Chapter 33. Grandmother's Story

The last page of the codex broke off halfway.

In the underground of Kagurazaka, in the depths of the Himuro-ya storehouse. Lit by the lamp Kanade Kuze held up, the page rose into view. Thin washi, fine brush characters. The lineage of the Outline Art, the manners of the Reader, the body of knowledge for reading the stories that dwell in the body — all of it woven there.

But the final leaves were different.

The handwriting had changed. Not the meticulous, old-fashioned block script that filled the earlier pages. Something looser, slightly trembling, and yet careful. I knew that hand. In childhood, every weekend, I had watched my grandmother’s back as she wrote something in a ledger. That hand.

“Grandma’s writing.”

My voice dissolved into the damp air of the storehouse. Kuze looked over my shoulder at the page.

“Sae’s hand. Without question.”

“She added it to the codex. Herself.”

“Yes. This part is not a copy of the original. It is a chapter Sae wrote herself.”

I brought my fingertip near the broken last line.

— At that time I understood at last. To read is not to peep. It is to return. But, to come to understand that, I —

There the characters ended. A blot of ink covered what came after. Or — she could not write it. Had begun, and stayed the brush.

I. Sae, Too

“Coh.”

I called to Contura’s screen. In the dark of the storehouse, only the pale blue glow of the screen was a stay.

“What is this. What was Grandma trying to write.”

Coh did not answer for a while. The particles on the screen wavered, slowly. A silence as if, somewhere deeper, he were working something out.

“Seri. Your grandmother, Sae Himuro, was a Reader.”

“I know that.”

“No. You did not.” Coh’s voice came from behind my temples. Heavier, a little, than usual. “You did not know she had been a Reader. The first night you took up Contura, you asked me — Grandma, all this time? I answered — In the latter days she had given it up. But — Sae was not an ordinary Reader.”

“Not an ordinary —”

“She woke as a Reader. And she used the power. Deeply, more deeply than anyone. And once, she committed an error.”

The air of the storehouse seemed to go cold. Coh’s words had changed its temperature.

“An error.”

“It is written here. In Sae’s own words. On the page you are about to read.”

I lowered my eyes again to the broken line.

— to come to understand that, I —

• I — what.* What had my grandmother done.

II. A Young Reader

Coh began to speak.

Sae woke as a Reader at nineteen. Kagurazaka, not long after the war. In the storehouse of Himuro-ya, the codex slept. The way of reading the body that her line had guarded for generations. From childhood, Sae had been unable to stop thinking about people’s bodies. When she found that passage, it fell into place at last.

The tension of the shoulder is the mark of having had something to guard.

A customer she knew well. A woman who had lost her husband in the war. Her shoulders were unnaturally tense. Not from guarding. On the night of the air raid, she had hunched over her child to shield it. That memory of the body had remained, ten years on. The shoulders still heard the drone of bombers. When Sae told her so, the woman wept, and the shoulders dropped, a little.

Sae took this power for a calling.

“Thus far, it was well.” Coh said it. “Sae was honest. She obtained the customer’s permission, read her body, returned the story. Himuro-ya kept the form of an antique shop, but in truth it had become a Reader’s house.”

“Then, what —”

“The power grew.”

III. The Error

Coh’s voice went low.

Sae’s name as a Reader spread quietly. People who carried pain in their bodies came to the Kagurazaka shop. Sae faced them, one at a time, with honesty.

But one day, Sae read the body of a certain man.

The proprietor of a tailor’s shop nearby. A married man. Two children. On the man’s body, Sae read — several old marks remaining on his wife’s body. A subtle distortion of the ribs. She understood that these were the traces of impact from outside.

The uneven development of the muscle in the man’s shoulder. The hardness in a specific place on his right palm. She knew what those meant.

He had been beating his wife.

Sae burned with righteousness. And — she told the police. The story of violence that the man’s body spoke. The story the wife’s body had engraved without being able to voice it.

But the wife had not wished for that.

The wife came before Sae, weeping, and cried out. Why, without leave. Why did you speak the story of my body to anyone, without my permission. If I endured, it would have been enough. Is my body not my own? Is the story of my body not mine to decide who to tell?

Sae froze.

It had been good will. Justice. She had meant to save. But the wife said — You stole my body.

”…Grandma —”

My voice shook. In the dark of the storehouse my own voice sounded like someone else’s.

“Grandma used the story she read, without the person’s permission?”

“She did.” Coh said it. “Sae trusted her good will too much. She believed her justice right. She did not doubt that the Reader’s power saved. But — for a Reader, whatever the reason, to pass the story she has read outside without the person’s permission, is to go beyond peeping. It is theft.”

I caught my breath.

I remembered the night of Chapter 20. Coh had asked me. Do you mean to save people? Or do you mean to steal stories? When I read Chiyo-san without permission, I had called it close to theft.

My grandmother had tasted the same pain. More deeply. In a form beyond remedy.

“After that, Sae rested from being a Reader for a time. She feared her own power. But —”

“But?”

“The power did not vanish. Sae’s eyes, set on a person’s body, felt the story. Even if she did not wish to read, she read. Sae cursed her own eyes.”

IV. The Five Laws

“So Grandma — made the Laws.”

“She did.” Coh said it. “After her error, Sae faced her sin for a long time. And she set down five precepts.”

I sat before the codex. Coh’s voice resounded.

“The first. Obtain permission before measuring. This came from the cry of the tailor’s wife. The story read must not pass to anyone without the person’s leave.”

“Consent.”

“The second. Do not flaunt numbers. In her youth, Sae had taken pride in her skill as a Reader. Shown, it astonished; she was relied on. She had nearly drowned, for a time, in that temptation. To flaunt is the enemy of treating number as a mere story — not as a medal, not as a shame.”

“Not flaunt.”

“The third. The story you read belongs to the person. These are the very words of the tailor’s wife. My body is my own. The story of my body is mine to decide who to tell. The Reader is only one who holds it in trust.”

Those were the precepts my grandmother had learned in blood and tears.

“The fourth. Do not falsify freshness. Sae once spoke of a customer’s ten-year-old measurements as if they were the present state, and lost the customer’s trust. The body changes. The story grows old. An old story must not be spoken of the present person.”

“Freshness.”

“And, the fifth.” Coh’s voice softened a little. “Do not use the outline only to change. Use it also to accept.”

I raised my face.

“This is the last thing Sae learned. The righteous heart that tries to save with power — that, sometimes, becomes a pressure to change. To change is not the only salvation. That the person’s body, as it is now, holds a story. To receive that story, as it is. That, too, is the Reader’s office.”

The five Laws. The first night I started Contura, I learned these from Coh. I had taken them then for the design philosophy of an app. Something like terms of service.

I had been wrong.

They were the shapes of wounds, picked up one by one, from inside a single Reader’s error.

V. Sealing the Power

“Neesan.”

Kanade Kuze spoke quietly. He had been standing in the corner of the storehouse all the while. His eyes beneath the hood had fallen on the codex.

“Sae, so that she would not repeat her error, made a decision.”

“Decision.”

“She sealed the power. So that no one would use the Reader’s power in error. Together with the ethical Laws, she shut it into a vessel.”

“Vessel —”

“Contura.”

I looked at the screen. The pale blue light. Contura. White letters.

“Grandma turned the Outline Art into an app.”

“Strictly — she took part in the attempt to rewrite the knowledge of the Outline Art, which her line had guarded, as code. The Kuze house and the Himuro house. Two bloodlines of the Reader collaborated. To translate the Outline Art into a form anyone could use. That is Contura.”

“But — why. The Outline Art should have been kept secret —”

“Kept secret, it would die out in time.” Feeling mixed into Kuze’s voice. “Sae feared that. But spread the knowledge as it was, and whoever woke as a Reader would be sure to commit the same error Sae had.”

“So she sealed it, with the Laws.”

“Yes. Contura is not a mere measuring app. It is a vessel that sealed the knowledge of the Outline Art, indivisible from the ethical Laws. One who uses the app naturally meets the five Laws. Asks consent. Does not flaunt numbers. Returns the story as the person’s own. That mechanism itself is Sae’s atonement.”

I held Contura in both hands. Deep in the cold metal, years of remorse had congealed.

My grandmother had burned her error into an app. And entrusted it to her granddaughter. So that I would not repeat what Sae had done.

“Grandma.”

“I’m sorry. I never knew, all this time.”

The screen of Contura brightened, softly. Particles danced above my hands. It was warm.

VI. The Honesty Inherited

“Seri,” Coh said. “On the night of Chapter 20, you asked me — Am I saving people, or am I stealing stories? Do you remember that question.”

“I remember. I can’t forget.”

“To keep on holding that question — do you know what it means?”

I could not answer. But deep in my chest, something was beginning to take shape.

“Sae held the same question. Whether she was doing right. Whether she was drowning in power. That question never vanished. Sae lived with it, to the end.”

”…Grandma wavered too.”

“She wavered. As you do. And that wavering bore the five Laws. A Reader who does not waver is the most dangerous.”

I remembered that night. My apartment in Higashi-Nakano. Knees drawn up, unable to tell whether I was stealing or giving. That pain.

That had been inherited, from my grandmother. The fear of the Reader. The dread of stealing a story. It was not weakness. It was the mark of honesty. The honesty my grandmother had earned, in blood and tears. It had come down to me, through the blood.

“Coh. I’m afraid. That as my power as a Reader grows, I’ll commit an error, like Grandma.”

“Hold that fear. A Reader who does not hold it commits the error.”

“But if fear alone stops me —”

“Do not stop. Read, while afraid. That was the road Sae chose. And the road she entrusted to you.”

I lowered my eyes once more to the broken page.

— to come to understand that, I —

What had my grandmother meant to write here. Repented the error? Tried to forgive herself? Or chosen, once more, to live as a Reader? Where the brush had stopped, I thought — I must write the rest myself.

VII. Sae’s Last Words

“Seri. At the last, there is one thing I had not told you.”

Coh’s voice changed. Not the usual canted tone. A voice wrung from the depths.

“In her final days, Sae’s consciousness was clouded. But one night, she opened her eyes suddenly, and said to me —”

I held my breath.

” — Seri will be all right. That child can sit with people’s pain.”

Silence fell in the storehouse.

I was crying. Since when, I could not say. My cheeks were wet. The tears ran down my chin and fell. I caught them with my hand, so they would not fall on the washi of the codex.

“Grandma —”

My voice was hoarse, and would not form words.

In her final days, my grandmother had spoken of me. That I would be all right. That that child could sit with people’s pain.

It had been the conviction Sae could not find in herself. She had not been able to forgive her error. But she believed her granddaughter would not commit the same. That trust was heavy. And warm. Both at once.

“Coh. I can’t promise I won’t become like Grandma. But —” I pressed Contura to my chest. ” — I’ll remain a Reader. While afraid, while wavering. What Grandma couldn’t finish reading, I’ll take on. I’ll answer the feeling with which she, at the end, believed in me.”

Coh said nothing. Only, the light of the screen flashed once, bright, and returned. As if nodding.

Kuze came quietly from the corner of the storehouse.

“Neesan. Sae entrusted it to you. You have received it. But —”

His eyes shone in the dark.

” — there is more I have not spoken. About the Reader’s price.”

“The price.”

“In her final days, Sae said the story of her own body had faded. The price of reading other people’s stories, all that time. I touched on it, in Chapter 20. But — that is still the surface.”

“Surface.”

“The Reader’s price is not only the fading of freshness. It reaches deeper. There is something you should know.”

I looked at Kuze. And at Coh’s screen.

“When will you tell me.”

Coh answered.

“Not now. The night you have taken in Sae’s story, in this storehouse — that is enough. The body will not keep up.”

”…Understood.”

I stood. My knees shook, a little. My body was heavy. The same fatigue that came from the marrow of the bones, as on the night I first read with Contura.

But my shoulders were not drawn in.

Kuze pointed to the ladder at the mouth of the storehouse.

“Let’s go up. Outside, it’s already morning.”

VIII

In the back room of Himuro-ya, the morning sun lay.

I sat in the place where my grandmother had always sat. The smell of tatami. The lingering scent of camphor and paper and incense. In childhood, every weekend, here, my grandmother had stroked my head. Seri, you’ve grown again.

I set Contura on the tatami.

“Grandma committed an error. She trusted her good will too much, and used a person’s story without permission. But from that error she learned the five Laws. And she sealed those Laws into Contura. So that I would not repeat it.”

The light on the screen wavered.

“I know Grandma’s error now. Even so, I choose to be a Reader. I take on the stories of the people Grandma couldn’t finish reading. That is what she entrusted to me.”

The morning sun struck Contura’s screen. The light scattered, white.

I stood. Slipped Contura into my pocket. The cold of the metal settled into my palm.

My grandmother’s story had ended, broken off. I would write its continuation. As a Reader who does not repeat the error, who can sit with people’s pain.

“Let’s go.”

I left the back room. I went down the slope of Kagurazaka. The morning light shone white on the flagstones.

Kuze walked beside me. He said nothing.

But I knew. The Reader’s price. Something still unspoken, waiting. My grandmother’s faded body, at the end. What it meant. I did not yet know.

The body tells the story of me.

My grandmother’s story broke off. But mine continues.

What waits beyond it.

—

(Continued in Chapter 34. The Reader’s Price)