Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Mira meets them on an otherwise ordinary Friday. Well—maybe it being a Friday makes it out of the ordinary, given the usual quiet that comes before the weekend.

An ordinary Friday would consist of free breakfast and an hour scrolling on her phone before deciding that being bored is too agonizing to take and resolving to actually get some of the mindless maintenance tasks done around the office.

So… she meets them on an extraordinary Friday. Fridays would, of course in theory, be a great day to meet people if they're pleasant enough. Exchange a few niceties, use one of the premade questions like 'Any plans for the weekend?' or comment on the weather.

She's getting ahead of herself.

The ticket comes in while she's on her third cup of coffee, a light buzz tickling at the back of her skull that she pretends is alertness. It isn't anything noteworthy outside of vagueness and urgency—every user thinks their issue is the most urgent, without exception. They're wrong more often than they're right, but it's all the same to Mira.

"Floor eight," her manager mumbles. "I'll let them know you're on your way. Have fun."

Mira, meanwhile, tries not to scream as he manifests out of seemingly nothing behind her. Mystery's always doing this, scaring the shit out of her and staring at her blankly when she jumps... at least she's pretty sure he's staring at her. God, he needs a haircut. Long bangs judge her as much as hair can.

"The next time you do that, I'm punching you," Mira snaps. Mystery gives a little sigh in return that might just be a laugh.

"You say that every time." Mystery waves dismissively as he shuffles over the unmarked line that separates their two workspaces. "You know it would be a crime to hurt this face."

He wiggles suggestive fingers beneath the curtain of bangs. Mira raises an eyebrow. Who is she to deprive the world of an unmarred… whatever is under all that hair.

Thing is—he's not even really her manager. It's just a fancy title that only one of the two of them gets to hold, and she lost a thumb war back when they were handing out promotions like hotcakes because a neighboring company went under after a strike over low pay. Fear makes companies do funny things—like paying one of their two IT workers more than the other, despite equal experience.

And so she huffs and puffs but pushes aside the clutter of boxes and miscellaneous peripherals until she can just reach the bright red straps of the repurposed fried chicken to-go tote that holds at least seven kilograms of wires and replacement components. All because he technically outranks her. Her manager throws her a small wave with his unfairly-good-at-thumb-wars hand when she flips him off on her way out.

Out is a poor translation of up from the basement that they hide the technicians away in, where sunlight dare not grace their wretched forms. It's actually done wonders for her complexion—two years into this job, she stood still while waiting to cross a street in the winter and a schoolkid almost plowed her over, then tumbled off complaining that she was practically invisible. She posted a picture of of one hand splayed out in the snow to her private Instagram story later that day, counting it as a smug win when her brother messaged minutes later making fun of her poor tech skills that lead to posting a blank story.

So now she's crawling out of the basement, a pale monster unleashed. Three flights of stairs is nothing, really—

"Ew, are you sweating?"

"I'm going to sweat all over you, Jinu."

Jinu feigns a gag from behind the front desk. "Inappropriate! My report to HR just grew another three pages." He twirls a Rubik's cube between his hands, spinning once. "Implied physical contact." Spinning twice. "Involved bodily fluids." Spinning three times, then giving a scandalized gasp. "Flirting with me? During work hours?"

"Not flirting!" Mira calls over her shoulder when pressing the elevator button the first time doesn't miraculously cross space and time to make the elevator doors open in front of her. Four seconds pass and it's still not there, so she presses up arrow another five times just to be sure.

"Another page! You're calling me ugly. On company property."

The elevator dings happily and doors slide open. She shrugs the to-go bag higher and does a little twirl just to make sure he catches her grin. "Make sure they know I'm calling you stupid, too. While getting paid by company funds."

When the last leg of her daily gauntlet—the twofold trial, made up of manager and front desk guy—disappears between two doors whose pattern she decides is actually beautiful and wonderful and worth all the wait, she's gifted with a quiet few minutes.

It begins to feel a bit less like a gift when those same doors that granted her shelter slide open again, revealing a shiny sign across the way, carefully carved text reading Kim Celine. An arrow helpfully directs her curiosity to the right and down a long hallway that only gets longer and longer when she steps onto the floor. The CEO's door doesn't look any different than all the rest. Eesh. Can't even afford any gold plating? Maybe the company really is at risk.

Mira shoulders her bag higher and turns pointedly to the left. The unholy child of an open concept and a 90's cubicle nightmare looks almost passably like an office in the sunlight. Mira decides then that each floor must have had a different designer—and promptly ranks this one as the worst she's seen so far.

A head pops up over a cubicle wall on the far side of the room like a gopher. "Delivery?"

She must be talking to someone else. Mira glances left and right, giving the Gopher Girl enough time scamper out from the the world's most airy set of dividers and right up to Mira herself. It's then that she begins to think that maybe, she's made some terrible mistake.

Gopher Girl looks up at her with big sparkly eyes that give off waves of excitement at the gift of food that Mira is sure to provide her. Mira blinks down at the short girl—woman—who can't be any older than her. The woman's frumpy and informal dress shirt falls sort-of fashionably off one shoulder and makes itself entirely inappropriate for the workplace.

"Delivery, right?" Gopher Girl asks again, one hand already stretching out to grab at Mira's bag. "I'll just take that… wow this thing is heavy. You know, I don't think Jinu is supposed to let you up here? I'm not gonna, like, tattle or anything because I'm not a snitch, but I'm pretty sure that he's supposed to just take it from you and then I go get it from him."

She disappears back into her cubicle with Mira's bag. Despite this, she keeps talking.

"I mean sure, I like having things hand-delivered by pretty delivery girls," she continues. She peeks up over the divider again. "Did you know that, by the way? You're like super hot. And super tall! I didn't know that they let hot-tall people work as delivery drivers." Gopher Girl disappears again. There's some rustling and clanking. "Not saying that delivery is a cursed profession or anything! I'm just saying, y'know, for safety or something. Don't want you to get hit on or hit by the top of your car."

More clattering follows that, interspersed with some humming. Mira, a bit dumbfounded, thinks that it's time to update to her list of reasons to quit.

Those big sparkly eyes pop up again. "Oh, sorry. Am I supposed to tip you?" She adds something about America under her breath. Maybe she tries to whisper it, but it's still loud enough to almost make out from across the room.

"No offense," Gopher Girl says with a laugh as she makes her way back to Mira with empty hands. "I don't have any cash or anything—and, by the way, I think you maybe turned my order into a bunch of cables? And a keyboard somehow. Not that I'm complaining! I love cables. Yum. But, uh, if you have something edible for me maybe, I'd love to grab that from you instead."

"I'm from downstairs," Mira manages to say when she finally cuts in.

The girl blinks up at her, then her eyes widen. "From hell..?"

"The IT department."

"Oh."

There's a long pause as the two of them stare at each other. Her neck is going to hurt in the morning from how she has to keep this weird angle down.

"Can I have my stuff back?" Mira asks slowly.

"Oh!" Gopher Girl startles. "Right, yes, of course. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry—wait, no, I'm Zoey! I submitted the ticket!" Gopher-Girl-turned-Zoey bounces quickly between extending a hand to shake and bowing profusely. She rights herself before Mira has a chance to react, her face now a bright red.

Zoey continues to mumble out all manner of apology as she shuffles back to what must be her desk. Mira follows along behind her, weaving between empty desks. She promises herself that she's going to set Mystery's bangs on fire the next time he falls asleep at his desk. That'll teach him to give her work to do at the job she's paid for.

"So yeah, uhm, of you're here anyway, that means you can help me, right? I think I included all of the details on the email, right? By the way, I'm really sorry for calling you hot. I mean, you are hot, but I definitely should keep that to myself. And I will be. In the future. Especially if you don't report me to HR. I don't need another page in my file, you know? Celine called me into her office like five times last week."

"You didn't include a single detail in your email," Mira sighs.

Zoey comes to a stop just outside her cubicle and glances up at Mira curiously. "Huh." She bites her lip, looks down at the floor, then furrows her brow and looks back at Mira. "You sure?"

"Positive."

"I'm not doubting you or anything but I'm really sure I included everything. I pressed the power button and nothing happens. Right? Is there anything else you need to know?"

Mira pinches the bridge of her nose and pushes past her into the cubicle. Her extra cables and testing peripherals, with a startling speed, have been strewn about the area like something akin to a murder scene, if the murdered was a robot. She silently mourns both her own time that will need to be spent cleaning this up and the loss of an innocent robot life.

"Did you hear any sounds when you turned it on?" Mira asks, grabbing handfuls of cords and stuffing them back into her bag. "Anything else unusual in the last few days? Any changes to your setup here? Add any new devices from home, anything like that? Other devices still turning on okay?"

"Nope! Nothing added, nothing changed. I'm pretty sure the computer is the only thing that's plugged in, so I dunno how to answer that last one." Zoey shrugs. "You know as much as I do, I promise."

"You promise," Mira repeats, unimpressed.

"A ZoPro! Like if a GoPro was a really bad camera but also really good at keeping promises."

There's something so stupid about it that it catches Mira off-guard. She coughs to hide a chuckle that definitely doesn't happen. A brief movement catches her eye and in her peripheral vision, she catches Zoey's smug grin.

Mira fixes a frown onto her face and calls it quits with cleaning up when she manages to pull one of her extra Ethernet cables out of a tiny cap along the side of the desk. How in the hell did Zoey manage to get it stuck in there so quickly? She tosses it back into the bag alongside the USB cord that had been wrapped in circles around a picture of a turtle with a frame that could have only been handmade by a toddler. Whatever.

She opts instead to focus on the thing that will get her out of there the fastest. Kneeling down, she takes a stab at the power button for the mini tower fixed onto the bottom of the desk. Sure enough—no response.

"You said nothing changed? It worked fine yesterday?"

"Yup." She pops out the 'p' with a bit too much emphasis.

The whole bottom of this desk is a mess of dust and wires—it's almost hard to tell if the cleaning team is afraid of getting too deep into Zoey's workspace or the poor cable management. Mira pokes around until she finds the switch along the back, flips it, wipes her hand over her jeans, then tries the power button again. Nothing.

"Hey, do you think this is going to take a bit? I can add you to our takeout order, if you want! Rumi and I were gonna get some pickles for lunch," Zoey pipes up again.

"Some pickles?" It doesn't really register what she's asking, already back to poking around the wires again. She flips the switch back, feels for the power cable and finds—

"Yeah, nine of them." Zoey nods. The pickles, of course. What else could she possibly be talking about?

Mira looks at her, a bit baffled. "Nine of them…?" She pictures nine pickles, laid out in a neat row. Picturing it doesn't help.

"Zoey, I've got your—oh, hello."

The new voice is followed quickly by a new face, one that offers Mira a polite smile. This woman, with her long purple braid, takes Mira in curiously for a moment.

Mira gives her a wave from where she crouches. The woman squints.

"You're… Kang Mira. Technician rank two, from the IT department." The woman seems pleased with herself, and gives a bow. "It's nice to see you again."

"Do I know you?"

Zoey gasps. "Is she allowed to say that to you? Do we need to fire her? The audacity!"

"Zoey," the woman hisses, slapping at Zoey's side weakly. "We will not be firing her. You most especially!" To Mira, she gives an uncomfortable smile. "I'm—my name is Rumi. I don't believe we've actually met but—"

"—but she did your entire company standards training intro. You know, that super long video on your first day? You probably fell asleep during it. Everyone I've asked definitely did," Zoey interjects.

"It makes some people a bit uncomfortable if we meet and I don't recognize them," Rumi explains with a wince. "It's like they think a video is two-ways and that I'm watching them during training. Plus, knowing people is kind of part of my job, I suppose."

"Hell yeah. Let's go, nepo baby!" Zoey holds her hand just long enough for Mira and Rumi both to cringe at her before she high-fives herself.

It feels a bit like watching a clown show, in a way.

"So," Rumi redirects, "what brings you up here?"

"It's broke," Zoey says simply.

Rumi blinks, then tilts her head to one side. Mira pictures the saddest, most confused wet dog and decides that they'd look basically the same. "It's broke?"

"It's not broken," Mira says with a sigh. She pushes off the ground with her knees and slowly stands, careful to avoid knocking over any number of knickknacks in Zoey's space.

"It's not broken," Rumi echoes. Her eyes stay glued to Mira and the lightest blush starts to form, growing stronger and stronger until Mira is standing at her full height and Rumi looks something like a tomato with a rather sore neck. She swallows and takes a very deliberate step back. The movement draws Mira's attention down to Rumi's hand, where a cord bobs.

"It's missing a cord."

Rumi follows Mira's gaze and raises the cable up. She stares at it for a moment before jerking out of her stupor and squinting at Zoey.

"I told you I was going to clean off your cord! I even said your monitor wouldn't work until it got plugged back in," Rumi says with a huff.

"Well duh! I was just turning it on so it could get warmed up for a bit, you know? You don't need a monitor plugged in to turn on a computer." To Mira, Zoey gives a sly little smile. "I was big into keeping my Wii turned on forever so I would never lose my perfect speedrun of Mario. I know all about this sort of stuff." She nods wisely. "So anyway, I turned it on and the power light didn't come on at all. So, it's broken!"

"Not broken," Mira says again. If either of them hear her, they don't indicate it.

"I can't believe you called IT when I told you to wait for me. Computers don't work when they're covered in milk!"

"Milk…?" Mira mumbles to herself. She imagines what pickles and milk might taste like in one sitting and quickly decides she won't ever think about that again. She's left with no choice but to imagine how they could so precisely get milk on a single cable attached to the bottom of a desk.

"I told you, it doesn't need a monitor! This is basic stuff. Tech 101. Get with the times, old man."

Maybe it's cruel of her, but watching them bicker and be so wrong might be the most entertaining thing that she'll get all day. So Mira lets this go on, these two odd women throwing the most mild insults possible, until the clock on the wall ticks over the fifteen minute mark.

"And so I'm saying that if you just—"

"—So you know that's not the monitor cable, right? That's the power cable. For the computer. The cable that supplies power to the computer," Mira interjects. And that's what they call an honest fifteen minutes of work.

That gets their attention.

Rumi's glare snaps to her, and for a moment Mira thinks that she might actually get fired. But the anger melts away into confusion. "What? No… it was plugged in right under where the… monitor cable was… on the computer…" Rumi glances down at the cable in her hand with those big, sad eyes.

Not to be swayed, Mira pinches the bridge of her nose and snatches the cable from her hands.

"Do you think this means I lost the office competition to keep a computer on the longest without restarting?" Zoey asks over Mira's shoulder as she kneels to tussle with the plug. "I was nearing the three months mark. All that hard work for nothing!"

"I'm so sorry," Rumi mumbles for the fourth time. Fifth time? Hard to keep track.

Mira sighs. "You know what? Hand me my bag."

Her tools and testing equipment clatter around as she digs through them. She makes quick work of it, snapping tape off the roll. Wielding a power cord freshly covered in bright orange tape, she's almost certain that this will be hard to lose. Now she just has to get the angle right on the plug… maybe if she leans forward more and twists her torso—there.

She dusts of her knees and stands, ignoring the way they creak and crack. The second worst thing for a computer geek to experience: having to use any muscles for anything. While she winces, Rumi and Zoey both stare at where she once was, faces red.

"It should be easier to see now. Can you see it?"

"Mhm."

"Yeah, for sure. Definitely."

When they don't make any attempt to look at the changes, she sighs again. "Okay. What color is it?"

"Pink," Rumi mumbles.

"Hot pink," Zoey corrects.

Mira leans down and once again confirms that it's orange. Close enough. "… Right. So—in the future, if you don't see that cable, the computer won't turn on. Make sure it's there." To emphasize her point, she pokes the power button. The computer whirs and the monitor lights up.

"Have a nice weekend," Mira spits out in her best customer service voice. She grabs her bag and shoves past them toward the elevator.

There's shuffling behind her and quick footsteps. It doesn't matter how many times she pokes the down button, it just doesn't come fast enough.

"We'll totally have a nice weekend!" Zoey calls.

"Yes—you too. Again, really lovely to meet you. Maybe we'll see you again on another slow day?" Rumi adds.

They both come to a halt outside the elevator just as Mira steps inside it. It's only then that something occurs to her. "Where is everyone else?"

Rumi and Zoey glance at each other, then back to her. Rumi is the one to speak. "Your lead didn't get the memo? Summer Fridays—everyone works from home on Fridays for three months, starting last week."

Mira blinks—and the elevator door draws shut between them.