Chapter 9: Confinement

Ren was still there, with the phone in his hand.

He took a deep breath.

"Don't worry… he probably just went to the bathroom, right?"

He needed to check if the doorman was still in the building. Leaving mistakes uncorrected gnawed at his brain. He had always worked hard, but staying there until the storm passed wasn't exactly encouraging.

He walked to the elevator and pressed the button to go down to the ground floor. The descent felt like an eternity. He could only watch his exhausted face reflected in the mirror, though he almost seemed not to recognize himself.

"One day you're young and the next you hate seeing yourself in the mirror…" he muttered.

He decided to look at the floor so he wouldn't have to see himself for so long.

The elevator reached the ground floor and the door opened slowly with a metallic creak, as if it needed maintenance.

The entrance hall was wide, with very high ceilings and marble walls, which made every step Ren took echo throughout the space. The cold felt even stronger there.

"Hello? Mr. Río…"

There was no response of any kind, only the echo of his voice in that cold room.

He walked up to the guard's post.

Completely empty.

Only the constant pounding of wind and snow hitting the metal gate.

"They lowered the shutters… not surprising," he muttered as he walked to the main door and looked at the large metal mesh.

The wind rocked the metal structure as if it were paper, while the snow fell even harder than before.

"I can't see anything out there…"

The storm had become so intense that it was impossible to make out what was happening outside, but the most unsettling thing was the lack of other sounds, as if the whistle of the wind was the only thing that existed out there.

He turned around, brushing off the situation. After all, it wasn't the first time he had stayed overnight at work.

That had already caused him problems with his coworkers.

"They should learn from Takahashi, he works hard for the company," his bosses used to say.

"Nothing to do about it, I better go back to work."

He returned to the tenth floor, stopping at the drink machine, his mind still on the code and the corrections.

He stared at that machine longer than usual, as if he were analyzing it.

As if he had never seen it before.

"That can't be possible…" he muttered. "What do you mean it's sold out!?"

There was a slight flicker in the machine, though the red "sold out" sign was still there.

"Bah, whatever, there are other machines where I can get energy drinks."

Then his attention fell on the food machine, but that one was completely turned off.

"Did it break? I don't remember anyone mentioning it…"

It wasn't like his coworkers, besides Fujimoto, talked to him anyway.

He sat back down at his desk. Later he would go down to another floor. The building was full of vending machines and he had plenty of time.

His reflection looked blurry in the darkness of the turned-off monitor. Then, with a simple movement of the mouse, the screen came back to life.

And yes, there they still were, his sixteen errors, ruining his perfect code.

The air felt a little colder than usual, and the silence of the office was broken only by the constant ticking of the clock hands.

He looked back at the code, line by line. This time he set aside his laptop to focus on a single screen.

He fixed the first error and a green check mark appeared in the notes. The counter dropped to fifteen.

He stayed there for a long time staring at the notification, and for the first time all day, something close to a feeling of satisfaction appeared on his face.

He found another tiny mistake, a comma out of place.

The counter kept going down and Ren seemed a little calmer, though his serious expression showed the opposite.

After all, he was only removing a stain that shouldn't be there.

His face stayed fixed on another error, remembering a few words.

"Only perfection is acceptable."

That was his mantra.

He thought that if he worked hard without making mistakes, he would be rewarded and could move to the United States, to a big American company.

Even though he was young, he felt that this job tested his patience. The differences with his team kept growing, as if they purposely wanted to interrupt his progress.

As if they wanted to sabotage him.

He had never stopped to think deeply about whether those corrections were real mistakes or just a simple whim from his superior.

This time the error was another blank space.

He tried to move the mouse, but it didn't respond. No matter how much he slid his hand across the mousepad… there was no response.

"Come on…"

He began typing hard, hoping to get the slightest reaction.

Nothing.

The system no longer responded.

And after a few moments… what he already saw coming simply happened.

The screen gave back a completely blue reflection, accompanied by a constant error sound.

Ren stayed there, still, unmoved, staring straight at the screen.

Finally, his computer suddenly shut down and total silence filled the room completely.

He simply leaned back in the chair in that empty room.