The Jam-Stained Salaryman

By the time Akio stepped into the office lobby, he had mentally filed away the morning’s domestic comedy and slipped into professional mode. His expression was neutral. His briefcase was in hand. All was in order.

Well…almost in order. He still felt a sticky smidge of jam on his cuff from Amaya’s goodbye hug. He resisted the urge to sniff it. Strawberry. Great. He smelled like a toaster pastry.

He made a mental note to scrub it off in the bathroom later and prayed no one important would walk past and think he’d skipped breakfast in favour of wearing it.

The elevator ride to the 12th floor was filled with the usual awkward silence between coworkers and the faint elevator music playing a tinny pop tune. Akio adjusted his tie and gave polite nods to a couple of familiar faces.

Nod. Half-smile. Eye contact but not too much eye contact. The delicate morning dance of minimal social energy.

When the doors opened to his department’s floor, he stepped out and took a deep breath. A few colleagues were gathered by the coffee machine, chatting in low voices and someone laughing too hard for it to be 8:00 AM. Akio decided to make a small detour.

“Morning, everyone,” he greeted as he approached the coffee station, trying to seem like he didn’t still have dried jam on his shirt. It still felt slightly unnatural to him initiating conversation, but he tried to make an effort and he was met with friendly responses.

“Hey, good morning Akio!” said Karen from accounting, offering a smile.

“Morning! Did you catch the game last night?” one of the marketing guys asked in return, stirring sugar into his cup.

Akio blinked. Sports talk also known as the natural predator of quiet mornings.

“Uh, not last night, no,” he replied, politely evasive. “I was busy.” Busy mediating a showdown between an acrobat and her friend, he thought wryly, but decided that wouldn’t land well at the coffee machine.

“No worries,” the marketing guy chuckled, thankfully unphazed. “You didn’t miss much, our team lost spectacularly.”

“Ah. Better luck next time then,” Akio offered. It wasn’t a brilliant contribution, but it kept the ball rolling. He poured himself a second cup of coffee (one for each life he led, he joked internally, salaryman by day, unwitting ringmaster of a circus at home by night).

As people drifted to their desks, Akio returned to his own cubicle, the grey little sanctuary where email chains went to multiply. A familiar stack of reports waited for him. So did the blinking cursor in an unsent email he’d started yesterday, probably meant to chase someone for a late submission. He rolled in his chair, cracked his knuckles, and dove in.

Across the open-plan office, Kubo Shinji held court as usual. This morning, he was swaggering from desk to desk, recounting (for the third time) how he’d heroically solved last night’s big server crash. Never mind that he’d caused the outage himself by deploying the wrong config (a minor detail).

The junior developers listened with admiration as Shinji pantomimed his own glory.

“...and then I swooped in, rewrote the whole config blindfolded, while my keyboard was practically on fire—bam! Crisis averted!”

Akio didn’t even look up. So begins Act One of The Legend of Kubo-san, Hero of DevOps, he thought.

Akio sipped his coffee and turned back to his screen. Let the man have his audience.

“Alright everyone, listen up!” Shinji called out, clapping his hands to get the room’s attention. The scattered morning conversations died down. “Quick huddle, conference room B. Mandatory fun announcement!” He wiggled his eyebrows as if that phrase made sense.

A few groans arose, everyone knew “mandatory fun” was historically, never actually fun.

Akio saved his spreadsheet and joined the migrating herd of coworkers trudging toward Conference Room B, grabbing a seat near the back.

Shinji plugged in his laptop and projected a colourful flyer onto the screen. “I bring tidings from the higher-ups,” Shinji said dramatically, “and I wanted to tell you all personally because—” he held up a hand, fingers poised like he was delivering a prophecy, “—it involves free food and booze.”

A collective cheer went up from the group, one person yelled “praise be” like this was a miracle.

“Now I really have your attention,” Shinji grinned. “So! Our benevolent overlords have decided to bless us with a gala next month to celebrate hitting our Q3 targets and, uh…” He squinted at his palm. “‘Foster inter-departmental camaraderie and networking synergy.’ Or something.”

He flashed his hand briefly. Yup. He’d actually written it on his palm in ballpoint pen.

Akio raised an eyebrow. A company gala? That wasn’t the usual tepid cake-in-the-breakroom celebration. Normally, their version of celebration involved store-brand soda, someone’s dusty Bluetooth speaker, and Karen from accounting dancing off-beat to 2000s pop. A proper gala sounded… suspiciously optimistic.

“And because nothing says, ‘team spirit’ like forcing us into business casual outside of work hours, attendance is, shockingly, mandatory.” He flashed a smug grin and a collective groan rolled through the room.

Akio folded his arms and eyed the flyer. Bold golden letters glittered across the projection screen: Sunrise Systems Gala: A Night to Remember.

Shinji pointed at the screen. “Check it out. They’ve really pulled out all the stops. Fancy venue by the bay Chandeliers. Ice sculptures. Probably someone playing a harp. All the C-level execs rubbing elbows with us lowly peasants.” He winked. “Open bar, thank the heavens. And apparently…” he leaned in, eyes travelling to Akio, “they’re bringing in some special performers for our enjoyment. Rumour is some kind of modern circus act, sure to dazzle even the most jaded of us corporate drones.”

That got a reaction. A murmur of surprise and interest swept through the room.

Akio’s heart tripped over itself. Modern circus act? The phrase rang loud alarm bells in his head. His mind immediately conjured an image of aerial silks, flaming hula hoops, acrobats twisting in midair... and a certain someone with a fearless smile and white hair streaked with pink, flipping headfirst through all of it.

No, no, it could be any circus troupe, Akio told himself, even as his stomach performed an elegant triple axel. Tokyo's full of performers. Fire-dancers. Trapeze artists. People who juggle flaming swords in Ueno Park for loose change. Totally normal.

Still, the coincidence was enough to send a bead of sweat trickling down the back of his neck. He forced himself to tune back in, trying to keep his expression as unreadable as a software license agreement.

One of the junior developers raised a hand. “Circus, like clowns and stuff, boss?”

Shinji shrugged. “Not sure about clowns exactly, I think it’s the fancy kind. Expect something more high-class than red noses and balloon poodles. And sadly, no elephants, our Legal Team said something about ‘liability’ and ‘PR disaster’ and ‘do you want to get sued, Shinji?’” He sighed like this was a personal tragedy, then added under his breath, “Also, I asked if I could enter on a unicycle during the CEO’s toast, and they said no like I was the unreasonable one.”

A few chuckles rippled through the room. Akio didn’t join in.

He was too busy trying to will his thoughts into order.
If it’s her troupe… if she’s there, performing, with the pink hair and the glitter eyeliner and the terrifying lack of shame...

Akio’s face remained perfectly still. His brain, however, was racing ahead.

The worlds of his work life and personal life were on a high-speed collision course, and it was going to be loud. He recalled the last time it happened, the wild joint welcome party that ended with him piggybacking a drunken acrobat through the streets. His cheeks warmed at the memory.

And this time it wouldn’t just be a handful of coworkers watching. This time there’d be senior managers. Marketing execs. HR reps with clipboards and judgemental eyebrows.

Akio shut his eyes and tried to will the mental images away: Amaya somersaulting into the CFO’s lap, juggling expensive champagne glasses, announcing her opinion on corporate tax in front of the CEO. No, no, no. This was still hypothetical. It might not even be her troupe.

Still, the back of his neck tingled like his instincts were waving a tiny red flag.

He made a quick mental checklist:

- Don’t drink anything stronger than water.

- Don’t let Amaya talk to his manager. Or his manager’s manager. Or anyone with hiring or firing powers.

 - And above all, do not let her near a microphone.

He opened his eyes to find Shinji staring at him, head tilted. “Earth to Akio? You look like you’ve seen a ghost, man.” Shinji grinned, clearly enjoying himself. He knew exactly what buttons he’d pushed and he was thriving on it.

Akio realized belatedly that everyone else had been chattering excitedly about the gala while he sat there stiff as a corpse. He forced a chuckle. “I’m fine. Just... a circus performance, huh?” He hoped that sounded like normal surprise and not dread.

His team member, Tanaka-san squinted at him suspiciously. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of clowns or something.”

That earned a couple of snickers from coworkers. Akio waved a hand dismissively. “Not particularly. I just wasn’t expecting acrobats at a corporate event, is all.” That, at least, was true.

“Well, expect the unexpected,” Shinji declared, slapping a hand on Akio’s shoulder.

The conversation moved on to other gala-related topics: the date (three weeks from now, on a Saturday), the venue (a new convention centre in Lake Kawaguchi), and dress code (“snazzy casual, whatever that means”), and a stern reminder from Shinji that yes, it was on the weekend, and no, skipping was not an option unless you wanted to personally offend the CEO’s pet Pomeranian, Mr. Snuffles.

Akio nodded along, pen tapping against his notebook, pretending to take notes. On the outside: engaged team player. On the inside: a frantic architect drafting a disaster-prevention blueprint.

Plan A: Avoid the gala entirely.
Plan B: Since Plan A was impossible, survive it without collateral damage.
Plan C: ...Buy noise-cancelling headphones and move to a remote mountain shrine.

The rest of the workday unravelled in a caffeinated blur. Akio tried to focus, he really did, but he ended up rewriting the same three lines of code on loop like he was caught in some kind of cursed syntax time-warp. Every semicolon felt like a backflip waiting to happen. Every open bracket reminded him of a new disaster Amaya might launch midair, wrapped in glitter.

By the time early evening rolled around, he was practically sprinting.

Normally, Akio would never leave the office with an inbox still snarling and his task list glaring at him in passive-aggressive bold font. Especially not after Shinji had made him duck out early yesterday, leaving him with a creeping sense of productivity guilt. He hated feeling behind. But today he bolted the second core hours ended. Grabbed his briefcase, avoided eye contact, and slipped past the breakroom like a salaryman version of a prison escapee.

From behind the monitor jungle, Kubo’s voice floated after him, far too amused:
“Someone’s in a hurry~!”

Akio didn’t dignify it with a response nor did he slow down.

The walk home wasn’t long, but it was just long enough for him to spiral through approximately forty-eight disaster scenarios. 

He mentally ran damage control drills, drafted apology emails to HR that hadn’t even been warranted yet and braced himself for the chaos waiting in Apartment 5B. Specifically, one green-eyed hurricane in chunky clown slippers with unnecessarily strong opinions on pancake syrup ratios.