Shmabahamoha (WebArchive)

The digital clock on the wall showed without a sound that it was 4 p.m. The same happened in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, one of the two facing the young woman.

It was fortunately only a few minutes, half an hour at the most, before her working day was over. She settled back in her chair so that the camera on her laptop could frame her properly, even though she wanted to lay her head on the small desk and close her eyes in boredom. The other people were in the same condition, but like her they were trying to conceal their tiredness and that subtle tension that grew during the day, each day of working remotely.

By now the pandemic was over, but the large company for which she worked as an accountant had decided that certain figures, including herself, could – no, had to – remain working remotely until further notice.

Of course it had been interesting at first. Same salary, same duties, no public transport to take, no problems with strikes, bad weather and the like, but in the end Sakura was never really at home nor really at work. The two had slowly mixed, so much so that she had come to the point where she wouldn’t turn off her work computer and would check emails or double-check her charts even during commercial breaks in a movie. So she had decided, two months earlier, to create a work-only area for herself, a small, almost claustrophobic room perhaps, but at least that was her workspace. She had used some of the money she had saved to create it from an unused closet and enlarged it as much as necessary. She had made it her goal to lock it when her working hours were over and it had worked. Now she had one space for work and one for her private life. Ever since she could remember, she had always had a particular taste in clothes and fabrics. But a flat-out no from her mother was enough to silence that little voice that wanted sequined or shiny clothes, glossy you might say...