April 16. Eight a.m. I sat down at the fifth desk. It was the eighth day since the transfer ended.
My line on the terminal had only one digit left, almost wholly erased. Eight days ago it was a line filled to the end, and over eight days of dimming only one digit remained. On the screen that one digit was fainter than the other four lines, and its blinking the slowest. If that one digit dimmed today, my line would vanish from the terminal. Before it vanished, I decided to write down the law for the next hand. In the place the next recorder would open the day after taking the post, to write down in one line what it is that happens in this archive. As Do-gyeong had. While the hand could still write the line with one digit left, I had to write. Once the line dimmed all the way, the writing hand would dim with it.
On the last page of Do-gyeong's log, the four bundles' severed sentence was written as one line. Measure and it deepens, draw and it fills, read and it spreads, answer and it is sent. The surveyor's shaft, the lighthouse keeper's tide, the librarian's syllable, the telegraph operator's number. The four wrote their logs one fragment at a time, broken off, and those four fragments joined into one sentence in Do-gyeong's hand. Do-gyeong was closed without adding her own fragment to the end of the sentence. She wrote as far as answer and it is sent, and before writing what came next Do-gyeong's line broke off. I wrote what Do-gyeong could not. Preserve and it spreads, empty and it fills. To the five hands' closings I joined the sixth hand's closing, lengthening the one sentence. Measure-deep, draw-fill, read-spread, answer-send, preserve-spread, empty-fill. Six fragments became one line, and that one line held all six people's ends. The next hand would add a seventh fragment here. The sentence did not close but lengthened by one fragment per hand.
Having written the sentence, below it I wrote one more line. Writing this down does not keep the next hand from fumbling. Do-gyeong wrote this law and left it, but from the day after I took the post I fumbled for eight days. Even reading the written law, it took eight days to know the law was a thing happening to me. The written sentence pointed at the path but did not walk it for me. The next hand too would read this sentence, and read it and fumble eight days. That writing-down does not remove the fumbling, I wrote down.
Why I wrote even so, I wrote in one more line below. Even if it does not remove the fumbling, written down, the next hand knows his fumbling is not the first. Do-gyeong fumbled and I fumbled, so the next hand's fumbling is a fumbling joined to that line. Fumbling alone and fumbling joined are the same in fumbling, but on one side there is the record of an earlier fumbling. That record cannot stop the fumbling, but it tells the fumbling hand it is not alone. Writing down was not the work of removing the next hand's fumbling but of giving the fumbling a companion. The day after I took the post, when I read Do-gyeong's last line, that line did not stop my fumbling, but let me know Do-gyeong had fumbled at the same seat. That knowing let me bear the eight days. Not because I knew the law, but because there was a hand that had fumbled ahead, I bore it. The next hand too would read my line, and bear it not by the law but by the company. So I wrote the law, and wrote even that the law might be of no use. The line writing of no-use might be, to the next hand, the most useful line. The words not alone were not inside the law but at the seat where the fumbling was written down together.
Having written the law and the two lines below it, I tucked it into my card in the index box. That writing on the back of the card would be the last line the next hand read the day after taking the post. As I read the last line Do-gyeong left me, the day after I took the post. Do-gyeong's last line was the one law sentence, and my last line was that sentence with one fragment added, and the two lines that writing-down might be of no use. Two lines longer than Do-gyeong's. Those two lines were what I could write, having lived a fortnight more. What Do-gyeong, closed in a single active moment, could not write, I, dimmed passively over a fortnight, wrote. The chain reduced hands the lower it went, but for each reduced hand a line to write was added. What could be done lessened, and the lines to write down increased. The next hand would be unable to do one more thing than I, but would add his one line to my two and leave three. Hands lessening and records increasing was how the chain carried on. As much as was lost, was written.
Having finished writing, there was nothing more to do at the desk. The five bundles, the sixth bundle, the index, the law, all were written. I had done all the work of one who preserves. My line on the terminal was dimming at its last digit, and when that one digit dimmed all the way I would vanish from the terminal. Only the vanishing was left. Vanishing was not a thing I did but a thing that happened to me, so I just sat and watched it. Watching was the last work of one who preserves, and being-seen the last work of preserved material. The two lasts overlapped in one seat. The seeing me and the seen me looked, at the last, into the same one place, and that place was dimming.
Then on one side of the terminal, a field that had never once blinked, blinked. Not the body field but the sender field. The terminal had only received all along, and the sender field had been dark and empty since I took the post. Because a receiver's terminal had nothing to send. In Do-gyeong's log, the sender field was the seat of one who answers. Where Do-gyeong pressed one character of Kang Min-seok's name was the sender field, and that one press made Do-gyeong a sender. Since I took the post I had never used the sender field. There was nothing to use it for, and I feared that using it would make me a sender like Do-gyeong. That sender field, left blank by that fear, blinked for the first time at the place where my body line dimmed all the way today. From the place done receiving, a stir to send arose. It was the first stir of one done receiving crossing over to one who sends. At the seat where a receiving hand would become a sending hand, I had come. The place done receiving was also the first place of sending. As Do-gyeong became a sender by answering, whether I too, at the end of receiving all, would become a sender, the one blink of the sender field was asking the dimming me.