December 3. Eight in the morning. The line of my code, which had sat in the receiver cell yesterday, had its date cell ruled today. Until yesterday the date cell had been empty.
What was ruled was 'December' and, after it, two digits. The two digits were still blank. I knew that shape. In Do-gyeong's journal there was the story of the film on which the predecessor had photographed the living ledger. Among the growing digits of the balance, one frame that had never been shot stood lodged. What rose in that blank frame was the dismissal date, and it was made of December and two digits after it, and the two digits were, in the end, never read. Then I had read it as another's film. Today the same shape had come into my sending column, in my own hand. December, and two digits not yet ruled. Today was December the third.
I looked at those two digits a long while. All winter the dispatches in the sending column had carried dates, and when the date came the dispatch realized. A dispatch dated tomorrow realized tomorrow, one dated today realized within that day. Until yesterday the line of my code alone had no date. A line whose receiver is me and whose sender is me had, as yet, no when. Today that when had been ruled, and yet the when's two digits were blank. The month was read; the day was not. I would vanish in December, and which day of December I could not yet know.
The predecessor and Do-gyeong saw their dates on film. As the living foreign debt grew, in a frame not shot their dismissal date rose — so it was written that, lifted from the developer, the date sat of itself on the print, and however they looked, those two digits alone would not be read, as if bleached by light. They were in the seat that watches what rises. Today mine was no film. In my sending column, in my own hand, ruled with the stroke I ruled a dispatch with each day, the date stood. The slant of the stroke, the gap left blank for the two digits, were my hand's habit exactly, the same by which I stamp my code on the attendance sheet each morning. They saw their date; I wrote mine. From the seat of looking into another's film to the seat of ruling one's own date by hand — the whole distance I had crossed over the winter was held inside those two digits.
I tried to read the two digits but could not. Bring the eye close and the strokes blurred; draw it back and even the place where the two digits stood went dim. As with the film's blank frame, those two digits were not a missing date but a date not yet read. Today was the third, so twenty-eight days remained. While the two digits stayed blank it could be any of those twenty-eight, and with each day passing the number of days it could be would fall by one. The fourth would make twenty-seven, the fifth twenty-six. The two blanks were a masked date, and a date that, masked, narrowed a little each day. The December outside the window was no different from any December, the archive's heating shut off at three each afternoon, and I sat inside that undifferent month, counting by ones which of its days it was, come to the seat of waiting.
I considered whether I could edit the line of my code. As yesterday I edited one stroke of the head archivist's dispatch and put his seat off, perhaps I could put the two digits of my date further back. But I remembered how, when I put the head archivist off, the price went to the two assistants, and from the two assistants back to me. Where would the price go if I put my own date off? In a line where sender is me and receiver is me, the only seat to put it off onto was the empty receiver cell below. Push my date and it would move to that empty seat below, and the empty seat below belonged to my next recorder. To put off my own vanishing was to call the next person early. The law that saving is putting-off and putting-off is the next hand stood, this time, in the seat where my own hand puts me off. I could save myself, only the next person to pay for the saving had not yet come to this archive. That the seat to put it off onto was empty meant charging the price of the putting-off, early, to someone not yet arrived.
I looked into the empty receiver cell below again. That empty seat, which had risen faceless yesterday, had today too its date cell ruled. What was ruled was December and two digits after it, and the two digits were blank. It was the same shape as the two digits of my line. The day I vanished and the day my next recorder was posted were the same two digits. When my two blanks narrowed to some day, the two blanks below would narrow to the same day. In the seat of writing my own date, I was writing the next person's posting along with it.
I took my hand from the two digits. Lest something grow or be ruled while my fingertip touched the ledger, I lowered my right hand to my knee. Ten days ago I had held my right hand in my left and put the ledger in a drawer, trying to win one day. That morning the sending column had been empty, so I had taken it that if I lifted my hand nothing would be ruled. Today too I hoped the same. Until yesterday, when I lifted my hand the sending column stopped. But today it did not stop. While my hand lay on my knee, one of the two blank digits darkened a stroke of itself. It was not my hand that ruled it. All winter I had watched the hand rule dispatches, and written that I could not know what wrote through the hand, but today even the hand had left. With no hand the date was being ruled. That one half-ruled digit narrowed the twenty-eight days it could have been to a single figure. The remaining digit was still blank, and that one blank digit I could do nothing about with the hand on my knee — I only read it.