About three days later, Suzui had a slate of away meetings on his schedule. His plan was to pop into the office for some materials and go. However, he noticed that Jin wasn’t on the sales floor.
Jin was a very dedicated worker and showed up at Sales Section Two earlier than anyone else. It had become second nature for Suzui to expect his presence by the entrance when he arrived. This absence was unusual.
Maybe he’d fallen ill.
Jin’s desk was the cleanest in the area. His PC was turned off. Suzui kept an eye on Jin as he got ready, and before he left, an incoming call hit the section’s reception line.
“Yotsumiya Foods, Sales Section Two,” said Hamada, the man who sat in front of Suzui. There was a bit of back and forth, and then Hamada exclaimed, “What!” at a much higher pitch. “That’s terrible! Uh-huh. And then?”
Others on the floor stopped what they were doing to listen. The expression on Hamada’s face turned intense as he listened.
“All right, then. We’ll manage over here. I’ll tell them. The section chief? Sure thing.”
Hamada pressed the hold button, turned toward the section chief’s desk, which was up against the window, and called out, “Chief, Jin’s on line two.”
The section chief looked up from his computer. “Hmm?” Then he reached for the phone on his desk.
Hamada must have sensed Suzui looking at him, because once he patched the call through, he whispered, “Jin’s wife was in an accident.”
“What?!” Suzui cried in time with the section chief, who had undoubtedly just heard the same thing from Jin himself.
The others in the section took notice of the disturbance, and hushed words spread across the floor. Suzui hastened to ask, “A traffic accident?”
“No. He said she fell from the outside hallway of their apartment building,” Hamada replied in a hushed tone. It was so shocking that Suzui didn’t know what else to say.
“When?” he pressed.
“Last night.”
“Meaning…”
The first thing that popped into his head was whether the fall was genuinely an accident. Suzui didn’t know anything about Jin’s family, but the recent event at the train platform surfaced in his mind. He remembered the way Jin had smiled weakly as they parted ways, and how he said, “Shall we go? My family’s waiting.”
The memory clawed at Suzui’s chest.
Was there something more to the situation with Jin’s family? Perhaps there was a specific reason he had taken an entry-level job at his age.
“I wonder what floor she fell from,” Suzui muttered, praying that it was just the second, or even closer to the ground. Danchi-style apartment buildings could go pretty high—the thought caused Suzui to shiver.
Hamada shook his head. “I don’t know. But she’s in the hospital. Jin won’t be coming to work for a while, that’s why he asked to speak to the section chief.”
Sure enough, at that moment a crisp, clear voice rang out across the floor.
“Please don’t worry about it. Of course you can take the time off. Please stay with your wife,” the chief said. He leaned over his desk as he spoke to Jin. “Rest up and stay at her side.”
Suzui was rattled over the sudden news, but that came as a small relief. Sato was a real asshole of a boss, but at least he still had a heart in his chest.
Perhaps that thought was why Suzui was so shaken that afternoon when Mutsumi accosted Sato.
After finishing his meetings and returning to the office, Suzui immediately noticed something strange about the vibe.
The lights were on, yet it felt dark inside.
Nobody was welcoming him back or paying attention. They were all focused on a single spot, whether subtly, from a distance, or by staring outright.
Suzui returned to his desk with his briefcase in hand. Hamada and the others in his area were either at their desks or standing by the copier, but almost all of them had eyes on the section chief’s desk.
When Suzui turned to look at last, he nearly gasped.
“Tell me,” demanded a trembling voice. Someone was on the brink of exploding, barely holding their emotions back.
Mutsumi stood before Chief Sato’s desk. She stared at him, her face pale, almost openly furious.
“Talk to me. You weren’t actually calling Jin, were you?”
Calling. The word sent a shiver down Suzui’s back.
He recalled the phone, and the screen that showed a call of three hours, twelve minutes, and fourteen seconds. He thought of how it vibrated again and again…
The section chief didn’t answer Mutsumi’s question. He was as silent as a sulking child, and he looked away.
It was astonishingly immature. Everyone else in the room was speechless.
“I heard you from the meeting room,” she continued, each word trembling. She no longer gave Chief Sato the benefit of deferential courtesy. “‘This is what the department chief told me, what do you think? What do you think he meant by this word? That’s how the company president valued me in the past, what do you think in light of that? I can do my job, and people expect good results from me, so this is clearly jealousy from smaller people, right? Our retail partners tell me Yotsumiya Foods equals Sato, so if I’m not around, the majority of those partners will lose confidence in the company. People complaining about my methods are just whiners. Yeah, that’s right, they’re all just idiots.’ And on, and on, and on.”
Mutsumi repeated quite the list of statements, as though reading them from an invisible script. There was a real momentum to her speech. Anger pushed her to go faster and faster.
However, the section chief had no reaction. He refused to look at the woman.
“That’s fine. You can talk on the phone. Talk about whomever you want, even me. Although I don’t think highly of doing so during work hours.”
She took a deep breath.
“But,” she continued, “I thought I heard you mention Jin’s name. And when one subject was just about over, you’d say, ‘Oh, that reminds me,’ and continue on about another thing. If I hadn’t forced you to stop from outside the room, you’d still be on that call, wouldn’t you?”
Everyone held their breath, even Suzui. He swallowed audibly.
“Answer me,” Mutsumi insisted. She sounded ready to cry. “How can you do this? Jin’s in the hospital because his wife’s in critical condition. How can you waste his time by filling his ears with this stream of one-sided nonsense?”
“It’s not one sided,” the section chief replied at last. You could hear a pin drop in the office, the room’s attention was so laser focused.
As impossible as it was to understand the section chief’s side, he seemed to take offense. His eyes were narrowed, as though the concept of Mutsumi scolding him was in itself insulting. “I wasn’t just yelling at him. We were having a conversation. It’s rude to insinuate otherwise,” he snapped.
“No. It was entirely one sided.”
Mutsumi didn’t back down. She wasn’t crying, but the look on her face betrayed grief equal to her outrage.