Tanabe’s job is counting things nobody can see.

More precisely: he measures invisible light, logs the data, and subtracts everything that doesn’t belong. Every telescope scan picks up contamination from closer sources. Strip away the foreground noise, and the true signal hiding far behind it finally comes clear.

Today, like every day, he was at his desk by eight. Coffee brewing, monitors on, last night’s scan data already open.

“Today I finish isolating the foreground.”

He’d said it roughly forty times in the past three weeks.

The data was a stack of overlapping light — layer upon layer, each from a different source, all arriving at the detector as one tangled mess. Tanabe’s job was to peel them apart, carefully, one layer at a time.

His colleague Sawada came in and stopped short.

“Morning. Were you here all night, Tanabe-san?”

“Since yesterday evening.”

“You slept here?”

“The data’s in an interesting phase.”

Sawada glanced sideways at the coffee cup on the desk. Four rings from four empties.

“Has your wife been trying to reach you?”

Tanabe said nothing. He traced the curve on the graph with his eyes, almost with his fingertip.

“Tanabe-san. Has she messaged you?”

“My phone’s on airplane mode. I can’t focus otherwise.”

Sawada sighed and sat down at his own desk.

That afternoon, Tanabe finally cracked it — foreground noise cleanly separated from the source signal. He saved the results, pushed back his chair, and stretched.

“Done.”

“Congratulations,” Sawada said. “Now turn off airplane mode.”

Tanabe looked puzzled but took out his phone and switched it over.

Notifications hit all at once.

Fifty-three messages from his wife.

The first, sent at nine last night: I’ve gone into labor. Heading to the hospital.

The last, sent at six-thirty this morning: It’s a boy. He looks just like you. Come whenever you can.

Tanabe stared at the screen for a long moment.

“The day I finished isolating the foreground,” he said, barely above a whisper.

Sawada stood up and pressed Tanabe’s jacket into his arms.

“Quite the anniversary.”

“Does he really look like me?”

“Go find out for yourself.”

Tanabe took the jacket and finally looked away from the monitors. On the screen behind him, the stripped-down signal glowed quietly — foreground peeled back, the thing that had been there all along now sharp and unmistakable.

“A specialist in invisible light,” he started to say, “missing the closest thing of all —”

“Happens to the best of us,” Sawada cut in. “Now go.”

Tanabe ran.