'Saturday: November 26th: 05:28:50'

Saturday

26th November

05:28:50

Stupid.

He’d lost focus for a moment, and look at what’d happened.

Now you’re worse than stupid.

In one night, one mistake, he’d become stupid and broke.

Naoki exhaled. A brief jet of mist exited his nostrils, before dissolving into the murky chill of the alleyway.

He tried to think through his internal calendar. He only hoped he'd made some kind of mistake, to top off all the other ones defining the situation he'd found himself in.

But he'd checked. Back in his room, his actual calendars, his phone, his desktop, his reminders, his bank statements.

Of all the times for rent to be due, of which he was missing a large chunk of, he had until... Tomorrow.

As if that wasn't enough, even though he had more important things to be doing...

What did he think he was going to accomplish, coming back to the scene of the crime?

What crime had been committed, exactly?

As far as the law of the jungle was concerned, it had been a perfectly legitimate transaction.

A mere ¥101,100, in exchange for a prize that would last forever:

Title of the biggest freaking idiot in history.

What wouldn’t last, however, was the number of hours before rent was due. Regardless of whether Naoki wanted to think about it, the seconds continued ticking by.
One, after another, after another.
Some perverse part of the back of his mind seemed to track the time with careful precision, as if for the very reason that he didn’t want to know.

The alley was as dark as it’d been the night before. Only worse, in fact, as morning attempted to interfere with Naoki’s search.

For what?

A slow, half-hearted light filled none of the shadows, seeming to seep out of the corners of the dank little nook between apartment blocks. But even if his eyes had planned on adjusting to the bleary, vague illumination coming over the side of the streets outside, he couldn’t find the answer to that question.

Unfortunately, or maybe not, he was the only one here.

Only a stretch of concrete lay between him and anybody, him and anywhere. One almost hoped the city’s alleyways were full of props, of the markings left by those who slunk around in the shadows before him, but this place was bare. Glass surfaces, covered. Fan units, unmarked, quiet. Even the centerpiece of the alleyway’s atmosphere, a lone, flickering bulb, now sat offline above a pair of dumpsters.

There was no possible incentive worth coming here for.

Nothing interesting, or exciting, and though there were surely worse twenty-meter walks out there in the world, staying here any longer than the several seconds it took to traverse one end of the alleyway to the other was already making Naoki miserable.

The whisper of disappointment that he was trying to ignore didn’t help. It was time to get out of here.

“Honestly. What'd I even come out here for?—” He wanted to chuckle, before something caught his eye, between the giant, wheeled bins.

He glanced either way out of the alley. But of course there was no-one out to see or potentially judge him for scrabbling around between the dumpsters.

There, he found a couple of hand warmers. One of them still in its packet.

He drew in a sigh slowly. He had a hard time exhaling.

“Honestly...”

Bzzzzzt.

Suddenly something vibrated in his pocket, with more solidity and urgency than Naoki’s wandering mind.
Given the circumstances, there was zero delay before his phone was in his hand.

‘what’s up.’

Naoki almost reeled.
As if enough wasn’t enough, already, Takiguchi had caught him off-guard. A man like him never prefaced a message with ‘what’s up.’

‘3mil accepted. Will be ready by launch.’

And his usual business partner was back.

Yes! In the frenzy, he’d almost completely forgotten about the upside. Maybe there was a way to temporarily trade in some of that—

But no.

3,000,000 not as ‘investment capital’, or a gift. The money was for the business. This was a case where a little scooping off the top wasn’t just illegal, but he couldn’t think of a single way he’d talk Takiguchi into it.

And anyway, that was 3,000,000 by launch. 
That was too late. There wouldn't be a next month's rent, and Naoki would be out on the streets by then if he didn't fix this.

“What do I do?” Naoki typed, sending the message before he’d realised.

‘?'
'all we have do is wait.’ 

The reply was prompt enough to imply Takiguchi hadn’t paused to consider the strangeness of Naoki’s.

‘nothing rly takes off til we open up public trading.’

The bulky, softly shivering man refrained from following up on his question.

“Got it.” He typed, before a thumbs-up sticker appeared, the sign the conversation was over.

“What do I do…?” His palm seemed to pull itself squarely over his head.

Bzzt.

Bzzt.

Bzzt.

It was no message or call buzzing in Naoki’s pocket this time, but an alarm. 
He pressed on his leg, snoozed it, knowing it was going to go off again in five minutes. That gave him enough time to walk back to his apartment, at least.

“Okay…”

Rent was a lost cause. At least, the version of rent he’d been imagining.

He still had a little over twenty-four hours before it was due. Enough to pursue a simple, surefire solution, the kind that a simple man like Naoki knew best.

If he had no money, all he had to do was make more money.

¥¥¥

The stage was set. The die was cast.
The remainder of Naoki’s alarms were switched off, and as he skipped the meditation to draw up his office chair, he planted himself in front of his workspace, ready.

Fifteen minutes, thirty-seven seconds later, he woke up from his trance.

“Crap.” 

Finally, he bent down and pushed the power button on his PC.

As the brief loading screen flashed, an eternity passed Naoki by, piling on top of the eternity that had already been his morning. He reflected on the power, the terrible, useless when-it-went-wrong power of routine.

A couple of hours shaved off his usual sleeping window had left the man too tired to think about how tired he was. But there he was, pondering, reflecting, deep in a state of regret, how far back he wasn’t even sure it went.

It felt like he’d been set up to start bad, and continue worse.
Had it been when he’d nodded off, last night?
Otherwise, from the moment he’d set his heart on fried chicken - for a cheat day that had already gone by?

Maybe the choice that’d brought him here, feeling like this, was stepping into that alleyway.

“Focus…”

Nothing precluded the day’s work in front of him. If he slipped up now, he could kiss goodbye the bag that all this was supposed to be for in the first place.

Yet all he could do was mouth the word, staring bleary-eyed at the calendar, the to-do-list, the accompanying spreadsheets he was supposed to update last night.

The first few taps of his keyboard were easy. He’d rehearsed the little bits and pieces of tasks that needed finishing up, the shower thoughts that had percolated here and there during the couple of showerless hours he’d been awake.

Blip. The spreadsheets finished updating, and the items Takiguchi had taken the liberty of adding floated to the top.

There was a long, long list of addresses. Some of them emails, SNS profiles, text apps but a lot, a lot, a lot of them were phone numbers, stretching past the point where Naoki could scroll.

Even in the haze of fatigue hanging over him, Naoki retained the long-built-up skill of watching his own mind. He could feel the urge to procrastinate creeping, like a soft, sweet spectre wrapping its arms around the base of his energy-starved brain stem.

He saw it coming, and prepared himself.

“It’s just a few emails… I got this.” He drew in a deep breath.

¥¥¥

Twenty-five minutes later, Naoki sighed, staring at the ceiling, rocking slightly back and forth.

“It’s just a few emails…”

It was true. For the most part, all he needed to do was copy-paste the same line of text into a window. The same link, the same call-to-action, for the most part, it was all automated.

But there had to be that slight touch of humanity. Just enough for the message to feel personalised, even if it never reached the recipient. A touch that would only take Naoki a couple of moments to add. For just a few emails, it would be a cinch.

For fifty, or a hundred-fifty of them, it was work. More than Naoki could rationalize himself into doing right now.

“Just one…” The man winced quietly. “Just one, and maybe cheat day can come late…”

A small promise, with slim chance that he’d actually allow himself to follow through on when the time came. But still, it got Naoki typing.

…Done. The young man sighed. He didn’t know how many he had gotten through, owing to his little burst of inspiration, but he certainly didn’t want to check.

Four.

Champion of doing things he didn’t want to do, Naoki wondered, as always, if his way of life came with way more of a catch than it was worth.

He just wanted to sit back and stare at the screen again.
The weather outside was dull, uninspiring, and the inside of his apartment wasn’t much better. His fingers were too stiff to even type properly, much less the thorough aches all up the lengths of his arms that refused to be forgotten.

He rubbed his hands, slipping them into his pockets.

Something crinkled inside one of them.

It felt like… A small, rectangular packet.

He’d almost forgotten. He wished.
It, too, couldn’t help but take up space in his mind the longer he gazed down at it.

Out of the corner of his eyes, a glowing set of red digits switched. The clock was digital, and didn’t exactly tick, though the change was practically audible on Naoki’s end nonetheless.

Another hour gone.

And with just so much hindsight came a reminder, like a slap: He was exactly 0 yen towards his deadline.

There were many, many more emails, and even more calls to go through from here.

How soon would the payoff be, exactly? It wasn’t like he’d been told.

No. He needed something faster. Something more guaranteed.

With trepidation, his hand wandered, his cursor moving to open a new tab directly into Gooble.

‘How to make money online’, he typed.

It was time to take matters into his own hands.