Chapter 10Six Hours Forty

At ten to seven he did the top button of his shirt right up.

The shirt had been ironed. The iron was plugged into a socket in the bathroom and took three minutes to heat up. He stood beside it and brushed his teeth, and he finished just as the iron was ready. The white part of the collar had been washed too many times and had turned cream-yellow. A loose thread at the edge had curled up. He did not change it. To change it he would first have to buy another one. To buy one he would have to choose a time, and to choose a time he would have to ask for leave. To ask for leave he would have to write a slip, and to write a slip he would have to stand at the supervisor’s desk and wait while someone read it through. He had done the sum, and the answer was that the collar stayed.

He lived in a one-room flat. The curtains were grey and drawn halfway, leaving a strip of light. The radio next door came on at half past six every morning, exactly on time. It gave the weather first, and when the weather was over it gave the traffic. He dressed during the traffic report and tied his tie. The tie was dark brown, and the knot was very small. The shoe rack stood just inside the door, the toes pointing at the door, pair after pair in a row. The black leather shoes had been polished on Sunday. The right shoe had a crease across the vamp. When he polished them he ran the brush along the crease and did not brush across it. The crease had come from stepping into a puddle on a rainy day last year, and he had never smoothed it out since. Before he left he had three things to do. He turned off the gas, unplugged the electric kettle, and turned the lock twice. On the second turn his wrist paused. That was to check that the bolt had gone all the way in. This one was extra. He knew it, but he did it every day. His breakfast was a rice ball left over from the night before. He ate it standing up, folded the wrapper into four, and dropped it into the bag by the door. His keys and transport card were in the inside pocket of his jacket. The teeth of the key dug into his palm, and he moved them to another pocket.

The right arm of his glasses was bound with clear tape, wound a turn and a half from the hinge upwards. It had been caught in a train door half a year ago. He had made no sound when it happened, because a sound would have made people turn round. From that day the frame had been a little crooked. When he wore them, things seen through his right eye were one millimetre lower than through his left. He had got used to it. If he took them off now, the edge of the desk would tilt to one side.

At the end of the lanyard round his neck hung a clear card holder, and inside it was a white card. There was nothing on the white card. There was no photo, no name, no department and no number. The new ID badge had not come through yet. On the first day, when the lanyard was put on him, someone from Personnel said next week. Seven weeks had gone by, and next week was still next week.

He wore it going out of the door, wore it down the stairs, and wore it at the copier while he waited for the paper to come out. The front of the holder faced his shirt, and the white side pressed against his chest. No one had ever asked.

In his right trouser pocket there were four strips of paper.

The paper had been torn from a leave slip. The slip was a form laid out across the page. Along its top row were four boxes, printed with the words ‘Date’, ‘Period’, ‘Cover’ and ‘Reason’. He had filled it in four times. Each time, when he had finished, he tore it along the lines between the boxes into four strips, one for each column. He folded the strips neatly and put them in his right trouser pocket. The strips from the first three times had gone into the bin on the platform as soon as they were torn. The fourth time, he kept them.

The edges of the paper had gone fuzzy. When he ran the pad of his finger along the lines, he could feel that the strip on the far right was a little thicker than the other three. That column was ‘Reason’. He had written in that column in pencil, rubbed it out, written again, and rubbed it out again. Where he had rubbed, the fibres had lifted, and the paper felt thick to the touch.

Every morning before he went out, he ran his fingers over them. What he touched was that one strip.

※

The platform was just below his flat. There were forty-two steps in all, and he had counted them. On the way down his right hand stayed pressed against the outside of his pocket, holding the strips. It was not that he was afraid they would fall out. He had got into the habit.

By seven o’clock the convenience store outside the ticket gates already had customers, and he was third in the queue. Behind the yellow line on the platform, the first white square was for the door of the fifth carriage, and he stood on it. Wind blew out from the far end of the tunnel, carrying the smell of iron. On the billboard opposite, the actress’s hair was blown to one side, but she still had the same smile, and the corners of her mouth had not changed.

There was a person standing in front of him.

The newspaper rack stood to the left of the warming cabinet. On it was a row of weekly magazines, with big letters on their covers. She did not look at them. She stood there, waiting for the person ahead to finish counting out their change.

He knew her umbrella, but not her name, and he had never spoken to her. He remembered only a few of her habits. Each morning he noted one more, and by the end of a month there were twenty-odd.

Her umbrella was black, with a long handle. One of the ribs inside was broken. It was the third rib, and the break was near the canopy. She had bound it with white medical tape, three turns, and one edge of the tape had lifted a little. When she furled the umbrella, that part always slid into the cover first.

She got on the third carriage, at its second door. His was the fifth. So every morning on the platform he had to walk two more steps to see her umbrella through the gap between the doors. He had counted. In one month she had got on the third carriage sixteen times. The rest of the time she was in the fourth carriage or the second, and he stood at the door of the fifth and could see nothing.

At the warming cabinet she always took two hot cans. One was milk tea. He could not make out the label on the other. At the till she kept only one. The other she put back in the cabinet, and as she did so she turned her wrist first, so that the bottom of the can faced outwards. He had watched her do this many times, and he had never asked her why.

Today she was one place ahead of him.

She took two cans from the warming cabinet, went to the till, then walked back and put one of them into the cabinet, bottom outwards. Then she paid and walked out with the other. At the ticket gates she took her transport card out of her bag. One edge of the card had a white mark, left by a fingernail that had pressed on it many times. The tip of her umbrella touched the frame of the gate, and she did not stop.

He went to the warming cabinet. The can that was left was still hot. The light from inside the cabinet fell on it, and a thin film of mist covered its side. He picked it up.

The assistant at the till did not ask whether he wanted a bag. It was a young lad with his cap pulled low, stacking a row of rice balls onto a shelf. He turned each one as he set it down, so that its label faced outwards. He paid, held the can in his right hand, pressed his left hand against his pocket, and walked through the ticket gates.

The morning trains were more crowded than the evening ones. He stood by the door with his back against the frame. His left hand gripped a leather strap that hung from the handrail, and in his right hand he held the hot drink. He did not drink it. The heat came through the aluminium and into his palm. He changed hands once, and then changed back. Outside the window the buildings went past one after another, and the water tanks on their roofs were white. At the third stop someone got on and squeezed in beside him. He moved his body a little towards the door frame, making room for one person. That person did not speak, and neither did he.

※

The office was in a twelve-storey building. The automatic doors at the bottom opened and closed more than a hundred times a day, and each time they opened slowly. He stopped at the entrance, waited for them to open all the way, and then walked in with his head lowered.

The angle of his bow was fixed. He lowered his head until the card holder on his chest touched the second button, and then he stopped. Any lower, and the card would flip over, white side outwards. So he never bowed past that angle. Even when he had to make way on the steps at the door, or pick something up from the floor, he lowered himself only as far as that point, and then reached the rest with his hand.

The office lift was old. Its doors paused before closing, for three seconds every time, and then they closed slowly. He always stood to the left of the buttons, so that he did not block anyone’s hand. Between the lift and the entrance was a glass door, covered in handprints, high and low. He did not try to work out which one was his.

From the entrance to his desk he had to walk down a long corridor. It was carpeted in grey, and as he walked he could not hear his own shoes. He had walked this stretch many times, and each time he paused for half a step at the third door, to let a person carrying a cardboard box go past.

His desk was by the window, against a row of grey filing cabinets. The things on it were set out very straight: a stapler, a roll of tape, and a plastic pen pot holding three pens, all with their caps facing up. The hot drink stood beside the pen pot. The mist on the can slowly dried, and he did not open it. The supervisor’s desk was at the far end, behind a partition. Above the partition, the back of the supervisor’s head showed.

In the morning, in the lift, he bumped into someone’s bag and said sorry.

At ten in the morning the copier jammed. A thick sheet had caught between the rollers at the feed, and a red light came on. He pulled out the sheet that was stuck. Its corner was already creased. He said sorry to the machine, then smoothed the sheet flat with his palm and put it back on the pile it had come from. The paper was flat again, but the crease at the corner remained, and he did not try to rub it out.

At noon he handed over documents three times. The first was to a senior colleague in the next team. As the senior colleague took the paper, his fingers stopped on its edge. The first line on the sheet was a date. The senior colleague looked at the date, then at him, and the only reply was “Mm.” He said sorry. The senior colleague did not respond to it. The senior colleague turned the paper over and looked at the back, to see if there was anything written there. The second was to accounts. Accounts was looking at something else, so he set the paper down at the corner of the desk, drew his hand back, and said sorry. The third was to the supervisor. He said sorry, and when the supervisor said to put it there, he put it there.

The supervisor looked up. His gaze landed on the second button, paused, and went back to the papers. His card holder had flipped round, so that its white side lay against his shirt. The supervisor’s gaze did not go any lower.

At noon he ate a rice ball at his desk. The tab on the wrapper snapped halfway. He used his fingernail to peel the rest of the film away, bit by bit and very slowly, so as not to tear the nori. The nori had been stuck to the wrapper. He peeled it off first, and only then put it in his mouth.

When he had finished the rice ball, he took the slips he had to check that afternoon out of the folder. A purchase order, a goods receipt and an invoice: three sheets had to be matched into one set. If they matched, he put a tick in red in the bottom right corner. If they did not, he did not tick. He wrote a figure in pencil beside it, crossed the figure out, and wrote it again. There were three red pens in the pen pot. He used only the same one each time. Its cap had two tooth marks bitten into it.

In the afternoon someone in the corridor called out “Hey.” He stopped and answered. The person walked past him and called to the one behind. He stood where he was and said sorry. No one heard it, and no one needed to hear it.

He had not counted, but he knew how many there had been over the day. The lift, once. The copier, once. Handing over documents, three times. And once, being stopped by a call that was not for him. Six times.

※

At half past five the screen on the time clock flickered.

The time clock was at the far end of the corridor on the third floor. It had a grey casing, a small screen on the front, and a slot underneath for cards. Beside it a notice was pinned to the wall. The words were printed: ‘Clock-out is allowed from half past five.’

He stood in front of the time clock with his card in his hand. A colleague in front of him put his card in. The machine bit once, the screen showed the time, and the colleague took the card and walked away. Then another one. He waited until the third person had gone, and only then put his card in.

It bit once. The hole for that column had been punched at the very front, and its edge was fuzzy.

Then he went back to his desk and finished the form he had left unfinished. He checked the third column of figures twice. Once he touched each figure with the tip of a pen, and once he pressed the paper with his fingernail, matching them one by one.

In the bottom right corner of the computer screen the time read eighteen minutes to six. He pressed save, and then he pressed it again. The file had not changed, but he pressed it a second time all the same.

He was the last person to switch off the lights on this floor. No one had ever decided it, but it was always him. Before he switched off the lights he had to look at the standby light on the copier, turn the tap in the kitchenette tight, and press flat the corner of the white sheet on the supervisor’s desk.

At ten to eleven he went downstairs. The guard’s booth was still lit. The guard was an old man. Every night, when he walked past the entrance, the old man lifted his head from his chair and said, “Thanks for your hard work.” He nodded. His head dipped once, and the card holder did not touch his button. The old man said nothing more, and lowered his head to his newspaper again.

It took eleven minutes to walk from the office to the station. On the way there was a footbridge. Its railings were iron, and along them a row of supermarket plastic bags had been tied, rattling whenever the wind blew. He walked across the bridge with one hand on the railing, and the coolness of the metal crept up into his palm bit by bit. In the middle of the bridge a man in overalls stood watching the traffic below. He went round behind the man in a small curve, without touching the man’s backpack. Past the bridge, the streetlamps were lit one after another, and the ground beneath each one was dry.

※

At twenty past eleven, the last train.

He stood by the door at the very back of the carriage. The lights inside were white, and the fluorescent tubes flattened every face to the same colour. In the window he saw his reflection. The frame of his glasses was crooked, the white card was in its holder, and his lips were dry. He practised a smile at the glass. He lifted the corners of his mouth to the second notch, stopped, and let them go. The face in the glass let go with him.

There were not many people in the carriage. On the glass of the door was a handprint, pressed from the inside, the fingers spread wide and the print very large. The people in the seats had their heads down, and the light from their phones fell on their chins. On the wall opposite was an advertisement for a cram school. In it a girl was smiling a textbook smile, with the corners of her mouth at the same height. He looked at the advertisement once, and then he stopped looking.

He glanced at the digital watch on his wrist. It had a plastic strap, and the numbers on the screen read twenty past eleven. The time clock’s attendance day rolled over at six in the morning. Anything punched before the roll-over counted as the day before. There were six hours and forty minutes to the roll-over.

Then he took the strips from his right trouser pocket and spread them on his palm, laying them side by side, torn edge to torn edge. All four were there. The fuzzy edge of the strip on the far right curled up on his palm. He looked at them for a while. He did not go looking for anything. He folded the strips up again and put them back.

The train swayed once on a bend.

The corner of his briefcase touched the hand of a woman sitting diagonally opposite, the hand resting on her knee. The ticket she had been holding slipped out of her fingers, fell to the floor of the carriage, and stopped beside the toe of his shoe.

The woman had short hair and a grey coat. She sat up very straight, with her knees together. Her hand stopped in mid-air, and she did not pick up the ticket.

He bent down. This time he went lower than that angle. The card holder knocked against the second button of his shirt and bounced back. He did not stop. He bent until he reached the edge of the ticket. He pinched the paper between two fingers, then straightened up and held the ticket out to her.

“Sorry. I’ve caused you trouble.”

The woman took the ticket. Her fingers touched only the edge of the paper.

There was a little dust from the carriage floor on his fingers. He rubbed them against the seam of his trousers, once and then again. He looked down. The dust had not come off completely. Outside the window the tunnel lights went past one bay at a time, each gap the same length as the last, and the light passed over the back of his hand and went on.

“Thank you.”

Her voice was not loud, and it fell away at the end.

The train’s announcement came on, giving the name of the next station. He did not catch it.

The train pulled into the next station. The doors opened and closed again. She did not look at him again. She folded the ticket in half, put it in the inside pocket of her coat, and zipped the pocket shut.

It was the first thing anyone had said to him all week that did not ask him to apologise.

※

The platform was on the left side of the train. He squeezed out one second before the doors closed. His shoe came down on the yellow line, he stood there for a moment, and then he walked on.

There was no one on the platform but him. A wooden bench leaned against the wall, and on its back there was a shine where hands had rubbed it. The electronic board on the platform scrolled up one line at a time, and when it reached the last line it read ‘Last train today’. He stood beneath the board and read that line through. The frame of the board was black, and dust had settled on it. In the dust there was a thin line of fingerprints. They must have come from someone who had stood here and run a finger along the frame, as far as the line for the last train.

The clock hung on a pillar three pillars away from him, and its second hand was moving. He stood under the clock and counted ten seconds. Each time the second hand moved one mark, his fingers touched his trouser seam. When he had counted ten seconds, he stopped. At the far end of the platform the convenience store was still lit. On its window was a poster for oden, with a daikon drawn very large. The oden pot gave off white steam. The steam rose, and where it reached the light it broke apart. On this whole street, this was the only warm colour.

He took a paper bowl, picked up a piece of daikon and a stick of chikuwa, and put them into the broth. The steam from the broth rushed up at him, and his glasses fogged all at once. The lenses went completely white.

It was in those two seconds.

The lenses were still white, and he could see nothing. His shoulders sagged first, before anything else. The place at his collarbones let go, his arms dropped, and the rim of the paper bowl touched his wrist. He did not try to prop himself up.

In his pocket his phone buzzed once. He did not take it out.

Two seconds passed, and the lenses slowly cleared. He put the paper bowl back on the counter. The daikon and the chikuwa were still in it, and the broth had not been touched.

The automatic door of the convenience store opened, and a gust of air-conditioning came out. There was no one at the door. The door stood open, and the light fell across a narrow strip of floor. He bowed his head towards the door. He lowered it to that angle, where the card holder touched the second button, and stopped.

Facing the automatic door, where no one stood, he bowed his head and apologised.

There was still no one on the platform. The second hand of the clock reached the last mark. The digital clock behind the till in the convenience store read one minute to midnight.

A strip of torn paper slid out of his pocket. It was the one on the far right. He did not see it.