activa-t Chapter 333 Hard Landing
Chapter 333 Hard Landing
Setagaya Ward Sutra Hall.
At 4:10 p.m., when Minako placed the shopping bag on the kitchen counter, the "S-Mart" logo on the plastic bag was facing her.
The bag contains today's groceries: 300 grams of pork shoulder, two blocks of tofu, a quarter of a head of cabbage, and a pack of ten eggs.
There's also a bag of discounted udon noodles—S-Mart's own brand, a five-pack for 190 yen.
At this time last year, she was still buying groceries at Tokyu Store (a chain of upscale fresh food supermarkets).
Wagyu beef shoulder tenderloin, 480 yen for 100 grams, sliced thinly for sukiyaki. This is Yuta's favorite; he can eat two bowls of rice with it every time.
Later they switched to Australian beef. And then—starting last month—pork.
Yuta never asked why. A seven-year-old has no concept of different types of meat; he only cares whether there is meat on the plate.
But one day at the dinner table he said, "Mom, the color of the meat today is different from before." Minako could only laugh and say, "It's a different brand."
S-Mart was recommended by my neighbor, Runzi.
"The prices there are clearly marked, all in whole numbers, so you don't need to give change. Checkout is also quick—it only takes five seconds, unlike at Da Rong where you have to wait in line for ages."
When Minako first walked into S-Mart, she stood at the entrance for two seconds, stunned.
The lighting was softer than in Tokyu Store, the shelves were shorter, and the product labels—"100," "200," "500"—were all clean whole numbers.
There are no numbers like "298" or "397" that require extra thought from the brain.
In that instant, she felt an inexplicable sense of relief.
Relaxation in every sense of the word.
And a kind of indescribable sourness.
She paused for a moment as she took the pork out of the bag. The meat under the plastic wrap looked fresh, a pinkish-white color.
She put it in the refrigerator, next to the half-carton of eggs left over from yesterday.
At 4:30, Yuta returned from school.
He threw his schoolbag on the floor in the entryway, kicked off one of his slippers, and rushed into the living room.
"Mom—I don't need to go to my piano lesson today, right?"
"Yes, the teacher is still sick."
Actually, the teacher wasn't sick.
Minako called last week and reduced Yuta's classes from twice a week to once a week.
The reason given was that "the child has been busy with schoolwork lately." The teacher paused for two seconds on the other end of the phone before saying, "I understand."
The monthly allowance saved is 12,000 yen.
Yuta didn't press the matter; he probably hoped Yuta wouldn't go.
He turned on the TV, switched to the animation channel, and lay down on the carpet to watch "Dragon Ball Z." Minako was washing vegetables in the kitchen, the sound of the faucet mingling with the fighting sounds from the TV.
At 5:40, I started cooking.
Braised pork with ginger, miso soup, and cold tofu salad.
I steamed three portions of rice—I used to steam four portions, and Yuji would eat one and a half portions for dinner. But for some reason, his appetite has decreased recently.
Yuji returned at 7:20.
It was forty minutes later than usual, and there was no smell of alcohol.
His tie was loose, but his shirt was neatly tucked in—he stayed at the office a little longer, probably waiting for his colleagues to leave before departing.
"You're back." Minako came out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of miso soup.
"Um."
Yuta had already eaten, and there were still two sets of chopsticks and bowls left on the table.
Yuji sat down, picked up his chopsticks, and put a piece of pork in his mouth. He chewed it a few times.
"It's delicious," he said.
Minako sat opposite her, picking at the rice in her bowl.
There was a silence of about two minutes.
"Minako."
She looked up.
Yuji placed his chopsticks on the rim of the bowl, clenched his fingers slightly, and then relaxed them.
"If..." He lowered his voice, as if afraid Yuta, who was watching TV in the living room, would hear. "If the company asked me to 'resign'—"
He didn't finish speaking.
Minako looked at him.
She knew. Two days ago, she found a document folded into thirds in the inside pocket of his suit hanging in the closet.
The header displays the company logo, and the title reads "Business Improvement Plan (Draft)".
She didn't open it all—she only caught a glimpse of a few words: "personnel integration", "hope to resign", and "severance pay increase".
She folded the document exactly as it was and put it back in her suit pocket. The position, the crease, the direction—it was exactly the same.
"We'll see." Minako stood up and took away the empty plate in front of him. "The soup's cold, I'll go heat it up."
She went into the kitchen and turned on the tap.
The sound of water hitting the stainless steel water tank was very loud.
She wiped the corner of her eye with the back of her hand and then continued washing the dishes.
...11:30.
Yuta is asleep, and Yuji is asleep too.
Minako sat alone at the small table in the kitchen, with the household accounts book spread out in front of her.
The pencil slowly moved down the "Monthly Fixed Expenses" column: mortgage 78,000, utilities 21,000, Yuta's tuition and lunch 15,000, piano lessons (halved) 6,000, insurance 14,000, food expenses—her pencil paused for a moment—and then dropped to 35,000.
The total is 169,000.
If Yuji is asked to leave—
She closed the household accounts book.
The small radio on the kitchen counter was bought three years ago; the antenna is crooked, so I've wrapped it with tape.
She turned the knob and tuned to FM Tokyo. This time slot usually features late-night jazz.
But the show was different today. The DJ's voice was very soft, and he spoke slowly.
"—This song comes from a new artist who is about to debut under SA Entertainment."
It paused for a moment.
"Sakai spring water."
The sound of a piano leaked from the small speaker of the radio; it was very quiet.
Then comes the human voice.
Female voice.
The breath control is very steady, the mid-range frequencies are full, and there is a very subtle tremor in the end of the rhythm—as if it is pushed up from a very deep place.
She felt the voice was familiar, as if she had heard it somewhere before.
The lyrics are also very simple; they are about a beam of light.
Minako's hand rested on the cover of the household register, without moving.
She listened to the entire song.
She didn't quite catch what the DJ said—something about a "themed concert" or a "small theater."
But she remembered that name.
Sakai spring water.
……
Job orientation meeting, third floor of Building 14, Waseda University.
Kenichi Sato sat in the seventh row on the left, with a corporate brochure of Daiwa Bank spread out on the table.
The paper in the booklet was noticeably thinner than the one I attended at last year's briefing—and it wasn't coated paper anymore, it was just regular matte paper.
The color saturation of the panoramic photo of the office building on the cover is also one level lower.
Last year's information session was held in the Imperial Hotel's ballroom. Each person received a glass of orange juice and a box of pastries upon entry.
The HR manager stood behind the podium, which was covered with a white tablecloth, and his first words were, "Welcome to all of you outstanding individuals."
But this year.
The personnel minister on stage cleared his throat.
Thank you all for taking time out of your busy schedules to come.
There's no orange juice this year. The personnel manager's suit is the same as last year's—Sato remembers the diagonal stripe on his tie.
The only difference is that her dark circles are deeper than last year.
"The number of general staff hires this year has been adjusted compared to the previous year—"
"Adjustment." Sato mentally translated these two words: cut.
The last page of the booklet shows the number of people who used it last year: 320.
What about this year? He didn't read anything on stage.
The student next to him looked down and flipped through the booklet, turning to the last page, where that column was blank.
The briefing lasted forty minutes. When Sato came out of the meeting room, there were already more than a dozen people waiting in the corridor for the next session.
Everyone held the same thin booklet in their hands, their expressions like uniformly mixed shades of gray.
I applied to 23 companies, had seven interviews, and received zero offers from them.
He's a third-year student in the economics department at Waseda University.
In previous years, this resume should have at least two or three offers secured by the end of October.
However, until the end of October this year, he had seven identical letters in his pocket that read "I am truly sorry...".
His roommate, Nakamura, was waiting for him in the dorm. Two cans of Kirin Ichiban Shibori sat on the table.
"How is it?"
Sato threw his schoolbag on the bed and opened a soda can.
"Same as the previous six companies."
Nakamura didn't press the matter. He took a piece of paper from the drawer and pushed it towards him.
Sato picked it up and glanced at it; it was an offer letter. The header read "SA Logistics Co., Ltd."
"I got it last week." Nakamura leaned back in his chair, legs crossed. "The interview was twenty minutes long, and we shook hands on the spot. The starting salary is 10% higher than the average position at Daiwa Bank. Lunch is included."
Sato put the notification back on the desktop.
"SA...is it under the Saionji Group?"
"Yes." Nakamura took a sip of beer. "I looked it up, the parent company is SA Holdings. The Saionji family's. They do logistics, retail, finance, real estate—basically everything."
My impression of Sato is very vague.
Saionji Temple.
I occasionally see this name in the newspaper, associated with Ginza, Odaiba, and some 500-meter-tall building.
What exactly I do—I can't say.
"While all other companies are cutting back on hiring, this one is still hiring on a large scale." Nakamura scratched the back of his head. "Maybe they're buying at rock-bottom prices."
He smiled. Sato didn't smile.
...8 PM. A window seat on the second floor of the izakaya "Kinoba Taro" in Takadanobaba.
Five people. Sato, Nakamura, plus Baba, Hayashi, and Kobayakawa from the same class.
On the table were five glasses of draft beer, each costing 280 yen, and three plates of edamame. They used to order a yakitori platter and sashimi when they came to this restaurant—now they only order the cheapest items.
"My dad was laid off last week," Kobayakawa said calmly, holding his cup. "He worked at Taisei Construction for twenty-six years."
The desktop was silent for three seconds.
"How much was your severance pay?" Lin asked.
"The price has increased by 20%. That sounds like a lot, but he still has 14 million left on his mortgage."
No one responded. The edamame shells piled up on the edge of the plate, glistening with oil.
"Our class..." Watanabe's voice trailed off behind his beer mug, "was the class that was sacrificed, wasn't it?"
"The bubble should have burst long ago," Lin said, adjusting his glasses. "Land prices tripled from 1985 to 1989. Everyone knows that's abnormal."
"What's the use of knowing?" Nakamura crumpled the can—he had brought his own canned beer, saying he thought the draft beer at the izakaya wasn't cold enough. "Even if you knew, you couldn't stop me."
Sato didn't join the discussion. He held his 280 yen draft beer and looked out the window at the street.
The neon lights at Takadanobaba were still on, but he noticed that only half of the sign for the mahjong parlor across the street was lit. The other half was probably due to a broken light bulb that hadn't been replaced.
A sound came from the karaoke room on the first floor.
Someone is singing.
It was a very soft female voice, and the melody was very slow.
Sato turned his head and listened for a few seconds.
The lyrics were hard to make out. But the quality of the voice—quiet, clean, like someone sitting next to you, speaking at very close range.
"What song?"
No one answered.
Watanabe is arguing with Hayashi about whether housing prices will continue to fall, Kobayakawa is silently shelling edamame, and Nakamura is rummaging through his pocket for his job offer.
Sato listened for a while longer.
The song ended. Sparse applause came from downstairs, and one or two people were laughing.
He looked away and finished the last sip of beer in his glass.
The bubble has burst.