Work Text:
To say that Anna was curious is the understatement of the year.
In fact, Anna was so curious that she updated her LinkedIn profile just so that she would have something valid enough to be able to request connection with the absolute goddess that was the translator fixing the bugs she'd been logging for the past year.
Not only was she a stunning beauty coming from another world, but she was also respectful, polite, and courteous whenever she resolved one of Anna's localization bugs.
Anna was a Localization Quality Assurance tester (simply abbreviated to LQA) for the Norwegian language. Thanks to her amazing job, she had the occasion not only to work on triple A titles, but also the opportunity of working hand-in-hand (or rather keyboard-to-keyboard) with the stellar deity that was the language coordinator she worked with.
Being based in Warsaw, Anna lived rather well thanks to her better-than-average salary. Yet, since she'd started working with Ms. Arendelle, Ms. Anderson felt that something was amiss.
Recently, Anna had developed the "I should verify this fact with my translator" syndrome, a rare illness that often developed rejections after rejections. However, the twist this time was that Anna's bugs were never rejected: so far, they had always been pertinent and pertaining to the actual subjects at end, and the redhead always made it her duty to be as polite as possible in her reports. After all, far from her was the intention to offend Ms. Arendelle with poor quality reports.
Truthfully, her translator was too much of a pearl: she was a good person, and a stunning human being. For this reason, Anna was resolute to never ever disrespect her with reports that would lack brilliance. Every word, every syntaxical composition, every mark of punctuation had to be carefully chosen.
The result could be deemed "simple" or "minimalistic", but Anna knew that behind each "This issue has been fixed, thank you for reporting!" hid a sweet hearted woman that only cared about bringing the best translation and quality she could to every single Norwegian gamer than did not speak English, though Anna did wonder if they even existed in the first place.
Elsa Arendelle was that good a translator, and through her seven words and one exclamation mark, Anna had managed to fall head over heels for the woman.
This was precisely why Anna had tailored the best LinkedIn profile she could've mustered, just so that she could request the woman as a connection.
Not without surprise, Elsa Arendelle had accepted the connection request.
Yet, one issue became clear to Anna after a whole week of anticipation. The one problem that during all of her thinking, working on her profile, plan scheming, and hours of pondering she had never even considered.
Elsa had yet to write to her.
Just take a minute to imagine the great demise of her ladyship Anna, as she learnt at the end of that one week that her Royal Majesty Elsa was quitting language coordination for their company!
Anna stood dumbfounded in front of the security lady, phone in hand, with a face that had lost all its colors. She felt like crying. She had been working with Elsa for over a year, and had turned down opportunities to work elsewhere for better pay just to continue working with her. Call it a stupid move, Anna was so lovestruck that she did not care.
The following weeks were dull and grey for the redhead. The translator replacing Ms. Arendelle was retarded, and that was a massive compliment. Anna’s bugs were being rejected for the first time since joining the company, and her drop in motivation became noticeable. Less bugs reported, with worst quality. Soon, it felt pointless to even stay in this line of work, if she did not work with the one person that made her work so much easier.
The woman often checked Elsa’s profile on LinkedIn. There laid no information that could help Anna figuring out why the woman had decided to resign from her position. Her former position still appeared just below her picture, like a ghost mocking Anna’s past happiness and hopefulness.
At the nearby Starbucks, Anna was sipping depression out of her Pumpkin Latte, to fuel her own sour mood. She felt that it was pointless to stay in Warsaw now that her goddess had left the company, since anyway she would find better jobs for better pay back in Norway. Mopping back to her apartment, Anna bumped into someone by accident while on the streets. The woman’s perfume was sweet, reminding her of spring in the middle of this cold weather. Without really looking at the woman, Anna apologized immediately with her best Polish, and carried on without paying any more attention to what had just happened.
While on her way back, Anna mourned the loss of the amazing translator. A shame for her company, and a shame for her own used-to-be flawless bug reports. She knew that she had to get a grip of herself not to get replaced. Not that Norwegian people were replaceable anyway, but the redhead always convinced herself otherwise to try and keep the motivation going.
She couldn’t let Ms. Arendelle’s hard work go to waste just because she felt momentarily as if she had been slapped with the biggest rejection of her life. Besides, if one person was to be blamed, Anna decided that it should be her herself for being such a wimp at not writing her translator on LinkedIn after having chatted so much over their work channel. Not that they had actually conversed about anything trivial… to Anna’s demise.
Arriving at work the next Monday, Anna started hearing rumors that a new Lead was to start working in a couple weeks. The person was to take the position of one of their leads that had recently got promoted, and in spite of the quantity of internal applicants, word had it that the person selected was from outside the company. A rare feat in their line of work.
Sitting at her station, and paying no heed to pointless rumors that would never affect her work, Anna started working. Again her bugs were being rejected in spite of being valid, and the woman did not understand how could the translator be butt-hurt this way, knowing that he had not been the one translating everything she was reporting. Decidedly, this jerkface was dead-set on pissing her off, and Anna was reporting bugs by keysmashing. Thankfully her workpal was bringing her tea to make up for lost breaks taken arguing the validity of grammar rules in Norwegian.
More weeks passed, and Anna started losing hope, and faith, that Elsa Arendelle’s profile would ever be updated on LinkedIn. The worst part in all of that was that… Anna had recently learnt that LinkedIn had a function telling you who checked your profile.
The redhead had come up with her own self-punishing nickname: Anna the omega stalker.
The embarrassment and shame had never been more real. She started considering digging a hole in one of Warsaw’s forests and burying herself there with the help of her workpal so that no one would ever find her again. Perhaps she could even do a walk of shame in a Games of Throne fashion. She needed a bell.
Not long after Anna found out about the LinkedIn feature, the boss of her boss a.k.a the manager of her department came directly to her in the morning. Word was that she was supposed to present the job to the new Lead and introduce the team, the tools, and everything done in LQA. Usually it was not the testers’ role to do that. In fact, it was never the testers’ role to do that but this time, the reason given was that: first, she had no project assigned, which meant she was being paid to do nothing… which was not entirely true, but still a fact, and second, the new Lead apparently spoke Norwegian.
Why the hell would a Norwegian accept the position of LQA Lead was beyond Anna’s wildest guesses, but oh well, she would be doing the task assigned to her, since she had nothing better to do anyway.
10a.m. quickly arrived, and Anna headed down with her manager. At the reception, a tall woman with the silkiest palest blonde hair was standing with her back facing Anna. The redhead felt immediately flushed, for some mysterious reason. The anticipation building as the woman slowly turned to face her and her manager felt like the longest seconds in Anna’s life.
Anna felt her eyes open wider than they had ever opened when faced with the most perfect creature to ever walk the surface of the Earth, whose name she already knew, and yet could not pronounce. Her manager, making the conversation next to her, was not moved by the otherworldly display present in front of them. Anna, whose time had stopped the minute the goddess turned, was snapped back to reality when the purest hand accompanied with the sweetest “Nice to finally meet you, Anna” was presented for her to shake.
Anna, to this day, still does not remember everything said that Tuesday.
Elsa, for her part, remembers how cute and dorky Anna was and has been ever since.