Igarashi’s desk

Igarashi’s desk stands defiantly in the middle of the office. Right there between the badge-in door to the coveted floor to ceiling window seats, with their sit stand desks and privacy from prying eyes. Igarashi’s desk faces directly at department head Tanaka's open windowed central office. Most days for the last two years, when Tanaka looks up longingly towards the north window, up the Meguro river towards home, Igarashi’s hunched form, wearing what he knows is a gym hoodie and running shoes, is just visible above the partition, blocking his gaze. But today, Igarashi’s desk is empty. Three black and green tall-boy Monster energy drinks sit open on Igarashi’s desk, pushed into a back corner. Another can waits on the right side of the desk, along with a pen and a short stack of papers. The top paper is a dense black and white document, with 10 point text, numbered down the side for easy callouts, neatly arranged into paragraphs, headers, and consistent margins. Scrawled across the paper are unreadable handwritten notes with jagged lines connecting them to parts of the document, some crossed out with lines punching through the cheap A4 paper. Under it another paper with a colored background and pie chart, neatly labeled with a “Confidential Deloitte consulting” sticks out. In the middle of the desk a steel grey HP laptop is open, its clock reading 10:24 am. A messaging app fills the screen, showing a chat group with 34 people in it. The top of the chat is all short answers and replies “Please fill in your section in the QBR by this Friday”, “Do we have guidance on length from leadership”. Then, from Igarashi, a message that takes up the entire middle of the chat. Some words are bolded, a few exclamation points are thrown in. “What is the value of a central team? What is your ROI?” “I am not aligned with this decision” “Our data shows that clients value price parity and feature development, not rebranding”. The chat stops there, the empty space glaring back in answer.