#93: Impossible / ep.7
I am a cat. My name is Mimosa.
I have some idea where I was born, but I do not remember much about my past. At most, I recall crying “meow, meow” inside a transparent cage. It was there that I saw humans for the first time.
There are many humans. And they are diverse.
Children and old people, those with bodies like rocks and those who are long and slender. Every one of them would look at me and make strange, lovesick noises, writhing with affection. All of it was so creepy that it sent chills down my feline spine.
But that was when I learned that here, in this life, cats such as myself cannot survive without the protection of these humans.
I am an intelligent cat.
“Oh, what a cute little girl.”
And so, in order to survive the hunger and make ends meet in this life, I set my sights on the human who looked the least objectionable of all those I had seen. A woman on the other side of the transparent cage, staring at me with her amber eyes opened wide, almost like one of us cats.
For the moment, I cried prettily, intending to win this woman over and escape my transparent cage.
“Hehe. Have you taken a liking to me?”
“She’s a rare one. This little girl spends all her time sulking and looking the other way, so she’s had a hard time finding an owner.”
“You don’t like humans either, do you?”
The human in an apron who brought us food was speaking to the woman. After several incomprehensible exchanges, I was packed into a box and taken out of the transparent cage.
I learned later that this woman was a bartender, apparently the most despicable species of human there is.
It seems I was not very good at judging people.
My next home, after escaping the transparent cage, was another cage, broad and cold.
At first, the only one living there with me was the bartender. She slept during the day, went out at night, and returned around dawn covered in complicated smells. Since she was, by and large, a cat-like woman, I decided she was not a human but a cat, and resolved to educate this insolent, oversized resident cat with the dignity of my superior nature.
If she was late serving my meals, I bit her.
If she failed to play with me when I declared that I was willing to play, I bit her.
If she touched me while I was sleeping, I bit her.
In short, if she displeased me for even an instant, I bit her.
This was how I disciplined the foolish bartender resident cat. She ought to be grateful. She had no grounds whatsoever to scold me.
It was during this life that the bartender resident cat brought home a new inhabitant.
A human woman named Mikoto.
This woman was an excellent human who understood my wishes perfectly. When I was hungry, she fed me. When I was bored, she entertained me. When I wanted to sleep, she gave me peace and quiet.
I am fair and impartial.
Those who perform their duties appropriately are deserving of my favour, even if they are newcomers. I am a noble cat who bestows special affection where it is deserved.
I also possess the intelligence to favour Mikoto excessively, making the bartender jealous and thereby encouraging her to devote herself even more to me.
And so, time passed, and we arrive at the present.
“Nyao.”
Even when it was time for my meal, the foolish bartender resident cat was sleeping off a drunken stupor.
A cat with poor memory, who never learns no matter how much she is disciplined.
I am an intelligent cat, and therefore I know that there was once a cat who drank this thing called alcohol and died.
Alcohol is poison to the body.
The reason one drinks alcohol despite knowing it is poison is because one wishes to use poison to counteract poison. There must be an awful lot of poison overflowing through human society.
But this resident cat’s drinking decreased after Mikoto appeared.
There was less poison that needed counteracting.
I am an intelligent cat, and therefore I can see straight through everything this fool is thinking.
The poison tormenting this resident cat was called loneliness.
According to my honoured slave, Mikoto, the bartender Shandy was simply lonely.
She brought me home, and wanted to live with Mikoto, in order to distract herself from the poison called solitude that had been tormenting her.
Loneliness is a terrible poison.
She cries alone because she is lonely, then comforts herself alone because she is filled with love.
To counteract that poison, the resident cat takes pleasure in poison herself, consuming it to distract herself.
As if that could possibly solve the problem at its root.
“Ow!”
It irritated me to see her sleeping so peacefully without even putting out my food.
So I bit her unguarded ear as hard as I could, and at last the foolish resident cat woke up.
“Oh, it’s time for breakfast.”
I am intelligent, so I understand the cry that means food.
I rushed over at the pop of the food container opening and finally got my absurdly late breakfast.
At that very moment, the resident cat stared at the little slab that fit in the palm of her hand and barked.
“Perhaps someone needs to be punished, Mikoto?”
A chill ran down my feline spine.
But it had nothing to do with me.
No matter how the hierarchy of this broad, cold cage might change among the lower ranks, I would remain at the top.
“I’m off to discipline a very bad kitty. Be a good girl while I’m gone, Mimosa.”
“Nyaow.”
And so the resident cat went outside the cage, into a world steeped in poison.
She could simply wake, eat, play and sleep like me, and live in the springtime of her life, yet she chooses not to.
Because she is lonely. Because she is in love.
She willingly consumes poison.
Worse, she enjoys consuming it.
Humans are truly hopeless creatures.
They ought to quietly accept their rightful place under the rule of us cats.
＊
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to deceive you…”
In the General Manager’s office of the Planning Division, Mikoto lay on top of the General Manager’s desk, her freedom taken away by handcuffs and ankle restraints.
Michelle sat in a chair within Mikoto’s field of vision, appearing at a ninety-degree angle.
The only emotion visible on her face was sadness.
“Then what are these handcuffs for!?”
“I’ll make this the last time. I’ll tell you everything. All you have to do is listen…”
Her sorrowful monologue trembled against Mikoto’s eardrums.
“…Tell me.”
“You’re kind…”
As she said this, Michelle placed the ID hanging around her neck on the desk.
Then she took the four familiar smartphones from her cardigan pocket. She even removed the cardigan itself, which had large pockets sewn into it.
One by one, she removed everything she had been wearing: her hair clip, earrings, rings, necklace and shoes.
Eleven items in total.
The same number as her boyfriends and girlfriends.
“Everyone gave me all sorts of things. So I thought that if I wore them, they’d like me and listen to me…”
A platinum ring from the person she loved most gleamed on Mikoto’s own ring finger.
But love was not so simple that merely wearing things one had been given could prove it.
“But everyone only talks about themselves… They have really big dreams, or they’re highly regarded at work, or they don’t have a place where they belong at their workplace… And all I ever say is, ‘Wow, that’s amazing,’ or, ‘That sounds hard’…”
At that point, Michelle stared at her own ID.
A Hibiya ID card bore her photograph, department and name, proof that she was a person named Hirose Michelle.
“…Nobody ever looks at me. They know I’m the short half-Japanese employee, but nobody is interested in me as a person.”
Mikoto understood Michelle’s problem.
“First impressions are scary, aren’t they?”
Soft, dreamy, and naturally spaced-out, exactly as she looked.
That was how Mikoto, and probably her lovers too, saw Hirose Michelle. They had fitted her into the box marked “natural airhead” based on their first impression of her.
By then, she was no longer Michelle at all, but a convenient illusion they had constructed for themselves.
“You wanted someone who would listen to you, didn’t you, Michelle?”
“I’m jealous of your girlfriend, Mikoto-san…”
Michelle cried without even trying to suppress her sobs.
Mikoto would have preferred her to take off the handcuffs and ankle restraints before crying, but she could not bring herself to point that out. So she stared up at the ceiling until the sound of Michelle’s sobbing finally ceased.
“…Mikoto-san is on my side, right?”
Her voice was barely audible.
Yet it sounded like a heartfelt cry that must not be allowed to disappear.
If Mikoto thought she was pitiful, if she intended to show her kindness, then she could not afford to be indecisive.
She remembered what Shandy had once told her.
“I’m on your side, so could you take the handcuffs off?”
“You won’t betray me…?”
“I think you’ll just have to trust me on that. I’ll trust you too.”
After thinking it over, Michelle released Mikoto from her restraints.
Her whole body, which had been writhing like a fish washed up on shore, was finally free.
Mikoto rolled her shoulders and wrists, then sat on the desk and took Michelle’s hand as she sat in the chair.
“If you don’t mind me, I’ll listen to what you have to say.”
“Your panties are showing…”
Not now, please.
Mikoto closed her legs and started over.
“So, Michelle, what did you want to do?”
“You know… I want to destroy the Secretary Division.”
Michelle muttered it without meeting her eyes.
It was surprising, but given the wounds she had suffered, it was an understandable conclusion.
“You’re not surprised…?”
“Well, I could tell you’d been having a hard time.”
Michelle’s rambling story was exactly what Mikoto had expected.
The grievances she had heard in Basement Level 2 were the entirety of her motivation.
“My ID not working wasn’t your doing, was it?”
“No, no. It wasn’t me. My plan was… to have Yanase-san from General Affairs defeat the section chief…”
“How, exactly?”
“Er… by arguing with her…?”
Even Sanae’s considerable abilities would not be enough to make a plan like that work.
And Mikoto still had no idea what Michelle meant by “destroying” the Secretary Division.
“What are you going to do after destroying the Secretary Division?”
“Well… Kuto-san is kind, so I wanted her to become section chief… And the current section chief and the other two aren’t kind, so… I wanted them to quit, and then the two of us could work hard together.”
She had no grasp of reality.
It was far too naive.
Even Mikoto, an outsider, could not help thinking so.
And under the present circumstances, if Mikoto reported what had happened, it was Michelle whose head would roll.
“Wouldn’t that leave you terribly busy?”
“I’ll work hard…”
Unlike Shandy, who was a bar owner, company employees could not choose their customers or colleagues.
To fulfil the work assigned to them, they had to stand shoulder to shoulder and work even with people they disliked.
That was the unwritten rule of human society.
“…Sounds difficult.”
“But I tried my best… I thought if I kidnapped Mikoto-san, it would look like the Secretary Division had done it, and maybe the section chief would get fired…”
“Do you think you could pin the crime on the section chief?”
Michelle shook her head vigorously.
Now that Michelle’s absurd emergency plan had failed, her actions had accomplished absolutely nothing.
“…Thank you. I’m sorry. I think I’ll… give up now…”
“Give up?”
“I don’t know… But if I just keep working patiently… something good will happen eventually, right…?”
If she genuinely believed that, Mikoto wished she would not give her such a feeble smile.
“That’s not good enough, Michelle.”
Mikoto squeezed Michelle’s hand and tried to gather her thoughts.
How could she make it easier for Michelle to live?
How could she save her from a life that felt so difficult?
Mikoto could offer any number of pieces of advice.
If she hated her workplace, she could quit.
She could change jobs and look for somewhere she could make better use of herself.
If she had a dream, she could pursue it.
Even without quitting, she could ask to be transferred to another department.
There were countless things she could do.
But…
She could not say them.
She could not.
She could not make statements that might alter another person’s life.
If Michelle took her advice seriously, acted on it and failed, Mikoto could not take responsibility for the consequences.
“But I…”
“You can lie to me if you have to, but don’t lie to yourself.”
“Then what should I do…?”
“That’s…”
The confidence she had felt in being unable to do anything about Michelle’s troubles was hollow.
She had said she would be on Michelle’s side, yet that was all she could offer.
A powerless answer that was of no use to anyone.
“…No answer, then? Well, I suppose remaining silent is more honest than giving irresponsible advice. Provided, of course, that one has not already behaved dishonestly.”
Mikoto’s spine froze.
There was no way she could have misheard that voice.
Her ears remembered it.
Her body remembered it.
That woman should not have been here.
And there was no way she should know about what had happened.
Yet Mikoto could not turn around.
“Did you do something that makes it impossible for you to look me in the eye?”
There was not the slightest hint of anger in her voice.
It was the same clear, bell-like voice as always, sounding almost as though a bell were being rolled gently across glass.
That was because she had covered every last one of her emotions with a smile.
She had definitely noticed.
For once, Mikoto did not want to discover what lay behind that smile.
“I’m s…”
“S? Seven Samurai? Or Scarface?”
There were countless film titles beginning with “S”, yet the fact that she had deliberately chosen violent ones…
“I’m sorry! There were circumstances beyond my control! Please forgive me, Shandy-san!”
Mikoto turned around in one fluid motion and dropped into a full dogeza.
She was too frightened to look at Shandy’s face.
“Your bra’s showing, though…?”
Michelle’s voice came from behind her.
Not now.
＊
“Rinko-san! Go to the fifth floor, Planning Division, right now!”
“There weren’t any hidden rooms, though?”
“I’ll arrange something that looks like one!”
The werewolf had been flushed out.
Sanae immediately approved the two IDs that had been repeatedly tapping their way into the Information Systems Division on the sixteenth floor without being registered, granting them access to the Planning Division and General Manager’s office on the fifth floor.
That was all Sanae could do from so far away.
She had mistaken the Secretary Division for the enemy and driven Mikoto into a corner.
She was consumed with making amends for it.
A hollow dogeza devoid of sincerity would not be enough to earn forgiveness.
Just as she finished processing everything through Secure and let out a sigh, Nomura returned from the interrogation room.
“It’s over. Just as we thought, she hated you.”
Sanae was accustomed to being hated.
Even more so because she repeatedly overstepped departmental boundaries in the name of removing those barriers.
Japanese society had a tendency to hammer down anyone who stood out.
“Now what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Her disposition. Do we go for good-and-evil justice, or the ‘let’s not make a fuss’ approach?”
“I’ll leave it to you, Nomura-san.”
“Then, let’s see…”
Nomura scratched his head and gave her a smile reminiscent of Toko.
“You’re fired. The two of you can go back to Tokyo together, right now.”
Sanae’s eyes widened.
Unable to fathom his intentions, she reflexively asked:
“But I still have work to do. I have Secure administrator privileges, so I should still be highly useful. And I’m completely white!”
“Whether the other members believe that is a separate matter. Besides, it would be inefficient to leave an individual incident under investigation at this point. I’m sure someone as perceptive as you, Sanae-san, can understand my judgement.”
“But I received a transfer order from the president…”
“Work isn’t everything.”
She had never expected to hear such words.
Perhaps this too was a microcosm of Japanese society, where anyone who stood out was struck down.
Being fired alongside Kaori made it seem as though they were simply being removed for causing trouble.
Even though they had done nothing wrong.
“So when we clear away the people who have been dragging us down and brush away the sparks falling on us, we’re punished through collective responsibility?”
Nomura went “Hmm” and fudged his answer.
It was impossible to tell whether he was good at the art of speaking without saying what he meant, or bad at it.
The more time he spent thinking, the harder it would become to talk his way out of the question.
“You really are doing everything on your own, aren’t you, Sanae-san?”
“Work is something an individual does. I believe teamwork is the result of each person fulfilling the responsibilities assigned to them.”
“Right. Got it. Then it’s not collective responsibility. Go back to Tokyo headquarters for Toko’s sake.”
Sanae could not understand Nomura’s decision.
Yet his slightly troubled smile seemed to be saying something without words.
Sanae could not discern what he really meant.
“Toko is a perfectly grown adult now, but as her father, I worry about leaving her on her own.”
“I suppose so…”
Only after saying it did Sanae realise how rude that sounded.
She cautiously looked up at Nomura, but he was smiling happily as though to say, “Exactly.”
“Besides, you and Kusumoto-san aren’t the only ones with administrator privileges.”
Nomura showed her his own smartphone.
A notification was dancing across the screen: the Hibiya Exploration Team had opened the door to the Planning Division.
“If that’s the case, you could have told me…”
“Keep your trump card until the very end. Ah, and one more thing.”
Nomura glanced at Kaori as she emerged from the room.
“I told Kusumoto-san how much of her life Yanase Sanae has staked on her work. Enjoy your youth together on the Shinkansen home. Hahaha.”
Sanae received the same order to go straight home as Kaori, and left the Hamamatsu branch.
There was hardly any time before the Shinkansen she had been assigned to take home.
She had the taxi driver wait at the hotel where she had been staying, hurriedly got ready, and headed for the station.
There was no conversation in the taxi, nor on the Shinkansen platform they barely reached in time.
Despite these being the days of social distancing, they were made to sit beside one another, silently watching Mount Fuji on their left grow smaller in the distance.
Sanae had been fired from the countermeasures headquarters.
In an hour, she would be back in Tokyo.
She might lose the good reputation she had built at headquarters.
Yet that worry was overwhelmed by the happiness of seeing Toko again, and her determination to make amends to Mikoto.
“…Hey.”
At the muttered words from the woman beside her, Sanae turned her gaze away from the window.
“What is it?”
“Have you ever played games?”
“If you mean Werewolf, yes.”
“Not that kind.”
Kaori had apparently taken it from her luggage.
She placed a game controller in Sanae’s hands.
She folded down the table behind the seat, set the console on it, and started a fighting game.
“You’re bored.”
“I’m working.”
Even after Sanae refused, Kaori started the game without permission.
A one-on-one fighting match.
The character Sanae had selected more or less at random was beaten to a pulp in an instant and sent flying off the edge of the screen.
“…Pathetic.”
“Mm…”
Even if it was only a game, losing one-sidedly was irritating.
In the next match, Sanae tried moving her character a little more.
But she had no chance against Kaori, who was accustomed to the controls.
She was flattened in an instant, and the match ended.
“Another round, please.”
“I’ll kill you as many times as you like.”
Sanae’s hands grew hot around the controller.
Attack. Defence. Dodging. Recovery.
She managed to move around by imitating what Kaori did, but she still could not lay a finger on her.
After match after match that was almost a perfect game, Kaori suddenly spoke.
“…I wanted to make games like this.”
“I see.”
“But I got rejected by every company in the industry. So I gave up on it completely.”
“And?”
“…Don’t you have any dreams or goals? Something you’d stake your life on?”
Sanae quietly resented Nomura.
She had no idea what he had said to Kaori or how he had put it into her head, but she had no desire to have some adolescent conversation like this at her age.
For one thing, Sanae no longer had any dreams or goals.
There were simply the days themselves.
“Work, earn money, and live. That’s all.”
“If that’s all the ambition you have, I’ll surpass you someday.”
Sanae found herself captivated by Kaori’s profile as she stared intently at the screen.
Then, the instant Sanae let her guard down, the announcer in the earphone she wore in one ear declared the match over.
Kaori’s tally of victories continued to climb.
“Even if you beat me at a game, it won’t make you better at your job.”
“Does it bother you that much?”
The difference between them was obvious.
Not in games, but in their standing within the company.
Of course, their fields of work were different, General Affairs and Information Systems, so a simple comparison was impossible.
But as employees of the same intake, Sanae had a decisive advantage.
Even so, Kusumoto Kaori had challenged Sanae using underhanded methods.
And now she was challenging her on a field where she held an overwhelming advantage.
Did she want to win that badly?
Did she want Sanae to notice her that badly, even when she had no desire to compete with her at all?
There was something strangely amusing about Kaori’s determination.
“That’s right. It bothers me. So I’ll beat you as many times as necessary.”
“Say what you like, loser.”
Sanae kept Kaori company until they stopped at Shinagawa Station.
Perhaps that was the least she could do to make amends.
So she watched the Yoshi being sent flying magnificently off the edge of the screen.
“…Isn’t Yoshi rather weak?”
“Sore loser.”