Chapter 20: Volume 1, - 20: The Office No One Wanted
Saturday morning brought a cold, damp drizzle that clung to the cracked concrete facade of the commercial building.
When Ren arrived at eight-fifteen, the iron security gate at the street entrance was still locked. Tanida was standing under the narrow awning, a heavy ring of brass keys clipped to his belt and a plastic thermos of black tea in his hand.
"You’re early," the building manager said, unlocking the padlock with a sharp click. "Contractor access was approved for eight-thirty. Wait down here until he shows up."
"Understood, Tanida-san," Ren said, holding his coat closed against the wind.
The electrician arrived at eight-thirty carrying a heavy tool bag and a portable insulation tester. Tanida recorded his name and arrival time on the contractor sheet before unlocking the interior stairwell. The three of them walked up the unlit concrete stairwell in silence, their shoes echoing against the bare walls.
Suite 302 smelled of damp concrete and old dust. Sunlight filtered weakly through the grimy street-facing window, illuminating the unfinished floor and the faded rectangle on the wall where a previous sign had once hung.
The electrician went straight to the small grey breaker panel beside the entrance door. He flipped the rusty metal latch, set his tool bag on the floor, and began testing the lines with a multimeter.
"These four branch circuits failed the insulation check," the electrician said twenty minutes later, using a red marker to draw clear lines across four of the wall outlets. "I’ve disconnected them at the panel. They stay off until the wiring is replaced. The ceiling lighting branch is staying isolated too. That damaged fluorescent fitting near the back isn’t safe to energize."
He pointed to a single grounded double outlet mounted directly below the panel.
"This is the only live circuit I’m approving," he said, taking out an official inspection pad. "One protected strip, no extension leads, and keep the combined draw below twelve hundred watts. Go over it and you risk tripping the breaker."
He slapped a red warning tag onto the panel face, handed a copy of the report to Tanida, and gathered his tools. "It’s safe for light equipment on that single line. Nothing else."
One circuit.
Ren looked across the room at the dead outlets and the hanging fluorescent fixture. He had spent days imagining himself working here, yet every outlet beyond the entrance wall was now useless. Trying to bypass the electrician’s limits would risk the whole floor for the sake of charging a phone. Irritation rose before common sense caught it. He wanted to ask whether the electrician could approve one more outlet, but the red lines across the walls answered before he opened his mouth.
One corner was more than he had yesterday. The thought was true, but it did not make him less annoyed.
Tanida entered the inspection result in the building log. He then removed one brass key from his ring and placed it beside Ren’s name on the sign-out sheet.
"This opens Suite 302 only," he said. "It comes back to my office before six. You do not copy it, lend it out, or leave it inside the room."
Ren signed for the key. The little piece of brass felt heavier than it should have. He finally had access to a place that was still mostly unusable.
At nine o’clock, Aoi arrived with a courier carrying two heavy cardboard boxes. She wore her usual grey overcoat and carried her battered black legal folder under one arm. Her attendance and document review had been billed separately to the estate’s legal-administration account; none of it came from the equipment allowance. She did not step far into the room, stopping two paces inside the door to look over the bare concrete space.
"The vendors were paid directly from the restricted Suite 302 support allowance," Aoi said, pulling a two-page inventory from her folder. "The equipment stays assigned to this room. None of it belongs to you personally, Kisaragi-san."
Aoi set the form on top of one of the boxes and handed Ren a pen.
Each item on the list. A compact mono laser printer, an LED task lamp, an eight-socket surge protector, a two-drawer locking steel cabinet, a folding table, and two steel folding chairs corresponded to a numbered red asset label already stuck to its surface. Ren checked the tags on the printer, lamp, surge protector, cabinet, table, and chairs against the written sheet.
At the bottom of the form, printed beneath the item list, was the standard compliance clause:
RESTRICTED BUSINESS-SUPPORT ASSETS: Title remains with the estate. The listed equipment may be used only for approved work in Suite 302. It may not be sold, pledged, removed, subleased or converted to personal use. The support allowance may not reimburse personal housing, meals, private entertainment, consumer debt or any expense unrelated to approved work in Suite 302.
Ren signed both copies and handed the pen back. "Everything matches the tag numbers."
Aoi placed her copy into her black legal folder and pulled her coat tight. "No additional equipment is approved. This is the area you may use. Those same tag numbers must be present at the next inventory check. That is enough."
When she turned toward the hallway, Ren looked toward the dark back half of the room, where dust lay thick over the bare floor.
"Could I stay until eight tonight, Tanida-san?" Ren asked. "I can finish sweeping the whole floor."
Tanida shook his head immediately. "No. The street gate locks at six."
"I could drop the key through the office slot before leaving."
"No. You sign it back in before six," Tanida said, his voice firm. "Contractor access was approved for this morning. It does not turn into permission to work whenever you feel like it. Sign the key back in at the office, use the commercial rubbish bins behind the building, and leave those marked outlets alone."
"Understood, Tanida-san."
By ten-thirty, Ren was alone.
He spent the next two hours sweeping concrete dust, dry plaster grit, and scraps of old packaging from the front corner near the live outlet. He carried a bucket of cold water up from the shared hallway sink and wrung the rag almost dry before touching the floor. He kept the bucket away from the panel and live outlet, cleaning only the open concrete around the future workstation until it dried to a pale grey.
His breathing grew louder after the second bucket. Sweat cooled beneath his shirt even while his fingers remained numb. He hated needing to pause after such ordinary work, especially in a room he wanted badly enough to imagine finished.
Ren lowered himself onto the folding chair for a minute, angry at the room and the body that still made every improvement feel slower than it should.
He set up the folding table three feet from the breaker panel, plugged the surge protector into the approved outlet, and clamped the small LED lamp to the table’s edge. He set the compact printer beside his laptop and placed the heavy steel cabinet against the wall, locking his blue notebook and project files in the top drawer.
Ren stepped back to look at the corner.
The single LED lamp cast a narrow circle of white light over the folding table and the metal chair. Beyond that small ring of light, most of the room remained untouched, dark, and freezing.
Ren imagined warm overhead lights, a proper desk, and a printed name on the frosted glass door. Then the hard edge of the cold folding chair pressed through his coat as he sat down, and the small printer hummed to life with a dry, mechanical whir.
A faint blue notification line surfaced briefly in his view:
[Suite 302 facility condition: Limited use verified]
[Founder threshold: ¥30,000 / ¥100,000]
At three-thirty in the afternoon, while Ren was sorting the Wada route records Kenji had provided for the proposed repayment review, his phone chimed on the table.
He picked it up, expecting an update on the driver schedules. Instead, an automated message from a private regional recruitment network displayed on the screen.
The notice showed that the dormant listing belonged to a verified predecessor account now administered through the estate office. Earlier that day, the office had reopened it for pre-incorporation exploratory interviews and registered itself as the interview coordinator, not the employer. The listing stated that no employment contract or productive work could begin until a legal employer, written terms and protected wages existed. The private network had matched the listing with an active applicant profile and sent both sides the appointment.
Ren had not asked anyone to reopen it.
Ren opened the notice:
Exploratory Interview Confirmation
Position: Operations Support Assistant (Pre-incorporation / Part-time)
Listing Reference: #2020-KW-0892
Interview Coordinator: Estate Administrative Office
Applicant: Nanami Shindo
Date: Sunday, 26 February 2023
Time: 10:00 A.M.
Location: Suite 302, address on file
Ren read the applicant’s name again.
Nanami Shindo.
She was coming to Suite 302 on Sunday to discuss work for a company that did not legally exist.