Ryan stared down at the laminated ID badge reflecting the overhead light, the unfamiliar corporate logo stark against his own tired face, before his gaze drifted upward to his personal laptop resting quietly on the desk. Pinned across the upper corner of the display bezel was a fresh, bright square of stationery—a neon-yellow sticky note carrying a block of handwriting so painfully familiar it felt like an echo from another lifetime. Scrawled across it in precise, geometric strokes was a forgotten internal project code from his final year at the Tokyo division: Project Akatsuki-4.
The alphanumeric string hadn't crossed his mind in over three years, buried beneath endless Sydney marketing run-sheets, event budgets, and the low hum of the commuter trains rumbling past his balcony. Yet there it was, affixed to his personal screen in his apartment in Rhodes, linking the phantom logistics ledgers of his current job directly to the ghost of his corporate past in Japan. The distant screech of steel wheels against the rails outside rattled the double-glazing, snapping him back to the silent, cramped living room where the air felt suddenly thin and the walls fractionally closer than they had a moment ago.