The Human Resources Department.
After forty years, this was the room where it ended.
I held the folder with all the required papers inside: pension records, official forms, and the doctor's report.
All the pieces were there.
All that was left was to put them in the file.
The woman behind the counter took my folder.
Her face was a blank mask of efficiency.
Her gaze swept across the documents, a practiced, automatic motion, but it snagged on the last page.
She paused, her eyes lingering on the medical report.
Paranoid Schizophrenia.
The diagnosis was printed in neat, black letters. I thought of the definition I had been forced to learn: a sickness of delusions, of hallucinations, of the mind folding inward, shutting out reality.
The woman across the counter showed no reaction. Her face was a study in practiced detachment.
"— Right, according to article 37 of the pension act, your case is classified as an early retirement due to a Grade 2 disability, non-occupational." — She pushed a sheet of paper across the steel counter.
"— The breakdown is here. You receive the base disability payment, plus a reduced pension. The lump-sum for long service does not apply, as you have not reached the age of sixty."
I stared at the number.
My own calculations had been modest, but this was significantly less.
The small dream I had held onto—a quiet trip, just my children and me—began to feel like a foolish fantasy.
My hand trembled slightly as I pointed to the figure.
"— Excuse me, this cannot be right. I have worked for forty years."
"— The years of service are accounted for here." — she said, tapping a different column with her pen.
"— But this amount…" — I shook my head, not in argument, but in pure incomprehension.
"— This doesn't account for anything. It's just a number. It doesn't see the winters, the long hours… My whole life is in that service."
For the first time, a flicker of something other than indifference showed in her eyes.
It was not pity.
It was the look of a teacher correcting a fundamental error, like telling a student that two plus two will never equal five, no matter how much he wants it to.
"— You're misunderstanding the purpose of this calculation, Kashiwabara-san, the pension system is not designed to value your service. It is designed to mitigate liability. Your medical file identifies you as such."
The words settled like dust in the still air.
"— Therefore, the amount you see is not a payment for the past. It is a projection for the future. The most efficient expenditure required to manage your case until its natural conclusion."
A liability.
Its natural conclusion.
There was no cruelty in her voice, only the flat finality of an unchangeable law.
And yet, something deep inside me, dormant after forty years of quiet obedience, shifted.
Those two words—liability, expire—were meant to be the end of the story.
Instead, they were a beginning.
They didn't extinguish what little hope I had left; they sparked something new.
A tiny, cold fire began to burn in the hollow space where my spirit used to be.
I looked at the paper.
At the number.
At the sad little pen, chained to the desk like a prisoner.
Then, very slowly, I pushed the form back to her side of the counter.
It stopped just short of her fingertips.
She looked from the form to me, and in her eyes, confusion.
People like me were not supposed to push back.
"— I am not a liability." — I said, my voice soft but steady as stone.
"— And I will not be expiring."
And with that, I turned and left.
For the first time in forty years, there was no form waiting for my signature, no supervisor waiting for my report.
The future wasn't a column of numbers anymore.
It was just a long, quiet hallway, and I was moving down it, one step at a time.
I found a phone booth on a corner and sealed myself inside, the city noise turning into a dull roar. I fed a few coins into the machine, listening to them fall, then carefully dialed his number.
"— Kashiwabara Real Estate, how may I help you?" — The receptionist's voice was polished and polite.
"— My name is Yutaka Kashiwabara. May I speak with my son, Shinji?"
"— Please hold."
Another click on the line, and then my son's voice, clipped and focused.
"— This is Shinji."
"— Shinji. It is your father."
The pause on his end was brief, but it felt heavy.
"— Father? Is everything alright? You've caught me at a bad time."
"— Yes, everything is fine." — I rushed to say.
"— I didn't mean to interrupt. I was only calling to ask about your work."
A sigh came through the receiver—the sound of a man whose patience was a finite resource.
"— Father, the bubble is over, the weak are being washed out. It's a difficult market, which is why it's the perfect time for the strong to find opportunities. We're doing well." — A world of winners and losers. My world was the silence after the bell.
I tried a different door.
"— Your sister, Manami. Is she well?"
"— I spoke with her last Tuesday, she's studying for her entrance exams. Her status is good. Listen, Father, I have to run. My clients are here."
The word "clients" was a closed door.
"— Yes." — I said to the empty line.
"— Of course."
The phone went dead.
A moment later, it spat my unused coins back with a hollow rattle.
Contracts in a failing economy; entrance exams for a medical degree.
Their lives were filled with urgent, important battles.
My need to simply talk to them had no place there.
It wasn't a problem to be solved or an advantage to be gained. It was just… noise.
An irrelevance.
I found myself walking toward the nearby park, with no real destination.
The sun was low, casting long shadows, and the first of the autumn leaves were beginning to fall.
Late afternoon had settled over the city.
Students in their school uniforms passed by in loud, happy groups.
Their laughter felt like it came from a foreign country, a place I could see but never visit.
Office workers, finished for the day, walked with a lightness in their step that felt alien to me.
As I watched them all, a question formed, heavy and simple:
Have I lived my life correctly?
The thought landed like a stone in my gut.
I tried to push it away, but two images surfaced in its place: Shinji, closing a deal in a broken economy.
Manami, studying to become a doctor.
They were strong. Secure.
They were successful parts of the very system that had discarded me.
A man who raises such children, I reasoned, cannot have lived a completely incorrect life.
The logic was sound.
The question was answered.
And I did not have to think about it anymore.
My logic was a fortress, solid and sound. But loneliness was a fog, and it paid no mind to walls, seeping through every crack.
Logic couldn't warm my hands.
It couldn't offer me a face to look at in the crowd.
And I needed to see my son's face. It was that simple.
I found another phone booth.
Fed another handful of 10-yen coins into the slot.
The clatter was the same as before, but the hope this time was a sharper, more desperate thing.
I dialed his office number one more time.
"— Kashiwabara Real Estate."
"— This is his father. I need to speak with Shinji."
The click was immediate.
"— Yes? What now, Father?" — His impatience was a physical thing.
"— I need to see you." I said, my voice steady.
"— For coffee."
"— I don't have time."
"— Make time."
...
"— I insist..."
A pause.
His mind, I imagined, was searching for a reason, a motive. It found the usual one.
"— Is this about money?"
The question of a businessman, not a son.
"— No. It is a personal matter."
Another sigh, this one of pure inconvenience.
"— Right. Today is out. Tomorrow is packed." — He was reading from a calendar, a list of obligations more important than this one.
"— I can move a meeting on Friday. That gives you an hour. In two days."
He had given me a time slot.
An appointment for one hour.
"— Friday will be good." I confirmed, as if closing a business deal.
...
I barely remember the drive back to my apartment on Seventh Street.
Just a smear of lights and buildings.
I parked in my space. Home was a small, square room. Not a home, really. A unit. A place to store a body.
The first thing I did, out of habit, was check the pills on the bathroom shelf.
The haloperidol.
One bottle empty, the other nearly gone.
I'd have to go to the pharmacy, but the weariness from the day clung to me like a damp coat.
It could wait until tomorrow.
I put a pot of water on to boil. Opened a package of noodles.
The orange dust of the seasoning packet hit the water. In three minutes, I was eating. It wasn't a meal, it was just… fuel.
I ate my noodles at the small table, the evening paper spread out before me.
The headlines were full of distant thunder.
A dictator named Kim Il-sung had died in his palace in Pyongyang; his son was already taking his place.
In our own government, a new Socialist prime minister was trying to hold a fragile coalition together.
The paper called it a time of instability.
Far above it all, a comet was hurtling toward Jupiter, and the astronomers were waiting for the crash.
They were all stories from another world, as remote as the stars themselves.
Leaders died.
Governments changed.
Worlds collided.
I ate my noodles.
The broth was salty.
I washed my bowl and chopsticks, the familiar motions a ritual to close out the day.
I switched off the kitchen light and lay down on my futon. The silence in the apartment was not empty; it was attentive.
It was listening.
From the bathroom, the faucet dripped. Not randomly, but in a pattern.
Drip-drip-drip... pause... drip... drip.
A code being tapped out, a message I couldn't understand.
I closed my eyes and the refrigerator hum began to warp, its pitch sliding until it wasn't a hum anymore.
It was a low, murmuring voice.
I strained to hear, and the words floated up from the drone...
...liability... expire...
My eyes snapped open.
The room was dark, but the shadows in the corner were moving.
They weren't just patches of darkness; they were lengthening, pulling back, breathing.
They were figures, and they were watching me.
I could feel their collective gaze, heavy with judgment.
The woman behind the counter.
The Vice Principal.
Of course.
They were behind this.
The figures in the corner were their agents.
Their spies.
I could hear their thinking as if it were my own
He rejected the system. He is a liability that is no longer being managed.
I pressed my face into the mattress, squeezing my eyes shut.
I tried to picture Shinji, but saw Masanori's face instead.
I tried to picture Manami, but she wore the dead-eyed smile of the government clerk.
They were all in on it.
All connected.
My mind was an open book, and they were all reading it.
Sweat ran into my eyes.
My pills.
The medication that could stop this, that could make the room empty again.
I remembered the empty bottle.
It wasn't a coincidence.
It was part of their plan.
They had taken them.
They had left me defenseless so the watchers could do their work.
I curled into a ball, trying to make myself small, but there was nowhere to hide from my own mind.
Closing my eyes only made the pictures clearer.
The voices were already home.
A chorus of judgment began.
Yamamoto's sneer:
"—He's a failure."
The clerk's cold assessment:
"—A liability until he expires."
My son's impatient sigh:
"—A waste of time."
The damp patch on the kitchen wall swirled into the shape of my mother's face in her final days, her eyes hollow with sorrow.
Her voice filled the room.
"— Yutaka, you were never what I hoped for."
In the dark glass of the window, my reflection wasn't mine. It was my ex-wife's, her contempt as fresh as the day she left.
"— Still running away, I see." — the reflection mocked.
Failure.
Liability.
Run away.
The words pounded in time with the dripping tap, buzzed with the refrigerator, and merged into a single, dissonant drone that threatened to shake my skull apart.
My hands flew to my ears, but the noise was inside my head. I screwed my eyes shut, which only made the visions more vivid. The room tilted. The walls began to close in, the air grew heavy, impossible to draw. A silent scream died in my throat. I was coming apart, a final, total...
...and then I was awake.
Or, I had been awake all along.
Sunlight streamed through the window, illuminating the dancing dust in the air. I was lying on my futon, tangled in a sweat-soaked blanket.
My body ached. For a long moment, I just listened.
The steady, mechanical hum of the refrigerator. The meaningless drip, drip, drip of the bathroom faucet.
I looked around the small room. The shadows were gone. It was just a room.