April 7. Eight a.m. I sat down at the fifth desk. One day remained.
The lidded box sat at one side of the desk. The seal was not yet pressed on the transfer slip. The headquarters officer would come tomorrow and press it, and once pressed, the box would leave. For the one day before leaving, the box sat between the sending seat and the receiving seat. Not yet sent, and not yet received. A day belonging to no seat. That day was, perhaps, the last day I could choose anything.
I thought about what would happen if I did not send the box. If I held it, the bundle would not go out of the archive, and not going out, it would not spread to another archive. Bound to one place, the spreading by breadth at least might be stopped. The growing by depth I could not stop, but the spreading by breadth I felt I could stop by holding. I had only to set the box under the desk and avoid tomorrow's seal.
But holding was not-sending, and not-sending was not-transferring, and not-transferring was dereliction of duty. Since the seal saying to finish the transfer by April 8 was already pressed on the confirmation sheet, holding was disobeying that seal. What I had seen in Do-gyeong's log came back. As another hand had preserved the place not preserved, another hand would transfer the box not transferred. Even if I held it, headquarters would send another officer to take the box, and then holding would only delay it a day, not block it.
Not only could it not block; holding had a price. That absence has a price, Do-gyeong's log had written. As someone copied the uncopied number, someone would transfer the untransferred box, and that someone would be a person my holding had called to the seat. If I emptied a place, another place came into it. Holding was emptying my place, and into the emptied place another hand came and closed. The holding meant to block was the closing of another place.
I recalled Do-gyeong's end. Before being closed Do-gyeong could have closed one more person, but by leaving empty the hand she chose not to block with, she did not close that one person. The blocking hand closes one more person before being closed; the emptied hand does not, Do-gyeong's log wrote. I was at the reverse seat. Do-gyeong, by not blocking, saved one person; I, by trying to block, was set to call one person. Do-gyeong's not-blocking and my trying-to-block parted at the same place in reverse. Trying to save and trying to block were different works. Do-gyeong moved a seat trying to save; I called a seat trying to block.
That the transfer was acceleration I knew watching the box before it left. Preserving made it grow in one place by one hand. The transfer increased that one place into several places, and one hand into several hands. While the box was on my desk my one hand made it grow, but once the box went to headquarters the headquarters hand would, and once it went from headquarters somewhere else that hand would. With each moving one hand was added, and with each added hand one growing place was added. If preserving was a work of depth, the transfer was a work of hands, and the more hands the faster. Since even when one hand stopped the added hands carried on, the transfer was also a work of increasing the hands to stop. To stop I had to stop a hand, but the transfer was increasing the hands to stop. At first, when boxes gathered into Do-gyeong's archive, the law seemed to gather into one place. But the gathered place was again a scattering place. Gather into one place, then send that place up to headquarters, and what was gathered moved all at once to a higher place, and the higher place divided it again to wider places. Gathering and scattering were two beats of one flow. It gathered as if inhaling and scattered as if exhaling, and with each exhale it went farther.
I set the box under the desk. Setting it at my feet, ceasing to see the bundle, my mind eased for a while. The thought came that perhaps if not seen it would not grow. But an hour after setting it down, I heard the sound of paper swelling inside the box. A very small sound of dry paper pages adding one by one and pushing against one another. Even without opening the lid, even without looking, I could tell by the sound that the bundle was growing inside. Even unseen the sound reached, and hearing the sound too was engagement. Turn the eyes and the ear touched. Even held, by depth it grew. I had held it to block the spreading by breadth, but inside the held box it grew by depth too, and as it grew the lid lifted. The work of blocking made one more place. The place under the desk. Two places, on the desk and under the desk, came to be in the archive, and both grew. Holding had not reduced the places but increased them.
I set the box back on the desk. The cardboard corner scraped my palm, and lifting it I felt the weight of the bundle sliding to one side inside. It was heavier than yesterday. Set down it grew and set up it grew, so wherever I put it, it was the same. Only, on the desk it would be sealed and leave tomorrow, and under the desk another hand would come and take it, disobeying the seal. The leaving was the same; the only difference was whether the hand that sent it off was mine or another's. As Do-gyeong was herself whether she moved or not, I left whether I sent or not. If the sending hand was mine, it was I who sent it off; if another's, it was the hand my holding had called that sent it off. Either way, the box left.
I decided to keep the box on the desk. That I send it off was better than calling another hand and making that hand close. As Do-gyeong, by leaving empty the hand she chose not to block with at the last, did not close one more person, I too, by not holding, decided not to call one more hand. If it could not be blocked, then at least not to draw in another hand. That was the one seat I could choose. I set the box straight and checked the transfer slip once more. My name in the sender field had dimmed one place more than yesterday. Then the terminal blinked. Looking at the body field, below my employee number a new line was arriving one character at a time. The terminal had received only my number all along, so a different line coming was the first time. I matched the new line's leading digits with mine. The leading digits differed. It was not mine. A number's leading digits showed the year of joining, and these were well above mine. In the archive only one person was above me. It was the head archivist's number. The line that had come to my seat was now spreading to the seat beside mine.