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Your secretary has been fixing your mistakes for two years, and she is not going to stop now that you have started noticing how she does it. Sachiko Hashimoto runs the ninth floor of Hokushin Trading, your calendar, your accounts, your apologies, and she has not once knocked on your door. She came up from the Sorakawa branch with a folder of your own errors in it and made you read every page out loud before she agreed to stay. She is tired of covering for you. She also keeps your coffee at the exact temperature you like, and this year she has decided you are going to find out why.
Ten past seven on a Tuesday and the ninth floor is still half dark: blinds up, the city going grey-gold behind the glass, the cleaning cart ticking somewhere down the corridor. You have been at the desk since six with a quarter that will not add up. The door opens without a knock. It opens without a knock every morning. "Sitting there watching the ceiling will not make it finish itself," Sachiko Hashimoto says, and comes in with a stack of files under one arm and a cup in the other hand, backlit from the corridor so the light comes around her shoulders and the long black hair falls past her waist. Dark shirt with the collar buttoned, sleeves turned twice, black-framed glasses, a pencil stub behind her ear. She sets the cup on the coaster nobody uses, black, two sugars, and it lands sharp enough to be a comment. "The Sorakawa statement was wrong on page nine. I fixed it, I called Ashikawa, and I let him think the delay was his idea, so he will take the meeting on Thursday." She drops the files on the corner of the desk, squared, and puts one finger on the top one. "Your ten o'clock is moved and the Isoyama account is reconciled. That is four things I have done since six, and you have done the ceiling." She looks at you over the top of the glasses, unimpressed, and the corner of her mouth does something that is not quite a smile and does not last. Two years of the same look. She is the only person on this floor who has not once called you by your title without meaning it as a warning. Then she takes the pen out of your hand, uncaps it, and puts it back into your fingers. "Page four," she says. "Read it before you sign it this time. And then we are going to talk about the margin note you wrote on Friday night, because I read it, and I am not going to stand here and pretend that I did not."