Chapter 15. The Layering Called Age

I

At the end of July, the streets of Aoyama held a thick, standing heat.

In the Circle beneath Life Compass I was changing the cloth beside the measurement platform. The afternoon appointment was a referral from Kurosawa. The name, Yoshie Yukii. Fifty-five. Proprietor of a restaurant chain — that was all I had been told.

The footsteps coming down the stairs were slow. But each step carried a weight with no hesitation. The footsteps of someone who has been making her own decisions and walking her own walk for a long time.

“Excuse me.”

A low, settled voice. The woman who opened the door and came in narrowed her eyes for an instant at the dimness of the room.

She was an elegant person. A grey jacket with a good sheen. A thin silver brooch at the collar. Hair gathered at the shoulder, with white running through it here and there. But the white was not a thing to be hidden — it sat, bright, dignified. Her posture was straight. Only — so straight that there was a strain about the line of the jacket, as if she were consciously pulling the belly in.

“Yukii. Kurosawa-san has been very kind to me.”

“Seri Himuro. Thank you for coming today.”

Yoshie looked at me and smiled a little. The smile had refinement, and at the same time a faint shadow, as if she were holding something back.

”—— Honestly, Himuro-san. On the way here, I thought about turning back three times.”

“Did you.”

“Lately — the mirror has begun to frighten me, a little.”

Yoshie broke off there. And laid a palm lightly on her belly. The gesture had in it the touch one gives to something one is sorry for — a mixture of distaste and shame. Ah, I thought. This person too. The same gesture as Ōyama-san. Somewhere, treating the body as an enemy.

“Please, sit.” I pulled out a chair. “May I hear a little from you, first? Before measuring.”

II

Yoshie spoke evenly, but as if a dam had broken.

In her twenties she had opened a small eatery. It became three shops, then ten; now she held upward of twenty, centred on Kantō. Every day was a round of ordering, people, numbers, the floor. Thirty years lived that way.

“When I was young, I was sturdy. Standing from morning to night didn’t bother me. I ate and ate and never put on weight. It’s the last three or four years. It suddenly changed.”

“Changed.”

“The clothes I’d been wearing stopped fitting. The person in the mirror looked like someone else. Is that me? I’d think. I catch myself holding my photograph from five years next to the me of now.”

Yoshie dropped her eyes a shade.

“I want to go back. Truthfully. To my old size. I want to go back — perhaps, really, to the me of that time.”

I felt what lay beneath the words. Beneath size, youth and worth were knotted together. This person could not receive getting heavier as simply getting heavier. Somewhere, she felt ageing as a defeat.

I chose my words.

“Yoshie-san. I can’t promise you. To return your body to its old size. But —”

I set Contura beside the platform. The screen glowed faintly.

“Would you hear what the body of fifty years is saying now? Not to go back. To hear what kind of story the you of now has cut into your outline. I’d like to try reading it.”

Yoshie looked at the light of Contura. Then at me.

”…You do say strange things.”

“A little strange. Yes.”

“Kurosawa said you were a different sort of young person. May I expect something?”

“Please judge with your own eyes.”

Yoshie smiled a little. This time the shadow in the smile had thinned.

”…Very well. Read me. This — body that has grown old.”

“Not grown old.” I said. “Layered seasons.”

III

The Measuring went as it always does.

Yoshie stood on the platform. I told her she could leave her shirt on. In my heart I checked two Laws. Consent before measuring. Do not flaunt the measured.

The Contura screen brightened. Pale blue light fanned out as particles and drifted down around her body.

The light traced the surface of her slowly. As if cherishing it. As if tracing the line of a ridge. I sensed Yoshie catch her breath.

Shoulder. Chest. Waist. Hip. Thigh. Upper arm. Neck.

The rings of light circled her. Numbers surfaced.

Shoulder width 39 Chest 92 Waist 82 Hip 98 Thigh 56

The numbers joined into an outline line, and a luminous body shaped like Yoshie stood up in the air.

I looked at that outline honestly.

There was roundness.

The line from shoulder to chest drew a gentle arc. The nipping of the waist was shallow. The curve continuing to the hip spread full, warm. The thighs were solid, the legs powerful. The whole body was round, soft — shaped somewhat like a vessel. A shape that seemed to wrap something up.

And beneath that roundness, the presence of muscle. The dense thickness of the lower body, especially the thigh. Legs that had stood in kitchens and walked the floor for years. Legs that had carried her.

”…Ah.” Yoshie looked up at her own outline. “This is me.”

“Yes. Yoshie-san’s body, now.”

“It’s round.”

She said it evenly. There was no self-mockery in her voice. Only the quiet of confirming.

“Round, you say.”

“Yes. Long ago the lines were thinner. There were angles, you might say. Now — everywhere, round.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Yoshie was quiet a moment.

”…A bad thing, I suppose. The world does say so.”

“What the world says and what Yoshie-san feels are different. Here, especially.”

Yoshie looked at me and gave a small nod.

Coh’s voice resonated behind my temples; only I could hear.

“Seri. Read the type.”

“Endomorph.” I said it aloud, for Yoshie to hear. “A sturdy skeleton, a soft layer, a body of warm roundness. It’s called the storing type.”

“The storing type.”

“Yes. Body fat percentage is currently thirty-two per cent. For your age, by no means an unusual number. Muscle mass is above the average for your age group — particularly in the lower body and trunk.”

Yoshie’s brow moved a shade at those numbers.

“Thirty-two. The gynaecologist said the same. But at the time I felt nothing. Only — it’s high. Today — somehow, it sounds a little different.”

“Numbers take on meaning only when they come with context.” I said.

IV

“Seri.” Coh said inside my head. “Will you explain endomorphy properly. In your own words.”

I nodded.

“Yoshie-san. Endomorphy is by no means an inferior type. It’s one of three — endomorph, mesomorph, ectomorph — and each is a type of inborn story.”

“A type of — story.”

“Yes. The endomorph is a storing type. Warm, soft, a body that holds life. Mothers’ bodies are often this type. Not because they are weak, but because they can store warmth.”

Yoshie’s eyes went a little wide.

” — Holds life.”

“The roundness of the belly, the softness around the waist — it isn’t superfluous flesh. It stores energy, holds temperature, guards the organs, wraps a person in. It’s a shape of abundance. Not inferior — differently rich.”

Coh continued quietly.

“Seri is right. Among the three types there is no better or worse. Mesomorphs fight. Ectomorphs soar. And endomorphs enfold. To ask which is best is the wrong question. All of them are shapes of life.”

Yoshie reached a hand toward the round belly of her outline. Her fingers passed through the light. But the gesture was the same gesture Ōyama had laid on his back — one of cherishing.

”…Holds life, huh. Heh. For twenty years I’ve watched over nearly three thousand employees. The ones who come to me are usually carrying something — family trouble, debt, illness. To watch them eat at my place and get a little better — that was my joy. If enfolding is the word — perhaps I have been doing that all along.”

“Yes. Yoshie-san enfolds people, and so her body enfolds.”

Yoshie dropped her eyes a little. Then raised them. They were gentler than when she had come.

V

“I’ll read now,” Coh said.

The numbers in the air burst at once into particles. The particles swirled, gathered into a single thread, became letters.

Your body has layered fifty years of seasons. That layering is depth, not thickness.

The room stilled.

Yoshie read the words. For a long time. I did not rush her. The story is the person’s.

”…Depth, not —” Yoshie murmured. “Depth.”

“Yes.”

“You know, Himuro-san. For thirty years, it isn’t that I always thought of the body as an enemy. When I was young, I had pride in it. Sturdy, I thought. Able to work. But once I passed forty, the body suddenly stopped keeping up. Every time I saw myself in the mirror I felt, somewhere, that I was deteriorating. — Deteriorating. That is what I thought.”

“And now.”

Yoshie looked once more at the words in the air.

“Now — it sounds a little different. Depth. Layered seasons. That is not thickness, but depth. When you put it so — these thirty years were not wasted. Everything I stacked up remains in this body.”

Yoshie laid her hand on her belly once more. This time, as if confirming. As if accepting. Not with the old distaste.

“To have grown fat — was not to have grown inferior. Only, to have layered. One season, and another.”

“Yes. Ageing is sedimentation. The accumulation of the time you have lived. That, itself, is the depth of the story. Not a body for going back, but a body that has been stacked up. That is the body Yoshie-san has now.”

Yoshie closed her eyes. For a long time. When she opened them, there was a brightness at their corners.

”…Thank you. Himuro-san. — Thirty years’ worth. I feel, at last, I’ve been able to forgive myself.”

VI

Above Yoshie’s outline, light gathered.

A stronger brightness surfaced as letters. Coh spoke quietly.

Title — One Who Has Layered the Seasons

“One who has — layered the seasons.”

Yoshie repeated the Title. Then laughed, a soft breath. A calm, deep smile.

”…Does it suit me.”

“It suits you very well.”

Yoshie looked up at the outline once more. And this time, looked at its roundness with pride.

“Himuro-san. May I ask one thing.”

“Yes.”

“When I was young, I loved to dance. Jazz dance, a little. I haven’t danced once in thirty years, but —”

Yoshie smiled mischievously there. The smile held a girlish light that felt her age nowhere at all.

“Do you think, with a body of fifty years, I could still dance?”

I caught my breath.

The question was too — beautiful.

The person who had said I want to go back was no longer speaking of return. She was speaking, now, of dancing with the body to come. It was not a small step. For a long time the mirror had been her enemy; she had seen the outline in its place, and seen depth in it; and now she spoke of dancing with that deepened body.

“You can.” I said. “Yoshie-san. Your body has layered seasons. The more it has layered, the more depth it holds. A dancer with depth is not something a shallow dancer can imitate.”

Yoshie’s eyes went a little wet. And she nodded.

”…May I come again.”

“Anytime. Next time, we’ll draw a Goal Outline together. In your own words — where you want to go.”

“Yes. I find I want to know, myself, where I want to go. — It wasn’t only return to being young, was it.”

Yoshie stepped down from the platform. Her step was, certainly, lighter than when she had come. The strain of pulling in her belly was gone.

VII

After Yoshie had gone up the stairs, I stood alone in the dim light of the Circle.

Coh spoke quietly.

“Seri. How did you feel.”

I searched.

”…Youth-supremacy — today I felt it again. The world treats the young, thin, trim body as the correct body. But — that is only one story. A body that has lived fifty years and layered the seasons has a depth proper to it. To call that thickness and accuse it is — an error.”

“Mm.”

“Yoshie-san has enfolded people for thirty years. That power of enfolding shows in the body too. To see it as inferior is — poverty of view. As a Reader, I want to read ageing as sediment. So I’ve decided.”

Coh was quiet a moment. Then spoke.

“Seri. A good reading. But — do not forget one thing. Ageing, too, is different for each person. One person takes it as depth. Another bears it as pain. You must not push it is depth onto anyone. Yoshie-san saw depth today because she had the strength, in herself, to see it. You only raised the outline.”

”…Yes. I understand.”

“I understand, huh. Well. All right.”

I slipped Contura into my pocket.

The light in the air faded slowly. Yoshie’s outline thinned, became particles, dissolved into the dark.

But I closed my eyes. On the inside of my lids, the round, warm, vessel-like outline remained. A deep outline, fifty years of seasons layered in it.

The layering called age.

It is never thickness. It is depth. The time one has lived settles in the body, becomes layer, becomes the thickness of story. The mirror shows it only as the thickness of the surface. But the outline can read the depth beneath.

I thought of my own twenty-four-year-old body. Still shallow. How many decades of season would I layer? When that time came, I wanted to be a Reader who could read the outline honestly, without making a mirror of it, and not make the mirror the enemy.

Outside, the Aoyama evening was dyeing its western edge vermilion. The colour of the end of summer.

Climbing the stairs, I thought.

Who would the next client be. And what story would that body tell.

In my pocket Contura grew faintly warm. As if in answer.

—