Chapter Text
Coffee. Three sugar, two cream. Red silk from Spain. Black nylon.
All written down on a post-it note as you ran around bright and early at 4 in the morning. Desperately trying to prove SOMETHING. Anything.
The need to feel important, helpful, and successful. All on a salary of less than 50k a year. In a big city. So obviously you had other jobs that you worked in. You just had to make it big. Which is how you found yourself getting everything ready for your boss at 4 in the morning in hopes that you could work on a piece and present it to your boss by the end of the week.
You remembered how you got here. Bright eyed ambitious, dreaming big so when the biggest fashion company in Japan-Bakugou corp- offered you a job. You took it immediately. Not thinking to ask questions, negotiate, or even ask about benefits.
So now stuck with a low paying job with high demand, with no benefits whatsoever; and rent higher than the sky scrapers in Tokyo you worked your ass off.
Knowing that it had to pay off somehow. It just had to.
So when you got everything done for you boss Yui. You decided to finally get to work on the suit you had been working on.
Your brother is getting married soon. So why not kill two birds with one stone and make money off a piece you could also give to your brother.
The only good part about your job was each piece that is actually put out you get 13% commission. Much higher than most of your colleagues. But you wouldn’t be credited for the work. Yui would.
Which was amazing and all. But that meant you’d have to self publish if you wanted to make a name for yourself.
You finally had the stencils done along with the measurements. So now it was up to cutting the fabric. Which is super expensive if you mess up. Though you were going to get paid soon anyway. At least from your coffee shop job. The same one you had since high school.
It was about 6 when you finally finished cutting the Mohair blend you chose. I deep black with undertones of blue wool for warmth. You had about 30 minutes until people started coming in to start their work day so you could cut the black silk inside the lining if you wanted.
You did. Which really put a dent on your expenses for the rest of the week until you got paid. But the faster you could finish this project the faster you started getting commissions once it was—hopefully— approved.
Cutting the silk was a lot easier than you thought. It was smooth, easy to cut through and didn’t snag as much as you thought it would.
6:37 am.
The red lights blinked at you reading the time. The little colon counting the seconds. Yui would be in at 7 on the dot. You already got her fabrics she requested, all that was left was her coffee. Which was easy enough.
Just start a fresh pot of coffee for basically everyone in the office today and pour Yui a cup first. Add three sugar cubes and two ounces of sweet cream. Then boom. She gets her “black coffee”.
But while the cup was brewing you heard someone walking fast. Heels clicking. Rushed, frantic. Obviously carrying a ton and worried.
When you checked the time it was 6:48am no one dared come in early. Because why would they? They were successful. They made enough to go buy a six dollar coffee a day. So who the hell was here early.
Being nosy and way too alert at six in the morning you decided to go find out who it was. You walked out of the break room. With your learned confidence—straight posture, relaxed smile, and calming steps—you made your way through the hall of glass walls with glass doors showing everyone’s own office. Black names right next to each door. Under their title—job—they held. Each of them empty, dark. Except Yui's, who was pleased to see the fabric she requested was where she wanted it. But who also looked extremely stressed.
She snapped her head up looking right at you through that glass that separated you. She waved you in with a nod, eye-brows creased and glasses fogged from the dramatic temperature difference from the outside.
It was late winter, still cold but no more blankets of white draped over the city. Now small songs on birds; sparse and short. The soft promise of spring. Prime wedding season when everyone would be buying new clothes for summer. The busy season. But Yui was never stressed. She had plenty of people who worked under her that she could make deadlines weeks beforehand.
“I’m glad you are here early.” Yui began her sleek black hair being pushed up into a high ponytail as she scanned over the fabrics and also brought. “We have tons of deadlines that were recently added to our list of things to do. So you’ll most likely be working a ton of overtime.”
“Overtime? Since when do I get that” you asked knowing that overtime wasn’t a part of your contract. But also hoping the coffee pot would be ready soon so you could leave the very tense office.
“Since now. The Bakugou’s are having their son come in four weeks to model our male wedding collection. Which means anything you make without any help from me will be tagged by your name. We need to finish and finalize 30 new sets. As well as have finished 5 new wedding dress designs, they must also be ready to have a model try them on. I have 15 sets for the male collection done. I need you to finish 10. I'll do 5 more and start on the wedding dresses.” Yui sighed, taking her glasses off and cleaning them off. Before putting them back on and slightly enlarging her eyes highlighting the hints of green in her brown eyes. “Questions?”
“I need 10 suits done in four weeks? Like done as in the design is done or made and have the different sizes ready to be shipped off to be produced to the public?” You asked, trying to do the math in your head on how to make this work while balancing your other two jobs.
“You’ll need to send off the sizing in two weeks so they can start producing them, and have them done before the Bakugou’s son models them and it goes out on magazines.” Yui explained while she rifled through her desk drawer. “So get the design done by Thursday. Get the draft done for the sizing sent to you by Mr. Bakugou’s agent. Make sure it looks good then let me look over them. Then send it to the plant.”
“So basically have it all done in two weeks? And the final draft for the model in four weeks?” You questioned no one, as you wrote this down on a sticky note.
“Yes and yes. Now can I get my coffee? We both have a ton of work to do. As everyone else in the office is about to arrive and they have other deadlines to meet.” Yui exasperated, waving you away.
“Yes of course! I also will drop off the first design today!” You cheered, excited to prove yourself and get your name out there at the same time.
“Don’t forget about your other duties, this project doesn’t get you out of them. That’s why you are getting overtime.”
Hearing that explained a lot; but you rushed out of her office with as much grace as you could possibly have to go and grab her coffee. The pot was done and someone had already gotten the first cup but there was plenty of coffee left.
As you finished making Yui’s coffee you felt kinda buzzed. Like you were high. But you knew you weren’t. So you just had to ride the high to get all your other tasks done. To finish the suit you originally were making your brother and a way to prove yourself, now taking it to the wedding collection.
You were buzzing around the office. Checking inventory, collecting everyone’s finished paper designs for Yui’s approval before they continued. You also were reaching out to model agencies to see if models were interested in modeling for some of your co-workers. Because their time was too precious for simple work like that.
By lunch everyone was in the office and you were running their errands the fastest you possibly could. Since it was Monday everyone went out for lunch together including Yui. Even with a looming deadline by the CEO herself Yui found time to have fun. You wanted to go, but like always you were not invited. You were just the errand runner. Why would anyone want to go to lunch with you? They wouldn’t.
Though the disappointment was short lived. It meant an hour where you could sew together the suit you had all cut out. It also meant you could work on the other nine pieces.
This suit was going to make your career. It was simple but the Mohair blend wasn’t usually seen in fashion anymore, especially with a silk lining.
The pants were the easiest to sew. Most men didn’t care about the different seams. So you went with a French seam, with a Flat-Felled seam for the bottom of the pants. For the jacket, since you wanted to slim the waist line you had the shoulders squared out and the end of the jacket made the illusion of slightly wider hips. Not like an hour glass figure but more of a built one. So for the jacket you used a lapped seam to connect the lining the mohair blend and a bound seam for connecting the different parts.
Because you were going for a built figure with the way the jacket was designed. The pockets were smaller on the outside to prevent any bulging and made deeper pockets with the lining. Promoting to use the pockets inside the jacket rather than the outside and pant pockets.
It only took forty-five minutes to sew everything together. So it gave you enough time to scarf down whatever you packed in your lunch of leftovers. Before you started sketching out a few more designs.
By the time you got the chance to sit down and start designing your second suit you heard laughter and chatter coming down the hall. Which meant errands to run, things to do. Honestly Yui was your boss on paper. Everyone else was actually your boss. Not that you started to realize how much work it was you had to make a choice of which job to call off for the week. Grocery store or coffee shop. But that had to be a choice made later. As someone was snapping their fingers waiting for you to rush over and do whatever they ask like an obedient dog.
More tasks, more time wasted on stupid things like trying to find just the right shade of blue just for them to use the original blue you suggested. But what did you know? Before you knew it, it was four pm. When everyone left to go live out their successful lives. You half expected Yui to stay. So it wasn’t a surprise to see Yui hunched over her desk looking over everyone else’s designs.
You knocked. Holding the suit you made. Yui looked up and crinkled her nose.
“Mr. Bakugou doesn’t usually wear blue.” She stated. But sighed seeing your dropped expression. “It’ll do but don’t be disappointed when he doesn’t model any of your pieces. I approve, send in the design to the plant. Could you also send in my fifteen designs as well. And deliver these to everyone’s mailboxes. These designs are getting basic nowadays.” She shook her head. Before pulling out her notepad and starting to get to work on the other 5 suit pieces and 5 dresses.
By five pm Yui had left. While you were still working on scanning everything and sending it to the plant. Proudly hanging up the suit with the other fifteen that were already made.
You remember helping make some of them. As originally the collection was going to have fifteen suits. But you assumed since a big time model like Katsuki Bakugou was going to model these suits they wanted it to be bigger, more sophisticated, spectacular. Which meant more work. More opportunities.
Once you were finished the time read 6:57pm that same semi colon blinking counting the seconds away. Your shift at the grocery store started at eight and just went till eleven. You were lucky today that it was a later shift.
It just seems everything was working out for you.