April 10. Eight a.m. I sat down at the fifth desk. It was the second day since the transfer ended.
In the terminal's body field four lines were up. My number, the head archivist's number, the two assistants' numbers. The four lines stood side by side on the bluish screen, filling from the end one character at a time. The blinking of the four lines was slightly out of step, so the screen's edge wavered like ripples. That morning, I counted one by one the roads I had tried to block by. The archive was quiet, and all I heard while counting was the fluorescent tube and, from somewhere, the very small sound of paper swelling. If I counted, perhaps there was some road out. Having counted, there was not one road out.
The first road was to stop preserving. I had tried stopping the hand, but the log wrote preservation continued, and the unpreserved material grew too. Stopping was not a door but the confirming of no door. The second road was to hold the transfer. I had tried setting the box under the desk, but inside it grew by depth, and headquarters would send another hand, and holding closed another seat. The third road was to tell. I had tried to tell the head archivist, but the words split into syllables, and even the thought of telling filled his line. Telling was closing.
The fourth road was not to choose. Do-gyeong, choosing, had sin; I, not choosing, had none. But not choosing did not leave the seat empty; the order chose. Not choosing was leaving it to the order, and the order did not stop. The fifth road was to save. Even if, like Do-gyeong, I emptied my surroundings to save someone, I had no surroundings to empty, and even if I had and saved, that seat would only be deferred to the next hand. Saving was deferring.
Having counted all five roads, the five roads met at one place. Stop and it grew, hold and it grew, tell and it closed, not-choose and the order chose, save and it was deferred. The five doors all opened onto the same room. The closing room. Each road was a different shape, but the room they reached was one. The road of stopping preservation and the road of finishing preservation, walked in opposite directions, met in the same room. The road of telling and the road of not telling, the road of choosing and not choosing, set out facing each other but reached one room. That two opposite roads open onto one room was the deepest shape of this seat.
Do-gyeong wrote that whether she moved or not, it was herself. At Do-gyeong's seat, whatever she did, what closed was herself. At my seat, whatever I did, it spread. Do-gyeong closed in her one line, but I spread at every seat I touched. Whether-I-move-or-not-it-is-me had widened into whatever-I-do-it-spreads. If hers was a closing within one person, mine was a spreading beyond one person. The same dead end had moved from depth to breadth, and breadth had no visible end.
One last road remained. To leave. If preserving and transferring and telling and choosing and saving could not block it, could I not leave the archive, go out of the preserving seat. If I left the seat, at least my hand would touch no more. But leaving was emptying the seat, and into the emptied seat the next recorder would take the post. The day after taking the post, he would open the box with no recipient, read to the end, and read out his own number. As I had, the day after I took the post. Leaving was not ending the seat but handing the seat over. That absence too has a price, I met again at the end of the road of leaving. The predecessor too had left, but it did not end with his leaving; I took the post. As the seat the predecessor emptied became my seat, the seat I emptied would become the next person's seat. Leaving did not remove the seat but called the next name to the seat. What I had taken for the door out was the door letting the next person in.
Six roads were all blocked. Stop, hold, tell, not-choose, save, leave. The six doors all opened onto the closing room, and the room had no other door. From the start I had been looking for a door, but even the looking was sitting at the seat watching the terminal, so while I looked the four lines filled. Looking for a door was confirming there was no door, and while confirming, it spread. Every road of trying to stop gathered into the one seat of being unable to stop.
That she could not stop, Do-gyeong knew as one person's matter, but I knew as the matter of every seat touched. Do-gyeong's no-way-to-stop was being unable to block her own line from closing. My no-way-to-stop was being unable to block the touched seats from spreading. One person's closing and many seats' spreading were of different size. Do-gyeong could end it by giving herself up to close one line, but I could give myself up and the spreading would not end. Even if I closed, the terminal would receive the next line. My closing was not an end but one field.
Then what remained was not stopping but knowing there was no stopping. While I tried to block the unblockable, the act of blocking spread it again. If I stopped trying to block, at least the spreading caused by blocking would not be. Since I took the post I had looked for a place to block. A place to stop, to hold, to tell, to save. Looking for a place was the work of one who preserves, so the looking itself was preservation, and preservation was spreading. The day I looked hardest for a place to block was the day it spread most. But stopping the blocking was also one resolve, and resolving filled one more place. It reduced on neither side. Having known it would not reduce, I did not stop watching the terminal, but only set down the mind that tried to block.
When I set the mind down, above the four lines a fifth line rose. It was not another's number. At the very top, my own number. All this while my number had been blinking with one last digit empty, and that empty last digit began to fill. As the head archivist's last digit had been filled by the hand handing the box, my last digit was being filled by the hand that set down the mind to block. Stopping the blocking was the work of filling my own line. While I blocked, the last digit stayed empty and blinking; when I stopped blocking, it began to fill. Blocking had left my last digit empty, and not-blocking filled it. With one more character, my number would be complete as a whole line. All this while I had sat at the seat that saw four lines, but now the fifth line was my line, and the seeing seat was becoming a seen seat. The one who measured was, at last, by her own hand, being measured to the end.