Chapter 14Sleep

The person opposite still moved: sliding with her feet never leaving the ground, every arc symmetrical to the hair’s breadth.

The hairline crack down the centre of the mask was still there. It ran down from the forehead, very fine, and showed only when the light came across it from the side.

On the first step she slid, the dark patch on the top of her foot slid away. The shadow did not follow her. It stayed where it was, one end still joined to Mitsuki’s heel and the other end empty, pressing out an edge in the shape of a shoe’s toe.

Her soles slid forward over the grid: a foot, a stop, another foot. No sound. The two sleeves of the furisode turned with her body. The long sleeve on the right drew an arc on the right, and the long sleeve on the left drew the same arc on the left, at the same height and the same length, the cuffs coming down level with each other. Above the waist was the furisode. Below it were lead-grey suit trousers. Where the two met at the waist, the body turned sharply, and not a thread was out of line. The folding fan turned over in front of her chest, its face turned in. Then it turned back, its face turned out.

Mitsuki counted. Four steps made one whole number, and eight steps made one phrase. On the eighth step the foot came down, and the next step began from the place where the first had been.

Mitsuki watched three phrases. The three were one phrase. The height the cuffs swept, the angle the face of the fan turned through, and the gap between the toe and the line of the grid where it stopped: three times, not a hair’s breadth apart. Laid one on top of another, they made a single line.

Mitsuki recognised this.

Not long ago—perhaps a whole day and night ago, though she no longer trusted the time in the tower—her three cuts had lined up in the same way, into one line. Her wrist had been set in the position least likely to be hurt. It had been set with care. It had not been her choice.

The fluorescent light pressed down from the steel frame, layer after layer. It lay on the white porcelain and on the weave of the furisode, and every part of them was clean. Mitsuki found that she was holding her breath. She let the breath out.

There was no stop anywhere in the dance. Nowhere did it wait. Nowhere was there an extra half beat, left for the dancer to choose.

On the ninth step, the fan pushed out towards her, once.

The wind was flat. It came off the face of the fan in one sheet and ran low across the grid. Mitsuki turned side-on, her left shoulder giving way first. The wide, plain-white sleeve lifted, and the Noh cloud pattern turned to the outside and covered half of her face. The wind pressed on her right shoulder—nothing covered that side, so the wind pressed straight onto the skin—and drove her whole body two steps to the left, slantwise.

Her shoes dragged two lines across the grid.

Both lines were crooked, one long and one short, and the short one hooked at its end. Every other line on this ground was aligned: the grid, the shoulder lines of the shadow soldiers, the trouser lines of the person opposite, and the two arcs the fan had traced. Only these two were out of order.

Behind her the ring of shadow soldiers had started to move again. The strides were the same, and so was the spacing.

She could hear herself panting. The person opposite was not.

※

Mitsuki did not take up a stance.

She brought Poxiao in to her side, the blade lying along her right forearm with its edge facing back. She had no scabbard. This stroke should have come out of one. Her scabbard was her own forearm.

Then she stopped.

She stopped dead. Her feet did not move, nor her shoulders. The cyan along the blade ran out to the tip and stopped there too, and did not go back.

She did not count the beat of the person opposite. She counted her own breaths.

One.

Two.

The dance went through one phrase in front of her eyes, and began again from the first step. The ring walked behind her, from the left round to the right, and then round again. The flat hum from the fluorescent tubes kept pressing on her ears, until her ears felt full.

Three. Four.

She held still until the fifth breath, and then her left knee began to ache. Her right knee was older than her left. The old side held steady; the aching side was the new one. The two loose strands of the cherry-pink knot lay against the back of her hand, not moving. In the inside pocket on the left, two sheets of paper lay against her ribs: her own, and the strip she had picked up off the spine of the blade. She had put that one in before she stood up.

Her eyes went up once. Only her eyes.

The steel frame went up into the fluorescent light, and its top could not be seen. Where the four legs of the tower drew in beneath the main observation deck, something very large stood upright. Its shape could not be made out. All that could be seen was that it was long, and that it stood very straight. The clock faces were spinning, the ash was falling, the shadow soldiers were walking, and it had not moved once. The fluorescent light slid across its surface, and not one speck of ash came to rest on it.

Halfway through the sixth breath, she moved.

It was not that the person opposite had reached some beat. It was that she wanted to move.

The blade flicked off her forearm and burst out in one motion, from close against her body to full extension, with nothing in between. The crescent-shaped mark below her left eye lit up at the same moment, all the way to the cheekbone. The blade struck the fan’s ribs with a short metallic sound, and it landed in the middle of two beats: the one before had just gone, and the one after had not yet come.

A gap was knocked into the dance.

The right sleeve finished its arc. The left did not follow it. It stopped halfway and hung down. On the hem of the furisode, for the first time, a fold appeared that did not line up.

The whole number Mitsuki had been counting snagged.

※

Then the dance was gone.

The hand of the person opposite quickened. The fan no longer drew arcs. It struck: one blow, two, five, a dozen or so, from the left, from the right, from above her head, each one coming faster than the last. The beat came apart. It was not disorder like Mitsuki’s. It was speed. It was so fast that one whole number had not landed before the next was on top of it, and the numbers were crowded together until they were crushed.

Mitsuki gave ground. She caught each blow on the spine of the blade, and each catch pushed her back half a step. The seventh blow landed too hard. The raw patch on the web of her hand burned again, a layer hotter.

The fan’s ribs broke.

The first rib snapped off three inches out from the rivet. Its broken end flew away, stuck into the grid and stood up. The second rib broke after it and stuck into the grid a foot from Mitsuki’s feet. The cap of the rivet had worked half loose in all of this.

A piece came loose from between the two broken ribs. It turned over twice in the air and landed just in front of Mitsuki’s toes.

It was a card. Stiff, beige, with two rows. The top row was printed ‘In’, and the holes were punched high in the slots, their edges fuzzy. The bottom row was printed ‘Out’, and there was not one hole in it, not even the shallow marks left by the punch’s teeth. Beside the first slot in the Out row, the time for that slot was printed: half past five.

Mitsuki looked up.

The crack in the mask opened. It did not shatter. It opened, from the forehead downwards, across the horizontal seam on the left, and then slanted on down towards the jaw. The piece on the left came loose and slid away, showing half a face beneath.

From seven steps away, all she could see was this. Dark bruising under the eyes, a broad patch, so deep it had turned dark. The lower lids were swollen, the puffiness of someone short of sleep. The other half was still white porcelain, and the corner of the mouth still held its curve, not changed by a fraction.

“I can’t stop. Please don’t stop either.”

The voice still lay against her ear, still that small, still spoken with a smile. But the gap between the two sentences was longer than any gap inside the first.

The fan was still striking, at empty air.

Mitsuki stopped.

She lowered the blade, its tip an inch above the grid. She stood, and did not attack. The wind from the fan passed by her on both sides, lifted the loose hair at her temples, and let it fall.

The person opposite raised the fan and held it in front of the half of the face that was showing. The face of the fan had lost two ribs. It could not cover everything, and there was a notch in it.

“Don’t look. This face is not for anyone to see.”

Mitsuki lowered her eyes.

She looked at the feet of the person opposite. The lead-grey trouser hems came down exactly onto the uppers. The two feet were still sliding, a foot to the left and a foot to the right, and they had never left the ground. They could not stop.

※

Mitsuki took one step forward.

It was not a charge. She walked, with a stride the same size as usual. She stepped into that dance and came to the left of the person opposite, shoulder against shoulder, her face turned the same way.

Like this, she could not see that face.

The person opposite slid a foot to the left, and she slid a foot to the left too.

For the first time she counted the beat of the person opposite. One, two, three, four. She set her foot down on four.

All night she had been half a beat behind. Her cuts were half a beat late, her steps half a beat late, and even the ends of her words fell a little later than they should. Now she had matched it. It was the only time that night she had made herself line up. As she matched it, something in her right knee caught, as if a shoe had been put on the wrong foot. She did not stop.

For the first time, their feet came down on the same point. The person opposite’s step made no sound. Mitsuki’s soles made one, and another, laid over the step that had none.

Turn.

Mitsuki turned with her, one full turn. The plain-white wide sleeve swept past behind Mitsuki, the other one’s long sleeve swept back across her chest, and the two sleeves brushed once, halfway round. When the turn was finished, they were back in the square where they had begun.

Something hung between the two of them.

It had been there all along: the ring of afterimage flung out by that whole day and night. It had been gathered in from the clock faces on the four sides of the tower. It shrank as it came, until it was the size of a plate, hanging at the height of an ear and spinning. Time had been spun faster by it. Its axis pointed at the small clock at the side of the hair bun of the person opposite. The second hand was still going, very steadily.

On the second beat of the next phrase, Mitsuki cut.

“This one isn’t aimed at you.”

She said it very low, and the last sound dropped away.

The line of the blade passed close to the person opposite’s ear, so close that a strand of hair at her temple was lifted by the wind of the blade and fell back into place. Not one strand was cut.

What the blade cut through was the ring of spinning clock that hung between the two of them.

The afterimage broke in the middle. The glass of the clock faces shattered into pieces, which flew upwards into the fluorescent light. The crack was long, drawn out, pulled along until it reached its end, and there it snapped off. The tower did not send it back.

The second hand of the small clock stopped dead.

Then the other clocks. The clock faces on the four sides of the tower stopped one after another. So did the wall clock on the platform, and the one on the level-crossing barrier, and the digital clock behind the till in the convenience store, and the four-digit figure in the top right corner of the screen across the street. In the same second, all of them stopped.

On the wall clock the hour hand pointed at five and the minute hand at six. The four digits on the screen read one, seven, three, zero.

Mitsuki looked down at the card on the ground.

The first slot in the Out row of the time clock. The earliest moment anyone could go home.

The shadow soldiers that had been walking round them fell, one after another, onto the grid, and shrank back into narrow strips of paper. The sounds of the city went quiet for a moment.

※

“I just… wanted to sleep.”

This line was not against her ear. It came from the side, from Mitsuki’s right hand, from the height of a mouth. It had distance, and it had direction. The speaker stood there, taking up that place.

Mitsuki heard the gap in the middle. It was an intake of breath. Shallow. It caught in the throat, paused, and then took in a little more.

Mitsuki turned round.

The shoulders of the person opposite were raised, lifted for the first time, and had not yet come down. The chest was full of that breath. The hang of the furisode had tilted; it was no longer the line it had been.

The white porcelain mask broke apart completely along the crack, piece by piece, and dropped into the heap of name strips on the ground. Not one piece was whole.

Under the mask was a young woman.

Her hair was half down. Her bun had slipped back behind her ear, and the small clock that had stopped hung from one strand of hair and swung twice. The dark bruising under her eyes ran all the way to the cheekbone. On her right cheek was a shallow mark where the edge of the mask had pressed, pressed for so long that the mark had gone flat. Her lips were dry and had begun to peel.

The corners of her mouth fell. That curve had not changed by a fraction for so long, and now it fell, unevenly, the left side going down first and the right side following after a moment.

She leaned forward.

Mitsuki reached out.

The hand was on its way to press her shoulder and hold her up. Halfway there, it did not stop.

It came down onto her shoulder.

She was lighter than she looked. Her forehead came to rest on Mitsuki’s left shoulder, through the plain-white wide sleeve. Poxiao hung in Mitsuki’s right hand, and the cyan along its edge was reflected on her cheek, a faint line. This time nothing pressed it back.

She was still gripping the fan. It was open, two of its ribs broken, a notch in its face. Mitsuki reached for it. The fingers did not loosen at first. After a moment, they opened.

Mitsuki bent down, picked up the card from the ground, and slipped it back into its place between the two broken ribs. Then she closed the fan, an inch at a time.

The leaves of the fan passed one by one under her thumb. Some still had name strips stuck to them, pale grey, in varying shades. The nearer the rivet, the paler they were; on the innermost few, only a few marks remained. When it was all closed, her thumb pressed on the cap of the rivet, which had worked loose.

Here, wait a little.

She waited half a second.

Click.

A very light sound. Then, from overhead, from high on the steel frame, came another, fainter still: click.

The tower sent it back. It was the first echo Mitsuki had heard in this tower.

The name strips slid out through the seams where the leaves had closed. One, then another. The narrow strips on the ground rose too and flew off into the street. The darkest strip flew at the front. Each one dropped into a white gap: one at the level crossing, two at the convenience store door, and then further off, one after another. Each gap darkened as it took one in. It darkened into the shape of a person, with the shoulders and head of the person opposite. A few flew a long way, past the street corner, and out of sight.

The people walking in the street slowed down. Not one of them looked back at the tower.

The faded marks near the rivet did not move.

※

She carried that person to the steps at the base of the tower.

That person had fallen asleep. Mitsuki untied the cord at her left shoulder, took off the plain-white wide sleeve, and laid it over that person, the Noh cloud pattern uppermost. Now both of Mitsuki’s shoulders were bare, and she wore only the short jacket of deep indigo. The wind before dawn came from the left, and fine bumps rose across her left shoulder.

She backed off to a spot three steps from the bottom of the steps, and stood.

The clocks had stopped, so she counted with her own breath. She took twenty breaths, and the edge of the sleeve rose and fell nine times. It was not even. Between the fourth and the fifth there was a long gap, long enough for Mitsuki to step forward half a pace. The fifth came. She drew the half pace back.

Out of the darkness under the base of the tower came three people.

The first of them wore a trench coat and carried a briefcase, its corners worn white. They walked very slowly, one behind another, with uneven strides. At the edge of the open ground the first one stopped and looked down at his feet. There was a shadow at his feet.

Mitsuki counted. Three.

She had always counted how many were left. Now it was zero.

“Sleep. I’ll take the next tower.”

She said it flatly, and let the last sound fall. The tower sent back a little of this line too. The person on the steps did not wake.

The fluorescent light on the steel frame began to go out, floor by floor.

It began at the base and climbed. First floor, second floor, third floor, each gap between floors a different length. She tipped her head back and followed it up. By the twelfth floor her neck still had room.

The last floor went dark. There was no beam of light above.

For the first time the steel frame had a top.

The square main observation deck, its four corners rounded. Above it the tower narrowed to a small white drum. Above that came a section a little thicker, and then a thin needle, its point jabbing into the pale sky. It had a top. It had an end.

In the east, low in the sky, it had begun to lighten. A very thin line of orange-red seeped out of the edge on the east side of the steel frame. It rose from the foot of the tower, ran along a diagonal brace, and faded before it reached the underside of the main observation deck. Only that one line. Everywhere else was still grey.

There was no clock face up there. It was only a tower.

The grid under her feet was gone too. The asphalt showed through, black, carrying the damp of the night. The marks her soles had scraped were still on the asphalt, about a foot long, crooked, their edges fuzzy. Two broken fan ribs lay on the ground beside them.

Then the thing in the tower moved.

Between the four legs, beneath the main observation deck, the great upright thing moved for the first time. The cross-braces that had held it in the frame drew back one after another, to either side. It shifted north first, very slowly, sliding out between two of the tower’s legs until it hung over the open ground. Then its head came slowly down.

When it was level, Mitsuki could see what it was.

A ship.

The bow was a wedge, tapering at the front to a chisel point. Behind it sat a low bridge with glass on three sides, and the glass was dark. Further back ran an openwork spine, and through its gaps you could see the pale sky beyond. The stern was heavy. Two fins stood up on it, parallel, leaning back. The hull was whitish grey, and an orange stripe ran from bow to stern. From this far away it was only a thin line. Several lights glowed beneath the belly, each one nothing but a point of amber at its throat, and on those few points it held itself up, hanging there. A red light was lit on the side, and a white one on the tail. They flashed every few seconds.

There was no name on the hull. A serial number was sprayed in one line beneath the bridge: LM-1-02. The letters were grey, one shade darker than the hull.

She had seen it stand upright like that before, in the office. In the card rack beside the time clock, the cards stood upright, pushed into their slots one after another. Any card without a clock-out punch stayed where it was.

A patch of sky in the north was empty.

The disc was gone. The black mouth beside it was gone too. Nothing hung in that patch of sky. It was the same grey-white as everywhere else.

To the south-east, in the direction of the sea, far off, a light hung low. A red one, a green one, and a white one in the middle, flashing every few seconds. She did not know how long it had been there. While the beam of light was on, nothing beyond it could be seen.

※

There was no wind in the Star Corridor.

Nothing hung from her left shoulder any more. She had walked a long way, and both her shoulders were bare.

The stone steps ran ahead one after another, with a break in the middle exactly one step wide. She counted. The horizontal stroke on the thirty-first step was still there. She walked over it without crouching. Her fingertip remembered that one: deep at one end and shallow at the other. You could feel both where the stroke began and where it ended.

On the broken edge of the forty-fourth step there was a second one.

She crouched down.

It was also a horizontal stroke, and also short. It was shallower than the one on the thirty-first step. It was so shallow that her fingertip ran from one end to the other and could not tell where the stroke began. She had to go back and feel it again. The second time she found it. At the end where the stroke finished, the edge was fuzzy, curling upwards, not smoothed down.

This time she had gone over it twice.

She stood up and pressed the left inside pocket through her coat. Two sheets of paper, against her ribs.

The way out was a narrow gap. It was narrower than her shoulders, so she had to turn sideways.

Below the gap was not the platform. It was the ship. A hatch stood open, and the light inside it was white. By the doorway the thin orange line on the hull ran past and on towards the stern.

※

The clock on the platform had stopped at half past five.

He glanced at his own watch. Plastic strap. The screen read half past five. The digits had stopped changing.

He did not work out how long it was until he next had to clock in.

He put his hand into his right trouser pocket and took out three strips of paper. The edges had gone fuzzy. He spread them on his left palm and fitted them together, one beside the next, torn edge to torn edge. When he came to the right-hand side, one was missing. The rightmost column was gone. All that was left there was a fuzzy edge.

He looked at the fuzzy edge for a while. He did not go looking for it.

Far off, the sound of a train. The first one. At the far end of the platform the oden pot in the convenience store was still on. Steam rose, and when it reached the light, it dispersed. The automatic door opened, then closed again. No one was in the doorway.

He raised his head until his chin came away from his collar.

No one had told him to. It was the first time he had not kept his head down on the platform. The sky to the north was very empty. He had never noticed the sky to the north before. Low in the east it was turning pale, and light came in at a slant from there and pushed his shadow out across the platform. It was very long. It ran out from the tips of his shoes, across the yellow line, all the way to the foot of the pillar opposite.

He could see it without lowering his head.

For the first time, a shadow of his own lay at his feet.

The next morning, his face was in the window of the train. He did not practise in front of it.

At the office he took clear tape out of a drawer and stuck the three strips to the back of the sheet. He cut the tape short and pressed it flat. Then he walked to the supervisor’s desk and put the sheet down on it. The right-hand column was missing. The torn edge was fuzzy.

The supervisor looked up. His eyes went first to the white card on the young office worker’s chest, and stopped there for a moment. The holder was empty. Seven weeks, and this was the first time anyone had looked at it.

“Good morning.”

He said it. Not loudly, and not quietly. When he had finished, he did not bow, and nothing else followed.

The fluorescent lights were overhead. A shadow of his own trailed at his feet.