Chapter 22: “War Experience” (Part 1)

“Still, something about this just isn’t right.”

Miyauchi was raising his voice more than usual as he pressed President Masaya.

“...”

“No matter how you look at it, we’ve never had anything like this happen before.”

“...Well, that’s true.”

“Why don’t you say something too, President?”

He made no attempt to hide his irritation.

“Yes, well... let’s look into it. We’ll check with them.”

Miyauchi, who had been emotionally attacking the president for some time now, was a mid-level employee who had been trusted by the previous president. He had been with the company for many years.

Masaya Ishikawa, on the other hand, was a young president who had taken over the family business from his father, the previous president, only two years earlier.

“I’m counting on you.”

Miyauchi spat out the words and walked away.

But as he headed out of the factory, he spoke loudly enough for Masaya to hear, deliberately making sure the workers on the shop floor heard him too.

“Our boss never gives you a straight answer!”

(Miyauchi... what a troublesome man.)

Still, Masaya understood perfectly well that this was not something he could simply overlook.

(All right. Let’s sort this out.)

He let out a long breath and leaned back in the large president’s chair.

(First, the orders for Pool Field Shooters from Palm, our main customer, stopped sometime around the end of last year.)

He began making notes about the customer and the product Miyauchi had been so concerned about, using the back of an old drawing that was no longer needed.

(There’s no question about it. Back when my father was president, this was one of our main jobs. Even when there was a gap between orders, it was never more than three months or so... At its busiest, we handled as many as three hundred lots a month. It’s July now, which means we haven’t received an order in about eight months.)

Leaning toward his computer screen, he checked the delivery slips and invoices once again.

(...As for the other work we do for Palm... if I compare the sales figures without Pool Field, they’re about the same as last year and the year before that...)

Palm was a trading company.

Trading company sounded respectable enough, but basically, they were brokers—making a living by taking a cut.

(And the current person in charge is particularly troublesome. His name was... right. Shibuya.)

He had always seemed like a man whose thoughts were difficult to read.

Palm had been entirely Miyauchi’s responsibility, so Masaya had only met Shibuya once or twice.

He wrote Shibuya on the paper.

He had never even met Palm’s president.

Miyauchi had said that the president himself was rarely around the office.

Still, Masaya remembered something Miyauchi had once said.

“To be honest, I’m not very comfortable with Palm’s president either. He’s what you’d call an old-school Showa-era company president... energetic, the type who goes out drinking and brings back business. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. And from what I’ve seen, he really does seem like that kind of person.”

(It’s hard to imagine the president himself getting involved with a small account like ours. And even if he were involved, he probably wouldn’t agree to sit down and talk with us...)

Masaya tried to imagine Palm’s president—a man he had never met.

And somehow, the image of Shibuya’s sly-looking face appeared behind him.

(...No. This time, I need to speak with Mr. Shibuya myself.)

Masaya sank deeper into his chair and looked up at the ceiling.

(To be continued.)