Shattering the Barriers

Yoichi raised his head from looking at his phone. The five tables with four sinks each and the cabinets filled with equipment around him made him feel like he was in his second home.

His social sciences degree didn't require lessons in the laboratory, yet he had come uncountable times with Mrs. Kawahara. His parents suggested he not mention it to anyone. It took years for him to understand why.

Even then, the tests Mrs. Kawahara made him do were mere questionnaires and activities that felt more like games than tests. He always had fun and grew quite close to her, to the point of calling her Aunt Enko.

He closed his eyes for a second, yet that was enough for the image of Okamoto lying motionless on the floor to appear in his mind.

He shook his head and looked back down at his phone. Ten minutes had passed after the appointed meeting time. She had never been late, and the last thing he had heard from her was the call to ask him to come more than one hour ago. He opened the contact list and tapped Enko's name.

Just as the keypad slid in from the bottom of the screen, the door of the laboratory opened. Enko stepped in, followed by three unfamiliar faces. The man at the back seemed Japanese, while the other man and the girl walking beside him didn't.

Yoichi stood up from one of the sofas in the small office area within the laboratory. He only knew about a doctor, who must've been the smiling man with the blue sweater holding a briefcase and carrying a backpack. He was barely taller and rather rounder than Yoichi.

The girl beside him kept a bigger distance compared to the rest. She wore a black hoodie and a guitar case hung around her torso. Opposite the man, she showed no expression, her brows slightly furrowed as her eyes moved in every direction behind her glasses. She must've been the girl with the mutated disease, but she seemed quite young.

Enko stopped in front of Yoichi at a safe distance and so did the three people behind her.

"I apologize for the delay, the many impromptu precautions we had to take altered my initial calculations," she said. "Yoichi, please meet Dr. Herrera and Verónica. He's the doctor I talked to you about and she's the girl with the mutated disease."

Yoichi bowed.

"It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Yoichi Ishige; you can call me Yoichi. I hope your flight wasn't too troublesome."

He said that knowing how annoying it was traveling with a disease that kept you on your toes when getting close to people.

Expecting them to reply, the Japanese man at the back spoke in Spanish. Only then did Yoichi find out they didn't speak Japanese.

Dr. Herrera stiffly bowed when the man stopped talking, his torso slightly bending forward for a moment. At the same time, he said something in Spanish while looking at Yoichi.

The man at the back didn't take long to translate.

"He said it's a pleasure to meet you too."

Then, the girl replied in Japanese while bowing.

"Nice to meet you. I'm counting on you."

Her accent was a little broken and the phrasing didn't make much sense in this context, but Yoichi didn't care about that.

"Hey, you speak Japanese?" he asked.

"No."

Although she answered in another language, the word was simple enough for Yoichi to understand. However, how could she answer his question if she didn't know Japanese?

"The glasses the three of us are wearing display subtitles in front of our eyes in real-time," Enko said, referring to Dr. Herrera, Verónica, and herself.

Yoichi had heard about the cutting-edge technology that allowed the glasses to translate any language on par with the speaker and display subtitles in front of the wearer's eyes. He understood none of it, but it was incredible.

"Aren't those crazily expensive?"

"That's why I only have two pairs aside from mine."

The conversation only halted for a couple of seconds, yet that was enough for the man who had been translating to cough exaggeratedly before asking.

"Aren't you forgetting something, Enko?"

"Oh. Yoichi, he's Kōji, the first person with the CTCT disease to be documented along with his wife. I've told you about them before."

Kōji coughed exaggeratedly again.

Enko added, "He's a great friend as well."

A grin formed on Kōji's face.

"That's better. It's nice to finally meet you, Yoichi. Enko talks about you every now and then but barely elaborates. You know her, confidentiality and that stuff."

Yoichi smiled, "That sounds like Aunt Enko."

Kōji's grin disappeared and his eyes widened at Enko.

"Aunt Enko?"

Enko pushed her glasses with one finger.

"He asked if he could call me that fourteen years ago and I saw no reason to refuse."

After looking her in the eyes, Kōji crossed his arms and a smile returned to his face.

"She asked me to come with her to the airport in case there were problems with the glasses' translation, but they worked just fine. She also asked me to give you and Verónica some kind of motivational speech about the disease, but I can't really say much. Our case was much milder compared to yours."

Yoichi replied, "Maybe ours is more dangerous, but wasn't it more stressful not knowing what was going on?"

"It was stressful, but it definitely can't be compared with what you have to go through every day. In Verónica's case, pulling people toward her hurts her more often than not. In your case, pushing people away might hurt them. That means you haven't been able to touch someone, right?"

His chest tightened a little, but he was used to it.

"Not since I have memory."

"That's… awful. Everyone needs touch."

Enko said, "That's where my hypothesis comes in. Verónica, may you please take a step forward? The rest of us should step back."

A couple of silent seconds later, Verónica nodded. She took a step to stand in front of Yoichi while the rest walked back to the door.

Enko raised her phone in front of her and aimed at them with its camera.

"I'll record for future observation if you don't mind."

Dr. Herrera replied in Spanish with a smile.

Enko nodded. "Verónica, Yoichi, walk toward each other slowly. Stop immediately if you feel anything strange."

Yoichi looked at Verónica and she looked back at him. Standing in front of each other like that after exchanging a few words for the first time was awkward, but that didn't matter. They both took the first step at the same time and continued to do so every few seconds.

His heart beat faster as the moment of truth approached. Being used to the range of the invisible force field around him, he counted the remaining steps in his head.

Three.

Two.

One.

…

The room fell silent and no one moved as if time itself had frozen.

Verónica and Yoichi stood one step in front of each other.

Slowly, his chest stopped being on the verge of exploding.

He raised his head and saw the widest smirk he had ever seen on Enko's face.

Suddenly, she handed the phone to Kōji.

"Keep recording."

She hurried toward Verónica and Yoichi and slowed down when she got too close. He wanted to tell her to stop and move away, but what if…?

By the time he came back to his senses, Enko stood one step beside them. It was the first time he had to raise his chin that much to look her in the eye. Her smirk remained.

"Verónica, Dr. Herrera, coming here from the other side of the world wasn't for nothing."

He and Kōji smiled wide, while Verónica's jaw dropped.

On the other hand, Yoichi could only think about one thing.

"Aunt Enko, can we hug?"

Still smirking, she bent forward and wrapped her arms around him.

Goosebumps soaked his body. It took a moment for him to process the warmth inside his chest and return the hug. His gentle heartbeat reached his own ears, or was it Enko's?

"That's quite tight," she said.

He flinched back.

"Sorry! I just… can't believe it."

"Understandable. None of this makes sense even thirty years after discovering the disease."

She looked at Dr. Herrera and nodded. That was enough for him to understand he could approach Verónica.

He had just said something in Spanish when Verónica hugged him. The backpack didn't allow her to wrap her arms around him entirely, while the briefcase and the guitar case got in his way, but they didn't care.

"Ow, ow," Dr. Herrera uttered amid his nervous laughter.

They stepped back. Verónica's frown became more prominent as they exchanged words, none of which Kōji translated. A long silence followed, both staring at each other. Eventually, Verónica nodded.

Dr. Herrera removed the backpack and gave it to her. He then looked at Enko and spoke.

"He says please take care of her and give him updates every day," translated Kōji.

Enko replied, "We will."

He approached her and took off the glasses to hand them back.

Kōji said something to him in Spanish. He then said to Enko.

"I'll go with him. Just like him with his clinic, it's a miracle I found time to come even though it's a Sunday. You don't get many breaks being a principal."

Yoichi's brows raised. "You're a principal?"

"Of Kasen," Kōji grinned. "Just started last year, though."

Yoichi's jaw dropped. "My grades were nowhere close to getting admitted; can't imagine how hard it must've been becoming the principal."

Kōji scratched the back of his head and giggled.

"Anyway. It's wonderful seeing your future is in good hands, and so are millions of other people's."

He and Enko exchanged smiles before he and Dr. Herrera walked out of the laboratory.

Enko handed the glasses to Yoichi, who didn't hesitate to put them on.

Verónica glanced at him and Enko. Her eyes then lowered to the floor.

He couldn't blame her. Her home was on the other side of the world and she had been left alone with two unknown foreigners. Maybe she was shy too.

"Don't worry, we'll make sure you're comfortable," he smiled. "Aunt Enko's wording might be weird a lot of times, but the tests are actually fun."

"Regarding that," Enko said. "I didn't have permission to run proper tests before, but I do now. We'll begin with taking samples of your blood and it'll escalate from that. Fret not, I won't force you to do anything you don't want."

Verónica replied in Spanish and subtitles appeared in front of Yoichi's eyes instantly.

"Thank you. Ah, I have a question."

"Go ahead."

"Where am I going to stay?"

Yoichi realized she knew as little as him.

Enko answered, "My original plan was to bring you home with me and my family. However, I have another proposition now that we know the effects cancel out. Yoichi, doesn't your parents' house have an unused room?"

"You mean the one we use for storage? What about it?"

"I'll ask your parents about letting Verónica stay there for the time being. I'll take care of buying a futon and whatever she needs."

He couldn't believe how much she was willing to spend.

"I don't see why they'd refuse," he smiled. "That's if Verónica's okay with it."

Verónica nodded.

Enko replied, "In that case, let's stop wasting time and begin with the tests."

And so they spent the rest of the morning and half of the afternoon in the laboratory. Enko took small samples of Verónica's and Yoichi's blood before asking them to touch each other's skin.

That was because the CTCT—Couple That Can't Touch—disease made people swap bodies after skin contact, whether direct or indirect. In some cases, the process of swapping could begin through particles in the air if the couple was close enough.

Nothing happened in Verónica's and Yoichi's case. Regardless, Enko took another small sample of their blood to compare them again.

They did the process while lying on a reclining chair and wearing a strange helmet-shaped device with dozens of pads and round pins on their heads. They stung a little after a while, but it was nothing bad.

Enko asked them many questions and made them do several tests Yoichi had already done, adding a few cooperative ones. He was having a good time, while the lack of words and expression on Verónica's face was a little worrying for him.

Eventually, it was time to go home.