Takuya Anzai was, by any measure, a strange employee.
Whenever he joined a department, its numbers went up. Twelve percent on average. The figures spiked while he was there, then dropped back to normal the month after he transferred out. Three years, five departments, same story every time. Sayuri Kaji, head of HR, had plotted the pattern on a line graph, taped it to the side of her desk, and taken to calling it “the EKG.”
Anzai himself, for what it’s worth, was less than thrilled about any of this.
“They only let me do filing,” he told Kaji after each transfer. It was the same in every department. The section chief would give him an apologetic look — “Anzai, honestly, just being here is enough” — set him up at a desk, and hand him a stack of folders. He filed them impeccably. Nobody ever called him into a meeting.
“Just once, I’d like to write an actual proposal.”
Kaji flipped through his personnel file without looking up. “You don’t need to write anything,” she said. She was the kind of person who led with the conclusion and gave you about half the reasoning afterward.
It wasn’t hard to see why Anzai was confused. His single completed task in department number five was, for the record, replacing the toner in the copier — and even that almost didn’t happen, because someone from general affairs tried to wave him off.
The mechanism was simple enough.
When Anzai was around, people just worked a bit more honestly. Nobody could explain it. He wasn’t strict. He wasn’t watching anyone. He sat quietly and filed papers. That was all. Yet somehow, the senior colleague at the next desk stopped dozing off. The section chief across the room put his phone away after lunch. The department head, deep in the back corner, found himself actually writing careful daily reports.
Anzai seemed to have a gift — entirely beyond his own control — for making people around him slightly more decent. Maybe it was the eerily orderly filing. Maybe it was the way he held his spine perfectly straight. Ask him about it and you’d get a baffled “Who, me?” so the truth remained anybody’s guess.
In the autumn of his third year, Anzai handed in his resignation.
“At this rate I’m going to turn thirty without learning anything.”
Kaji didn’t try to stop him. The EKG had made that much clear. His five handover notebooks were all blank. The colleague taking over his duties asked, “Is this the complete handover?” Anzai bowed deeply. “I’m sorry. There was nothing to write.”
The following month, all five departments dipped at once. The dozing came back. The phones came back. The daily reports got sloppy again. Department heads exchanged glances in a meeting, and someone — no one could say who — let the words “Anzai withdrawal” slip out.
Kaji added a sharp downward line to the right end of her graph. She sat with it for a moment, then turned to her computer.
The next morning, the company intranet’s job postings carried a new listing: “Rotating Specialist (working title).” The job description read: Spend a set period in each department. No required qualifications. No skills listed. No minimum years of experience. Under application requirements, just three words:
No particular requirements.
Three placement requests arrived from different departments before the day was out.