Chapter 33Open Items

She walked back from the wall to this side of the desk. She stood on this side of the desk, and when she turned round, the person was standing behind it.

The person behind the desk spoke.

“Open item oh-oh-oh-one, not closed.”

When she stepped out of the lift, this person had been standing there. She had looked back once from the wall, and the person had still been there, the chair pushed in under the desk, its back to the wall, not a single scratch on the desktop. Now the chair was still where it had been, and the person stood in front of it. The light came down from above, and the person’s shadow fell under the desk, very short, joined to the shadow of the chair.

Mitsuki had not heard a door. She had not heard footsteps either. There was no wind in the hall. The air was still, carrying the wet smell of flagstones that had been wiped, and a little of the dry smell of cement and rust mixed together. The sole of her own shoe had sounded once on the flagstones, and the sound came back from the three corridors, came back very slowly, and all together. Every step landed behind the count.

She did not look back at the lift. The lift was at the other end of the hall. Its doors had closed, the number above them had stopped at seven, and no sound came from that side.

The floor of the hall was flagstone, one slab after another, the joints straight. The mouths of the three corridors were the same width, and their edges were straight too. The doors along both sides of the corridors were all shut, and on every door was pasted a sheet, its heading the same as the ones on the wall. The corridors were all very long. The lights at their far ends ran in a line, the lights were white, and they were evenly spaced. She had counted the lights in each corridor. Eleven. Seen from the wall, the three mouths were three straight lines in her eyes, meeting on this side of the desk.

The middle wall was whole, with no door and no window, and its surface was grey. The sheets on the wall were the only thing on it. The surface would be rough to the touch. She did not touch it.

The shoes were black, with no dust on the soles. She stood very straight, her feet one flagstone’s width apart. A card was pinned to her chest, printed with one word: Signer. There was no name on the card. Mitsuki did not ask. A D-ring hung at the centre of her chest, matt steel, giving back no light. A strip of steel-grey webbing ran down from the ring, round from under her right armpit to her back, and ended in a hook, clipped into the ring on the table leg, below the edge of the desk. Her two hands rested on the edge of the desktop, fingers together, middle fingers against the edge. Her fingers were long. Her shoulders were level, both at the same height. Her hair was tied back in a single tail, tied very tight, not one strand loose.

Mitsuki did not look at her face. The face was under the light at the far end of the desk, far away, and the light stopped at the chin. Mitsuki looked at the desktop. The desktop was dark, its four corners square, with nothing on it at all except the card sleeve in the middle. The mouth of the sleeve faced up, the pen tucked inside, its cap facing out, the thin cord on the pen slack. No one picked it up.

The lights overhead were laid out in a grid. Every square was lit, and none of the tubes flickered. Mitsuki counted one row. Twelve squares, all lit. The very faint mark under her left eye caught the light and held a little shadow. The small cherry-pink knot on her wrist pressed against the bone. Her legs had gone numb, and the numbness had worn off. She could stand. Both legs were straight, and her shoulders neither lifted nor sank. Her breathing went once, and again, let out very slowly, so slowly that she could hear each pause.

Her right hand hung at her side, holding the straight blade. The blade had no sheath, its point downward, the cherry-pink cord wound round the hilt pressed into the web of her hand. The bottle of water was no longer in her hand. When it left her palm, the cold had gone first, a little way ahead of it. Five lines on the bottle. She had counted them.

The voice was flat. Every word was set at the same height, not drawn out, not lowered. The sentence landed on the desktop and went no further, and the wall gave back not a single word. When the Signer finished, she did not take a breath. Her chest did not rise or fall. The webbing did not move either. Mitsuki’s breathing came back twice from the flagstones, once, and again, and she could hear it. The voice did not come back.

Mitsuki opened her mouth for a moment, and closed it again. It was not yet time for that sentence. It was under the root of her tongue, held down, and did not go out. Her left thumb pressed into the web of her right hand, pressed hard, and let go.

Mitsuki looked at the sheet on the far left of the wall. That line of words was still there, and so was the blank after it. The edge of the paper had curled, and the paper around the pinhole had been pressed white. After the heading there was a colon, and of the words after the colon, the Signer had read out the number and the final verdict. Of the words in between, she had not read out a single one. Mitsuki had looked at that line many times, and every time she looked, the words had not changed.

The Signer spoke again, her voice at the same height.

“The Signer is not trapped. The Signer has not finished signing.”

When she had said it, her right thumb moved. The Signer’s wrist did not turn. It only sank an inch, and stopped. The thumb reached in under the edge of the desk, pressed on the hook in the ring on the table leg, and clipped it in again. The hook was steel, the spring tight, and the thumb had to press down some way before the gate opened. As the thumb pressed down there was a very short pause, so short that only Mitsuki’s count could measure it. The gate closed again. Click. The click passed flat across the flagstones, and did not come back from the wall. The thumb let go, and the hook settled in the ring and did not move.

The ring was welded to the table leg, right up against the underside of the desktop. A band on the inside of the ring had been worn bright, the bright band facing up, paler than the steel around it. That band had not been worn bright in one go. It had taken many times, in the same place, with the same webbing, passed round, then brought back. She had crouched to look at it earlier. Now she stood a step away and did not crouch again. She went no further forward. The ring was only a step from her. She could reach it if she put out her hand. She did not put out her hand. From where she stood, she could see the card sleeve, and she could see the wall. Both of them, she could see.

Under the desk, the chair was pushed well in. Its back faced the wall, and there was no dust on the seat. One of the chair’s legs had a faint scratch where a foot of the chair had knocked against something. Mitsuki could not tell whether someone often sat in it, or no one had sat in it for a long time.

At the door to the fifth floor, the line from someone she could not see had landed at this same height. Mitsuki thought: it was the same person. This person stood behind the desk and had not moved a single step, and the flagstone beneath her feet was clean, unscuffed.

The hall was quiet. Far off a fan was turning, its sound low, always there. It did not get into the air of this floor. It only kept to the underside of the flagstones, sounding a little at a time. It had never stopped. Only by standing there did Mitsuki pick it out. The Signer’s voice was in front, the fan’s low sound behind, very far away, coming up from under another floor.

On the landing at the door to the fifth floor, the tubes had hummed. The lights on this floor made no sound.

※

The Signer read on.

“Open item oh-oh-oh-two, passed. Open item oh-oh-oh-three, passed. Open item oh-oh-oh-four, passed. Open item oh-oh-oh-five, passed. Open item oh-oh-oh-six, passed. Open item oh-oh-oh-seven, passed. Open item oh-oh-oh-eight, passed. Open item oh-oh-oh-nine, passed. Open item oh-oh-one-oh, passed. Open item oh-oh-one-one, passed. Open item oh-oh-one-two, passed.”

The number went down, the verdict followed it, with only a comma between. Where each verdict went down was the same distance from where the number before it had gone down. The whole run was read very evenly, so evenly that Mitsuki counted along in her head, and could count neither faster nor slower. From the first sentence to the last, the height of the voice did not change. When she read “passed” and when she read “open item”, it was the same height. From start to finish, the Signer did not once say the word I.

The time between each item was the same. Mitsuki counted three times, and every time it was the same. What she counted was her own breathing, once, twice, three times. The Signer’s chest, not once.

Her count moved only inside her lips, with no sound. Her count landed half a beat behind the Signer’s numbers. When the Signer reached four, she had only reached three, and three was not finished. When the Signer reached seven, she had only reached six, and six was not finished either. Her feet were the same. Every step landed behind the count, half a beat slower than it. At the door to the fifth floor, that step had been half a beat late too, and she had not made it up. This time she did not make it up either. The half beat stayed empty the whole time, empty between her count and the Signer’s voice, cleanly empty, with nothing getting in. Whether the half beat was her count running slow or that voice running fast, she could not tell.

By the twelfth, Mitsuki’s throat was a little dry. She swallowed. The swallow made no sound.

She turned her head and looked to the right. The sheets on the wall ran along one after another, the headings all the same, only numbers, no names. The numbers went on one after another. She searched from left to right, and by the time she found a number, the Signer’s voice was already on the next one. The second sheet, the third, the fourth, all the way to the twelfth. In the bottom right corner of each was a square black stamp. The stamps were dry, a little white at the edges. That black, she had seen at the sign-in booth. The ink pad the clerk stamped with was the same colour. The pins were steel, their heads all facing out, one beside the next, evenly spaced. There was a layer of dust on the heads, pressed into the steel, that would not wipe off.

Her thumb and forefinger reached out and measured the space between two sheets. She could not measure it. Between two sheets there was only wall.

When the sheet on the far left had been pinned up, she did not know. Back then the pin head had been bright, and the edge of the paper flat. Later it had curled, curled into a tube, and no one had pressed it flat.

She took one look and turned back. The Signer was not looking at the wall. Her eyes faced the mouths of the corridors, and beyond the mouths, the lights at the ends of the corridors ran on square by square, with nothing there. Mitsuki’s eyes moved from the desktop to the wall, and back again. On the wall were twenty-three sheets. On the desktop was one pen. The time outside could not be worked out on this floor. All she counted were the numbers.

That sentence was said once more. The same words, in the same order, with no pause in between. The thumb reached under the edge of the desk again, pressed the gate open, let it close again, click, and let go. This time Mitsuki saw the hand press down too. The fingers came together again, the middle finger against the edge. The thumb pressed exactly as deep as the first time, not a fraction more, not a fraction less.

She thought of the ring on her own chest. It was a D-ring too, the webbing from the sign-in booth too. Her end was a chest harness sewn shut, tightened under the chest, its buckle needing two presses before it bit, and once it bit it did not move. The Signer’s end was a hook, and had to be clipped. When it was clipped the sound was small, smaller than her footsteps. She had looked down once. At the centre of her chest was a small greyish patch that the light did not brighten. The webbing pressed against her breastbone, neither loose nor tight. Her chest rose once, and the webbing moved a little with it. That time she did not adjust it.

For every sheet, someone had probably waited down below. A person standing at the top of the stairs, waiting for the Signer to come up, or waiting for the Signer to finish signing off this floor. Under the last line of the register, the clerk had drawn a line across, with a ruler pressed down. The line was straight, and once it was drawn it did not move. The squares on the steps were the same. That floor was not signed, so the steps did not count, and the people who walked on them did not count. At the door to the fifth floor, the treads of the steps were new, and the fourteen squares were all empty. No one had recorded that step for the people who had walked it. She had sat on the steps of the service yard for over an hour, and her legs had gone numb, the numbness running from her knees to her toes. That numbness, she remembered. People on a site, before they signed, probably all asked one question: once it was signed, could they go. On this floor no one asked.

The twenty-second of October. That day, a weld on the fifth floor had not been closed. That day, someone downstairs had probably been waiting as well, waiting for someone to come down and sign a sheet, perhaps still with an injured hand. Of these twenty-three sheets on the wall, not one said who, and not one said how long they had waited.

The yellow line at the door to the fifth floor was painted, and she had not stepped over it. The line here was webbing, pulled taut to the table leg, and someone had clipped it there themselves. Where that weld on the fifth floor was, she had not seen. She had only stood at the door and looked at the line once. There was still a mark across her left palm, pressed in by that webbing, and it had not faded yet. The V-06 visitor card was still in her pocket, its back white. She did not take it out.

The blank at the end of that sheet was left for the person who signed. It was empty. To sign was to set down one stroke on the paper. Whether that stroke should go down lightly or heavily, she could not work out. Mitsuki’s eyes came to rest on the card sleeve in the middle of the desktop. The pen was right there. She could reach it. She did not take it. She thought: once that stroke went down, that line would not be empty. If that line was not empty, there would be no more waiting. Her fingers curled at her side, and straightened again. The cap faced out. That was for someone to take. Her right hand did not move.

The Signer signed only things that were closed. Every number she had read was followed by “passed”, except for the very first, which was followed by “not closed”. Mitsuki said nothing. Her left thumb went back to her side, held together with her fingers, like the Signer’s.

The sheets the Signer had read out had left no change on the wall. Twenty-three sheets, all in their places. The row on the wall looked as even as it had a moment ago.

※

The Signer read on.

“Open item oh-oh-one-three, passed. Open item oh-oh-one-four, passed. Open item oh-oh-one-five, passed. Open item oh-oh-one-six, passed. Open item oh-oh-one-seven, passed. Open item oh-oh-one-eight, passed. Open item oh-oh-one-nine, passed. Open item oh-oh-two-oh, passed. Open item oh-oh-two-one, passed. Open item oh-oh-two-two, passed. Open item oh-oh-two-three, passed.”

At twenty-three, the count was done. Twenty-three sheets on the wall, the Signer had read twenty-three numbers, and each was followed by a single verdict. Twenty-two sheets passed. From start to finish the Signer’s voice had neither quickened nor slowed. The Signer had read out twenty-three sheets, and had not paused before any of them.

Mitsuki looked over the sheets on the wall again from left to right. Twenty-three. Her eyes stopped on every one. The sheet on the far left, she stopped on longest. The words on that line were printed, darker than the paper, printed very solidly.

Article One was the safety line. Mitsuki had heard this article at the door to the fifth floor, the voice flat, the same as here. She had known then that there were other articles after it. The ones in the middle, and Article Seven, she had not heard yet. She thought the ones in the middle were probably like this too, one by one, each with a number, and each number followed by a “no”. She counted the sheets on the wall, then counted the pin heads on the wall. Twenty-three, twenty-three. The Signer’s voice was ahead of her, half a beat before her count, every time.

She knew what the next sentence was. That sentence had only one wording, and she had heard it twice already.

※

When that sentence was said for the third time, Mitsuki had already moved one step forward, up beside one corner of the desk. The thumb reached down, pressed the gate open, let it close again, click. This time the click was quieter than the two before. It landed on the flagstones and did not come back.

When the thumb let go, the hook came to rest in the ring. The webbing on the Signer’s chest ran down from the ring, the hook at its end clipped to the table leg, pulled very straight, taut all the way down under the desk. One stretch of the webbing was a little darker. It had been soaked, and the colour had stayed after it dried. The edges of the webbing were stitched with fine thread, stitch after stitch, the stitches equally close, sewn all the way from the ring end to the hook end. The Signer’s right hand went back onto the desktop, fingers together, middle finger against the edge. It did not move at all. The length of webbing let out reached exactly to the table leg. An inch more, and it would be slack. An inch less, and she could not reach. Who had set this length, Mitsuki did not know.

What she wanted to say was not about the safety line. That sentence was further on. It had not come yet.

“Your line is clipped to the table leg.”

Mitsuki said it very slowly, the end of the sentence sinking, not rising. The sentence struck the wall and came back from all three corridors at once, came back longer than she had said it, every word trailing a little tail. Her voice was half a beat slow. In the gap of that half beat she drew in a breath, and let it out.

The Signer did not stop. Her eyes faced the mouths of the corridors and did not turn. Mitsuki’s words were still travelling back through the three corridors, and she did not answer them with a single word.

The Signer read on. Her voice followed straight after Mitsuki’s words, without the slightest gap, landing at the same height.

“Article Seven: the spire not accepted, the whole tower is not to be handed over.”

Article Seven. Mitsuki put it back on the wall. The first sheet was about the weld on the fifth floor. That was one floor’s business. The spire had not been accepted, so the whole tower was not handed over. The Signer’s sentence did not come back from the corridors. It landed on the desktop and stayed there. The sheet on the far left was still not closed, and that was how it stayed. The blank at the end of that sheet was left for the person who signed. Empty. Nothing written.

Nought point four millimetres. That weld, she had never seen. She had only seen these few words on the sheet, and the one blank after them.

Mitsuki’s beat fell half a beat slow again. She did not make it up. Her left hand closed at her side, closed until it reached the mark in her palm, and let go. When it let go, the mark was still there. The sole of her shoe shifted. There was no sound on the flagstones. It was her toes that shifted. The hook of the webbing was to her right, a hand’s width from her hand. She looked at the far end of the desk, at the thumb resting beside the hook, not at the face. She said:

“The crack is still there. Sign it.”

When she had said it, the end of the sentence sank. The words landed on the desktop, and the echo came back from the wall, once, and again, and stopped at last by her feet. This sentence’s echo was longer than the last.

The Signer stopped. Her chest did not rise or fall. Her two hands rested on the desktop, fingers together. The row of numbers stopped at this end of the desk, stopped after twenty-three, and went no further. The sheets on the wall were still there, and not one had been taken down. There was no sound in the hall. Mitsuki’s breathing came back once from the flagstones, and then was gone. The fan’s low sound was still there, coming from under the flagstones, not stopping. The lights were lit square by square, and not one square was dark. The shadow of the desk fell on the flagstones, very short, and square. The webbing on the Signer’s chest ran to the table leg, pulled very straight, the hook clipped in the ring, not slack. The Signer’s thumb rested under the edge of the desk and did not press down again. The reading did not go on.