Chapter 37. Rui's Return

The call came on a Tuesday night, just past nine.

I had finished tidying the Circle beneath Life Compass. The mirrors rested, dark. The bluish auxiliary light on the floor had gone out, and only the steady hum of ventilation filled the room, that underground breath that settles in when no one is left. My polo shirt smelled of soap and the warm sweat of a long day. The phone shook in my pocket. An unknown number. If there was business, they would leave a voicemail — I almost left it.

“Seri.” Coh’s voice rang in the inner ear. Not from the screen — from within, that voice no one else hears. “Answer.”

“Why. It’s unknown.”

“The registration on the other side links to the name Rui Takatsuji.”

I stayed my finger. Swiped. Held it to my ear.

” — Yes, this is Himuro.”

”…Himuro-san, is that you?” A businesslike woman’s voice, neutral, the kind of voice trained to deliver facts without letting them tremble. “This is Veil. Takatsuji — Rui Takatsuji has registered your number as the primary emergency contact.”

“Emergency contact.”

“A little while ago, she collapsed. During the public scan rehearsal at Mirage Omotesandō. She is conscious. But she cannot stand. We’ve called an ambulance. She asked for you, personally.”

Beyond the receiver, a siren sounded, far off. It rose, faded, rose again — the distance swallowing it in oscillations, like a wave that breaks and reforms farther out.

“The hospital.”

“Kyōritsu Hospital, Aoyama. The emergency centre.”

“Understood. I’m coming.”

When I cut the call, my hand was shaking more than I thought. The phone in my palm was cold — that coldness of metal that refuses to take the body’s warmth, that stays foreign.

The former enemy. The woman who judged people by number, laughed at my Laws, tried to take my clients. That woman had put me at the top of her emergency contacts. Not an employee. Not a colleague. The enemy.

“Seri,” Coh said. “Do you remember her outline, the one I showed you that day.”

“It was faded.” I answered as I climbed the stairs from the underground, my hand on the cold railing. “Cracked. You said she did not have long.”

“Nothing has changed since. No — it has progressed. You had better hurry.”

It was nearer to go straight to Aoyama than back to Omotesandō. I ran to the station. By the gate, I was trotting, and on the escalator I climbed two steps at a time, my breath a little short, the phone clenched in my fist.

Why I was hurrying, I did not fully know. Rui had cause to resent me for the deal I had refused. That day, in the glass office at the top of Veil’s tower, I had shaken off her hand. The proposal — share it, and we will save more people. And yet she had written my name at the top. Not an employee, not a colleague — me, the enemy.

In the subway car, the overhead lights strobed through the windows — white, amber, white — striking my dark reflection in the glass. Coh spoke.

“Seri. The reason she chose you is simple.”

“Simple.”

“She knows no one else who can read her body as a story. Numbers, a doctor or a colleague can give. But a story — only you.”

I held the strap. My palm was cold, and that cold crept up into my wrist, into my forearm. The car swayed, and my reflection in the window swayed with it — a pale figure, badly lit, who could have been anyone.

I

The emergency ward was white with fluorescent light even at night. The smell of disinfectant mixed in the cold, dry air — that clinical air that holds nothing of the warmth of bodies. Down the corridor, someone coughed — a muffled, wet sound that clung to the ceiling. The nurses’ station telephone rang, muted, and someone answered in a low voice. Footsteps echoed on the linoleum, and mine did too, despite myself.

Rui Takatsuji was on the bed. An IV tube ran into her thin wrist, fixing it to the bag suspended above like a thread connecting a body to what keeps it alive. The silver-rimmed smart-glasses — those glasses she never removed, her everyday armor — were off, set on the tray at the bedside, laid down like insignia of a rank temporarily relinquished. Without those glasses, Rui looked like another person. The hollows under her eyes were purple-dark, almost mineral, like old bruises. Had her cheeks been this hollow? The cheekbones jutted under skin that seemed too thin, too taut, paper stretched over a frame. Her lips were dry, white, cracked. The arm showing from the sleeve of the hospital gown was less balanced than stripped — bone and skin, bare, as if the flesh had withdrawn of itself and left only the structure.

”…Himuro-san.”

Rui noticed me. Her voice was hoarse, a voice worn at the edges, like cloth washed too many times. The cold ring that had once cut me down was nowhere in it.

“You came.”

“I came. I heard from Veil.”

”…I’m sorry. There was no one else to contact.”

That one sentence pricked my chest, small. A thorn planted low, where you don’t expect it.

Once, Rui had bundled together employees, clients, countless numbers. She stood at the center of a network, a node from which lines radiated in every direction. And at the emergency, the person she had to contact was only me.

“How are you.”

“The doctor told me.” Rui looked at the ceiling — that ceiling of white tiles, immaculate, indifferent. “Overwork. Malnutrition. Dehydration. Menstruation halted for half a year. Bone density well below the standard for my age.”

One by one, she recited them as if reading a signboard. Emotion was gone from her voice. The voice was flat, emptied.

”…Nothing but numbers.” Rui laughed. Or meant to. Only the corner of her mouth moved, a millimeter, and that was all. “My specialty.”

I could say nothing. The words stayed at the bottom of my throat, heavy, formless.

“Himuro-san.” Rui looked at me. Those eyes — I had expected cold, the calculator behind glass. What I found was not cold. It was fear. Naked fear, without armor, without filter, the fear of someone who sees herself from the inside for the first time. “I have a request.”

“What is it.”

“Can you read my body?”

I caught my breath. The word read — that verb I had spoken so often before clients, that verb Rui had laughed at, dismissed as sentiment — this verb, in her mouth, in this white room, carried an entirely different weight.

”…What am I. Not in numbers. In your way. The story, or whatever it is. What my body is saying, now — tell me.”

II

I looked at Coh. In the screen of the phone, the figure of light stood quietly, arms at its sides, like a guide waiting for you to be ready.

“Seri,” Coh said, in a voice only I could hear. “Keep the Laws.”

“I know. I’ll obtain permission.”

“She is weak now. There is also that she may not be able to refuse. It does not mean you may read one-sidedly.”

“I know.”

I turned back to Rui. I sat on the white plastic chair at the bedside and looked her in the eye.

“Takatsuji-san. Before measuring, let me confirm.”

”…What.”

“What I measure is you. The story I read is yours. I will not spread my interpretation on my own, or show anyone. Only —”

“Only?”

” — I want to ask. Do you have the resolve to know the story of your own body, as it is now. Not a flattering one. Not an arranged one. The real story.”

Rui looked at the ceiling for a while. The cardiac monitor pulsed, regular, marking the silence in small green spikes. Then she lifted the hand with the IV. It shook — not from cold, but from that inner trembling that grips the body when it is about to say something it has held silent for years.

“I — Himuro-san. Have never once read my own body.”

”…What.”

“Other people’s bodies, I have scanned thousands. Given numbers, ranked them, drawn improvement plans. But I have never properly looked at my own. I have avoided mirrors, too. I would walk past without raising my eyes. If I caught my reflection by accident, I turned away. Not out of vanity. Out of… I don’t know how to say it. A fear.”

She returned the IV hand to her chest.

“So — read. Please. What my body is saying — I want to know. Even if it is terrible. Especially if it is terrible.”

”…Understood.”

I set the phone at the bedside, screen up. Coh’s light seeped into the air of the room, like a tint dissolving in water. Pale blue particles — fine, barely perceptible, pulsing in a slow rhythm — spread above the bed, passed beyond the IV tube, and reached Rui’s body. A ring of light formed and circled her. Neck. Shoulder. Chest. Waist. Hip. Thigh. The ring traveled methodically, like a hand that palpates without touching, and where it passed, numbers floated into the air — white, glowing, suspended — and these numbers, one by one, joined into a single outline.

The trainer’s eye in me was first caught by the accuracy. Contura measures finer than a tape. The numbers fell with laboratory precision. But at once, another eye, wakingly, lucid, read the same numbers. This waist, this upper arm — to maintain them, how much restriction, piled up daily. The feel of the field spoke, the memory of the skin, what my hands had learned touching hundreds of bodies. This is not a healthy thinness. This is a thinness that holds itself against the body, that holds the body against itself.

III

What rose was Rui’s luminous outline.

But — it was not the perfect outline she had once boasted, up in the glass office at Veil.

On numbers alone, still thin, still ordered. The line from shoulder to waist was straight; the subcutaneous fat was extremely thin. Mathematically — without a gap.

But the outline itself had faded.

The pale blue light should have held a deeper colour. My clients’ outlines always bore a dense, warm light, the blue of the floor of the sea — a blue that holds the light and returns it, like a stone at the bottom that you see glowing. Rui’s outline was colourless, like cloth left long in the sun, the colour drawn out, washed away. There was a glow, yes, but it was whitish, without depth, a surface shimmer.

And it was cracked.

Across the surface of the outline ran thin, thin fissures. Like dried earth. Or paper stretched too hard. Brittle, about to crumble. The fissures were deepest at the base of the shoulder and the waist. Those were the places, the form said, that had borne unnatural posture for a long time — the places that had held on, held on, in positions the body should never have been made to hold.

“Freshness is withered,” Coh said quietly. “The story of the body lives by being constantly rewritten. Every day the body changes, and the story rewrites itself. She has refused, for years, to rewrite the story of her own body. And the old story, for want of renewal, has frayed, and cracked.”

“Refused to rewrite.”

“Because she believed only in number. Number freezes story. She tried to fix her body to a single set of perfect, ideal values, unchanging. But the body is a living thing. It changes every day. A body not permitted to change — a body forbidden to move — that body cries. These are those cracks, frozen.”

”…Brittle.” I murmured. “As if it could break at any moment.”

“Which is why it broke, tonight.” Coh said it short.

I looked at Rui. She was looking up at her own faded outline, suspended above her in the fluorescent light.

”…This is — me.”

“Yes.”

“How colourless.”

Rui’s voice shook. Not the professional cold. A fear without defense.

“That pretty blue light you showed your clients — mine has none.”

”…Not now.”

“Was it always absent.”

“I can’t say. Only — your body, now, is withering the story. That is certain.”

Rui closed her eyes. Her lashes trembled, fine and dark against the pale skin. And a single drop ran down her hollowed cheek, lingered at the edge of her jaw, and fell on the pillow.

IV

“I’ll read,” Coh said.

The numbers in the air burst into particles. They swirled — a slow, spiraling movement, like leaves in a current — gathered, drew a line, became letters.

Your body wore numbers as armor, for years, and ignored the crying. Now, you may take the armor off.

The letters pulsed, quiet, in the air, like a lighthouse turning without hurry.

”…A bitter irony,” Coh said, as if to himself. “She has read others’ bodies so accurately. Thousands of bodies, thousands of numbers, thousands of diagnoses. And did not notice her own body screaming this much. One who reads numbers is sometimes blindest to her own.”

Rui’s voice broke.

Not a scream. A cry. A muffled cry wrung from the back of the throat, a wet, convulsive sound. From the mouth that had once coldly demolished me — I had not known such a sound could come.

”…I measured people.” Rui said, between sobs. “Thousands. Evaluated them in numbers, ranked them. I thought it right. I thought — to save.”

I listened, silent. There was nothing to say. Only to be there.

“But — I. I had not asked my own body. For years. Are you tired? Does it hurt? Are you hungry? — I never asked. If the numbers were good, that was enough. If the numbers were perfect, the body would not complain.”

I saw my old self in that. The me who had believed that at a certain weight, all was well. Who had thought safety lived only in number, and ignored the pain, the anger, the hunger, of the body. Rui’s words carried the same note as the things I had not been able to say, five years ago, inside my own chest.

“I was — bullying my own body. The same thing I did to others.” Rui cut the sentence. Her breath ran high, ragged. “No — before I did it to others, I did it to myself. That’s why I could do it to others. Because it didn’t hurt me. Because I was already numb.”

She did not try to wipe the tears. The IV tube shook with her, the bag swaying gently above the bed.

”…Himuro-san. I was cowardly. I laughed at your story-reading, called it sentiment. But it was someone who had never once read the story of her own body, laughing.”

She cut the sentence there. As if searching for something, she looked at the ceiling — as if searching the white tiles for a word, a thread, something to hold onto.

“Tell me, Himuro-san. You don’t resent me, do you. For that night, when I tried to take your clients.”

“I don’t resent you.” I answered, without hesitating. “That time, I had caught a glimpse of your outline. Before you wounded anyone, you were already wounded. I knew that. And —”

“And?”

“I was once the same. Judging myself by number. Weight, size, calories. Thinking that was all. So I understand. Number is easy. Number lets you not look at the story.”

Rui looked at me. Those eyes no longer saw an enemy.

V

“Takatsuji-san. May I speak.”

”…What.”

“Medicine is not my field. Overwork, nutrition, menstruation, bone density — these are for a specialist doctor. What I can do here is limited.”

”…Yes.”

“So — first, take proper treatment. Food, rest, specialist consultation if needed. That is the foundation of the story. With the foundation broken, no reading stands.”

“Foundation.”

“But recovery, as story — that I can promise. Your body will be rewritten, little by little, from here. The cracks may not close. But — they say a crack lets the light in. From the broken place, a new story can begin. There, I can help.”

“From the broken place.”

“You are crying, now. That itself is the start. Your body has, at last, found a voice. And you, who heard it, are crying. This is the first step of recovery.”

Rui was silent a long while. Only the wave on the monitor shook the air of the room, regular, its green spikes dancing in the corner of my eye. Beyond the window, still dark. But the city lights had begun, slowly, to change the colour of the night — a bluish grey rising from the horizon, the colour that comes before dawn, not yet day, no longer quite night. Then she spoke.

”…Himuro-san.”

“Yes.”

“I thought you an enemy. I denied your way. But now, looking at this colourless outline of my own — I think. Perhaps you were right, all along.”

“It isn’t a matter of right and wrong.” I said. “Only — not forgetting that the body has a story. Remaining faithful to that.”

“Not forgetting.”

Rui repeated it. And slowly lifted the hand without the IV, and laid it on her own chest. Over the heart.

“Something is here, I think. Something I’ve never felt. It hurts, but — it’s warm.”

“That is the story.”

”…Story.”

She said the word once more. This time, not in the tone she had used to mock. As a simple, new word, spoken for the first time, tentatively, like a child learning to pronounce.

VI

“Himuro-san.”

“Yes.”

“May I — look at my own body, again, properly?”

It was still early for dawn. The fluorescent light of emergency was white, unchanged, indifferent. But in the faded blue of Rui’s outline, I thought — a little depth had returned. The cracks were still there, visible, sharp. But from within the cracks, from the bottom of the crevices, a faint light — barely perceptible, a breath of luminosity — leaked.

“Anytime.”

I answered. The same word that had once been said to me — by Sono, by Misaki, by Rin, and by my grandmother. The same words, passed from mouth to mouth, like a key that does not change its shape.

—