December 6. Eight in the morning. The line that had stood in the one cell yesterday evening was, this morning, in the same place. I looked at it again, and knew it for my own hand.
The eight digits' strokes had come from my hand. The slant of the stroke, the habit of pressing down each place, were the hand's that stamps my code on the attendance sheet each morning. But I had no memory of writing that line. When it had risen in the one cell yesterday evening, I could read it neither as one I had sent nor as one that had come to me. Since the seat of sending and the seat of receiving had become one yesterday, I could not even ask whether the line had gone out or come in. The question that rose before it this morning was not when, nor where. It was: who sent this. And I found that the question had no place to stand.
I looked a long while at that hand. I took out the attendance sheet and set it beside the code I had stamped this morning. The place the stroke began, the habit of the second character thickening under the press, the slight trailing of the last character's close — all the same. It was no one's imitation. This was a line my own hand had written. But I did not remember the time of writing it. When it had risen yesterday evening, I had been sitting before it, yet I had not seen my hand rule it. It was not that the line lay where my hand had passed; the line was there first, and only the hand was mine.
I knew this discrepancy. There was such a story in the predecessor's log. On the film with which the predecessor had photographed the living ledger, in a frame never shot, his own face had sat in advance. He wrote that he looked into that frame again and again, reckoning whether he had ever stood in that pose, and in the end could not remember. In Do-gyeong's ledger, in a line never transcribed, a transcribed self had stood. Do-gyeong too knew the hand of that line for their own, and having known, had nowhere further to draw back. The three hands differed in medium. One was film, one a ledger, and today's was the sending column. But in all three, the result stood before the hand. The predecessor's face was captured in advance, Do-gyeong read a self set down in advance, and I received a dispatch already sent before I sent it. Even as the medium moved from film to ledger, from ledger to sending column, that one thing did not change. The seat made the hand so. As the measuring seat had made the one measured, the sending seat made the one sent.
Then who sent this. The hand being mine, did I send it. But writing and sending were not the same act, and sending and intending were not the same act either. It was true my hand had ruled it, but I had never meant to rule it, nor did I remember ruling it. If the law had borrowed my hand to write, then the sender was the law and only the hand was mine. I could not call the line mine, for I had no memory of writing it. But neither could I disown it, for the hand was mine. In the seat where I could call it neither mine nor another's, I only looked at it.
There the question collapsed one layer further. To ask who sent it, there had to be a separate seat of sending. Something goes from this side to that side, and on this side a sender must sit, for the question to hold. But yesterday the line dividing this side from that side had vanished. Since the seat of sending and the seat of receiving had folded into one cell, there was no this-side for a sender to sit on. Who sent it was not a question with no answer but a question with no seat. To fail to find the answer and to have no place for the question to stand were different. While I failed to find the answer there was still a question left, and I could keep at least the seat of one who waits for an answer to come someday. When there was no place for the question, that seat too was gone. I had not lost the answer; I sat in the seat where the question was lost. That what had kept me all winter was not the answer but the question, I knew only once the question was gone.
The seal covered one more axis. As the winter deepened I had been losing directions one by one. First I lost the before-and-after: whether the thing happened and I sent it, or I sent it and the thing happened. Yesterday I lost the left-and-right: whether it was sent or received. Today I lost the seat itself: whether the sender was me or the law. No before-and-after, no left-and-right, and now no one. What remained was the one thing, that the line is in one cell, and before that one thing the words I could ask grew fewer by the day.
I looked again at that subjectless line, and saw that four of the eight digits were the attendance code I stamp each morning. The line was mine. My code was in it, so it was mine, but there was no one who had sent it. To ask who had written me into that line was, all the same, to find no seat for the question. If the hand that set down my vanishing was my hand yet outside my memory, then my vanishing had no sender. It was sent by no one and yet already sent, simply there in one cell. Beneath a question with no place to stand, my four digits lay.
Until evening I strove to raise that question, but it would not rise. And when I gave up raising it and lifted my head, there was one more line in the one cell. It too was my hand, and it too I had no memory of writing. Only one thing differed from yesterday's line. Yesterday's line had risen only by evening, but today's had risen before evening came. While I could not name the sender, the lines I could not name were growing at intervals shorter than a day. A sending no one sends, having no one to slow it, was quickening. When there had been a sender, the line had been slowed at least by the moment that hand hesitated; with no sender, there was no hand to hesitate.