Running, almost late, but still with a little bit of time to spare, Jens recognized a familiar slender silhouette near the elevators, and he happily ran to her to greet her.

“Good morning, Tanikawa-san!”

“Hello. You’re not as early as yesterday”, she rocked back and forth on her toes with some impatience, waiting for the elevator. How is it that they are the slowest in rush hour?!

“Oh, you noticed. I started packing yesterday. I got a message from Tanaka-san that people from the moving company will help me move my things to a new apartment this Saturday.”

“This Saturday? After nomikai?” She frowned a little. “Tell me your address, I’ll help you with this”.

“No no no, it’s fine…”

She froze him with her gaze. Haruka saw Jens drunk once. She didn’t trust that the day after nomikai he would be in a state that would let him move from one apartment to another in dignified fashion. Under her gaze, Jens shivered.

“Okay, I will tell you later. Look, the elevator is here!”

The door of the elevator opened. Haruka went inside, pressed the button of their floor and instantly started to press the button of closing doors. Jens was a little surprised. The door started to close, and then one big hand SLAMMED right into the closing door. The door started to open, and Haruka just slightly clicked her tongue and backed off.

And then a tsunami of people started to fill the elevator. It was getting tighter and tighter, Jens needed to lean over Haruka, with his hand pressed to the brown elevator wall, as he tried to give her the most space possible in this situation. At some point the elevator started to ring and ding, almost pitifully, that it cannot take more people, the maximum weight was exceeded. 

“Someone needs to go out!”, someone on the elevator called to other people in front. People closest to the door of the elevator tried to make themselves look the most small and unnoticeable ever in their life. At some point, some woman was almost pushed out, so she resigned and went out. The elevator was still ringing and dinging in distress.

After another moment, some guy on the heavier side was also pushed out, and the door closed. It was hard to believe this all took place in the span of no more than 20 seconds.

And then the elevator started to stop at every floor, letting one or two people out at a time.

“I’m sorry”, whispered Jens to Haruka.

“What?”

“I heard people from Japan don’t like the smell of foreigners.”, Jens explained. He looked extremely uncomfortable.

“It’s not like that. Some foreigners have really strong body odor and should shower more often.” She took a whiff. And now, she felt too aware of what Jens smelled like. He smelled of a pine tree forest in the heatwave near the free and salty sea. The smell reminded her of her childhood, when she was on vacation with her grandparents. It felt... safe.

“You don’t smell bad”, said Haruka without thinking. 

“I’m relieved”, Jens didn’t know where to look. He felt a redness creeping up his neck. 

The elevator slowly but surely pulled upwards.

The things Jens found on the intranet were… Weird. He was looking into how he could write an official letter requesting or proposing the replacement of office chairs. But he found so many suspicious notes related to the chairs… Almost every note or article he found about office equipment directly or indirectly said stuff about treating chairs with utmost care and attention. Some articles were about unrelated things, like instructions on using an office printer or the company culture, and how to address each other politely, and yet, they would still have notes about chairs in them, like “Remember: your chair has feelings too. Avoid sudden movements or causing loud noises near its backrest, and approach it from the front.” or “Replacing a chair is equivalent to replacing a team member”. It was… Uncanny. He  noticed that the articles had a history of changes, and that those changes were added by one person - someone whose initials in the company system were NR. He had no idea what it could mean, as his initials were much longer. He wanted to ask Haruka about that but he figured she was also new here, so he scooped his laptop, and snuck away to some coworkers here. He hoped for Minato-san to explain this to him, but he was nowhere to be found - probably at some meeting. So instead Jens selected the next most approachable person - and it was a young woman coworker, who didn’t have her headphones covering her ears.

“Psst? I’m sorry?” whispered Jens to get her attention.“She jumped on her chair which squeaked loudly. Her coworker, sitting next to her, was startled by the sudden movement of her friend, and took her headphones off.

“How did you sneak up on me like that? You have like two meters!”. The girl was startled, but not scared, which looked like a good sign to Jens.

“Hahaha, I’ve got my ways. I want to ask you something”, Jens took out his laptop. “Please call me Jens. What should I call you?”

“Ooooh.” She looked at her friend. “Please call me Aoi”, she looked at her friend and they both giggled. 

“And me, call me Hina!”, her friend chipped in, and they both smiled. “Can I also call you Jens?”

“Of course, everybody can call me Jens”. He said. Girls stopped giggling. “How can we help you?” asked Hina. With some parts of her hair dyed in dark red in a peekaboo fashion, she was clearly the braver or maybe even feistier of those two.

“I looked at some articles on the intranet, and look at this”, he showed them some articles with marked fragments about chairs. “Isn’t it weird?”

Both of them quickly took his notebook, leaned into it, and started to read.

“Eeeeeh, that’s so weird!”, said Aoi.

“So this is not normal?” Jens make sure. Aoi just shook her head full of dyed brown hair.

“Thank you, I needed to confirm that. So, one more question, maybe you know, all those changes were made by somebody with NR initials in the system, do you have any idea who it could be?”

“NR?!” exclaimed Hina. Aoi shot her a meaningful look.

“I’m… Not sure”, said Aoi. “Hina-san do you maybe know?” she asked her friend.

“No, I’m not so sure either”, said Hina.

This reaction was unexpected to Jens. He was sure they knew something. Why were they hiding it though?

“Anything else?”, asked Hina. She looked as if she wanted to change the topic quickly.

“Can you keep a secret?” Jens leaned into both women.

“Of course” they both said that, with conspiratorial tones. They both got a little excited.

“I want to write some petitions to higher ups and request chair replacements.” 

First, a storm of black hair spilled out from behind the monitor on a desk adjacent to Aoi’s, and then the tanned face of an employee Jens had yet to meet emerged.

“Is it because you break them all?” asked the guy.

“Maybe they all reached their expiration date”, joked Jens “But sure, a big guy sitting on them did not help them for sure” he smiled.

“Oooh, you can never be sure if your chair is going to be next”, smiled the other guy. “Call me Saito Ren, Jens-san”

Jens was sure he had listened to the whole conversation.

“Of course. Thank you, Aoi-san, Hina-san, Saito-san” Jens said his goodbyes and went back to his desk.

“What. Was. That.” asked Haruka, really slowly, when he came back.

Jens was startled. He felt like she did something wrong.

“Something weird was written in few places in intranet, so I asked Aoi-san and Hina-san if I understood it correctly”

“You mean  Yoshida-san and Tani-san?” Haruka corrected him.

“Oh no, I asked what they preferred to be called and they told me to call them like that. Is this wrong?”

Haruka’s face froze. She felt a little spark of irritation on the inside. How does he do that? He naturally shortened the distance to others like it was nothing to him. Where she carefully and meticulously nurtured relationships with others that could be useful, he just… Barged into people’s lives, and most people instead of getting angry, irritated, annoyed or scared - liked that. 

“No, if they asked you to call them that, it’s not wrong. So, what did you find out?”

“Look at this”, Jens showed her the articles with the added comments about the chairs. “All those comments were added by one person, with the initials NR”

“This is… Suspicious”, Haruka’s brow furrowed. “And what did they say?”

“They both have no idea who it is. But I think they are not telling the truth. Their reaction to that initial… Was weird”

 “So it means…”

“They protect someone”, said Jens “But why?”

“Or protect themselves,” said Haruka calmly. 

“Themselves? Why?”, asked Jens.

“Well, if this person can get them in trouble,” Haruka thought for a second. “It’s best to not rock the boat.”

Jens got lost deep in thought.