"Do you realize what time it is?!" Chiba Takuya exclaimed.
He was very upset that I had arrived so late in the day, and that was understandable. However, the fact that I came back with not one, but two manuscripts, had calmed him down a little bit.
"And what did you do to your face?!" He exclaimed in horror when he saw my black eye. "I sent you to get a document, and you come back looking like a panda!"
A panda?
Was he trying to be funny, or openly mocking me?
The comment, audible from all over the floor, made some people laugh.
"Did you get into a fight or something?" Chiba asked warily. "Because if we get in trouble with the police, I warn you that it won't be without consequences!"
No, there probably wouldn't be 'trouble with the police', considering the circumstances under which I had found myself afflicted with that ridiculous black eye. But he didn't need to know that.
With the two envelopes in hand, he sat down at his desk, still with his green travel pillow around his neck. And now that I was paying more attention, said cushion had two eyes and a pair of little legs sticking out the back. Maybe it was some kind of frog, or other amphibious animal?
In any case, he almost always had it around his neck during the day, and only bothered to remove it when he left the office.
Absorbed in reading the documents I had given him, he had completely forgotten my presence. This was the signal for me to leave his office and return to my desk. However, as soon as I sat down and turned on my computer, Mrs. Asanuma came towards me, with the intention of starting a conversation.
"Well, Nijima-kun, you can be glad that Chiba-san is not cutting your pay for this delay..." She said thoughtfully.
"I was on a mission as per his instructions," I replied while entering my credentials on the keyboard. "And I already understood that he was shouting more than he was taking action."
"Oh, I see, I see," she said with a small smile. "But in your case, it seems more like the opposite, right?"
To agree with her, I nodded, while still not looking at her.
I had several chapters to proofread before they were published in magazines, and also to organize the documents that my colleagues higher up the chain of command than me had already processed.
"I don't know if it's by choice that you're stingy with your words, or if it's your character," she continued. "But at least you're doing a very good job so far. I wouldn't be surprised if you're entrusted with managing an author very soon."
She wasn't wrong. I had already been in the position of assistant editor for two years, and had been with the company for three years in total. So it was very likely that I would be given the responsibility of a young author in a short time.
"Keep up the good work, Nijima-kun," she said and walked away to her own office without waiting for a reply from me.
She probably knew I wouldn't answer her. And that was correct. She seemed to have a lot of patience with people, and was always very polite to others. But I had also noticed that she would always try to talk to me whenever she saw me for the first time that day. It didn't matter if I responded verbally or not. So I had taken it for granted, for the past two years, that she would come to my side and do some kind of monologue about me.
I was also relieved that she didn't try to make me talk in spite of myself. She respected the distance that I had unwillingly set with my colleagues. It was really appreciable, because without that, I would quickly find myself stuck, unable to conduct even a trivial discussion on a regular basis.
Her words already forgotten, I focused on one of the chapters I had to validate. And as usual, it was full of repetitive mistakes that I had learned to anticipate from the author I was correcting. It was quite amazing, by the way, to see that the same mistakes would come up with particular authors; each one having a particular type of mistake that the others did not have. And by error, that could mean typos, conjugation errors, or extra letters that slipped into the text because of a too haphazard typing on the keyboard.
About 80% of the texts received were in paperless form, although some authors still worked by hand before scanning their pages or retyping the content on the computer. Osagawa sensei was in the latter category, for example.
If I remember correctly, he said in an interview that he couldn't get over the feeling of the pen sliding over the paper. Or something like that.
As for the author I was editing, he was an all-digital writer, who had long since done without paper. And obviously, that didn't prevent mistakes. On the contrary.
My role was therefore to make corrections, to manage the archiving of paper documents, but also in some cases to help the editors by going directly to pick up a manuscript, as had been the case last night. I was not, however, in charge of evaluating the content itself. That was the job of a real editor, not an assistant editor like me.
But that didn't matter. I enjoyed being able to read, even out of order or without a logical sequence, several stories at once. Sometimes because I was interested in the story, and sometimes because it served as a reference for me to decipher people's emotions.
Books had taught me a lot about this. Of course, manga and other comics were the most telling, in my case. Because I could see the expressions of the characters drawn. But it also made the interpretation of certain emotions confusing.
That's why, in addition to reading, I studied the expressions and the body language, in order to understand more easily some delicate situations.
I had already finished correcting the current chapter - a story about a knight and a policewoman - and was about to move on to the next one, when Mr. Chiba stood at the door of his office and shouted at me.
"Hey Nijima-kun! Someone is asking for you at the front desk!" he exclaimed.
People were already used to him raising his voice, even to say banalities.
So they didn't look up to see what he was talking about, remaining focused on their work, or their ongoing phone call.
But being directly concerned, I unfortunately could not do the same.
Standing up at my desk, I tried to find out more.
"Someone is asking for me? Who?" I asked calmly.
Chiba looked at me before quickly huffing, annoyed.
"Yeah right, pretend you don't know." He replied sarcastically with a shrug. "The front desk told your 'girlfriend' to come straight up, so next time give her your direct line number, instead of forcing her to make the trip..."
And strangely, the apparent peace of the place was disturbed by this information. The phone calls had become whispers, and the noise of the keyboards had faded. It was as if everyone was trying to listen carefully to what was going on.
Mr. Chiba had gone back to his desk and was grumbling.
I even heard him say to Mrs. Asanuma, "This guy has a girlfriend? Tell me I'm dreaming!' while closing the office door behind her.
And to tell the truth, I was the first one surprised. Because I didn't have a girlfriend. But that was obvious, wasn't it?
So I was wondering who had the audacity to introduce herself like that, when the elevator doors opened.
There was silence as my colleagues held their breath to discover the new arrival.
But in my case, it didn't take long to figure out who I was dealing with. Just until the person inside the elevator decided to get out.
The detective was there. Dressed in a turtleneck sweater under a burgundy leather jacket, and black pants.
And with a big smile, she called out, waving her arm:
"Iwao!"