## /kohei/notes/fools_theorem.md

  The Fool is a clay man.

  Molded by paycheck Gods.

  The Fool speaks in binary.

  YES, SIR. NO, SIR. ONE, SIR. O’, SIR.

  The Fool dreams in promotions.

  Still wets the sheets at night.

  The Fool becomes the institution.

  Clothed in polyester and pride.

  The Fool is the fetus within the virgin womb.

  A plutocratic prophecy.

  # saved @ 09:58 JST

  “So, I matched with this girl from Hong Kong…” the Fool said. “Wooo! You shoulda seen the pair on her, I mean, God bless international relations, am I right?…”

  Junior Strategy Analyst. Small mind, big mouth. Ogawa, Hisao. 24 years. ID #ZM-44871.

  My obnoxious shadow. As if the pile in front of me, which piled higher with each waking day, wasn’t enough, my fat supervisor assigned me caretaker to the faceless executive’s virgin birth. The prophet stood before me. The florescent light haloed before him.

  “…You could say I did the deed,” he said, backhanding my stomach. “Anyway, what school?”

  “Huh?”

  “I said, what college did you attend?”

  “It’s been a while… Hokkaido University. I don’t remember much from it—”

  “Oh man! The boonies? Dosanko boy, huh? I’m Waseda,” he said, thumping his chest. “Business.”

  “Mm, that’s good for you.”

  “Hey, can I borrow that stapler for a minute? Mine’s all sticky.”

  “Well, I’m—”

  “Thanks, man!” he walked off, stapler in hand. “’Ppreciate it!”

  The stapler never returned. But Ogawa did.

  “You catch the game last night?”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “No, I was visiting someone.”

  “Ouch! Wrong choice, man,” he said, far too loudly. “It was a total shit-show. Those Koreans can’t play even if their Mothers’ lives depended on it!”

  I didn’t respond. That would’ve required me to believe he could hear anything but his own voice.

  “So where’re the broads in this place?” he asked, glancing around as if a cat in search of prey. “Don’t tell me it’s a sausage party… Did Tanaka eat all the women?”

  “You know, that isn’t out of the question.”

  Ogawa howled. “My man!”

  He looked up at my monitor. “I sent you an email by the way. Check it.”

  I rolled around to my monitor and checked my inbox, clicking on ‘Ogawa, Hisao’ at the top of a tower of unread messages. A photo of an old salaryman unconscious on the sidewalk with Ogawa mock-posing in front of him. It was my monkey grass shrine. The same one I’d passed twice before, now somehow found his way onto my desktop monitor.

  “Ha! Look, he’s upside down. I thought he was dead…”

  His breath smelled of imitation coffee, and his eyes like stimulants. His gaudy tie was a replicate of a replicate. His plastic name tag, far too big. I pondered how many weeks before he himself ended up on the sidewalk. And if he did, would I be responsible for taking a distasteful selfie of his fallen corpse? Or would I be reprimanded for mocking the all-holy prophet-fool?

  “Over here, Kuramoto."

  Yoshida. I sat across from him.

  “My granddaughter’s into photography now,” he said, unwrapping his egg salad sandwich. “Got her one of those digital cameras the other day. She says she wants to photograph the graffiti.”

  “Oh, that's a interesting hobby,” I said, taking a bite of my tamagoyaki.

  “You know those tourists?” he asked. “They’re vandalizing Ichibangai Street now… Can you believe it?”

  “Really? That’s a shame.”

  “A thousand years, defaced in a day” he muttered, scratching the back of his graying head. “I told her she should photograph the cherry blossoms instead. Or the torii gates at Sannoinari Shrine. Something to hang on the wall, you know?”

  “Does sound much more pleasant.”

  “I agree… And you know what she says? She says, ‘Everyone already takes pictures of that stuff. I want to take pictures of things that aren’t supposed to be there.’ Whatever that means.”

  He shook his head. “I love her, she’s the only thing that makes my day. But sometimes, she just makes no sense to me.”

  “Times’ are changing, I suppose,” he said, chomping down on his sandwich.. “Anyhow, did you manage to fill out those 144-JPs?”

  “I wasn’t able. The revised batch came in late, and between that and the Q2 integration briefings, I couldn’t finalize processing.”

  “Tanaka won’t be pleased.”

  “He never is.”

  I looked over my shoulder, glancing around the makeshift lunchroom. The Fool was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if he ate upstairs with the executives. Or maybe I was the fool to assume a prophet needed to eat at all.

  “A former colleague of mine passed away last week,” Yoshida said, causing me to turn back around. “I hope his family finds peace. There’s a ceremony tomorrow. Would you attend?”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, setting down my chopsticks. “I’ll attend.”

  “No worries, we weren’t close,” he said, with two pats to my back. “I’ll email you the time and place.”

  The veins in my skull tingled with blooming migraines, as if between the forms and funerals, my psyche was violently rejecting something. I touched the back of my head, feeling the permanent hypertrophic scar left behind by year-old surgical knives.

  I only asked for one thing. I only wished it not take me away to some new place.

  But I was quick to discover that rarely do wishes come true.