Chapter 5. One's Own Outline

Coh’s words would not leave my ears.

If you will not keep reading yourself, you cannot read others.

Four days had passed since he said it. Each night I slept with the old phone on the pillow beside me, tethered to Contura. The screen stayed dark. It said nothing. Only the coldness of the metal reminded me that it was there.

Monday I let Sono drag me into a planning meeting and escaped. Tuesday I stood in front of the mirror and my fingers shook, and I gave up on starting it. Wednesday Kurosawa called me in to work late. Thursday I invented a reason and went to bed early. In short, I was running. Reading my own body frightened me far more than reading another’s.

Friday night. I came home and opened the window. The July dampness came in on the announcement of the last Chūō Line train. I peeled off the work polo and changed into a T-shirt. The washstand mirror caught me. The same me as always. But tonight I looked different. The me in the mirror looked as if she were waiting.

“Tonight. I measure.”

I said it to no one. Saying it aloud hardened something, a little.

Alone in the Room

Not in the Circle. That basement room at the Aoyama studio belonged also to Kurosawa, to Sono. Tonight I wanted no witnesses. What I was about to measure was no one else’s body. It was mine. My story.

The third Law — the story you read is the person’s. Then surely my own story was mine to bear alone.

I set the phone in my palm. I breathed in, deep. Out. My finger pressed the screen.

White letters surfaced.

Contura

And then — the voice.

”—— Welcome back, Seri.”

Coh. From beyond the screen there was the sense of a small, dry laugh.

“You came at last.”

”…Be quiet.”

“You hesitated for four days. Started and cancelled three times. I was waiting.”

He had been watching. I bit my lip. But I was glad, a little, that he had waited.

“I’ll measure. Me.”

“I know. Then stand. In front of the mirror — no. Tonight, the centre of the room is better. Read your own outline with your own eyes. Properly.”

The Light Circles the Body

The centre of the six-mat room. Outside the window a train went past, and the rattle of it came up through the floor. I propped the phone on the shelf.

“Close your eyes.”

Coh’s voice tonight came from behind the temples, not from the speaker. From further in.

When I closed my eyes, the pale blue light flowed across the surface of my body, tracing it. I had felt this once before. But that first time fear had run ahead, and I had not been able to truly taste what was happening. Tonight was different. From fingertip to fingertip, the hollow of the collarbones, each rib, the corners of the hipbones — the light traced them all, carefully. A warm, water-light. The temperature of a hand laid gently on the skin, as if in tenderness.

“From the shoulder.”

Light drew a ring. A line of luminescence ran across the shoulderblades. And in the air a white number surfaced.

Shoulder width 41

The chest. The light circled, careful, over the breasts.

Chest 83

Waist. Hip. Thigh.

Numbers rose, one after another. Neck, upper arm, forearm, knee, ankle. From shoulder to the tips of the toes, the rings of light measured me out to the end.

And then — for an instant, a voice sounded inside me.

Too much. Not enough. Too thick. Too thin.

The voice that had bound me, ten years ago. The voice that had accused me on the scale each morning, reading the dial.

“Seri.”

Coh, quietly.

“Do not forget to breathe.”

The Net of Numbers

I had been holding my breath. The columns of numbers had been forming a net, closing around me.

I breathed out. Long. Slow. The shoulders dropped, a little.

Numbers were only numbers. Numbers did not judge. What judged was the one who fixed a meaning to the number. As Coh had said, in the Laws.

I looked at the numbers again.

Waist 71 Hip 89

These were only points of outline. Lines. Characters that joined together into the shape called me.

”…It’s all right,” I told myself.

“Mm,” Coh answered, quietly.

The numbers in the air burst at once into particles, swirled, gathered. And the shape of my body, a body of light, stood up in the air.

The Second Outline

It was the second time. I had seen my own outline once before. That time, surprise and fear had prevented me from looking properly.

Tonight, I would look.

The luminous body wore my shape. The outline of me, without clothes. The shoulders broad, the waist barely nipped. The line from waist to hip curving slowly. The chest, modestly but certainly, there.

It was not beautiful. It was not ugly. It only was. My shape.

“This is me. Now.”

“Yes. This is your outline, Seri.”

“It looks a little different from last time.”

“It does. You are alive every day. You eat, sleep, move, weep. The body changes with each of those. No two stories are the same.”

I nearly reached a hand toward the luminous outline. But I did not touch it. It seemed too frail a light; touching it might extinguish it.

“I’ll read now,” Coh said.

”—— Read.”

The particles gathered again. This time into a single sentence.

Your body has fought itself as an enemy for a long time. You may lay down arms now.

Surrender

I read it.

And my knees gave.

Folded is not the right word — the strength left them. I sat down on the floor. The rough grain of the tatami pressed into my palms.

Enemy.

That one word undid ten years of me at a stroke.

In my second year of secondary school, I had begun to regard my body as an enemy. Every time I saw myself in a mirror I felt disgust. Every time I dressed I dreaded the body showing through. I measured my waist with a tape and stood on the scale and rode the numbers up and down. Far more often than thinking not enough, I quailed at too much. In the mornings I mounted the scale first thing, and if the figure had risen, the day was broken.

I ate, and purged. I ate, and restricted. The cycle. Club, friends — all of it secondary. My head was forever packed with calories and measurements and the next morning’s weight. The body was my enemy. The vessel by which I punished me.

And now that body said — you may lay down arms now.

“You are weeping,” Coh said, quietly.

”…I know.”

The tears would not stop. Not the loud kind. Only something hot spilling silently from the backs of my eyes. It might have been ten years’ worth. Or older still — things I had stored away from before.

For the first time, I was looking at my body as a thing that was not my enemy. The luminous outline stood quietly before me. As if the adversary I had fought for so long had set down its weapon and was holding out its hand.

“Thank you.”

I did not know who I was thanking. My body, perhaps. My grandmother. Contura. Or all of them at once.

”…Have you accepted it,” Coh said.

“Yes. A little. Bit by bit. But right now, I can think so.”

The luminous outline brightened a shade. As if it had smiled.

The Core Number

But the story did not end there.

“Seri. There is one more thing to show you.”

Coh’s voice shifted. Inside the gentleness was something — a hesitation, perhaps.

The outline in the air changed. The particles of light sank beneath the skin. The outline was being seen through, from outside to inside. Beneath the skin, past the layer of fat, a different light — reddish — began to surface. Muscle. Skeleton.

“The outward shape is not all the outline. The body has a core.”

“A core —?”

“The Core Number. It shows the hidden bottom strength of muscle. A different axis from how thick or thin the body looks. Also called the fat-free mass index.”

In the air, a single number floated up.

Core Number 13.8

And beside it, in small letters, a note.

Your Core Number falls below the average for your age and sex.

My breath stopped.

Thirteen point eight. Below average.

In the very instant I had laid down arms against my body, the body now, from its depths, had been declared lacking in bottom strength.

“This — is low, isn’t it.”

“It is low. Seri, your muscle mass is clearly less than that of women your age.”

There was no consolation in Coh’s voice. Only honesty.

“It is the price of ten years at war with the body. A body that swings between eating and restricting loses muscle before it loses fat. Muscle is the easiest fuel the body can burn.”

I bit my lip.

I had only just accepted the body. I had only just been able to think this is not my enemy. And the moment I opened it, what came out was not salvation but a new verdict.

”…Then my body — is no good after all.”

“Seri.”

Coh’s voice sharpened.

“How many times must I say it. The numbers do not judge. The one judging is you.”

Freshness

I lifted my face.

Coh’s voice went on.

“Seri. The image you carry of your own body — a body that is no good, a weak body, an enemy body — all of that is an old story.”

“An old story.”

“Yes. The story of your body from ten years ago. Or five years ago, or three. You have carried that old story all this time. It clouded the eye you turned on your body.”

In the air two outlines appeared, side by side.

One was a faded outline, thin. Its lines were blurred, broken in places.

The other was the vivid blue luminous outline from tonight.

“The left is the old image of yourself you have held in your heart. The right is you, now. The high-freshness outline measured tonight.”

“Freshness —”

“The freshness of the story. The body’s story ages with time. It fades. The body of a month ago is already not the body of today. And the body of ten years ago is nowhere at all.”

I looked at the faded outline. It was, truly, the image of my body I had carried in my mind all this time. Enemy, ugly, punishable, too much, not enough — that body.

But it was not the body I had now.

“What you were fighting, Seri, was an old enemy that no longer exists.”

Coh said it quietly.

I peered at the faded outline. And I understood. It was the memory of my past bodies. The secondary-school body, the university body, the body of the years I was sick. The body I had hated most.

But my body now was not that body. It was another body — one that had lived ten years more, eaten, slept, moved, wept, laughed, all of it accumulated.

“The old story — you can let it go.”

”…Yes.”

“However.” Coh’s voice again. “Freshness fades unless you keep it up. In a month, when you try to recall tonight’s outline, that will no longer be you. So you must keep measuring. Keep reading your present self. That is the only way to keep freshness.”

“Keep measuring.”

“It is the same with reading others, Seri. You may not dwell forever on a story you have read once. People change. The next time you meet, they will be a different body. You must read it anew. That is the Reader’s honesty.”

The First Line

For a long time I sat on the floor and looked up at the two outlines.

The faded old outline. The vivid current one. And beneath them, the faint reddish light of muscle surfacing. Thirteen point eight — the low Core Number.

I had accepted the body. I could think this is not my enemy. But that body lacked a core.

Were accepting and changing different things, then.

“Coh.”

“Mm.”

“Is it all right — to accept it, and then change it.”

Coh paused.

”—— Yes. Indeed, it is the only way.”

“What do you mean.”

“To try to change without accepting is to punish the body. It becomes a war to correct a body that is no good. But to change after accepting is different. It is to say — with this body, I will write the next story.”

I turned those words over.

To accept and then change. Not to punish — to write.

“Sono-san always said it. Muscle is something you make. Learn the pleasure of making it.”

“Sono Kiryū. Her Core Number is above sixteen. Nearly the ceiling for a woman her age.”

“Sixteen —”

A figure from a different world than my thirteen point eight.

“Sono has a core.”

“Less that she has it than that she built it. Muscle stacked up over years of wrestling. The core is partly inborn — but it can also be made.”

It can be made.

I looked at my own thin core. It was not shame. Not anymore. The number 13.8 was not a sentence against me; it only pointed to the place from which I would begin. Accepting the body and changing the body were not at odds. A new story could only be written in a place you had accepted. As Coh had said in the fifth Law — the outline is not for changing alone. It is permitted to use it for accepting.

This was the first line of the next story.

“Coh.”

“Mm.”

“I’m going to build muscle. A little at a time. Slowly. But build it.”

”—— Yes.”

“To do it, I’ll ask Sono-san. Let me measure her body. Have her teach me how a core is built.”

I thought Coh laughed, a little.

“Good. That is a good plan.”

The outline in the air thinned. The light drew back.

“We’ll stop here for tonight. Measuring yourself is heavier on the body than measuring another.”

I nodded. And I fell into the bed.

I looked up at the ceiling. The rough grain of the tatami still in my palms. The dried track of tears on my cheek.

I laid a hand on my belly. Beneath the thin T-shirt. The place where a little muscle ought to be. The core of 13.8.

“Good night.”

The phone grew faintly warm. As if in answer.

Tomorrow was Saturday. Sono would be on the morning shift. I would speak to her first thing. To the person with the strong body, the body with a core.

I would show her my core-less body — not as a shame, but as this.

“Sono-san, teach me. What does it mean — to build a core?”

—