Black Company

PIckAtTheScAB. pICKaTtHEhEALING.

pick at the scab pick at the healing

Pick at the scab. Pick at the healing.

Fidgeting fingers fought for focus as Ishikawa Masaru braced for the incoming crowd crush on the Chūō Line. May’s springtime winds had faded, and now June’s plum ripening rains were turning the Tokyo skyline purple with incessant precipitation. As Masaru flinched and shuffled his feet to welcome dozens of other commuters, he watched their distorted reflections bend against the raindrop streaks on the train window. Faces blurred and smeared into garish, stretched visages with darkened eyes and gnawing mouths.

Pick at the healing.

Razor burn and ingrown hairs lined his shirt collar as the rough edges of pressed white fabric pulled continuous friction against his aggravated neck. There was never a break. He shaved everyday and no matter what product he used, his skin stayed aggravated. Bodies filed in and his teeth chattered on themselves. Too many bodies. Too many days. Too many everything.

Cheap black and blue polyester gave semblances of conformity. Silence coated the air. He hated being touched. One of his eyes didn’t look in the correct direction. Arthritis was setting in to his wrists and shoulders.

Pick at the scab.

Hundreds of damp, humid suits crowded into the car and the interior temperature rose several degrees. Windows fogged with every second. His collar was always too tight. All he could do was close his eyes and try to ignore the breath of his neighbor who was inches away and now exhaling on his ear.

Last night he dreamt of his teeth all falling out and being replaced by mechanical keyboard keys. Pitch black ink bled from his gums and coated his fingers as he shoved plastic key after plastic key into place.

The train entered a tunnel and the car went black.

In the darkness he could feel them. Even when no one was visible, he could sense the bodies of those around him, and he wondered how he registered to them. Did they notice he was small? Did they feel his frail arms and trembling hands? What did he smell like to others?

Streaks of light bent and glared as they rushed by, casting their temporary hints of awareness onto the passengers as they looked down in silence at their phone screens.

No one ever looked at one another. No one spoke. Trains moved in silence as they hurtled thousands of weary souls to their daily rituals of labor.

Muscles spasmed in his face as a faint grunt escaped from his lips without his permission. Too many breaths on his neck. Too many bodies. Too many everything.

Pick at the healing. Pick at the healing. Pick at the healing.

His stop was coming up soon. Fifty-four minutes each way, with two connections.

The tunnel always seemed to last longer than it should.

Pick at the scab.

Creaks and screeches sounded out as the cars hurled along the tracks, still blanketed by dark.

Then the eyes appeared.

“Oh no, please no,” Masaru muttered to himself as the two glowing orbs bobbed in the depths just outside the window.

Though they were careening through the darkness at a pace well beyond any human or animal, the eyes were moving in tandem with them, just as they always did.

Bodiless.

Faceless.

Weightless.

Unblinking.

Masaru shook his head, begging for them to disappear, but to his great fear, they remained. It had been quite some time since those spectres had visited him. At least three years. But now they were there, peering relentlessly at him as they hung in the darkness. Something terrible was about to happen.

“Don’t look out the window,” Masaru whispered to the young children who were riding beside him on their way to school.

“Sorry?” the girl asked.

It was subtle, but her gaze settled on his lazy eye before looking at his good one. He was used to it. Light broke along the glass as the train exited the tunnel. Faint sounds thudded from the front of the train.

“Don’t look out the window,” Masaru repeated.

He didn’t know how or why, but he felt like whatever terrible thing was waiting, it would be visible from the window. Icy pricks of dread crawled from his liver and fingertips, clawing their way along his skin with pained slowness. Their embrace corrupted his arms and chest until the entire upper half of his body was numb and trembling. Up and up the feeling rose until it reached his throat, building into a guttural gagging growl that Masaru forced into submission with a choked gag.

The eyes grew brighter.

“Please,” Masaru begged.

Just like every other time, he didn’t know what was coming. He just knew it would be sad. No way to stop it. No way to understand it. All he could do was brace for whatever was next.

Then the red appeared on the window.

It was faint at first. Drops of rainfall were still gathering from the steady precipitation, but their presence was now being accented by foreign red lines that streaked and smeared. They’d come from the front of the train, one car up. Now, their remnants were making their way along the metal of the outside. Masaru’s stomach spasmed as the dread drilled into his throat and eyes. Chunks of hair and flecks of fleshy residue smeared along the window and he forced himself to look away.

Beside him, the girl ignored his warning and looked up. When she realized what was happening, she let out a faint whimper just before the overhead alerts began to ping.

“Personal Injury. Please Be Advised. Personal Injury.”

Many in the crowded car let out sighs of frustration. There was going to be a delay now. They were going to be late.

Pick at the scab. Pick at the scab. PICKatTHEscab. pickatthescab.

The edge of his shirt sleeve was damp as it rested on his wrist.

Pick at the healing. Pick at the healing. Pick at the healing.

Cotton tri-blend bit at his neck. Breaks screamed. The train slowed. There would be a delay. He was going to be late.

Late.

Late.

Late.

He couldn’t be late.

As the train came to a stop for servicing, the red no longer streaked in momentum. Now it began to smear downward, where it gathered in the pooling water that sat on the windowframe. Crimson and cadmium life force ran vertically along the place where the eyes were, but now they were gone.

Right side doors opened, smearing the remnants of humanity along rubber seals and metal rails. Whispers of annoyance and a few thoughtful prayers hung in the air as the passengers began to exit beside the incident.

“God damned train jumpers. They should at least wait till morning commutes are done,” a well-dressed young man snarled as he pushed by Masaru.

Pickatthehealingpickatthehealibgpickatthehealing

Officers and station attendants shooed them away as they unfurled tarps and safety markers. Masaru sighed as he bowed to the red streaks and braced himself to walk the rest of the way.

When he exited the station, the downpour had intensified. Soon, far more than his sleeve-end would be damp. Wetness on his collar always made his neck even more aggravated. His stop had a vending machine where he would get morning coffee, but this machine didn’t have his preferred brand.

Masaru resigned himself to head to the office. Another form of dread settled into his throat and the bottom of his liver as he contemplated what was waiting. Today was his annual performance review.

Pick. Pick. Pick. Pick.

Nothing was ever fully clear when he looked out at the world.

Having Amblyopia meant the brain had trained itself to see what it wanted to see. Instead of struggling to process blurring images caused by out-of-sync vision, the mind simply focused on the normal eye’s signal and blocked out the unclear narrative of the other.

Masaru’s family couldn’t afford treatments when he was a child, so the damage became permanent. When he was in grade school, he had worn an eyepatch in hopes that it would help his mind calm and also keep attention from him. In the end, it gave him migraines from frustration due to the cheap fabric rubbing his temple and brow, and it made him a favored target for local bullies.

In time, it became easier not to wear the patch and simply exist with his head lowered. Add in crooked teeth and a faint, throaty voice, and Masaru was all but unnotable to general society. Not ugly. Not handsome. Not important. Not polished. Simply there.

Thereness was easier than presentness, even if deep in his heart he truly wanted to be present. He hadn’t asked for the eye. He hadn’t asked for the teeth. He hadn’t asked for the trembling fingers that always wanted to scratch at his angry skin. He hadn’t asked for the eyes to follow him.

He hadn’t asked for so much. But it still happened. Life’s steady onslaught of anguish had meticulously chipped away at his essence until he’d eventually lost any sense of agency, autonomy, or purpose. And all of that built upon itself until ‘being there’ was all he could expect.

And the act of simply ‘being there’ had led him to this place.

Pick. The eyes are still there.

As he plodded through dirty puddles and tried not to focus on the way his dampening trousers were now clinging to his thigh, he braced for whatever misery or aggression awaited him at his office that day. Andrakin Property Management was not a noble place of employment. It was the very type of place all those in Japan feared winding up at.

Pick. They hid in the blurred corners of his mind, just out of sight.

They had a name for such workplaces in their country. It held a stigma and a warning- never fully fading or being regulated into submission because the threat of finding oneself working at such a place was enough to keep the majority of society in check.

Pick. That train jumper woke up as a person and died as a splattered mass.

They called them burakku kigyō.

Pick. The eyes will follow you until _____

Black company.

Pick. Pick your eye from its socket and shove it back into its place at the correct angle.

Within its eggshell-painted walls, beneath the garish halogen, along the matted carpet and faded tiles, life bled by in steady deadness. To enter its dingy halls was to leave your gentleness outside as hours of labor were dotted with screaming superiors, insults from frustrated clients, cheap, second-hand chairs that ground spinal disks to dust, and monitors that never seemed bright enough.

Scratch.

A scar on Masaru’s cheekbone told stories of staplers thrown at him on more than one occasion.

Bleed.

They weren’t important or polished enough to be “front office” and client-facing; the luckiest ones were sent to actual nice buildings in important districts within Tokyo. There they would stand at marble desks and engage with the well-dressed and hurried. But those roles were rare at best. For the majority of them, they were stuck in that office, or whatever rundown facility could afford on-site attendees.

For the ones like Masaru, they’d never leave that alert-filled world of unseen “back office” roles.

Two decades of knowing that to be true meant Masaru’s nervous system had conditioned itself to drown out the pings.

But he could never drown out the cruelty of the others, especially his bosses.

There was a misery in the silence that met the start of every day, when workers funneled in with mouths clenched in preparation. To their desks they’d go, where the alerts and pings would soon begin.

Pick.

Alerts never stopped. Rents had to be collected. Office buildings never functioned as well as they should have. Elevators jammed. Plumbing burst. Tenants complained about rickety air conditioning ducts. Common area maintenance was never done. Each building told the same story of landlords never having enough funding to keep properties alive or competitive. And all of those frustrations from tenants and owners alike would gather themselves in the abyss of cloud networks before hurling themselves in spiteful frustration to Andrakin, where Masaru and his peers did their best to fix what they could.

But it was never enough.

And that’s when the bosses would lash out.

That day, he was late, just like he’d feared. And now he was wet.

Pick.

Top layers for fabric pushed moisture down into stitching and lining, until faint whispers of dewy overstimulation pulled its roughened fingers along Masaru’s shoulders and inner thighs. It wasn’t warm enough to dry quickly, and the sun was still hidden behind rainclouds. So Masaru had to accept that he’d likely be wet all day.

When he entered the office, he made his way towards the cubicle farm where dozens of others sat in rows of conformity as they braced for the day’s onslaught.

Masaru couldn’t even think on the suicide or the return of the eyes any longer. His thoughts were so wholly dedicated to preparing for his first rush of tickets and alerts that he didn’t realize his fingernails were pulling down against a small bit of crusted red covering that was protecting a recent razor nick. They pulled too ravenously and the scab came loose. Red immediately appeared.

The eyes are always there. Always.

Residual dampness on his skin made the blood’s downward pathing accelerate, and before Masaru could cover himself, red met white. Drops touched the edge of his collar and immediately began to stain.

“Oh… no…” Masaru nervously muttered to himself as his hand covered his neck and he turned to move towards the hallway bathroom.

His weak peripheral vision failed to alert him that his superior was right behind him with a cup of still-warm coffee in his hand. They collided before either could realize what was happening, and his superior let out a yelp of annoyance as hot liquid ran along his wrist and knuckles.

Panic seized Masaru as he saw what he’d done. Without thinking, he extended his hand from his neck.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m so sorry!” he said as he frantically looked away.

Red on his palm and finger only caused his victim to become even more enraged.

“Why is there blood on your hand?! Get away from me, you stupid, worthless bastard!!” the man shouted as he flung the remaining ounces of coffee onto Masaru’s chest.

It was hot, but not scalding. All Masaru could do was flinch and bow as the man left. Through it all, no one else dared to speak. Few even dared to look at the scene.

“Lazy-eyed fuck,” the superior snarled as he walked away.

The dread was always there, even when the eyes weren’t. It hung in the humidity and nipped at his neck like a taunting hound. Occasionally, when his mind was truly spiraling, he could hear the hound’s teeth grinding and clicking just behind his ear. Tension rose with every second as the trepidation coated him.

Blood dripped from Masaru’s neck and down onto the carpet. A faint squeak of fear left his throat as he rushed to the bathroom to try to stop the bleeding. By then, it was too late. His collar was streaked with red, and his chest was covered in brown.

His review was supposed to start nine minutes ago.

He hated the way his pants were pressing against his thigh.

With that man.

He was simultaneously cold and warm from the rain.

Rough, cheap paper towels were pressed to the wound as Masaru tried to calm his breathing.

Ten minutes.

He’d never wanted any of this. Just once, he wanted to have a pleasant day. Tremors shook his hand. Fretful twitches pulled his face to the right as his brows arced inward and upward in anxious concern.

Eleven minutes.

He braced for another stapler to be thrown at him. He’d always hated violence and violent people. They’d always loved him and his eye.

He couldn’t be any later.

All he could do was clench his eyes and inhale. Once he held the air in his nose for a moment, he exhaled slowly and exited the bathroom, accepting that an already bad review was likely about to be much worse.

Malice had a way of metastasizing through the souls of miserable people who gained power. They festered in offices, boardrooms, conference calls, and message threads, forever protected and glanced over by like-minded individuals or friends who would shield them from harm. Hateful, wretched personalities gathered control and used it to abuse those beneath them, knowing they would never face actual consequences. Their ugliness lingered until entire industries were infected by their cruelty. Beneath them, every worker or mentee was at risk of harassment, violence, extortion, and basic malice.

Masaru hated them. His boss was one such person, and on more than one occasion, the harassment and violence had been severe enough for gentle Masaru to imagine drowning his boss in a vat of discarded toner. Or watch as his head was crushed between malfunctioning elevator doors. Either worked, as long as it meant such a person couldn’t harm anyone else ever again. Unfortunately for Masaru and the world, his superior was very much alive and was currently in a conference room waiting to give him his review.

As Masaru tried and failed to steady his breathing, he caught a glimpse of two glowing orbs reflecting in the windowpane at the edge of the hall. He flinched and closed his eyes, hoping it was just a mental regurgitation of what he’d already seen that morning. To his relief, when he reopened his eyes, the orbs were gone. The Eyes weren’t there. Only the distorted refraction of nearby caution lights blinking in the rain.

“Masaru! In here! Now!!” his superior shouted from the conference room.

As always, no honorifics. Only bluntness and dismissal.

The air conditioner vent squeaked overhead as the cheap unit forced its dampened cycles through the ducts. The door handle to the conference room was loose. Every part of him was damp. His neck was still bleeding.

Pick.

Don’t pick.

dontpick

Focus.

“Kakarichō, forgive me for being tardy. There was an accident on the train this morning,” Masaru explained as he closed the door behind him.

His superior didn’t move or respond, instead allowing silence to permeate the walls and open air as he stared at his prey. Beige. Everything was beige. The room smelled of mildew and cigarette smoke.

His superior had yet to blink or look away.

Masaru’s chair squeaked as he sat down. Then it popped as the worn-down springs of the back support shifted. Its sudden loudness caused Masaru to flinch from habit. It wasn’t a stapler or a hole in the drywall. It was just the chair. Still no blink. Still looking directly at him.

Let it heal don’t pick.

Don’t pick.

dontpick

Eyes.

Eyes everywhere.

Eyes always watching.

Still not a word.

“...S-sir?” was all Masaru could ask.

Once, that man had intentionally urinated on Masaru’s shoes when they were in neighboring stalls.

He got away with it, of course.

He got away with everything.

They always did.

Masaru’s heart rate was rising in the unblinking silence. This was a taunt, he knew it. A simple manila folder sat waiting between them. Only one printed page was inside, and its corner was partially sticking out. Masaru’s gaze settled on it.

“If I look at your bad eye and only your bad eye…” his superior finally spoke.

Masaru raised his head to listen and braced for whatever verbal humiliation was coming. After a lifetime of it, there was little else he could hear that hadn’t already been hurled at him.

“If I only look in that eye, can you see me?”

“Sir?”

“More importantly… Can you see me SEEING you?” his superior said with a dead-eyed smirk.

This room was always frigid. It made the dampness even worse because now he was shivering. Those words were strange.

“I… I can see somewhat well in my laz- my bad eye.”

“Do you feel it when it starts to drift out of position?” he asked.

Masaru inhaled. He hated talking about his eye. He hated talking about himself. He hated talking.

“No. There’s no physical feedback,” Masaru said as he lowered his head once again.

There was never any physical sensation within his eye socket that alerted him that his eye was betraying its correct position. No, the only things that happened were the tension headaches arriving without warning and the steady blurring of vision. When it was really bad-

pick

When it was really bad, the darkness would appear.

Pick.

Black emptiness would spread from the far edges of his vision, bleeding into the frame of his mind until, drop by drop, the emptiness consumed half of his vision, leaving his eye utterly pointless.

Manilla creased, and his superior finally blinked as he smirked a devilish smile of coffee-stained teeth. There was a bit of shaving cream still behind his ear. It was small, but now that Masaru had seen it, he feared he wouldn’t be able to look away.

Smug fingers tapped on the folder.

Sounds of teeth grinding returned with a whisper.

His superior removed the single page from the folder and handed it to Masaru to inspect.

When Masaru received the paper, he was confused to find it blank. Simple, matte coat, standard-weight letter-sized paper bent and shifted in the breeze of the air conditioning vent as Masaru looked at both sides to see if he was missing something.

“Is this my review form, sir?” he asked.

His superior simply chuckled and reclined slightly. Grinding, snarling teeth were near Masaru’s ear now. He could almost feel it. Chiiiiit. Chiiiiiiiickt. Ccccccchiiiiickt. Chickkkkt. Chiittt. Chit. Grrrrrk. Grrrk. Grrrrrrrrrrrk. Empty white.

“It is. Your review for this year is me telling you that I fucking hate you. I hate every one of you. But you especially. You are a hideous, strange, lonely creature with absolutely no purpose. Some sad sacks of shit forgot to wear a condom forty years ago, and now we have you sitting in here bleeding from your neck with your stupid crooked teeth and your weird damn eye looking at me even when you aren’t.”

Black appeared.

Creaks in the chair told him his superior was standing. He couldn’t raise his head, just in case a slap or worse was coming. Please, not a stapler again. It hurt. He didn’t like being hurt. He didn’t like being hurt. He didn’t like being hurt.

Black emptiness. Pick. Chickt. Grk. Bleed.

A vice grip was tightening on his skull. WHeRe WaS HiS eYe eVeN LooKiNG? sHOES iN hIS vISION tOLD hIM hIS sUPERIOR wAS bESIDE hIM.

“I’m tired of looking at you, Masaru. I’m tired of acknowledging you. So from now on. I’m not going to. When you’re in my building, I’m going to pretend like you don’t exist.”

Black spread. GODS IT FELT LIKE HIS HEAD WAS BEING SAWED OPEN. Emptiness spilled along the edges of reality. Pulses accelerated as his ribs popped. This was humiliating. Was a hit coming? He didn’t want to bleed anymore. He had to speak. Speak.

“W-when I’m in-in your building?” Masaru asked in concern.

A heavy palm settled on his shoulder, causing him to flinch once more. Two fingers were extended in disregard, with a small business card hanging limply between their clasp. Trembling fingers retrieved the offering.

“Correct. You’re not going to be here often anymore. Because I’m relocating you.”

Masaru inhaled as he looked at the card. Being relocated was different from being promoted to client-facing. Being relocated was a death sentence. They weren’t firing him, but they were abandoning him. This was a trick they’d do to avoid being penalized for firing people. The degradation and isolation were usually enough to force people to quit and place the same on themselves. Black. Black everywhere. For all he knew, his eye was bleeding from the agony now.

Pick.

“Starting tomorrow, you will be the facilities and operations manager for this establishment. Handle your duties well.”

Black spread until nothing was visible in half of his sightline. When Masaru lifted his head, he gasped in shock. His superior was right beside him, leaning down with his bloated face only inches from Masaru’s. Bloodshot eyes stayed locked on him as they soaked in his misery like a fresh meal waiting to be devoured. Muscles tensed, pulling the man’s lips upwards into a smile.

“Do your best,” he said with a sadistic wink.

With that, Masaru was left alone with the blank page and the business card. It took every ounce of effort to focus his eyes and look at the cardstock death sentence. Tacky red font was embossed over faded gloss black. Edges were torn and frayed. But the address and name were there to read.

Warm Embraces Hotel

4-chome-99-4 Arakawa

Tokyo 194-0004, Japan

Masaru quickly retrieved his phone to inspect the new location. To his great terror, when he typed in the address and name, the images that greeted him were of a garishly painted, dingy, forlorn building on the western edge of the metropolitan sprawl. It was closer to his home, in an area never thought of by most. This wasn’t the glamorized, functional, or cute variation of this type of establishment. This was the variation no one went to with good intentions.

Chikkkt.

This time, it was his own teeth grinding. He could hear them as they scraped against one another with panicked friction -pick- Flickers of orbs in the corner, glowing, watching, never blinking -pick- Blood on his collar -pick- Stains everywhere -pick- Everything was damp -pick- He hated his eye -pick- He hated all of this.

Pick.

He was being sent to a nearly-abandoned, seedy love motel.

Rain pattered on the aged windowpanes with ceaseless taps that were equal parts relaxing and frustratingly distracting. Humidity had arrived and begun its monthslong onslaught as it blanketed the metro in an inescapable sheet of clinging frustration. Fans spun with steady hums as mold treatments set into kitchen and bathroom surfaces. As the chemicals dried, Masaru resigned himself to standing outside on his tiny balcony as misery and terror battled for superiority in his mind.

His superior had all but announced his time at Andrakin was over. To be cast out like this was to be put in a position where loneliness and waywardness settled in so severely that one simply resigned. They wouldn’t have to fire him because he would merely break in time and leave on his own. But for now, he was going to be forgotten and ignored.

The motel was all that awaited him now.

A small saving grace was that the commute would be better since the motel was closer to home than Andrakin’s office. That was about the only positive Masaru could think of as he tapped the weathered card against the back of his other hand while his heel rose and fell with a matching cadence.

Love motels were not all bad. Most were respectable. Many served their purpose nobly within a society made of multi-generational housing and packed schedules. They stood in silence along the corners of districts, waiting for young workers and tired parents to visit their cloistered, hidden rooms for a few minutes or hours of respite from everyone else. Drunken dates would stumble in for a fun bit of engagement as they sobered and prepared to return home. Tourists enjoyed the novelty with innocent curiosity. You could rest for an hour or a few, or you could stay a night.

Of course, there were also the affairs that moved from office desks to rented beds, the escorts who lured clients into temporary escapes chosen by kiosks, and the extortionists who used those rooms to ruin the lives of anyone stupid enough to enter their domain.

Judging from the card’s terrible font, the internet reviews, and available imagery, Masaru knew that Warm Embraces fell in the latter category. If anything, it was likely worse.

Establishments like this only existed to be money laundering vessels, escaping demolitions for better use via corruption and eyes that looked the other way when it was time for inspections. Only the seediest of visitors would dare set foot in a place like this, and those would now be the people Masaru had to engage with- if anyone at all.

Drops splashed from the balcony railing and onto his hand as he stared out at the sea of glistening rooftops. Faraway towers were hidden beneath the haze of summer precipitation. By now the sun was setting, but the radiance of dusk was lost. Only ash and indigo made it through the darkness, covering all the metro in a cold, isolating solemnity.

Another drop touched his hand, and he returned the card to his tattered wallet. His headache had stopped, but the events of the day had left him shaken and exhausted.

As memories of the blood and hair streaking on the window began to replay in his mind, the door of the neighboring balcony opened. Masaru’s eyes stayed ahead, knowing who was about to appear.

Faint hints of a radio playing within the space floated out and mixed in with the rainfall’s chorus as the door opened fully.

A pale, measured hand reached out in a familiar, normal motion until it found the shallow balcony’s railing.

Fingers came to rest on the iron bracing before retreating and shaking slightly to fling the moisture from their tips. Cheap, fading, and uneven tattoos lined undernourished, purple-veined skin before vanishing beneath an oversized shirt. One hand lowered a single cigarette from exhausted lips as the other hand retrieved a portable knob lighter. It was the kind that used to be in every vehicle in the old days, back when armrests had ashtrays. This version was retractable and safe.

It activated with a click, and the cigarette edge met the heat with a motion that said this had been done thousands of times. After a second, the smallest crisp of sound said that the paper and tobacco were burning. With that, the lighter closed, and the cigarette returned to its weary lips.

Dyed red bangs hung over much of her face, almost hiding the tattoo that ran along her left cheekbone. On occasion, Masaru would absentmindedly start to glance at it before catching himself and stopping. That day, his thoughts were too distracted to look over at her.

The rain began to pick up, with westerly winds pushing the sheets across the alleys and sending more stray drops into Masaru’s domain. But he didn’t move. His treatments still needed to dry, and he found himself only wanting to stare at the rooftops of all those he’d never speak to. Plus, he was already damp; what was another drop?

Tomorrow would be his first commute. He had no onboarding scheduled. He didn’t know if he’d have a permanent co-worker. All he’d been told was that someone would be there to let him in that afternoon so that he could work the night shift.

Pick.

His sleep schedule was going to be ruined.

pickatthehealing

He hated having routines ruined.

pickandbleed

He hated all of this.

“You’re tapping your leg a lot more than usual,” she said from nearby.

Masaru’s mind cleared when she spoke. They’d lived beside one another for over a year now and had only ever said a handful of words to one another. True, they’d shared well over one hundred balcony sessions in silence, but he barely even knew what she sounded like.

“S-sorry,” he stammered.

Smoke drifted from her mouth and out into the downpour.

“Wasn’t an accusation of annoyance. More just’n observation,” she said as her eyes stayed looking ahead.

Her voice was husky, weathered, and distant, yet it felt calm. Masaru noticed a dialect that wasn't Kanto.

“Sor-” Masaru started to apologize again, but stopped.

“...A lot on my mind,” he adjusted.

Hair hung on her eyelashes as she blinked. She rarely wore makeup in the times he had seen her. He figured he understood well enough why she didn’t.

“Good shit? Or bad shit?” she asked.

She still didn’t face him, but he did feel like she was focusing her hearing on him. There was a tenseness to her listening as she waited for his answer. He almost didn’t know what to say, but he found himself not being up to deflecting or lying. He was too tired to be fully Japanese in that moment. So truth slipped out.

“Bad shit. My day started with an old… trauma… returning. Then I had a jumper. I saw the blood and bits of them. Then I had my yearly review, and I am now being relocated from my office to work at a forgotten, dirty love motel…”

She blew the remnant bits of smoke through her nose as her expression stayed blank.

“Yeah, that sounds like a bad shit day. Sorry to hear that.”

He had no idea if she wanted to say anything else. This was the most they’d ever spoken by far. He wasn’t sure he’d ever even looked at her face-to-face or learned her family name. Still, he wanted to be polite.

“What- what about you?” he asked.

Her cigarette reached its end, and her hand patted along a small side table until it found the moist ashtray. As she crushed the remainder into submission, she shifted her jaw left to right, allowing the last drags of smoke to exit without a full exhale. Small grey puffs and streaks floated from her lips and out into the gathering abyss. Most of the sun’s remaining glimmers of light were gone, and now the deep blackish blue night was covering everything. Small orbs of yellow blurred through the rain as windows and streetlamps shone out their halogen greetings.

“Day’s not started yet for me. I… work nights. Rain’s gonna suck, but I'll survive.”

With that, she inhaled and stretched her arms up with a deep sigh.

“Name’s Sayane, by the way.”

Masaru flinched at her frankness. He had certainly never spoken with her enough to already know her first name.

“I- I’m Ishikawa Masaru. It’s nice to meet you, Sayane- Sayane-san.”

Her eyes blinked with pained exhaustion.

“You don’t have to waste honorifics on me, I don’t give a damn. I’m only half-Japanese, which I was told my whole life means I’m not Japanese. So I use that as a credit to never have to adhere to bullshit formalities. But s’nice to ‘meet’ you, too, Ishikawa-san.”

She dipped her head slightly as she faced him. Without realizing it, Masaru stood to bow to her. It was a habit, and he didn’t think she’d mind, even if she couldn’t see it. When he rose from the bow, he finally saw her face-to-face for the briefest millisecond before she turned.

She was tiny and seemed quite unhealthy. He’d seen milk with more color. Beneath the curtain of faded bangs, two heavy, unwell bags lined her unblinking eyes with purple emptiness. Her wide lips tensed and raised ever so slightly into an uneven smirk as she blinked. When her eyes opened, they were looking past him, at nothing at all.

Both irises were partially rolled up in release, only partially revealing their cloudy, white coloring. Another blink hid them as she looked away, and the moment ended.

With that, she left him alone on the balcony once again. The door closed behind her, and Masaru paused to reflect on what had just happened.

“Good…bye?” Masaru asked at the sealed door.

He decided it was time to go inside as well. Coffee would be needed so that he could stay up long enough to begin adjusting his sleep schedule. As he re-entered his humble home, he braced for a new reality that would begin the next day. He hoped it would be better than he was currently fearing.