Koji Suzuki - Loop

And in that huge limestone cavern lived an ancient tribe of people… Kaoru could see it now, a close-up look at an extreme longevity zone.

Even more than before, Kaoru wanted to go there.

Machiko yawned and mumbled, "That sounds strange though-if it's nothing, how can it be there?" She got up from her chair.

"See, Mom, you're interested in the place, too. If low gravity and longevity are connected, then maybe there's a city of ancient people there, cut off from civilization. It's at least possible, right?"

Kaoru was fishing for a response, based on his knowledge of Machiko's interest in North American folk tales, especially Native American myths. He figured that he stood a better chance of getting what he wanted if he got Machiko to go to bat for him than if he just blurted it out himself.

Just as he'd hoped, Machiko's interest seemed to grow suddenly. "Well, it is close to a Navajo reservation."

"See?"

Kaoru knew-Machiko had told him-that there were tribes who had made their homes in the wildest deserts and ravines, and whose lives today were not all that different from the way they'd lived in ancient times. He hadn't heard of any noted for their longevity, but he knew that if he suggested it without really suggesting it, he could pique Machiko's curiosity.

"Hey, kiddo, what are you trying to pull here?"

Hideyuki had evidently guessed what Kaoru was going for. Kaoru shot a meaningful glance at his mother.

"It'd be interesting to go there," Machiko said.

She sounded less like she was pleading Kaoru's case than like she'd become interested herself.

"Yeah, let's go!" Kaoru said, expectantly.

"Four Corners, eh? Talk about coincidences."

"Huh?" Kaoru looked at his father. "Well, in a little while-next summer, maybe, or the summer after that-it looks like my work is going to take me there."

Kaoru yelped in delight. "Really?"

"Yeah, I'll have to be at some laboratories in New Mexico, in Los Alamos and Santa Fe."

Kaoru clapped his palms together as if in prayer. "Take me! Please?"

"Want to come too, Machi?"

"Of course."

"Well, then I guess we'll all go."

"That's a promise, okay?" Kaoru held out paper and pen. If he was bound by a contract, Hideyuki couldn't turn around someday and pretend he'd never said it. This was just a little insurance. Kaoru knew from experience that his father's promises stood more chance of being kept if they were backed up by writing.

Hideyuki filled out the contract in his sloppy handwriting and waved it in Kaoru's face. "There, see? It's a promise."

Kaoru took it and examined it. He felt satisfied. Now he could sleep soundly.

Dawn was breaking and September was ending, but still the sun as it climbed was brighter than at midsummer. A few stars still shone evanescently in the western sky, looking now as if they would disappear at any moment. There was no line dividing light from dark-Kaoru couldn't say just where night ended and morning began. He loved with all his heart this moment when the passage of time manifested itself in changing colours.

Kaoru remained standing by the window after his parents disappeared into the bedroom.

The city was starting to move, its vibrations reverberating in the reclaimed land like a foetus kicking in the womb. Before his gaze a huge flock of birds was circling over Tokyo Bay. Their cries, like the mewling of newborns, asserted their vitality under the dying stars.

At times like this, staring at the blackness of the sea and the subtly changing colours of the sky, Kaoru's desire to understand the workings of the world only increased. Taking in scenery from on high stimulated the imagination.

The sun rose above the eastern horizon, pushing the night aside; Kaoru went into the bedroom and curled up in his futon.

Hideyuki and Machiko were already asleep in their different positions, Hideyuki with arms and legs akimbo and no blanket atop him, Machiko curled into a ball hugging the rumpled blanket.

Kaoru lay down beside them, hugging his pillow and clutching the paper holding the promise that they'd go to the desert. Curled up like that, he looked something like a foetus.

Recently Kaoru had begun to look older than his twenty years. It wasn't so much that his face had aged as that his unusually large frame projected a robust presence. He exuded an air of adulthood. People he met tended to tell him he was mature for his age.

Kaoru thought that was only natural, considering how he'd been forced to become his family's pillar of strength at the age of thirteen. Ten years ago, in elementary school, he'd been skinny and short, and people had often thought him younger than he was. Supposedly he'd been something of a know-it-all, tutored as he'd been in the natural sciences by his father and in languages by his mother. His main job had been to give his imagination free reign, to wonder about the structure and workings of the universe, rather than to involve himself in mundane chores.

Ten years ago-it felt like another world altogether. Back then, playing with his computer, sitting up talking with his parents into the wee hours of the night, the road ahead of them had been clear and without shadow. He could remember how he'd started thinking about longevity and gravity, and how that had turned into a family plan to visit the Four Corners region of North America. He'd even gotten his father to sign a pact to that effect.

Kaoru still kept that contract in his desk drawer. It had never been fulfilled. Hideyuki still wanted to honour it, but Kaoru the medical student knew better than anybody how impossible that was.

Kaoru had no skill that could tell him when or by what route the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus had infiltrated Hideyuki's body. No doubt the virus had turned one of his body's cells cancerous years before he first complained of stomach problems. Then that newborn cancer cell had probably undergone its first cellular division not long after he'd promised that trip to the desert. And those cancer cells had silently, steadily reproduced themselves until the family trip had become an unattainable dream.

Hideyuki's initial plans to visit some laboratories in New Mexico had been delayed; only three years after the initial promise had he been able to finally work the visits into his schedule. He'd arranged for a three-month stint at the Los Alamos and Santa Fe research centres. He'd planned to depart for New Mexico two weeks early, so he and Machiko and Kaoru could visit the site of the negative gravitational anomaly that still fascinated Kaoru so.

And then in early summer, two months before they were scheduled to leave-after they'd already bought the plane tickets and the whole family had their hearts set on the trip-Hideyuki suddenly complained of stomach pain.

Why don't you see a doctor, Machiko said, but he wouldn't listen. Hideyuki decided it was a simple case of gastritis, and made no lifestyle changes.

But as the summer wore on, the pain became worse, until finally, three weeks before their departure date, he vomited. Even then, Hideyuki insisted it was nothing. He kept refusing to be examined, reluctant to cancel the plans they were so excited about.

Finally, though, the symptoms became unendurable, and he agreed to go to the university hospital and see a doctor who happened to be a friend of his. The examination found a polyp in his pylorus, and he was admitted to the hospital.

Naturally, the trip was cancelled. Neither Kaoru nor Machiko was in any mood to travel. The doctor in charge informed them that the polyp was malignant.

Thus did Kaoru's thirteenth summer turn from heaven into hell: not only did the trip fall through, but he and his mother ended up spending most of the sweltering summer going back and forth to the hospital.