Hollow Inside

SUGANUMA WAS in the living room making dead dogs.

The 3D printer on the cabinet was making a hell of a racket as it squeezed out molten white filament. It was the size of a smallish Buddhist home altar, a bare- bones model with exposed arm and head. It wasn’t so much futuristic as reminiscent of a paper guillotine gathering dust in the back of the school art room.

An H-shaped structure stood atop a base, with a small box-shaped head attached to the crossbar. This head was inching its way from side to side, its motor screaming. A nozzle on the head was extrud- ing filament onto the base, and the figure of a dog was gradually emerging from the feet up.

A photograph of the dog stood on the edge of the cabinet. It was already dead. They all were.
Suganuma’s 3D printer was a bit too noisy for home use. At first it had been in her room, but she couldn’t sleep when it was running and had moved it to the cabinet in the corner of the living room. Now, as she stood facing the corner while she operated it, it was as though she too was being driven out of the apartment.

I stood behind her stuffing my breakfast bread roll into my mouth. I didn’t bother about the crumbs falling onto my white blouse. I could gather them up and throw them away when I’d finished. Suganuma had been complaining of deteriorating eyesight lately, and now and then stood back from the machine to observe the details of the emerging figure. Her over- sized T-shirt revealed the contours of her skinny body, and all the bumps of her spine stood out starkly when she rounded her back. Her hair, carelessly gathered into a ponytail, was splitting at the ends for lack of moisture and nutrients. From behind, her thin body didn’t look firm and well toned, it just looked frail.

As soon as cheap 3D printers hit the market, Suganuma had bought one, thinking she could make some money with it. She had tried various things, but the best-paying job turned out to be making custom dog figurines. She would be sent photos of pet dogs that had died, and would tweak templates of particular breeds to produce models that were the spitting image of those beloved pets. The plain white figures she made would then be sent out for colouring before being delivered to the respective owners. It was cheaper and easier than taxidermy, and popular with owners who couldn’t bear the thought of skinning their pet.

I picked up what looked like a reject figure that was lying on the floor. It was of a chihuahua, hollow inside and surprisingly light. The threadlike fila- ment had become tangled around its body, as though enveloping it in a spider’s web. Could the grieving owner get some measure of comfort from holding this hollow figure made to look like their pet? I couldn’t even begin to imagine it.

“ We’re down to our last roll of toilet paper,” Suganuma said suddenly, without taking her eyes off the machine.

“I’ll get some on my way home from work, if I remember.”

“Please.”

I put the figurine of the chihuahua down on the low table. The filament had wound around its legs so that it was unable to stand properly, and it toppled forward onto its nose.
I’d forgotten about the crumbs from my breakfast and they scattered over the floor as I left for work.

I couldn’t get a seat on the commuter train, but it wasn’t too packed as it was headed away from Tokyo. As I held on to an overhead strap and braced my legs, I caught sight of my dim reflection in the window. A plain woman just shy of forty in a grey skirt. I had the feeling that by blurring my focus I could be completely assimilated into the jostle of strangers around me on the swaying train. I crossed my eyes slightly and concentrated on erasing my existence.
Our office was some distance from the business district around the station, on the fourth floor of a cheap-looking building that housed various stores, offices and restaurants. The layout was old-fashioned, with the desks arranged in five islands and the group leaders in the seat of honour at the head of each. It was a cozy little printing company with just a production department and printing plant in addi- tion to this office.

There were about twenty dull old men in this dull old office crammed with stuff, but I didn’t know whether they were dull from working here or whether they had chosen this job because they were dull in the first place. There were also several women employees wearing make-up that seemed to indicate a strong resistance to being tainted by the environment, but I myself probably blended right in by now, having started working there seventeen years ago, straight after graduation.

I arrived at my desk just as Yoshida, who sat oppo- site me, pulled his bottom desk drawer open with a clatter and threw his shoulder bag into it.

“Mornin’,” he muttered without moving his mouth so you could barely catch what he said.
I muttered a similar greeting and sat down, but then noticed that something in my field of vision was different from usual. Through the acrylic desk shield I saw that Yoshida was wearing a white polo shirt. Until now, he’d always worn a white shirt buttoned right up to his neck.

It had been decided that male employees could wear polo shirts from May, but it was only now the rainy season was over and it was getting really hot that they were starting to wear them. The shirt clung tightly to Yoshida’s chubby body, and it had some kind of silhouette motif on the left breast. I’d thought it was a Ralph Lauren horse logo, but while it was extremely similar, it was a motif I hadn’t seen before. My screen brightened as my computer started up, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Yoshida’s brand-new polo shirt. What was that motif? The tall, thin silhouette looked a bit like a stain, with jagged contours.

A pop-up menu displaying today’s schedule appeared on the screen, and I finally managed to drag my eyes away from the polo shirt.

The “New Season Drinks Party” at 16:00 caught my eye. Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that. I quietly closed the schedule, resisting the urge to click my tongue. Yoshida wiped the sweat from his forehead with a carefully folded handkerchief.

My job came under Accounts.

I was the second longest old-timer in the depart- ment. I’d already seen most of the problems that my colleagues got all worked up about, and as I always showed them how we’d solved them in the past they’d started calling me Hirai-sensei, as though I were some kind of teacher or something.

If I were to leave this company, I doubted whether I would find another job where anyone would appre- ciate me. There had been a time when the company got lots of emails and leaflets advertising business streamlining and systematization, but I’d quietly binned them all. I was scared I’d be out of a job if we ever computerized the office.

The drinks party in the meeting room next door started bang on time. I stayed at my desk, pretend- ing that I had too much work to do. Once a year, Accounts and General Affairs would get together for a party in the meeting room, ordering in catered food and sending some office juniors out to buy a load of drinks. It had been put on hold during the COVID- 19 pandemic, but unfortunately they’d started it up again on a smaller scale this year.

I clicked the update button, and the inbox on the accounts system showed up empty. “No new tasks for Ms. Hirai,” it said. I’d finished all my work for the day.

Of the five work islands in the office, two were occupied by the Accounts division, and a few of my colleagues were still at their desks, too. Next to me, my boss was busy as always, banging away furiously on his keyboard, his face lit up by the screen.

The hubbub coming from the meeting room was getting pretty loud. Despite the noise, though, you couldn’t make out any conversations through the single wall separating us. It was as though all the threads of conversation had been unravelled, mixed up, and stuffed back into a homogenous sound that was rapidly getting denser.

One of the younger employees had recently mar- ried, so no doubt they were the centre of attention at the party today. I looked down at the veins standing out on the back of my hand resting aimlessly on the mouse, and wondered when I had started feeling so out of place at work drinks parties.

People began filtering back out of the meeting room, dragging the party air along with them. The smell of fried food hung in the air, and I looked up to see Yoshida sit down at his desk.

“Oh, Hirai-san, are you busy?” I heard someone say behind me.

I looked round to see Mrs Kondo standing there holding a tray loaded with cans of beer and cocktails. Mrs Kondo was the number one old-timer in the office, my senpai, and unlike me she had the title of section manager. I had learned everything about my job in Accounts from her.

“Yes, um… I want to finish this task today.”

Mrs Kondo had worn the same short hair and black-rimmed glasses for over ten years. It had become her trademark style.

“Really? Well, take some of these drinks home with you, will you? There’s quite a lot left over from the party,” she said, putting the tray down on my desk.

“Okay then.”

I took a canned cocktail. The surface of the can was covered in droplets of moisture, which slid down the gap between the palm of my hand and the can. “Take as many as you like. Not that I want to burden you with them.”

She still didn’t make any move to pick up the tray, so I took a can of beer and placed it next to the other one.

“I never knew you drank beer!”

“Oh, it’s not for me, it’s for my flatmate.”

She froze, and her eyes grew exaggeratedly round behind her glasses.