2021 FLASH FICTION COMPETITION WINNER

Prize: £1,000

Finalists:

Joel O'Flaherty

Nicki Blake

Christine light

Kevin Sandefur

Simon Rowe

Katrina Moinet

Honourable Mentions:

Armand Diab

Laura Varney

Rose Cullen

Marie-Louise McGuinness

Sally Curtis

Susan Wigmore

Tony Litchfield

Richard Westwell

Peter Bainbridge

Lisa Sedgwick

Sarah Kelleher

Rhian Healy

Filip Chapman

Finnian Burnett

Adele Evershed

Kathryn Crowley

and the winner is…

Christine Light

The Salaryman Underground 

“What have we forgotten?” Ryo seethed through his tightened mouth. 

“If we allow them to strip us of our honor, of our ability to show them, to show the Koreans, the Chinese, the Americans, the office ladies, who we are, who we really are, what do we have left? There’s not enough shochu in Tokyo to cover our shame.”

Ryo’s voice spilled forth in a mellifluous current of Japanese, drowning any dissent that may have otherwise arisen from the small host of salarymen who crumpled into their skewered meat dishes, their lemon sours, their cups of nihonshu. The men shifted with discomfort as they peered down the fluorescent-lit alley just outside their favorite tachinomiya.

“They think we’ve been bred to submit, to answer yes to every command,” Ryo said, delivering the battle cry he’d spent hours setting to paper early that morning. “Americans write papers about us in their business courses. Professors say to hire salarymen, to hire us, because we are loyal, because we are consistent, because we conform. Because we are willing to do anything for our employers. Anything. They expect unconditional servitude from us. In their eyes we are nothing but dogs in support of their avarice. Dogs.”

Rivulets of sweat dribbled from Ryo’s forehead. He gulped some air and followed it with beer that left froth on his twisted upper lip. These men around him, Suzuki in his pressed jet-black suit, Makoto in his navy-blue suit, Tanaka in white with his slate-gray suit jacket upheld by a hook on the wall behind him, plus six others he knew less well, could only stare as Ryo spoke. He searched for recognition in their eyes, pleading for some incipient showing of support. Finding none, he turned to face the white-and-red paper lanterns just outside the bar. 

Ryo found that the air at their table by the door was redolent with tangy barbecue, cigarette smoke, and that pungent-but-alluring stench of alcohol. He wondered if any of the other hundreds of salarymen standing in their own pocket-sized bars in the Shinbashi district asked questions like his. The thought of forsaking his colleagues sent a cringe through his limbs. But hadn’t they forsaken him? Hadn’t they forsaken themselves? It occurred to Ryo then that he and his colleagues had never faced anything difficult together outside of work. The tachinomiya was a closet for toothy grins, off-key singing, and off-colored japes about office ladies. He startled himself with the thought that the men next to him might not feel as he did.

“Sumimasen,” Ryo beckoned Ichiko, who was preparing another round of lemon sours for three salarymen at a table across the bar. Ryo had visited her bar every night for the better part of the last decade. With his counterparts mum, Ichiko might offer some solace, or at least show that she’d heard him. She shuffled to his side with a smile.

“Ryo-san.”

“Ichiko, have you seen the news today?”

She had not. Surprised, given how gravely their contents would affect Ichiko’s tachinomiya, Ryo continued, “They’re requiring businesses, all businesses, to close at eight o’clock or be punished for it.” He waited for a reaction that did not come. “Ichiko, it’s half past ten now. Ichiko, we arrived here an hour ago. It was half past nine then. Ichiko, do you ever see us here before eight? Ichiko, I started when I was three years old. School and cram school and the top high school and the top college and the top employer and the top ass-kissing and the top dollar-earning and my friends dropping dead from karōshi and Americans using me for my “good nature” and me missing my grandmother’s funeral for work, Ichiko, all so I could be here every night, so I could be the salaryman every little boy looks up to, the salaryman I spent my whole life becoming.” Hot tears welled in his eyes as his voice ballooned. “Ichiko, they want me to give it up, all of it. All of it. I am a salaryman. I will not give up. I am a salaryman. I AM A SALARYMAN.”

Ryo’s heart pounded nearly out of his chest. He covered his face with his slender fingers. He’d never cried before these men, who now whispered in hushed tones, inaudible to Ryo through his muffled sobs. Ryo’s tears, it seemed, spoke his case with more honor than did his painstakingly rehearsed words. Makoto leaned toward the stunned Ichiko, speaking into her ear. Her eyes widened as she nodded her head.

“Ryo-san,” Ichiko approached the broken salaryman. “No karōshi for you. I have a basement the officials don’t know about. If it pleases you, Ryo-san, you can still come. I will serve. Downstairs.” She smiled again and moved his hands from his disbelieving eyes. “The Salaryman Underground.”