Prologue (1)

The rhythmic tapping of a pen echoed throughout the office.

Tap, tap, tap...

The sounds were not borne of mindless boredom, but deliberately constructed. The echoes had a cadence that slowly drove the other party into a state of anxiety.

Tap, tap...

As soon as it seemed to settle into a predictable pattern, it changed. Speeding up, slowing down; its tempo was chaotic, yet controlled.

Tap.

And then the sounds stopped.

The newfound silence seeped into every corner of the room, which made the situation all the more unbearable. A few more moments were allowed to pass uninterrupted until finally, the opportune moment arrived.

"Uzushi-san, it has come to my attention that your team has been underperforming this quarter," a voice spoke. It was unimpressed, one that held no hint of emotion or warmth. Corporate speech, one honed and refined by years of practice. It held no bias one way or another—it was a voice that you'd perhaps hear during scripted TV interviews or an annual shareholder's meeting.

Uzushi—who was the victim of the corporate power play—quivered beneath the distant gaze of the speaker.

The sound of the chair moving could be heard; the other man leaned forward.

He placed his hands on the desk in front of him and stared at the man summoned before him. If he ever dared look up, they would be met with eyes like steel traps, holding the poor soul in place. A smile appeared on the lips of the man in charge. It was a thin line of a smile, almost too small to notice. He looked as though he had a secret to share with his subordinate.

He opened his mouth to speak, but paused. Instead, he took a sip of the cup of tea that sat before him.

'I almost rushed it,' he chided himself. 'Patience. Lay the foundations first. Everything else follows.'

The man in charge exhaled, then continued: "I have given you several opportunities to improve your performance; you have failed to take advantage of them. The recent rounds of peer-review reports seem to indicate as such."

A long pause followed. He was not the kind of person who would waste time with empty words. His quality was that of someone who knew exactly what they wanted to say—and how best to say it.

"What do you do when a nail sticks out among the rest, Uzushi-san?"

It was a common proverb in Japan, so widely known, that it was impossible for Uzushi to feign ignorance. To do so would be a failure of character, something pride would not permit. And yet, to complete the proverb would be to seal his fate.

Uzushi did not reply.

The man in charge was satisfied that he had gotten his point across. The man's lips grew wider, as if he were about to explain to a five-year-old why stealing cookies from the cookie jar was bad.

"Perhaps, in your world, the nail gets hammered down. That is convention, is it not?"

There was no answer. Not that there was anything to say. In fact, there was nothing that Uzushi could say; he was being swept along towards his own destruction.

"In my world," the man said, "this particular nail is rusty and old, and no matter how long and hard you hammer for, it will never be clean. To keep it lying around, who knows what damage it would inflict? What if its corruption spreads to others? It will never know its place."

Uzushi's heart filled with dread.

The man leaned forward.

"So, it is decided. We must remove the rusty nail from the board it so desperately clings to."

For the first time since entering his boss's office, Uzushi broke his silence. As he raised his head, he avoided the instinct to recoil at meeting the man's empty, black eyes.

"Y-you can't do that. Those peer reports were written by those greenhorns you just hired! I have allies! They will vouch for me!" he protested.

"Ah, you have allies?" the man replied. "That is good to hear."

If one were to hear the muted response, one may have been inclined to think he was being sarcastic. However, this was not the case. For this man, he was genuinely happy to hear that Uzushi still had allies within the company. He had been systematically purging the old faction little by little, and had suspicions that a handful remained. It put his mind at ease to hear confirmation of this.

"I have it on good authority that I have the power to dismiss you. This meeting is just a formality," the man continued. "After all, to me, you are no longer 'Uzushi-buchou', but 'Uzushi-san'."

The man in charge allowed the facade of politeness to fade away as he leaned back in his chair.

"Now," he said, "let us not waste any more time. You will be relieved of your position immediately. As for your salary, we will cover six months; after that, you will have to fend for yourself. You will retain your basic pension, per the law dictates. Is that agreeable?" In the boss's opinion, the terms were too favourable.

'A normal dismissal,' he mused. 'If Uzushi agreed to these terms and walked away now, it would be troublesome...'

However—

"I made this company into what it is today! You can't afford to throw me away! You would never recover from the political fallout!" Uzushi's voice shook.

Something changed in his boss's demeanour at that moment of defiance. There was a glint in his eye, and the well-trained smile on his face evaporated. A cold sweat ran down Uzushi's back.

"Then you are a fool," the man said. "You claim to be indispensable, yet the truth is quite the contrary. Failing to realise this simple fact is why you have been left to rot."

"But...!"

"I see from your expression that you remain steadfast in your belief. Allow me to dispel the notion, then."

The man rose from his seat and walked around the desk.

Uzushi watched his every step; like a mouse watching a cat's movements, waiting to be pounced upon. His boss' steps were slow and deliberate, and—in Uzushi's eyes—ones that he seemed to take great pleasure in dragging out for as long as possible.

Reaching the wall behind Uzushi, he unlocked a drawer with a click and rummaged around for a while, producing a filing box. He glanced at the subordinate still sitting in his office and then turned around to face him.

"Do you love your wife, Uzushi-san? And what of your dear daughter? I do hope she is doing well in her studies."

'What?' Uzushi thought, his heart thumping against his chest. This was the last thing he had expected to hear.

"Do you love them?" the man repeated.

Though he didn't know where the conversation was heading, he knew that the question was some sort of trap.

"What are you scheming? Are you threatening my family? Whatever underhanded tricks you're plotting, I won't—"

"Threatening your family?" the man asked, his tone of voice unchanged. "Please, do not take me for one so primitive as to threaten a man's family." He raised both arms to mimic surrender and shook his head. "I wouldn't know where to begin if I were to attempt such a thing. I am a law-abiding, model citizen of society, after all. I am merely curious, so I shall ask again: do you love your family, Uzushi-san?"

This was the most shocking thing of all. The man's tone was as flat as the surface of a lake. He was asking like a teacher might ask a pupil: 'do you understand the lesson?'

Uzushi nodded mechanically, as if he had received the answer from somewhere else entirely.

"Yes, I suppose that is the correct answer. It would be strange for a working man not to love his own family."

The man returned to his seat, with a smile once again in place. Between his hands on the desk, the filing box he'd retrieved from the cabinet. It was lined with countless documents with dividers between, each scribbled with a name on it. From senior-level members of committee branches to the lowliest salaryman, Uzushi recognised many titles—some still worked at the company, though, there were a striking number of names who'd left over the years.

"Let's see here..."

The man flipped through the pages before landing on the divider labelled 'Hiiroga Uzushi'.

"Hm."

"W-What is it?" Uzushi asked. He could feel the tension in his body rising.

"You are an interesting man, Uzushi-san. Is it not a contradiction?"

"A contradiction?" Uzushi's eyes flicked desperately to the documents the man was inspecting. He was unable to hide the tremor in his voice. He looked for any tell on the man's face, any hint or indication of something that might be out of place.

The man gave nothing as his eyes settled on a small, delicately wrapped envelope before him.

"Although you may be rusty and old in the workplace, you lead a rather sprightly life outside of the corporate world," he chuckled to himself, fixing Uzushi with a piercing glare. The laugh was an unsettling departure from his usual aloofness.

He withdrew the envelope from the filing box and slid the brown parchment across the desk.

Uzushi looked at it—then at the smiling man—then at the envelope again. It was unmarked, and his hands trembled as he reached for it.

"Open it."

"W-What is it?" he asked.

"Your severance package."

With unsteady fingers, the older man struggled to open the envelope. He ran his fingers under the main fold, ungracefully ripping the paper into thin fibres to get at its contents.

From inside, several polaroids clattered onto the desk below. They were all of Hiiroga Uzushi; taken from various angles and distances. Some were taken from above, like surveillance photos, while others were taken from ground level. What linked all of them, however, was that he was accompanied by a woman, a young woman, and their expressions were unmistakably those of guilty lovers.

As he flicked through them, Uzushi's face contorted in anguish as the pictures began to paint a clear picture. He grew paler with each subsequent image, each becoming progressively more risqué, taken in more private locations.

'How did he get these? When was I being followed?!'

The man watched Uzushi's reaction carefully. He was not looking for tears; instead, he was observing the way his subordinate's body reacted to each image. The man allowed an unrestrained smile to grace his features—he knew he had won.

Then, Uzushi flipped to the last image. Taken within the confines of his very home—the one time his wife left to do some errands—it was a clear shot of him and his mistress eloping in bed.

"Uzushi-san loves his family? How bold an assertion."

His boss's words rang in his ears.

"I-I..."

Uzushi's voice stalled in his throat. His face flushed red; the blood was pounding in his ears. With trembling hands, he dropped the polaroids and pushed them far out of arm's reach, as if doing so might make the whole situation disappear.

"There is one more document in that file."

Uzushi's gaze fell back to the envelope, recognising the pale white of a piece of paper sticking out from it. He took hold of it, like a drowning man grasping at straws, and pulled it free. It was a letter—addressed to the company, signed by his own hand. His blood ran cold.

"That is your resignation letter, relinquishing your right to severance pay, pension, and vested equity. If you truly love your family, as you so confidently stated, I believe it to be in your best interest to submit it before the day is over. Now, Uzushi-san; do you wish to continue your employment with this company?"

The man's voice was gentle. He was speaking like a kindly father to a wayward child. Uzushi wanted to scream, to run from the room, to smash the desk against the wall and dash out of the building. He wanted to tear the man's face off with his bare hands.

But—

"..."

The warning was clear. Those photos would find their way into his wife's hands if he did not comply. His marriage would be dissolved, his daughter would be taken away from him, and his life would be destroyed. Of the two evils, the lesser evil was submission to the upstart before him.

Uzushi took a shaky breath. He forced the resignation letter back into the envelope and pushed it across the table. The man scooped it up and placed it neatly to the side.

"Thank you for your decades-long service, Uzushi-san," the man said. "Please send my regards to your family."