The Award Nobody Wanted
誰も欲しくなかった賞
Never had Marcus wanted anything less than the trophy now heading steadily toward his desk.
It was called the "Above and Beyond Award," although no one could say what, exactly, he had gone above or beyond.
The company handed it out , to reward excellence, in reality to fill an awkward gap in the meeting.
Even though everyone knew the award meant nothing, everyone secretly dreaded actually getting it.
To win it was to be volunteered for a speech, and Marcus would rather have swum across a cold lake.
"Congratulations," said his manager, in the tone one usually reserves for delivering bad news.
Little did the manager know that Marcus had spent years quietly perfecting the art of being .
Rarely had a personal strategy failed quite so completely.
The ceremony was held, as always, in the break room, right beside the broken vending machine.
Although the was warm enough, it lasted precisely the length of social and not a second longer.
"Speech! Speech!" chanted two colleagues, neither of whom would remember doing so by lunch.
Marcus rose, holding a plastic trophy that weighed roughly as much as a small lie.
"Thank you," he began. "I truly don't deserve this, and I mean that far more sincerely than you could possibly know."
Laughter followed, though he had not, in fact, entirely been joking.
Even though he despised the ritual, he privately understood its purpose: to make ordinary work feel briefly meaningful.
Not once did he mention the actual project, largely because he could no longer quite remember it.
Instead, he warmly thanked "the team," a group so pleasingly vague it could include almost anyone.
So polished was his false that several people were, against all reason, genuinely moved.
Priya, watching from the back, could not tell where the ended and the sincerity quietly began.
Neither, if he was honest with himself, could Marcus.
When he sat down, the trophy was already being forgotten, which was, he felt, its natural and proper state.
Although the whole thing was patently , some small, traitorous part of him had actually enjoyed it.
He would never admit that, of course, not even under oath in a court of law.
By Friday, the trophy had migrated to a high shelf, where it would gather dust beside the others nobody wanted.
And yet, Marcus noticed with mild suspicion, he did not throw it away.