Chapter Text
Knocking on her boss’s door shouldn’t make Rin as nervous as it does, but reminding herself of how utterly unremarkable this interaction should be doesn’t actually do much do abate the anxiety she feels. She stands, not quite ready to knock, outside the door to her boss’s office while she contemplates just how important it is she delivers this proposal now, or whether it can be sent in an email—her favorite way to avoid any sort of confrontation.
And then, there’s that thought she can’t help but get rid of: the fact that Gurubai is retiring at the end of the month and she really, really needs the promotion she might get out of it. It’s long overdue, and if she plays her cards right… Well, she could use the extra money. Mom could use the extra money.
So she sucks it up. A quick knock and then she’s sticking her head into Yang Souji’s office, grimacing at her boss’s idea of business casual, a flannel and khakis that say ‘hipster’ more than they say ‘CEO’. Rin grimaces even more at the way he smiles at her, condescending and predatory and altogether slimy while she approaches to hand over the stack of papers that comprise her latest proposal.
“Right on time, like you asked,” she says, a little too forcefully. Under any other circumstances, Rin would probably cringe at how awkward it is; right now, she doesn’t really care.
With blank, glazed-over eyes, Souji, owner of Iron Wolves Brewery, scans over the first page her proposal for all of half a minutes before throwing it unceremoniously in the recycling bin next to his desk. Rin’s blood boils, but all she does is ball her hands up into fists. “Good work, Rin. But I actually put Tyler on the new social media campaign. He knows the demographic, you know?”
‘The demographic’ is shorthand for hipster guys with too much money to burn on shitty craft beer, so the fact that their new Hesperian intern, fresh out of college, is the one put on that project makes sense. But, it doesn’t stop Rin from being pissed the hell off, so she speaks up before she can think to bite her tongue. “So I did all that work this week for…”
“Maybe you can help Tyler,” her boss says with a shrug that clearly says this isn’t his problem. “Actually, I do have another little project to put you on…”
When Souji gets up from his desk to cross to the table near the door of his office, the way his hand brushes against the small of Rin’s back is anything but accidental—she knows it, has known it the last time he grabbed her arm during a meeting when he didn’t really need to, and the time before that when he pressed in just a bit too close while she was trying to highlight an Instagram post she’d made.
And yet, every time she lingers outside the HR office she talks herself out of it. Maybe she’s overreacting—maybe she’s not, either, but Iron Wolves isn’t winning any awards for being all that progressive. Considering she’s their only female employee, she shudders to think of their policy on workplace sexual harassment.
Twenty minutes later, when Souji’s done mansplaining the way he wants her to look over their demographics and post engagement, Rin lingers in his doorway while she contemplates her next move.
“You know what, I’m actually not feeling so hot,” she admits, trying to look the part too. “I think I’m gonna take tomorrow off.”
The unexpected day off leaves Rin with plenty of time to take care of all the chores that have been piling up because of her laziness. That is, it would leave Rin with plenty of time if she were to take advantage of it. Instead, she procrastinates with a trip to the gym, and the sweaty, tired walk home seems entirely unappealing, so she takes the subway.
Except, she doesn’t get off at her stop. It’s habit for Rin now to end up getting off just a little further uptown, where she makes her way to Brookdale Memory Care, the most depressing place on Earth. Just stepping inside fills her lungs with the smell of bleach and stale food, an unappealing combo that makes her stomach turn as she checks in at the front desk and climbs the four flights of stairs to the all-too familiar room.
Before she enters, Rin makes a point of unclenching her fists and taking a deep breath. Every thought of Souji and of work and of the money she’s paying this place leaves her mind, and well-practiced routine that Rin has down pat.
The TV is on when Rin walks in, the people on the screen acting out some poorly written melodrama. It doesn’t matter anyway, the action on the TV going entirely unnoticed. Instead, Hanelai is sitting in a stiff, beige armchair and staring at the window.
“Rin, sweetheart,” she says in Speerly—a sure sign that she’s having a bad day. Rin tries not to sigh as she sits down across from her mom, in an equally uncomfortable chair and with the best view of the building next door’s roof.
She tries to smile, too, the key word there being tries. It probably ends up looking more pained than anything, so she’s glad her mom doesn’t notice. “Hi, mom,” she says. “Have you had lunch yet today?”
“You should be at work,” her mom says instead of answering. Which is fine by Rin. She’s used to random shifts in conversation by now, almost likes the way that talking with her mom feels a bit like verbal sparring, keeping her on her metaphorical toes. Almost likes it.
Part of her wants to tell her mom about Souji. While she contemplates it, she stares at an inky puddle of water on the roof next door. But no, better not to worry her mom. “I took the day off so I can come see you.” And, despite herself and despite the circumstances, Rin cracks a smile. “Is that such a bad thing?”
She can’t help how her mom brings out the best in her, brings out the side of Rin that still smiles and doesn’t worry so much. She wishes she could be this Rin more, the one that believes in the best and isn’t so scared for the future, but each day that part of herself seems to drift further and further away.
“You shouldn’t do that,” her mother says, offering what she clearly treats as sage advice. “Too many days off makes you lazy.”
“I know, mom,” Rin says fondly. “But I just can’t help wanting to see you more often.”
She just wishes she’d realized that before having to put her mom in the only memory care facility she could afford after showing signs of Alzheimer’s before she was even sixty.
Hanelai gazes out the window some more, and while Rin isn’t sure what about the gray skies should be so fascinating, she knows the conversation is, for right now, over. With the silence, she takes the opportunity to grab the issue of People magazine on the coffee table and flip through it.
On the cover is one of the most well-recognized faces in Hollywood, Yin Nezha. While Rin objectively gets the appeal of his sharp cheekbones and six pack abs, she can’t quite relate to how the masses on Twitter seem to think he’s basically a marble statue come to life. The supposedly swoon-worthy article that accompanies his cover feature is just as trite, proclaiming that Nezha loves traveling (who wouldn’t when you have millions of dollars to burn?), his work (the reason for his millions of dollars to burn), and his girlfriend, Zhang Ming (just plain gag). Disinterested, Rin tosses the magazine back on the coffee table and enjoys the company of her mom.
Sitting in the overpriced coffee shop down the road from her apartment building is supposed to guarantee Rin gets some of her work done, it does nothing but ensure that she ends up over-caffeinated and stressed. It’s this state that has her calling Kitay to come join her, hoping that his presence might soothe her enough to, if not get any work done, at least calm some of her anxieties about her mom and how much of an absolute douchebag her boss is being.
It doesn’t quite work out that way, but all the best conversations with Kitay never go quite the way Rin expects them to. When he plops down across from her with a matcha latte in hand, the first words out of his mouth are, “Did you know the entire tax system of feudal Nikara was completely fucked up? I’m talking from the bottom up, it’s sincerely a miracle that in six hundred years we’ve managed to reinvent the system in a way that works.”
“And I’m so happy we managed to unfuck it just in time for Nikara’s revenue service to entirely screw me over every year,” she mutters, but it’s hard to be in a sour mood with her best friend around. “I take it your dissertation is going well?”
“So well,” he drawls sarcastically. “And work? I hope the impromptu day off means that you finished that proposal early.”
Rin winces. “About that… Souji gave it to fucking Tyler. Tossed my shit right out and gave me some menial task while our intern gets to be out of his depth with a project like that.” It had frustrated Rin at the time, no doubt about that, but around Kitay her anger at the unfairness of the situation flows like water from a broken tap-ceaselessly, until she’s ranted about the situation and both of their drinks are empty and Kitay is staring at her with a mix of fascination and horror.
“Are you okay?” He asks her, which feels a bit moot.
“Peachy,” she remarks, but all the bite is taken out of it. “And don’t even get me started on mom. I swear they keep upping the price to give her that single room every month.”
“And they probably are,” Kitay concedes. Rin can’t argue. Memory care is expensive, and for her mom’s comfort Rin couldn’t not opt for a single room, but it does mean she’s burning a hole through her budget every month.
Rin packs up her belongings with the air of someone clearly frustrated, hasty movements and a bit more force behind throwing out her empty cup than what’s strictly necessary, but she can’t deny that sharing some of the burden with Kitay has done wonders to make her feel better. But as she turns away from the trash can, half-eaten muffin still in hand, she catches a glimpse of a flash outside the cafe window.
It draws her attention, and then another flash—this time, she recognizes it as a flashbulb from a camera. Bewildered, she stares at the man on the street, his camera aimed directly at her. Once she realizes what’s happening, she ducks behind a nearby pillar and looks over at Kitay. “What the fuck?” She asks, her mind startled and her vision still flashing different colors in the echo of the flashbulb.
She’s saved by the barista coming around the counter and sticking her head out the door to wave the man off with some rather creative curses, but that does little to explain why that just happened—or even what just happened.
“Sorry about that,” the barista says with an apologetic smile, before going back to work, clearly unbothered by having a man just take a picture of one of her customers through the window. She looks young, though, and Rin tries to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she’s new on the job and terrified.
Kitay, though, looks out the window and down the street, then back up, as if searching for signs of the man and his camera. “I feel like that probably counts as harassment in some way? If you want to talk to the police about it, I can be a witness for you.”
Rin shakes her head, her hand waving Kitay off. “No, no, I’m not gonna bother.” She has too much on er plate, after all, to add connecting with the police over an incident that confuses her more than it bothers her.
Still, as she exits the coffee shop with Kitay in tow, she glances down the street towards the direction the man fled in, and can’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t entirely a coincidence.