stopped by not pressing. Answering had a place to stop. But my preserving had no place to stop. Preserving was the duty. The head archivist had pointed at the box on my first day and said to preserve it, headquarters sent down an official letter pressing for preservation complete, and the preservation log wrote the next processing date ahead before I even wrote it. Stop preserving and it became non-preservation, non-preservation was dereliction of duty, and even so the unpreserved material grew untouched. Do-gyeong's depth stopped when I lifted my hand, but my depth did not stop when I lifted mine. I had tried to read Do-gyeong to know my own seat, and having read, I found my seat was one entrance deeper than Do-gyeong's. Do-gyeong had at least a hand to stop with, but I did not even have a hand to stop with.
I pointed at Do-gyeong's last line again. I tried not to, but trying not to was reading the line in my head. The paper my fingertip touched was cold, and the ink where it touched seemed to thin one place more at the warmth of the fingertip. It dimmed one place more. This time I did not ask whether the dimmed place was Do-gyeong's or mine. The broken place that had divided Do-gyeong's line from mine blurred one field at a time each time I pointed, so that where Do-gyeong ended and where I began showed no mark. I had thought that reading Do-gyeong's depth to the end would let me know my own depth, but since Do-gyeong's depth was my depth, the more I read it the more it deepened rather than became known. Then what becomes of preserving if I stop it — that alone was a seat I had not yet read. To read that seat, I decided, for the first time, to try stopping the preserving hand.