Chapter Text
“I’m home.”
Normally, Ibara would offer Jun a chipper greeting while she responds to another slew of emails from her company laptop. Normally, Ibara would be on her second coffee of the night. Normally, she’d play the part of the businesswoman-after-hours until she dealt with just enough emails to slam the laptop shut and shake off every buttoned-up hour of the day she’d spent so far and start the slow but ever-enjoyable process of melding into the worn couch while Jun makes instant ramen, for them to both eat while they watch a shitty reality TV show or Jun boots up a video game.
Instead, Ibara’s company laptop and work phone sit forlornly across the table from her, the laptop completely shut down and the phone switched off. She’s on her third glass of wine, which means she’s past the point of pleasantly buzzed and on her way to unwisely drunk. (Three glasses of wine is ‘spill her entire sob story of a childhood to her roommate’ drunk. Four is ‘text her ex, who she hasn’t talked to since the last time she drunk texted and hasn’t seen since he got that new fancy job at the Himemiya firm’. Five, and she’s waking up in the bathtub with the worst hangover of her life.)
So, really, Ibara can’t be blamed for how the only greeting she can offer Jun is a worn-down, put-upon sigh. Maybe if she sighs hard enough her soul will just leave her body entirely, and she won’t have to figure out what the hell to do about the situation she somehow found herself in. Maybe.
Jun walks into the main room before Ibara can further contemplate how to escape the horrors of her job. “Goddamn, what happened to you?”
“Work,” Ibara grouses, taking another sip of wine. It isn’t the greatest — she’s had better, mostly on the Tomoe Foundation’s dime — but it’s good enough she doesn’t grimace as it makes its way down and has enough alcohol to get her drunk, which is all she’s looking for right now.
“Bad enough to break out the wine?” Jun says, a teasing half-smile curving across his face. Ibara just rolls her eyes, lifting the glass to her mouth again.
“What the hell does it mean,” Ibara says once she’s swallowed her next mouthful of wine, “when your boss starts paying you to gossip with her at a cafe for an hour. While on company time.”
Jun sets his bag down, moving into the kitchen and grabbing two packets of instant ramen. “Is that why it’s a wine day?” He refills their electric kettle, turning it on while he grabs a pot and two bowls. “I mean, if you’re still getting paid, I don’t see the issue.”
“I’m getting paid extra ,” Ibara stresses. “As in, Tomoe Hiyori, for some fucking reason, thinks it’s worth her time and money to hand me double what I would make in that same hour in cash once I get back to my desk.”
Jun hums. Ibara can’t see what he’s doing past his own back, but she can hear the crinkling of plastic packaging as Jun opens and separates out the components of their delightful ramen dinner. “I don’t know, rich people are weird. If she’s willing to pay for a goddamn midday coffee date, she can do it. And you benefit.” The kettle hisses as it reaches a steadier and steadier boil, then switches itself off. Jun carefully pours the water into the pot, turning on the burner before adding the ramen noodles. “Just saying, I wouldn’t complain if it were me getting paid to get coffee with Tomoe Hiyori.”
Ibara swirls the wine around her glass. Maybe she shouldn’t go for a fourth glass once she’s done this one — she can’t quite stop herself when the next words to leave her mouth are “It’s not a date .”
Jun snorts. “I didn’t mean it like that kind of date. How many glasses of wine have you had?”
There’s maybe two small mouthfuls of wine left in the glass. Ibara drains the rest in one go. “Three,” she says.
Ibara grabs the wine bottle. She blinks, and then somehow Jun is right next to her, a hand around the neck of the bottle and a pleading but wry expression on his face. “Three is definitely more than enough,” Jun says. Ibara scowls — she would fight him over the bottle, but she’s drunk and there’s a nonzero chance the bottle spills and makes a mess while they do.
“One more glass won’t kill me,” Ibara says. It’s not exactly the tone of voice she uses when leading big names in business to whatever boardroom Hiyori decided to occupy for her slew of meetings this time, but it’s something close, albeit a little wine-sodden. “Besides, we both need something to drink while I go over the rest of what fucking happened at work today.”
Jun’s eyes narrow slightly, but then he relinquishes the wine bottle. Ibara pours herself another glass (probably fuller than is considered proper, but she doesn’t really care) while Jun finishes making the ramen and brings over the food, along with a wine glass for himself.
“So,” Jun says, pouring himself a glass of wine, “what’s up with your boss today?”
Ibara takes another sip of wine, steeling herself. She’ll definitely need it, to get through this anecdote.
-
“Ibara-chan!”
Ibara lets out a soft breath that, if you were reading her mind or being particularly uncharitable, could be interpreted as a sigh. “Yes, Tomoe-shi?” she says. There’s a slowly growing stack of sticky notes on her monitor of items for Hiyori to review before the end of the day, but Ibara has worked as Tomoe Hiyori’s secretary for long enough to know that if Hiyori doesn’t ask for the list of items, the only thing she gains from bringing them up is Hiyori’s annoyance.
Hiyori perches on an unoccupied corner of Ibara’s desk, pink lips pouting ever-so-slightly as she looks down towards where Ibara sits in her office chair. (The devil on Ibara’s shoulder whispers that Hiyori looks particularly good in the cream-coloured skirt and blazer combination she wore to work today. The rest of Ibara tries really, really hard to not stare directly at Tomoe Hiyori’s magnificent ass, because that ass owns more money than Ibara could dream of and staring at it will only get her fired. Ibara stares directly at the spreadsheet open on her monitor and hopes she isn’t flushed.) “I’ll pay you double your hourly rate to come get coffee with me and let me bitch about that awful social I had to attend last night!”
Ibara nearly chokes on her own spit, gaze shifting from the spreadsheet — Ibara doesn’t even remember by this point what the numbers on the screen are supposed to mean — to Hiyori’s face in a split second. “I’m sorry, Tomoe-shi— Can you repeat that? I’m worried I may have misheard you—”
“You heard me just fine and you know it,” Hiyori says in that same chipper tone of voice, the one that Ibara knows to mean you can’t fool me with those tricks, the one she only pulls out when Ibara lays it on a bit too thick. Ibara swallows and stares at Hiyori’s very pink, very pretty lips while her brain loads and reloads like an old computer. Hiyori doesn’t say anything, just stares at Ibara with that slight pout that Ibara thinks has to be something she trained to be a lethal weapon, because if her face made that expression naturally it would elevate her even closer in Ibara’s head to the kind of untouchable god of a woman that Ibara is nothing more than a tool to.
And then Ibara realizes that the silence between them is starting to draw close to awkward, and that Hiyori’s stupidly perfect pout is there because she’s waiting for Ibara to respond, so Ibara chokes out an “If you declare this part of my secretarial duties, I can’t refuse,” before Hiyori takes advantage of this moment of weakness to strike even closer to Ibara’s heart.
Hiyori’s lips spread to reveal pearly white teeth — it’s unfair , how she probably paid for her teeth to be this perfect, and Ibara is here begging for her scraps to make a living — as she beams with a smile that could melt any snow and claps her hands together. “Great! Let me grab my purse from my desk — I know this adorable place down the street that makes the best espresso—”
Her idle chatter fades as she moves away from Ibara’s desk and towards her own office, separated from the small waiting area that Ibara manages for her by a sleek frosted glass door. The Tomoe Foundation is a large, well-established financial group with a history of wealth that makes Ibara seethe, just the tiniest bit, so when Ibara landed this job she was surprised at the modern appearance of the management company run by the Tomoe family’s secondborn. Still, Ibara isn’t one to complain about the amenities that come with such a slick-looking building, even if she can only make use of them a fraction of the time she should as she puts out the fires that Hiyori is supposed to deal with.
The glass door between them muffles just enough of Hiyori’s speech that Ibara is surprised she maintained a coherent thread of thought between her departure and her return, not stopping for breath or to wait for Ibara as she breezes easily towards the elevators at the far end of the room. Ibara scrambles behind her, quickly logging out of and shutting down her computer before shuffling all open documents into a prim manila folder that gets locked in a desk drawer, the key snugly tucked in her own purse. (Ibara prides herself on her prioritization of her clients’ privacy. She likes to think it’s part of the reason she even got this job in the first place, when her resume is so… sparse.)
The elevator lets out a pleasant ‘ ding ’ and Hiyori steps inside, Ibara quick to follow. Maybe it’s habit, maybe it’s tactical, but either way Ibara places herself a step behind Hiyori, just off to the left. Hiyori scans her employee badge before hitting the button for the lobby floor, and Ibara is silently glad that she can take advantage of Hiyori’s express clearance. Nothing is worse than going home exhausted after a day of work and having to cram yourself in the elevator with countless other sweaty bodies before finally being freed from the looming domain of the office.
Hiyori’s words faded out sometime between Ibara’s scramble from her desk and stepping inside the elevator, leaving Ibara with nothing but generically pleasing elevator music to fill the silence. They reach the ground floor in no time at all (curse CEOs and their special perks), and Hiyori smiles amiably at the security manning the entry checkpoint on the way out. Ibara observes her behaviour with a careful eye — though she isn’t a stranger to buttering up a particularly well-connected higher-up or gaining trust with well-placed service staff to gain information that would be otherwise impossible to attain, Ibara doesn’t do it with nearly half the ease that Hiyori seems to. Ibara doesn’t know if she admires or resents how Hiyori can do everything that took Ibara years of careful training and experimenting and failing with nothing but her own innate amiability and cunning.
The walk to the cafe is pleasant — it’s just barely past midday, and still early enough in autumn that Ibara isn’t yet feeling the chilling bite of the wind. Hiyori strikes an imposing figure a step in front of Ibara, shoulders squared and heels clicking against the pavement of the sidewalk like she’s a woman on a mission. (In a way, Ibara supposes she is. What that mission has to do with her, she still has yet to find out.)
Ibara tries and miserably fails to keep her eyes on the slight bounce of Hiyori’s impeccable curls as she walks, instead of the glorious view she is being presented with her absolute bombshell of a boss’s backside.
It’s not like Ibara wants to be attracted to her boss. She resents herself for it, most days — it’s a terrible breach of employee protocol, never mind the general code of social conduct. Worst of all, Ibara resents herself for letting any one person have this much control over her without even knowing it, the worst kind of power — the one Ibara is most likely to let take control of her, without even realizing. It’s the most dangerous kind of power in the world to her, especially after—
Ibara shakes her head, a movement miniscule enough that ideally, no one but her would ever know it existed. Now is not the time to be thinking about him . All of that is in the past, and Ibara has a job that can put his to shame, and her boss is taking her out on a coffee date—
Well. Maybe Ibara isn’t exactly choosing the best topics to distract herself with.
They reach the cafe, and Ibara dutifully steps forward to pull the door open before Hiyori has to, gesturing for Hiyori to pass through the cafe’s entrance with a pleasant smile. Hiyori pauses for a moment — maybe Ibara’s movement was too swift for “just” a secretary — seemingly appraising the situation, before a pleased and almost haughty expression falls over her face, walking into the cafe like she damn well owns the place. (And who knows — maybe she does. Ibara’s learned to never underestimate how many things in this world are controlled by the same few rich families.)
It seems this isn’t the kind of cafe where you stand at a counter to order, or maybe Hiyori oozes enough of a rich, old money vibe that the cafe owners know she wouldn’t stoop so low as to order her drinks that way. Whatever it is, a kind-faced young man in an apron bearing the cafe’s logo comes over with a notepad and pen in hand. “How may I help you two this afternoon?”
“An espresso and a salmon quiche for me, and—” Hiyori turns to Ibara, flashing her a brief but sunny smile. “You don’t mind if I order for you, do you? I want to see if I can guess your tastes right~”
Ibara opens her mouth to protest, because she can damn well order herself a coffee, but pauses just before the offending words leave her mouth. This is her boss, and this is an hour of paid lunch and then some, so Ibara manages to eke out a socially appropriate “Of course, since you’ve offered me the generosity of covering my lunch today,” before she says anything particularly stupid.
Hiyori beams again, and Ibara marvels slightly at how easy it is to make her smile by just acquiescing to her every whim, and how that sunny smile can so easily shift into a stormy anger that even Ibara dislikes having to face. “Great! In that case, one of the breakfast sandwiches and your seasonal latte for her.”
Their server scribbles down the order intently, then nods and cheerfully lets them know that the wait shouldn’t be any longer than twenty minutes for the food, and that he hopes they don’t mind waiting since it’s all prepared to order. Hiyori waves him off with another good-natured smile and exchange, and then Ibara is left alone with her summer storm of a boss.
“Tomoe-shi, you really didn’t need to go through all that trouble for me,” Ibara says once Hiyori has turned her attention back to their… whatever this is.
“I won’t hear it,” Hiyori responds, more firmly than Ibara is expecting. She still gets shocked sometimes, by the edge of steel that hides beneath those floral perfumes and frilly blouses and shiny heels. “When was the last time you took a proper lunch break, hm?” Ibara opens her mouth to answer, but is stopped in her tracks by a glare that straddles the line between disappointed and scathing. “And don’t say a protein bar and a ten minute pause in your work to scroll… I don’t know, the stock reports or something, you seem boring like that.”
Ibara’s mouth hangs open for far longer than she would care to admit before she grasps onto a response. “You’re a CEO of a major company that’s part of an even larger financial group,” she points out, “shouldn’t you take interest in the stock market?”
Hiyori gives her a little flippant wave of her hand, an almost dismissive gesture that says I’ve heard this before, but I’ll entertain you with an answer anyways . Like Ibara is being graced with the privilege of Hiyori’s explanation. “Well, of course I pay attention, but that doesn’t mean I find it interesting , Ibara-chan.”
There it is again — that infuriatingly diminutive way that Hiyori insists on using to refer to Ibara. There’s no way Hiyori can just be that— that willingly intimate with people, of course not, to go so far as to refer to them so familiarly, so that leaves only a few explanations: either she’s trying to make Ibara feel small, or she’s trying to make Ibara lower her guard.
Whatever the reason, it scrapes and skids across Ibara’s skin and down her spine until she has to suppress a full-body shiver of cold, murderous rage.
She takes a slightly deeper breath, willing the sparks skidding beneath her skin to calm. Think about the paycheck, think about the paycheck, think about the paycheck—
“Eichi-chan hosted another one of those awful socials,” Hiyori starts, and it takes Ibara about half of that sentence to realize she’s talking about Tenshouin Eichi , the head of the fucking Tenshouin Foundation , with all the casualty of a schoolgirl talking shit at a sleepover, “and of course I went because I have to, but some of the people she invites? I know they’re just sheep for her to fleece, but sometimes it’s too easy, you know?”
Ibara nods her head, because she can’t think of a single appropriate response to give here. For the first time in a long time, Ibara finds herself at a complete loss for words.
The kind-faced server returns with their drinks, and as he sets down the significantly larger mug in front of Ibara she notices that it’s decorated with intricate latte art in the shape of a swan. Pretty, if useless.
“There was this one lady— I swear, she wouldn’t stop complaining all evening about this ‘evil’ pet hotel that ‘mistreated her darling baby’ while she was off on a shopping spree in Milan,” Hiyori continues seemingly without taking a breath. “Which I can completely understand, because I would never want my darling baby Mary to be mistreated if I was away.”
Ibara already knew that Hiyori had a dog, but she notes that the dog’s name is Mary. Who knows when Hiyori might decide to add ‘dog walker’ into Ibara’s list of duties.
“But then —” Hiyori says, before taking a sip of her espresso and sighing contentedly. “She said that the hotel that mistreated her dog is the same one I send my Mary to, and I know that’s just flat out wrong. I’d never send my dear Mary to somewhere disreputable or untrustworthy, of course.”
Ibara takes a sip of her latte. If this entire hour consists of her doing nothing but eating free food on Hiyori’s dime and listening mutely to Hiyori’s rich people woes, this will be easier than she thought.
“Anyways, she said she was going to buy the pet hotel and tear it down to build herself a new apartment building,” Hiyori continues. “Can you believe the nerve? And I bet you she was an entitled, privileged asshole to all of those sweet people who take such good care of Bloody Mary…”
Ibara takes a note that the dog’s full name is Bloody Mary, internally wonders if it was after the urban legend or the drink, and then takes a second, ironic note for herself that even Tomoe Hiyori has a standard of what she considers “entitled, privileged assshole behaviour”, despite being one of the very entitled and privileged bastards herself.
Hiyori takes a deep breath, then turns that beaming smile back on Ibara. “How’s the latte, Ibara-chan? Was I right?”
Oh, so she has to engage in small talk . That’s fine, Ibara knows how to do this.
“Perfectly to my tastes, Tomoe-shi!” Ibara offers her a smile of her own, just long enough to incite feelings of ease without lasting long enough to be creepy.
Hiyori’s eyes seem to narrow briefly, and Ibara’s mind kicks into gear, analyzing her words to see what she could have possibly said wrong—
“One salmon quiche and one breakfast sandwich?”
A melodious voice breaks Ibara’s train of thought, and Hiyori lets out an excited noise as their food is placed in front of them. “Please enjoy~” the server says.
Ibara watches Hiyori primly take a bite of the salmon quiche in front of her, and decides that she was wrong in her assessment of danger. It was likely just a misinterpretation of an odd twitch, that’s all. Nothing more. Hiyori is so different from her — even after the few months Ibara has spent as her secretary already, there’s absolutely no way Hiyori could know anything about her that Ibara didn’t already want her to.
Ibara takes another sip of her latte, the smooth flavours of caramel and apple and cinnamon blending harmoniously on her tongue. Tomoe Hiyori is just a rich socialite with an entire building of people making it seem like she has a knack for business, and a pretty face that Ibara doesn’t mind taking advantage of when it suits her. That’s all.
Nothing more, and nothing less. Ibara will make it so.
-
“And then, of all things, she goes and tells me to start sending out the necessary memorandums to purchase that fucking pet hotel!”
Jun snorts, reaching for the wine bottle again. He and Ibara share a disgruntled look, then Jun sighs and does the responsible thing of putting the empty bottle away to be recycled and reaching a hand out to Ibara to help her to her room. Ibara resents the implication that she’s that drunk, but the room sways and tilts around her as she stands up, so maybe Jun’s assistance is… not needed , but appreciated. Yes. That works.
Jun deposits her safely on her bed and asks, “Do you need help with clothes or anything?”
Ibara wrinkles her nose. Jun laughs at her reaction, holding up his hands defensively. “Okay, okay, I get it. Figured I’d ask after that time you, y’know—”
“We do not talk about the dress incident,” Ibara hisses, and Jun takes that as his cue to leave Ibara’s bedroom and shut the door behind himself. He thoughtfully turned on only the lamp on Ibara’s nightstand, meaning she doesn’t need to get up again to turn off the overhead lights after she wriggles out of her blouse, bra, and skirt. She attempts to use her admittedly affected motor control to take off her pantyhose, but the tight nylon prevails, and she sighs before accepting her fate to sleep in pantyhose tonight. It’s fine. Ibara’s slept in worse conditions. There’s a sleep shirt tossed haphazardly over the end of her bed — she must have been in a rush this morning; Ibara honestly can’t remember anymore, which means the wine is doing its job — that she manages to tug on before collapsing backwards into her bed. Her glasses go on the nightstand, next to a half-full water bottle from the night before that she finishes off before turning off her lamp.
Even in her wine-sodden state, sleep takes a while to come to Ibara. Maybe because it’s only Wednesday, and she still has two more days of work; maybe because she still hasn’t stopped thinking about her boss’s perfectly manicured fingers holding an espresso cup and chatting animatedly about pet care.
Ibara sighs, accepts that Tomoe Hiyori is going to haunt her dreams tonight, that she gets one night of weakness, one more night of the impossible, and finally manages to fall into a fitful sleep.