Espresso Love (A Dystopian Japan Novel) #Wattys2014

Making Ripples

It's not Shizuka, not anyone on my contact list. I don't recognize the number. I don't pick up. I return to my book, and make it through another page before it rings again, exactly five minutes later.

I wait a good minute this time. Just me and the vibrating cell phone. I let it vibrate and then not earlier, not later, I pick up a moment before the line switches to voicemail. My voicemail is an automated message that I hadn't bothered to customize, so that the smart crisp-sounding lady could do the work for me. So that my voice or name would not be associated with my number, and my number would acquire no identity.

There are too many numbers in life to begin with. As soon as we're born, the hour, minute, seconds, day, month, year, recorded as numbers, memorized, filed, photocopied, told stories about, written over and over again for the rest of our lives. It's the beginning of existence: a birth certificate is registered, identification numbers are issued as a part of citizenship, a part of belonging, sealed in government documents, locked away behind closed drawers and doors and vaults, retrieved in violation of the law, perhaps retrieved in violation of Etiquette - and the end of existence: certificate of cause of death, death registry, obituaries, read at funerals and memorials, engraved on tombstones and updated on documents, maybe in textbooks and websites. It creates the uniform passage of time, and applies its influence on one's lifestyle and maturity, day to day, year to year. It represents the amount of cholesterol, diabetic glucose levels, blood pressure, temperature of fever, body mass index, strength of eyesight, size of breasts. It's the permission to drive, to attend school, to participate in communities, to be owned by a company, to purchase and sell, to procure money and see its growth or decline, to demonstrate availability of resources, fluctuation of businesses, markets, industries, economies, the rise or fall of nations. They are longitudes and latitudes, addresses and postal codes, apartment units and hotel rooms. It gauges temperature, weight and value, height and depth, distance and speed. It counts the pages of a book and the level of intellect or emotional quotient. It depicts population density, the total summation of the human race and humanity. Without it, there is no standard, no method of illustration, no universal understanding. No System.

Somehow it gives us meaning. It gives life meaning. It's the human attempt to give everything meaning. In the process, giving meaning to numbers creates and bends us to the will of system. Yet numbers carry no meaning in itself. In the same way, in my attempt, I have strived to supply no meaning to my phone number, and no meaning to the caller. But I pick up the phone.

"Hello?" I say. I breathe, squint my eyes, clutch the phone.

My voice is loud in the climax of the night. There are no lights but the one above me like a spotlight on a stage. It's not enough. Darkness presses in on all sides to listen. I can almost make out ghastly wisps and humanoid effigies in the shadows, wavering, ever morphing, advancing and retreating, testing their tendrils, their footing against the sole fixture above my head.

There's no reply on the other end. Not even static from the receiver, or breathing. Not even the shift of fabric or a change in grip. The silence is deadweight.

"Hello?" I say again, almost to myself.

After giving another full minute of silence, I end the call. I set the phone down carefully and watch it, as if it might get up and walk off on its own, right off the table.

A drunk? A malfunctioning device? Perhaps a prank call? But none of these possibilities feel right. I might aspire to spend the rest of the night - or morning - inventing new scenarios, but there won't be any that are satisfactory. The heaviness of the call, the frequency of the vibration, the colossal silence. They serve to deliver one meaning. It could be the psychosis that seizes me, its effects deepening day by day - yet, I have an inexplicable certainty that it is an intentional call, an intentional silence, an intentional warning. Almost as if Shizuka is here, whispering in my ear. "Look at the poster."