Koji Suzuki - Loop

Next Eliot pointed down with the same finger.

"And what do you think is below where you're standing?"

What could be beneath this little room? Earth, of course. But Kaoru wasn't about to give the obvious answer. He remained silent.

Eliot provided the answer to this question himself, too.

"A vast space."

Kaoru realized what he was being told: that he was suspended between water and space. But it still didn't make sense to him.

It would, however, explain some things. If what Eliot was saying was true, then the force of gravity in this area should be abnormally low. Gravity increases in spots with great mass underneath, and decreases in spots with low mass underneath. A vast empty space beneath his feet would account for the gravitational anomaly. It was persuasive.

Kaoru still couldn't believe it, though. Had he really reached his destination? If he had, if this was the place indicated on the fictional gravitational anomaly map, then he shouldn't be surprised that Eliot knew his name.

The old guy's trying to tell me that gravity is lower here. He knew I was trying to reach this place.

Confusion overwhelmed Kaoru, and he had to put his hand on the wall to steady himself. He was gasping for breath, but he finally managed to force out the question.

"Did you know I was coming?"

Eliot reached out a huge hand to keep Kaoru from toppling over, and said, in a voice full of charity, "Yes. You were meant to come here."

Kaoru felt hot. His fever must have come back.

"The only thing that wasn't predicted was that record-breaking storm."

Kaoru couldn't even tell any longer if he was burning up or freezing. He felt feverish, but chills were running over the surface of his body. He couldn't stay on his feet. Eliot's words were indistinct in his ears.

He brushed Eliot's hand away and tried to walk back to the bed under his own power. Halfway there he collapsed.

For the next three days Kaoru's task was to recover his strength. This expenditure of time, Eliot finally gave him to understand, wouldn't have been necessary had it not been for the rainstorm. Once his strength had been restored, Kaoru would be given the answers to all his questions. Until then, he was forced to recuperate in that little room, in ignorance of his real situation.

Eliot poked his head in once in a while, but mostly it was the nurse, Hana, who looked after Kaoru's health and other needs.

Kaoru thought Hana was a cute name: in Japanese, hana means flower. He asked her if it was her real name, but her only response was laughter. "You can call me that, at any rate." And it was easy to call her by it, once he got used to it.

Hana … It reminded him of delicate wild flowers blooming in a meadow-an image that fit the nurse to a "t".

Once Eliot had left them alone, Kaoru would barrage her with questions. What kind of facility is this place? Who is Eliot? Is there a purpose to all this?

He delivered himself of every question that occurred to him, with an effect that must have been overwhelming, but Hana simply smiled and held her peace, shaking her head to show that no answers would be forthcoming from her.

In face and body, Hana looked like a child. She couldn't have been more than four foot ten, and she had plump cheeks and big round eyes. If she'd worn her lustrous black hair down, sweeping back from her forehead to cover her whole back, she might have looked more grown up. As it was, she wore it tied tightly back, exposing her smooth, arcing forehead in a way that emphasized her youthfulness, obscuring her true age. The swelling of her breasts, too, was that of a half-grown girl, but he doubted she would get any bigger. Her small breasts, however, went well with her delicate Oriental features.

Kaoru was taken in by her childlike appearance, at first. He assumed that she wasn't answering any of his questions because she herself hadn't been let in on the truth. The innocence in her face seemed to indicate ignorance, so that even though she supplied none of the information he asked for, he felt no suspicion, no anger, toward her.

But Hana's skills as a nurse turned out to be such as to belie her appearance. Kaoru could recognize a good nurse when he saw one, having virtually lived in hospitals for almost as long as he could remember. It was as though she knew how to scratch him exactly where he itched. She was perfectly efficient, with not a movement wasted.

She had him hooked up to I.V.s, taking antibiotics, and trying to get sufficient sleep.

She was fairly taciturn as she went about her work. He thought he detected in her gestures an unnecessary briskness. He wondered, although it was unfair to her, if she was trying to minimize contact with his body. She had manual dexterity in line with her competence as a nurse, but sometimes her hands seemed to hesitate when it came time to touch him. And occasionally he caught her stealing glances at him, observing him as if he were something unnatural, alien. He noticed it more as time went on.

It was two days after he first met Hana. He heard the sounds that meant she was about to enter the room, and he pretended to be asleep, leaving his eyes open just a slit. He watched her gaze at him with curiosity as she quickly changed the I.V. bottle. It was almost a morbid curiosity he saw in her eyes-she was afraid of him and intrigued by him at the same time. This in turn piqued Kaoru's interest. What was she reacting to in him when she got that expression on her face?

She finished changing the bottle, and then bent over him, hips thrust back, observing him nervously. Surely she was convinced he was sleeping. But then why didn't she let down her guard?

Kaoru snapped open his eyes and grabbed Hana's arm. He hadn't intended to startle her, but that was the effect. She tried to let out a little scream, but couldn't find her voice. It died in the back of her throat, and all that escaped was a gasp.

"Why do you look at me like you're seeing a ghost?" Kaoru spoke slowly and distinctly. He wanted to calm her down, first of all. Her hand, the one Kaoru wasn't holding, was pressed to her cheek. She wasn't putting up any resistance worth the name: she didn't try to shake loose, didn't turn her head away from him. She swallowed her scream and looked down at him vacantly. She looked like she was about to burst into tears, a look that was a fine complement to her childlike features.

"I want to know. Why do you look at me like that?"

She shook her head sadly. "I'm sorry." The words seemed to come from the bottom of her heart, but they didn't answer his question. He could interpret them one of two ways. Either she was saying she was sorry for looking at him like he was a ghost, or she was apologizing for not being able to answer him. Or maybe it was both.

He let her go.

Her job was just to nurse him back to health. She'd been forbidden to open her mouth about anything else. Any explanation about the way she looked at him would necessarily involve explaining the whole situation he was in, and she couldn't do that. As Kaoru came to understand this, he decided to quit pressing her.

She remained standing next to his bed even after he released her.

"Isn't it difficult for you to talk?" Her sense of duty was showing through. Her first impulse was to check on her patient's condition.

"It's difficult for me not to talk. It's driving me crazy."

"Well, then, why don't you tell me about yourself?"

"What do you want to know?"

"Let's see… How about everything, starting with your birth?"

"And what good would it do you if I told you?"

"At the very least, I probably wouldn't look at you as if you were a ghost anymore."

In other words, she knew nothing about him. If she knew more, maybe she'd be able to look on him as a fellow human.