April 16. Eight in the morning. I sat down at the fifth desk. It was the eighth day since the transfer ended.
My line on the terminal had a single digit left, all but erased. Eight days ago it had run full to the end; eight days of dimming had left the one digit. On the screen that digit was fainter than the other four lines, and it blinked the slowest of them. If it dimmed today, my line would be gone from the terminal. Before it went, I decided to set down the law for the next hand — to leave, in the place the next records-keeper would open the day after taking the post, a single line telling what it is that happens in this archive. As Do-gyeong had. It had to be written while the hand still had a line with one digit left to write it with. Once the line dimmed all the way, the writing hand would dim with it.
On the last page of Do-gyeong's log, the severed sentence of the four bundles stood as a single line. Measure it and it deepens, let it rise and it fills, read it and it spreads, answer it and it sends. The surveyor's shaft, the lighthouse keeper's tide, the librarian's syllable, the telegraph operator's number. Each of the four had written a fragment of it into his own log, broken off, and in Do-gyeong's hand the four fragments ran together into one sentence. Do-gyeong was closed before she could add her own fragment to its end. She wrote as far as answer it and it sends, and her line broke before she wrote what came after. I wrote what Do-gyeong could not: preserve it and it spreads, empty it and it fills. To the closings of five hands I joined a sixth, and the one sentence grew longer. Measure-deep, rise-fill, read-spread, answer-send, preserve-spread, empty-fill — six fragments made one line, and that one line held the ends of six people. The next hand would add a seventh fragment here. The sentence did not close; it lengthened by a fragment with each hand.
When the sentence was down, I added a line beneath it. Setting this down does not spare the next hand the groping. Do-gyeong wrote this law and left it, and still I groped for eight days from the day after I took the post. Even having read the written law, I needed eight days to know it was a thing happening to me. The written sentence pointed to the road; it did not walk the road for me. The next hand too would read it, and read it and grope for eight days. That the setting-down does not do away with the groping — this I set down.
Why I wrote all the same, I set down in one more line beneath that. Even if it cannot do away with the groping, once it is written the next hand knows their own groping is not the first. Do-gyeong groped and I groped, so the next hand's groping is a groping joined onto that line. To grope alone and to grope in a joined line are the same in the groping, but on one side there is a record of the groping that went before. That record cannot stop the groping, but it tells the groping hand it is not alone. Setting it down was not the work of ending the next hand's groping but of giving the groping a companion. The day after I took the post, when I read Do-gyeong's last line, that line did not stop my groping — but it let me know Do-gyeong had groped at the same seat. That knowing was what carried me through the eight days. Not because I knew the law, but because a hand had groped ahead of me, I held on. The next hand too would read my line and hold on, not by the law but by the company. So I wrote the law, and wrote as well that the law might be of no use. The line that spoke of its uselessness might, to the next hand, be the most useful line of all. That one is not alone was not inside the law; it lay in the place where the groping had been written down together.
The law and the two lines below it written, I slipped the card into my slot in the index box. What I had written on its back would be the last line the next hand read, the day after taking the post — as I had read the last line Do-gyeong left me, the day after I took mine. Do-gyeong's last line was the one sentence of the law; my last lines were that sentence with a fragment added, and the two lines saying that the setting-down might be of no use. Two lines longer than Do-gyeong's. Those two lines were what a fortnight more of living had let me write. What Do-gyeong, closed in a single active instant, could not write, I — dimmed passively across a fortnight — wrote. The chain thinned of hands the lower it went, yet with each hand it lost, a line to write was gained. What one could do grew less; the lines to set down grew more. The next hand would be unable to do one more thing than I could, and would add a line of their own to my two and leave three. Hands thinning and the record growing was the way the chain carried on. As much as was lost was written down.
With the writing done, there was nothing more to do at the desk. The five bundles, the sixth bundle, the index, the law — all of it was written. I had done everything the work of one who preserves asks. My line on the terminal was dimming at its last digit, and when that digit dimmed all the way I would be gone from the terminal. Only the vanishing was left. The vanishing was not something I did but something that happened to me, so I only 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 a single seat. The watching me and the watched me looked, for the last time, into the same one place — and that place was dimming.
Then, on one side of the terminal, a column that had never once blinked, blinked. Not the body but the sending column. The terminal had done nothing but receive, and the sending column had stood empty and dark since I took the post — a receiver's terminal has nothing to send. In Do-gyeong's log, the sending column was the seat of one who answers. It was the sending column where Do-gyeong pressed a single character of Kang Min-seok's name, and that one press made Do-gyeong a sender. In all my time since taking the post I had never used the sending column. There had been no call to, and I feared that to use it would make me a sender as it had Do-gyeong. That sending column, kept empty by that fear, blinked for the first time today, at the very place where my line in the body was dimming away. The column that had stayed dark blinked once, the moment my line in the body thinned to its last digit. From the place where receiving was finished, a stir to send arose. It was the first stir of one who has received everything crossing toward one who sends. I had come to the seat where a receiving hand turns into a sending hand. The place where receiving was finished was also the first place of sending. As Do-gyeong became a sender by answering, whether I too, at the end of receiving all, was about to become a sender — the single blink of the sending column was asking it of the dimming me.