Control
“I want to crush that bastard.”
I’m a morning person, but I’ve never liked the office in the early hours, before anyone else arrives.
As usual, I had come in well before the start of the workday and was sitting at my computer. Yesterday, one of my proposals had finally been approved.
I should have been at least a little excited.
Instead, I felt heavy.
I knew why.
Kambara, the director.
As I tried to push the feeling aside and focus on my work, I remembered something a famous producer had once said.
“If you want to succeed on the front lines, you have to treat the workplace like a battlefield. Leave your anxiety and fear in the graveyard, and focus on what’s in front of you.”
I let out a quiet breath.
A battlefield, huh.
I’d heard that unpopular commanders sometimes get shot in the back.
“I want to crush that bastard.”
Of course, I didn’t mean it literally.
It was just a thought.
“Yamada. How’s that thing coming along?”
A voice suddenly came from behind me.
I didn’t even have to turn around.
It was Kambara.
“Good morning. The design is finished. I should be able to submit it by tomorrow.”
“Right.”
Kambara glanced at my monitor.
“And that proposal you gave me the other day. I looked at it, but… what was that?”
“...W-what do you mean?”
“The proposal.”
“I’m sorry. Which part are you referring to?”
Kambara frowned.
“You should be able to figure that much out yourself. Think from the client’s point of view.”
“S-sorry. I’ll go over it again.”
“Do that.”
With that, Kambara returned to his desk.
I stayed perfectly still, staring at my screen.
Again.
Kambara was always saying, “If you think about the client, you’ll understand.”
It wasn’t as if he was completely wrong.
And he wasn’t bad at his job, either.
The problem was that what counted as “best for the client” seemed to change depending on the day.
Something he praised yesterday would suddenly be unacceptable today.
Ask him why, and he’d say,
“It’s obvious if you think about it.”
Offer your own opinion, and he’d shut the conversation down with,
“Just do what you were told first.”
My coworkers complained about him behind his back all the time.
Kambara was obsessed with producing major results.
He forced his own ideas on people too much.
Maybe he was desperate for recognition.
It was always the same kind of talk.
But when Kambara himself was around, nobody said a word.
I had tried confronting him directly once.
He hadn’t even listened to me until the end.
I nearly sighed again.
“...Just focus on the work in front of you.”
The moment I whispered those words, my vision blurred.
My eyes burned.
I quickly grabbed a tissue and pressed it against them.
It was frustrating.
Infuriating.
But more than anything, I hated myself for almost crying over something like this.
I hid the tissue in my hand so no one would see it.
Then I clenched my fist around it.
—That bastard.
I want to crush him.
I was about to throw it into the trash can by my feet when I felt a strange warmth in my palm.
“...?”
I opened my fingers.
It wasn’t a tissue anymore.
It had become a single sheet of crumpled paper.
Something was drawn on it.
At first, it looked like a stain made by mixing several different colors of paint together.
But when I looked closer, I realized that wasn’t it.
Arms.
Legs.
A face.
Something resembling a human being had been forced into a tiny box, as though it had been crushed from above by a gigantic hand.
I couldn’t tell who it was.
I couldn’t even tell whether it was really human.
“Ah—”
A sound escaped my throat.
I dropped the paper.
As I stared at it lying on the floor, fear began to rise inside me.
“C-can someone... take a look at this?”
My voice wouldn’t come out properly.
“This... could someone just...”
No one answered.
I looked up.
Toward Kambara’s desk.
Kambara wasn’t there.
Instead, a man I had never seen before was sitting in his place.
“...What?”
My mind couldn’t process it.
A complete stranger was operating the computer as though that desk had belonged to him for years.
“Is something wrong?”
The man looked at me.
“N-no. It’s nothing.”
Without thinking, I snatched the paper off the floor and shoved it into my pocket.
“I see.”
The man said nothing more and turned back to his screen.
I looked at his face again and again.
His hair.
His eyes.
The shape of his face.
Every feature was unmistakably Kambara’s.
And yet—
he wasn’t Kambara.
It felt as though someone had left Kambara’s appearance intact and replaced everything inside him.
The real Kambara would have said something the moment I made a strange noise during work.
But this man said nothing.
That afternoon, something even stranger happened.
“Kambara’s always been such a calm guy, hasn’t he?”
I overheard one of my coworkers say it casually.
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“...Always?”
“Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him angry.”
They weren’t joking.
I asked another coworker.
Same answer.
Kambara had always been gentle.
He listened carefully to his subordinates.
He had never shouted at anyone.
Apparently, that was now the truth.
I was the only one who remembered.
The other Kambara.
When I got home, I took the paper out of my pocket.
The crushed human-like figure was still there.
The longer I stared at it, the more one part of its outline began to resemble Kambara’s profile.
And for the first time, a thought occurred to me.
Maybe I had trapped something that belonged to Kambara inside this paper.
Once the idea entered my head, I couldn’t get rid of it.
I couldn’t sleep that night.
I could barely eat.
Had I done this?
“I want to crush that bastard.”
Had that single moment of hatred caused all of this?
I couldn’t throw the paper away.
Eventually, I became too afraid even to touch it, so I shoved it into the very back of a shelf.
If possible, I wanted to forget it was even there.
I hadn’t killed anyone.
At least his body was still alive.
I repeated that logic to myself over and over.
Some time later, one night as I lay in bed, a thought suddenly came to me.
“Even when I hate someone, I still can’t bring myself to take their life. That’s just like me. Cowardly.”
For some reason, the thought reassured me.
After that, work became unbelievably easy.
Kambara listened to me.
He stopped rejecting proposals for no clear reason.
And I no longer had to waste energy worrying about unnecessary things.
One proposal after another began to get approved.
I produced results.
People started trusting me with more responsibility.
Before long, I hardly ever thought about the paper hidden at the back of the shelf.
There was no punishment.
No curse.
Nothing happened.
Several years later.
I had once been just another mid-level employee.
Now, at last, I had become a director.
I even had my own team.
On the day I gathered my subordinates together for the first time, I looked at their faces and made a promise to myself.
I won’t become like Kambara.
I’ll actually listen to people.
I won’t give unreasonable orders.
I’ll create a team where everyone can work comfortably.
That was what I decided.
“Yamada.”
One of my subordinates raised his hand.
“About this proposal... I think the alternative plan would be better.”
I smiled.
“Why?”
I listened to his explanation.
But it didn’t really make sense.
He was inexperienced.
That was probably why he didn’t understand.
I had spent years working in the field.
I understood what clients wanted far better than he did.
“I understand how you feel,” I said.
“But I think if you really consider things from the client’s point of view, the answer should be obvious.”
My subordinate opened his mouth as if to say something.
Then closed it.
Seeing his expression irritated me slightly.
He still doesn’t get it?
Well.
I’ll teach him until he does.
I’m not the one being controlled anymore.
Kambara can’t push me around anymore.
This time, I’m the one who will bring the team together.
No—
I’ll **control** them.
