Chapter 28. Kurosawa's Judgment

On a night at the end of June, I sat alone in the Circle beneath Life Compass, my back to the wall.

The measuring lights were off. Only the blue-white glow of the emergency lamp remained, creeping thinly along the groove of the circle set into the floor. A residue — as if someone’s outline were still lying there.

But no one was there. Only me, and the phone in my pocket.

“Seri.”

Coh’s voice resounded behind my temples. Not from the screen. The inner voice, audible only when I had sunk deep.

“Your temperature is down. Thirty-six point two. Zero point four below last week.”

“I know.”

“If you know, you should be eating.”

The answer caught. Coh did not press further. Instead, quietly:

” — Rest. Any more and the body will break.”

“I can’t rest.”

I buried my face in my knees. There was Shiori. At the live measuring, Rui’s cold numerical analysis had wounded her deeply, and my story-reading had somehow stood her up again — but I had paid for it in exhaustion. Sono had been my shield. And Rui. Behind those perfect numbers, her own body was faded and collapsing. I had seen it.

There was no way I could fight alone. Veil was a corporation. In capital, in people, in reach, it was orders of magnitude beyond me. I was twenty-four, a new trainer. I had only a strange app my grandmother had left me, and a strange power to read the stories bodies told. With that — what was I supposed to do.

Footsteps came down the stairs.

I

Heavy footsteps. Not Sono. Sono walked lighter, canted forward. These weighed each step on the earth, as if measuring it.

“Seri.”

A low voice. Tadashi Kurosawa, the owner of Life Compass, stood in the blue light of the emergency lamp.

Fifty-two. The close-cropped hair was threaded with white. The creases on his face were deep, but his eyes were not dim. Rather, they shone quietly, like the eyes of a beast long used to the dark. The eyes of a man who had once supported the national track team.

“Shichō.”

“Still here.”

”…Thinking.”

Without a word, Kurosawa crouched in front of me. He looked into my face. A large hand came down on my shoulder. The palm was hot.

“You haven’t eaten.”

“I have.”

“Don’t lie.”

Short. Not in anger. As if stating a fact. I looked away.

“You heard about Shiori-san? From Sono-san.”

“All of it. The data extraction. The unauthorised use in advertising. The outcome of the live measuring. And —”

Kurosawa cut the sentence.

” — that Rui Takatsuji is destroying her own body.”

I caught my breath. He knew. But then, I knew better than anyone the sharpness of Kurosawa’s eyes. On the matter of seeing bodies in the field, he had been a Reader long before I was. Without Contura, those eyes read people.

“Seri. You’re trying to fight this alone.”

”…”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“But I can’t leave it. Shiori-san was hurt. That data is hers, and yet —”

“I know.”

Kurosawa set his hand on my head. A heavy, warm hand — the way a father would lay one on a child.

“That’s why I’ll move.”

II

We came up from the Circle to the ground-floor studio, to Kurosawa’s office. A narrow room: an old desk, a bookshelf, a single photograph. A young Kurosawa, gripping the shoulder of a sprinter at the start line of a track. The runner’s face was hard, drawn taut. I had looked at that photograph many times. But tonight, for the first time, I noticed that in the runner’s eyes there lived a light close to terror.

Kurosawa sat at the desk and offered me the visitor’s chair. From the drawer he took a single document.

“A complaint. Strictly — a petition to the industry body, and a press packet.”

My eyes ran along the text. Commercial use of biometric data without consent. Numerical ranking of clients. Unauthorised transfer of analysis results into advertising. Veil’s acts were laid out in spare, heavy sentences.

“Shichō, this —”

“It goes out under my name. Yours is nowhere on it.”

“But I —”

“Don’t.” Kurosawa cut me off. “Whatever you are using, that is your weapon. A weapon is not to be shown carelessly. Show it, and it will be taken.”

Coh’s shape crossed my mind. Contura. The thing that must not be taken. The light my grandmother had entrusted to me.

“And —” Kurosawa went on. “This is not your private fight. It is a structural problem of the industry.”

“Structural.”

“Veil alone is not to blame. These ten years, fitness, beauty, health — all of it has moved toward being recovered into number. Steps, heart rate, calories, body fat, muscle mass, sleep score. Everything that can be measured is measured, and everything measured is converted into rank and score. Veil is where that current arrives.”

”…”

“I, too, once rode that current.”

Kurosawa lowered his eyes to the photograph on the desk. The runner at the start line.

“In my time, what bound an athlete was the record. Best time. Personal best. Weight. Body fat. The season’s target number. I believed that chasing those numbers was my work. To manage the athlete by number, to drive him by number, to evaluate him by number. I thought that was the trainer’s duty.”

“Shichō —”

“His name was Nogami.”

Kurosawa’s voice dropped half a tone.

“A sprinter. Promising. I managed his weight to the gram. In the off-season he put on half a kilo, and I shouted. You’ve gotten fat. You’ve drifted from your best. He would nod and run. But one day —”

Kurosawa cut the sentence. A long silence made the air in the office heavy.

” — he broke. Not the knee. The heart. Driven by number, he stuffed himself, vomited, stuffed himself again, until the bone showed through. In the end, he stopped running. He ended his career as an athlete in front of my eyes.”

I lost my words. My own past layered over it — high school, bound to number, seeing my body as the enemy.

“I understood then.” Kurosawa lifted his eyes from the photograph. “The body does not lie.”

“The body does not lie —”

“Yes. The body tells it as it is. Fatigue, pain, hunger, joy. All of it is carved into the outline. What can lie is human language — and the numbers on a screen.”

Kurosawa took a breath. And then, slowly, a word at a time, as if testing each one:

“But numbers lie.”

The words sank deep, into a chest that had only just climbed out of the dark underground room.

“Numbers are a slice. A part, of one moment, at one angle, under one definition. No more than that. Weight changes with the day’s water and waste. Body fat changes with the device. Muscle mass changes with the formula. A single number does not tell the whole of a person. And yet we brandish that slice as if it were the whole truth. That is the lie.”

”…Numbers lie.”

“The numbers themselves are not evil. To measure, to know — that matters. But to take number for the whole truth. To rank people by number, to judge people by number. That is the lie. I judged Nogami by number and broke him. I’ve carried that.”

Kurosawa looked at me.

“What you read is the body. Not the number.”

” — Yes.”

“The side we ought to stand on is the side of the body. The side of the person. Not the side of number. Don’t forget that, Seri.”

“Yes.”

Something hot came to the edge of my eyes. I hurriedly wiped it with my sleeve. Kurosawa pretended not to see.

III

The next morning, Kurosawa moved.

Moved, is not quite accurate. Kurosawa had already been moving. By the time I noticed, the preparations were nearly done. The petition had already been filed with the industry body for fitness and health services. The press packet had gone, as anonymous information, to several outlets. All under the name of Tadashi Kurosawa and the signboard of Life Compass.

My name appeared nowhere. Neither did Contura’s.

“Whatever you use, that is at your discretion. But when I move, I cannot make your strange power into evidence. What is not understood will only be used against you. So I fight with the facts my eyes have seen, within the range I can verify.”

Kurosawa’s words were heavy. It was an adult’s honesty. A care and a resolution beyond the imagination of a twenty-four-year-old.

The news spread, slowly. It began with a small article in an industry paper. The fitness media picked it up. In time, the general lifestyle magazines touched on it. Questions about the consent process. Voices raising the psychological impact of numerical ranking on clients. The headlines were modest, but they were changing the air of the society, surely.

I watched it on the television in the studio lounge. I held a coffee in both hands. Sono sat beside me.

“The old man’s done it.”

Sono folded her arms and laughed, shortly.

“He’s been that way forever. Quiet. But once his mind is set, he moves. Even as a trainer, when his athlete was dropped by an unjust call, he went in silence at the federation. It ended up costing him his place on the floor. Never learns.”

”…Never learns, or —”

“Conviction, you mean. People with conviction lose. But the people around them get saved.”

Sono clapped me, hard, on the shoulder.

“You’re on the losing side, too. Prepare yourself.”

“Yes.”

I sipped the coffee. It felt, a little, warmer.

But this was not a victory.

IV

Veil did not sway so easily.

The night the complaint broke, Mirage Omotesandō was lit as always. Brighter, if anything — as if in resistance. Rui issued a statement.

Our services are operated under contract, in good order. Quantification is a scientific approach, rendering the client’s own health challenges visible and prompting improvement. We are compelled to recognise the criticism from certain quarters as an emotional reaction born of insufficient understanding of science.

On the screen, Rui’s face. Silver-rimmed smart-glasses. A composed, cold expression. But I had seen it — the faded outline. The freshness, nearly collapsed. Did Rui not know the truth of her own body? Or did she know, and keep the lid on it?

Either way, she did not pull back. Veil’s investors did not move, either. They, too, believed — or made themselves believe — in the creed that number saves.

Coh spoke.

“Seri. They won’t pull back. Number is, to them, a religion. And religion does not shake under criticism.”

“Then what do I —”

“I don’t know. But one thing I can say.”

“What.”

“You are not alone. Only — don’t forget that.”

I looked at the light of Coh on the screen. A pale blue wavering. And then at Rui, inside the television. A cold rigidity.

Between those two lights, I stood.

V

At night, again, Kurosawa’s office.

He was writing something at the desk. When I came in, he set the pen down.

“Seri. Did you see the news.”

“Yes. Veil does not look like it will pull back.”

“No.”

Kurosawa stood. He looked out the window. Night in Aoyama. Headlights streaming.

“From here, it becomes a head-on collision. The industry body alone won’t contain it. It will become a controversy that draws in the whole of society.”

“Shichō — aren’t you afraid.”

“Yes.”

It was immediate. I looked at him, surprised.

“I was driven from the floor, once. My name was hurt. If I move now, I may have no place left in this industry. I know that.”

“And you still move.”

“I move.”

“Why —”

Kurosawa turned to me. And looked straight into my eyes.

“Because you are here.”

” — Me.”

“You are my pupil. Outside the reach of my eyes, you are trying to save people. And that pupil is about to be crushed by a corporation. Can I look away.”

“Shichō —”

“And I made a promise. To myself. On the day I broke Nogami. Never again to stand on the side of number and judge a person. The Veil of today is the corporate, enlarged edition of what I once did. Left alone, it will make another Nogami.”

I looked at Kurosawa’s back. A wide, heavy back. The back that had once supported an athlete, and once, wounded one. That back stood now in front of me.

“Seri.”

“Yes.”

“We stand on the side of the body. We do not sell people to number. Hold that, whatever comes.”

“Yes. I’ll hold it.”

My voice shook. But the core of it carried.

Kurosawa gave a short nod. He turned back to the window. That back of his did not move, like a mountain.

VI

When I got back to the apartment, it was past midnight.

One room of six mats in Higashi-Nakano. The last Chūō Line was gone. Outside the window, it was quiet.

From the pocket of my polo I took out the phone. The screen was faintly bright. Coh’s light was wavering.

“Coh.”

“Mm.”

“I’m not alone.”

“No. There is a mountain called Kurosawa at your back. There is a shield called Sono. And there is the light your grandmother left.”

“But — what happens now. Veil won’t pull back. Rui won’t pull back. If it comes to a head-on collision, my power alone —”

“Seri.”

Coh’s voice hardened, slightly.

“Next, Rui Takatsuji moves. She is not a woman who only receives criticism. She will counterattack. And the point of that counter —”

“Me.”

“Yes. What you hold. Contura. She will want it. Not as an enemy — as an ally. She will try to take you in. Then, you will have to choose.”

“Choose —”

“How to use the outline. Keep it, or share it. Make it the possession of one, or of all.”

I looked at the light on the screen. A pale blue wavering. The light my grandmother had left me.

I stood before the mirror in the washroom. And I looked at my own outline. My shoulders were drawn in, a little. But tonight, I could undo it. The collarbones stretched. The chest opened.

Kurosawa’s words came back. Stand on the side of the body. Do not sell people to number.

” — I understand. I’ll choose. I will choose.”

Coh said nothing. Only, the light flashed, once, strong. It might have been an answer. It might have been a blessing.

Beyond the window, the eastern sky was beginning to pale. The first morning of July.

My body was tired. But deep in the core, something was burning. A small, hot, inextinguishable light.

I knew the name of that light.

It is called resolve.

—

With Kurosawa’s mountain at my back. With Contura’s light in my palm. I stood toward the morning sun.

The next move is Rui Takatsuji’s.

—

(Continued in Chapter 29. The Choice of the Outline)