Chapter 2. The Studio at Aoyama

Seven forty-five in the morning. I stepped out of Aoyama-Ichōme station and turned down the back street, and the commuter tide thinned at once. The block held a florist, a small gallery, and a French restaurant still shuttered behind its grille. Life Compass occupied the second floor of a three-storey building on that quiet street.

I climbed the stairs. Through the frosted-glass door, the silver letters LIFE COMPASS floated. I turned my key and the door pulled itself inward.

“Mornin’!”

The smell of sanitising spray and Sono Kiryū’s voice hit me at the same moment. She was arching her back on a stretch mat, one hand fluttering up in greeting.

“Seri-chan, you’re three minutes early today. Very good.”

“Good morning, Sono—san.”

“The san is extra. Well. Never mind.”

Sono grinned and stood up from the mat, and the way she stood up was the thing that always, in spite of myself, made me a little jealous. She put her weight forward and rose without using her hands, pulling her body upright from the abdomen and the hip alone. Twenty-eight years old. A former wrestler. She was a little shorter than me, but the line of muscle from shoulder to back could be read through her shirt. Her thighs were solid, her hips round, the curve in at her waist deep. Her short hair swung against the cord of her neck.

Sono’s body always looked as if it were enjoying itself. In motion or at rest, it carried itself like a thing that knew it was the lead actor and was pleased about it. My own body — well. I could not remember a time it had given me much pleasure.

I

Life Compass was a small studio. Forty-odd tatami of floor. One wall entirely mirrored. A free-weight rack, two cable machines, a single treadmill and a single stationary bike. The rest was mats and foam rollers and a few kettlebells. Nothing extraneous. The floor was dark hardwood, and your footfalls came back to you agreeably.

Tadashi Kurosawa had built this room. He was the owner, and my employer. Fifty-two years old. Close-cropped hair going silver, a weathered, dry-featured face, economical with words. This morning too he sat at the back of the counter, writing something in his favourite Moleskine notebook.

“Good morning, Kurosawa-san.”

“Mm.”

A single nod. But he glanced at me for an instant and his eyes softened. I had been here three months, and I was beginning to tell his mms apart. This morning’s was a good-mood mm.

“Seri,” he said, without lifting his eyes from the notebook. “Ten o’clock, Misaki-san. Sixth session postpartum.”

“Yes.”

“Last time she said her back hurt. Check her form.”

“Understood.”

Behind me, Sono, stretching, interjected.

“Misaki-san. The one with the belly thing, right? Seri-chan, your arms are going to ache.”

”…Yes.”

Sono laughed, sympathetically. Then she patted her own stomach through her shirt. It made a hard sound. A belly backed by muscle.

“Listen, if you ask me, a belly is a belly — you train it, it comes. But everyone has their season, you know.”

II

The studio’s mornings start quietly.

I wiped the floor, stacked towels, aligned the water bottles. Sono put on music — today a slow piece for piano and strings.

At eight-thirty the first client came. A man in his fifties, in for knee rehabilitation. I assisted Sono, demonstrating form in the mirror while we checked the angle of his knee. Sono’s coaching was precise and warm at once. There. Good. Once more. Her voice leaned in close to whoever it was addressed to.

I loved that about her. She was good. But at the same time I could see, in the mirror, the distance between us. The way Sono’s hands settled a client’s shoulder blade was full of conviction. My hands were always, somewhere, searching. Confirming. Doubting.

In the gap between sessions I went to the changing room and straightened my name badge. My fingers brushed the breast pocket of the polo. The old phone. Contura.

The memory of last night’s light came back into my fingertips. The pale blue particle-outline. Coh’s voice. You have the makings of a Reader.

I let go of the phone. Some instinct told me not to take it out now. I couldn’t have explained the reason. But the sense was that the lid should stay closed, for now. That it wasn’t time yet.

Then I noticed, in the mirror, that my shoulders were drawn in again. I had meant to watch for that. I breathed out and let them down. The collarbones lengthened a little.

III

At ten, Misaki-san came in.

She was thirty. Six months postpartum. The baby was a girl who had finally gone to sleep that morning, she said, with a small smile. There were bruises of exhaustion under her eyes. She had tied her hair back but strands of it lay along her cheek in tired wisps. She wore loose clothes that looked hard to move in. There was a hesitation in her walk, a wandering in her centre of gravity — the body of a woman who had spent the last half-year carrying an infant. The upper body tilted forward, the pelvis dropped, the knees were slightly bent.

“Good morning, Misaki-san. How are you feeling today?”

“Mm. Well. Sleepy, I suppose.”

She was an honest person. I smiled and led her to the stretch mat.

“Then we won’t push today. Let’s move lightly and see where the body is.”

Misaki nodded and sat on the mat. And then, over her clothes, she pressed both hands against her stomach. The hands gripped the fabric, tightening it.

“Seri-san. Listen. My belly — I can’t stop thinking about it.”

She had said the same thing last time. And the time before that.

“Before the pregnancy, it wasn’t like this. Now it’s like the belly is — left over, somehow. My jeans won’t do up. It’s been six months.”

I said the correct things, evenly. That a postpartum body does not return quickly. That the separation of the abdominal muscles might not have fully closed. That aggressive core work could backfire. That what was needed was correct breathing, light stabilising exercise, and time. I laid them out one at a time, accurately, gently.

But the correct words had no temperature. I could hear it myself. I sounded like someone reading from a manual.

Misaki was listening. She was nodding. But her eyes were not catching up. Her head was taking my words in; her body was not. What I was saying was right. It was not wrong. But something her body was asking for was not in those words.

I could feel that. I could feel the absence.

IV

After the exercises I worked on Misaki’s shoulders, as part of the cool-down.

Her shoulders were hard. The trapezius was ridged with tension. I set my fingers at the nape of her neck. Beneath the skin, heat had pooled. This was the accumulated fatigue of months — holding a baby, leaning forward to nurse, curling in on herself through sleepless nights. It had settled in layers across her shoulders, her back, her low back.

“Misaki-san, your shoulders are very tight. Your neck too. Are you nursing for long stretches?”

“Mm, well. Every hour, something like that. Up at night too.”

“Then today let’s not chase the belly. Let’s first release the shoulders and back. The belly will find its way back in its own time.”

”…Really?”

“Really. There’s no need to rush. Your body is already trying to return. More than you think.”

Misaki bit her lower lip a little. She did not disbelieve me. She wanted to believe and could not quite manage it. Seeing that face, something in my chest hurt again.

I went to work, carefully, one muscle at a time. With the pads of my fingers, following the grain of the fibres. From the origin of the trapezius to the levator scapulae, to the rhomboids. Each knot I released eased its neighbour a little. It was a chain. The body is never tense in only one place. And as each layer let go, Misaki’s breathing deepened, a degree at a time.

It was then.

When my fingers reached the region of her low back, something passed through my fingertips. Less a sensation than a premonition. Not heat. Not pain. Something crawling up from a deeper place, from very far in. Something that did not yet have a word.

In Misaki’s body there was a thing I could not read.

I stopped my hands. I steadied my breath.

Don’t read.

I thought it without deciding to. Clearly, flatly. Don’t read. You may not read her on your own.

It was then that the phone in my pocket grew faintly warm.

“——Seri.”

Coh’s voice resonated in my skull. Not an outside sound. From behind the temples, somewhere in the marrow of the bone.

“You felt it. That her body holds a story.”

”…Whether I felt it, I’m not certain.”

I answered inside my mind. My lips did not move.

“But I can’t just read it without her permission.”

“Correct. Before you measure, you ask consent. That is the Law.”

Coh stopped there. He said nothing more. The warmth in the pocket receded.

I finished the rest of the cool-down in silence. Misaki’s breathing deepened a little further. But in my fingertips the presence of that unreadable thing lingered.

V

When we were done, Misaki stood in front of the mirror. Over her clothes, again, she held her stomach. Her eyes were on her reflection. Not accusing eyes. Only bewildered.

“Seri-san.”

“Yes.”

“When should I come next?”

“Same time next week, if that works. Are you all right for then?”

“Mm. …Yes. Please.”

She booked the appointment and left. After the door closed I sat on the mat and looked at my own palms. The hand that had touched Misaki’s body. It seemed to me the presence of that thing was still on the skin.

The story I had not been able to read. Could I read it? And having read it, what then?

VI

At lunch I sat with Sono on the front steps of the studio, eating rice balls. Sono had salmon. I had plum.

“Seri-chan, how was Misaki-san?”

”…Mm. Difficult, I think.”

“Difficult, huh.”

Sono, chewing, looked up at the sky. A blue sky. The humid blue of June.

“Seri-chan, you know — you’ve got a good eye for bodies. Form, muscular balance, you watch all of it. You notice a shifted centre of gravity faster than I do sometimes. But.”

“But?”

“You could be a little prouder of your own.”

I stopped mid-bite.

Sono rolled up her sleeve. A tanned, lean forearm. The tendons stood out clearly.

“Me, I love this body. Ten years since I started wrestling. I’ve been hurt too. Wrecked my knee. But this muscle — I made it. It’s my core.”

She patted her stomach. The sound it made was hard.

“Fat-free mass index — you know FFMI? It’s a number that shows the hidden bottom strength of your muscle. Mine is twenty-two. For a woman, that’s high.”

“Twenty-two.”

“Yeah. More muscle packed in than you’d think looking at me. That’s the core. When you’ve got it, your body can hold its own confidence. You think, no matter what comes, this body will carry me through.”

Sono’s eyes found mine. There was no consolation in them. Only a straight, held belief.

“Seri-chan, your body — your core is still thin. I’ve been watching since you joined. The muscle isn’t landing. You’re not eating enough, are you? A trainer running her own body down — how’s that supposed to work.”

She had me. I was — am — bad at eating. More precisely, I am bad at deciding how much to eat. Whether I have eaten too much or too little. I am still, in some part of me, afraid of the numbers. And I knew it showed in my body.

“You’re strong, Sono-san.”

“I am strong. But I built it. It isn’t that I was born this way. I built it.”

Sono stood. From the top of the steps she looked down the street. From the florist opposite, the smell of carnations drifted on the wind.

“This body is my story. It took me ten years to be able to say that. You’ll get there too, one day. But Seri-chan — you treat other people’s bodies so carefully, and your own you pretend is invisible. That’s the biggest waste of all.”

I put the last shard of the plum rice ball into my mouth. It was sour. The tartness stayed at the back of my throat.

VII

I worked two afternoon clients, cleaned the studio, and got ready to leave.

Kurosawa spoke from the counter.

“Seri.”

“Yes.”

“Did Misaki-san say anything?”

“She booked the next session. Same time, next week.”

“I see.”

He paused. Then, still writing in his notebook, he said:

“You have a good eye for the body. But don’t stop at looking.”

”…What do you mean?”

“Give back what you see. There’s no point in looking and then holding it in silence. The client hasn’t borrowed your powers of observation. She wants her own body put into words.”

I caught my breath. Kurosawa could not know anything — not about Contura, not about Coh, not about Readers. And yet his words sounded as if he had seen straight through all of it.

“Yes. I understand.”

Kurosawa gave a short nod. He said nothing more.

VIII

On the way home, going down the stairs into the subway, I touched the phone in my pocket. It was cold. The warmth of midday had gone.

What had been in Misaki’s body. The presence of the story I could not read. Could I read it? Could I give it back to her? And when I did, what would she think?

“Seri.”

Coh’s voice again, inside my head. Small.

“You are hesitating.”

”…Of course I am.”

“Why?”

“Because I still don’t understand anything. Not about Contura, not about being a Reader, not even about my own body. And yet to read someone else’s — ”

“That is exactly why.”

Coh spoke quietly.

“Because you do not know, you measure. Because you measure, you know. And then you return the story you have read to the person it belongs to. That is the Outline Art. It is what your grandmother did, all those years.”

The train came. I boarded. The doors closed. The window went dark. A woman beside me was watching something on her phone, and the light from the screen painted her face blue.

Misaki’s hand, pressing her stomach, was burned into my eyes. What that hand had been gripping was not only flesh. Something deeper. A story scored into her body over the six months since the birth.

I wanted to read it.

I wanted to read it and hand it back to her.

But to do that — I would have to open that app once more. When I was still afraid even of my own body. Did I have the resolve to touch the story written in Misaki’s body? And was it right, to want to read it when I had not yet asked?

The phone grew faintly warm again.

In my pocket, I closed my hand around it.

—