Chapter 44. The Light at Mirage

The zelkova along Omotesandō showed through the slanting sun. A late-July afternoon. The cicadas, like a far-off sea-roar, sounded from the bottom of the town.

I stood before Mirage Omotesandō.

I

Half a year.

The last time I had come here was the day I had faced Rui Takatsuji head-on — that interview. Then, this facility had been cold. White walls, pale blue-white light, the cylindrical scanning booths. Veil’s AI dissolving the visitor’s body into number and ranking it by beauty score. The light had been beautiful. But it had carried the cold of a blade that judges.

Today, Mirage looked, somehow, different.

The glass automatic door opened. The lobby’s lighting had shifted from the old blue-white to a colour that held, just faintly, more warmth. On the reception wall, where the Beauty Score Ranking had once hung — there was nothing. The panel had been taken down. In its place, a thin cloth, quietly printed with a line of text, was hung.

I stepped closer and read.

Your body carried you, again, today. That, alone, is enough.

The Japanese was a little stiff. Like something translated. But that stiffness was, if anything, earnest. I stood there and read the line twice. I remembered the old wall — the top twenty scores and full-body photographs ranked in a row. I remembered the faces that had looked up at it and gone pale. Now, that wall simply stood, quietly, welcoming each person who walked in.

“Himuro-san.”

The voice was Rui’s.

Rui Takatsuji. The woman who had been my enemy. Who measured people in numbers, who tried to bind them with ranking. Who, half a year ago, broke her body and collapsed, came to me for help, and was reconciled.

She had changed.

The silver-rimmed smart glasses were the same. The tall, slender, well-proportioned frame was the same. But the way she stood was different. Before, she had always held herself taut — her body a living billboard for her own perfect numbers, her spine pulled straight, not a crack of slack anywhere. Now, her shoulders had loosened, just a little. And her smile was not the old calculated one. It was slightly awkward. It was real.

“Thank you for coming. You’re busy.”

“You said you wanted it, no matter what.”

My tone had gone slightly formal. I could not help it. This person was not, yet, someone I could be easy with.

“I’ll show you. There’s something I want you to see.”

II

Rui led me to the measuring room at the back — the room where, once, the cold scanning booths had stood in a row. Now only one booth remained, and on the rest of the space, a small table and chairs had been set. It recalled, a little, the Circle at Life Compass.

“I’ve been changing this, little by little.”

Rui said. There was nervousness in her voice.

“Three months ago, I began a pilot. For those who take the conventional scan, we offer, to those who wish it, a different rendering of the result.”

“Different rendering.”

“Yes. Not only the number — we return, in prose, what the number means. On trial.”

Rui worked the tablet. A thin hologram rose in the air. The format was familiar — but it was not Contura’s. Veil’s own, simplified display. Not a body of light, but a flat figure, and several lines of prose.

Your right shoulder sits 2.3 centimetres higher than your left. That is the shape of having shouldered something, for a long time.

I caught my breath.

It was imperfect. Beside Contura’s story-reading, the expression was stiff, the line short, no particles of light rising. But the direction was the same.

“You — made this?”

“With a team. I designed it.”

Rui adjusted her glasses. The gesture, too — not the old over-confident adjustment, but something almost shy.

“I thought I’d stop returning only the number. That doesn’t save anyone. As I — was not saved.”

”…”

“But I can’t do it, not fully. It doesn’t approach the feet of Contura — of your Outline Art. So I wanted you to see it. How it might be a little better.”

“How did the users respond.”

“Half went away, bewildered.”

Rui said it honestly. That honesty was something the old Rui had not had.

” In the end, I don’t know what you mean to say. The number is safer, they said. I had expected that. Number lets one feel one has understood. Story — one must read. Reading takes effort.”

“And the other half?”

“The other half — there were people who cried.”

Rui’s voice trembled, a little.

“A woman in her forties, read the number on her shoulder, and cried. No one noticed, she said. That her shoulders were different. And we returned to her that it was the shape of having carried a child, for a long time. Behind the monitor, I thought, for the first time — perhaps my work was, after all, right.”

I listened, and nodded, silently. I knew those tears. The tears Misaki had wept. Rin. Shiori. And Rui herself.

III

Rui poured tea, fresh and hot. Two cups. The steam dissolved into the air of the room.

“You’re fighting the management, aren’t you.”

When I said it, Rui smiled, bitter.

“You can tell?”

“Your face is more tired than before. In a good way — the face of one who is troubled.”

”…I’ll take that as praise.”

Rui drank a mouthful, and went on.

“At the shareholders’ meeting, I was opposed. Don’t break the business model that sells by number. The beauty score and the ranking are the pillar of Veil. Replace that with something vague called story, and sales fall. So I was argued.”

“Will they fall.”

“They will. Probably.”

Rui was honest. She had learned, in these months, that honesty was the one thing she could not trade away.

“To rank people by number is to make them anxious. Anxious, they pay. That is the structure — of Veil, no, of this whole industry. Make them feel not enough, and sell. Add a story, return you are fine as you, and the anxiety thins. Thins, and sales fall.”

I listened, silent.

“So I’ve put forward a compromise. Not to abolish number entirely, but to set the story beside it. Two renderings, to choose. Even so, more than half the directors oppose.”

“One director said — Takatsuji, what do you take this company for. We are in the business of making people beautiful. Telling stories is the work of an abbot.”

Rui reproduced the words, evenly. The evenness conveyed, inversely, the pain of having heard them.

“He is right, I think. He is. Business sells anxiety. That is right. I — until half a year ago — believed it. So I can’t blame him. I can’t. But — I can no longer stand in the same place.”

“Why do you go so far, to change it?”

When I asked, Rui looked at her own hand. The hand had regained, a little, the flesh it had half a year ago.

“Because I broke my body.”

She paused, then went on.

“Trying to be perfect in number, I broke it. And then — you read the story of my body, Himuro-san. That time, for the first time, I understood. Number does not save. Number is only the letters of the story.”

IV

“Himuro-san.”

Rui looked at me, full-on.

“How, in practice, should the story be added to the number. Tell me. Not — technically. Something more fundamental.”

I took a moment to think. The old phone in my pocket grew faintly warm. Coh, listening.

“If it’s technical, you know far more than I.”

“Perhaps. But technique alone cannot write that sentence. The sentence your Outline Art returns has — a temperature. My system does not. I don’t know what is missing.”

I said:

“Probably — it is, to face a single body, honestly.”

“Honestly.”

“Contura — Coh — is always telling me. Obtain permission before reading. The story you read is the person’s. To measure, I think, is to touch the person’s most fragile place. So the one who measures must know the weight of that.”

Rui listened, lips parted.

“What your system lacks is not technique. Probably — whether it is trying to know that weight. As long as you see the user as a data point, no matter how many sentences you add, it is only decoration on number. Whether you see them as a single body. Whether you imagine what that person has lived, in that body. That, I think, is the true form of the temperature.”

Rui was silent a long while. Then gave a small nod.

”…It’s difficult.”

“Yes.”

“But — I think there’s nothing for it but to do it.”

V

Then I had an idea.

“Shall we try something?”

“Yes.”

“Let me read your body. With Contura. And you — feel what you feel. Feed that into the system.”

Rui looked slightly bewildered.

“My — body.”

“The last time, when we stood side by side, I didn’t, properly, read a story of only you. This time, I want to. If I may have your permission.”

Rui took off the glasses. Behind the silver-rimmed frame, her eyes were, for the first time before me, bare. The long lashes trembled, faintly.

”…Please.”

I took Contura from my pocket. The old phone. The screen brightened at my finger.

Contura.

Letters rose. And pale blue light danced, in particles, around Rui.

Rings of light circled Rui’s body. Shoulder. Chest. Waist. Hip. Thigh. Each, carefully. Numbers floated in the air. I did not speak them. Coh whispered in my head.

• — I’ll read, Seri. What her body speaks.*

The particles swirled. And became letters.

VI

A sentence rose in the air.

Your body, trying to be perfect, held its breath for a long time. Now, you may breathe.

Rui read it.

Read it, and could say nothing. Her lip trembled. With the glasses off, a tear spilled, a single line, from her eye.

”…Yes.”

That was all. No other word would come. Rui laid a hand on her own chest. The ribs moved. She was breathing. Deeply, slowly. As if, at last, permission had been given for a breath held long.

“This — is temperature, isn’t it.”

“Probably.”

“My system doesn’t have this. How to build it in —”

“Less build in —”

I said.

” — than, whether the one who measures can feel this. Whether you, Takatsuji-san, can face each user this seriously. That, I think, is more important than the system.”

Rui wiped the tear, and put the glasses on again. And bowed to me, deeply.

“Himuro-san. Thank you. I think I understood, a little.”

VII

Rui saw me to the entrance.

The Omotesandō rows of trees had begun to dye into the purple of dusk. The glass facade caught the colour of the sky.

“Himuro-san.”

“Yes.”

“Not perfect, but, step by step, I’ll change Veil. That cold light — into something a little warmer. Someday, so that the one who comes out of that booth goes home holding her own story, not the anxiety of rank.”

“I’m cheering for you.”

I said it. And meant it.

”…I, too, once believed that number saves.”

Rui murmured.

“Now, I don’t think so. Number is only the letters of the story. How to read those letters. How to return them to the person. That, I think, is our work. From here.”

I nodded. The one who had been my enemy, facing the same way. That fact was, deep in my chest, warm — and painful.

Rui bowed once more. And went back through the glass door. Her back was, a little, softer than before.

VIII

On the way to the station, I held Contura tight in my pocket. The screen was faintly warm.

“Seri.”

Coh’s voice, in my head.

“Mm.”

“The light has spread.”

I stopped.

“The light?”

“The light of Mirage. That cold blade of light is, little by little, turning into a warm lamp. You lit the wick, Seri. In the depths of that person’s chest.”

I turned back. Beyond the Omotesandō trees, Mirage’s glass blazed in the sunset — orange. Not the cold blue-white of before. Warm orange. It was, by chance, the reflection of the setting sun. But to me, it looked like something — a presentiment.

“The thought of Contura does not stay shut inside me alone.”

“No. Your reading has a core: to face a single body, honestly. That core has begun to pass to others. Not only Takatsuji Rui. Rin, who asked to be your apprentice. Sono. And, beyond them, the many people you will meet.”

“I’m not alone.”

“From the beginning, you were not, Seri. But from here on, it becomes more so.”

I looked up at the sky. A late-July afternoon. Still blue. But the western edge had begun, slowly, to take on the colour of dusk.

The light was spreading. From my hand, to the hand of the one who had been my enemy. And beyond.

Technology, depending on how it is used, can bind people or save them. That cold light of Mirage — the blade that ranked people in numbers — was now, little by little, turning into a lamp that told the story of the body. Not perfect. Step by step. When Rui took down the ranking wall. When she began returning prose to the people who stepped out of that booth. The shape of the technology had changed. The same measurement, not used to judge, but to read. That was the core of the Law I had learned from Coh. And now, it had left my hands, and was spreading. That, I thought, was the meaning of what I could do.

On the train home, I took out my phone. One notification. From Kanade Kuze. That boy.

Himuro-san. There is a matter to discuss, regarding the future of Contura. Tell me a time that suits.

Short. Administrative. But beneath it, something heavy — like a tide rising under the hull of a boat, invisible from the deck.

The future of Contura.

That would not be my problem alone — not anymore. When the light has spread too far, who guards the fire? The next choice was here.

—

(Continued in Chapter 45. Kuze’s Choice)