Chapter 5

For once, Saeko felt refreshed when she woke up that morning. The hot water shower had definitely helped. Now to check whether anyone had commented on her post.

To her surprise, a heated discussion had erupted in the comments section while she was asleep. She looks at the comments one by one.

"Maybe they respect privacy," the first comment suggests.

"After all the stalking they did? Get real!"

"What do you suggest, then?"

"I have no idea. Maybe they're shy?"

"...I hate the fact that it kind of makes sense."

"No, it doesn't! They're just a pair of eyeballs! As if they have any sense of shame, or any emotion at all!"

"Why else, then? They're always keeping their distance. If they aren't shy, they can just appear before us, body and all."

"Oh, no no no no. Don't you even suggest that! I, for one, am more than content that those eyes are keeping their distance!"

"I second that. Whatever they are, I don't want to meet them."

The comments stopped here. Saeko lets out a sigh as it got absolutely nowhere. She also noticed that she has forgotten to add a rather important detail in her post. Whoops.

"The strangest thing is, they never had any qualms on staring at me from inside a building when I was outside. In fact, when they appeared for the first time, they were staring at me from beyond the window of an office building right opposite mine," she typed on the comments section.

She planned to log out at once, thinking that the comments would need some time to arrive. However, a few appeared almost immediately.

"Now that you mentioned it, the first time I saw those eyes, they were staring at me from the doors of a closed restaurant."

"Mine was a library."

"Seriously, how do those eyes work?"

"I don't know anymore."

Saeko is rather worried that she's not getting any answers. She has to know the precise details of where the eyes can and can't appear. Otherwise, she might end up at a place where the eyes won't be shy to appear at, and will finally show the rest of its body to her, if they even have any. She has to avoid that at all costs. As she's thinking this, she begins to realize that she has been deliberately avoiding a much important question than the one she asked at the forum.

What do the eyes want?

It's not just her, either. At this point, she has read thousands of posts and comments. Some of them shared their own experience, some speculated, some gave opinions. Most of them asked questions, all kinds of them except that one. It's as if every single one of them agreed unanimously to treat that question as a taboo.

The reason is probably pretty simple. For those who're involved, they just want to get rid of those eyes and not think of the worst-case scenario should they fail. It's not helping that K's coworker posted what happened to him. As for the outsiders, they don't want to be held accountable for opening up a floodgate of fear and panic when it doesn't even have anything to do with them.

At least, that's what she thinks.

She looks at the time. Now that she doesn't have to head to the train station, she has some spare time left. Instead of continuing with the investigation a little bit more, she decides to log off and call her parents.

The phone on the other side rang several times. If they're taking this long to pick up, they're probably working at the field. Saeko was about to hang up before someone finally answered it.

"Hello, this is the Yamashita," comes Father's voice.

Upon hearing his voice, Saeko almost got choked with emotion. She takes a few quick breaths to calm herself down.

"Hello, Father. It's me, Saeko," she says to him.

"Oh, Saeko! It's about time you called! Your mother and I were pretty worried that something happened to you!"

"Sorry about that, I was kind of busy these past few weeks," she apologizes guiltily. "Where's Mother?"

"She's still working at the field. Hold on, I'll go fetch her right now."

Saeko waits patiently for their return. A few seconds later, she hears the sound of the phone being picked up.

"Hello? Is it really you, Saeko?" Mother's voice is heard from the other side of the phone.

Saeko grits her teeth so that she could hold back a sob that was about to come out. It feels eternity since she last heard their voices.

"Yes Mother, it's me," she confirms.

"You could have called earlier, you know? Do you know how worried we were?"

"Now now, Saeko has her own life too, you know," Saeko could hear her father saying. "Besides, it was only less than a week."

"That's no excuse! I was worried so much I couldn't sleep well at all! Do you even know what I went through?"

"Oh, I know all right," Father replied drily. "You forced me to stay up with you, remember?"

"...Did I?"

"Don't play dumb with me, woman!"

"Don't you yell at me! I can't help it! Now that I'm old, my memory couldn't keep up with me anymore!"

"That excuse again? I don't see you forgetting about the time I accidentally ate the pudding Masaru bought for us, even though it's been almost a year!"

"This and that are two different things!"

Saeko couldn't stop herself from giggling. The two of them get along well, as usual.

"More importantly, how have you been doing these days?" Father asks.

"Oh. Um... I'm doing fine," she replied rather hesitantly.

"Are you eating well?"

"...Sure I am. Three meals a day."

Two pieces of bread for breakfast and a rice ball each for lunch and dinner. That reminds her. she has to buy her breakfast for today as well since her bread was left inside the fridge back at her apartment.

"How about sleep?"

"...That too."

Four to five hours if she's lucky, and only up to two hours if her work delayed her.

"Are you getting along with your colleagues?"

"...Yeah."

At least, most of them. And her manager is a real jerk.

"What about boyfriend?"

"Did you find someone you like there?"

Saeko rolls her eyes and groans softly. This topic comes up pretty much every single time.

"This again? Can you stop pestering me about it already?"

"We will once you find yourself a man," Mother says.

"A good man, mind," Father adds. "Don't ever think we'll approve of just any random guy you find."

"For the last time, I'm not interested in those kinds of things yet," Saeko says to them patiently.

"Well, you should while you're still young," Mother says. "Just go to a few wonderful dates, settle down, get married, giving birth to a cute baby-"

Saeko winced as her got a sudden stomachache. She grips her phone hard so that she doesn't drop it, and uses her other hand to cover her stomach, even though it doesn't help with the pain at all.

There it is again. She doesn't even remember the exact time she this began, but she couldn't even mention or hear the word "baby" without getting a stomachache. The same goes to actually seeing one.

"...ko? Saeko? Are you there?"

Mother's voice brought Saeko back to reality at once.

"I'm still here, Mother," Saeko quickly replies.

"Are you okay? You just went silent all of a sudden," Mother asks with a worried tone.

"I'm fine. Really. By the way, how's everyone at the village?" Saeko asks in an attempt to change the subject.

"Hmm? Oh, you know, the same as usual."

"Which part of Takashi and Umeko getting married next month is "the same as usual"?" Father asks with an exasperated tone.

"Oh, right. There's that."

Saeko blinks in surprise. "...Wait? What? When did they even started going out?"

"Just last week."

"And they're already getting married?"

"You know how they were always acting around each other. It was only a matter of time."

"Still, just after one week of going out?"

"It was the idea of Umeko's parents. After Takashi told them that he and Umemo are going out with the intention of getting married, they went, "Why wait?" So here they are now."

"...Wow. Just, wow. I always knew they're desperate for some grandkids, but even for them, this is way too far."

"I can't say I don't understand their impatience," Father says. "Now, if only-"

"If you're going to finish that sentence, I'll hang up right now," Saeko interrupts.

She hears both of them clicking their tongues.

And then, they just kept on chatting about things that happened in the village. It's really strange. Nothing ever seemed to happen when Saeko was still living there. Now that she has left, her parents always have something new to tell her-

"Oh, before I forget. Did the money we gave you managed to help you out?" Father asks all of a sudden.

....................................................................................................................................................Huh?

"...Did I ever ask the two of you for money?" Saeko asks softly.

"Yeah, you did. It was around five days ago."

"And how much did I ask for?"

"150,000 yen."

"We were surprised, to say the least. After all, this is the first time you asked us for a favor," Mother adds.

"Like we said last time, we're never going to ask the reason you need this money for. We won't ask you to return it, either," Father adds.

"Um, thank you. Oh, look at the time. I have to go to work soon."

"Already? Can't you afford to stay a bit longer?"

"Sorry, but no can do. Talk to you next time."

"Well, alright. Oh, one more thing before you go."

"Yeah?"

"You're always welcomed home. No matter what happened, you're still our daughter," Father says.

"Just tell us if you're ever depressed. We might not be able to help, but we'll always be there when you need someone to talk to," Mother adds.

"...Okay, I'll keep that in mind."

"Good. Well, we've kept you around long enough. Goodbye."

"Remember to call more often next time."

"I will. Goodbye."

Saeko managed to hang up on time. If they spoke a bit longer, she's afraid that they could hear her being uneasy and freaking out.

She doesn't remember asking her parents for money, like ever, much less a sum as big as 150,000. And it happened around the same time when she took the leave that she doesn't even remember taking. To make matters worse, she swore that it was around two weeks since she last gave them a call, but what Father said contradicts the memory.

What on earth is wrong with her?

Alas, she doesn't even have the time to recall when and why she asked them about the money. She has talked a little too long on the phone. She has to head out now, or she's going to be late for work.

***

"Yamashita!"

Saeko flinches and sits up straight in her seat at once. It was Asakura who called her. From the entrance of his office, no less. Blimey, she didn't even see him arrive.

"Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Yes?"

"Come inside my office, now!"

Without waiting for a reply, he enters his office and slams the door shut.

The least he could do is wait for her, she thought sourly.

She gets up from her seat dejectedly and shuffles towards the office slowly, pointedly ignoring Hinata's snickers. Once she's standing in front of the door, she raises her hand and knocks on it three times.

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

"Come in!"

"P-P-Pardon my intrusion..."

Asakura was already waiting for her, his face as black as a thundercloud. Saeko stands and stares at him fearfully. Not trusting herself to speak, she could only wait for him to explode.

He begins by throwing a piece of document at her. She barely managed to catch it with her hands.

"What the hell is that?" he demands.

Saeko quickly glanced through the documents.

"It's the sales report of Tatekawa Industry, sir," she informs. "You wanted me to-"

"Of course I know that!" Asakura interrupts furiously. "What I want to know is why the numbers are different from the ones they approved!"

Saeko blinked in surprise.

"T-They approved it? But you told me to revise and update them with new ones."

"...I said that."

"Yes."

"Me."

"Y-Yes. As I was about to say just now-"

"WHY WOULD I EVER TELL YOU TO DO THAT?" He was practically shrieking at this point. "The old numbers were already perfect! All you had to do was upload those, and we would have one less thing to worry about!"

Asakura lets out an exasperated sigh and rubbed his temples with his fingers.

"The rest of your team worked painstakingly for those numbers, and what did you do? You went and deleted all their hard work," he continues. "Do you hate them? Did they do something to earn your grudge?"

"N-No, sir..."

He lets out another exasperated sigh.

"Just go back to your seat and fix those numbers. I don't care how long it takes. You're not allowed to go home until you're done. Do you hear me?"

Saeko hangs her head. "Yes, sir."

"Now get out of my sight. I've had enough of you for today."

"Yes, sir."

Once Saeko got back to her seat, she immediately stares at a sticky note she pasted on the right side of her seat. The words "Fix the data numbers given by Tatekawa Industry. Asakura-san's orders!" is written on it.

Below the words are Asakura's handwritten signature.

Saeko remembers it clearly. Tatekawa Industry is an important client for them, so Saeko was always being extra whenever she's tasked with handling their data. When Asakura told her to replace the numbers that day, she triple-checked with him, wrote it down on that piece of sticky note and mustered her courage to ask him to sign it in case he denied responsibility.

Saeko tears the note away and throws it inside the trash bin. So much for that.

***

16 hours. That's how long Saeko took to fix the so-called mistake that she did, and that's after working during her lunch and dinner break. Needless to say, everyone else at the office has long go home. As Saeko is waiting for the data to be finalized, she starts to weep uncontrollably.

Her never-ending work.

Her fuzzy memories.

Shinya No Manako.

What did she ever do to deserve all this?