What, Failure to Transition!? Prologue 1/3 (Patreon)

Prologue 1/3 - Truck accident

=========================NOVEL START!

It was the first work day at the beginning of the year.

Despite that, a certain company’s work schedule was cut in half, meaning they’re only half-day, a pretty odd situation after they had just been through a longer-than-usual New Year's vacation. And this also came from a company with no particular holiday on this month on their company calendar.[1]

In the factory's break room, a group of men were chatting with each other over canned coffee and cigarettes. The room was filled with cigarette smoke, a rare occurrence in recent years when smoking was allowed in the break room.

 “I heard we’re on half-day today. What a bummer……”

Yoichi Toudo, a 35-year-old bachelor, mutters lonesomely to himself.

There are several other workers, all of whom, without exception, have cigarettes in their mouths or between their fingers, but Yoichi doesn't have a cigarette in his hand.

In the first place, he does not have the habit of smoking cigarettes.

The first reason he is here despite this is that he doesn't mind the cigarette smoke, and the second is that he doesn't dislike the lazy air after work.

“My credit card bill is nearing its due.”

Yoichi spat out a half-hearted complaint to his senior, Noguchi.

''Then, you should consult to the JGB[2] for now.”

“JGB?”

“yes, JGB. We're like sole proprietors, right?

“What? So it’s a government-run lending company or something?”

“That you have to confirm yourself. I just got a glimpse of it from an acquaintance in the architectural department, so I don’t have much to tell. Well, what you said is true, somewhat.”

“So I can borrow from them? I’m maxed out on cash advances.”

“There are not many borrowers right now, so probably? He also said the annual interest is 2 percent, and their requirements are pretty lax.”

“Really? I’ll go check it out then. Thanks for the info.”

At that time, the door of the break room, where they were chatting idly, was opened, and Tamura, a full-time employee, showed his face on the door.

“I'll be closing the factory. Can you guys go home already?” 

At Tamura’s reminder, each of them put out their cigarettes and got up to finish their coffee cans.

Yoichi as well. He placed the empty coffee cans he had drunk into the trash and left the lounge right after.

○●○●

The factory where Yoichi works adopted a full commission system a few years ago.

The few full-time employees were, of course, paid on a monthly basis, but the non-permanent workers were paid on a commission system.

However, the job title of the workers is neither part-time nor temporary, but sole proprietors.

What they do is the same as a part-time job, but they are outsourced to a sole proprietorship.

In other words, they have to pay for their insurance and pension on their own.

There is no minimum wage, and if there is no work to be done, the workday ends early, and the remuneration is reduced by that amount.

However, if asked whether they are a black company or not, it’s tough to answer.[3]

During peak season, the amount of work per hour increases dramatically, and three to four hours of overtime is the norm.

At times, the monthly remuneration could even exceed up to 400,000 yen.

However, in the off-season, the amount of remuneration could hit as low as 150,000 yen.

On average, it should be around 250,000 yen?

So, it could not be said that the working environment was poor.

Still, this wave of income is one of the scariest parts of the job.

If you are a person who can manage your own money, or if you have a wife who can manage your money like Yoichi’s friend Noguchi, you should be fine.

If you receive a lot of remuneration, you can save it well, and in the months when your pay is low, you can use the money you have saved.

If Yoichi could do that, there would be no problem at all, but unfortunately, he is the type of person who is not good at managing his own money.

If he was paid a lot of money, he would inevitably waste it and raise his standard of living.

As it was difficult to lower the level of living once it had risen, he often finds himself unable to control his spending even in the months with low remuneration. Therefore, he always ends up in the red.

As a result, he would revoke part of his credit card bill or take a cash advance and put it in his credit card to bridge the gap until payday, and now he was in a significant amount of debt.

It was a good thing that Yoichi was able to manage this month's payment, but there is still the looming possibility that he will be behind on his payments next month if he doesn’t get some financing from somewhere, the thing which Yoichi actually fears inside.

"Ugh, it's cold......... JGB.........JGB, huh?”

On the way home from the factory, Yoichi was looking up something called "JGB" on his smartphone.

Of course, He only looks at the screen when he stops, a safety practice to focus himself on more important things down the road, such as warning signs and traffic lights.

Despite his bad spending habits, Yoichi still has a sense of ethics around that area.

”Under Government Finance……This one?”

After minutes of browsing, Yoichi finally found a website that looked like it and scrutinized the information.

What Yoichi was looking for was a method to refinance at a cheap interest rate.

However, he was dismayed when he found the site. From there, it clearly stated that this JGB doesn’t allow loans to be used for refinancing.

In addition to the official site, Yoichi also tried to look at sites where ordinary people explained how to use the service. Still, all of it only explained ways how to borrow money needed for capital investment and new hires, etc. In other words, without a solid business plan, one won't be able to pass the examination, which made Yoichi's shoulders slump in a great way.

(Noguchi……as usual, a stickler……)

Unknown to Yoichi, if it weren’t for his reliable wife, Noguchi would probably in as much, if not more, trouble in life as he was.

Just as the traffic light changed, Yoichi put away his smartphone in his shoulder bag and looked up.

When he was about to cross, he saw the figure of a truck rushing into the crosswalk as if it was about to ignore the signal.

“Are you serious!?”

If Yoichi had just walked away like that, looking at his smartphone and not checking for safety, or maybe he would have collided with the truck, but fortunately, he noticed it early on and waited for the truck to pass by.

Most of the other pedestrians had also noticed, as he saw many of them stopping in a hurry.

.... but from across the road, he saw one child who had neglected to check his safety and tried to cross the crosswalk as he continued running halfway across the street because the light had changed.

A woman's voice, presumably the mother, shouted a noun that was presumably the child's name.

Would I be able to save this child if I jumped in now?

Yoichi was lost for a moment, until he saw a figure jump out from behind the child.

It seemed to be a young man, and quickly catching up with the child, he put his arms around the child's waist as if to hug him, then spinning his body around to gain momentum, he threw the child towards where he was originally.

As he spun with quite a bit of momentum, it made the man stumble halfway, landing roughly towards Yoichi.

“Alright, Come on!!”

No pedestrians were waiting for the traffic light near Yoichi, and it was also out of the truck's path.

If he could catch the man well, then he would not be seriously injured.

Yoichi is working in a factory that uses a fair amount of physical labor, so he's more or less confident in his strength.

Yoichi crouched down and caught the man who jumped in with great force.

“Oh shit! Thanks!”

The caught person looked at Yoichi and smiled.

He seemed to be quite a nice young man.

When they turned their gaze forward with relief, most of their field of vision was suddenly occupied by a truck heading towards them, as if they were being sucked in.

''Whaaaaahhhh.......Huh?''

The truck was right in front of them.

After that, thinking the truck was about to crush them, Yoichi kept his head down and tried to brace himself, but there was no impact.

Yoichi raised his head and looked around, but there was nothing.

Yes, nothing.

An empty, pure white space.

“This can't be...”

With a bad feeling, he looked around and saw a man standing there.

It seems to be the man he just caught.

When did he get away from me? He thought.

“Uhm……”

When Yoichi called out to him, the man turned around as if he had been shot.

''Ah, thank you for earlier.''

It looks like the other party figured out who Yoichi is, too.

"Umm, we were just in the truck before....”

“...right?”

“You see, I don't know if you noticed, but we-“

“Are we, are we really dead?”

The decisive word was uttered.

No matter how I think, it wasn’t the place we had just been, Yoichi began thinking.

More than anything, I couldn’t think of a similar white space like this on Earth.

He looked down at his feet and saw that there was nothing on the ground.

Nevertheless, the fact that he was able to stand up was unnatural.

“Sigh. Why does this have to happen at the beginning of the New Year? We’re finally going to have our first baby next month, you know?”

“Really? Congratulations on that……wait, I can’t say that.”

“Heck. You said it. Well, I just got life insurance the other day, so I’m still pretty lucky, I guess?”

“Wow, that’s great. I'm just a member of the prefectural mutual aid association.”

“I was like that as well. I applied the insurance because I was overpowered by the soliciting woman who came to the office during our break time. Oh, but I haven't told my wife about it yet, you know.”

“Isn't that okay? The insurance company will definitely be in touch. After all, they have the backing of a great conglomerate. As long as they do their job properly, you should be fine.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Well, the guys at my company saw us as well. They will definitely tell them, just in case.”

“So the baby's due next month, is it a boy or a girl?”

“It's a boy.”

“Have you picked a name yet?”

“Well, it wasn't easy to come up with a name. We tried to think of many ways to avoid a flashy one, but we didn't want it to be a trendy name either, you know? In the end, we almost decided on "Shinta (心太)," but my wife suddenly started to object to it.”

“Shinta, huh. I think it's a great name.”

“Isn't that right? Still, I don’t know why she’s against it so much, saying it sounds like a tokoroten (心太)……”

“……by any chance, is the “Shin” character of “Shinta” the same as the character for thick/stout (太い)?”

“You really get what I’m saying! The name Shinta is composed of the characters shin 心, meaning heart and ta太, meaning thick, because I want him to have a thick heart, bold and strong once he grows up.”

“Um... Have you ever heard or eaten tokoroten (心太)? You know, the jelly snack made from seaweed?”

 “Isn’t that the smooth and long ones that look like thick noodles?  I like eating them with mirin, soy sauce, and vinegar.”

“You see, that’s the tokoroten. If you write it in Chinese characters (Kanji), it spells heart心(Shin), and thick 太(Ta) combined 心太 (Shinta).”[4]

‘Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Aaaaaah……now that I think of it, she said I should go for the character for big 大 (ookii) and not the character for thick/fat太 (Futoi).”

“Well, I'm sure your wife will take care of that, won't she?”

“If I didn’t make it through, just think of it as my last will and testament that don't use the fat (太) one, but... Ah, I want this dream to end already...”

Once their chit-chat came to a pause, the space in front of them began to distort all of a sudden.

“Whoah, what was that?”

Then, out of the distortion, a young woman in kimono appeared.

“Sorry to keep you waiting~. Let’s see here. Mister Todou, correct?” She appeared with lots of papers at hand, not taking a glance at the two of them……

“Yes!” “Here!”

……until now. By the time we both spoke at the same time, she immediately fell into a panic.

““Eh……?””

It was the only thing we could mutter in the pure white space.

[1]. The Japanese have regular 12-hour work schedules, especially in factories like these, much longer compared to the US’ 8-hour work schedules. Half-days vary, but usually they dismiss around 2~3pm if you start your work at 7am and leave at 7pm. While the rule is not applicable in other countries (especially in third world), the Japanese factories built overseas usually bypass them by adding the 4 remaining hours as a ‘mandatory’ overtime. ‘Mandatory’ (note the quote) meaning they’ll dump all the nice benefits when you exit the company at the 12th hour (shuttle services, free takeaways, etc). In my experience, some even do schedule the crucial activities (meetings and such) way past that 8th hour schedule, forcing you to attend or else you won’t get the job properly done the next day. 

[2] I couldn’t find any related articles about this but the raw says (国金) which translates to Country国 and Gold 金. For convenience’s sake, I just used the closest term I could get, which is Japanese Government Bonds or JGB, which works similarly to the US Treasury. More could be found here. (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/jgb.asp)

[3] Black companies in Japan are those companies that ‘legally’ extort their employees, often due to their workaholic nature. 

You see, in Japan, the first problem in their employment is that, they focus more on the ‘camaraderie’, honor and loyalty rather than wellbeing and benefits for their employees. Applying for a job there is more like a knight pleading allegiance to a Lord, and I mean that in the literal sense. 

‘Camaraderie’ (note the quotes) just means that you have to put more emphasis to your co-employees rather than your friends, relatives and even family. (This is why NTR Housewives are a thing). You have to put more hours in work in order to help the company progress, etc. If you don’t, expect all the work to get dumped on you and if you fuck up, you get the boot. (Mind you that Japanese have 12-hour regular work schedule), and this is also why employers are more biased against women, because they often leave the company once they get pregnant to care for the kids. Little do they know that this act made their population shrink. But that’s not all, and I’ll explain later.

Honor just means that a Japanese person must not do any shameful acts. Sounds okay, right? What if I tell you that asking for a raise is also a shameful act? If you’re doing it “for the company” you should be willing to do it WITHOUT ASKING ANYTHING IN RETURN. Well, a good lord, err manager of course should reward you for your efforts, but you HAVE TO WAIT, NOT ASK. 

Loyalty. Oh boy, here comes why these black companies, and any other companies in Japan have the gall to ‘extort’ you in the first place. You see, in Japan, loyalty is the most important thing they want in their employees. And by that they will often employ young ones as newly hired, and when they get their ‘veteran’ status, the company will then choose from them who to promote to be a manager/supervisor and the like. There are almost no instances in them where they ‘hire’ a manager from the outside. They only ‘promote’ them from their ranks. So, either way, it will be very detrimental for them if you quit your job. But that’s not where the problem lies.

The problem when you quit/get fired from a job and reapply for another is that the succeeding companies will see you as ‘disloyal’ to the company you previously worked on, and have a great potential to quit, because you have experienced quitting before. It doesn’t matter if you have 3, 5 or even 10 years of experience. It’s always a YOU problem for them, you are not adapting well, you couldn’t keep up the performance, you, you you, and not the company. Never. Since quitting the company is the most shameful display of all, companies were able to ‘lock’ their employees to do their bidding. 

Black companies in Japan do everything above, but only much, much worse. 

[4]  This is the Tokoroten. Basically Jelly Noodles.  

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Tokoroten.jpg

https://shizuokagourmet.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/tokoroten-1.jpg

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