The additional sleep did not seem to have made much difference to Akiko’s energy the next morning, as she struggled to maintain the facade of alertness necessary to keep Mr Kanayama from criticising her further. The strain of keeping it up was starting to tell on her by mid-morning, and she was deeply grateful that it was Friday; fantasies of sleeping through the whole weekend were one of the things sustaining her.

During one such fantasy, she noticed Mr Kanayama emerging from his office, and immediately turned her attention to the database she was supposed to be checking. Fortunately, the data in it was mostly correct, limiting the number of necessary changes. Mr Kanayama came over and stood by her desk, and she looked up before bowing her head to acknowledge him. He nodded back, and handed her a file.

“I need graphs and charts of this data before I leave for Osaka tomorrow morning. Make sure that they are clear. They have to make us look good, without being misleading; the companies in Osaka <em>will</em> press me on details.â€

“Yes, sir.â€ He just nodded again, his face grim, and Akiko flicked through the file, her heart sinking. Reams of data, all in hard copy, that she would need to type in. She opened up the spreadsheet, and was about to begin when Satomi leaned across and whispered,

“How are you going to present them?â€

Akiko realised that she didn’t know, and that until she did know she didn’t know how to set up the spreadsheet.

“Thanks,â€ she whispered back, and Satomi smiled, returning to her own work.

The project was actually a lot less daunting than she had thought, when she came to look at it. At least half the information in the files was irrelevant, and there was normally only one choice for the way to display it if you wanted it to look good. She briefly reflected that that was not a good sign, in more general terms, but that wasn’t her problem. She was entering data before lunch time, and worked through the lunch hour to get them finished.

Before handing anything over to Mr Kanayama, she checked once more, comparing the data to the sheets of paper and printing out the graphs, checking their impact. Everything looked accurate to her, and she showed the graphs to Satomi, who agreed that they looked good. Taking a blank thumb drive (no point risking mistakes over the files) she copied the spreadsheets across, and took them to Mr Kanayama.

He looked pleased when he received the drive. He did not look pleased ten minutes later, when he stormed out of his office, dropped the drive on her desk, and told her to stop messing about and do it properly.

Akiko was stunned. She was about to ask what the problem was, but he had already returned to his office. Opening the files, she was stunned again. They were completely different from the ones she had handed over. Data she had checked was now wrong, the graphs were badly designed and chosen to show the company in the worst possible light, and half of the points were not illustrated at all. She opened the files on her own computer, and they were the same.

In her state of complete bafflement, one thing became distressingly clear: she was going to have to call Naoyuki and cancel their date.