Kojo Suzuki - Spiral

As Ando stood up, he happened to notice three people entering the lounge. There were two men and a woman, and Ando had seen each of them before. The woman was a nonfiction writer who’d vaulted to bestseller status when one of her books had been turned into a movie. Ando had seen her face on TV and in the weekly news magazines several times. One of the men was the director who’d adapted her work to the screen. But the one who really caught Ando by surprise was the fortyish man who came in with the director. The name was on the tip of his tongue. He wracked his brains. The man had to be a writer or something. As they passed, Kimura spoke to the man.

“Hey, Asakawa. Glad to hear it’s going forward.”

Asakawa.

It was Junichiro Asakawa, Kazuyuki’s older brother. Ando had visited him at his apartment in Kanda in November to pick up the Ring floppy disk. At the time, Ando had been so happy to get his hands on the disk that he hadn’t said more than a perfunctory goodbye. But when he’d sent the disk back later, he’d included a very polite thank-you note.

He also remembered that the business card Junichiro had given him had borne the name of this publishing house. Whether by mere chance or thanks to the connection, Ryuji’s book was being published by his best friend’s brother’s company.

Noticing Ando, Junichiro seemed to flinch slightly in shock.

“Well, nice to see you again…” Ando bowed, thinking to thank the man again for his assistance as well as utter a proper New Year’s greeting. But Junichiro averted his eyes and spoke almost before Ando could get a word out.

“Excuse me.”

With that he sidestepped Ando and ushered the writer and the director to an empty table. Ando could tell when he was being given the brush-off. He glanced again at Junichiro, now seated at the table, but the man was deep in conversation with the director now and didn’t look his way. He was blatantly ignoring Ando.

He searched his memory for an explanation of Junichiro’s rude behavior. Ando thought he’d observed the man well enough in their previous contacts. He couldn’t remember having done anything to merit this treatment. He didn’t get it. Shaking his head at the man’s unnatural attitude, Ando followed Kimura out of the lounge.

That evening when he got back to his apartment, Ando filled the tub for the first time in ages. While his boy had been alive, they’d taken a bath together every night. Since he’d been on his own, drawing a bath seemed too much trouble, and he’d gotten in the habit of showering instead.

After his bath, Ando took his copies of the photos from the electron microscope and hung them on the wall. He stepped back and had a good look at them.

One wall of his apartment was taken up with bookcases, but the wall over his bed was bare and white, like a screen. He’d hung the photos there like X-rays on a light box, in ascending order of magnification: xl7000, x21000, xl00000. The photos were of the virus isolated from Mai’s blood. Without taking his eyes off them, Ando stood back a few steps. In one area the ring viruses were piled up on top of each other and looked like a spiral staircase. He concentrated, trying to notice something, anything he might have missed before.

He turned off the overhead light and shone a lamp directly on the photos. Under illumination, it looked as though huge specimens of the virus were crawling around on the white wall. He turned the lamp on a x42000 photo showing broken rings that were stretched out like threads. These showed up in great numbers in Asakawa’s and Mai’s blood, but hardly at all in Ryuji and the others. In Mai’s case, there were no signs of any narrowing in the internal membrane of the coronary artery. In Asakawa’s case, however, the beginning of a lump had been observed. In other words, even Mai and Asakawa showed slightly different symptoms.

Why was her artery undamaged?

Ando turned his attention to this problem. The thread-shaped virus he was looking at now had not attacked Mai’s coronary artery, the main target in everybody else. Why was she an exception?

Something tugged at his memory. He opened his planner to where he’d jotted down Mai’s movements for late October and November and held it under the light. He’d first met her on October 20th at the M.E.’s office, just before Ryuji’s autopsy. Mai hadn’t looked well that day. Ando had formed a guess as to why: she was menstruating. It was just an intuition, but he was confident.

He returned his gaze to the photos on the wall. He looked at a x100000 shot of the virus in thread form. He tried to remember his first impression upon seeing it at the university.

Hadn’t it reminded him of something, with its oval-shaped head and wiggling flagellum? Swarms of them had been swimming around in Mai’s veins, but they hadn’t attacked her coronary artery.

What did they attack?

His head felt hot. A tiny hole slowly opened, letting in light. It was one of those moments when something previously hidden suddenly begins to heave into view. Ando looked at his planner again, at the date on which he supposed Mai had watched the videotape. The evening of November 1st. The twelfth or thirteenth day after her period.

He took one step closer to the wall, and then another. Toward the ring viruses lashing their flagella.

That’s it. They look exactly like sperm swimming toward the cervix.

“Sperm?” he said aloud.

She’d have been ovulating that day.

A woman usually ovulates roughly two weeks after her period, and the egg only stays in the oviduct a maximum of twenty-four hours. If Mai had had an egg in her oviduct the night she watched the video…

The ring virus must have abruptly found another outlet and switched its target from her coronary artery to her egg. Gasping for breath, Ando sat down on the edge of the bed. He no longer needed to look at his planner or the photos. It was just possible that Mai had been ovulating when she watched the videotape. It had been her luck-misfortune, rather-to watch it on the one day of the month. And that was why she was the exception. Of all the females who had watched the tape, she’d been the only one ovulating.

And…

When he tried to deduce what must have happened, Ando’s spine froze. But he couldn’t prevent himself from arriving at the obvious conclusion.

Countless particles of the ring virus would have invaded Mai’s egg and been incorporated into its DNA.

They fertilized her egg.

Although it had evolved, the ring virus’s basic nature had not changed. In exactly a week, the fertilized egg would have reached its full growth and been expelled from Mai’s body. That had to be why the autopsy found evidence that Mai had just given birth.

But what did she give birth to?

Ando was trembling violently now. He was remembering a certain touch on his foot.

Whatever it was… it touched me.

When he’d visited Mai’s apartment, her supposedly empty room, he was sure he’d felt the breath of a living being. Hunched over at an unnatural angle to examine her toilet, he’d felt something soft caress his Achilles tendon where his sock had slipped down. He was sure that whatever had touched him was what Mai had given birth to. Something small enough to escape his notice when he looked around. Maybe it was early enough in its growth stage then to hide in her wardrobe. Whatever it was, he could still feel its touch as it swept across his skin.

Ando’s shivering didn’t stop. Feeling the need for another soak in the tub, he took off his clothes. He hadn’t pulled the plug, so the tub was still full of water. He ran the hot water until the bath temperature was higher than it had been for his first soak. After lowering himself into the tub, he poked his foot above the waterline and twisted it so he could see his Achilles tendon. He rubbed it. It felt perfectly normal, but that didn’t comfort him any.