"What the hell did you do?!" Mr. Chiba exclaimed in horror as he stared at me with an appalled look.
It was only eight in the morning; on Monday. And I was already being yelled at.
"No, seriously!" Chiba exclaimed. "You go away for the weekend with a black eye, and you come back with an unusable hand?! What are you doing with your free time?!"
"I helped arrest a stalker," I replied with an inexpressive look.
Mr. Chiba then raised a hand towards me, and while shaking his head, he closed his eyes.
"Sure, sure... No, you know what? I don't even want to know what you do in your spare time. Forget it!" He whined, desperate. "But if it's holding up your work, you better be prepared to have your pay docked accordingly!"
I nodded, before heading to my desk in the greatest silence.
And as soon as I was seated, Mrs. Asanuma joined me to say hello.
"Arresting a stalker, really?" she asked with an amused look. "I would have thought you were smarter than that, to come up with a valid excuse...."
"That's the truth, though..." I replied without even glancing at her, too busy turning on my computer.
"Oh..." She said with astonishment. "I didn't expect that..."
Why was she saying that?
Was the very idea of me doing something during the weekend that surprising to them?
Fair enough, I'd never really done anything significant until now. But couldn't they just recognize that I could also do something for the good of others?
Finishing settling down, I left the humming computer behind and got up to make a cup of coffee, and was followed closely by Mrs. Asanuma.
"By the way, did you look at the TV show pitch for Osagawa sensei?" She asked, obviously more interested in that, than in my hobbies.
I nodded while pouring hot water over a mixture of instant coffee and powdered sugar; the characteristic smell of the drink tickling my nostrils.
Even in this form, it was a little too strong, so I quickly opened a pod of milk creamer to thin out the evil drink.
"This is quite a breakthrough in your work," she said. "So try to complete the assignments you're given, and I'm sure you'll have a junior author assigned to you soon."
She smiled, and patted me lightly on the shoulder, which startled me.
Then she walked back to her office, and as I followed her, my eyes fell on Mr. Chiba's glass-enclosed office, where he seemed to be having an energetic argument over the phone. He was pacing back and forth, gesturing wildly, the apple-green travel pillow around his neck bouncing with each new shake of his shoulders.
Both my colleagues and I could thank the soundproofing of his office for sparing us the yelling that regularly occurred there.
It was only eight o'clock in the morning, and the day was already shaping up to be a busy one.
As usual, scripts and manuscripts piled up in my e-mail box, leaving me no time to rest. I had almost forgotten that it was the last day of the month, and that many authors were sending this month's and next month's chapters together to save time. This resulted in everyone being overwhelmed with work.
Because of this, I didn't really enjoy the end of the month. Or Thursdays.
It was the kind of day where you started to get tired of the week, but not yet close enough to the weekend to be able to completely rest. And on Fridays, it depended on my workload. The sooner I got home, the better. Even if it was to do nothing in particular.
Sometimes my parents would text me, to see how I was doing. They were always the ones who initiated the contact; because even with them, I didn't want to make the first move. It was always the others who came to meet me, otherwise, I remained silent.
I even wondered how those people did it, who at the end of the school year promised to keep in touch regularly, even though they would change schools and never see each other again. Was it even worth the trouble?
I had never had any friends, so I couldn't really have an opinion on the matter. However, if I already didn't keep in touch with my own parents, it was doubtful that I would keep in touch with people I had only been around for a few hours a day for a few years.
I also didn't know why my parents went into so much trouble with their messages. They would virtually talk about anything and everything, as if they wanted to give me a glimpse of their daily life; and include me in it at the same time. Afterwards, they would always ask me what I did during the day, if I liked my job. If I had someone in my life, too...
This last point made me sigh, because it was not at all something I had had in mind, until now. I was content to go to work every day of the week and stay home quietly on the weekends. My parents were even desperate for me to come and visit them. But for that, I had to take the train or drive for several hours. And I was a little too tired to do that for one or two days.
But as for a girlfriend... Things were a bit complicated. I was far from being sociable, because of the problems I had in expressing myself or communicating my emotions. So even if a woman approached me, I never paid attention or understood the intentions behind her actions.
Yet, when I met the detective, I found myself strangely fascinated by those two eyes staring at me.
And even though she had said it at the time without really thinking about it, the fact that she had said she had feelings for me was enough to dust off my insensitive heart. Did it come down to so little after all? Or was it because of this line, along with the shock of thinking I had killed someone by accident?
Master Osagawa's words came back to my mind.
Sometimes you have to find something to occupy your mind, to forget about the problem you are facing.
Could this kind of process really work? I had put myself in danger the last two days, but in return, it had disturbed me like never before. I had felt emotions that I'd never felt before, but which were nonetheless oddly familiar to me. Something that was natural, and had always been there, without me realizing it.
The sunlight suddenly disappeared from my office, a blind having been pulled down in front of the large windows by one of my colleagues. I squinted.
Maybe it was the result of the situation, and that alone.
Maybe the cause of this confused whirlwind filling my heart was this strange woman. People would think my reasoning was simplistic, but I was convinced: she was the first one who made me feel like this.
No, correction.
She would probably be the only one to have that effect on me.
It didn't matter if she was weird, or if she was hiding things from me. I didn't expect her to tell me anything about herself, but to trigger things in me. So I could get past the hidden information, because after all, I was hiding something too.
With that thought, I started to feel the little plastic case in my pants pocket.
No.
I still preferred that she let me in on everything she was doing. I really didn't like being kept in the dark. And for that, I had just the right amount of leverage.