Koji Suzuki - Loop

Kaoru followed her with his eyes, but the expected sound of running water never came. It seemed that Reiko just didn't want to be there. Maybe because the topic of Kaoru's mother had come up.

The Metastatic Human Cancer Virus can also be spread through contact with lymphocytes, the attending physician had said. Kaoru's first fears had been for his mother. He imagined they'd ceased sexual relations as soon as they'd been made aware of the risk, but there was a good chance she'd already contracted it by that point. Recently, Kaoru had finally been able to prevail on his mother to have her blood tested.

The results were positive. She had yet to manifest any symptoms, but it was a fact that the MHC virus had already attached itself to her DNA. In other words, the retrovirus's base sequence had been incorporated into the chromosomes in her cells.

At the moment, the process was paused at that step, but at any time her cells might begin to turn cancerous. In fact, there was every chance that it had already begun, and it just wasn't yet apparent on the surface.

The mechanism that determined when and how the provirus attached to the chromosomes would turn the cell cancerous was not yet understood, so the disease's progress from this point could not be predicted with any accuracy. But if it moved on to the next step, then his mother's cells would start producing new copies of the MHC virus.

Even if I get sick, I don't want to have surgery, she'd proclaimed, as soon as she'd heard the results. Since there was no way to head off metastasis, surgery was doomed from the start. All it could do was slow the progress of the disease, not cure it. After watching her husband suffer, she had a strong aversion to seeing her own body carved away piece by piece.

But what bothered Kaoru most was seeing his mother stray into mysticism, thinking that if modern medicine couldn't cure her, she'd try to find her own miracle elsewhere. The person she really wanted to save was not herself, although she knew she'd someday come down with cancer, but her husband, in the last stages of his.

With a passion that wouldn't blink at selling her soul to the devil, she started reading old writings on North American Indians. Her desk was stacked high with primary sources sent from who knew where.

The mythical world holds the key to a cure for cancer, she insisted, almost deliriously.

Again from the bathroom came the purposeful sound of running water. Ryoji reacted by glancing toward the bathroom.

"My mother's a carrier," said Kaoru in a low voice.

"Oh. So are you…?"

Ryoji asked his question with no emotion whatsoever, and Kaoru slowly shook his head. He'd had his blood tested two months ago, and the results had come back negative.

Hearing this, Ryoji actually laughed. Not necessarily out of relief that Kaoru was uninfected, though. Rather, it was a scornful, even pitying cackle. Kaoru glared at him.

"What's so funny about that?"

"I just feel sorry for you."

"For me?" Kaoru pointed at himself, and Ryoji nodded his head twice.

"Yeah. You're strong and healthy, so you're probably going to live a long time. Just thinking about it…"

Under his motorcycle-loving father's influence, Kaoru had taken up motocross, and under Hideyuki's tutelage he'd improved his showing with every race he'd entered. He'd grown up muscular and fit in a way that nobody could have predicted from a childhood spent on a computer from morning to night. Kaoru's muscles were visible even through his T-shirt, and yet this scrawny kid was pitying him. To Kaoru it sounded like he was laughing at something Kaoru had inherited from his father, and he fought back vigorously.

"Living's not as bad a thing as you seem to think it is."

Part of him could understand Ryoji's feelings, of course. Kaoru didn't know when or how he'd been infected, but here he was at age twelve- between surgery, chemotherapy, and repeated hospitalizations, his life had been nothing but an endless round of suffering. Kaoru could see why he'd want to generalize from his experience and believe that everybody must be feeling the same way.

"Yeah, but everybody dies." Ryoji turned his hollow gaze toward the ceiling. Kaoru no longer felt like arguing with him.

Death filled everything, everywhere. There in front of him was that bald little head. It was a solemn fact.

Nobody who hasn't experienced it can understand the misery of chemotherapy. Overcome with violent nausea, you lose your appetite, and anything you do manage to eat, you bring up again soon enough; you can't get any sleep. That was Ryoji's life, and that was how his life was going to end in the not-too-distant future. Kaoru knew it. What could he possibly say in the face of that?

Kaoru felt tired. Not physical fatigue. It was like his heart was blocked and screaming. He wanted to soar; he wanted to laugh, freely and from the heart. He wanted to spend time in close bodily contact with another human being.

"I never wanted to be born in the first place," Ryoji said, ignoring Kaoru's unresponsiveness. At that very moment, Reiko stepped out of the bathroom and into the reverberations of Ryoji's statement. Without the slightest change in her expression she crossed the room and went out into the hall.

Why did you have me? Perhaps she left because she couldn't bear her son's accusations, or perhaps she simply had an errand to run. There was no way of telling.

But Kaoru had been paying attention to her movements. And now two questions raised their heads. First of all, was Reiko infected with the MHC virus? And, second, by what route did Ryoji become infected with it? These were questions Kaoru couldn't come right out and ask, as they touched on private family matters.

"Well, I think I'll be on my way now." He couldn't be by Ryoji's side any longer. Plus, he wanted to follow Reiko.

Kaoru left the boy's bed and opened the door to the hallway. He wanted to come into closer contact with Reiko, both bodily and with what was inside her. Maybe his interest in her amounted to a kind of love; he couldn't tell. He felt that she was urging him out of the cramped hospital room and into the world outside.

Compelled by this stimulus, Kaoru wandered the long corridors of the hospital, looking for Reiko.

He had an idea where she was, or at least he thought he did.

My only peace these days comes from going to the very highest point in the hospital and looking out over the city.

A few evenings before, Kaoru had seen her standing outside the restaurant on the top floor of the hospital, nose pressed against a window, and he'd asked her what she was doing. She'd explained her actions with those words.

The sun would be setting soon, silhouetting the skyscrapers in this subcenter of the city, bringing them into beautiful relief. Kaoru knew that this was her favourite time of day for gazing at the city.

He got off the elevator on the seventeenth floor, and when he stepped into the hallway and looked left he could see a woman standing there, leaning against a pillar. Kaoru approached her without speaking, until they were standing side by side.

The setting sun streaked Reiko's face with crimson. Her cheeks glowed seductively as they reflected the sky's shifting hues.

She knew as soon as he came up to her; she could see his reflection in the glass. She addressed his reflection with a faint smile.

"I'm sorry."

Kaoru couldn't figure out what she was apologizing for. Maybe she was recognizing his skill in tutoring her difficult-to-deal-with son, but in that case a thank-you would have been more appropriate. Kaoru was embarrassed for a response.

He decided not to ask why she'd apologized. "You really like high places, don't you?"