Chapter 8. The Fading of Freshness

I

A muggy Tuesday near the end of July, evening.

I was straightening the brochures at reception when the entrance bell rang. I looked up. Rin Suzuki was standing there.

”…Good evening.”

The bristling voice of three weeks ago was gone. In its place was a tired, unmoored tone. The blazer was the same one, but the cuffs of her shirt had discoloured a little with sweat. She had come straight from school, it seemed.

“Rin-chan.”

“I — came again.”

She kicked off her shoes and stepped up. Her gait was different from before. She was favouring the right ankle, only slightly, shifting her weight onto it one deliberate step at a time.

“Your leg — what happened?”

For an instant Rin considered lying, and stopped. ”…I may have run too much.”

I set down the brochures. Three weeks ago I had measured this girl in the Circle, told her type, read the insight: legs for running. Since then, I had assumed she would not come back. Coh had said the same — that she would mistake one reading for enough.

But she had come. And with an injured leg.

“Your mother?”

“Today I came alone. It’s a secret from Mum. She’d only try to stop me.”

My eyes went to the door at the back of reception. The door that led down to the Circle. Three weeks ago, I had raised Rin’s outline there.

“Rin-chan. Will you tell me a little? First, here, sit down.”

I indicated the sofa. Rin sat down readily. Not huddled against the armrest building a wall out of herself, the way she had before — in the middle, knees together.

II

Rin’s story went like this.

On the train home that day, she had turned the phrase a type for running over and over in her head. Seri-san had said so. My legs were built to run. They are still mid-stride — a shape on its way.

Then I should run — that was what Rin had thought.

From the next day she had begun to run. On the way home from school, on the riverbank near her house. Thirty minutes at first. An hour within a week. Two hours in the second week. Every day, without rest.

“I thought maybe I’d get thin. Because they were legs for running — if I ran, maybe I’d become that type.”

I felt the bottom of my chest go cold. She had taken the insight as a prescription. She had swallowed a word about her quality as though it were an order.

“But I didn’t get thin.” Rin laced her fingers on her knees. “My thighs even felt tighter, I think. My calves got hard. Then my shins started to hurt. Yesterday I couldn’t even get down the stairs properly.”

“And today?”

“A little better. But it still twinges when I walk.”

I asked where the pain was. The lower inside of the shin — the place beginner runners sometimes injure. I couldn’t make a medical claim. But I knew it was a part that needed rest.

“Listen, Rin-chan. Three weeks ago, I said this, didn’t I. Your legs were built to run far. They are still mid-stride — a shape still on its way.”

”…Yes.”

“That wasn’t me telling you to run.”

Rin looked up. ”…It wasn’t?”

“No. I had only read what shape your body was in. That you had the quality for running. But quality and obligation are different things. Whether you run or not is something you decide.”

Rin went quiet. She laid her forehead on her knees. The school skirt creased.

“Then what was I running for?”

I could not answer that at once.

III

In my pocket Contura grew warm. I leaned aside and glanced at the screen. Coh was there.

“Seri.” Coh’s voice resonated behind my temples; Rin couldn’t hear. “There’s another thing you must tell her.”

“What?”

“She took the insight of three weeks ago as gospel. There are two reasons. The first is that you let the quality sound like a prescription. The second is —”

Coh paused in the screen.

”— the insight of three weeks ago was the story of the Rin of three weeks ago. It is not the story of the Rin of today.”

I turned Coh’s words over.

“Freshness.”

“Yes. A story has freshness. The body changes every day. What you ate, how much you moved, how long you slept, what you worried over, what you laughed at. All of it rewrites the body’s outline by a little. To speak today’s self in the numbers of three days ago — it’s like reading someone else’s letter.”

Someone else’s letter. The metaphor took my breath.

A letter written by the Rin of three weeks ago. Today’s Rin is reading it and mistaking it for her own. But it was written by a different Rin. Not by the Rin who stands here today on a painful ankle.

“Coh — what does an old story look like?”

“It fades. The light of the outline thins and yellows. Like the type of an old book sunburnt brown. It can still be read. But it isn’t the true colour of the person now.”

I looked at Rin. She still had her forehead on her knees.

“Listen, Rin-chan.” I said. “The outline you saw here, three weeks ago — do you remember it?”

”…I remember. Legs for running.”

“That was the story of your body three weeks ago. It isn’t the body of you now.”

Rin raised her face. Blank. ”…I’m different now?”

“You must be. If you’ve been running every day. If your shins hurt. The body has already changed by the amount you ran. The one reading from three weeks ago won’t catch up to you now.”

Rin laid a hand on her sore ankle. She looked as if she were learning for the first time that an invisible change lived there.

IV

“Shall we measure again? Your outline. Now.”

Rin hesitated. ”…But you just said I don’t have to run. If it’s going to say a type for running again, there’s no point in —”

“It might not. You might have changed. Let’s look.”

The Circle, below. Low light. Mirrors on one wall. The same quiet room as three weeks ago, the two of us alone. But the density of the air was different. Last time Rin had stood there bristling with thorns. Today the thorns had been pulled and tiredness had settled in their place.

Rin stood on the platform. She pulled off her socks. The same pale-pink nails as that day. But the right ankle was a little swollen.

“Arms out a little. Yes. Easy.”

The rings of light began to move.

— Hm?

I caught my breath. The pale blue particles, which should have been the same as before, looked slightly clouded. No — it wasn’t the particles that were clouded. Contura was trying to lay the current measurement over the previous record, and the two outlines were interfering.

“Coh — this.”

“The old record is still there. Faded. That is the fading of freshness. Erase the old one. Raise the new.”

I worked Contura. I dissolved Rin’s previous outline. The light withdrew from the air. Rin looked a little anxious.

“It’s all right. I’ll raise you again, now.”

The rings of light circled Rin’s body afresh. Calves, knees, thighs. Waist, hips, chest. Shoulders, arms, neck. And in the air, Rin’s current outline stood up.

The same pale blue as before. But I could see it at once.

The change was subtle. But it was there.

The spring of the thighs had hardened. The muscles had stiffened into rididity. The line of the calf had sharpened, and around the knee, a tired, sluggish light had pooled. The shoulders — were further forward than before. She must have been leaning into the run. The shoulders had memorised that distortion.

And the thing that drew the eye most was the ankle.

Three weeks ago the ankle had been thin and supple. Now the right one alone was a little swollen. The light there was reddish. It looked as if it were pulsing. The colour of pain.

“Here.” I laid a finger beside the luminous ankle. “This hurts, doesn’t it.”

Rin’s breath caught. ”…How do you know?”

“Your body is saying it. Three weeks ago, this wasn’t this shape. Now it’s holding pain. The trace of your running every day.”

I had Contura call the previous record back, faintly. A half-transparent, faded-colour Rin of three weeks ago. Beside her, the newly measured Rin. I set the two side by side.

Rin compared her two outlines.

”…This is me? Both of these are me?”

“Both are you. The you of three weeks ago, and the you of now. The same you — but not the same.”

V

Coh was floating a sentence above the new outline. The numbers in the air burst, swirled, gathered, drew a line, became letters.

Feet that have begun to move. That is the you of now.

I read it aloud. To Rin.

“Feet that have begun to move,” Rin repeated. “Not legs for running?”

“No. The you of three weeks ago had legs for running. As potential. But the you of now has actually begun to move. You ran. That fact — that you moved — is the story of you now.”

“But it hurts. My shins, my ankle.”

“That it hurts is your body saying it wants to stop and rest. The feet that began to move are now saying they’d like to rest a little.”

Rin stared at the luminous ankle.

“I kept thinking I had to run. Because they were legs for running, I had to run. I thought if I didn’t run every day I’d go back to being just thick legs.”

“You won’t go back. A body that has moved once is different from one that hasn’t. But moving on and resting are not at odds. What your body is saying now is two stories: the story that it moved, and the story that it would like to rest a little.”

Rin cried. This time she did not hold it back. Three weeks of fatigue, of urgency, of confusion, bled into the tears. I said nothing. I stood beside her. The luminous outline swayed the same way Rin’s shoulders were shaking.

VI

When the tears had run their course. Rin wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her blazer.

“Seri-san.”

“Mm.”

“I had it wrong. I thought that once you read it for me, that was my story forever. That a type for running was a label that would never change for the rest of my life.”

“Mm.”

“But it isn’t, is it. My body changes every day. The type for running from three weeks ago is already old. Today’s me is a different shape — I’ve moved, and I’m a little hurt.”

“That’s right. A story is written on and on. The page you wrote once is not the last page. Tomorrow’s you will be different from today’s again.”

Rin looked back and forth between the two outlines in the air — the faded one of three weeks ago and the vivid one of now. Then she looked up at the old one and smiled a little. As if saying goodbye.

“Then, Seri-san — will you read me again? When my body changes, by the amount it’s changed.”

“Of course. Whenever you think you want it read.”

”…Can I come next week?”

Hearing those words, I knew my premonition of three weeks ago had been wrong. She had not thought once is enough. She had said again.

“Yes. I’ll be here.”

Rin smiled a little. A calm, small smile — a different person from the bristling girl of three weeks ago.

“Um, Seri-san. I’ll hold back on the running. When my shins heal, whether I run again is something I’ll decide.”

“Good. Do that.”

“I don’t hate my body anymore.” Rin said. “When you said a type for running, I liked it a little. But when I ran too much and it hurt, I almost hated it again. But now, reading it like this — I know the pain is just the body saying it wants to rest. And I could like it again.”

“To like it, and then not, and then like it again — that’s normal. Because it’s a story. Because it has freshness. Because a new page is written every day.”

Rin nodded. And at the door, on her way out, she turned back.

“Seri-san — do you read your own body?”

The question stopped me.

”…Sometimes.”

“Sometimes might not be enough.” Rin said it seriously. “I ran every day and my body changed. Your body must change every day too. If you don’t keep reading it, Seri-san — your body will fade too.”

The words of a sixteen-year-old dropped to the floor of my chest.

VII

After Rin left. I was alone in the Circle.

Coh peered out from the screen.

“Seri.”

“Mm.”

“How is your own freshness?”

I choked on the answer. For three weeks I had not measured my own body. I had believed, as it stood, the story I had read once. Broad shoulders, shallow waist, a trunk short on power. I had accepted it as my type and left it there.

Just as Rin had been bound by the insight of three weeks ago. I too had been bound by my one reading.

”…I haven’t measured. Not once in three weeks.”

“I thought not. The fourth Law — do not falsify freshness. Not only of others. Of your own.”

I looked at myself in the mirror. Broad shoulders, shallow waist. The same as three weeks ago, it seemed. But it could not be the same. In these three weeks I had worried about Rin. There had been nights I couldn’t sleep. There had been days I trained with Sono and been sore. All of it must be scored into my body.

“Let’s measure.” I said. My own outline. At current freshness.

The rings of light circled my body. A different me from the one I had read once, three weeks ago, stood up. The hardness in my shoulders had increased a little. A sediment of fatigue had gathered around my waist. But — the lay of muscle was a shade more solid than before; the core had thickened. The trace of training with Sono these three weeks.

A new sentence surfaced.

Your body has begun to learn to keep being read. It is still mid-way. But it will not go back.

I looked at that sentence. And smiled a little. I couldn’t show it to Rin — my story. But it was certainly there. The story my body was telling me, at current freshness.

“Coh. I have to keep measuring my own body too, periodically. The same way I do for Rin.”

“The same way, yes. Before a Reader reads another’s story, she must have her own latest page open. If she is bound by her own old story, she will not notice the old stories of others either.”

I nodded. Not a one-time diagnosis, but an ongoing relation. With Rin. With myself.

VIII

When I came back up, a summer shower had just passed over. Puddles on the streets of Aoyama held the streetlamps’ light. The air, which had been close, had cleared a little.

In my pocket, Contura grew faintly warm. It felt to me as if it were remembering next week’s promise to Rin.

Freshness. The fading of story. One reading is not enough to keep up. The body writes a new page every day. Old pages yellow, the edges of their type softening. To believe them as they are is to be bound by the past self — by the words of others in the past.

The next time Rin comes. I will read her current outline again. And the time after that, and the time after that. Each time it changes, reading it anew. That is the Reader’s office. Not a one-time diagnosis. A relation of witnessing change together.

I walked toward Higashi-Nakano station. Before next week, I would measure my own outline once more. Keep its freshness. As that child had told me. If you don’t keep reading it, it’ll fade.

On the train home, I thought. When Rin next came, she might say: Seri-san — I want to be this.

A self she wanted to become. The distance between her present self and her future self. Coh had said an outline could be drawn of that. The Goal Outline.

And I — I too had a self I wanted to become. Build a core. Become a Reader. Be reconciled with my own body. Those wantings seemed to glimmer faintly ahead of me.

The next story would begin from there.

—