Work Text:
Begrudgingly, Yokozawa goes to check up on the Sapphire department; he needs to talk to Aikawa-san about the upcoming promotion for the magazine. As he approaches the area, he hears chattering, frantic call-answering, and pen clicking. However, when he comes into their field of vision, all that stopped. One of the women began to giggle, stifling her laughter with the sleeve of her shirt.
He swallows uncomfortably, “A-Aikawa-san, can we go over your promotion designs?”
“She’s in the bathroom right now,” a brunette stifles her laughter, a mix between fear and hilarity on her face.
He furrows his brows. Sure, he was used to the snickers and meaningless gossip from this department, every male in the company was. They did edit BL after all. This was a bit much, though. He groans, “Is something the matter?”
They all suddenly freeze, “Nothing!”
Now he was beginning to worry. Kirishima does have a bad reputation for spreading around weird pictures of him…
The editor-in-chief finally returns, “Good morning, Yokozawa-san!”
“...Good morning. Do you have the samples of the promotional material ready?”
She strides over to the head of the table, “Yes! It’s right over here.” The other editors seemed to relax in the presence of their superior. Creepy.
Yokozawa follows her to her desk, preparing himself for whatever they were selling this time. He didn't care for this genre one bit, even as a gay guy (or whatever he was).
Aikawa procures this disgustingly pink keychain: two guys holding hands in a cutesy chibi style, one with dark hair and the other with light. He smiles to himself at the silly thing; it looks a bit like Kirishima and himself.
“Ehhhh~? Do you think it’s cute, Yokozawa-san?” Aikawa teases, sorting through stacks of papers on her desk.
He glares at the elated woman, “N-Not particularly. It’s a very well made product. Is it a limited time sale with the magazine?"
“Yup! There’s a new series coming into our ranks from one of my authors, so I figured it'd be nice to do a little promo- Oh!” She pulls out a brightly colored sheet, “Here’s the art for posters, again, for the new story.”
He takes the sample from her, examining the art to see if it was suitable for posting in public areas; for whatever reason, they typically had a hard time grasping that concept.
Yokozawa grimaces at the mere sight of the picture. There he was, in a freakish manga style, leaning against a false Kirishima in the same ugly aesthetic. Hell, even their damn cat was there!! He creases the edge of the poster as he read the pink text, ‘ World’s Greatest First Love: The Case of Tokozawa Yakafumi! Written by Akikawa Yayoi, author of best-selling Junai Romantica. Illustrated by Shungiku Nakamura.’ Tokozawa…
Trying to act as mature as possible, Yokozawa calmly places the material back on Aikawa’s desk, “Forgive me if wrong, but is this some sort of joke?”
Aikawa hides her shit-eating grin, “I-I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Yokozawa-san.” The girl behind him snickers.
He sighs, internally panicking, “Alright, alright. Very funny. Now, do you have the actual poster designs?”
“Those are the actual poster designs.”
He squints at her nonchalance, “...What?”
“...Is there a problem with them..?” She laughs nervously.
“Yes, there’s a-!” He lowers his voice, rubbing the space between his eyebrows. He makes a quick reminder: ‘the more defensive I get about this, the more I become the laughing stock of this company. The more rumors spread, the closer I get to unemployment.’
“You switched two characters in my name and slapped on the cover of a gay porn book. Without my consent, at that.”
“It wasn’t me, it was my author,” she quips.
Yokozawa sighs, retorting, “And how did the author get the idea for this novel?”
She scratches the back of her neck, “Well, as an editor, it is my job to provide my author inspiration…”
His eyebrows twitch, “And where exactly did you gain said ‘inspiration?’”
“Um…” Her eyes flicker around, “K-Kirishima-san does like to chat about your… personal affairs…”
Personal affairs… Several rows down the editorial area sits Kirishima, occupied with correcting a manuscript. He flashes his eyes upwards, meeting Yokozawa’s grimace. He chuckles to himself, amused at the face his partner was making. Yokozawa, however, felt the exact opposite. He wants to take Aikawa’s Exacto knife and chuck it at that smug bastard’s skull.
“E-Excuse me, I just remembered,” he breaks his eye contact, storming down the aisles of editors, “I have a meeting to get to.”
“Good luck, Tokozawa-kun!”
He doesn’t even bother looking back. Better make it two Exacto knives to throw.