An unexpected inspiration came to Kaoru.
Cancer cells invaded a normal organ, changing its color and shape and constructing new bulges, until the normal functioning of the organ was impaired and it died. The obviously negative aspects of this were what stood out, but at the same time it was possible to detect in the cancer’s actions a certain groping towards something. By infiltrating the blood and lymph to penetrate cells elsewhere, it was experimenting with transplanting its immortal nature bit by bit. But to what end?
To create somewhere within the body a new organ adapted to the future. Maybe the Metastatic Human Cancer Virus was nothing but a sort of trial-and-error attempt to create a new organ.
In the process, large numbers of human beings would die, just as most of the fish had died at the water’s edge. But just as after a hundred million years sea life had finally made it onto the land, someday, after countless sacrifices, maybe the human race would find itself with a new organ. Humanity would have evolved. Maybe an evolutionary leap comparable to the movement from the water to the land was impossible without something like a new organ. When would it happen?
Human cancer deaths were surging upward, but without knowing when the cancer cells had started their work it was impossible to know if the human race had just begun its fumbling toward evolution, or was about to complete it. The only thing certain was that the pace of evolution was accelerating. The time it took for apes to evolve into humans was shorter than what had been needed for sea creatures to evolve into amphibians, so much shorter that there was almost no comparison. So it was possible. The intervals in the evolutionary process were gradually getting shorter, so maybe it wasn’t too soon for this to be evolution, too.
Kaoru wanted to think so. He wanted to turn his attention to anything that would afford him hope. He wanted to believe that his father would be the first one to successfully evolve, rather than just another sacrifice.
To be reborn. Kaoru would have wanted that, if it were possible. No doubt everybody wanted to live again. The gift of eternal life.
Since it was a property of the MHC virus to create immortal cells, it was only natural to fantasize about human immortality. Maybe even Ryoji had a chance.
Kaoru almost said so, but bit back the words. Anything that sounded like an affirmation of the illness might have the effect of loosening the boy’s attachment to living.
He heard faint snoring right behind him. Reiko, who had been nodding off for some time, had finally lowered her face to the table and gone to sleep. Kaoru and Ryoji looked at each other and giggled.
It was still early, not even eight o’clock. Outside the window, the evening cityscape was starting to emerge from the summer dusk. From below the window came the sounds of highway traffic, suddenly loud.
Reiko’s elbow twitched, knocking an empty soda can to the floor, but she didn’t awaken.
Kaoru spoke cautiously. “Your mom’s asleep. Maybe it’s time I was leaving.” The lesson had ended long ago.
“Weren’t you about to say something to me just now, Kaoru?”
Ryoji looked discontented, as if he hadn’t had his fill of talking yet.
“We’ll pick up where we left off next time.”
Kaoru stood up and looked around the room. Reiko had gone to sleep with her right cheek pillowed on her hands and her face turned in his direction. Her eyes were closed but her mouth was half open, and the back of her hand was wet with drool. Fast asleep, she looked quite cute.
It was the first time he’d thought that about a woman ten years older than him. Kaoru felt affection for her entire body, and harbored a momentary desire to touch her.
Ryoji reached out and shook her shoulder. “Mom, Mom.” She still didn’t wake up.
“It’s no good. She’s out like a light.”
Ryoji trained his innocent eyes on Kaoru, and then on the extra bed provided for relatives accompanying the patient. “Mom gets tired taking care of me, so I like to let her sleep when she can. She’ll have to wake up in the middle of the night tonight anyway,” he said, as if he weren’t making a veiled entreaty.
Kaoru felt an unaccustomed warmth in his body, as if Ryoji had managed to peek inside his heart. He realized that what the boy was really saying was, Would you pick her up and move her to the extra bed real gently so she doesn’t wake up?
If he could manage to pick her up, it was only about six feet to the bed. Reiko’s knees beneath her short culottes were pressed tightly together as if to fend off any attempts to touch her. Carrying a woman to bed was nothing for someone of Kaoru’s physical strength, but his guard went up at the thought of touching her—he wasn’t sure he’d be able to control his desires in the face of that stimulus.
“When she’s like this you couldn’t move her with a lever.” Ryoji’s expression as he said this was suggestive; then he pointedly turned his face away from Kaoru, even as he seemed to be looking right through him. It was as if he knew Kaoru was interested in his mother as a woman, and was egging him on.
Look, I know you want to touch my Mom. It’s okay. You have my permission. I’ll even give you the opportunity.
Ryoji was provoking him, biting back laughter while he did it.
Kaoru wordlessly set up the extra bed. It wasn’t so much that he was caving in to Ryoji’s challenge as that he was eager to yield to whatever he felt on touching Reiko. If his feelings were going to deepen, let them. As yet he didn’t understand the effect physical contact with her would have on his psychological state.
Kaoru placed his arms behind Reiko’s neck and under her knees, and in one motion lifted her up and placed her on the bed.
As he laid her down, her lips brushed against his neck, just for a moment. She opened her eyes slightly and flexed her arms so as to hug him closer, then loosened her grip with a contented look on her face, and fell back to sleep.
Kaoru stayed silent and motionless for a little while, afraid she’d wake up if he moved. For several seconds, his body covered hers. With his face between her chest and belly, he could feel the resilience of the flesh of her abdomen; his eyes were trained on her face. He was looking up at her face from below, essentially. He could see the fine lines of her jaw, and above it the two black holes of her nostrils. He’d never seen her face from this angle before.
At length he stood up again. As he separated himself from her body, he asked himself, repeatedly: Am I falling in love with her?
The touch of her lips was still vivid on the skin of his neck.
“Well, then, I’ll see you next week.”
Kaoru put his hand hesitantly on the doorknob, so as not to reveal the pounding of his heart.
Ryoji still sat cross-legged on his bed, rocking back and forth, cracking his knuckles. Unlike a few moments ago, his face held no look of provocation or mockery now—he’d stifled all expression.
“Good night.”
Kaoru slipped out of the room. He could feel Ryoji’s unnatural smile fixed on the door as he shut it behind him.
Kaoru had a flash of intuition. This meeting was not mere coincidence. His future would be intimately tied with Reiko and Ryoji.
Among Kaoru’s pleasures in life were his visits to the office of Assistant Professor Saiki in the Pathology Department. Saiki had been a classmate of his father’s in this very university, and now, with his father in this unfortunate condition, Saiki was always ready to lend an ear or some advice. Officially, he wasn’t Kaoru’s advisor, but he was an old