It was late May.
The damp, muggy heat of the rainy season, mixed with low pressure rolling in from the Pacific, had settled over the entire Kanto Plain.
Tokyo, Minato Ward. A high-floor bedroom in a luxury apartment.
Heavy blackout curtains stayed drawn, blocking the pale 2 p.m. daylight. The room hadn't been aired out in days. It reeked of stale tobacco and fermented alcohol.
Watanabe, once a senior R&D engineer at Tokyo Optical Precision, sat slumped on the living room floor. The lights were off.
He wore a wrinkled cotton shirt, its collar buttons long gone, the hem splayed across an expensive Persian wool carpet. Dark blue stubble covered his cheeks. His eyes were sunken and webbed with red veins.
Scattered beside him were several payment notices stamped with Fuji Bank's bright red seal.
A thirty-year, one-hundred-million-yen mortgage.
Just last month, on the eve of the Ministry of Finance's "total volume regulation," Fuji Bank had intervened in Tokyo Optical Precision's finances to cover its own massive bad debts from the stock market crash. The company's entire R&D working capital — the lifeblood of the century-old factory — was drained overnight to fill the bank's credit hole.
The company didn't go bankrupt. But it became a zombie, a skeleton with no muscle left.
Top management issued a kill order: halt all costly projects. Every cutting-edge core division, including Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths, was disbanded on the spot.
Watanabe lost his ten-million-yen annual salary. Worse, the liquidity crunch had frozen the entire headhunting market. Tech and manufacturing firms were slashing staff and shrinking operations. No zaibatsu could spare even one hundred million yen in R&D funds to absorb a team working on underlying optical lenses.
Watanabe stared at the dizzying string of zeros on the payment notice.
His pride, his social status, his stable income — all of it shattered like a soap bubble against that thin sheet of paper. Next month, the court's seal would go up on his apartment door.
What do I do now?
He grabbed his messy hair, fingernails digging into his scalp, his whole body trembling.
Half a month ago, he'd promised his parents back in the countryside that he'd bring them to Tokyo for the summer. They'd live in this high-end apartment with its view of Tokyo Bay and finally enjoy their lives.
His girlfriend of three years was pressing him to file their marriage registration at the ward office. He'd even put down a deposit on a new red sports car, planning to give it to her as a wedding surprise.
Those visions, and his dignity as a top engineer, had been ground to powder under the Ministry of Finance's loan recall and the banks' orders.
The apartment's central air conditioning hummed at a low frequency.
Rustle—
A faint sound of paper scraping came from the entrance.
Watanabe turned his head slowly.
At the bottom of the door, a pure black envelope — no return address, no markings — had been slipped through. It lay on the hardwood floor, its matte edges catching the dim light.
"Ah… what is this, another bill…"
He braced his numb legs, pushed himself up, and walked to the entrance. He bent down and picked up the envelope.
It wasn't sealed.
He pulled out the document inside.
In the faint light from the hallway, his eyes landed on the page.
At the very top, printed in clear type, was his Fuji Bank mortgage account number, along with the total remaining principal and interest, accurate to the last yen.
Below that were several lines of printed text:
Mr. Watanabe, it seems you have encountered some trouble recently.
We currently need to fill several technical positions. We require your practical experience in Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) thermal load deduction and specialty optical glass.
The company can offer you an opportunity.
If you bring your technical proposal, pass our professional assessment, and prove you can create value for the company, the group will assume the insignificant bank debt in your name and provide you with a respectable job and salary.
Eight o'clock tonight. Chiyoda Ward, Imperial Hotel, top-floor executive lounge. Bring your research manuscripts and prove your value to us.
At the bottom of the envelope, an anonymous invitation card with gold-embossed numbers slid out. It hit the carpet with a dull thud.
Watanabe stared at the paper, his Adam's apple bobbing.
"Extreme Ultraviolet thermal load deduction… practical experience in specialty optical glass."
He mouthed the technical terms. Before the core division was forcibly dissolved, he'd led top-secret pre-research in those two fields for five years. Across all of Japan, only a handful of people had ever handled that kind of extreme ultraviolet specialty glass in a lab and built a complete thermal deformation model. Even inside Tokyo Optical Precision, the technology was classified top-secret.
This was his last trump card.
And whoever sent this knew it. They'd named the most valuable knowledge in his head with surgical precision. They knew which bank he owed, exactly how much, and exactly how desperate he was.
His eyes dropped to the last two paragraphs again:
...the group will assume the insignificant bank debt in your name and provide you with a respectable job and salary.
...prove your value to us.
Watanabe gripped the thin paper tightly.
One hundred million yen. The debt that had broken his back. The debt that would put a court seal on his door next month.
And in these cold lines of print, that life-ruining sum was dismissed as an "insignificant bad debt."
The letter didn't use the polite, flattering language of normal headhunters. It didn't paint grand visions of changing the world.
It said one thing: equivalent exchange. Bring your technology. Pass the assessment. Prove you're worth using. In return, we clear your debt.
How arrogant.
Before, Watanabe wouldn't have glanced at a letter like this. It would have insulted him as a "high-level technical talent."
But now…
Well then. Is this a scam?
His gaze swept over the Fuji Bank payment notices on the coffee table, and a bitter smile tugged at his mouth.
He was a hundred million yen in the hole. Next month he'd be on the street with his luggage. What scammer wastes effort setting a trap for an insolvent pauper? He had nothing left to scam.
If they wanted to take his bill, he'd thank them.
He remembered rumors circulating through the stagnant industry these past weeks — whispers of "black headhunters" with deep backgrounds, using the layoff wave to scoop up technical staff abandoned by old firms for pennies.
Seemed the rumors were true.
This recruitment method — no name, no face — radiated danger. But in a winter where all of Japan was shutting down and laying off, those glamorous century-old factories were tossing men like him into the trash to protect bank ledgers.
He had nothing left. One step back was an abyss.
This letter of unknown origin was the only straw he could grasp.
As long as the debt disappeared, as long as he kept his dignity in Tokyo, as long as he still drew a salary… what difference did it make who he worked for?
Watanabe drew a deep breath.
He turned and walked quickly into the study. He pulled open a heavy oak drawer and took out a large black canvas briefcase.
He stuffed ten years of optical design manuscripts, multilayer reflective film tolerance data, and several rolls of irreplaceable microfilm drawings into the case.
He zipped it shut and changed into a clean suit.
Carrying the heavy briefcase, Watanabe opened the apartment door and stepped into the silent hallway.
His life wasn't over yet.