Takeshi Fumimota and Professor Wawazume: Former Employer and Continuing Client

Takeshi Fumimota and Professor Wawazume are linked by a professional relationship that survives Takeshi’s departure from Wawazume Vita & Non-Vita. The professor was his former employer, but remains a source of paid assignments and practical information as Takeshi tries to establish an independent life.

From Employee to Independent Agent

Takeshi had long dreamed of escaping the corporate embrace and becoming a ronin—a samurai without a master. By the time he was investigating the destruction of a Chipco laboratory, he had left the firm and was working for himself. Independence did not mean a complete break: Professor Wawazume continued to send him a substantial number of commissions, keeping their working connection active even after the old employment arrangement ended.

The material signs of this change are modest. Takeshi no longer wore the company badge in his lapel, and his only permanent address was a cramped, shared rental in Ueno. Its furnishings were a locked filing cabinet, a telephone, and a framed photograph. His new autonomy was real, but his livelihood still partly depended on work passed along by his former employer.

Advice and Continuing Work

The professor remained involved in Takeshi’s professional world through both assignments and advice. The night before Takeshi examined the enormous footprint-shaped crater where the Chipco building had stood, Professor Wawazume reminded him by telephone that Chipco had recently added insurance coverage for damage caused by animals of any kind. That detail sharpened the questions surrounding the wrecked laboratory: the clause offered a possible explanation for the company’s interest in framing the destruction as an animal attack, while Takeshi considered other possibilities as well.

The call shows the relationship operating beyond a simple flow of commissions. The professor’s knowledge of insurance and the business at issue gives Takeshi a lead in his investigation, while their ongoing professional contact brings the former employer into the work of the independent agent. The evidence establishes this continuing exchange without suggesting that Takeshi has returned to the company or surrendered his independence.

The Photograph as a Keepsake

When Takeshi left the firm to set up on his own, the professor gave him an autographed photograph. It was an enlarged paparazzi picture of Wawazume outside a Shinjuku bar, gazing at a famous woman in gold lamé, with an unusually long strand of drool at the corner of his mouth. Takeshi kept it framed in his sparse Ueno room, alongside the filing cabinet and telephone.

The photograph is a personal keepsake embedded in the material circumstances of Takeshi’s new working life. Its presence does not erase the hierarchy that had once defined them: Wawazume had been his employer and continued to send him work. Instead, the gift accompanies a relationship being recast, from corporate subordination into a looser connection of referrals, advice, and an object retained after departure.