An Unwell Eye

Pick. Pick. Pick. Pick.

Nothing was ever fully clear when he looked out at the world.

Having Amblyopia meant the brain had trained itself to see what it wanted to see. Instead of struggling to process blurring images caused by out-of-sync vision, the mind simply focused on the normal eye’s signal and blocked out the unclear narrative of the other.

Masaru’s family couldn’t afford treatments when he was a child, so the damage became permanent. When he was in grade school, he had worn an eyepatch in hopes that it would help his mind calm and also keep attention from him. In the end, it gave him migraines from frustration due to the cheap fabric rubbing his temple and brow, and it made him a favored target for local bullies.

In time, it became easier not to wear the patch and simply exist with his head lowered. Add in crooked teeth and a faint, throaty voice, and Masaru was all but unnotable to general society. Not ugly. Not handsome. Not important. Not polished. Simply there.

Thereness was easier than presentness, even if deep in his heart he truly wanted to be present. He hadn’t asked for the eye. He hadn’t asked for the teeth. He hadn’t asked for the trembling fingers that always wanted to scratch at his angry skin. He hadn’t asked for the eyes to follow him.

He hadn’t asked for so much. But it still happened. And all of that built upon itself until being there was all he could expect.

And the act of simply “being there” had led him to this place.

Pick. The eyes are still there.

As he plodded through dirty puddles and tried not to focus on the way his dampening trousers were now clinging to his thigh, he braced for whatever misery or aggression awaited him at his office that day. Andrakin Property Management was not a noble place of employment. It was the very type of place all those in Japan feared winding up at.

Pick. They hid in the blurred corners of his mind, just out of sight.

They had a name for such workplaces in their country. It held a stigma and a warning- never fully fading or being regulated into submission because the threat of finding oneself working at such a place was enough to keep the majority of society in check.

Pick. That train jumper woke up as a person and died as a splattered mass.

They called them burakku kigyō.

Pick. The eyes will follow you until _____

Black company.

Pick. Pick your eye from its socket and shove it back into its place at the correct angle.

Within its eggshell-painted walls, beneath the garish halogen, along the matted carpet and faded tiles, life bled by in steady deadness. To enter its dingy halls was to leave your gentleness outside as hours of labor were dotted with screaming superiors, insults from frustrated clients, cheap, second-hand chairs that ground spinal disks to dust, and monitors that never seemed bright enough.

Scratch.

A scar on Masaru’s cheekbone told stories of staplers thrown at him on more than one occasion.

Bleed.

They weren’t important or polished enough to be “front office” and client-facing; the luckiest ones were sent to actual nice buildings in important districts within Tokyo. There they would stand at marble desks and engage with the well-dressed and hurried. But those roles were rare at best. For the majority of them, they were stuck in that office, or whatever rundown facility could afford on-site attendees.

For the ones like Masaru, they’d never leave that alert-filled world of unseen “back office” roles.

Two decades of knowing that to be true meant Masaru’s nervous system had conditioned itself to drown out the pings.

But he could never drown out the cruelty of the others, especially his bosses.

There was a misery in the silence that met the start of every day, when workers funneled in with mouths clenched in preparation. To their desks they’d go, where the alerts and pings would soon begin.

Pick.

Alerts never stopped. Rents had to be collected. Office buildings never functioned as well as they should have. Elevators jammed. Plumbing burst. Tenants complained about rickety air conditioning ducts. Common area maintenance was never done. Each building told the same story of landlords never having enough funding to keep properties alive or competitive. And all of those frustrations from tenants and owners alike would gather themselves in the abyss of cloud networks before hurling themselves in spiteful frustration to Andrakin, where Masaru and his peers did their best to fix what they could.

But it was never enough.

And that’s when the bosses would lash out.

That day, he was late, just like he’d feared. And now he was wet.

Pick.

Top layers for fabric pushed moisture down into stitching and lining, until faint whispers of dewy overstimulation pulled its roughened fingers along Masaru’s shoulders and inner thighs. It wasn’t warm enough to dry quickly, and the sun was still hidden behind rainclouds. So Masaru had to accept that he’d likely be wet all day.

When he entered the office, he made his way towards the cubicle farm where dozens of others sat in rows of conformity as they braced for the day’s onslaught.

Masaru couldn’t even think on the suicide or the return of the eyes any longer. His thoughts were so wholly dedicated to preparing for his first rush of tickets and alerts that he didn’t realize his fingernails were pulling down against a small bit of crusted red covering that was protecting a recent razor nick. They pulled too ravenously and the scab came loose. Red immediately appeared.

The eyes are always there. Always.

Residual dampness on his skin made the blood’s downward pathing accelerate, and before Masaru could cover himself, red met white. Drops touched the edge of his collar and immediately began to stain.

“Oh… no…” Masaru nervously muttered to himself as his hand covered his neck and he turned to move towards the hallway bathroom.

His weak peripheral vision failed to alert him that his superior was right behind him with a cup of still-warm coffee in his hand. They collided before either could realize what was happening, and his superior let out a yelp of annoyance as hot liquid ran along his wrist and knuckles.

Panic seized Masaru as he saw what he’d done. Without thinking, he extended his hand from his neck.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m so sorry!” he said as he frantically looked away.

Red on his palm and finger only caused his victim to become even more enraged.

“Why is there blood on your hand?! Get away from me, you stupid, worthless bastard!!” the man shouted as he flung the remaining ounces of coffee onto Masaru’s chest.

It was hot, but not scalding. All Masaru could do was flinch and bow as the man left. Through it all, no one else dared to speak. Few even dared to look at the scene.

“Lazy-eyed fuck,” the superior snarled as he walked away.

The dread was always there, even when the eyes weren’t. It hung in the humidity and nipped at his neck like a taunting hound. Occasionally, when his mind was truly spiraling, he could hear the hound’s teeth grinding and clicking just behind his ear. Tension rose with every second as the trepidation coated him.

Blood dripped from Masaru’s neck and down onto the carpet. A faint squeak of fear left his throat as he rushed to the bathroom to try to stop the bleeding. By then, it was too late. His collar was streaked with red, and his chest was covered in brown.

His review was supposed to start nine minutes ago.

He hated the way his pants were pressing against his thigh.

With that man.

He was simultaneously cold and warm from the rain.

Rough, cheap paper towels were pressed to the wound as Masaru tried to calm his breathing.

Ten minutes.

He’d never wanted any of this. Just once, he wanted to have a pleasant day. Tremors shook his hand. Fretful twitches pulled his face to the right as his brows arced inward and upward in anxious concern.

Eleven minutes.

He braced for another stapler to be thrown at him. He’d always hated violence and violent people. They’d always loved him and his eye.

He couldn’t be any later.

All he could do was clench his eyes and inhale. Once he held the air in his nose for a moment, he exhaled slowly and exited the bathroom, accepting that an already bad review was likely about to be much worse.