Keigo’s words snapped her out of a haze of teary relief. He was right. The system manager at Yummy Foods was waiting for her.
The sooner she got him the project, the better. She grabbed whatever her hand touched first and stuffed it into her bag, then hurriedly stood up.
“Thank you so much for delivering the message! I’ll head out now!”
She bowed her head to Keigo and ran toward the door.
“Be careful!” he called as she dashed headlong out of the office.
The sound of Nagi’s footsteps faded from the other side of the door.
“I swear, that woman is always running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”
“She must be busy.”
Left alone in the office, Kojima and Keigo continued talking.
“Busy? Nah, just inexperienced,” Kojima said, sounding exasperated.
“Is that so? I often hear people in my department say Ms. Yoroizuka has a good reputation with clients.”
“Her?” Kojima snorted. “I mean, I know there were a lot of additional requests with this project, but she knew that days ago. The fact that she cut it this close to the deadline is a sign of poor time management.”
Keigo responded to this harsh assessment with an impressed “Ahh.”
“That does sound like something you’d say, Mr. Kojima,” he replied. “In fact, your own time management is quite famous in my department.”
Kojima scratched his head, looking pretty pleased with this compliment.
“My reputation has spread that far? You’re making me blush,” he said.
“Oh yes, everyone talks about you,” Keigo answered, smiling slightly. “They say you make schedules like you think programmers are livestock.”
Silence.
“…Huh?” Kojima said after a moment, his cheek twitching. He didn’t seem to fully grasp what Keigo had just said.
“Is something wrong?” Keigo asked innocently, tilting his head. Kojima looked increasingly flustered.
“No, it’s just…”
As he backed away, his hand bumped Nagi’s mouse. He looked at the screen as if to escape Keigo’s gaze. The code for Yummy Foods, supposedly written by the president, was still pulled up.
“…”
Something seemed to catch his attention. He scrutinized the screen, then finally muttered, “…This can’t be. All the code I wrote…has been completely rewritten.”
He grabbed the mouse and began navigating the document.
“Here, and here, too… This is unbelievable. What’s going on? The original code was here last night. I could understand a few corrections, but there’s no way the president could have written all this himself…”
He scratched his head, then suddenly fell silent. After thinking for a few moments, he quietly continued.
“…Hey, did the president really write this? I thought he had practically no programming experience…”
“I believe that’s true,” Keigo said nonchalantly.
“Then who wrote the code for Yummy Foods?”
“I wonder,” Keigo replied, shrugging. Kojima gasped in realization.
“Not…you?”
He stared at the preternaturally calm Keigo.
“I originally planned to do just the bare minimum,” Keigo said. “But you’d written such awful spaghetti code, I couldn’t bear to leave it, so I ended up rewriting the whole thing.”
“Wh—…? In one day…?” Kojima said after a moment, fury flooding his face. “Who the hell do you think you are, coming in from another department and doing this?”
“I’ll admit I broke some rules.”
“Then…!”
“But my misdeeds are trivial compared with yours.”
Slowly, Keigo withdrew a sheet of paper from his suit pocket and held it out to Kojima.
“Have a look at this.”
Kojima took the paper and cautiously unfolded it. As he looked over the contents, the blood drained from his face.
“…What is this?”
“It’s a log of the dating and adult websites you’ve accessed from company computers during work hours. I would’ve thought you had a lot of work as a manager, but it seems you spend most of your time on sites that have nothing to do with our industry. You’re quite good at time management, I see.”
Kojima flinched at Keigo’s biting sarcasm like he’d been punched.
“H-how did you get this…?”
“Actually, the president appointed me manager of our internal network. We’ve had a suspicious increase in traffic to illegal foreign websites, so he asked me to look into it.”
By now, Kojima’s face had lost all trace of color.
“I believe you know which of us is in the more awkward position,” Keigo said with a grin. “Well, I’ll be going now.”
He bowed and turned away. Just before he got to the door, he looked back one last time at the stunned Kojima.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said. “It seems my old friend has been working under you quite frequently.”
His smile had vanished entirely now. Cold anger and scorn filled his narrowed eyes.
“I will be informing the president of your obvious workplace harassment of Nagi Yoroizuka when I tell him about the present incident.”
With that, he nodded politely and walked out the door.
On Monday morning, Ryou Yoroizuka, the president of Sync. System, stared at his computer screen in disbelief. Slowly, he picked up his phone and dialed an internal number.
“Yuuki speaking.”
“Morning. I’d like to ask you a few things about your e-mail. Can you come to my office?”
“Of course, I’ll be right there.”
As Ryou read through the e-mail again, there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” he called.
Keigo walked into the familiar room and strode to Ryou’s desk.
“Can you explain what this is all about?”
He swiveled his screen toward Keigo to show him the message and attached file. Keigo looked at the screen, then shrugged calmly.
“What else can I say? It’s a log of adult and dating websites accessed during work hours by Mr. Kojima in System Development Division One.”
“That’s not what I’m asking. How did you get access to Kojima’s log—?”
Ryou’s voice was drowned out by the ringing of his phone.
“Go ahead,” Keigo urged, and he picked it up.
“Hello, this is Yoroizuka,” his niece, Nagi, said briskly on the other end.
“Oh, good morning, Nagi.”
At the office, he interacted with Nagi like he did with all the other employees, and they almost never talked on the phone.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, slightly surprised by her call.
“Thank you so much for your help with Yummy Foods. You got me out of a tough situation.”
“…What are you talking about, Yummy Foods?”
“I had no idea you could write such beautiful code. You’re amazing,” she went on.
“I’m sorry, Nagi, I don’t know…”
Before he could finish his sentence, he noticed Keigo flapping his hands at him. As Ryou made some vague statements to stall the conversation, Keigo grabbed a piece of paper on his desk and scrawled Go along with her. Ryou abruptly changed direction.
“Oh, right…Yummy Foods. It was nothing.”
“You’re too modest. Anyway, I’m truly grateful. Please let me repay you in the future,” Nagi said enthusiastically, then lowered her voice to a teasing whisper. “I know you don’t need money, so how about I cook dinner for you? Just don’t expect anything gourmet!”
She returned to her normal voice and continued.
“I’m sorry for interrupting your work.”
“Not at all. Thanks for taking the time to call.”
After setting the receiver back down, Ryou turned slowly to Keigo.
“Thank you for playing along,” Keigo said. “You really saved me there.”
Ryou smiled wryly at the other man’s easygoing expression.
“Now,” he said, addressing his niece’s childhood friend, “will you explain to me what’s going on?”
“…Ah, so that’s what happened,” Ryou said when Keigo had given him the whole story. He leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh. “Now I understand why you suddenly wanted to become the network manager.”
The truth was, hardly anyone liked that kind of work, so Ryou had said yes without so much as asking Keigo’s reason. He never would have guessed it was because he wanted to dig into Kojima’s work log.
“And to top it all off, you rewrote Kojima’s source code in a single day? He lost face big-time with this one.”
“I’m sorry for using your name without asking first,” Keigo said.
Ryou smiled wearily. He had doted on Nagi’s friend just as he had his niece ever since they were children. Nagi’s and Keigo’s parents had been friends, and he’d been like an uncle to both of them since they were toddlers. Seeing the fine young man Keigo had become made him think about how frighteningly quickly time passed. Keigo had always liked computers and often created simple systems on his own. Ryou’s older brother—Nagi’s father—was a systems engineer and had praised the boy for his work, calling him a genius. Ryou agreed with his brother’s assessment. Despite all that, Keigo was an honest boy who never boasted about his talent. That was exactly why Ryou had asked him to join Sync. System. And Keigo had exceeded his expectations, earning company MVP three years in a row. But he had one flaw.
“You’re right that I can’t let Kojima get away with this,” Ryou said. “I’ll handle that end of things. And this time, I’ll overlook the fact that you performed work in a different department without permission.”
Normally, that sort of thing was prohibited because of confidentiality issues, but given the situation, Ryou couldn’t very well punish Keigo. That said, far from being contrite, Keigo was trying so hard to contain his laughter that his shoulders were shaking.
“Actually, I think I did you a favor here. I’m fairly sure we have a long-standing relationship with Yummy Foods, and they’ve been a steadfast client. If I hadn’t stepped in, we’d probably have missed the deadline or handed over a system full of bugs. It’s a good thing this wrapped up without negatively impacting our company’s reputation.”
Unfortunately, there was nothing Ryou could say to that.
“Fine, fine. I’ll buy you dinner sometime. Now stop harassing your elders,” he said, raising the white flag.
Keigo shook his head.
“You don’t have to get me dinner. I’d rather you do what I asked before.”
“You mean…the transfer?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“It’s exactly what I want,” Keigo said decisively.
“All right.” Ryou nodded.
“Thank you very much,” Keigo said, bowing. Then he muttered coldly, “If you don’t do it quickly, someone like Kojima will make a pass at her. The thought alone makes my skin crawl.”
With that, he nodded and left Ryou’s office.
“…I wouldn’t want to make an enemy of that guy,” Ryou mused.
Keigo Yuuki’s sole flaw was that when it came to his childhood friend Nagi Yoroizuka, he had a tendency to go a bit overboard.