The weather was scorching. The old air conditioner creaked and groaned, blowing until people felt dizzy.
"Hey... wake up! Wake up!"
An impatient voice came from above, jolting the young man awake from his dream. He sprang up from his desk and squinted against the backlight, only to see his boss standing there with a stern face. He shuddered inwardly, and all sleepiness vanished at once.
He hurriedly explained, "Sorry, I got a little sleepy after lunch, I..."
"Work properly. Don't slack off." His boss merely glared at him, said nothing more, and quickly turned to leave.
The young man let out a breath of relief.
He sat back down in his chair and rubbed his temples. His freshly awakened mind was clearly still muddled. For some reason, he felt as though he had had a dream—a long, complicated dream. That dream seemed to have drained every last bit of his energy, leaving him exhausted, as though he had endured eighty-one trials and tribulations.
But... strangely enough, he could not remember what he had dreamed about.
It should have been an extremely bizarre thing, but perhaps his head was spinning too badly at the moment, or perhaps some unseen voice was guiding him. In any case, he did not look into it, simply ignoring it as though that were only natural. His boss had not gone far when he suddenly looked back. The young man tossed the matter completely to the back of his mind, lowered his head, and put on an appearance of working attentively.
As he lowered his head, he saw the payslip lying at the edge of his desk. The pitiful number looked even thinner after deduction upon deduction. Yet in the name column, all the characters were blurred. His name seemed to have been mosaicked over,