Beyond
the Water

It is four AM. I have not run in months, and my shins burn with each stride. There is a stinging pain in my chest that won't leave. Familiar streets, lit only by the street lamps, look strange tonight. I don't know where I'm going.

"We are sorry, but given the metrics on your P&L over the past twelve months, we have to decline your request for additional financing." I see the banker's smile.

I push harder. Clack-clack. Clack. An abacus. Then a voice.

"President. I'll be blunt. At this burn rate, you have several weeks left. Numbers don't lie." The face clinical. Another street light passes.

"I'm not asking you to build a machine. I'm not asking you to run the company. Why can't you do even one small thing right?" My own voice. Heat in my face. A young face, looking down at the floor.

"The supplier for Part C is raising prices thirty percent. Lead times have gone from two weeks to six."

"Sir. I'm sorry. We lost the C account to S-corp again. I think it was the price."

I hear my own panting in the dark and keep running, as if somewhere in this neighborhood there is an exit out of this deep hole. I start thinking about where I went wrong, over all the years of running this company.

I keep running. My right foot catches, a half-second of nothing beneath it where the ground should be, and my body knows before I do, the hands already coming up, already reaching for something that isn't there. Right palm. Left knee. The curb catches my shoulder like a door slammed shut. The cold hits my cheek, and for a moment everything is very bright, and then the brightness goes somewhere else and takes the street with it.

Five years earlier, it had begun.

"Thank you for everything."

He stands in the doorway of the cafeteria, head bowed. I am holding his resignation letter, after a brief talk like the ones I've had with the others who left. Six years. He thanks me for those years with his shoulders slumped. He cites a personal reason.

After the door clicks shut I sit in the empty room. Outside the window, the Seto Inland Sea is bleeding a violent, bruised red in the last of the light. The islands look the way they always look. Unchanged. Indifferent. Utterly unaffected by anything happening on this side of the glass. His face is still in the room. The eyes on the floor. I have watched the margins thin for three years, the bonuses shrinking. Next year, I promise. I have said it so many times it has stopped meaning anything. He stayed through all of it, longer than he had to, and I never once thanked him for staying. The Seto Inland Sea bleeds red and then goes dark.

The next morning the television is on in the kitchen before I am fully awake. "…bankruptcies among small and medium enterprises have risen eighteen percent over the previous year…" The anchor reads the numbers like they belong to someone else. Regional manufacturing. Labor shortages. Cutthroat price wars. I stand at the counter with my coffee and listen to him read my company's autopsy in the same tone he uses for the weather.

"Dad, I'm heading out."

My first daughter appears in the doorway in her school uniform, ponytail, the entrance exams a month away. I give her a nod. "Have a good day." I watch her go.

"We're still okay," I mutter to the empty kitchen.

That Sunday I drive with my wife to the coastal lookout above the town. The water is quiet, small islands scattered across it, permanent, serene, entirely untroubled by what is happening on land. But when I look down at the town, the rot is visible. Shuttered storefronts along the main street, the gaps between them. The factory on the hill where over seven hundred people once worked: dark windows, an empty lot, a FOR LEASE sign at the gate turning pale in the weather.

My wife is looking at a mountain in the distance. "Remember last month?" she says. "I climbed that one with the kids and my parents. They were so happy."

I nod. "That's good."

From the parking lot below comes the sound of a child laughing. I look down. A man has a toddler on his shoulders, both of them laughing at something I can't see. The woman beside them is laughing too.

"We used to be like that," my wife says softly.

I nod. I look up at the factory on the hill and shiver. The wind off the water is turning cold and strong.

Monday morning, I am checking last month's expenses when my phone vibrates. Inoue, the company's top sales manager.

"Boss, I'm sorry." His voice already sounds sorry. "S-corp. They beat us on price again. The Tanaka account."

A folding chair falls behind me as I stand. "How much did they discount?"

He tells me the number. Well below our price. When they compete against us, they discount to win. When they aren't competing, they charge a list price higher than ours. The customer who gets the cut feels like he's scored. But now every customer in the market believes there is always room to push, and the floor under what anyone will pay for quality drops a little further.

"Thank you for the report," I manage. I put the phone down a little too hard.

I stare at it. "We're still okay," I mutter to the empty cafeteria.

There is only the sound of the ventilation.

The factory lights are already on when I pull into the lot. They always are when I arrive. Watanabe gets here before the forklift operators, before the engineers, sometimes before anyone else can see a reason to.

He is crouched at the base of the shelving near the loading dock, pouring milk from a small carton into a shallow dish. He does it carefully, not rushing. When he turns his head, I see past the meticulous punch perm to a gray cat edging out from behind a pallet. He hears my footsteps and stands. The carton disappears into the bag he carries. He gives me a nod, his monolid eyes meeting mine, and walks back toward the assembly line. The Gothic ring on his thick middle finger catches the overhead light. People see him coming and straighten by half an inch without noticing they've done it. I stand there. The gray cat pads forward and begins to drink.

I follow Watanabe onto the factory floor and walk it before going upstairs to the office. The floor is quiet. Aisles of shelving hold the parts that go into our equipment. Assembly lines marked with tape, one zone per model. The testing and packaging area, scrubbed clean every night after the last shift. I take deep breaths as I go, checking station after station, touching a component here, a finished unit there in the shipping area, everything wiped down the day before.

After about five minutes I wave to Watanabe and take the stairs to the office, where sales, service, and the engineers work at their desks. On the half-landing I catch the hair at my temples going gray in the mirror. My younger daughter Chika's voice comes back to me. Can you look nice in front of my friends? I check my phone calendar to see if I can fit in a haircut next Sunday.

I poke my head into the administrative office and find Miyamoto. She handles accounting, HR, and all the small things that hold the place together.

"Morning, boss! How's your day going? Coffee, the usual?"

"Had better mornings," I say. "Any applications come in?"

"No, boss. But I'll re-post the job ads today."

"Thank you. Send the coffee to my usual spot."

"You got it." She smiles.

When I walk into the main office, a chorus of "Good morning, boss!" comes from several desks. Then Inoue comes over. He is in his fifties, always in a well-pressed suit, a little out of place in a regional factory like ours.

"Boss, can I fill you in on the changes M-corp wants on their equipment?"

"Morning, Inoue-san. Any updates? Let's meet with Watanabe and Tanaka later today."

"Of course, sir. Just let me know the time. I'll be in the office all day."

After the rounds, I head to where I work, the company cafeteria, and set my bag down at my usual spot. In the corner stands a refrigerator full of containers labeled with people's names. I open it to check that the yogurt I mean to eat after lunch is still there. I started eating it after my wife passed along what the girls had been saying about my waistline, in the hope of slowing its growth. I pull out a folding chair and sit.

Twenty-eight people work here. Some have been here longer than I can remember. Miyamoto at the front desk, answering the phone, keeping the invisible architecture of the place from collapsing under its own weight. The maintenance team who know every machine by sound and can diagnose a fault before it becomes a failure. The sales team fighting the same price war every quarter with the same honest weapons and the same lengthening odds.

Around noon, I untie the furoshiki, the thick cloth once used to wrap gifts in Japan. Deep indigo, faded at the folds. My wife ties the knots the same way every morning, two loops, one tuck, and when I spread it across the table it opens flat, a place mat the size of a plate.

I lift out the magewappa, an old-fashioned bento box. Akita cedar, the wood darkened amber at the edges, the cherry-bark seam running along the lid like a fine stitch. No lacquer. The wood breathes on its own. I have been using this box for eighteen years.

I lift the lid.

Cedar. The smell comes up before I see the food. The rice is still slightly separated, each grain distinct, the way rice stays only when something has been drawing the moisture out of it all morning. The compartments run along the right side, separated by thin cedar partitions, each section the width of two fingers.

Karaage in the first one. I remember it from last night. Four pieces, the batter a deep reddish brown, still slightly crisp at the corners. She marinates the chicken overnight, soy sauce and ginger and garlic and mirin and sake and something else she has never told me. Eighteen years and I have never gotten the full list out of her. I stopped asking.

Beside it, stir-fried bell peppers and ground beef, dark with oyster sauce, the peppers still holding some color. Too much on its own, the sauce too strong, the beef too rich, but against plain white rice it becomes exactly the right thing. The kids call a side dish like this a rice thief.

Tamagoyaki in the last compartment. Five careful layers, each a slightly different shade of gold. Lotus root, four slices. Cherry tomatoes. A small stack of broccoli florets cut at exactly the same angle.

I remember eating three pieces of that karaage standing at the counter last night while she cleared the table. She moved around me with the dishes and I reached into the pan and she let me.

I pick up the chopsticks I have used for years.

Outside the window, smoke rises from the chimney.

I open my laptop and scan the overnight emails for the ones that need me. My desktop wallpaper is a photo of this building, taken twenty years ago. Twenty years. I look out the window. The sky is blue with small scattered clouds. A factory stands in the distance. It looks like one I used to visit as a young engineer, servicing equipment my old company had built. The owner was about the age I am now. Married, three children, at the time the same ages as my own are now. The eldest studying hard for exams. The middle one at soccer, never missing practice. The youngest into music.

One day, talking with him at the factory, he told me how hard it had become to hold quality on a machine already more than fifteen years old. As a sales engineer, I suggested he invest in a new model I was sure would help his business grow. He shook his head. "Mouri-san. I wish I could. To be honest, it's hard for me even to pay the service fee. The competition is getting fierce these days." I heard him sigh. I don't remember what I said in response. But I remember the morning, months later, when I found a letter on my desk. It was from him.

Mouri-san. I took up my pen to write this because I wanted to thank you for the three years you came to service my equipment. I know the old machine was difficult to work on. I always appreciated your presence. Unfortunately, I have decided to close my business. Please do not blame your company or the equipment. The machine ran well and sustained my business for sixteen years. I am grateful for that. The fault is all mine. I am only sorry for my family. My children.

My vision blurred. My hands trembled. I saw each of his children. Studying. Playing soccer. Singing a song.

I still have the letter in my desk drawer. I still read it from time to time, when I am unsure of a decision I have to make. I look out the window. Smoke from the chimney is stretched sideways in the wind.

The drawing is spread across the table. Two other men stand over it with me. It is the third revision in the past few months, components circled in red where Watanabe has found ways to cut material cost without losing function. Having assembled and stripped the equipment down hundreds of times, he can redraw the blueprint in his head.

Tanaka, another engineer, points. "If we substitute the housing here, we lose maybe two percent on tolerance, but M-corp's application doesn't require…"

A careful knock on the door. Miyamoto stands in the gap, a slip of paper in her hand, stooped a little, head low, just her face showing, her brows drawn together. She is not someone who interrupts an engineering meeting.

"I'm sorry. There's a call."

I don't look up from the drawing. "Take a message."

"It's M-corp."

I look up. "Which department?"

She checks the paper. "Procurement. A Mr. Yamamoto."

I set down the marker. Procurement. Not the CEO. M-corp usually calls Inoue. Purchase orders, installation scheduling, requests like this customization. I have spoken to their procurement office maybe twice in thirteen years, both times about delivery dates. Nothing that needs me.

"He asked for me? Not Inoue?" I say, to be sure.

"Yes, boss. He said it's something important. That he needs to speak with you personally."

"Something important…" I mutter.

"Five minutes," I tell Watanabe. "Don't touch the housing section."

The administrative office smells of the green tea Miyamoto brews every morning. She hands me the receiver and closes the door behind her on the way out, and most of the noise drops away.

"Mouri speaking."

"Sir." The voice on the other end is careful, controlled. "This is Yamamoto, from M-corp procurement. Thank you for taking my call."

"Not at all." I am, in fact, in the middle of a cost-reduction meeting for their order, though I don't say so.

"I know you're busy, sir. I won't take much of your time." A brief pause. "We have completed a review of our supplier relationships under a new procurement policy. Going forward, we will consolidate to a smaller number of approved vendors."

The words sound foreign. For a moment I don't understand what he means. "Okay. So that means…?"

Another pause. "To put it plainly, we are changing our supplier. It will no longer be your company."

Outside, a delivery truck backs into the loading dock.

"I see," I manage.

"We have valued this relationship enormously. Truly. Thirteen years is…" Yamamoto pauses, and I understand, suddenly, that he is not reading from a script. He means it. "Thirteen years is a real partnership. We do not take this lightly."

"Of course." I can't keep my voice from shaking.

"The transition takes effect at the end of the quarter. Someone from our team will be in touch with Inoue-san about the final order specifications."

I am nodding, I realize. I can't feel my legs.

"Sir, are you…"

"Yes. I understand completely." My voice comes out muffled. "Thank you for calling personally, Yamamoto-san. I appreciate the courtesy."

Another pause. "I'm sorry," he says. And then, quietly, "I genuinely am."

The line goes dead.

I stand there, the receiver still in my hand. The back of my neck is soaked. Two men pass outside the office, their words lost through the glass. Somewhere a forklift goes about its work. The clock ticks too loudly. I should go back to the meeting. The others are waiting. Twenty-five percent of our revenue.

I sit down on the floor, my back against a cold pillar. The fluorescent lights glare down. Twenty-five percent. Gone. Just like that. Thirteen years of tiptoeing.

The CEO. He used to call me himself, on my mobile. I still have the number. When did he last call? I remember: he was congratulating me on building equipment that had helped speed up his business. He stopped calling after they went public. After that, more departments. New people we barely finished entering in the CRM before the next wave arrived. More requests, more often. Cost reductions, always. More meetings to satisfy whatever M-corp wanted next.

"Did you make a mistake again? Why can't you take anything seriously? If you're going to do it, give it everything!" The voice echoes in my head. My hands tremble. I see my old study desk, the surface scratched, the stickers worn to nothing. "If you won't be serious, don't try at all!"

The handset lies on the desk, still beeping. The door opens and Miyamoto's worried face appears. "Boss, are you all right? What happened?" She crouches, shakes my shoulder.

"Oh. Sorry. I slipped. I'm fine. Shouldn't have stayed up for the end of the game last night."

I go back into the meeting. I sit down. I look at the drawing, now useless. I look at the two men who have just spent hours on it.

"I'm sorry. I genuinely am."

Yamamoto's voice echoes in my head.

"Let's call it for the day," I say. "Good work."