The Logmaster - Chapter 1
It’s after midnight.
In the carriage nearing the last train, dim fluorescent lights flickered erratically, and the luggage racks on the seats made a faint creaking noise as they shook.
There were only a few passengers on board, and it was strangely quiet.
Silence as if sound had been sucked away
— Ayumaru Omiichi, 44 years old, single.
As I gazed blankly up at the advertisements on the hanging straps, I felt a slight discomfort at the unnatural silence.
Omiichi, dressed in a worn navy blue suit, was running his fingertips over the cheap synthetic leather bag on his lap.
His eyelids felt heavy, and his shoulders felt stiff like lead.
I blinked slowly once, as if to soothe my eyes from the strain of the office, then I shifted my gaze to my reflection in the window.
There was a middle-aged man with lifeless eyes.
— I even look surprised at how tired I look.
“So this is what I look like.”
I work for an IT company located in a high-rise building in a prime location in the city center.
Despite its glamorous appearance, the business is constantly in trouble.
An unnecessarily luxurious office maintained solely for the sake of the president’s vanity…
“If you have money to pay such high rent, put it towards our salaries.”
I couldn’t help but curse in my mind. The other employees were harboring the same dissatisfaction, though they just didn’t voice it out loud, and the atmosphere in the office was always filled with these pent-up feelings.
Omiichi is a low-level programmer working at the company.
He has no position and is only given the task of maintaining the outdated system, which is grave-keeping work.
Younger employees often gave him tedious chores to do.
On the surface, he seems to be shown a fair amount of respect, with people saying things like, “Thank you for your hard work, Ayumaru-san,” but he knows that behind his back people are teasing him and making fun of him by playing with his name and calling him a “burden.”
Resignation and self-mockery…
They enveloped his mind like a thick, leaden coat.
The train rattles along with a monotonous rhythm.
As he gave himself over to the swaying, Omiichi scrolled through the pages of his smartphone.
What is shown is the fulfilling daily life that someone posts on social media
–It’s a glittering world far removed from my own.
I couldn’t help but let out a deep sigh.
The sigh dissolved into the humid air inside the car and disappeared without a sound.
(…I’m exhausted again today. What on earth is the purpose of my life…)
I muttered to myself.
But there’s no way to find an answer.
But fatigue clung to my whole body, and my thoughts felt heavy as lead. The events of the day came back to me one after another.
◇◇◇
As soon as I arrived at the office first thing in the morning, my junior colleague, Tanaka, came running up to me.
“Hey Ayuma-san, can you help me with renovating this legacy system? I only understand the current framework…”
He sounded apologetic, but it was clear that he was just passing on a nuisance. What Tanaka brought was an outdated business system code written in COBOL decades ago.
A chaotic tangle of spaghetti code.
There is no proper documentation, and the more you use it, the more bugs you’ll find.
— It’s no wonder that Tanaka, a newcomer or, more specifically, a young person of today, has a hard time handling the situation.
However, within the company, it was always Omiichi who was put in charge of these kinds of old cases.
“…Okay, okay, I get it. I’ll just take a look.”
In the end, he can’t refuse and accepts the offer.
“Thank you! That’s very helpful!”
Tanaka bowed his head and returned to his seat.
Even though I knew I was being forced to do it, I was in a weak position and didn’t dare to refuse.
(As expected, today’s chores have started again…)
Letting out a heavy sigh that morning, Omiichi began looking through the documents on the spot without being able to sit down.
afternoon.
This time, I was called by Iiyama, a middle-aged section chief, whose face was bright red.
“Hey Ayumaru! We’ve had complaints from customers about last week’s release! It’s because you didn’t check it properly!”
The very first thing I said was that I was greeted with yelling.
The sudden scolding caused all the eyes to turn towards me.
Omiichi knew the cause.
The root cause of this problem was an unreasonable change to specifications that Iiyama himself had forced through just before release.
——There’s no way to argue against that.
In this company, if you upset your boss, you will only face further retaliation.
He clenched his fists tightly and swallowed the anger he had been holding back.
“Very sorry…”
Omiichi had no choice but to squeeze out the words of apology.
As he bows his head while being yelled at one-sidedly, his colleagues around him either turn a blind eye or give him a momentary look of pity.
There was no way anyone would come to his rescue. It was the same as always.
— Telling himself this, Omiichi simply waited for the storm to pass.
In the afternoon, I was busy analyzing and fixing the legacy code that Tanaka had forced upon me.
A proliferation of meaningless variable names and a whole lot of debugging code left uncommented…
It’s like excavating an ancient ruin, Omiichi thought with his hazy mind.
Frustrated and exhausted, I wanted to give up many times, but I continued to steadily identify the causes of the bugs one by one.
By the time I finally identified the problem and had a plan for how to fix it, the clock was already past regular time, and I realized that almost no one else was left in the office except for me.
“Ayumaru-san, you were helpful! I’ll be off now!”
As for Tanaka, he had only given a brief thank you and had already left the office a long time ago.
Standing on the deserted floor, Omiichi stared blankly at Tanaka’s empty seat.
Behind his expressionless face, I felt a faint sense of emptiness spreading in my heart.
Near midnight.
The office floor was deserted and deafeningly quiet.
I look at the clock and it’s past 10 pm.
Having somehow managed to complete the “quota” that had been imposed on him for the day, Omiichi leaned his exhausted body back in his chair.
A dull feeling of hunger welled up from the pit of my stomach, and I finally realized that I hadn’t eaten anything since that morning. My empty stomach growled in agony.
“…I’m hungry.”
He muttered to himself, then reluctantly got up and put his arms on his coat.
I left the building and walked quickly through the deserted office district.
Our destination is the nearby 24-hour supermarket.
At this time of day, the main attraction is, of course, the bento boxes with half-price stickers on them.
As I entered the store, I was lucky enough to see the staff just starting to put discount tags on the deli items.
As if they had been waiting for this, men in suits who looked like company employees and housewives returning from part-time work crowded into the corner.
They reached out for the newly discounted items, vying to be the first to grab them, like a pack of hyenas.
–Unfortunately, Omiichi no longer has the energy or stamina to join the battle.
I wait from a short distance away for the crowd to die down.
Soon, after all the popular side dishes had been bought out, all that was left on the shelves was the “leftovers”: a brown bento box filled with deep-fried food that no one would reach for.
Omiichi picked one up.
Rather than choosing, it feels more like rummaging through the scraps of survival.
Still, when I see that there is a half-price sticker on it, I mutter sarcastically to myself.
“My first meal of the day, got it.”
I return to the office and pop my lunch into the impersonal white microwave in the deserted hot water area.
A silly electronic sound echoed hollowly across the floor.
I return to my desk with a steaming hot lunch in hand.
The seat next to me and across from me are both empty.
Even at this hour, only the brightly lit monitor of his computer seemed to be urging him to continue working.
I pour hot water from the water server next to my desk into a paper cup and dissolve the instant miso soup powder in it.
After finishing preparing a simple midnight snack, Omiichi sat down in a chair and picked up his chopsticks from the bento he had reheated in the microwave.
I put the tonkatsu, its batter now soft, into my mouth.
It satisfied my hunger, but it was too oily and didn’t excite my taste buds.
I simply chew on the brown, cooled chunks.
The only sounds I could hear were the sound of my wooden chopsticks scraping the corners of my lunchbox and the sound of my chewing. I was left alone in the office late at night.
–That loneliness seeped into my heart.
After shoving the empty container into the trash, Omiichi returned to his keyboard.
There are just a few more tasks left to complete today.
The soft sound of typing continues to echo through the deserted office.
Suddenly, in the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the night view from the window of a high-rise building.
The neon lights of Tokyo’s streets twinkle like jewels even at this late hour.
The scene was so dazzling that it seemed like a symbol of a world that had nothing to do with me.
(What on earth is my time… my life being consumed by?)
It felt like there was a gaping hole in my chest.
The unanswered questions rear their heads again.
The question sank into Omiichi’s chest like a heavy lead ball, and all that could be heard was the thumping of his heart.
Don’t cause any trouble, stay inconspicuous, and just stay hidden and get through each day.
–That was his way of getting by in order to survive in this company, and it was his daily life.
Yes, I tell myself. I never thought about changing anything in the first place…because thinking about it won’t change anything.
However, even in these grey days, there was one thing that was like an oasis for Omiichi.
Shizuka Tomaru, 27 years old. A mid-career employee in her third year at the company, she is a rising star in the company, having been appointed team leader at a young age. She has a cheerful personality and is a mood maker who treats everyone equally.
She had a bright smile like the sun and was extremely enthusiastic about her work, which earned her the trust of many employees.
–There are quite a few male employees in the company who secretly have feelings for her.
But she also had an unexpected weakness.
He is surprisingly bad at using a computer. When he first joined the company, Shizuka was the one who relied on him like a puppy for everything, from basic Excel usage to how to operate the business system.
“Ayumaru-san, can you tell me about this?”
To be honest, there were times when I thought it was a hassle, but Omiichi carefully explained everything to me.
That was the beginning of this strange relationship.
Although they maintained the distance between senior and junior, Shizuka relied on Omiichi whenever she needed to, and they even became close enough to joke around with each other at times.
“Ah, Ayumaru-san! Tomaru-san and Ayumaru-san, the two of them together make a double O-O!… Just kidding, hehe.”
When we pass each other in the hallway, they call out to me cheerfully.
It’s a silly pun, but when Shizuka laughs so innocently, it somehow makes your mouth relax as well.
“That’s stupid.”
Even though Omiichi replied brusquely, he found himself secretly looking forward to that moment. It wasn’t fresh enough to be called romantic love.
A drop of water falls on my parched heart
— Perhaps it was a twisted parental instinct, watching over the junior student he had taught with care.
◇◇◇
As the train swayed, Omiichi remembered Shizuka’s innocent smile.
Even with my exhausted head, her voice strangely came back to me vividly.
Gradually, my eyelids became heavy.
The warm air from the heater in the car was comfortable, and I felt my consciousness fading.
How long had I had my eyes closed like that?
–At that moment, a pop-up notification suddenly appeared at the top of my smartphone screen.
Omiichi, who was falling asleep, suddenly opened his eyes.
The smartphone in my hand is vibrating slightly.
Although I always have the notification sound turned off, I heard a muffled vibration that sounded like it was coming from underwater. When I looked at the screen, an unfamiliar message was displayed.
『LINE: You have a new message from ⭕️』
—— Mr. ⭕️? Who’s that?
It’s a name I don’t recognise.
I can’t think of any acquaintances who would send me a LINE message at this time.
Omiichi shook his head lightly, trying to clear his sleepy mind.
I look down at the smartphone screen again.
At the time, he had no idea that this strange notification would be the signal that the life of a man named Ayumaru Omiichi would cross the boundaries of everyday life…