'Saturday: November 26th: 04:59'

Saturday

26th November

04:59

Gratitude was a powerful thing.

Every night, or morning— At least, every time he went to sleep, Naoki sank into it. All the relief he’d managed to put off throughout the day would hit at once, and from barely hanging on he went to barely being able to hold it in.

A sigh would escape him. Every time, at a pitch and volume that was almost a wail. But despite the kind of requirements that had to be cleared during daytime so that he could reach these precious six or seven hours at all, he wouldn’t trade that bliss for almost anything.

Bliss. All it took was a pair of pillows and some sheets, though it wasn’t a feeling that had been bought for free.

Bliss. Only tempered by the hours it would take to get there, and the quiet rehearsal of the next day, the dawn of a new routine.

Awakeness would stab him like a knife. But after laying flat under its blade for a few moments, Naoki always knew what to do.

Every movement, from bed, to his mat. The headstand pushups, the burpees, the pistol squats, his tabata routine straight into meditation, breathwork.

Study. Shower. Work. It was all ingrained, pre-programmed to the point of being pre-ordained.
There was the routine, and Naoki its agent. He was only here to act it out, to answer its call.

But he was grateful. He would always be grateful to the pain, so long as it meant he could feel this…

This… What?

Suddenly, oddly, he thought to himself, as his eyes slowly scraped open.

He couldn’t remember feeling any bliss.

He didn’t even recall falling asleep, in the first place.

The stab had come.

Rather than gratitude, as Naoki rose up from the hard fibreboard surface of a desk, in front of a keyboard pushed awry, a document that was only continuing to fill with the spacebar his elbow was still jammed on, he only grew more and more confused.

For starters, he removed himself from the keyboard. Like a rubber band snapping back, his newly refreshed mind focused the task down effortlessly, and he deleted the 136 pages that had been born during the small hours of the morning, scrolling up to the spot he had been supposed to edit, adding his signature, sending it off in a matter of moments.

His phone buzzed, just then. For fear of the message he’d see, he stood back, stretching his legs, and finally looked at the digits on his clock.

They were the wrong digits. But he’d seen them on the monitor of his PC, and so it finally sank in. It wasn’t the clocks who had made the mistake.

“Oh, God…” He crouched down, with his face in his hands, counting. How many tasks had he missed? How much cleanup did this make, altering updates, shifting schedules?

How much time, how much dream had he lost, because of this?

Finally, he gathered the courage to look down, and pick up the buzzing box-shaped device from his desk.

‘A little late.’

The reprimand had come in from Takiguchi. They had been in business together for a couple of years now, but Naoki had never witnessed the mysterious man make a mistake. Having only heard his voice, he could only imagine the calm, measured timbre with which Takiguchi spoke over the phone bled into his every action. It had been a good influence, but even a few stern words over the years had given Naoki cause to shiver.

‘Sorry.’ The young man typed into the device, diminishing into his hands like he were an adult trying to use a child’s toy.

In this case, he felt like the child. He wracked his brain, trying to think up what more there was to say. But he was still too frazzled to think.

‘I have no excuse.’ He could only manage. ‘Please, keep the commission from this deal.’

He hoped that was enough to settle on. He didn’t want Takiguchi getting mad…

‘Commission?’

The words blinked on-screen in swift response, bluntly, simply.

‘You’ve just lost us 3,000,000 yen.’

Naoki was tempted to enter the standing fetal position that’d almost become familiar, all too recently.

Not that it would change anything. He stood back in the middle of his cramped apartment, and engaged in some light stretches. Even that, he lost the heart for moments after.
He just stared. Until the next message blinked on-screen, and against his worse instincts, this time, he checked.

‘I am just joking with you.’ Takiguchi had messaged.
‘Everything looks good, thanks. Will reach you with next steps from client. Until then, keep up the good work.’

“Ah, Takiguchi. You absolute...”

A legend, and a bastard. Naoki forgot he was in the presence of both every time he got a text or call from the man. He simply never seemed to let on his next move.

Naoki sighed. Suddenly, he had received all the dose of gratitude he could’ve asked for, that morning. Even if it was just an aftertaste from the severe whiplash he was trying to recover from.

It was early yet.

The young entrepreneur turned his focus to nearer matters, if only to suppress the quiet sweat, the panic still fluttering in his gut. The undercurrent churning deeper yet, that he was doing everything not to think about.

I have an hour.

He had to get back on schedule. There was a frank voice that his bravado wanted nothing more than to squish, relaying the fact that the necessary catchup was probably going to take two.

Naoki wiped his brow, the beads just as cold as the air coming in through the crack around his window. He was at least blessed with enough sense not to spend the rest of his timeslot slacking.

He took a deep breath. Perhaps by habit, or perhaps because the thought of paying any extra for the heating bills raised the alarm in his mind, Naoki had slipped on his blazer before getting to work.

The exhalation never came, but the chilled sweat sure kept going, as he realised something was wrong.

“My—”

His hand swept the breadth and depth of his inside pocket as he noticed a difference in the fabric as it sat against his chest. His hunt expanded to the rest of his jacket, and soon after his desk, his floor, his whole apartment.

The more he searched, the more he realised that ‘wrong’ didn’t even come close to covering it.

His shoulders sank. His eyes widened, as he sat back limply in the back support of his home-office chair.

“My rent…”

He'd been keeping it in his pocket since the time he'd noticed the 27th was drawing near.
Only a couple of days ago, it must've been. In the interests of preserving his routine, he didn't want to keep moving it so soon before the collection date, and he'd thought little of the chances of a gym visit posing any risk.

But that was the only place he could've lost it...

Wait.

No.

Like a sheen of frost rippling over a Michelangelan statue, a thought occurred to Naoki.

There was one other place, one other moment it could've happened, last night.