April 12. Eight in the morning. I sat down at the fifth desk. It was the fourth day since the transfer ended.
My line, whose last two digits had faded by yesterday evening, had faded to the third overnight. One place at a time from the end, working inward, just as Do-gyeong's last line had. There was one difference. Do-gyeong had watched her fading line in fear; I had resolved to record mine as a preservation procedure. Between fearing and recording, recording was the thing I could do. Fear had come from the wish to stop, and I had set that wish down yesterday, so what remained was only the recording hand.
The preservation procedure had its set form: for each item, make an index card, and on it write the item's name, its condition, and the date of handling. 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 arrived — the same stock as the one that bore, on its face, do not read to the end. I regarded my line as a single item and began to fill out the card by that form. In the name field I wrote my employee number. As I wrote, the last digit of the number seemed to fade once more beneath my fingertip, but this time I did not stop and wrote it out to the end. In the condition field I wrote last three digits faint. When I went to enter today's date in the handling-date field, April 12 already stood there. As with the log, so with the card: written before the writing. It was my own hand, and the ink was dry.
That it stood written before the writing had been a terror until yesterday, and today was not. It was no longer a terror because I had accepted that the writing hand and the written hand were one hand. At the place where I had asked who wrote it in advance, I stopped asking. Whether the hand that wrote ahead was mine, or the next person's who would receive me, or ours, it made no difference to the writing-as-written. And where there was no difference, there was no terror. The terror had come from the thought that the writing hand might not be mine; but if it was written the same whether mine or not, there was nowhere for terror to stand. The day after I arrived I had feared the pre-written log for days. I had struggled to find out what did the writing-ahead — whether it summoned me or foreknew me. A fortnight passed, and I set the fear down without ever finding out. Not that I found out: I simply stopped. To accept, unknowing, that it would never be known — that was all that remained.
The one who writes was the one written, and the one written was the one who preserves. The three were one hand. I wrote my own fading (the writer); the line I wrote was that same fading line (the written); and the writing was itself the preservation procedure (the preserver). Until yesterday the three had been apart: there was a preserving hand, the material that hand wrote, and the content written onto the material. Today the three folded into one place. The material the preserving hand wrote was its own fading, and to write its own fading was to preserve. The three, folded together, I set down on a single card.
The card done, I looked at the receiver cell. A preservation index card had a receiver cell — the cell where you write for whom the item is preserved. What to write in my card's receiver cell I turned over a long while. The one to receive my line would be the next records-keeper, the one who would open the sixth bundle now gone up to headquarters. But who they were I did not know. As Do-gyeong had left the receiver cell blank and left it to me, I too, instead of writing a name in the receiver cell, wrote the next records-keeper. Not a name but a seat. The seat stood empty, and the empty seat was the next person's.
That I was carrying on what Do-gyeong had done, I understood as I filled the receiver cell. Do-gyeong too, making her log the fifth bundle, had left the receiver cell blank and written the next records-keeper in the empty cell — and that next records-keeper had been me. Now I too, making my line the sixth bundle, was leaving the receiver cell blank and writing the next records-keeper. What Do-gyeong had done and what I was doing did not differ by a single character. Only the seat had shifted one place, from fifth to sixth; the work was the same. Even come one cell down the chain, the work the hand did was the same work.
For all we did the same work, there was one place where Do-gyeong and I differed. Do-gyeong could not stop her line fading at the end, and the not-being-able tormented her. I already knew it could not be stopped, so instead of anguish I recorded. Recording was not stopping. The fading did not stop for being written down. Only, while it was written, the fading line did not simply vanish; it stayed on as a single preserved item. To vanish and to vanish-while-preserved were the same in that both vanished, but on one side a card remained. A card remaining did not keep the line from fading, yet in the place of the faded line one card was laid. What that card left, and to whom, I could not know. When the next records-keeper opened it, they would preserve the faded number written there as a single item, and, watching their own line fade as they preserved, would make one more such card. As I carried on Do-gyeong's card, the next person would carry on mine. The card joined the chain one sheet at a time. For every fading line a card was laid, and the card did not fade. The line vanished, but the card stayed, recording that the vanished line had once been there. If preservation is the writing-down of a vanishing that cannot be blocked, then I was, to the very last, one who preserves.
In the blank of the card I wrote one line more. The warning that had stood on the four bundles' cards, I copied onto mine as well. Do not read to the end. Do-gyeong had broken that warning under the pretext of preserving, and I had broken it, and the next records-keeper would break it too. The warning had never once stopped anything, yet it was copied onto every card. To write down a warning that cannot stop what it warns of was itself a procedure of preservation. Knowing the next person would break it, I still could not leave it unwritten.
I slid the card into the index box. The moment I did, the index box grew one sheet thicker. The card that recorded my fading had made the index box grow by a sheet. I was fading, and the card that recorded me had grown. As far as the line faded, the card thickened, and the thickened card became, in its turn, material to preserve. The card that had preserved me, someone next would preserve, and that preserving would make one more card grow. To write down the fading was to make what recorded the fading grow. To grow while vanishing — that was the shape of the last material I would preserve. Tomorrow was the turn to enter my line formally, together with the card now in the index box, into the sixth bundle. As Do-gyeong had entered her log as the fifth bundle.