Loop

by Kōji Suzuki

  The boy turned a mocking gaze on the panicking adults and continued to kick and dangle his legs in his usual way.

  As soon as they saw Ryoji, the guards stopped in their tracks and began trying to talk him down.

  "Calm down."

  "Don't do it."

  "Come down from there."

  "Ryo!" Reiko croaked, not at her son but at the narrow square of ceiling above him.

  Ryoji seemed to notice Kaoru standing behind his mother. Their eyes met. Then Ryoji rolled his eyes back in his head until only the whites were visible, and leaned back. Kaoru's last glimpse of Ryoji's eyes showed him something no longer alive.

  The next instant, Ryoji threw himself toward the sunset behind him and disappeared.

  15

  Kaoru sat next to the bathtub with his hand in the running water, adjusting the temperature so that it would be on the tepid side. At first the water felt a bit hot to the touch, but as he grew accustomed to it he decided it was close to body temperature. Then he got in and sank back until the water was up to his shoulders. He soaked a while. Once the last droplet had fallen from the tap, the bathroom was silent. It was unusual for him to take a bath on a weekday afternoon like this.

  He lay back until his head rested on the rim of the tub, closed his eyes, and pricked up his ears. He hugged his knees and curled into the foetal position. He had the feeling that his heartbeat was being picked up by the water, making wavelets in the tub.

  He tried to empty his heart, but it was no use. The same scene kept replaying in his mind.

  It was nearly a week since Ryoji had jumped to his death from the hospital emergency stairs.

  Help me. Help Ryoji.

  Ryoji had ended his young life before Kaoru's very eyes, forsaking his mother's wishes.

  The sight of Ryoji jumping had made a strong impact on Kaoru. The moments just before and after, the empty look in Ryoji's eyes as he leaned backward, Reiko's scream. The images, the sounds, the most fragmentary details were tragically etched into Kaoru's brain. They'd appeared in his dreams every night for the last week.

  Immediately after Ryoji had jumped, Kaoru and Reiko and the others had rushed to the window to look out. They could see the boy's body twisted unnaturally from its collision with the concrete. They could see rivulets of blood, all flowing in the same direction, shining reddish-black in the setting sun. Reiko fainted on the spot; Kaoru picked her up. He made arrangements for Ryoji's body to be taken into the emergency ward, but he already knew just by looking that it was too late. The chances of surviving a twelve-story drop onto a concrete surface were virtually nil.

  Sometimes he dreamed about the stain Ryoji's blood left on the concrete. The stain was still there, in a corner of the hospital courtyard. The boy's life was gone, but it had turned into a shadow which lingered on the surface of the walkway. Kaoru couldn't make himself go near it.

  Ryoji's suicide was an impulsive act, but there was something premeditated about it, too. When he made his move he'd dashed straight for the window in the emergency stairwell. He must have known the windows there were the only ones that opened from the inside. He must have had his eye on them for some time.

  The motive for his suicide was obvious. He'd finished the scintigram, and was now facing his fourth round of chemotherapy. He must have been filled with revulsion at the thought of that miserable struggle starting again. And it was a struggle against an enemy he couldn't defeat. Sooner or later, his life would end, and until then there would be only agony. He must have begun to weigh the question of which was better, to prolong his life a little and thereby ensure more suffering for himself, or to cut his life short and spare himself the pain. Perhaps he'd taken into consideration the way his mother suffered watching him.

  With the MHC virus ravaging his body, Ryoji had chosen death. Kaoru could understand his feelings, could understand them painfully well. This was something that touched him-a catastrophe that would befall him in the not-too-distant future. This was an enemy Kaoru himself would have to fight. He understood Ryoji's act.

  But that didn't mean he wanted to end up the same way.

  You 've got to concentrate all your intelligence on confronting this enemy that wants to destroy your body, your youth.

  Those were his father's words. If he wanted to escape death, he'd have to fight, and he'd have to win. And he had only one weapon, just like his father had told him: his intelligence.

  Kaoru sank deeper into the bathtub. Now the water was up to his earlobes. Do I have that kind of strength?

  The more he thought about it the stranger it seemed. All these events connected with the MHC virus springing from somewhere close to him, closing in on his body as if he'd been assigned to save the world.

  You 're overestimating yourself.

  Unable to stand the heat any longer, he got out of the tub.

  Saving the world actually had a nice ring to it. He wouldn't mind looking like a hero, playing at saviour. But he had a personal matter he had to attend to first. Nothing world-class-something far more local in scale. This evening, for the first time in a week, he had a rendezvous planned with Reiko.

  He wiped himself clean of perspiration and then put on a brand-new T-shirt and jeans.

  He hadn't seen Reiko since Ryoji's funeral.

  Since then, she'd refused even to meet him. Finally, she'd offered to speak with him for an hour this evening. This would be his only chance. Kaoru would have only tonight to find out why Reiko had closed her heart to him.

  16

  Reiko's condo was on the edge of a wooded hilltop. The building was an ostentatious one, three stories, red brick exterior.

  Kaoru went around to the entrance, pressed the buttons for her room number, and waited for a response. The speaker came to life and he heard Reiko's voice softly say, "Come in." A moment later, the door slid open.

  He'd already assumed that Reiko was financially comfortable due to the fact that she'd been able to put Ryoji in a private room at the hospital. As he walked down the carpeted hallway to the elevator, he saw his assumption borne out.

  Of course, he'd never tried to find out where the money came from. He never asked, and she never volunteered the information. However, she'd hinted that her husband had been socially successful. He'd been older than her; he'd died of cancer a few years ago.

  Hers was a corner apartment on the third floor. Before he could even ring the bell, the door opened. She must have been watching through the peephole, estimating his time of arrival.

  It had been a week since he'd seen her. She opened the door a crack and stuck her head out. They were face to face. Her hair was combed back and held in place with an elastic band. He noticed a few strands of white.

  "Come in." Her voice seemed to recede within itself.

  "Long time no see."

  She showed him into her living room, where he sat on a couch. For a while neither spoke. Kaoru felt uncomfortable. He didn't know why she was acting so cold toward him, and not knowing that, he didn't know what he should say or how to start.

  Reiko wordlessly placed a glass of iced barley tea before him, and then sat down facing him.

  "I've been wanting to see you." He reached out for her, but she avoided his touch. She sank back into the sofa, maximizing the distance between them.

  The same thing had happened at the funeral. Flattering himself that he was the only one who could heal the pain of losing her only son, Kaoru had tried to put his arm around Reiko's black-clad shoulders, but she'd rejected the gesture, twisting away from him. Inexperienced with women he may have been, but even Kaoru could get the message if it was repeated enough times. But he couldn't fathom the reason behind her persistent refusals. One day they'd been in intimate physical contact, and the next she recoiled from his touch.

  Reiko hugged herself tightly, rubbing her arms with her hands as if chilly. But the air conditioning was at a reasonable level, and the room was far from cold. In fact, it was still too hot for Kaoru.

  He observ
ed her exterior, hoping to understand the pain in her heart, hoping that if she'd closed herself off to him out of anguish at losing her son, he might yet find a way to comfort her.

  He wanted to say something that would give her courage, ease her heart, but the only words that came to him sounded so weak and forced, even to himself, that he was embarrassed to speak them. "Cheer up"-he couldn't bring himself to say that if his life depended on it. And so there was no way to start a conversation.

  "How long do you intend to sit there without saying anything?" She said this coolly, looking at the floor. This bothered Kaoru-she'd made it so he couldn't say anything, and now she was reproaching him for his silence.

  "Knock it off already," he finally managed to say.

  "You…"

  She held her head in her hands and shuddered violently. She was crying: every now and then he could hear a sob.

  "I want to relieve your sadness somehow, but I don't know how to do that."

  Reiko groaned and looked up at him, biting her lower lip. Her eyes were red from weeping, and her cheeks were wet with tears.

  "I wish I'd never met you."

  Kaoru was shocked.

  "So you hate me now?"

  That just can't be, he wanted to shout. If she really hated him she wouldn't have consented to meet him. She could have spared herself this awkward scene simply by continuing to ignore his phone calls. And yet she hadn't: she'd set up this tete-a-tete, albeit on the condition that it last only an hour. There had to be something she wanted to talk to him about, some legitimate reason for meeting him.

  "He knew." Her voice was suddenly, unexpectedly calm.

  "What?"

  "About you and me."

  "That we're in love?"

  "In love? So that's what being in love looks like?" A self-mocking smile appeared on her face.

  Kaoru sat bolt upright, startled. What being in love looks like?

  "What did he know?"

  "What you and I were doing in that room."

  She couldn't go on. Kaoru swallowed and said, "He couldn't have known."

  "He was a sharp boy. He picked up on it. We were so stupid. How could we… how could we do something like that?" Her heart was starting to crumble.

  "But…"

  "He wrote it in his note."

  "Huh?"

  "What do you think he wrote?"

  Kaoru swallowed again, bracing himself.

  Reiko imitated her son's voice. '"I'll be gone, so you two knock yourselves out.'"

  Oh, no.

  Kaoru thought of Ryoji in his swim cap, smiling, standing by the side of the pool in his baggy trunks, repeating the words over and over. I'll be gone, so you two knock yourselves out. I'll be gone, so you two knock yourselves out. I'll be gone, so you two knock yourselves out.

  They'd taken every precaution. They'd only been together when Ryoji was gone for two-hour tests. Even then, the act itself had been over in less than ten minutes. After it had been accomplished, they'd spent the rest of the time on the edge of tears, eyeing each other with lethargy or regret. Kaoru would sometimes kiss away Reiko's tears and whisper, "I love you."

  Reiko rocked back and forth as if having a seizure, as if reading Ryoji's suicide note had stolen her reason.

  Kaoru let her weep for a while. There was nothing else he could do. She'd calm down eventually, once she'd cried herself out.

  He tried to imagine things from Ryoji's perspective. His mother had seized on the occasions of his tests, moments when he'd been in the worst pain, to abandon herself to pleasure. To Ryoji it must have amounted to betrayal. His mother was supposed to be fighting this illness side by side with him, but instead, she'd sent him off to fight it alone while she got her kicks. No wonder he felt disillusioned. No wonder he'd lost the will to fight. Kaoru had assumed that Ryoji's suicide had been a form of surrender to the illness, but the reality turned out to be something else again.

  Up to now, Kaoru had grieved relatively little over Ryoji's death, knowing that the poor kid was destined to die soon anyway. His time would come soon enough, so if he wanted to shorten its remaining length himself, maybe it was better that way. Kaoru had almost felt relief.

  But if Ryoji's mother's actions had triggered his suicide… Ryoji's thinking suddenly seemed a little more complicated than Kaoru had imagined.

  No doubt Reiko felt the same. She'd paid extra for a private room, she'd hired a tutor on the assumption that her son would return to school someday, and she'd generally tried to show an enthusiasm for life. When you know somebody's going to die, love is letting that person see that you're willing to fight right by his side. She'd wanted to show Ryoji that she would stick by him until the very last moment, but instead she'd simply sped him on his way.

  No wonder Ryoji had despaired. And now Reiko was wracked with remorse for having driven her son to that despair, to his death. She'd turned the brunt of her rage on Kaoru, her partner in crime. Kaoru finally understood why she'd fled when he'd tried to put his arm around her at the funeral. Standing in front of Ryoji's memorial tablet, she didn't want to be seen touching him even for an instant.

  What Kaoru needed was time to think. He was still young-he didn't know how to deal with something like this. It would've been easier if he'd wanted to end their relationship. But he had no intention of doing that. He desperately wanted to find some way to fix things, to overcome this seemingly hopeless situation.

  "Can you give me some time?" He decided to be honest with his feelings. He wanted to wait a while, then consider rationally what they should do.

  "No." She shook her head violently.

  "But I don't know what to do."

  "Neither do I. That's why…"

  Therein lay his salvation. She hadn't called him here today to put an end to their relationship once and for all. She was admitting that she herself was lost, that she didn't know what to do. She couldn't make this decision alone.

  He'd promised only to stay for an hour, but outside the window the autumn sunset was already upon them. It had been the rainy season, early summer, when he'd come to know Reiko. They'd only been together for three months. It felt longer to Kaoru.

  The majority of their time together that evening was spent in silence. Sometimes the gaps when they couldn't think of what to say lasted ten minutes or more. But still, Reiko never told him to go home. Kaoru thought he sensed something unnatural in her attitude. Several times she'd be on the verge of saying something, only to bite the words back.

  "Reiko, you're hiding something from me, aren't you?"

  This made up her mind for her, and she looked up at him. Her expression challenged him.

  "I think I'm pregnant."

  It took him a few seconds to process what she was saying.

  "You're pregnant?"

  "Yes."

  Their eyes met, and he knew she was telling the truth.

  The shock ran up and down his backbone. He simply couldn't grasp this. Death and birth had been almost literally bumping elbows in that little hospital room. The world's cruel irony rankled him. He felt the presence of an ill will invisible to the eye.

  "I see."

  He heaved a deep sigh.

  "What do you think I should do?" Reiko asked.

  "I want you to have it."

  Saying this, Kaoru leaned forward. He hadn't just been playing when he started this relationship. If there was a child on the way, then he was prepared to raise it-he wanted them to live together.

  "What are you saying?!"

  Reiko took a newspaper from the magazine rack by the couch and threw it at him. It was this morning's edition.

  He knew what she was trying to tell him without even looking at it. He'd read the article this morning.

  The article accompanied a photograph of a stand of desert trees in Arizona, in America. The trees had been discovered by chance along US Highway 180 between Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. According to the article, most of the plants, short trees and shrubs growing low to the brown
earth were covered from their trunks to the tips of their leaves with strangely shaped swellings. Of course there are relatively common plant viruses that cause unnatural growth or withering, but these specimens suggested a viral infection on a scale never before seen. The very shapes of the trunks, branches, and leaves had been altered. All signs pointed to the work of a virus. In fact, some were theorizing that the culprit was a mutated version of the MHC virus. Not content to ravage the globe's human population, it seemed that the virus had extended its reach to encompass not only animals but even plants. The sight of these grotesque trees seemed to signal the end of the world. A gloomy article, ending on a doomsday note.

  Reiko was a carrier; she just hadn't gotten sick yet. The probability was high that the child within her would be born infected with the cancer virus, too. And if that child were to be born into a world in which the cancer threatened every living thing…

  It was all too easy for Kaoru to say that he wanted her to have the baby. She lashed out at him.

  "You tell me, where in this world is there any room for hope?"

  In the Loop, the ring virus had come in the end to have sway over every life-form pattern, hounding them all to extinction. Kaoru was beginning to know how that felt.

  It's starting. Reality is coming to take after the Loop.

  "Just give me some time, okay?"

  He was forced to beg. He couldn't come to any conclusions right now.

  "Will a way open for us if we put off deciding? I'm sick and tired of this. Disgusted. I don't want to have an abortion. Can't you see that? It's like this child has come to take the place of the one I lost. Of course I want to have it, to raise and protect it. But I just can't, not when I think that this child might meet the same fate. To be born into the world only to suffer, to die so young… Help me, please. I don't know what to do anymore!"