Standing in the entrance, Koga peered down the long and narrow corridor.
“Good grief. Why am I even here?” he mumbled as he walked down the hallway toward the stairs. Climbing up to the second and then the third floor, he found himself running out of breath. “Why the hell do I have to visit a goddamn shrink or ‘mental health professional’ or whatever? Mental health, my ass.”
There was nothing to like about this situation. By the time he reached the fifth floor, he was wheezing, his shoulders heaving up and down.
“What’s with this strange address anyway? What a mess.”
East of Takoyakushi Street, south of Tominokoji Street, west of Rokkaku Street, north of Fuyacho Street, Nakagyō Ward, Kyoto.
These kinds of addresses, which provided the intersections in all four directions, were intended to make navigating the chessboard-like streets of Kyoto easier. But the directions he was given to the clinic were a mess, likely to have been passed down by people unfamiliar with the city. He had overheard a conversation in which someone recommended Nakagyō Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. He had never been that keen to visit the clinic in the first place, and even now, as he stood in front of the clinic’s door, he was hesitating.
Maybe I shouldn’t do this. Wait, no—I got off my butt to come all the way here. I might as well get a checkup, even if it’s just for my own peace of mind.
But stepping into a mental health clinic, no matter how informally, was no simple undertaking for Koga, a man in his fifties who came from a generation that harbored deep skepticism toward psychiatry.
I should go home. Wait, no—I took today off to come here…
As Koga stood there debating with himself, a man appeared at the end of the hallway. He strode past Koga and headed for the unit adjacent to the clinic. As he slowly opened the door, he cast Koga a wary glance.
Worried he might look suspicious, Koga hastily pushed open the door to the Nakagyō Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. Despite being old and heavy, the door glided open, revealing an unexpectedly pristine interior. The small, tidy reception window was unattended. He had rushed up the stairs yet found himself suddenly lacking the courage to let anyone know he was there. Should I just turn around now? As he stood in the doorway and dithered over what to do next, he heard the pattering of footsteps, and soon, a nurse appeared.
“Hello. You’re a new patient, right? Please come in.”
“Well, I’m not—”
“Please come in.”
Without so much as a glance in Koga’s direction, the nurse, who looked to be in her late twenties, motioned for him to enter. Koga felt he had no choice but to do as told. He spotted a small sofa in the waiting room, but when he was about to take a seat, the nurse snapped at him. “The waiting room is for patients with appointments. The doctor is available to see you now, so please make your way toward the back.” There was something both gentle and sharp about her distinct Kyoto accent.
Koga was miffed. What a disagreeable woman. She reminded him of the very person responsible for his anxieties. He scowled at her, but he could see she wasn’t paying him any attention.
Pouting in frustration, he walked into the examination room. It was a compact space, furnished with only a desk with a computer and two simple chairs. Privacy curtains hung at the back of the room. He wondered about the layout of the place, which seemed quite basic for a medical facility.
Koga’s doubts grew when the curtains flew open and a doctor in a white coat appeared, a slender man of about thirty. He was considerably younger than Koga and had the kind of delicate facial features he knew his daughter, Emiri, would find appealing. Is a kid like him qualified to practice psychiatric medicine? Koga, who often received pointed remarks about his protruding belly and old-man vibes from his wife, couldn’t help but feel a bit resentful.
“Hello. I see you’re new to our clinic,” said the doctor. His inflection, thick with the Kyoto dialect, made him sound like a more mature town doctor.
“Well, I suppose, yes.”
“Out of curiosity, how did you find out about us?”
“A friend of a friend…no one in particular,” mumbled Koga. He couldn’t recall the exact source of the information, but he had been desperately eavesdropping on a conversation when someone mentioned a good psychiatric clinic.
The doctor let out a peculiarly cheerful chuckle. “I see,” he said. “Well, that’s a problem. From time to time, patients do drop in like this, having heard about us from someone. But as you can see, there are only two of us here, the nurse and me, so we’re not accepting any new patients.”
“Wait. What?” Having been skeptical about the clinic until a moment ago, Koga suddenly felt a rush of anxiety as it seemed he might be turned away. “I took half a day off from work to come here. Isn’t this a mental health psychiatric clinic or whatever? I have issues and need an examination.”
“Mental health? Psychiatry?” The doctor cocked his head in puzzlement. “Ha! That sounds cool.” He dissolved into more chuckles. Koga looked at him blankly. “Well, since you came all the way here, I’ll make a special exception for you. Now, tell me your name and age.”
“I-I’m Yusaku Koga. I turn fifty-two next month.”
“What brings you in today?”
He’s been a bit uppity, but I guess he’s agreed to see me. Koga scowled. Even if I share my feelings, no one will understand what I’m going through. Not the doctor, not my family, not my coworkers. I’m an outcast.
He wrung his hands in his lap and dropped his gaze.
“I have a work-related problem. I find it challenging to get along with a new employee who joined our office about three months ago. A—what d’you call it—diversity, equity, and inclusion hire or whatever. A female supervisor. And she…How can I describe her? She’s extremely bubbly, and I find her displeasing.”
That’s right. Hinako Nakajima. I just don’t like her.
Hinako was forty-five years old and he considered her too old to be always so cheerful. Perhaps it was because she was single, but everything about her was loud: her outfits, her voice, her gestures. And she was always laughing. Just remembering her laughter made Koga nauseous.
“I work for an outsourced call center, and almost all our staff, except me, is female. So the workplace is a lonely place for me. But that’s not a big deal. I’ve done a reasonably good job listening to the complaints of both my coworkers and any chronic complainer customers. But since that woman joined our office, the atmosphere has totally changed. I don’t know why, but I find her voice incredibly grating.”
The call center covered a lot of floor space, and it had numerous workstations equipped with phones, on which operators spoke directly to customers. Dealing with a wide variety of callers and their issues placed a lot of stress on the staff.
As a middle manager, Koga’s job was to oversee the operation. And on occasion, he had to jump on calls himself to offer profuse apologies. Although he’d worked at the same company for fifteen years, he was still only a section manager. He’d been yelled at by customers, but he’d never gotten into trouble at work. His days were monotonous, but they were mostly tranquil. The call center’s general manager was a man with even less potential for career advancement than Koga, and he was a year away from retirement. Everyone had assumed that Koga would take his place.
And yet…
Out of the blue, Hinako Nakajima had turned up at their office from Tokyo. She was appointed to a newly created role of deputy general manager, making her Koga’s new boss all of a sudden.
“I like it, I like it, I like it!” Koga clenched his fists in his lap. “I can’t get those words out of my head. They keep ringing in my ears, especially in the middle of the night. When I’m trying to sleep, I hear, ‘I like it, I like it, I like it!’ like an incantation.”
Koga relaxed his fists and looked up. What? He had just bared his soul, but the young doctor was looking blankly away from him and picking his nose.
“What are you looking at, doctor? Did you hear what I just said?”
