November the twentieth. 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 sender field had blinked since April. Through spring turning to summer and summer to autumn, the terminal's sender field lit and darkened at the same interval. The hand stayed before it, unable to press, unable to lift away. My line in the body field had been wholly erased in April, so I was no longer preserved material. Yet I had not left the archive either. The line was erased; the eye remained. Between the erased line and the remaining eye, I watched nothing but the sender field's blinking for half a year. I could not press, having nothing to send; I could not lift away, being unable to leave.
In that time the archive received a second transfer. The ledgers of companies that had fallen in spring came all summer, and the boxes of merchant banks that had closed in autumn poured in as winter set on. The country was changing seats once more. Great companies traded their businesses 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 field filled with new lines every night. I was not a receiver, so those lines were not mine. I only watched, from the side, lines that were not mine fill the receiving field.
For half a year I only watched. In summer came the ledgers of the companies fallen in spring; in autumn, the boxes of merchant banks backed up from summer. The head archivist received the boxes and numbered them; 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 field. I watched them dim. As my line had in spring, their lines too would blur one 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 field fill and dim for half a year. We were watching a little longer, I had written in April. As that little became half a year, we were watching still.
And yet the more the receiving field filled, the more often the sender field blinked. If what is received piles up, does something to send come to be — so I thought for half a year. But what was received was not mine, and I could not send what was not mine. Though there was nothing to send, the sender field shone the more urgently. Each time one line filled the receiving field, the sender field blinked once more; so it was not a demand to send what had been received, but nearer a signal that receiving was, on its own, coming to its end. Once this winter passed, there would be nothing left to receive. As my line had been wholly erased in spring, when winter was spent the lines of the receiving field too would be filled, and once filled would begin to empty again.
On the morning of the twentieth of November, the hand that had not pressed all the way to winter touched the sender field 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 field was nearly full, and winter had come, and the hand that had stood still for half a year had nowhere else to go. If in April the hand had gone to the sender field from the seat where the preserving hand had finished its work, then this winter the hand had at last pressed the sender field from the seat where even receiving was ending on its own. Though there was nothing to send, the seat of sending stood open, and the open seat had waited half a year. Every reason to make a waiting seat wait longer, I had lost on the way to winter.
The fingertip pressed the sender field. I wrote nothing. I neither laid my hand on the keys nor chose a letter. The fingertip that had stood still for half a year merely touched the shining field — and in the pressed place a line rose. It was not a line I had written. As the predecessor's film had shot his face beforehand, as the lighthouse keeper's tide table had written the next day beforehand, the sender field had waited for my hand to touch it and then raised its own line on its own. 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 line that had risen. It was not an employee number. It was not a name. It was a date. Eight digits stood in the middle of the sender field, and the first six pointed 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 sender field was tomorrow.
The telegraph operator had been one who received the tomorrow-dated dispatch. The roster of a day not yet come reached his receiver first, and being a receiver he only received it. Now that tomorrow-date stood not in the receiving field but in the sender field. What had been received had become what is sent. The tomorrow the telegraph operator received, my hand was now about to send. If a dispatch arriving with no recipient had been the operator's reception, then this tomorrow-date risen with no sender was my dispatch. Reception and sending were reversed, yet in that there was neither recipient nor sender they were the same.
The dispatch that arrived with no recipient, 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 received his own name, I too would send my own name, or would send another's, I could not know, the place beneath the risen date being still empty. Only that, in crossing from the receiving seat to the sending seat, the property of arriving beforehand held the same. The operator's reception too came 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 the tomorrow-date there was as yet no line. Only the date, the roster empty. What would fill that empty place, and whether the one filling it would be my hand or the sender field, 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 part. Whether it happens because it is sent, or whether what is to happen is sent. What I could not part in April I could not part in winter either. Only one thing was certain. The sender field's light no longer blinked. The field that had blinked for half a year, once the hand touched it and a line rose, held steady without going out. It was a light whose waiting was over. The sending hand had come, and so the field had nothing more to wait for.