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“She’s from accounting.” Naoya gives the cousin in the cubicle he’s leaning on a smug look. “If you know what I mean.”
The man grins. “Accounting, huh?”
“Huh,” Maki cuts in from the next one over, shooting her cousins a cutting look. “Maybe that’s who sprung a leak in our budget.”
Another day, another of Naoya’s conquests, and another murder she regretfully can’t commit: it’s all too common to surprise Zenin Maki anymore. Working in the most uneventful sector of a business built and kept running by people who use the names of its various departments to indicate their dalliances with office girls more often than to indicate any kind of business matter will do that to a person. The only difference between Maki and said office girls is that she’d throw her stapler at anyone in this room if she felt the need.
And she nearly always feels the need.
“Maki-chan,” Naoya shoots back, smirking, “if I were you, money would be the least of my worries.”
She gives him a look that she hopes is about as potent as a stapler to the face. “And what would be?”
“Well, I’d start with the fact that you’re still here.”
“Oh, trust me.” Maki is neither amused nor intimidated. “That is at the top of my list.”
“I don’t know, Maki-chan, I just think it’s a little bit of a red flag,” he goes on, undeterred. “That you’ve gotten all the way up to twenty-five and nobody’s even tried to put you back in the kitchen yet.”
“And you wonder why all you can manage are one-night stands with people who want promotions,” Maki shoots back.
He smirks. In his mind, that apparently isn’t the insult it was meant as. “That’s a hell of a lot better than you’re doing, Maki-chan.”
Maki briefly considers spitting at him, but declines when she realizes that it probably wouldn’t reach its target from all the way over here. A pity, because if it would, she wouldn’t hesitate. He’s like this every chance he gets, and she’s never been a believer in taking the high road.
“I could make your death look like an accident,” she warns him, turning back to the spreadsheet she’d been entering data into before she’d cut in.
He hasn’t bothered being offended by comments like that since he realized that was exactly what Maki wanted. It’s better, in his mind, to let her believe she’s too insignificant to get under his skin, even when she makes him want to break a window with his bare fist.
“And there,” he says, “is a perfect example of why our entire family is going to pounce on you at the reunion because you’re still single.”
She doesn’t know what makes her say it, later on.
“I’m not,” she blurts out.
“Come again?” Naoya’s smirk stays on.
“I’m not,” she repeats. “Single. I’ve been seeing someone.”
He’s enjoying this – she’s sure of that. “I remind you about the reunion and a boyfriend materializes out of thin air? Sounds a little too convenient.”
“Yeah, well,” Maki snaps, “that’s because there’s no one in this family worth telling about something like that.”
**
“Maki, why?”
“He was pissing me off, okay?” It’s not as if she didn’t know all of this already. “He just…gah. I’m sick of him.”
Mai snorts. It’s a very un-Mai-like sound, but then, most of the things Mai does in private are very un-Mai-like. “We all are, but most of us don’t invent boyfriends about it.”
“Well, I did, okay? And now I have to find one by Friday, so if you have any suggestions-“
“Tinder,” Mai immediately suggests.
Maki wishes they were having this conversation in person. It’s far too difficult to properly convey a stare of disappointment over the phone.
“Do you really think a guy looking for a hookup is going to want to go to the trouble of pretending to be my boyfriend for a night?”
Mai pauses to consider, then suggests, “one of those boyfriend rental things?”
“Do I look like I can afford that?”
“Yes,” Mai says flatly.
“Do I look like I want to spend my money on that?”
“Maki, I really don’t know what to tell you.”
A pause. Something clicks in Mai’s head.
“You already have a plan, don’t you,” she sighs.
“I mean, I was hoping you would have a better one.”
“Couldn’t you have led with that?”
“No.”
“Gonna go out on a limb and guess that means the plan is Yuuta.”
Maki slumps. It sounds terrible, put like that. “Yeah, that was pretty much all I had.”
“I mean, go for it,” Mai says coolly. “It isn’t like he’s going to say no.”
“Mai.”
“What?”
“It’s Yuuta.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“And he won’t say no.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Of course it’s not!”
“…why?”
“Because!”
“Maki, you’re not fifteen. You can just admit it.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You’re not subtle,” Mai informs her. “There’s really no point in pretending you’re not into him.”
“I’m not-“
“You buy him coffee mugs with puns on them, Maki. You’re basically married.”
She had done that once, for his birthday their fourth year of university. But she doesn’t think that counts. It’s not like it’s her fault that her best friend of five years acts like a middle-aged father of four who spends his weekends mowing the lawn and occasionally hosts neighborhood barbecues in a twenty-five-year-old’s body. He had been delighted. Maki wonders when doing something a little stupid to make someone happy for three sorry seconds became so damning.
Well. It’s not like Maki to think that way. At all. But it’s Yuuta, and he’s different. He’s been an unwavering constant since the calculus class they’d been forced to take their first year of university, always ready to pick up Maki’s calls, always free when she asks. Of course he’d say yes if she asked him to help her by posing as her boyfriend – he’d probably even be good at it. He’s the only reminder she ever gets that there are men in the world who don’t deserve to be punched into space.
But…
It seems like such a terrible idea, for so many reasons. Bringing somebody so kind to the gauntlet of death that is a Zenin family reunion, for one. Putting his sincerity and awkwardness under their microscope. Asking him to put up with all of the things her family is going to say about her even though she knows their words hurt him more than they hurt her. And…messing with things. Putting herself in a position to wonder why sometimes she looks at her dorky middle-aged dad of a best friend and feels like she needs to do something (about what, she never knows) or she’ll die.
“And really, Maki,” Mai says, softer this time, “do you actually, seriously think he wouldn’t throw himself at you if he thought he had a chance?”
“Yeah, no.”
“Y’know, Maki,” Mai tells her, “sometimes I really wonder about you.”
**
“So I kind of need you to be my fake boyfriend.”
Yuuta blinks at Maki like he’s not sure whether or not he’s all the way awake yet. “I’m…sorry?”
“My fake boyfriend,” Maki repeats.
“No, no, I got that part.”
“Okay, so what’s the deal?” Maki crosses her arms. “You can just tell me if you won’t do it.”
This is not the weirdest request Maki has ever made, but it’s taking Yuuta a second to process. Never in a million years would he have expected that to be her reason for ‘needing to talk.’
“Start at the beginning,” he requests. “What do you need a fake boyfriend for?”
“Oh.” Maybe that would’ve been a better way to lead off. “Family reunion.”
“Did somebody say something?” he asks, concerned.
He knows her so well. People have been poking her ribs about her relationship status at family reunions since she was in high school, but she’s never felt the need to appease them like that before – he of all people would know what that meant.
“Naoya,” she tells him.
Yuuta’s concern shifts to irritation. He stabs a hole through the fried egg atop his katsudon with a chopstick like he always does when he doesn’t want anybody to know that he’s upset. “What this time?”
“Nothing abnormally bad,” she says, just so Yuuta’s poor egg won’t be torn to shreds before he even has a chance to take a bite. He’s never been able to grasp that Maki is too used to this kind of thing to be bothered by it anymore. “But it pissed me off. And I kinda told him I had a boyfriend.”
“Because you want to prove him wrong,” Yuuta guesses.
She smiles, which is bad, because Maki only smiles when she wants to kill someone or else rope them into doing something devious. “I knew you’d get it.”
“I mean, I’ll do it, but…won’t that make things worse later?” he asks. “Like, when your fake boyfriend isn’t at the family reunion next year?”
She swirls the ice at the bottom of her glass with her straw. “Sounds like a problem for next-year me.”
“Sure,” he says faintly. “That’ll work.”
She brightens. “So you’re saying you’ll do it?”
“I mean,” he offers, “I like spiting Naoya too.”
“See, this,” she says, taking her straw out of her cup to gesture with it in his direction, “is why I keep you around.”
“No, you keep me around because you don’t like anybody else.”
“I like Mai just fine,” Maki scoffs, jabbing her straw back into her cup with a little too much violence.
Nevertheless, this is a very accurate assessment, and they both know it. Okkotsu Yuuta has the dubious honor of being able to call himself the only person Maki genuinely likes. (Mai, whom Maki doesn’t like so much as she couldn’t get rid of if she tried, doesn’t count.) It’s the reason they still spend nearly every free second together even though college and their most obvious tie to one another ended three years ago.
“Still,” he replies. “But I can be your fake boyfriend if you want.”
Never mind that he’s been trying to figure out how dead he’d be if he told her he’s wanted to be her real boyfriend since their second year of college. It’ll help Maki, and besides, after all that time, even a simulacrum of that five-year-old dream would be perfectly sufficient.
“You gotta act like you actually like me,” she warns him, “or it won’t work.”
He offers his sunniest smile and almost means it. “No problem.”
Maki narrows her eyes. “Like you really like me.”
“Um, I got that,” he informs her.
“I’m not kidding, Yuuta. Naoya will accuse me of renting you to make a point if you’re not looking at me like you want to rip my dress off.”
Yuuta reddens. “That’s…that’s a lot.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a lot.” She cracks her knuckles, a habit of hers that still makes Yuuta uneasy after all these years. “You gotta commit.”
“I’m very committed,” he protests. “You know that, Maki-chan.”
She gives him a hard look. “Rika doesn’t count.”
“Rika does count!”
“Doesn’t.” She sets her straw aside to pick up her cup and dump as much ice into her mouth as she can, chews for long enough to let half of it melt, then continues, “so are you still in?”
“I can’t promise your creepy cousin’s gonna think I want to” – he can’t bring himself to repeat what she’d actually said, else he die of mortification – “…have my way with you-“
“Yuuta, you’re twenty-five.”
“I’m aware.”
“You don’t have to use old-lady euphemisms.”
He blushes faintly. “There’s nothing wrong with the fact that I happen to find them more comfortable!”
Maki doesn’t really mean it when she teases him about things like that, but it still makes him redden and jump on the defensive. She finds it entertaining. “Anyways, you can’t promise…”
“Right. But…I’ll definitely try.” In his element again, he smiles. “I mean, it’s basically just hanging out with you, right? I’d probably be doing that anyway.”
“No, it’s hanging out with the pit of snakes that is my entire extended family under one roof.” She shakes her head. “Honestly, half the reason I asked you is because if I asked anyone else, they’d probably never talk to me again.”
“But that’s good, though,” he replies. “If I’m your fake boyfriend, don’t I get to tell them off for you?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Why? Someone has to.”
“Because then they’ll start hounding me about how my boyfriend is unsuitable and I need to get rid of him.”
“But I’m not-“
“But I don’t want to have to put up with that for the next eight years.”
“Okay, but-“
“You’re my fake boyfriend, not my lawyer.”
“So you’re doing all of this to spite your cousin,” he asks, “but I don’t even get to go off on your family about how you’re great and they’re idiots?”
“It’s…not like that.”
Yuuta can’t even begin to piece together what she means by that, but he’s known her for long enough to know that an answer so cryptic was meant to tell him not to try.
**
If she were anyone else, they would’ve sent a car.
That’s how the Zenins do things – sparing no possible expense, thinking themselves above taking the train. But not for Maki. If they’re too good for public transportation, it’s perfectly suitable for her. Daughters who are insubordinate and equally ill-suited for the delicate work of negotations and for making impressive matches aren’t worth the expense. So she, in the most unremarkable black dress she could find, and Yuuta, in a too-loose suit that’s awkwardly hemmed at the cuffs, make the trip like anybody else would.
“We met in uni,” she repeats for what Yuuta swears is the fourth time today. “We’ve had feelings for each other for years, but I wouldn’t make a move.” The family is meant to read into that: it would’ve been ‘improper’ not to wait for a man’s cue to act. As a reason for Maki to do anything, it sounds almost farcically unbelievable, but it’ll be what they want to hear. A little something to rub salt in the wound she’s going to inflict on her cousin by proving him wrong. “And you wouldn’t make a move until you got a promotion.” Also a farcically unbelievable reason for Yuuta to hold off on confessing to somebody, but they don’t know that, or him. “So we didn’t get together until six months ago.”
Yuuta, ever-loyal, plays along. “When I got promoted to project lead,” he adds. That, at least, is true, but it doesn’t hurt to let them think that the project in question is in a field far less dull than accounting.
“And then you asked me out because you felt like you had something to offer to somebody of my superior status.” The words make Maki want to be sick, but her family will like them, and there’s no better way to spite them than by pretending she’s become exactly what they wanted. She’s been their factory defect for so long that the news won’t please them so much as it’ll anger them, taking away the only reason they’ve ever had to resent her like they do, and that’s precisely what she wants.
“I don’t like any of this,” Yuuta says listlessly, leaning his head against the window.
“I don’t, either.”
“I’m making myself sound like a jerk.” He gives her a pleading look. “Why don’t I get to be decent?”
“Yuuta,” she sighs, reaching over to pat his cheek. “Decent won’t get us anywhere.”
“I know, but…”
“But what?” she asks. “What would you even say if we didn’t have this cover story?”
He smiles sadly. “That I liked you for years, but I was too shy to tell you.”
It’s such an innocent explanation that it makes Maki’s stomach turn, but then, maybe that’s because she’s realized how much she likes it. A truly horrifying thought. She’s long accepted that she wants Yuuta, but she still can’t bring herself to understand why she feels so passionately enamored with his boring, innocent decency. (Then she kicks herself for thinking so – it’s mean. Yuuta is the kind of person to whom one can never in good conscience be mean.)
“And?” she prompts, trying to sound unruffled. “What changed?”
“One night we were sitting on the fire escape, y’know, like all the kids do.” He only chuckles when Maki rolls her eyes. “And you kissed me.”
She remembers exactly which night he’s referring to and kicks herself for not having thought of that, until she remembers that Yuuta’s never actually given her any indication that he’d have kissed back if she did. She’s always imagined he’d want a nice, normal girl – somebody sweet like him, with a normal job and a normal family and normal life skills like cooking and talking to irritating coworkers without looking like she wants to rip them limb from limb. Not her. Not abrasive, ambitious Maki and her lack of tact and her tons upon tons of family baggage.
“And what did you do?” she asks.
“Dunno. But I asked you out pretty soon after that.” He looks over at her and smiles. “And you didn’t want me to come tonight, but I insisted.”
She raises her eyebrows. “And why would that be?”
“Because I’m serious about you.” He says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “So of course I have to meet your family.”
That, at least, sounds like Yuuta. Leave it to the guy who’d asked his childhood sweetheart to marry him the day after their high school graduation to be serious about her.
(He still contends that he doesn’t know what he was thinking. She still contends that it means she’s got no chance, because someone that decisive would never have held out on making a move for so long unless he never planned on it to begin with.)
“Yeah, I honestly think they’d laugh at you.”
Yuuta deflates a little. “I figured.”
“No, but” – she gives his arm a squeeze – “it’s sweet.”
He shrugs. “You don’t have to say that.”
“Yuuta,” she whines. “I said it was sweet. Don’t mope.”
“I’m not moping.”
She tugs up the corner of his mouth in a weak approximation of a smile. “You look like somebody kicked you.”
Gently, he grasps her wrist and pulls her hand away from his face. That more than anything tells Maki that he’s upset. “Can you stop?”
She pauses. “Yuuta?”
“It’s just…” he burrows his hands deep into the pockets of his too-loose suit coat. “Never mind.”
“Wait, no,” she backtracks, pushing up the armrest between their seats so she can lean against him. “What’d I say?”
“’s okay, Maki-chan. No big deal.”
“Yuuta…”
“I’m just a little nervous,” he reassures her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. It really is unreasonable of him to touch somebody as touch-starved as Maki like it’s nothing and expect her not to be in love with him. Even more unreasonable to be so warm, to have such gentle hands and make Maki want things she’s not supposed to. Her family thinks she ought to want what they tell her to want; she’s trained herself to think she ought to want success and nothing else – but Yuuta makes her want warmth, security, and that’s a thought she’s never liked to dwell on.
“Don’t be,” she tells him, letting her head rest against his shoulder.
**
Yuuta can feel eyes following him almost as soon as he walks into the banquet hall that the Zenins have rented out for Zenin Biopharmaceutical’s annual employee gala. That a room of this size is even needed for a company party is incomprehensible – even moreso is the fact that everyone here is related to the CEO. It’s a family business in every sense of the phrase except its homey connotation, and he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised, but he still is.
“Maki,” he says under his breath, leaning in close, “are all of these people your relatives?”
She scoffs, her grip on his arm tightening. “Unfortunately.”
It doesn’t take long for them to begin to accost her, either. He watches her face carefully for signs of hostility, any clue he can get as to how she feels about each person they have to stop and talk to, but early on, there aren’t many she seems unusually agitated around. She usually does the introductions, as deadpan as possible: this is Yuuta, he’s from her university, they’ve been together for six months. No indication of his background, his job, or anything that would lose him face. He barely even has to talk, or really do anything except smile politely, pat Maki’s hand on his arm sometimes, and look at her lovingly often enough to be convincing. (And that’s really anything but difficult.) It’s…not what she’d warned him about.
Still, he doesn’t think it’s smart to rest on his laurels just yet.
“Oh,” a familiar voice says. “You.”
Sure enough. Yuuta looks up and tries to manage a smile. “Mai-san,” he says faintly. “Hey.”
This is far from his first encounter with Maki’s sister, who, though she’d attended the same university as the two of them, had studiously avoided the pair as often as she could. She’s never really liked him, and frankly, her attitude exhausts him, but they’ve grown into a grudging respect for one another on the basis of their mutual fondness for Maki. Still, that won’t stop her from getting in every dig she can.
She thinks he’s pathetic. He thinks she’s unpleasant in every possible way. They’ve got a good thing going.
“You look like you shrunk,” she comments.
He flaps the excess fabric at the end of his jacket’s sleeve, as if checking to see whether or not she’s right, then looks up and gives her a rare irritated look. “This suit’s not mine.”
“Oh, wow. Never would’ve guessed.” She looks him up and down. “Who exactly told you it was a good idea to go out like this?”
“If it really looks that bad, you should be relieved,” he huffs. “Considering how worried you were the last time we met about me stealing your sister.”
Mai smirks. She seems to have a better read on the situation than Maki does, which should probably scare him. “Guess so.”
Yuuta tugs at the too-loose sleeve of his jacket. “It’s my uncle’s.”
“The creepy one who looks like a cockatoo?”
He’d popped in on Yuuta once while the twins had been lounging around to make use of the superior air conditioning at his old apartment. Apparently it had left an indelible impression. “That one, yeah.”
“No wonder.”
“He’s taller than me,” Yuuta says, pushing up the badly-hemmed cuff of his pant legs with his shoe.
“There are people taller than you?”
“Hilarious, Mai.”
She pauses to size him up. He gives her a look that lets her know exactly what he thinks of that.
“Did you actually think this through?” she asks after a pause.
“Mai, I already told you-“
“Not the suit.” She glances over to make sure Maki is otherwise occupied and nobody is listening before she says, “the fake date thing.”
“Oh.”
“Did you?”
Yuuta shrugs. “She needed my help.”
“And did it ever cross your mind that you’re a terrible liar?”
He narrows his eyes. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I have eyes,” Mai informs him. “You’re into her.”
“Oh.” No point in denying that. “Well, I mean, it’s…it’s none of my business.”
“Your own feelings are none of your business?”
“I mean, I…it’s not like I’m going to say anything, Mai-san. That’s not what she wants me to be.” He smiles – what can you do? – and shrugs. “Why else would she have asked me to be her fake date?”
“Because she told Naoya she had a boyfriend, Yuuta, catch up.”
“No, but-“
“You know something, Yuuta?”
“No, but honestly, I doubt I want to.”
She doesn’t care. “I really think your stupidity is contagious.”
He gives her a look. “Really? So you’re getting dumber because we’re having this conversation?”
“No, but my sister is.”
**
“Maki,” Yuuta informs her, “your sister is rude.”
She rolls her eyes. “What now?”
“She’s making unfounded accusations.”
“I’m sure,” Maki replies, taking his offered arm again. Neither wants to let go; both figure the other would if it weren’t an effective way of marking them as a couple. “Wanna hide out by the food tables and pretend we don’t know anybody?”
“I think that kind of defeats the purpose of me being here,” Yuuta points out. “If nobody sees us.”
“Yeah, but people will.” She looks over at him to gauge his interest. “We just…act like we don’t see them seeing us.”
“Okay,” Yuuta says warily, “but isn’t that gonna look a little weird?”
“Meh.”
“Okay,” he sighs. “Hiding it is.”
**
“And what is it that you do again?”
Yuuta tries to smile, even though he knows he won’t want to by the time this conversation is over. He already doesn’t, really, what with the way Maki’s aunt is staring him down.
“I’m an accountant,” he tells her. There’s no easy dodge here, and no point in lying – best to get it out. Even though watching the woman’s expression sour as soon as he tells her makes him want to shrivel up like an unwatered plant.
“Oh,” she says, smiling politely to – barely – mask the fact that she doesn’t mean to be polite at all. Then she turns to Maki. “Remind me, Maki-chan, where did you find him?”
“You make him sound like a couch I got off the side of the road.”
The aunt sniffs. “You’re not answering my question, Maki-chan.”
“Uni.”
“Hm.”
“Well,” Maki says curtly, taking his arm, “I think my sister is calling me.”
It’s almost a graceful exit. If Yuuta’s head weren’t spinning, he would be impressed.
**
“Mm. You know, a Zenin requires a certain degree of…quality.” A man who can’t be more than five years older than Maki looks Yuuta up and down like he’s trying to price an antique. “In our standard of living, and…” he makes his way back up to Yuuta’s face – “in the people we choose to associate with.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Yuuta says politely, even though he wants to ask whether any degree of that ‘quality’ has ever actually been extended to Maki. “Maki has very high standards.”
“Ah, good.” He laughs, probably condescendingly. “Though I would hope that she might learn to, mm, correct certain lapses in her judgment.”
“I’m sure she will,” Yuuta replies. He’s under no illusion that the lapse in judgement this man is referring to is him, but really, it’s not worth thinking about. He doesn’t need to be accepted by the family of a woman who’d never want him in any way her family would have a reason to disapprove of.
“One of which is having this conversation,” Maki cuts in, her smile like the open-mouthed grin of a shark. “I’m sure you won’t mind if I correct myself.”
This seems to be Maki’s forte, cutting and running. He’d never known she was so good at segues.
“That was a good one,” he whispers as soon as they’re out of the man’s earshot.
“You shouldn’t let them talk about you like that,” she whispers back.
“What do you want me to do, make a scene?”
“I mean-“
“It’s okay, Maki.”
“Yuuta…”
“Seriously. I expected this.”
It hurts, he can’t deny that, but he’d expected it to. He knows he’ll never be what these people want, nor what she really deserves – it’s all right. He’s accepted it, knowing he’ll be able to love her better if all he is to her is another friend. He doesn’t need to be the only one by her side; it doesn’t need to matter what her family thinks of him. It’s…fine, really. No need to take anything to heart. These aren’t good people. The only one he cares about is Maki.
But her shoulders are a little slumped even though, for once, she’s not the one being insulted, and he wishes, futilely, that he could’ve done more than just take the heat off of her for a little while.
She’s the only one he cares about, always has been.
“So don’t worry about me,” he tells her. “I’m only here to help you.”
**
“So this is the boyfriend, huh?”
Yuuta looks up from his plate of too-small appetizers at the sound of a voice he doesn’t recognize, and he thinks he has a general idea of who he is when he sees the sneer on the speaker’s face. “That’s me,” he says, smiling, then inclining his head politely. “Okkotsu Yuuta. Maki’s boyfriend.”
How he wishes he could say that and mean it. Oh, well.
“Hm.” The man looks…oddly pleased. “I was going to ask which agency she rented you from, but you don’t seem professional enough for that.”
This is definitely Naoya. He doesn’t wait for Maki to cut in.
“Everyone in this family is incredibly rude,” he says, smiling, his tone as chipper as ever. “I’ve never been to an event where every new person I met openly insulted somebody else within a single sentence.”
Naoya looks like Yuuta imagines a squashed insect hanging onto its last vestiges of life would feel.
“I’ve been trying to play along, but I don’t feel like it anymore.” He looks over at Maki with a proud smile. “Anyways, what’s your name?”
“Maki-chan,” Naoya says cloyingly, “this is a joke, isn’t it?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Nope.”
“You planted him.”
“Definitely not.”
“You found somebody you knew we’d disapprove of and trained him to air your grievances.”
“Actually, no, he’s doing this all on his own,” Maki replies, as if Yuuta isn’t there. “He’s been way too nice to everyone but you.”
“Because you told him I was the only one who’d know you lied if you showed up without a date, I’m sure.”
“No,” Yuuta says innocently. “It’s just because you’re an asshole.”
Maki visibly blanches. She only ever hears Yuuta swear in emergencies – when he almost sets the kitchen on fire, the time he had to get stitches after a mishap with a cooking knife – and never in polite company. Granted, Naoya’s not polite company, but…still. It’s so out-of-character that she doesn’t really know what to think.
“I see,” Naoya says smugly. “Like attracts like, is that what they say?”
“Oh, no, I’m nothing like Maki,” he replies. “Maki’s way smarter than me.”
“I don’t think you realize what it says about you if my cousin is actually smarter than you are.”
“You’re the nepotism baby, right? The CEO’s son?” Yuuta smiles. “What would you know about intelligence?”
“Yuuta,” Maki hisses.
“Hm?”
She gives him a look that’s supposed to tell him to shut up before he gets her written out of the will. It doesn’t work.
“It’s not like she’s ever gotten a chance to show it, but,” he goes on, “Maki’s brilliant. Maybe you would know that if you let her do something harder than putting things into spreadsheets.”
“Would I?” Naoya doesn’t even seem angry – he’s cool, rather, far more composed than Yuuta had expected. The look on Maki’s face makes him think that should scare him far more than anger would. “What would you know?”
“More than you would.”
Both men freeze at Maki’s voice. Neither had been expecting her to jump in, which might’ve been a mistake – she’s never been the type to let people talk about her like she isn’t there.
“I mean, I don’t want to get disinherited,” Maki says casually, “but it’s not like he’s actually wrong.”
At that, Yuuta’s pasted-on smile starts to look genuine. “Yeah,” he agrees firmly. “That.”
“Hm. Well, I concede.” Naoya raises his hands in surrender with a sickening smirk. “It doesn’t seem like you rented this one after all.”
“Nope,” Yuuta says blithely. “I love her.”
Maki wants to roll her eyes at that, but she doesn’t. “Toldja.”
“If he wasn’t your boyfriend, when would he have had time to give you such idiotic ideas?”
“Oh, I didn’t give her the ideas,” Yuuta replies, entirely earnest for once. “I’m just repeating stuff she told me because I know she won’t say it.”
Naoya, for once in his life, looks nonplussed. Maki takes the opportunity to drag Yuuta away by the arm before he can do any more damage than he already has.
**
“Yuuta, I appreciate all of this, but…” Maki exhales shakily. “Can you not?”
“What?” Yuuta tilts his head a little to the side like he hasn’t heard her right. “Why?”
“You can’t just say that stuff!”
“Sure I can,” Yuuta replies, leaning back against the balcony railing. The night breeze is a little chilly, but it’s a welcome distraction from the strain in Maki’s voice. “It’s all true.”
“Have you ever considered that there’s a reason I haven’t already punched Naoya into space?”
“Um,” Yuuta says cautiously, “not…not really.”
“Look, okay? I can resign, whatever. I can get out of here. But what am I going to do when my only job skills are in a field that my family pretty much has a monopoly on?”
“Pharma’s a pretty big industry,” Yuuta tries to reassure her. “They can’t possibly-“
“See, that’s what you don’t get.” Maki pinches the bridge of her nose. “You think I want to be stuck in an office entering data into spreadsheets for the rest of my life?”
“No, but-“
“The only reason I still am is because if I tried to get out, they’d make sure nobody else would hire me.”
These moments are frightening – being reminded how much of Maki’s life her family holds the strings to goes so starkly against what he knows about her. To Yuuta, Maki has always been the most capable person he knows; she’s brilliant, dynamic, driven, all of the things that he’s not. But to know she can be all that and still not hold the reins makes him feel impossibly small. He’d only wanted to tell that to the rest of her family.
Apparently, that had been a bad call.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate that you wanted to stick up for me, because believe me, I do,” she says sadly. “It’s just…if I can’t get out, rocking the boat is only going to make things worse.”
“I’m sorry,” Yuuta mumbles. “I just hate how they talk about you.”
“I…I know.”
“I won’t say anything else,” he promises. “I’ll act like I think they’re great, I promise. No matter how much I hate it.”
“You don’t have to do that, Yuuta.” She lays her hand on his arm. “And, I mean…watching you go after Naoya was…well.” She looks down so he won’t see her cheeks flush in the lamplight. “That was entertaining.”
“Entertaining?”
“For lack of a better word.”
“Oh. Uh…thanks.”
“Yuuta?”
Her hand lingers on his arm. He starts to wonder how long it’s possible for her to stay like that before he loses consciousness. It’s Maki - probably no more than five minutes. “Mm?”
“Thank you,” she murmurs. “I’m…sorry I worded it like that. I, um…I was freaking out a little.”
“You’re fine.”
“You’re a good friend.”
Thanks, he thinks miserably. Why don’t you just stab me while you’re at it?
**
He tries.
Maki can tell he’s trying with all his might not to say anything. It’s a valiant effort. Maki’s mother makes a snide comment; his eye twitches, but he doesn’t say anything. A cousin doesn’t even attempt to conceal her contempt when she asks Maki what she sees in her so-called boyfriend; he doesn’t even bat an eyelash. He’d taken her words to heart so thoroughly that she almost wishes she hadn’t said them.
It’s better this way, says the part of Maki that isn’t convinced it might be nice, for once, to have somebody to fight for her. But the part of her that wants to punch her cousin for daring to insinuate that Okkotsu Yuuta is anything but worthy of her doesn’t like that answer one bit.
“So your boyfriend’s been causing problems,” Mai tells her, sidling up to Maki with a fluted champagne glass in her hand.
“You could say that.”
Mai hadn’t bothered with a date, and it looks like she’s been studiously avoiding conversation all night – good call. Mai, who lacks Maki’s interest in research and doesn’t mind sticking with clerical work, has a lot less to lose by saying the wrong thing, but she’s even more afraid of slipping up than her sister. “Why’d you let him?”
Maki grimaces. “Couldn’t stop him.”
“Don’t think I believe that.” Mai smirks. “You didn’t want to, did you? Liked having someone stick up to you for once?”
“Can’t afford it even if I did,” Maki huffs. “One more wrong move and they’re going to stick me in the mailroom.”
“Why don’t you just quit?”
Maki gives her sister a cutting look. She knows damn well why Maki can’t just quit.
“Accountants make decent enough money,” Mai says, smirking.
“Zenin Mai.”
“What? I’m right!”
“I know you didn’t just suggest that.”
“Know what I actually suggest?”
Maki sniffs. “This oughta be good.”
“Go get your Master’s,” Mai tells her. “Do research or whatever.”
“You really don’t think our family would try to keep people from hiring me?”
“I mean, they don’t care about academia,” Mai reasons. “Not profitable enough.”
“Yeah, but they do care about me being ruined if I leave them.”
“Yeah, well, they suck.”
“They suck,” Maki repeats with feeling.
“Well,” Mai teases. “There is always still Yuuta.”
“I’m not making Yuuta pay my living expenses when he can’t even buy a suit that fits him properly.”
“To be fair,” Mai grudgingly admits, “that suit was probably expensive as hell.”
“Well-“
“He wanted to look classy, so he borrowed it from somebody way bigger than him. Duh.” She shrugs. “He could’ve bought a perfectly fine suit in his actual size if he hadn’t wanted to impress you so bad.”
“He didn’t want-“
“Maki,” Mai says, as gently as she can when she wants to punch her sister in the teeth, “he just about got into a fistfight with Naoya for you.”
“I’d have done it for him,” Maki deflects.
“Yeah. And you’re in love with him.” Mai jostles her arm. “Case in point.”
Maki doesn’t bother to deny it this time.
“Ask him about it,” Mai tells her. “After tonight.”
“How?”
“Uh, ‘hey, what are we?’ would be-“
“No, how?”
“Sorry?”
“After tonight. How am I supposed to just be, like, ‘hey, so, my family hates you and I’m completely trapped here, but you should totally date me anyway’?”
Mai shrugs. “Don’t see the problem.”
“Oh, really.”
“It’s not like you cared what they thought back in college,” Mai argues. “Or in high school, or middle school, or after college-“
“Yeah, but I do care what they’re going to do to him.”
“Hm?”
“You really don’t think they’re going to try to make his life miserable if we’re together?”
“Oh.” Mai kicks the toe of her stiletto against the carpet. “I guess I see your point.”
“And that’s assuming that he would even want to.” Maki joins her sister in kicking the carpet. “Which I still don’t think he does.”
“Tell yourself that,” Mai scoffs.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That he’s so into you he can barely see straight and I don’t know how you’re stupid enough to have missed it?”
Maki rolls her eyes. “Clearly you’ve never been into someone if you think it looks like that.”
“Maki,” Mai informs her, “you’re delusional.”
“I’m not-“
Maki never finishes that sentence.
“You know what?” Naoya’s voice rings out across the ballroom from the tables by the buffet, loud enough to draw half of every eye in the room. “Fine. Fine. Why should I care who takes that bitch off our hands?”
Maki doesn’t need to ask which ‘bitch’ he’s talking about. Nor who he’s directing that at. Or even really what he’s going to do about it.
“What,” Yuuta asks icily, “did you just call her?”
“Oh. Hilarious. What are you going to do, stab me?”
Maki turns, knowing this won’t end unless she intervenes, but Mai grabs her wrist as she tries to retreat. “Don’t even think about it,” she hisses. Maki’s desperate glare does nothing to dissuade her.
“What is your problem?” Yuuta’s voice pitches up like it always does when he’s angry. “What did Maki ever do to any of you people to get treated like this?”
“What’s your problem?” Naoya shoots back with all the dignity of a third-grader on the losing side of a playground fight. “Coming in here acting like you know everything and we’re wrong?”
“You know what’s funny, Naoya?” Yuuta’s almost shouting – Maki has never heard him shout before. “I actually do know more than you.”
“I’m-“
“If you’re the kind of imbeciles” – that’s a very Yuuta word, ‘imbeciles’ – “who think you can get away with talking about my Maki like that.”
Mai doesn’t miss a beat – “’his’ Maki?”
“Shut up,” Maki hisses, face reddening. “I have no idea why he’d say that.”
“Get away with it,” Naoya repeats.
Yuuta doesn’t say anything. That makes Maki wish, more than ever, that she could jump in, but Mai’s grip on her wrist still doesn’t slacken.
“I don’t think you get,” he says coolly, “that this family has a pecking order.”
“Oh, trust me, I get that just fine.” Yuuta seems to have recovered his composure. “What I don’t get is what idiot put you at the top of it.”
Either Naoya has cooled off or he wants Yuuta to think he has, because he merely scoffs at that. “And where, exactly, did you get all of this information?”
“Maki talks.”
“Have you considered that this is what she wants you to think?”
“No,” Yuuta says, dead-serious.
“Then you’re even more hopelessly naïve than I thought.”
“No, I’m not,” he replies. “I trust her.”
“Stupidly.”
“She’s a good…” he swallows hard. “Maki’s a good girlfriend. Why would I not trust her?”
“Because she’ll say anything to get you to-“
“No, actually,” Yuuta cuts him off, “that’s you.”
Naoya’s nostrils flare, and maybe he’s realized he’s not capable of saying anything right now that won’t make him look hopelessly idiotic, because he doesn’t say anything at all. It’s a surprisingly smart move.
“You wanted to know how I know all of this?” Yuuta cuts in before he can pull himself together. “Simple. I love her.”
Naoya apparently doesn’t think that’s worth dignifying with a response. He says nothing.
“And I don’t need to know anything about your family to know you’re wrong because I know her.” Yuuta doesn’t even sound angry anymore – only sad. “And that she’s beautiful, and brilliant, and she doesn’t even realize how funny she is. And that you probably keep her down because you know that she’d eat you alive if she ever got high enough up in the ranks to get compared to you.”
Naoya says nothing. Yuuta takes his stony silence as an excuse to go on.
“And honestly, it’s just pathetic,” he says. “That you could be putting all of that talent to work and instead you spend all of your time belittling her because you know that all you are at the end of the day is a nepotism hire who got lucky enough to have a CEO for a dad.”
“Says the pathetic, no-name accountant who looks like he crawled out of the forest in the dead of night?”
“Oh, I am pathetic,” Yuuta readily agrees. “I don’t know what Maki sees in me. But that doesn’t mean you’re any less of an idiot.”
“If that’s the case,” Naoya seethes, “why don’t you take her off our hands already?”
Yuuta’s smiling now – Maki doesn’t know what to make of that. “Gladly. One of me makes a better family than fifty of you.”
“Hm, I’m sure,” Naoya sniffs. “It’s about time-“
“That we get out of here.”
Maki grabs the back of Yuuta’s jacket like she’s pulling a kitten along by the scruff, and before he even has time to react, she’s dragging him away, and his feet have to scramble for purchase to follow. Naoya seems satisfied. Maki almost wishes she could give the last word, but she’s too dazed to think of anything good, and dragging Yuuta away is the best she can do.
“Oh, and,” Yuuta calls over his shoulder, “none of you are invited to the wedding!”
“Was that,” Maki hisses, “really necessary?”
**
“What are you doing?”
Yuuta leans over Maki’s shoulder in the backseat of the taxi to check. They’re nosy like that, always reading each other’s phones over their shoulders, and she’s been on hers since they got in the car – he’s curious. But he barely sees what’s on the screen before she switches it off.
“Sending them my two weeks,” she says flatly.
Yuuta’s eyes widen. “I thought you said you couldn’t do that!”
“Well, if I don’t, my cousin is going to put me in the mailroom after what happened tonight, so I might as well try.”
“I’m…I’m sorry.”
Maki wants to snap, but she doesn’t. “It’s fine.”
“I got carried away,” he admits. “I shouldn’t have.”
“No,” she agrees. “You shouldn’t.”
“I thought you said it was fine.”
“That’s because I was trying not to be mad at you.”
“Maki…”
“I don’t know who’s going to hire me now,” she says despondently.
“I’m really sorry, Maki, I swear,” Yuuta sighs. “I just…couldn’t keep sitting there and letting them say that stuff.”
“Why?” she asks drily. “I’ve done that my entire life.”
“But you shouldn’t have!”
“Oh? I shouldn’t have done what I had to do to survive?”
“Maki, everything I said was true,” he presses.
“Oh yeah?” she gives him a tired look. “Even the part where you said you loved me?”
Normally, Yuuta would stammer and blush and deflect, but he’s never seemed more certain than he does now. “Especially that part.”
“Funny,” she says to herself. “Mai told me you’d say that.”
A stiff blush colors his cheeks. “You talk to Mai about me?”
She shakes her head in amused bewilderment. “Is that seriously surprising?”
“Um, yeah?”
“She told me I should ask.” She shrugs. “I wasn’t going to, but it kind of came up.”
“Why were you talking to Mai about me?”
“Because sometimes I like complaining, I guess.”
Yuuta’s face falls. “About me?”
She reaches across and pats his arm. “More about me, really.”
“I’m confused, but okay.”
She swallows hard, then clarifies, “about how mad it made me that I wanted you when there was no way you’d ever be interested in someone like me.”
“Wait, huh?”
“What I just said.” She doesn’t want to clarify. “I was into you, you weren’t into me. Simple.”
“You…thought I…” Yuuta trails off. “Wait, what do you mean I’m not into you?”
“That you’re not into me, Yuuta. How much clearer do you want me to make myself.”
“Wait, wait,” he stammers, taken-aback. “You thought I wasn’t interested?”
“I have literally said that four times in the last minute!”
“Wait, no,” he backtracks. “That’s not it at all, Maki.”
“Then what is?”
“Honestly? I was just never going to say anything.”
Maki turns so quickly her vision swims. “Why?”
He shrugs. “Figured I didn’t have a chance.”
“Well,” she huffs, “you figured wrong.”
**
“I see you were very accomplished as a student.”
The interviewer taps a pen against his clipboard, eyes half-closed. Maki wonders if he’s tired or that’s just the face he always wears.
“Well,” she says evenly, “I wouldn’t call it that, but I was serious, yes.”
“And yet your resumé only lists clerical work at your last company.” The man looks up at her. “Care to explain why?”
“It was…an executive decision,” she says carefully.
“Based upon?” the man presses.
“Personal preference,” she says, as neutrally as she can.
“Hmm,” he mumbles. “And might that relate to why you’re interviewing with their main rival?”
“No,” Maki lies. “I genuinely think that Kamo Technologies would be-“
“Zenin-san,” he says politely, “off the record, you should know that most of us have no particular fondness for your family.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“And I think that gives me a rough idea of your reasoning.” He taps his pen again. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Zenin-san, but you didn’t want to work in an office, did you?”
No point in lying about it. “No, I didn’t.”
“So you were forced to.” Tap, tap. “Despite your considerable accomplishments in research when you were a student.”
“Yes.”
“Because of a personal conflict within your family.”
“That’s fairly accurate.”
“You resigned, but they had enough feelers out in the pharmaceutical industry that you figured your best hope of being hired was-“
“To work for a company that had a bone to pick with ours,” she finishes for him.
“Impressively conniving,” he says, barely smiling. “I was curious when I saw your name on the application. Zenins rarely leave their own company, though…” he glances down at her resumé on his clipboard. “I can see what might have driven you out.”
“My goal was to work in drug development,” she tells him, even though she’s said that at least four times since she got here. “I wanted to find a company that would make better use of my training.”
“Well, we do like stealing from Zenin Biopharmaceutical.”
Maki shouldn’t, but she smiled. This had been her one and only backup plan and she hadn’t been sure if it was a worthy gamble.
Mission accomplished.
**
“Yuuta,” Maki announces, breezing through the doorway, “you better watch out.”
Yuuta, who’s not even remotely surprised when Maki barges into his apartment without warning anymore, shuts his laptop and turns when he hears her come in. “For what?”
“Well,” she tells him, smiling slyly, “someone might want to steal me.”
“Steal you?” Yuuta asks, brow furrowing. “From me?”
She rarely feels so playful, but she feels like she’s earned it today. “Well…remember my backup plan?”
“The one you said you were pretty sure wouldn’t work?”
Maki nods. “I had an interview today.”
Yuuta gets where this is going and his eyes widen. “You got it?”
“Not officially,” she says, “but my interviewer did mention that Kamo Technologies likes stealing.”
She lets that sink in.
“Wait, you mean I didn’t ruin your life?”
Maki fights off the urge to laugh. “Clearly not.”
He’s out of his chair and across the room and kissing her within seconds, and when he’s finally had enough of sloppy, eager kisses, she pulls away, lacing her arms around his neck, and smiles.
“Was that,” she asks, “a relief kiss because you didn’t ruin my life, or a congratulations kiss?”
“Both,” Yuuta laughs, his hands on her waist, squeezing her hips. “Both, Maki.”
It’s easy to believe. Never, in any of the hypotheticals she had used to lull herself to sleep back in college even though she would’ve kicked herself in the shin before admitting to thinking about them, had Yuuta loved kissing her as much as he really does. Any excuse he can get is good enough.
“Well,” she says, patting his shoulder, “don’t count your chickens, right?”
“Aw. That’s such a me thing to say.” He looks – probably concerningly – truly touched. “Am I rubbing off on you?”
“No,” she calls over her shoulder, walking to the kitchen to forage for something to eat. “Not even a little bit.”
But he is. He knows that. And it feels pretty good to know that she’d been the sort of person he wanted to rub off on all along.
**
Sent this to Naoya, the message reads. He blocked me.
Yuuta opens the photo even though he can see it just fine in its original format. It’s a selfie, Maki smirking with all the self-satisfied smugness she can muster as she holds up a Kamo Technologies employee badge against her crisp white lab coat, and he zooms in on the text. Zenin Maki, it reads, Drug Development. And it’s not as if she hadn’t made him join her in staring reverently at the employee badge for nearly an hour after she’d gotten it in the mail, but it makes him smile just as wide as it had then.
(He wonders if she’ll ever have to get a new one, and how she’d feel about her nametag reading ‘Okkotsu Maki’ instead, and if four months is too early to be entertaining thoughts like that. He reasons that he’s got five years behind him even after only four months. But still.)
Beautiful :), he replies.
Her smile is supposed to be smug, but she looks happy, too. She looks a little like she did in college, full of passion and plans for a future that hadn’t yet felt as bleak as it had since graduation; she’s cut her hair so short that it barely brushes the collar of her lab coat. Everything about her seems lighter. Mine, Yuuta thinks, and the thought tugs pleasantly at his heart.
Haha thanks, she replies. He’s not offended. Maki is terrible at compliments. Always has been, and he doubts that the fact that he’s allowed to tell her how he really feels about her now is going to change that.
What’s Naoya’s number? He asks her.
…why?
Wanna try something, he tells her.
There is absolutely no logical reason to engage with Zenin Naoya any further than he absolutely has to and, frankly, Maki’s new job is better vengeance than he could ever hope to exact. But he can’t help but copy the number Maki texts him into his phone and send it the exact same picture.
Would ya look at that?
He can’t help it. When it comes to Zenin Maki, he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop finding reasons to want another last word.