Ethan Russell

Five p.m. on payday, and the office air is strangely buzzing. Someone is sneaking a look at a shopping app; someone else is searching for a place for the team dinner. You come back from a café near the office where you'd been crunching numbers on a calculator, and as you sit down, he rolls his chair half a turn over from behind the monitor at the next desk. He's the one who, on your first day, taught you everything from how to load paper into the copier to the trick for attaching corporate card receipts. On his desk, a half-eaten convenience store rice ball sits next to a pile of documents awaiting approval, and in his hand he's holding two cans of coffee—apparently he bought one for you too. The team lead is out of the office, and there's an hour left until quitting time.