November 20. Eight in the morning. I sat at the fifth desk. The hand that had stopped in April was still there, now that winter had come.
The sending column had blinked since April. Through spring turning to summer and summer to autumn, the terminal's sending column lit and went dark at the same interval. Before it the hand stayed, unable to press, unable to lift away. My line in the body had been wholly erased in April, so I was no longer preserved material. And yet I had not left the archive. The line was erased; the eye remained. Between the erased line and the remaining eye, for half a year I watched nothing but the sending column's blinking. Nothing to press, so I did not press; unable to leave, so I did not lift away.
In that time the archive took a second transfer. All summer came the ledgers of companies that had fallen in spring, and as winter set in, the boxes of merchant banks that had closed in autumn poured through. The country was changing seats once more. Great companies traded their lines of business with one another, and at each traded seat people fell away, and the last ledgers of those who fell away came to this basement by the box. The receiving column filled with new lines every night. I was not a receiver, so those lines were not mine. Lines that were not mine filled the receiving column, and I only watched from the side.
For half a year I did nothing but watch. In summer came the ledgers of the companies fallen in spring; in autumn, the boxes of merchant banks backed up since summer. The head archivist took the boxes and numbered them, and the two assistants carried the boxes and set them on the shelves. The three hands still moved within the archive, and their employee numbers were dimming from the last digit up, low in the receiving column. I watched them dim. As my line had in spring, so their lines too would blur a digit at a time as winter passed. Watching was the only thing I could do in the archive. An eye that could neither receive nor send watched the receiving column fill and dim, half a year long. We were watching a little further, I had written in April. As that little grew into half a year, we were watching still.
And yet the fuller the receiving column grew, the more often the sending column blinked. If what is received piles up, does something to send come of it — so I wondered, half a year long. But what was received was not mine, and what was not mine I could not send. With nothing to send, the sending column shone only the more urgently. Each time one more line filled the receiving column, the sending column blinked once more; so it was less a demand to send what had come in than a signal that receiving was, on its own, drawing to its end. Once this winter passed, there would be nothing left to receive either. As my line had been wholly erased in spring, so when winter was spent the lines of the receiving column would fill, and once full would begin to empty again.
On the morning of November 20, the hand that had not pressed all the way into winter touched the sending column for the first time. There was no content to press. Do-gyeong had pressed to save one person, had pressed because she had words meant to save. I had no one to save and no words to send. Only that the receiving column was nearly full, and winter had come, and the hand that had stood still for half a year had nowhere else to go. If April was the hand going to the sending column from the seat where the preserving hand had finished its work, this winter was the hand pressing the sending column at last, from the seat where even receiving was ending on its own. With nothing to send, the seat of sending stood open, and the open seat had waited half a year. Every reason to keep a waiting seat waiting longer, I had lost on the way into winter.
The fingertip pressed the sending column. I wrote nothing. I neither laid a hand on the keys nor chose a letter. The fingertip that had stood still for half a year merely touched the lit column — and in the pressed place a line rose. It was not a line I had written. As the predecessor's film had taken her face in advance, as the lighthouse keeper's tide table had set down the next day in advance, the sending column had waited for my hand to touch it and then raised its own line of itself. The hand was the trigger; the line was already loaded. Perhaps I was not one who sent, but one who lent a hand so that what was to be sent might come out.
I read the risen line. It was not an employee number. It was not a name. It was a date. Eight digits hung in the middle of the sending column, the first six pointing to this year and this month. I read the last two. It was not today. Not the twentieth, but the twenty-first. The date risen in the sending column was tomorrow.
The telegraph operator had been one who received the dispatch dated tomorrow. The roster of a day not yet come reached his receiver first, and being a receiver he only received it. Now that tomorrow's date hung not in the receiving column but in the sending column. What had been received had become what is sent. The tomorrow the telegraph operator had received, my hand was now about to send. If a dispatch arriving with no receiver had been the operator's reception, then this tomorrow's date, risen with no sender, was my dispatch. Reception and sending ran the opposite way, yet in having neither receiver nor sender they were the same.
The dispatch that arrived with no receiver, the telegraph operator received as his own employee number. He read his own name first in the roster of a day not yet come, and after he read it the day came. This date, risen with no sender — with what would I fill it and send it? Whether, as the operator had received his own name, I too would send my own name, or would send another's, I could not know: beneath the risen date was still empty. Only that, in crossing from the receiving seat to the sending seat, the property of coming in advance held unchanged. The operator's reception too had come from tomorrow, and my sending too went to tomorrow. Only the direction against time was reversed; that it was bound to a day not today was no different, receive or send.
Beneath tomorrow's date there was still no line. Only the date; the roster empty. What would fill that empty place, and whether the one to fill it would be my hand or the sending column, and whether what was filled would happen tomorrow just so, or whether what was to happen tomorrow had risen here first — I still could not tell apart. Whether it happens because it is sent, or whether what is to happen is what is sent. What I could not tell apart in April I could not tell apart in winter either. Only one thing was certain. The sending column's light no longer blinked. The column that had blinked for half a year, once the hand touched it and a line rose, held steady and did not go out. It was a light whose waiting was over. The sending hand had come, and so the column had nothing more to wait for.