“you’re leaving already?”
a hoarse voice calls out from rows and rows of cubicles. his balding head captured the attention of dimmed, fluorescent lights. his shoulders slumped more as the working hours went into the night. “seems like so,” yu responded. a distant echo carried his voice onwards. the number of belongings that was once atop his desk began to retire in his briefcase. “i’ll see you tomorrow morning. have a good night.” his smile is polite, perhaps sympathetic if given the context.
a brief walk turns into a ten-minute train ride. a ten-minute train ride reintroduces another brief walk. not that it was particularly late, but the streets took on more loneliness than the day. he’s been confined for longer than there was sunlight. concentrated eyes skimming through spreadsheets, the growing discomfort in the back of his head, numbness in both legs, voluntarily alternating. everybody laughs, might they roll their eyes when he offers to do a coffee run. anything, anything at all to keep the blood stimulating after prolonged hours of sitting. they give him money, and he’s standing in line fidgeting with a list of americanos.
a person of many thoughts, he was. unexplored ideas and feelings have begun to resurface, pacing himself before he turns right on the main street. he found that it was a bit of a journey to his destination. the way to being nothing different, nothing has changed. yu enjoyed the time spent on his own, coming intact with himself, clearing his mind and all. the weight of today slowly lifted off his back. he walked with a silent feeling of gratification.
as he approached mitsuki’s firm, he found his cell phone lodged in his palm. more modest than meek, a message was typed and sent.
( ### ) — i’m outside.
( ### ) — please take your time. no rush.
in those lost years between twelve and thirty, mitsuki wonders if he hated the splinters and the sawdust and the constant agonizing journey for perfection over a fucking table.
2000 years ago people lived to survive, not to critique the wood finish of a coffee table.
walnut, walnut, walnut echoes in her mind but a dark cherry finish sits in front of her. it’s not what she’s designed, not what the customer ordered. she’d scream like a banshee in frustration if it wasn’t considered so wildly unprofessional.
after all, it’s just a table. it might be her entire livelihood, but all the same it’s just a fucking table.
the sharp ding of her phone startles her. god knows how long she’s been standing in the same spot, smoking cigarette after cigarette eyeing her bastardized creation, but it’s late enough for a salary-man like yu to get off which means she’s spent more than enough time wasted over the inconsequential.
she pulls a sheepskin jacket over her shoulders and takes one last drag of her cigarette before snubbing it out — all too aggressively — in the ceramic ashtray that sits on her shitty creation of a coffee table.
even still, her heels echoes across the workshop as she makes her way out. she’ll deal with it later, like she does everything else. she’ll ignore it until it forces her to acknowledge it, she’s good at that. and her heels continue to clack against the linoleum until finally she makes it out of the front door and onto the concrete of the pavement where she finds him.
they make an odd pair, the two of them.
nishitanabe yu, a sweet-faced overworked salary man and tanaka mitsuki, a bitch-faced furniture maker who wears far too much black. even down to their clothes, there’s a marked difference with all-too business like dress shirt and black uniform pants and her baggy ripped jeans, faded t-shirt and old sheepskin jacket. they’re ill-suited for one another.
even still the sight of him, the familiarity of him, eases her irritation. he reminds her of home, of ryota, of everything she desperately misses. even if he isn’t from kagoshima, even if she never even knew him until she exiled herself to korea— he still feels close enough to home for her to cling on like a lost child.
her mother tongue starts to sound foreign to her these days, she’s been away from her homeland too long, she’s grown to accustomed to life in a foreign place but still there’s comfort in finding someone to talk to normally.
“did you have a fun day sitting in your cubicle, yu-chan?”
