Referent.

He wants to find out how to extend the insult onto himself, keep the embarrassment going. Self-flagellation, he has discovered, is an enterprise he enjoys. It's raining hard outside, but he goes to the stationary shop, picks out some paper that, under normal circumstances, he would never buy. Practices a handwriting with an awkward opposing hand. But, despite his meagre tricks, he composes a letter that clarifies nothing; he tries to sound firm and carefree, but the sadness is at home in his hands. He reads it over, re-acknowledging the fact that the letter is a pathetic show of faux-intelligentsia iciness and disregard. He hates it, feels an awkward blush rise up in his stomach, but he drops it into the box.

Nervous, he sits up all night, and comes to the understanding that his identity has been emptied and delegated unwillingly into a mere referent, truly, in the linguistic sense. Everything in his body is pointing outward, that way, in the direction of the departing letter. He has transformed himself into a symbol representing the letter's recipient. He is no pining lover; rather, he is a pedagogical tool, with a co-opted value.