April 11. Eight in the morning. I sat down at the fifth desk. It was the third day since the transfer ended.
In the terminal's body, at the very top, the last digit of my number — the one that had stood empty — had filled overnight. It was the digit that, when I set the wish down yesterday, had been the only one still missing. Through the night, with no one in the archive and no one to press it, that single character had come in on its own. Since receiving was never my hand's work, this last character too arrived without my hand. Now my number was a whole line, filled to the end. The day after I arrived, once I had read my own last digit into Do-gyeong's dimmed one, my number had stood ever after with one last digit empty. Over not quite a fortnight, that empty digit had slowly filled, and today it filled the rest and became a line with nothing empty in it. On the screen that one line alone stopped blinking and held steady, quietly lit.
Nothing empty meant nothing left to receive. All this while my line had held one last digit open, a line that could still take something in. As long as the receiving place stood empty, I was one who received. Once it filled, the line no longer received. A line done receiving. A line that had taken everything in did not grow any further. One line finished growing stood at the top of the five.
What it meant to be finished growing, I understood by looking at the other four. The head archivist's line and the two assistants' still had their last digits open and blinking. They were still receiving, still growing. Mine alone was full. The hand that had touched first filled first. The hand that had read out its own number the day after arriving had received the longest and finished receiving first. The head archivist and the two assistants had touched later than I, so they would fill later than I, and the hands that touched after them would follow in their turn. Filling in the order they touched, sent in the order they filled. Lined up, I stood at the front. A line that had taken everything in, with nothing more to receive, was now due to be sent. The front line was the first to leave.
That it was due to be sent, I understood by thinking of the fifth bundle. Just as Do-gyeong's log had become the fifth bundle and gone up to headquarters, my log too would become the sixth bundle and leave. The sixth bundle had already been boxed and had left three days ago, and my number was on its last line. My filled number was inside the departed box. I sat at the desk, but my line was already boxed and on its way up. There was a self seated here and a self boxed away, and the boxed self was the true one. The preserving self stayed at the desk; the preserved self left in the box. When the departed box reached some desk at headquarters, the next person seated there would open my last line. When they read their own last digit into the dimmed one of my number, they would do to me what I had done to Do-gyeong. Like Do-gyeong, I was becoming a line to be read by the next person. From one who reads to a line that is read had taken a fortnight.
I watched my filled line for a long while. As I watched, it dimmed by one place. Full, and dimming even so. A line finished growing had begun, this time, to fade. As Do-gyeong's last line had faded from its final two digits, mine too was fading from the end. A line that had taken everything in, instead of taking more, began to give out. From the place where receiving ended, the giving-out began, and the giving-out was a fading. The line that had grown while receiving faded once it was done. Growing and fading were the front and back of one line.
To watch the fading was the last preserving I would do. I had preserved material all along, and now the material to preserve was my own line. I watched my line fade the way I would preserve any other document. I noted the date its last two digits had faded and measured how far. I laid the ruler against them to gauge the weight of the ink and wrote the difference between yesterday and today into its cell. True to the law that measuring deepens, when I measured the fading, the fading deepened by one place. To preserve my own fading was to feed it. Preservation makes things grow, so to preserve my fading made the fading grow, and for the fading to grow meant to fade further. But this time I did not try to block it. Yesterday I had learned it could not be blocked, so I simply recorded the fading line. Not trying to block, the hand that wrote the fading was far lighter. The light hand wrote the fading more clearly, and the more clearly I wrote, the more the line faded. The writing hand was the hand of the fading line.
The one who preserves and the material preserved met in a single hand. Until yesterday I was the one who preserved and the line was the material; today the preserving hand wrote the preserved line, and the line being written was that very hand. The me who wrote and the me who was written stood in one place. Between the two there was no gap. As I wrote, the written me faded, and the writing me wrote the fading me again. Stop writing and I would not know the fading; but not knowing did not stop it. Faded knowing or faded unknowing, the fading was the same. Only, while I wrote, the fact that one person was watching the fading me was the last thing left to the fading me. And that watching person was also me, so I set myself in the seat that watches me to the end. As the surveyor had become the depth he measured, as the librarian had become the syllables he read, I became the material I had preserved. The other three had handled something outside themselves and become it; I had handled the work of preserving and become the thing preserved. The last material a preserver can handle was the preserver's own self.
By evening the last two digits of my line on the terminal had faded past reading. The digit that had filled in only that morning was, by evening, the first to be erased. The last place to fill was the first to empty. The full line was being erased from the end. When I opened the log to note the erasing places, that line of the log already held my number with its last two digits dim. Written before I wrote it, written dim before it dimmed. I wrote in the wake of what I would write; I faded in the wake of what I would fade. I was no longer one who preserves. I was a line of preserved material, and that line already stood, in some hand, written dim. Whether that hand was mine, or the next person's who would receive me, or the hand we had called we, I could not, like the faded last digits, read to the end. But one thing was clear. The preserving hand had, at last, come inside the very line that hand had preserved.