Chapter 2The Same Second

The stall under the elevated road was still lit. The stall owner stood at the pot with his back to the street, his head bowed. At the seventh table by the awning, a hand had stopped in mid-air. On the side of the index finger was a smear of chili oil, red, not yet dry.

A few minutes earlier. Tokyo.

A hand folded a sheet of paper once more, along the two old creases.

The last carriage of the last train. In the window glass was Mitsuki’s reflection: a dark coat with the collar up, the right shoulder a little lower than the left, because she was used to putting her weight on her right foot. Beyond the glass was a band of city lights, smeared into one streak by the rain. Tunnel lights cut across her face one at a time. She did not look at the lights. She counted them.

Four stops.

The paper was a leave slip. One line of writing, one date. The writing was in pencil. She had traced over it in black pen, following the pencil, and the tracing was uneven. In two places it ran outside the pencil line. The date had been changed twice. The first two dates were crossed out with horizontal lines, and both lines had been drawn against the edge of a train ticket. They were very straight.

This was the third. She had torn up the first two, in half. She had folded the second one before tearing it, so the tear was neat.

The first fold and the second went down along the old creases. The paper folded on its own. The third fold was new. Her thumb pad pressed on the middle of the fold and pushed to both sides, until the corners lined up. When it was done, her thumb did not lift at once. It stayed where it was for half a second.

She had been corrected into that half second the year she was fourteen.

Back then there was a wooden box by the door of the dojo. The last person to leave each day was in charge of tearing off that day’s record sheet, folding it three times and dropping it in. The sheet recorded who had come, what they had practised and what time they had left. On the night it was her turn, she folded fast. At the third fold the corners were out by two millimetres. The old man who kept the box took the paper from her hand, flattened it and folded it again. At the third fold his thumb pressed on the middle of the crease and did not move.

“Here. You have to wait a little.”

He pushed the paper out only after he had finished speaking. The corners met without a gap. He did not explain what the waiting was for. She did not ask.

She never went back into that dojo. The folding stayed with her. Since she was fourteen she had folded a great many sheets of paper: medicine packets, receipts, notices, and these three leave slips. On each one, at the third fold, her thumb pad stopped in the same place.

She put the leave slip back in the inside pocket of her coat. The inside pocket was on the left, against her ribs. The paper slid down, and she pressed it once through a layer of cloth.

“…Hand it in tomorrow, then.”

She said it without looking at her reflection. The end of her voice dropped and did not rise.

Seven people in the carriage, counting her. Three were sitting, two were standing and holding the straps, one was leaning against the door, and one was asleep at the far end, the head nodding again and again. She had counted twice, and both times it came to seven. She did not know why she counted. She had been counting since she was small.

The clack of the track joints was muffled. One of the fluorescent lights overhead was buzzing. A streak of water ran down the window from the top and stopped halfway.

She drew her right hand out of the inside pocket and pressed the same place again, through the coat. The first joint of her little finger was thicker than the others. It was old, and pressing on it she found a small hard patch.

※

A finger lifted off the delete key.

The cursor moved backwards, swallowing the line one character at a time. After the last character had gone she kept her finger down for half a beat longer. Under the awning the keyboard gave a hollow sound.

The seventh time.

Writing those seven times, she had to think. Deleting them, she did not. Her hand knew before she did. The little finger left the keyboard first, then the ring finger followed, and the index finger went last. Once, midway, she had tried to finish a line and send it without looking. Her hand stopped on the enter key and did not come down.

In that line, three characters were joined together. She changed the rest seven times, and those three she never changed. When the deleting reached the end, what was left was them too.

A plastic stool. A folding table. Under one leg was a flattened cardboard box, or it would wobble. She sat at the seventh table. It was by the awning. The string of warm-orange lamps on the awning lit her hand exactly, and did not reach the screen.

The bowl was by her hand. A thin layer of oil lay on the broth. Half a ladle of chili oil sat at the edge of the bowl, a red ring not yet dissolved, and at its edge a finer ring of oil flecks had formed. She had barely sat down when the stall owner ladled the chili oil out and set it by the bowl, without asking whether she wanted it. He never asked.

Tonight the soup had been served, and she had not touched a mouthful.

The rim of the pot gave a knock.

She looked up. The stall owner had his back to her, the dark grey towel over his right shoulder. The long-handled iron ladle in his hand had just been pressed to the bottom of the chili oil jar and lifted out. The rim of the ladle had a nick, and the red oil caught in the nick and did not drip. He came over and tipped a whole ladle into her bowl, and said nothing.

“Thank you.”

At that moment the oil in the pan spat once. He had already gone back to the pot. He did not answer, and he did not turn round.

She did not type the line again. On the screen the line was blank, and the cursor blinked at the far left. She took her hands off the keyboard and cradled the bowl in both palms. The enamel was hot. She held on and did not let go.

Her thumb pressed twice on the outside of her thigh, one light and one heavy. She had learned this way of pressing in the storytelling hall, keeping to the beat of the wooden clapper. She had been doing it for twenty years, and it had stopped being a movement.

A car went over the elevated road. The sound rolled overhead, and when it had passed the street was quieter. The tall buildings in the distance were smeared into one mass by the damp air. Further off, a very faint shadow stood, and there was no telling what it was.

The heat from the side of the bowl came up through her palms, all the way to her wrists.

※

One hand cupped his own jaw and pushed up.

Three millimetres. In the mirror he was someone else.

Seoul. An old practice room. The whole mirror wall ran from the floor to the ceiling, with tape along the joins. The glass was covered in handprints, sweat marks and dried water streaks, and nobody wiped them. The wooden floor had been worn into patches of white. In one corner were piled an old speaker, a stack of water bottles and a towel. One end of the barre had come loose, and it turned if you touched it. The ceiling light was a tungsten bulb. It lit only the corner with the speaker, and everywhere else was dark.

In the lower left corner of the mirror wall was a sticker. Half of it had been torn away, and the other half had curled up at the edge. Whoever tore it had been in a hurry. The glue from its back was still on the glass, and a film of dust had stuck to the glue, so that patch was darker than the mirror around it. He had not torn it all off, and he had not put another sticker up.

When he let go, his jaw dropped back. The broken microphone earring in his right ear swung a little. The break was ragged, its edges turned out, and the core showed through, violet. It had been broken for two years. He had not had it fixed.

Zero point four centimetres.

He had not worked out the number himself. Someone else had measured it for him. He only kept on measuring.

At first he had propped his phone against the barre and taken one photo, face on, not smiling, chin level. Then one more, with his chin resting on his hand. Laid one over the other, the difference was this number. Later he found this too much trouble. He tore a white strip off a convenience-store receipt and drew two pencil lines on it, zero point four apart. The strip was kept in his wallet, next to his ID card.

Twenty-seven times. After the twenty-eighth he stopped counting. The middle of the strip had been pinched soft by his fingernails and gone fuzzy, but the two pencil lines were still there.

He had tried pressing his tongue against the roof of his mouth before sleep. He had tried sleeping on one side only. He had tried clenching his teeth all night. It was always zero point four.

In the practice room there was only his own breath, and the soft sound of the mirror when the air conditioning blew across it. He sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor, his back to the door. He did not count how long he had been sitting—the red light on the speaker was on. It meant the power had not been cut. It had been on when he came in.

Tonight he ran through it once. Four eight-counts. He stopped on the fifth beat of the third eight-count and went back to the start. He stopped at the same place six times. The seventh time he did not stop. He got to the end, though it did not really count, because on the last move he landed early. He had been like this since he was small. He always came in half a beat late and always landed half a beat early. The part in between was his own, and only he knew how long it was. Someone had once told him this was a fault. He kept the words in mind, and he did not change the movement.

When he finished he sat down, in the part of the room the light did not reach. Sweat ran down from his jawline, along the very line he had pushed up a moment before.

In the mirror, the figure sat the way he did, and was waiting too.

He let go. His five fingers spread on his knee, and the middle knuckle cracked once.

※

A hand folded a sheet of paper in half, then in half again.

The rejection slip. She had read it once, then turned it over so the back faced up. The first fold, edges aligned. The second fold, aligned again.

“Not classical enough. So what would be enough?”

She said it flatly, both sentences in one breath, with no break between. There was no one else on the steps.

In the lower right corner of the sheet was a square stamp, red, pressed hard. All four corners were fully printed, with no faint patch anywhere. She had turned the sheet over by lifting that corner, so it was softer than the others.

Paris. The stone steps of the square ran down, one step after another, twenty-six in all. She sat on the ninth step. The iron railings had rusted, and the rust came away in flakes when touched. A coat hung over the railing. It was not hers, and it had been there since yesterday. At the foot of the steps were an old speaker, a few sheets of cardboard laid out, and a bottle of water, half drunk. On the cardboard were four marks pressed in, two of knees and two of palms. The palm marks were deeper.

A street lamp shone in from the side, throwing long shadows down the steps. The shadows bent down one step after another and broke off at the bottom step. Her shadow lay on the ninth step, as long as the others and as dark. She had sat here until this hour only because the stone was wide enough to stand on. The other places in the square were either sloped or crumbling.

She had counted these twenty-six steps more than once. The last time was because someone had danced a passage across the bottom three steps. The dancer’s right shoe had worn a hole through the toe. Each landing came ahead of the beat, and steadily so. She had sat on the ninth step and watched the whole passage through. When she left, she said only one thing, a remark about technique, and nothing else.

She put the paper into her bag. The bag had three compartments. The outer one held water. The middle one held a spare pair of pointe shoes, one of which already had its toe crushed. The innermost compartment was for paper, and there were already three sheets in it. This was the fourth. All four were the same size and folded the same way. She lined up the four corners, and only then zipped the bag shut.

Then she stood up. She pressed her left hand on the railing for support, and when her palm lifted away it took a layer of rust with it.

Her left foot came down first. A satin pointe shoe, thin in the sole, made no sound on the stone. Her right foot came down after it, in an old trainer with a stain on the side. The sole scraped half a turn across the stone and gave a dull thud.

The two shoes were not a pair. This was not new today.

She hitched the bag strap onto her shoulder. Her fingers went for the strap. The first grab missed, and the second caught it. She ignored that. She simply stood there, the bag on her shoulder and two unmatched shoes beneath her.

※

A hand closed inside a coat pocket.

In the palm, two things: a screw, and a dog tag with nothing engraved on it.

New York. The corner by a pharmacy. The roller shutter was half down. The cool white lights in the shop window were still on, and behind the glass the shelves were covered in price tags, one layer over another. On the steps lay an empty canvas bag and a stack of loose bills, which turned a page each time the wind passed. Across the street an exhaust vent breathed out steam, white, in puffs. There were shallow puddles on the ground, reflecting the white of the window.

Ten minutes earlier he had been at the far end of the shelves. The veteran was at this end. The veteran picked up a box of medicine and turned it round, read the row of figures along its side, looked at it for a while, then set it back down gently in the same place, label facing out, lined up with the boxes beside it.

On Andrew’s side there was a box too. He had turned it round and read its side as well, and put it back, lined up. Tonight, too, he had not paid.

The form in his inside pocket was one he had signed for the veteran. He had signed on the bottom line, pressing harder than on the lines above. He folded it in half and pushed it in, beside the short chain of the dog tag.

The screw had come from the veteran. The prosthetic below the veteran’s knee had six screws around its joint, and one of them had been replaced. It was a little shorter than the other five, and its thread was coarser. The veteran had sat in the clinic doorway and unscrewed it, and put it in his palm.

“You keep it.”

He had asked why. The veteran did not answer. He pulled his trouser leg down and patted his knee twice.

The stack of bills on the steps had slid out of the veteran’s shoulder bag, and he had not picked it up. The top sheet lay face down. On its back, in pencil, the figures had been worked out three times. The first time they were laid out across the sheet. The second time they were laid down the page. The third time only a few numbers were left, and they were circled. The three results did not match. Before going into the pharmacy the veteran had pushed the bills back into the bag once, in a hurry, and one corner was left sticking out.

The dog tag hung on a double chain, the short one against his collarbone. The face of the tag was blank and matt. The side that should have been engraved had been rubbed brighter than the other side. He did not take it off.

He had gripped them for a long time. When he opened his hand, there was a white mark across his palm: the imprint of three and a half turns of thread, and beside it a square edge where the dog tag had pressed. Sweat had stuck the two things to his skin. He had to shake his hand before they dropped back into his palm.

He closed his hand again. He began to draw it out of his pocket. Halfway, it stopped.

※

Mitsuki’s hand was still pressed against the inside pocket, through the coat.

Then the five towers woke.

On the Tokyo side the sound went first. The rail joints still clacked, but the warm band of light outside the window was cut off—not put out, taken away. The water streak that had stopped on the glass suddenly ran upward.

A beam of light rose from the shaft of the tower.

It took the air up with it. The dust on the street, the drizzle and the scraps of paper were all drawn upward in straight lines, one by one, without bending. The light was white, with not a trace of any other colour in it, and it lit nothing. The road was still the road, and the signs were still the signs. It rose and rose, through the clouds, to a height Mitsuki could not see even when she looked up. She tipped her head back as far as it would go, and still the light had not ended.

No thunder. No alarm.

Everyone on the street lifted their heads in the same second.

In the northern sky there was a disc. It was twenty-odd times the width of the full moon. Half of it was lit and half was dark, and the lit side was edged with a ring of pale violet. A little higher, beside it, a black mouth had opened, with a very fine white ring round its edge. The few stars behind the mouth had been bent out of line. No one had seen when it was hung there. It did not move or make a sound, and it kept its distance from the towers.

The light did not shine down. It stopped somewhere else first, turned its direction, and only then came looking.

It came down on the last train, through the roof and the glass, and onto her.

The six others in the carriage were gone. The seats were empty, the straps were still swinging, and the light at the far end was still flickering. Of the seven she had counted twice, only she was left.

The Seoul light had a touch of pink in it. It came down from the ceiling of the practice room, landed on the white patches of the floor, and fell exactly between Jaewon’s crossed legs. In the mirror wall there was only him. Even the sticker, torn half away, had gone.

The Paris light was red, a red with no warmth in it, like sticky tape on paper. It landed on the ninth step. Swan had just stood up, the strap of her bag still across her shoulder. She did not duck. She lifted her face and kept looking until there was nothing more she could see.

Nobody saw the other two.

Shanghai. Under the elevated road the oil in the pan spat once, and oil splashed onto the awning. The stall owner turned the flame down one notch. Qingluan was still cradling the bowl.

New York. At the end of the shelves a row of empty hooks rang once, iron against iron. They were empty. Andrew’s hand stopped at the mouth of his pocket.

Then came the skin.

Mitsuki lowered her head and turned the back of her hand up.

Three lines came out from the metacarpal bones, climbed along the knuckles and went over the wrist. They did not glow. They were a shade darker than the skin, and their edges were slightly fuzzy, like an old scar that someone had traced again from the inside. They did not hurt. They were cool. She could feel how far that line had got.

“…This isn’t a street lamp.”

Shanghai. Qingluan let go of the bowl and turned both palms up. The palms were bare. The marks were on the backs of her hands, and she had to turn them over twice before she saw them. There was still a red ring on her palm from the bottom of the bowl.

Seoul. Jaewon drew his spread fingers in, turned the back of his hand up and brought it close to the small patch of light from the tungsten bulb to look. He did not look at the mirror.

Paris. Swan lowered her head. She had kept it tilted up for so long, and this was the first time she had lowered it, to look at her own hands.

New York. Andrew drew his hand out of his pocket and opened it. The screw and the dog tag were still there. Across the white thread mark on his palm there was now another line, heading for the wrist.

Five people bent their heads and looked at the same place.

The clock faces of five cities showed five different numbers. Only this second was the same one.

None of them knew that the other four were making exactly the same movement.