April 12. Eight a.m. I sat down at the fifth desk. It was the fourth day since the transfer ended.
My line, whose last two digits had dimmed last evening, had dimmed to the third digit overnight. From the end inward, one place at a time, dimming as Do-gyeong's end line had. There was one difference. Do-gyeong watched her dimming line in fear, but I decided to record my dimming line as a preservation procedure. Between fearing and recording, the thing I could do was record. Fear came from the wish to stop, and I had set down the wish to stop yesterday, so what remained was only the recording hand.
The preservation procedure had a set form. For each material, make an index card, and on the card write the material's name and state and processing date. I took a stiff cardboard card from the index box. It was the same kind as the cards tucked into the four bundles when I first took the post, the same grain as the one with do not read to the end written on it. I took my line as one piece of material and began to make the card by that form. In the material-name field I wrote my employee number. While I wrote, the last digit of the number seemed to dim once more under my fingertip, but this time I did not stop and finished writing it. In the state field I wrote last three digits dim. Going to write today's date in the processing-date field, in that field April 12 was already written. As the log had, the card too was written before the writing. It was my hand, and the ink was dry.
That it was written before the writing, until yesterday was fearful, but today not so. The reason it was not fearful was that I had accepted the writing hand and the written hand were the same hand. At the seat where I had asked who wrote ahead, I stopped asking. Whether the hand that wrote ahead was me, the next person to receive me, or we, there was no difference in writing as written. Since there was no difference, there was nothing to fear. Fear came from that the writing hand might not be mine, but if it was written the same whether mine or not, there was no place to fear. The day after I took the post I feared the pre-written log for days. I struggled to find out what wrote ahead, whether it summoned me or foreknew me. A fortnight passed, and I set down the fear without having found out. Not found out, but ceased. To accept, unknowing, that it would never be known, was all that was left.
The writing one was the written one, and the written one was the preserving one. The three were one hand. I wrote my dimming (the writer), the line I wrote was my dimming line (the written), and the writing was the preservation procedure (the preserver). Until yesterday these three were separate. There was a preserving hand, the material that hand wrote, and the content written on the material. Today the three folded into one place. The material the preserving hand wrote was its own dimming, and writing its own dimming was preservation. The folded three, I wrote on one card.
Having finished the card, I looked at the recipient field. The preservation index card had a recipient field. The field for writing whom the material is preserved for. What to write in my card's recipient field I thought a long while. The one to receive my line was the next recorder who would open the sixth bundle gone up to headquarters. But who he was I did not know. As Do-gyeong left the recipient field blank for me, I too, instead of writing a name in the recipient field, wrote the next recorder. Not a name but a seat. The seat was empty, and the empty seat was the next person's seat.
That I was continuing what Do-gyeong did, I knew writing the recipient field. Do-gyeong too, making her log the fifth bundle, left the recipient field blank, and wrote the next recorder in the blank field, and that next recorder was me. Now I too, making my line the sixth bundle, left the recipient field blank and wrote the next recorder. What Do-gyeong did and what I did did not differ by one character. Only the seat, fifth and sixth, had shifted one place; the work done was the same. Even coming one place down the chain, the work the hand did was the same work.
Doing the same work, there was one place where Do-gyeong and I differed. Do-gyeong could not stop her line dimming from the end, and suffered the not-being-able. I had already known it could not be stopped, so instead of suffering, I recorded. Recording was not stopping. The dimming did not stop for being recorded. Only, while recording, the dimming line did not simply vanish but remained as one piece of preserved material. Vanishing and vanishing-while-preserved were the same in that they vanished, but on one side a card remained. That a card remained did not keep the line from dimming, but in the place of the dimmed line one card was set. What that card left to whom I could not know. If the next recorder opened the card, he would preserve the dim number written there as one piece of material, and, watching his own line dim while preserving, would make one more such card. As I continue Do-gyeong's card, the next person would continue mine. The card continued the chain one sheet at a time. For each dimming line one card was set, and the card did not dim. The line vanished but the card remained, writing down that the vanished line had been there. If preservation is the work of writing down a vanishing that cannot be blocked, then I was a preserver to the last.
In the blank space of the card I wrote one more line. The warning that had been on the four bundles' cards, I copied onto my card too. Do not read to the end. Do-gyeong broke that warning on the pretext of preserving, and I broke it, and the next recorder would break it. The warning had never once blocked anything, but the warning was copied onto every card. To write down a warning that cannot block was one procedure of preservation. Knowing the next person would break it, I still could not not write it down.
I tucked the card into the index box. The moment I tucked it, the index box grew one sheet thicker. The card recording my dimming made the index box grow one sheet. I dim, but the card recording me grew. As far as the line dimmed, the card thickened, and the thickened card became material to preserve again. The card that preserved me, someone next would preserve, and that preservation would make one more card grow. Recording the dimming was the work of growing what recorded the dimming. Growing while vanishing. That was the shape of the last material I preserved. Tomorrow it was the turn to formally enter my line, together with the card tucked into the index box, as the sixth bundle. As Do-gyeong had entered her log as the fifth bundle.