Koji Suzuki - Birthday

Friends who knew her as a dedicated member of the track team expressed doubts about her choice of boyfriend. Hey, I thought you went for jocks! That was the gist of their doubts. But Mai knew that if she had to choose between body and mind, she'd choose the latter as the locus of talent without hesitation. Of course, to have both would be ideal. But she wouldn't meet a man like that until Ryuji.

Several upperclassmen had asked her out back in high school. Although they were all pretty naive and none of them actually tried to move on her, just sitting across the table from that type came to be a burden for Mai, what with their masculine passions and ghastly thirst for sex.

Sugiyama's androgyny comforted her, in a way. She didn't have to worry about blocking his lust, or taming it and diverting it. That was a relief and it made him relaxing to be around.

That time in his apartment when they nearly hooked up, it began almost as a sort of ritual. They proceeded with great deliberation, and only after confirming each other's feelings and intentions. At that moment, Mai had no reservations about discarding her virginity.

Following his instructions, she lay down on his bed and shut her eyes tightly. Her nervousness had made her arms and legs tense. Just as now, her limbs were straight and rigid. Sugiyama didn't try to alleviate her tension.

Rather, he went about his business in stony silence, almost seeming to enjoy the stiffness of her body.

He slowly took off her clothes and exposed her skin.

Mai could see her own naked body in her mind. He simply undressed her, with no kisses or caresses, nothing to blur the roles of undresser and undressee. As pre-inter-course ceremonial, it was strangely monotonous, but Mai didn't have enough experience to think it odd.

It happened when she'd been reduced to bra and panties, and Sugiyama laid his hands on her chest. Her bra slipped upward and exposed her smallish breasts.

Never very big at the best of times, they looked perfectly flat when she was supine. She imagined her breasts the way Sugiyama would be looking at them. Her nipples, large in proportion to her breasts, must have been erect and pointing at the ceiling.

The image of that moment remained vivid in Mai's memory, no doubt because it had been the product of her imagination to begin with.

She was left in that state for a dozen or more seconds, her breasts visible beneath her displaced bra. It was an awkward limbo that emphasized the flatness of her chest. She thought she could feel Sugiyama's gaze. Then the current shifted subtly—she detected a change in the air that filled her with unease.

What are you doing I Hurry up!

But he didn't hurry. In fact, he started to replace her bra.

At the touch of his hands on her chest, Mai's eyes popped open. She stared in disbelief as he covered up her breasts. And not only her breasts. He put all her clothes back on her, retracing his earlier steps in reverse. He closed her away, just as innocent as she had been before, with not so much as a drop of his saliva upon her.

She looked the question into his eyes.

...Why ?

Sugiyama leaned close and whispered into Mai's ear,

"I guess we'd better not."

The blunt inadequacy of the words belied his usual eloquence. Sugiyama should have been able to come up with some pretty-sounding explanation for why he'd stopped in the middle. But he hadn't even tried. He had simply said "let's not."

Mai's mind went blank with confusion. She felt humiliated, robbed of her dignity as a person, reduced to the status of a dress-up doll.

They'd agreed to have sex. Why did he feel it necessary to do a u-turn like that? Was her body so unattractive? His refusal to explain allowed all sorts of doubts to bloom in her mind. She couldn't understand what had killed his desire. She could only despair.

Is it because my breasts are so small? she asked herself. But he hadn't needed to undress her to find that out.

It was obvious, to a degree, even when she was clothed.

Hurt, and without finding out why, she left Sugiyama's apartment and went home.

Their relationship ended there.

She'd had boyfriends since, and they'd tried, but she'd never crossed the line. Those dozen or so seconds of blankness always came back to haunt her. She felt like he'd evaluated her nakedness; she didn't like it. She'd rather stay a virgin for the rest of her life than go through that again.

There could be no mistake, no gap in her memory, about it. There was no point to any further scrutinizing the fact that she'd never had sex. That was a sure premise.

So then why am I pregnant?

Cause and effect. When something happened, there was a reason for it. The only immediate cause she could think of—yes, having watched that tape.

Then, she remembered something else, too.

I was ovulating the day I watched it.

She knew it, based on her cycle and on the ther-mometer. Her ovulation, that tape. The two had somehow come together to produce the change in her body.

The line between shadow and light was climbing the wall now. The sun was sinking, and the rectangular space was coming under the inexorable rule of darkness again.

Mai felt an appraising gaze on her body, like Sugiyama's. But there was nobody at the lip of the fissure peering in. The gaze emanated from within her own womb. The eyes she carried within were watching her.

As if to prove it, her belly undulated again with small but sharp movements.

In the end, she never was able to locate the missing pages among Ryuji's household effects. She'd promised the editor she'd have the manuscript to him by the next day. She had until the next afternoon to provide a clean copy of the final installment of the series.

It was late in the evening. Mai had locked herself in her studio apartment. She had spread the manuscript out before her on the table, and now sat there groaning, her head in her hands. It was a small room—five mats or so in size. She sat on the floor with a backrest propping her up at a low table that she used as a desk. This was how she always studied. From where she was sitting, her bookcase was close enough that she could reach out and touch it. The bookcase housed a fourteen-inch TV with a built-in VCR.

She didn't know what to do about the manuscript.

Over and over she'd look up and heave a sigh. How was she going to make up for the missing section?

Mai had been concentrating on filling in the gap with her own words. There was a clear leap in logic from the previous installment to this final one. She'd been trying to supplement the argument; that was what had her stalled and groaning, her head aching.

Suddenly it occurred to her. Instead of trying to add, why not subtract? I'm stuck because I'm trying to add words, and they won't come. It would be much easier to pare down what was there until it made sense. She wouldn't be as liable to twist Ryuji's thoughts that way.

As soon as she'd decided on her new plan, her spirits rose. Now there looked to be a good chance of getting it done by morning.

The videotape seized that moment to catch her eye.

It was what she'd found instead of the missing pages.

She'd brought it back with her and placed it carelessly on top of her television. She could watch the tape now, to refresh her mind, and still have time to finish the manuscript by morning.

Thinking back now, Mai felt she had been snared, and quite cunningly. She didn't know who had set the trap, but she'd certainly been carried along by that un-seen being's schemes.

From where she sat on the floor it was a natural motion for Mai to reach out and pick up the videotape.